New Deal Dbq

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The Great Depression began on October 24, 1929, also known as Black Tuesday. The Depression brought the world into a economic stagnation, the likes of which had never been seen before. The unemployment rate remained above fifteen percent, and with thousands of people out of work, something had to be done in order to protect the American democracy from falling to fascism in the ways of Germany, Italy, and Spain. In 1932, three years after the Depression began, Democratic presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt appealed to the needs of the people and promised them a “new deal”, a deal that would bring relief, recovery, and reform to the nation. Within the first hundred days of his presidency, Roosevelt and his administration passed 15 major acts through Congress that brought jobs to the unemployed and reform to the economy. The programs that these acts created, while they did not ultimately solve the problems of the Great Depression, they did preserve the American democracy until the economic boom of the post-World-War-II economy could revive the United States and bring it …show more content…

He did this by creating a plethora of organizations that created jobs such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Public Works Administration (PWA), and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). These organizations kept those who the Depression hit the hardest employed, young adults and those with careers that were considered non-essential. The relief programs of the New Deal further expanded on the work done by progressivists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The social workers that emerged from the middle class began to struggle as the number of unemployed grew while the numbers of social workers stagnated (“Federal Emergency Relief.”). This allowed for many of Roosevelt’s relief programs to pass into law without much resistance from both the public and congress.

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