New Deal Dbq

America in the early 1930's was a forbidding and bleak place; by 1932, one in every four Americans was unemployed and financially, the country was in ruins; the stock market had collapsed and what followed was arguably the worst financial recession America had ever suffered. Homeless and starvation were common and ‘Hooverville's’ were the nickname given to the shantytowns appearing across America because of President Herbert Hoover’s unwillingness to offer any kind of government intervention, instead believing in the importance of self-reliance. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the presidency in 1933, his goal was to return America to her former glory financially and to boost the morale of the population. FDR promised to ‘pledge [himself], to a new deal for the American people’ During the first one hundred days of his presidency, known also as the ‘First New Deal’, Roosevelt introduced several measures that were intended to provide immediate relief to the people, foster reform in the banking sector and to promote recovery. In this essay, I will discuss the principle measures and events which characterise this New Deal, and how successful it was, in improving the lives of the American people.

The financial disaster was ever expanding and on the day of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inauguration on 4th March 1933, four of New York City’s leading banks closed their doors, leaving America quite literally on the brink of economic collapse.

The number of banks in the United States fell 35 percent between 1929 and 1933 .Roosevelt recognised the severity and potential impact of the closures and almost immediately called a four-day bank holiday, which he used to push an emergency bill through both houses of congress in only eight hours. The Emergency Banking Relief bill (1933) was enacted on 9th March 1933; it brought all banks under the control of the federal government and enabled all banks that were stable and solvent, to reopen on the next working

day.
Unlike his predecessor, Roosevelt felt empathy for the common American. Per Colonel Edward House, Roosevelt was ‘genuinely fond of people’ and enjoyed talking to people. On 12th March 1933, soon after his inauguration, Roosevelt held the first of numerous nationwide radio broadcasts, often nicknamed ‘Fireside chats’. In this broadcast, he explained the measures that had been taken to save the banks and reassured 60 million listeners that it was safer to ‘keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress’
One of the first programs introduced by Roosevelt’s administration in March 1933 was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The CCC placed young men between the ages of 18-25 in camps to work on regional environmental conservation work, where they were paid $30 a month, $25 of which was sent home to their families. Roosevelt believed in the importance of conservation work and wanted the youth to appreciate the importance of hard work and discipline. By September 1935 over 500,000 young men had lived in CCC camps, most staying from six months to a year . The program was disbanded during World War Two