DBQ 5:4:20 - Grade: SSS PDF

Preview

Summary

bbq...

Description

Name Kohei Kurihara APUSH 2020 NEW DEAL DBQ Essay Prompt: Evaluate the effects of the Roosevelt administration’s responses to the problems of the Great Depression between 1933 and 1941 The Great Depression was a period of economic despair from 1929 to 1933, where over 15 million Americans were left unemployed and half of the nation’s banks shut down. This era started due to many problems during the Roaring Twenties (1920s), an economic boom after World War 1. First, many Americans were speculating the stock market, where they thought that prices of stocks would go up and could be sold for a quick profit. By playing with the market, stocks expanded and hit its peak in 1929, eventually causing the Wall Street Crash. Many investors who relied on the stock market, lost the money they had invested and borrowed. Second, the use of credit became popular during the 1920s, where consumers would buy products and decide to pay later. The excessive buying of items, such as cars, refrigerators, washing machines and radios, inflated the debt of Americans and couldn’t pay them back after the crash. Third, the economic boom of the 1920s didn’t reach the farming economy. After World War 1, the demand for crops became low and resulted in low prices. Furthermore, severe weather like the Dust Bowl of 1930 covered a lot of farmland in the Great Plains with dust that it couldn’t be used. Farmers lost their arable land and were forced to move out of their homes to search for jobs. A fourth reason for the Great Depression was weak government policies that regulated the economy. After the stock market crash and failure of banks, the Federal Reserve tried to preserve the gold standard instead of stabilizing banks and money supply. This bad decision of the Federal Reserve made the nation to lose hope in curbing the economy back. Fortunately, the election of 1932 brought a new president that would eventually save the nation. His name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, and during his presidency, he introduced a series of programs called the New Deal that was centered in the three R’s: Relief for the people, the Recovery of

business and the economy, and Reform of the American economy so a depression would not occur again. The New Deal program was successful and benefitted many Americans that were suffering from the Depression. The lack of governmental intervention in the economy was a large reason why the Great Depression started, so FDR started the New Deal’s Reform of the American economy by supervising industries and providing a framework so there would be no future crashes. This was seen when FDR first responded to the unrest of laborers that were occurring in corporations around the nation, especially in the automobile industry. According to John Lewis’ NBC broadcast in 1936 (Doc 5), workers rioted because of corporations not providing collective bargaining to them. FDR’s Wagner Act successfully addressed the concerns of workers by guaranteeing the right to collectively bargain. The act proved effective as labor unrest lowered. Then, the president took a step further to this end by establishing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to facilitate wage agreement and contain labor strikes, which in essence provided a reliable means of enforcing the Wagner Act. The Wagner Act changed the role of the government by signaling social justice, economic and political rights needed to be provided to citizens, as an agenda. Another way FDR reformed the economy was by introducing social security. FDR created social security to aid elderly workers by providing retirement pensions, along with welfare benefits to the handicapped and fatherless families. With the help of advertising, such as the poster from the library of congress, 1935 (doc 4), many Americans were encouraged to apply and received many benefits from it. The social security act was revolutionary in showing that the government’s role was to protect the wellbeing of citizens. These new programs created by the New Deal show how they expanded governmental power and influence. A cartoon from the Evening Star in 1934 (doc 2) explained the New deal was a progression of small changes that led to the expansion of government power. Many of the New Deal reform programs provided a foundation for the American economy to build off of.

The New Deal programs of Relief were put into place in order to financially save unemployed Americans, especially those who suffered the most from the Depression. Unemployment rates reached a high of 24.9% in 1933, and to solve this problem FDR set out numerous programs and organizations, such as the Public Works Administration (PWA), Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Civil Conservation Corps (CCC), and Rural Electrification Administration (REA). These programs provided paid jobs for Americans, but some of them even provided electricity and industrial technology to really poor citizens. One such program was the Tennessee Valley Authority of 1933, a project of getting the people from the Tennessee Valley region (one of the areas that suffered greatly from the Depression) to build a dam. Constructing a dam would provide jobs for the people, generate electricity, and irrigate farms in the Valley, which benefited much of the community. FDR’s New Deal sunk the unemployment rate from 15 million to nearly 1 million in 1945, proving the effectiveness of his programs. The third R of the New Deal was recovery, and its programs were successful in aiding the devastated economy by providing employment opportunities. Recovery was mostly done during FDR’s first hundred days after the inauguration, where he established programs for industrial and agricultural workers. For farmers, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was input into the agricultural industry to raise crop prices by reducing surpluses. Then, the government started the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and the National Recovery Administration (NRA), for industrial workers, which established rules of fair labor in industries and government regulation in them. The AAA was successful to give poor farmers profit, and the NIRA and NRA also benefitted industry workers and stopped them from rioting over unfair policies, but these acts were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme court (AAA on 1937 and NRA and NIRA on 1935) because the Federal government was interfering into problems that were state-issued, not the nation. Thus, the programs were cancelled for its bureaucracy, fortunately FDR enacted more recovery programs to continue the R of recovery, and was not proved unconstitutional by court.

Though the New Deal benefited many Americans, the expanding governmental power demonstrated that it may be run by a bureaucracy. According to “The Hand of Improvidence” by William Lloyd Garrison jar (doc 3), he claimed that the federal government was “outpouring” large sums of money to fund the New Deal programs, making it seem bureaucratic. But, the New Deal gained trust to FDR and his leadership. From an editorial in the New Republic (doc 6) the New Deal provided an overall relief to the nation, instead of particular groups of people. For Example, African Americans benefitted from the New Deal, such as the Works Progress Administration giving jobs to many African Americans and the Civilian Conservation Corps which enabled African American children to continue their education. This connects to the “Roosevelt Record” from the editorial crisis (doc 7) since the paper explains how FDR wanted every American, no matter their race, to take part in the New Deal in order to save the country from the Great Depression. FDR’s response, the Square Deal, was an innovative response to combat the Depression and financially saved many Americans who were affected by it....