The folks who claim FDR prolonged the depression do so by counting all the workers at the various government agencies that built all those buildings and roads and bridges as "unemployed" because they were collecting government checks.Actual unemployment, people who couldn't find work, dropped to below 10%. The people collecting checks for working to build American infrastructure did not consider themselves to be unemployed.FDR, didn't follow Hoover's RFC, and rather than give me people money ala charity it was better they work, and better they work at fixing up America. So just agency WPA built 650,000 miles of new roads, 124,000 bridges, 18,000 parks and playgrounds, 125,000 public buildings including 41000 new schools and on and on. The banks, military, and most of America was involved in FDR's approach to the Great Depression, and maybe that's one reason for the historian's ratings and WWII was still coming.FDR extended the Depression years longer than it needed to last. I find it amusing how the left excoriates Hoover, yet canonizes FDR when he simply took Hoover's failed policies and extrapolated them to the extreme.