The Great Depression began on October 29, 1929, when the American stock market crashed on what became known as "Black Tuesday." Thousands lost their jobs, companies went bankrupt, and the nation's supply of money dropped heavily. It didn't help that President Herbert Hoover urged patience and self-dependance, characterizing the Depression as a "passing incident"; by 1932, over a quarter of the workforce was unemployed.
So in 1933, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office, he promised to turn the country's economic state of order around. In his famous inaugural address, he asserted that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," setting a tone of resilience and determination that gave people confidence in his ability to lead the country through these times.
First, he declared a four-day bank holiday to stop people withdrawing money from financially unstable banks; when they were reopened a month later, they were more stable and on their way to recovery. For the next hundred days, a period of time known for the large number remedial legislations passed, Roosevelt made reforms that built on earlier progressivism in order to deal with the economic emergency at hand. One such example was the step he made towards the ratification of the 21st Amendment, which would legalize alcohol again and thus put more people into work. The Tennessee Valley Authority Act enabled federal government to build dams along the river that controlled flooding and generated power.
Roosevelt's New Deal programs had three main aims, sometimes called the three R's -- relief, recovery, and reform. New Dealers embraced old progressive ideas such as unemployment insurance, old-age insurance, and conservation of natural resources. Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration to provide jobs for unemployed people. He also signed the Social Security Act of 1935, which guaranteed pensions to millions of Americans and set up a system of unemployment insurance.
http://www.history.com/topics/new-deal
This is a very well written article. I like how you went into detail about some of the things that FDR did to hep the U.S. economy. A lot of times we hear how FDR played a big part in helping the nation to recover, but we do not hear all that much about the types of things he did. I find it very interesting that alcohol was made legal again not because people were drinking it anyways but because by making it legal you open up 100's of thousands of jobs.
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ReplyDeleteI wrote a similar article so it was interesting to see your interpretation of the new deal. I think you are right that Roosevelt boosted the morale of the American people when he first started his reforms and was a promising leader. However, I do think that the programs became less effective because unemployment still persisted and upset many Americans. This created anti- Roosevelt sentiment and eventually caused the new deal to come to a halt. But great article! I enjoyed reading it.
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http://www.history.com/topics/new-deal
Looking at all the goals of the New Deal, what kind of opposition do you think Roosevelt faced during this time? Among his opposition were the radicals who felt that Roosevelt was doing enough to help the economy, and others like the Supreme Court who tried to repeal many of the acts, deeming them unconstitutional. Roosevelt was effective in his ways because he was able to gain the affection in the public who determined his popularity. This article talks about some of the opposition Roosevelt faced:
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It is interesting that Roosevelt decided that the best way to stop banks from collapsing was to simply force them closed. But it does make sense, as you mentioned if the banks had remained open people would have withdrawn all their money, causing even more people to lose money.
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