The Great Depression and Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal Essay

Unemployment continued and so did the Depression. The National Recovery Administration alienated business, and failed in encouraging private expansion or investment. Although it stopped the decrease in the prices of consumer goods, it failed to create new jobs and also contributed to feelings of animosity within the nation. The unemployment rate continued to hold devastating statistics as it never dropped below 14 percent and averaged 17 percent for the entire decade of the 1930s. The New Deal tripled federal taxes from $1.6 billion in 1933 to $5.3 billion in 1940, causing the American public to lose a lot of money. A number of New Deal laws, which included 700 industrial cartel codes, made it more expensive for employers to hire people and consequently discouraged hiring. The frequent changes in the tax laws combined with FDR’s anti-business ideology discouraged people from making investments that were essential for economic growth and an increase in jobs. The security laws of the

President Franklin D roosevelt had taken office in 1932. The new deal was a set of programs that were made by president roosevelt due to the economic disaster which is best known as the great depression. The main

In February 1933, “the Senate passed a resolution calling for the newly elected president, Franklin Roosevelt to assume unlimited power” (Bailey, Beth, et al. “Chapter 22: The Great Depression and the New Deal.” A People and A Nation: Brief Tenth Edition. Vol. 2. Stamford: Cengage Learning, 2015. 632-667. Book. [Further: Bailey, Blight, and Chudacoff]). Through the New Deal, Roosevelt sought to “revive the economy through economic planning and relief programs” (Bailey, Blight and Chudacoff). These relief programs helped many Americans find jobs and ultimately restore the economy.

The New deal of 1933 is often regarded at the height of the government’s beneficial support for the rights of the worker. The overall aim of the legislation was to decrease unemployment left in the wake of the Great Depression, as well as improve the rights of those who had already found employment in the unskilled labour force. The National Industry Recovery Act marked a significant change in the attitude of the Governments that had gone before, in that Roosevelt’s economic plans tended to support the worker over the employer, seeking to guarantee minimum wages, as well as the rights of trade unions to exercise collective bargaining techniques. The real benefits of the act were limited in that it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, as it infringed on State’s rights. Despite this, the prospects for greater improvement in labour rights had never been better, as there was now a President who not only

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

FDR knew that he had to deal with unemployment in New Deal, and he enacted the Works Progress Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Social Security Act, and the Civilian Conservation Corporation. The Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) goal was to provide jobs for the unemployed, building hospitals, schools, parks, playgrounds, airports, and post offices. The WPA also gave jobs to actors, writers, artists and teachers. For example, artists could paint murals on public buildings. Overall, the WPA managed to build 120,000 public buildings, and paint ½ a million miles of road(Source

The New Deal was a specific set of government works programs put into effect by President Roosevelt in response to the Great Depression. The New Deal took action to bring fast economic relief as well as improvements in industry, finance, agriculture, housing, the labor force, etc. The traditional American policy of laissez-faire was opposed in the new democratic promise of the “New Deal”. The majority of the New Deal was enacted in the first couple months of FDR’s presidency, which later became known as the Hundred Days. The first objective was to lessen the hardship of the large amount of unemployed workers in the nation. The Works Progress Administration(WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps(CCC) were created to establish short term government aid to temporary jobs. The National Recovery Administration (NRA) was created to develop rules to govern trade practices, hours, child labor, wages, and collective bargaining. Also, the New Deal worked to avoid another stock market crash and bank failures.The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) gave insurance for bank deposits and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was created to protect the people from stock-market companies committing fraud. An agricultural program , the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) attempted to raise prices by providing subsidies to farmers to reduce crop production. The New Deal was filled with government works programs to help pull the country out of the Great Depression but,

The government played a large role in funding the development of the many cutting edge technologies during this time period. This was a time period where government introduced never before seen laws that dramatically increased spending. The most sweeping legislation developed during this time period was the New Deal signed by President Theodore Roosevelt. The New Deal tried to provide relief from the Great Depression through programs of regulation, inflation, price stabilization, and public works. This also created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), National Recovery Administration (NRA), Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Public Works Administration (Columbia, 2013). The most well-known agency today is the FDIC which insures bank deposits up to a limit. This was aimed at preventing future runs on the bank. The New Deal also attempted to

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

During this time, “…FDR promised ‘a new deal for the American people’” (Polenberg, 8). FDR quickly realized that in order to win over the citizens of the United States and to fix the crisis they were in, he had to address the two main things that he saw every American wanted during this economical depression. Polenberg informs his readers that FDR saw that the two things every American wanted was “…Work; work with all the moral and spiritual values that go with work. And with work, a reasonable measure of security—security for themselves and for their wives and children” (p.8). Knowing that these were the two main aspects (at the time) that FDR had to place the majority of his attention on, he went to work immediately as “He feared that a resolution was likely if he failed, as Hoover had, to solve the nation’s problems” therefore he begun formation of the first New Deal reforms (Polenberg, 8). These reforms were “…designed not so much to promote reform as to proceed recovery,” (Polenberg, 9) therefore indicating that “…the Roosevelt administration intended to move the country in a dramatically new direction” (Polenberg, 9). Some of the programs that the New Deal initiated were: the NIRA (National Industrial Recovery Act), the NRA (the National Recovery Administration), the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act), the WPA (Works Progress Administration), the CWA (Civil Works Administration), and the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) just to name a few (Polenberg, 9-13). Each reform act was aimed at recovering a different but specific area of society. For example, the TVA worked to “…provide cheap electrical power… and… help prevent soil erosion and control floods” (Polenberg, 13) while the AAA “…served as the foundation of New Deal farm policy… balancing agricultural production and consumption so as to avoid surpluses and ensure that

Nonetheless, with the New Deal it addressed the problem of unemployment and the rights of the people. In 1933 the unemployment of nonfarm workers had increased, there were millions of unemployed citizens (Doc J). Which lead to the New Deal to create jobs to provide relief to the unemployed such as with the Civilian Conservation Corps, which employed jobless men in reforestation projects. Not only were jobs being developed, but the rights of the individuals as workers were being enforced more “Huge corporations, such as United States Steel and General Motors… Have no right to transgress the law which gives to the workers the rights to self organization and collective bargaining.” (Doc G). With the NLRA which allowed workers to form unions, removing the yellow dog contract; people were now able to form labor unions without having problems with the employer. The New Deal might of not not ended the Great Depression, yet it did improve the job opportunity for the American citizen and allowing more rights for the

FDR had many other accomplishments throughout his presidency such as the FDIC, CWA, and NIRA. The FDIC or Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is still in use today. The effect of the FDIC during the Great Depression had improved the trust in banks by insuring deposits into banks up to $100,000, which preserved public confidence in the banks. Roosevelt also created the CWA or Civil Works Administration which placed the unemployed back into the workforce. More than 4 million men and women were employed under the CWA in 1934 (“Civil Works Administration”). There had to be a standard for working wages, so FDR created the NIRA or National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 which allowed the President to regulate industry in an effort to raise

The government monitored workers’ wages and working hours and created “fair competition codes” to ensure that practices were followed in all companies within an industry. Although the NRA faced criticisms from FDR’s opponents, it was quite popular with workers and many of its principles were later incorporated into the Wagner Act. Document D is a political cartoon which features FDR as a doctor taking a house call, while Uncle Sam is the patient, looking more sickly than usual. There is a maid (the Hundred Days Congress) guiding the doctor into his bedroom. In this case, Uncle Sam represents the American economy, suffering under the effects of the Great Depression. Next to him is a table filled with the doctor’s “remedies” for the economy, which are the New Deal programs. Besides the NRA, the FDIC is another one of these treatments. The FDIC, or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, was founded under the Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act. It insured individual bank deposits up to $5000, although this amount was later raised, and ended the wildcat banking practices that had existed since the days of Andrew Jackson, thus reforming the banking

The Glass-Stbagall Banking Reform Act, which forbade banks to invest customers' money into the stock market. President Roosevelt also tried to better the economy by causing inflation. Inflation would cause an increase in prices and businesses would make more profit and the economy would boom.

Look deep within United States history to find its most significant molding element and one will find that its source stemmed from a great national crisis. At its highest extent, nearly one-fourth of its labor force was unemployed and American confidence in itself was deeply shaken. It is in studying the Great Depression and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, that America’s most significant influential event can be found. The New Deal and its legacy had the largest impact on American society since the founding of the United States. The New Deal altered the political and social nature of the nation as well as preserved the fundamental capitalist nature of the American economy.