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The Great Depression DBQ

Satisfactory Essays

Birsa Chatterjee
Mr. Meyer
APUSH II
15 January 2014

The America in the 1930s was drastically different from the luxurious 1920s. The stock market had crashed to an all time low, unemployment was the highest the country had ever seen, and all American citizens were affected by it in some way or another. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal was effective in addressing the issues of The Great Depression in the sense that it provided immediate relief to US citizens by lowering unemployment, increasing trust in the banks, getting Americans out of debt, and preventing future economic crisis from taking place through reform. Despite these efforts The New Deal failed to end the depression. In order for America to get out of this economic …show more content…

The administration used strategies like giving out the social security checks mentioned in Document E to help redistribute much of the wealth in America to the working class. This was an important step in changing the government from a passive bystander to an active assistant that was working to help eliminate the problems of the Great Depression. This change, brought about by Roosevelt's New Deal, was vital in asserting
Roosevelt's abilities to disable the Depression and is a good example of the effectiveness of Roosevelt's policies.

As is apparent through the AAA, the WPA, and the social security program of the New Deal, the government under F.D.R.'s administration was able to slow the effects of the Great Depression (although not reverse them, World War II would do this), and create a nearly entirely new system of government. The bureaucracy in Washington greatly expanded with all of the New Deal administrations and departments, and the federal government was turned into an essential insurance company, obligated by its previous actions to provide relief to America when the country encountered troubled economic times. Because the U.S. government created a system of near-parity, because it created social security, and because it gave jobs to those who didn't have any, it was expected to do this again in the future. Thus the government was transformed into an administration that was expected to provide for the entire country during

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