How Did The New Deal Help America

The Impact of the New Deal on the United States The Great Depression, an era of great poverty, misery, and

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.

The income change from 1929-1933 was drastic. It went from $700 per year down to $375 per year, as seen in Trends in Personal Income, 1929-1933 (Document #5). That is a difference of $325, which is nearly 50% of what the annual income was in 1929! After FDR observed this, he immediately took action to try and change this trend. He encouraged the federal and state governments to start the Public Works Administration (PWA), and the National Recovery Administration (NRA) to recover this crisis, as seen in Document #8. The PWA is an administration that issues public works projects. The purpose of it was to not only improve the nation’s infrastructure, but also create thousands of jobs, which will decrease the unemployment rate. The NRA was an administration simply aimed to improve the economy and the nation in general. It tried to keep prices stable, as well as employ people. Many people took advantage of these opportunities, and they got jobs, and started making an income, however small it may be. As FDR correctly assumed, the more people working and out of the streets, the more the nation will shape up and slowly begin to

The New Deal had a major change of the government and had to change it completely. Before the New Deal, the government didn't provide for the people or had control over the economy. After the New deal, the federal government had played a major role in the economy and providing for the people. The New Deal had caused the federal government to take care of us. They had provided people with Medicare and Social Security.

The era of the Great Depression was by far the worst shape the United States had ever been in, both economically and physically. Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and began to bring relief with his New Deal. In his first 100 days as President, sixteen pieces of legislation were passed by Congress, the most to be passed in a short amount of time. Roosevelt was re-elected twice, and quickly gained the trust of the American people. Many of the New Deal policies helped the United States economy greatly, but some did not. One particularly contradictory act was the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which was later declared unconstitutional by Congress. Many things also stayed very consistent in

FDR’s New Deal responses to the Great Depression were very effective in that they improved the conditions of workers, they decreased the unemployment, and increased overall income of families. At the beginning of the depression, many people were out on the streets, unemployed, and hopeless. This is embodied in Document A, which describes the abundance of men on the street in contrast to women. The main focus of the document is that everyone was out of work and hungry and the idea was to explore the reasons why some people might be more obvious about it. It really emphasizes the low quality of life at the beginning of FDR’s presidency. Some people had different opinions about the idea that government involvement was necessary, which is shown

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”- President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This words were announced to the American public by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his Inaugural Address, where he tried to reassure the people that everything would be fine. Having just experienced the prosperous era of the Roaring Twenties, not many people thought good times would ever end. However, this proved to be incorrects as pandemonium and turmoil overcame the people in October 29, 1929 with the Stock Market Crash. With the economy sliding downhill, Americans faced many problems that would change the government’s role in the economy. Nevertheless, many actions were also taken by both individuals and groups alike in response to this economic depression.

The New Deal had a variety of programs that proved to be effective during the Great Depression. While some of them failed or were ruled unconstitutional many succeeded in helping the economy whether it was temporarily or permanently. The programs were made for many different problems and tried to find a solution, some provided direct work for the unemployed. One of these programs was known as the TVA which stands for the Tennessee Valley Authority. A chart on the New Deal Legislation describes each policy including the TVA, CCC, and WPA. It created public corporations that would construct dams and power projects. (Document 3). Two of the other programs that helped with unemployment were the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Public Works Administration (WPA) which employed 8 million people by creating public works projects. (Document 3). In fact, two programs are still in effect today: the Tennessee Valley Authority(TVA) and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) (Document 3). The programs that helped to employ people throughout the nation helped with unemployment which led to people buying more products which put money back into circulation because the more people bought the more employees they needed. Also because of the New Deal unions became stronger. During a song named “Songs and Yells of Steel Workers” the lyrics say, “We’re

1. Banks became bankrupt, workers were laid off, and millions struggled to get a bite of food in Bread Lines

During his time in office, there were many reasons as to why Roosevelt needed to make changes. Citizens of the US began wanting reform with the beginning of the populist movement in the 1870s. The need for reform continued with the beginning of the progressive movement in the 1890s. Next came the depression, which needed the most reform attention. When Roosevelt became president in 1933 the United States had already been in the depression since October 29, 1929 when the stock market crashed and even before that in the rural community. From the beginning of the depression in 1929 the GNP fell from $104.4 billion to $74.2 billion in 1933 along with the industrial production declining 51%. (Source 8) The Great Depression dramatically changed the

The economic crisis that showed all the contradictions of capitalism led to an increase of a deep political crisis in the USA in late 1920?s. October 29, 1929 is known in the American history as the Black Tuesday. It was the date, when the American stock market collapsed. In such economically difficult situation, in November 1932, a regular presidential election took place. The Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, who spoke with the program the New Deal, came to presidency. It was a series of social liberal programs applied in the United States in 1933-1938 in response to the Great Depression. The New Deal was focused on three main principles: relief, recovery, and reform.[footnoteRef:1] They promised to bring the country to prosperity and economically stable future. However, the Conservatives criticized the New Deal during the whole period of the reforms. It was expressed by Herbert Hoover in Anti-New Deal Campaign Speech in 1936 and Minnie Hardin in 1937 in a Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt. [1: (notes)]

Prior to the great depression, the U.S. economy alternated between periods of prosperity and sharp economic decline. During the great depression, aggregate demand dropped sharply, causing the price level and real GOP to decline. As aggregate output declined, the unemployment rate jumped, climbing from around 3 percent in 1929 to 25 percent in1933.

On October 24, 1929, a day historically known as “Black Thursday”, the United States stock market crashed due to investors in the market starting to “sell off their shares, which resulted in a decline in stock prices.” (Dau-Schmidt, pg 60) This economic downturn in the market gave birth to financial ambivalence in the country, increasing unemployment, as well as other consequences on the landscape of international economics. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt took over as president in the year of 1933, “The country was in its depth of the Great Depression.” (Neal, 2010) Roosevelt’s New Deal consisted of implementing relief programs such as the Work Progress Administration and the Civil Works Administration, which aimed at revitalizing

According to the book, it is a program designed to hire around 3 million Americans every year from 1934 – 1943. Many of those who were hired worked for many different types of work force in an industrial business. They participated in jobs that involve designing public buildings, bridges, hundreds and thousands of miles of road construction, and hundreds of airports.

TVA damns helped control floods and also provided a source of hydroelectric power to the area. Never before had the federal government undertaken a project of such scope and maintained control over the public works it helped create. Reformers had pushed for the development of the nation's water resources a source of electricity but opposition from the utility companies had been too great to overcome. Hoover was one such opponent of government intervention in the free