New Deal Dbq

No analysis of the New Deal is complete without an analysis of Franklin D. Roosevelt himself. He assumed Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression and helped the Americans regain faith in themselves. All across the country, people were facing economic challenges. "The Great Depression" officially began when the stock market crashed. This was called the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929. People who invested their money in stocks began to lose all of their money. They couldn't pay their bank loans or personal bills. The depression affected the nation's banks as well. By 1932, many banks had closed their doors. This meant that many individuals lost all of their savings. Without money, several families could not afford a place to stay or a sufficient amount of food to eat. They also couldn't buy goods and services, which meant most businesses had to close as

well. Over 12 million people across the U.S. were unemployed at the peak of the depression.
Then almost like a beacon of light, FDR took stepped into the limelight. He promised prompt, vigorous action. In his Inaugural Address Roosevelt coined his infamous slogan, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In November 1932 he was elected his first of four terms as President. FDR's confident and self-assured personality was contagious and millions of people ended up turning to him for guidance during their darkest hours. By the time March came around there were around 13,000,000 unemployed individuals in the country, and almost every bank was closed or closing. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and Roosevelt responded with a courageous program of experimentation. This program arguably saved the capitalism and perhaps the American democracy.
In his first one hundred days, he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform. The New Deal helped create many jobs and sponsored public works projects that reached a large amount of people in the nation. Federal protection of bank deposits helped to end the trend of bank runs. Abuse of the stock market was more clearly pointed out and monitored. This helped to prevent collapses in the future. The Social Security system was reformed and expanded so that it remained one of the most popular government programs for the remainder of the century. The federal government actually assumed responsibility for managing the country’s economy. A new powerful union called the Congress of Industrial Organizations benefited laborers from protections as.
All of his visions and promises were just what the country needed to hear, while in all actuality anyone in the country who was not a white male only received limited advances by the legislative programs. Roosevelt was not fully committed to civil rights or even women's rights. However inclusive the New Deal seemed, it failed to reach its main goal of ending the Depression. In 1939, the unemployment rate was still at 19 percent, and it was not until 1943 that it reached pre-Depression levels. What actually ended the Great Depression was war. The Second World War created a ton of new jobs and it gave the Americans a focus. Massive spending brought by the American entry into World War II ultimately helped fix the nation's economic troubles.
Conservatives complained that Roosevelt more than doubled the national debt in two short terms, a good deal of which had been lost through waste. The New Deal also faced some opposition from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court came from a legal viewpoint and in 1935 it successfully declared the National Recovery Administration (NRA) was illegal. In the following year the Supreme Court declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was unconstitutional and in return killed off the AAA. The point they made was that any efforts made to help farmers or other laborers should come from the state level and not the federal level. Then they went on to say that these parts of the New Deal contradicted the powers given to the states by the Constitution. Liberals pointed out that the gap between rich and poor was barely dented by the end of the decade.
The New Deal sounded nice on paper, but it only had a short term impact. This simply lulled the unemployed into believing that all their woes were coming to an end. Arthur Schlesinger claims that the New Deal only got the wheels of industry turning but nothing more. It was merely a step in the right direction. The New Deal's greatest legacy was that it shifted opinions in government philosophy. It resulted in Americans believing that the federal government has a responsibility to ensure the health of the nation's economy and the welfare of its citizens.
The new deal discriminated against African Americans, immigrants and woman as jobs where aimed at white men.

It did not help ease the suffering of any of those groups. Many people claimed that it went against the United States’ tradition of Laissez-faire and it also meant that the government interfered with the economy. The Supreme Court saw the New Deal as harmful and unconstitutional. Some Americans resented the fact that they had to pay higher taxes to help with the new deal. There were violent clashes between unionist and employers. The New Deal did not even achieve its main goal of ending the Depression. When President Roosevelt withdrew some spending just to see the results, the economy immediately slumped. Which meant that American people would be dependent on government money for longer than they thought. It did not solve unemployment because unemployment rates were still high until America entered the war. The New Deal did not solve the economy (the economy only improved at the end of World War II). Therefore, I do not believe that the New Deal was truly successful and helped the country as a

whole.