Eric Rauchway: The Great Depression And The New Deal

Eric Rauchway's short introduction of the Great Depression and the New Deal is explained easily for someone wanting to understand what was going on during this time in American history. Rauchway uses examples from the Hoover administration to show the failure of government action that caused the United States to get hit hard by the economic depression through Franklin D. Roosevelt's programs to try and help relieve Americans from troubling times, even though most would fail. The 1920's to mid-1940's were an interesting span of time in American political history to learn from, as it can relate to current times, but not as severe. Rauchway emphasizes the weaknesses of the economic system, having "the web of debt binding that world together." Eric Rauchway, The Great Depression & the New Deal: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 13. After World War I the United States had an emerged as a world power because Europe was in rubble from the war. The war switched the United States from a debtor to the world's creditor. The European countries would be borrowing more than what they could pay back to rebuild their

Senator Robert Wager, Democrat from New York, had said this about President Hoover, as the nation was faced with the crisis of the Great Depression, "but clung to the time-worn Republican policy: to do nothing and when the pressure becomes irresistible to do as little as possible." Rauchway, The Great Depression & the New Deal, 23. One of the myths about Hoover is that he believed in lassiez faire economics, but the examples given by Rauchway prove otherwise. He was the head of a flood-relief effort in 1927, where he helped organized and managed the evacuations, overseeing the establishment of camps for refugees, and backing the federal control of river management to prevent the same type of disaster. Rauchway, The Great Depression & the New Deal,