New Deal Dbq

The New Deal is often considered a baseline for good political practices. Even today, people look back on it as a great example of a leader evaluating and taking care of a national issue. I believe that the New Deal did take the right steps to effectively address the correct problems to help America recover from the Great Depression. Roosevelt did this by getting more money into the banks and helping with unemployment, despite some disagreements from people.

Hoover did nothing when the Great Depression struck, and that was evident when looking at (Doc: 2 Unemployment Rates), where you see the unemployment rates rise until 1933, when Roosevelt came into office, and it quickly declined again. Roosevelt pushed for his New Deal Plan, and many

people were suffering because of the bank crashes, as evident in (Doc 1: Wise Economist). People placed all of their savings in banks, and when many banks crashed/closed, some people lost everything, even those saving for hard times. He actually encouraged many people to place their savings back into the banks, and within a few months, many more banks were seen open again across America.
Roosevelt also sought to use the New Deal to combat unemployment. Without jobs, people lose money and therefore cannot pour it back into the economy. He discovered that the best way to push messages into the public was to have “fireside chats”. In one of these chats, (Doc 5: Excerpts from Fireside Chat Broadcast), Roosevelt directs attention at employers, stating how if we work together and offer better wages, people will come back to work and the economy can pick up. He strongly pushed facts that together, America can rise from these ashes.
However, Roosevelt faced disagreements from many groups. Specifically, the entire Republican party opposed some of his ideals! As seen in (Doc 4: Republican Opposition), republicans attacked the New Deal plan, trying to claim that the Roosevelt Administration was borrowing and spending too much money, throwing us further down the debt hole. However, years later, many people feel grateful that Roosevelt took action to end such a national crisis. As seen in (Doc 3: Recollections of Ray Watkins), a normal citizen feels gratitude for Roosevelt’s actions and ideas. He even states how not everyone agreed with the programs that were put into place, but at least he took action. Hoover simply sat and waited, while Roosevelt took the initiative to find a cure to the debt epidemic.