The New Deal Dbq Essay

The United States encountered many ordeals during the Great Depression (1929-1939). Poverty, unemployment and despair clouded the “American Dream” and intensified the urgency for solutions to address and control the nationwide damage. President Franklin Roosevelt proposed the New Deal to detoxify the nation of its suffering. It can be argued that the New Deal was ineffective due to the inability to end the Great Depression with its short-term solutions and created more problems, however; it was successful in regards to providing direct relief for the needy, economic recovery and some structural reform for the majority of the general public in the severity of the Great Depression.

Faced with this economic decline, came other factors that included unemployment and lack of confidence in banks (Church 100). Restoring faith in banks across the United States was one goal for FDR. As depositors lost confidence in the national bank, over $1,000,000,000 was taken out in cash and hoarded (Boardman 64). The Emergency Banking Act closed all banks for four straight days, and put them under inspection by the national government (Schraff 52). Banks were put under meticulous scrutiny by the Treasury Department. The U.S. government demanded that all hoarded gold be returned and all of the $1,000,000,000 was deposited (Boardman 65). Banks were allowed to open only under a strict system of licensing (Schraff 52). Another banking program was The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, which was created by Congress to guarantee deposits up to $5000 (Gupta). In the case

Within 3 years, the GNP dropped by almost 50% from $104 billion to 459 billion. Since we had a weak banking system, more than 5,500 banks closed down and people lost all their money that was inside, with no guarantee of ever getting anything back. Farm prices decreased by 60% of what it’s normally worth and the only thing that seemed to increase was unemployment rates, from 3% to 25%.

This eventually affected big companies, which led in decrease in production and fired many employees. The unemployment rose higher than twenty five percent, which meant less money to hover up this economic situation.

The Civilian Conservation Corps accomplishments included the restoration of resources, recreational opportunities, and the building of national state’s parks. The failures of this program were that Civilian Conservation Corps was that it gave money to a small segment of the population, it took taxpayers money ,and it was only for young white men. According to experts of the Digital History Online Textbook, many New Deal Programs discriminated against African Americans. The document said “Roosevelt feared that conservative southern Democrats, who had seniority in Congress and controlled many committee chairmanships, would block his bills if he tried to fight them on the race question.(Document B)” This is why the Civilian Conservation Corps is labeled as a success and a fail. It helps citizens but not many. The second New Deal program that had accomplishment and failures was the Tennessee Valley. The accomplishments that the Tennessee Valley made was it provided cheap electrical power to rural areas, and it provided employment in rural areas. The failures that this program had was that since they provided lots with electricity, they had to build a lot of dams, which is bad for the ecosystem. The Tennessee Valley also had many long term failures. The long-term effect is that it generates power through coal fire plants, which causes pollution that generates global

When the stock market crashed and the worries regarding more economic decline, people from all classes stopped purchasing consumer products. Which lead to reduction in consumer products being made, this caused a reduction in the workforce. As people lost their jobs they were unable to pay for the items that were bought on credit. The unemployment rate rose and cause even less spending to assist to lesson the economic situation.

The stock market crash, called Black Tuesday. Unequal distribution of wealth was a key factor during the time period as well. The day know as “Black Tuesday” was the day the stock market crashed. This led to the fall of stock prices, in fear, people sold their stocks and gathered the money they could. The people who didn’t, lost all of their stocks. Those who bought them on credit, they were now in debt. Investors lost a collective amount equal to the amount spent in WWI, that’s billions of dollars gone, approximately thirty-two billion dollars (32,000,000,000). As bad as the crash was, unequal distribution of wealth did not help. The rich saw an income increase of 70%, and the poor saw an increase of 9%. More than 70% of families earned less than $2500/year. Many of these families couldn't afford household products, such as the flood of overproduced goods. Only one out of ten families owned an electric refrigerator. One thing many people overlook when on the subject of the Great Depression is the president's influence on the situation. The two presidents during this time were Herbet Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hoover was in office during the collapse of the economy, he didn’t believe in national relief, he believed in self-prevalence and self-help. His beliefs didn’t get the confidence of the people, in 1933, a fourth of working American’s were out of a job, that’s more than fifteen million people unemployed. Many people disliked Hoover, so when they needed to make a home out of paper, glass, tin, or whatever they could find, they named the towns constructed from these items “Hoovervilles”. They were found mostly on the outside of cities. Hoover's idea of self-reliance didn’t get him reelected, he lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Roosevelt brought forward a new strategy to take on the economic problems, it was called the New Deal. The New Deal was a series of actions him and his

The CCC was designed to garner trust from the people by giving them hope and jobs, which required repairing the damaged land. To avoid another environmental disaster, their primary work was to plant trees, as some people relied on their land to feed themselves. President Roosevelt saw a perfect solution to solve the two problems; he saw the barren land that needed to be replanted and the desperate men who could to the job. The CCC would initially hire a quarter of a million of young men (Roosevelt 5). To the masses, this idea of putting people back into action and earn a living for them and for their families gave hope to the future of America.

As soon as Franklin Roosevelt came to power, he was quick to react to the countries needs. The text states, “Swift legislation regulated the stock market and the banking system, improved the agricultural economy, and introduced a social security program” (“Great Depression”). Franklin Roosevelt was swift in recognizing the problems facing the country and attempted to solve the issues. His legislation focused on securing the economy and beginning to built back up the trust between the government and the American people. It was successful, to an extent. People did begin to trust the government again but economic decline would not stop immediately. There were signs of progress; From 1933 to 1938 the economy experienced growth. Unemployment fell and national income increased (Jeffries). This statistic shows that New Deal reforms had some positive impact on the economy. They also succeeded in restoring confidence to the average person which was extremely important at the time. This statistic does not, however, reflect that this growth was very small relative to the growth experienced during World War II. New Deal policies failed to ever achieve enough economic growth to push the nation out of the depression. Another cornerstone of the New Deal was its campaign to make life more safe. The New Deal worked to make life less risky, and in a sense it did through acts

People lost their life’s savings, their homes and farms. In his first broadcast on the radio Roosevelt speech, declared that “This great Nation will endure as it has endured , we will revive and will prosper the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. Heeding the nation to call for action, and action now he promise to exercise broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency. The first step was to save the banks. During his first hundred days as president, FDR ordered all banks to closed to stop people from withdrawing money from the banks, until congress meeting into special session. On March 9 congress passed Roosevelt’s Emergency Banking Act, in which recognized the banks and closed the ones there were insolvent. Banks would re open immediately with government support, and the ones that were insolvent would be handed over to federal conservators who would guide them to solvency. The President urged Americans to put their savings back to the bank, when banks re open the next day, deposits exceed withdrawals. Saving the banks and financial markets meant little if human suffering continue. One work relief program proposed by FDR was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). This program consist to employed hundreds of thousands of young men from relief rolls, and sent them into the woods and fields to plant trees, build parks and fight soil erosion. During its ten years put more than three million young men with jobs. The need to alleviate starvation led Roosevelt to proposed a new giveaway program. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) which consist in gave grants to the states to operate relief programs.The main goal of the program was to alleviate unemployment by creating new unskilled jobs in local and state government. The Social Security Act, and unemployment insurance were incorporated in a separate piece of legislation. The Social Security Act sought

This progressive act officially set up a national minimum wage, set up a forty hour work week, guaranteed 'time-and-a-half' for overtime, and prohibited oppressive child labor (Friedrich). These acts dramatically improved labor conditions. A clear improvement in labor could be seen from before to after the New Deal labor reform.

The first order was to reopen the banks and restore public confidence by enacting the Glass Steagall-Banking Reform Act, which insured deposit up to $5,000.00. Since then people deposit their money with the assurance that it will be there when they need it.

Uneven distribution of wealth serves as another cause of the Great Depression. America was wealthy in the 1920s, but this wealth did not extend to all segment of the society. The gains made by wealthy Americans in the 1920s far outstripped gained made by the working class. By the time of the stock market crash, the upper one percent of the population controlled over sixty percent of the nation’s savings. On the other hand, over three quarters of American families made less than $3000 a year. Problems that could develop from this situation were obvious. The bottom-line three-quarters of families were too poor to purchase much to help the economics to flourish. Underconsumption, in the long run, was a vicious circle to the economy. People had no money to spend. The income of many firms dwindled. More people were laid off or cut hours and thus further cut their spending. The economics became stagnant.

Moreover, another method in which Roosevelt used to revitalize the labor market was through the Civil Works Administration also known as the CWA. Similar to the Works Progress Administration, the CWA was introduced in 1933. This relief program also allowed for the construction of bridges, roads, but mostly focused on inner city projects. Nonetheless like the WPA, the CWA only “ employed up to 4 million people per week through March 1934.” This goes to show that there was only a number amount of people to get jobs, this was determined by the “Household budget deficit principle of the CWA.” Furthermore, to put this in simpler terms, the CWA was given certain amount of money in order to have unemployed people working, therefore

The New Deal provided countless of actions that helped Americans in the time being, but it did not end the Great Depression. Many Americans were still suffering with hunger, unemployment and a stable place to live or no place at all. It was believed by many politicians and economist that when the U.S entered World War Two, the New Deal could have been more of a success if Roosevelt put in more money in the