Samantha Chio

History 12

New Deal Essay

The New Deal was considered a very radical policy when Franklin Delano
Roosevelt introduced it in 1932 to cope with the Great Depression. Herbert
Hoovers government had always believes in economic freedom, which
means no government involvement in the stock market. The New Deal breaks
this by giving the government power to control bank activities, making other
people fear that this gave too much power to the government. Political
groups like The American Liberty league also believe that the new deal is too
left wing and might be the start of dictatorship. The upper class oppose the
new deal too because they did not like higher taxes on them, some even feel
that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, being part of the upper class, had betrayed
his class.
Although opposition was strong from specific groups, theres no doubt that
The New Deal is part of the progress in ending the Great Depression. There
were numerous amounts of programs involved in the New Deal, the first
program was the Emergency Banking Act which closes down insolvent banks
and persuades people to put their savings back into the reestablished ones.
This helped almost 3 quarters of the bank to open again. Another program
would be The Tennessee Valley Authority Act which consists of building
damns along the Tennessee to generate hydroelectric power for the people.
Agricultural Adjustment Act was also introduced to pay farmers to leave their
fields for a while to boost product prices and stop overproduction. The Home
Owners Loan Corporation was created too to lean long term loans for homes
to stop foreclosures.
Besides from stimulating the economy, New deal also consists of programs
to end unemployment. Some of them were the Civilian Conservative Corps,
Civil work Administrations, Public Work Administration, and Work Progress
Administration. These programs had created public work for unemployment
and provided jobs to people on construction like roads, bridges, parks, post
offices and schools. Others like National Labor Relations Act, which prevents
business to treat employees unfairly, and Social Security Act, which provided

Samantha Chio

History 12

unemployment insurance and care for children and disables, were also
created to help end unemployment.
President Roosevelt had done a lot towards ending Great Depression with
his New Deals, but how effective the New Deal actually was in improving
peoples lives was questioned. Americas Amount of Consumers Goods was
45 billion in 1933 and 65 billion in 1939, which shows improvement compare
to when Roosevelt just took over the government. But if compare to 1928s
data which was 80 billion, some think that Roosevelt hadnt restore peoples
quality of living to what America had before Great Depression. Same thing
happened to Americas Gross National Product and Private Industry
Investment from 1928 to 1939: improvements shown but nothing compare to
what America had before. Unemployment also remains high as most
programs were short term policies and that could not be a long term solution.
Historians think what really helped America ended the Great Depression was
when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and dragged America into World War Two,
stimulating Americas industry.
In my opinion, I think The New Deal had done little to improve
Americans lives. Unemployment was a huge problem during Great
Depression and the policies towards the issue werent effective for a long
term plan. Most programs also cost the government a lot of money because
these programs only allows people to take money from government instead
of making money from the industry. Overall The New Deal only had things
running but not going forward and could not last long. The only things that
New Deal had improved was the economy, which I believe would recover
slowly even if World War Two didnt exist because of its improvement, and the
hope that was rebuild in Americans towards the president and the countrys
future.