Hello Jahaira,
The New Deal was a turning point in the social welfare history of the United States. The New Deal is often summed up by historians via “The Three R’s: relief, recovery, and reform” (Kennedy & Cohen, 2016). In response to the Great Depression, it seems clear that President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) recognized the need of the people. In fact, he rolled out the first portions of the New Deal within the first one hundred days of his presidency (Kirby, 2013). The workings of FDR’s New Deal set a prescient for social services in our country. The New Deal – for perhaps the first time in our nation’s history –cemented the idea that the government can “help regulate social and economic affairs” (Paul 2017). As you said, Jahaira, this was an ‘eye opener’ for Americans in terms of social welfare.
However, although the New Deal changed the social welfare climate in America, it had some flaws. For instance, the New Deal mostly benefitted white Americans. The plans on the New Deal did little to help people of color. For instance, the Federal Housing Administration only further ensured the Jim Crow Laws of the time. Moreover, the labor assistance programs such as Works Progress Administration, did paid African Americans less than whites. FDR’s New Deal did nothing to aid people of color in their deleterious “discrimination
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in employment, wages, and working conditions” (The Roosevelt Institute, 2010). The New Deal also had inadequacies in terms of ending unemployment.
One of the focal goals of this program was to bring America back to its pre-Depression economy. Yet by 1939 it had not done so. It was the United States involvement in World War II that finally “cured the nation's economic woes” (UsHistory.org, 2018). When millions of American men went to war and those here in the homeland began jobs in wartime factories, there was a rapid decline in unemployment numbers. The end of World War II (1946-1964) is known as the baby boom because after the war, America was in the best economic shape it had ever been and the birth rate
skyrocketed. In conclusion, Franklin D. Roosevelt did change the way America viewed social welfare. The Social Security act is still the “cornerstone of social welfare legislation” (DiNitto & Johnson, 2012, p 51). It helped to form the maternal health, child welfare, minimum wage, and child labor laws that we know of today. While that is all positive, one should also acknowledge the defects to inform oneself about what would and would not work in social welfare policy today.
The New Deal sought to create a more progressive country through government growth, but resulted in a huge divide between liberals and conservatives. Prior to the New Deal, conservatives had already begun losing power within the government, allowing the Democratic Party to gain control and favoring by the American people (Postwar 284). With the Great Depression, came social tensions, economic instability, and many other issues that had to be solved for America’s wellbeing. The New Deal created a strong central government, providing the American people aid, interfering with businesses and the economy, allowing the federal government to handle issues they were never entrusted with before.
The Great Depression was one of the greatest challenges that the United States faced during the twentieth century. It sidelined not only the economy of America, but also that of the entire world. The Depression was unlike anything that had been seen before. It was more prolonged and influential than any economic downturn in the history of the United States. The Depression struck fear in the government and the American people because it was so different. Calvin Coolidge even said, "In other periods of depression, it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which you could base hope, but as I look about, I now see nothing to give ground to hope—nothing of man." People were scared and did not know what to do to address the looming economic crash. As a result of the Depression’s seriousness and severity, it took unconventional methods to fix the economy and get it going again. Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration had to think outside the box to fix the economy. The administration changed the role of the government in the lives of the people, the economy, and the world. As a result of the abnormal nature of the Depression, the FDR administration had to experiment with different programs and approaches to the issue, as stated by William Lloyd Garrison when he describes the new deal as both assisting and slowing the recovery. Some of the programs, such as the FDIC and works programs, were successful; however, others like the NIRA did little to address the economic issue. Additionally, the FDR administration also created a role for the federal government in the everyday lives of the American people by providing jobs through the works program and establishing the precedent of Social Security...
In his presidential acceptance speech in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed to the citizens of the United States, “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.” The New Deal, beginning in 1933, was a series of federal programs designed to provide relief, recovery, and reform to the fragile nation. The U.S. had been both economically and psychologically buffeted by the Great Depression. Many citizens looked up to FDR and his New Deal for help. However, there is much skepticism and controversy on whether these work projects significantly abated the dangerously high employment rates and pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression. The New Deal was a bad deal for America because it only provided opportunities for a few and required too much government spending.
The New Deal was a series of federal programs launched in the United Sates by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in reaction to the Great Depression.
...s of the New Deal worked; some did not. The New Deal restored a sense of security as it put people back to work. It created the framework for a regulatory state that could protect the interests of all Americans, rich and poor, and thereby help the business system work in more productive ways. It rebuilt the infrastructure of the United States, providing a network of schools, hospitals, and roads that served the United States well for the next 70 years. For many Americans, Roosevelt was the president who included in his policies the people who had felt excluded (Source XX). Nevertheless, the war was the decisive factor in ending the Depression. It employed people regardless of race and gender and thus eliminated unemployment. It stimulated industry as seen in (Source RRR) and ‘did for the economy what Roosevelt’s New Deal had not been able to achieve’ (Source PPP).
The New Deal was a set of acts that effectively gave Americans a new sense of hope after the Great Depression. The New Deal advocated for women’s rights, worked towards ending discrimination in the workplace, offered various jobs to African Americans, and employed millions through new relief programs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) made it his duty to ensure that something was being done. This helped restore the public's confidence and showed that relief was possible. The New Deal helped serve America’s interests, specifically helping women, African Americans, and the unemployed and proved to them that something was being done to help them.
Document 8, The New Deal in Review, by The New Republic talks about how the New Deal has helped them in many ways. It has helped them in many ways because it was able to expand jobs for people who couldn’t work for many reasons. Giving out jobs maintain the nation in good hands because they build schools for children. The New Deal was able to develop many programs for those who needed them. It was such a good idea to have these programs because it helped many families and gave them opportunities. The opportunities that they had were having a job, insurance, and having schools. Document 8, also states, “It work projects have added immeasurably to the nation’s wealth; in some regions the school, health and recreation facilities it has called into existence have fairly revolutionized communal life”.The New Deal programs had made people’s lives easier. They have improved a lot by building schools for children. Families helped the nation by making it better with the economy because of the jobs they had. Those who didn’t have a job were able to survive after suffering a lot. People are very thankful and the programs have become very common to
Stemming from a multitude of circumstances such as the Stock Market Crash of 1929, European war debt, The Dust Bowl, etc, the United States entered an era of mass unemployment and economic failure known as, “The Great Depression”. During the Great Depression, 25% of Americans were out of work, deflation was rampant, businesses, banks, and factories were closing, and many Americans, tired of the economic conditions in their country, fled to join the Soviet Union to help build communism. Amidst a seemingly downward spiral of failure, something had to be done to restore this country to its rightful self. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, he proposed a series of “New Deal Programs” to help rejuvenate the United States, as he promised he would do in his inaugural address. One of these “New Deal Programs” was the Works Progress Administration, which allowed for the development of large-scale public works and infrastructure, in turn creating jobs, as Roosevelt had promised in his inaugural address, stating, “Our greatest primary task is to put people to work”. The end result
“No New Deal laws were made to assist black people, with around 30% of all black families were dependant on emergency relief to survive.” (How successful was the new deal?) This is an example of why the New Deal was not successful, since it didn’t try to help people that actually were in worse conditions than everyone else. It also shows that the New Deal was a failure because it had a bit a racial discrimination, by not letting black people the security for the same amount of opportunities as white ones. To support this idea we have the book “The Americans” that state the following: “Townsend believed that Roosevelt wasn’t doing enough to help the poor and elderly, so he devised a pension plan that would provide monthly benefits to the aged, the plan found strong backing among the elderly” (The Americans, pag. 494). This shows that the New Deal wasn’t successful because it didn’t make a positive impact on everyone. We are also able to see its failure by noticing that the program didn’t even accomplish its objective of relieving the needy. We can comprehend that this program algo failed by not helping minorities, and so not achieving one of its main objectives, to give relief to the
The New Deal Program was set of federal programs launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after taking office in 1933, in response to the calamity of the Great Depression, and lasting until the American entry into the Second World War in 1942. Social Security was the most important of the New Deal Program. August, 14,1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sign into law the Social Security Act. Press photographers snapped pictures as FDR, flanked by ranking members of Congress, signed into law the historic act, which guaranteed an income for the unemployed and retirees. FDR commended Congress for what he considered to be a “patriotic” act.Roosevelt had taken the helm of the country in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, the nation’s
FDR began to pass new laws and acts to improve the everyday life of an American, which was destroyed because of the depression. Americans began to descend into poverty, during economic decline, many lost their jobs and homes. In April 1935, “FDR signs legislation creating the Works Progress Administration. The program employs more than 8.5 million individuals in 3,000 counties across the nation”(http://www.pbs.org). This was the start of FDR’s progress in improving everyday life. The WPA created jobs for individuals who were unemployed. This began to promote general welfare because more people began having jobs to support the economy. One of the biggest acts passed during the Depression, which still impacts us today is the Social Security Act. Kenneth S. Davis, historian, calls the Social Security act "one of the major turning points of American history”(http://www.pbs.org). Social Securit...
It is evident that a period of struggle occurred for almost all of the American people during the early twentieth century and specifically the 1930’s. There was an abundance of obstacles that constantly stumped and puzzled the society as whole. Often people found that the situations they faced were so difficult that they became unemployed. Unemployment left many Americans scrambling to try to do what ever they were able to in order to uphold financial agreements and provide a living for their family. Many people that managed to find employment, still faced detrimental financial turmoil. As people were low on ideas and starting to loose faith, it was evident that they should consider accepting the financial aid opportunities that the government
The New Deal occurred in 1933 when 13 million American workers lost their jobs. As a result of the massive job loss, thousands of workers demanded union recognition, unemployed Americans demanded food and shelter, and farmers demanded higher process on their goods. Federally funded jobs and social welfare programs to help the poor were set up by President Roosevelt in order to please the demands of the American people. The New Deal was established with the intention of improving lives, to save capitalism, and to provide a degree of economic security. In 1935, President Roosevelt passed the Social Security Act which, according to Katznelson, Kesselman, and Draper, “offered pensions and unemployment compensation to qualified workers, provided public assistance to the elderly and the blind, and created a new national program for poor single mothers” (332).This act allowed states to set the benefit level for welfare programs, which was set quite low (Katznelson, Kesselman, & Draper, 331-334). The Great Society programs were established by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 when Johnson declared war on poverty. This was would be the action that initiates the Great Society programs. The government used the New Deal as a foundation to build new welfare programs. Medicaid and Medicare were created to help poor and old people with their medical costs. Head Start was established to help low income
Welfare is a public assistance program that provides at least a minimum amount of economic security to people whose incomes are insufficient to maintain an adequate standard of living. These programs generally include such benefits as financial aid to individuals, subsidized medical care, and stamps that are used to purchase food. The modern U.S. welfare system dates back to the Great Depression of the 1930’s. During the worst parts of the Depression, about one-fourth of the labor force was without work. More than two-thirds of all households would have been considered poor by today's standards. With a majority of the capable adult population experiencing severe financial misfortune, many Americans turned to the government for answers. In response, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt led a social and economic reform movement attacking the Depression. Part of his newly enacted “New Deal” program was the Social Security Act, enacted by Congress in 1935. This act and established a number of social welfare programs, each designed to provide support for different segments of the population.
The New Deal recorded a new relationship between the government, as the central unit in charge of economic recovery, and the people of America who suffered the most from the Great Depression. From 1933 until 1941, President Roosevelt’s policies did not only adjust interest rates, or create “short-term make-work programs”. They created a brand-new political alliance that put together white people, African Americans and intellectuals. They all shared a strong belief that a government that would involve in people’s needs was what they needed for their families, for the economic recovery and for the development of the