Franklin D. Roosevelt

The benchmark for this list. The Social Security Act of 1935 still pays pensions to most older Americans, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation still guarantees bank deposits, the Securities and Exchange Commission still polices markets and the Fair Labor Standards Act created the federal minimum wage. Economists still argue over how much the New Deal itself ended the Depression rather than wartime spending, and many programmes excluded farm and domestic workers, a choice that left out a large share of Black workers in the South.