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Second New Deal Research Paper

Decent Essays

Early in the year of 1929, the stock market crashed, leaving only panic and despair behind. Some thought that it would only be a short time before everything was normal once again, but that was not so. Hunger, death, and misery hung in the air, shrouding the dejected feeling that thrived everywhere at that time. People dreamed of “leaving this world of toil and trouble” claiming that their “home’s in heaven, I’m going there” (The Carter Family). Many gave up trying, and simply waited. After the Election of 1933, President Roosevelt and his administration focused on the Great Depression and trying to solve the problems of the nation’s corroding economy and society. Their solutions, The First and Second New Deals, solved some problems, but not …show more content…

In fact, “most New Deal Programs discriminated against blacks” (African Americans and the New Deal). As stated in “African Americans and the New Deal” from the Digital History online textbook, “the National Recovery Administration, for example, not only offered whites the first crack at jobs, but authorized separate and lower pay scales for blacks.” Some people say that programs were “giving opportunity of employment” and “easing the… distress” and they are absolutely right (Roosevelt). But what about those who were not chosen, simply because of race and ethnicity? Shall you “exclude job categories blacks traditionally filled” from payment or “offer whites the first crack at jobs” that anyone could do just as well or better (African Americans and the New Deal)? Do you just let them starve while only white workers fill all the positions that the African Americans could of done just as well? It should never have been that way, yet it was. This racial and ethnic discrimination was also seen in the agriculture industry in the mid 1930’s. “The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) acreage reduction hit blacks hard” (African Americans and the New Deal). This program, combined with similar forces of other programs, “forced more than 100,000 blacks off the land” (African Americans and the New Deal). Other programs “excluded job categories blacks traditionally filled” in …show more content…

Based on the Unemployment Statistics by Gene Smiley, we can see that the First New Deal did help bring the unemployment rate down, as did the Second Deal. In fact, the total decrease during those time periods was 11.5 percent. This is a great improvement, but it was not permanent. When the Second New Deal ended after 1937, the unemployment rate skyrocketed once again, increasing from 9.1 percent to 12.3 percent (Smiley). The New Deal could never hold its own weight, so why could it handle the collapsing economy as well? The answer is that it could not, not for a long period of time at least. It would take 2 more years to bring the unemployment rate near where it was at the end of the Second New Deal programs, and another year after that to bring the rate below the 9.1 percent in 1937 (Smiley). After the 5 years of work and struggle that the First and Second New Deals went through, after 5 years of planning for success and stability in the years to come, the barrier collapsed, and that work and time and effort and planning, all of it, was gone in an

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