New Deal Dbq

Roosevelt entered his first term with quite a mess to fix. The unemployment rate in 1932 was 23.3 percent and suicides had increased by nearly 10,000 than the previous years. America was in the depth of the Great Depression and in FDR’s own words. the nation needed a leader who doesn't “shrink from honesty facing conditions in our country today…leadership of frankness an vigor”. The economic situation had gotten so bad that a state of emergency was called to allow the President the room to properly address the problem. Unfortunately, Roosevelt and his Brain Trust had difficulty pin-pointing the exact cause of the depression. This miscalculation would lead to nearly a decade of political fumbles and the eventual prolonging of the depression.

The market created a breeding ground for competition, larger companies could afford to lower their prices. This in turn would stifle their competition, and shut out weaker business. Roosevelt felt that these practices were one of the root causes of the depression, calling for an end to conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the links of callous and selfish wrong doing.
The NRA was created to regulate all aspects of business in order to “remove obstructions to the free flow of interstate and foreign commerce, witch tend to diminish the amount thereof.” Like the monetary policies before, the NIRA and NRA had disastrous repercussions that would ultimately deter business. Looking to the Table 1, presented at the begging of Best’s book, we can see that unemployment rose from 24.1 to 25.2, once the NIRA was implemented. Likewise Table 2, shows that the balance of trade fell nearly 400 million dollars during the implementation of these programs. Discontent of the NRA grew and in 1934, a “Field Day of Criticism” was started, in which business owners went to the Department of Commerce and listed grievances with the policies. These firms saw first hand the adverse implications of the NRA. The so called “fair competition.” This ties into the ultimate failure of the Roosevelt administration in its dealings with the