New Deal Dbq

In the wake of an economic crisis coined the Great Depression, many Americans struggled in President Herbert Hoover’s laissez-faire based government. This changed, however, with the election of Democratic candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose “New Deal” sparked the nation’s recovery from the depression, While Roosevelt’s deal may have benefitted many groups such as farmers and the unemployed, it posed as a deterrent to African American citizens.

One way FDR’s New Deal was successful was through the aid of farmers that had been affected by the overproduction of crops which was a major contributing factor in the depression.

According to the president in one of his famous “fireside chats”, Roosevelt states that the government would “pass legislation that will greatly ease the mortgage distress among farmers.” The positive effect of this act was obvious as many farmers struggled to make ends meet on housing. In addition to mortgage issues, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), one of FDR’s many policies,”lowered the supply [going] to the market and the prices immediately went up.” The increasing crop prices allowed farmers to make more profit with less crops, fixing the overproduction issue that had dug farmers into a financial hole.

Another group that benefitted from Roosevelt’s new legislation were the unemployed, who struggled in the faltering economy.

According to Gene Smiley’s “Recent Unemployment Rate Estimates for the 1920s and 1930s”, unemployment rates decreased drastically from its peak at 22.5 percent in 1932 to only 6 percent in 1941 during FDR’s presidency. Roosevelt addressed these changes in one of his fireside chats, stating that “we are giving opportunity of employment to one-quarter of a million of the unemployed.” While this may not seem like much of a difference at the time, the impact it had on the economy showed its effects years

later,
While the New Deal may have seemed successful at face value, it did not bode well for citizens of color, specifically African Americans, One such instance of this is evident with the enactment of the AAA, where although it may benefitted white farm owners, “40 percent of all black workers made their living as sharecroppers and tenant farmers”, with almost all of them losing their jobs as they were deemed unnecessary. Economist David E. Bernstein states that “when New Deal policies forced wage rates above market levels, hundreds of thousands of these jobs were destroyed”. So while the unemployment rates of the general populace seemed to falter, the number of African Americans who had lost their employment skyrocketed, In addition to the loss of job opportunities, Roosevelt, in an effort to maintain his status with southern Democrats, “failed to support an anti-lynching bill and a bill to abolish the poll tax” that had plagued the black community for years before. This, coupled with the “repatriation” of Mexican-Americans exposes one of the few, but impactful flaws in FDR’s New Deal.
So while the New Deal may have benefitted the majority of the nation, the effects on the minority went against the intended purpose of the legislation.