The Long-Term Causes Of The Great Depression

The Great Depression was the long economic crisis that began after the Stock Market crash of 1929. Two long-term causes of the Great Depression were a general mistrust in banks which hurt the economy and agriculture (over-production and weather.) Herbert Hoover was elected in 1928, and he believed in rugged individualism, a wait-and-see approach, and that the economy had natural cycles. These prolonged the Depression because the government did not help or take action in helping the people of the country get through the economic crisis, leaving many people unemployed and in poverty. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and he came up with the New Deal. FDR believed in a try-anything approach, so he created many government programs and

laws to provide direct relief, recovery, and reform to the people of the U.S.A. Despite the many attempts by the government at the time, the New Deal was not a success.
Government programs did not help the underlying problem because they only provided relief, which in turn caused debt to the country.

From the years 1929 to 1941, total government debt increased by 27.1 billion dollars (3). In 1929 it was 16.9 billion, and by 1941 it got to 44 billion dollars. This proves that the New Deal was not a success because it shows that the programs did billions of dollars worth of damage through relief programs instead of reforming the initial issues. As shown in the political cartoon (4) Doctor FDR’s “New Deal Remedies,” being the programs, did not help poor Uncle Sam to feel any better. Despite the countless medicines, the U.S. did not heal. This mocking cartoon proves the New Deal to be flop because the various programs still do not fix the country. One example of a direct relief program is Social Security (8). While the program helps the elderly and poor, no money goes back into the government, thus causing debt for the federal government, further proving the New Deal to be a failure.
The main reason the New Deal was not a success is simple, it did not end the Great Depression. What ended the Depression was the U.S. entry into World War II. In 1942, the unemployment rate decreased by 50% from the previous year, and continued to decrease to almost 1% unemployment (5). Why? The United States entered the War in 1942, creating more jobs for everyone at home while men were made soldiers (The Great Depression: End of the New Deal: DBQ Part 1) This proves that the New Deal was not a success because it never officially met it’s goal of pulling America out of the Depression, the war effort

did.
Some say that the New Deal was a success. As said by Helen Farmer (1), the programs were “good” and gave “necessary relief.” This may prove success by improving the lives of every-day people, but on the larger scale, this relief was anything but relieving to our suffocating federal debt. These programs have been used to feed “one million children” (6). How many federal dollars do you think it took to create “80,000,000 hot meals”? That was money our government did not have to spare. So while children were being nourished, the New Deal still did not succeed in repairing the country as a whole. Some may argue that the Social Security foundation made it a success because it aided children and people with disabilities including age (8). But, as stated in the article, with the monthly checks came a rise in the overall cost of living, which defeats the purpose and proves it to be a failure.
The New Deal was not a success. I do believe it is the role of the government to intervene like FDR did, because the leader of this country should do anything in there power to help the citizens. But, that does not mean that FDR’s programs were a complete success because they caused tremendous debt and did not ultimately end the Great Depression.