Achievements of Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Achievements of Franklin D. Roosevelt

In the first few years after the 1932 election, the people of America

were becoming better off, slowly they were returning to pre-depression

standards. But they were still not as well off as they had been during

the boom years.

Many factors contributed to this and probably the one that had the

greatest effect was the 'new deal' policies of Franklin D Roosevelt's

Administration. This was a set of new legislation's that tried to help

get the American economy back on its feet and increase the rate of

employment in areas that had been hit most badly.

Franklin D Roosevelt introduced similar schemes when he was State

Governor of New York. One of the ways in which the new deal helped

people was to create new agencies to share out money and start

initiatives in many parts of American life, both rural and urban.

Agencies were created such as the Agricultural Adjustment

Administration (AAA) to help the suffering grain farmers of the US.

The AAA bought surplus produce and destroyed it to get the market

working again. This did help.

Another agency was the PWA (Public Works Administration) which was

charged with the task of building new schools, hospitals etc… This

shows how the new 'alphabet' agencies were trying to improve like both

in the country and in the cities. One general agency set up, which was

the biggest and some would say the most beneficial was the NRA,

National Recovery Administration. The NRA tried to encourage employers

to allow Trade Unions, give workers better pay and better working

conditions. This helped greatly and soon by 1940 unemployment had

fallen by 40%.

Many would say that these agencies were the best thing to help America

recover but many of them had problems. Although the agencies tried to

help most people they did not do enough to help the really poor. Also

many of them were only short-term help and as soon as funding was cut

in 1937 unemployment rose again. Generally people in the later 1930s

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