Interpretations of the New Deal
The two statements show two very different interpretations of the New Deal. Interpretation I is very much in favour of the New Deal, where as interpretation II is not. I will use source based information and my background knowledge to back up both of these statements and then make a conclusion based on the evidence.
Interpretation I gives much of the credit from the recovery to the New Deal, saying that "It gave them the confidence to lift the United States out of the depression". Source B directly backs up this statement, saying that one of the achievements of the New Deal was "the restoration of self-confidence". This source also mentions that the New Deal lifted
…show more content…
This strongly backs up the statement in Interpretation I, which says the New Deal "helped many Americans".
Interpretation II does not support the New Deal. It says that the New Deal wasted a lot of money and made people dependant upon the government.
Source A backs up this Interpretation as it shows Roosevelt wasting money. Source A is a cartoon which holds the message "Roosevelt is wasting the tax payers money". It does this by comparing the New Deal to a broken pump, which Roosevelt is trying to fix. The broken pump does not do its job very well; taking in a lot of water but giving outlittle. In this cartoon, water is used to represent money. This cartoon backs up sveral points of Interpretation II. It shows how "The New Deal wasted a lot of money" and how "It did not solve the U.S economic problems".
Source C describes how badly the New Deal did, from a book entitled 'The Roosevelt Myth". It shows how "The New Deal wasted a lot of money" and "made people dependant on the Government" and "led to
…show more content…
These two sentences alone provide good evidence to back up Interpretation II. Source C also mentions how "more people are on government relief" and "Roosevelt is calling for more power". Source C also states how the Economic problem was solved by the outbreak of WWII, not Roosevelt and the New Deal "By leading his country into war, he was able to put every man and woman into work"
Source D only shows how many people were "dependant" on government relief. It does this by showing a large group of black people queeing for relief.
Source E gives a very strong opinion and argument against the New Deal. It describes how "men lost there confidense in themselves" because Roosevelt gave them soup. It says how "welfare kills a man's initiative". This is all evidense to support Interpretation II. The man who wrote source E was a self-made business-man, who was, no-doubt, a republican. He was totally aghainst the idea of receiving help from any one, and he believed that everyone should use there
Amity Shlaes tells the story of the Great Depression and the New Deal through the eyes of some of the more influential figures of the period—Roosevelt’s men like Rexford Tugwell, David Lilienthal, Felix Frankfurter, Harold Ickes, and Henry Morgenthau; businessmen and bankers like Wendell Willkie, Samuel Insull, Andrew Mellon, and the Schechter family. What arises from these stories is a New Deal that was hostile to business, very experimental in its policies, and failed in reviving the economy making the depression last longer than it should. The reason for some of the New Deal policies was due to the President’s need to punish businessmen for their alleged role in bringing the stock market crash of October 1929 and therefore, the Great Depression.
This led to numerous viewpoints on the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Critics on the left begged for relief and an expansion of New Deal programs where, those on the right argued that the poor did not deserve their money because they didn’t prepare well enough prior to the Great Depression and that they would take advantage of it.
During the 1920’s, America was a prosperous nation going through the “Big Boom” and loving every second of it. However, this fortune didn’t last long, because with the 1930’s came a period of serious economic recession, a period called the Great Depression. By 1933, a quarter of the nation’s workers (about 40 million) were without jobs. The weekly income rate dropped from $24.76 per week in 1929 to $16.65 per week in 1933 (McElvaine, 8). After President Hoover failed to rectify the recession situation, Franklin D. Roosevelt began his term with the hopeful New Deal. In two installments, Roosevelt hoped to relieve short term suffering with the first, and redistribution of money amongst the poor with the second. Throughout these years of the depression, many Americans spoke their minds through pen and paper. Many criticized Hoover’s policies of the early Depression and praised the Roosevelts’ efforts. Each opinion about the causes and solutions of the Great Depression are based upon economic, racial and social standing in America.
Biles describes each of these programs, their purpose, how they were developed, and how they operated. He then goes into analyzing each of these programs pointing out their strengths and weaknesses and how they affected the economy individually. “For all it did, the New Deal could have done much more” (115). Biles felt that after analyzing these relief programs, they didn’t do nearly enough to boost the economy, supporting his view with the unemployment rate dropping from 19.1% in 1938 to 14.6& in 1940 (226). The programs did help many people but their were also many Americans who received no
Assessment of the Success of the New Deal FDR introduced the New Deal to help the people most affected by the depression of October 1929. The Wall Street Crash of October 24th 1929 in America signalled the start of the depression in which America would fall into serious economic depression. The depression started because some people lost confidence in the fact that their share prices would continue to rise forever, they sold their shares which started a mass panic in which many shares were sold. The rate at which people were selling their shares was so quick that the teleprinters could not keep up, therefore share prices continued to fall making them worthless. Also causing many people to lose their jobs as the owners of factories could not afford to pay the workers wages.
However, it was a success in restoring public confidence and creating new programs that brought relief to millions of Americans. The New Deal provided Americans with the assurance that things were finally changing. People were being employed, acts were passed, discrimination was addressed and women's opportunities were restored.
Since the early 1930’s, non-whites in America have seen a steady increase in the division of wealth between themselves and their Caucasian counterparts, beginning with President Roosevelt’s New Deal. Franklin D. Roosevelt created many programs to try and grow the American economy, create new jobs, and save the banks. These programs were known as the New Deal. Although most Americans applauded his efforts, the non-white groups in America did not feel the same. The programs that were created by Roosevelt inadvertently disenfranchised the non-whites leaving them with a bitter taste in their mouths for the new America Roosevelt was trying to create. While learning about the economic growth during the New Deal Era and much later, one can see
In order to protect people’s benefits and provide a easeful life to people, Roosevelt started the New Deal followed his first inaugural address. When FDR gave his campaign speech at M...
2. Federal Regulation – the expansion of the federal government into almost all aspects of people’s lives
...onger had any savings left to live off of. The New Deal program enhanced the lives of Americans during the Great Depression and changed the role of the federal government. Most historians agree that the New Deal was what helped alleviate many of the problems during the Great Depression and has been said to have ended the Great Depression.
“No New Deal laws were made to assist black people, with around 30% of all black families were dependant on emergency relief to survive.” (How successful was the new deal?) This is an example of why the New Deal was not successful, since it didn’t try to help people that actually were in worse conditions than everyone else. It also shows that the New Deal was a failure because it had a bit a racial discrimination, by not letting black people the security for the same amount of opportunities as white ones. To support this idea we have the book “The Americans” that state the following: “Townsend believed that Roosevelt wasn’t doing enough to help the poor and elderly, so he devised a pension plan that would provide monthly benefits to the aged, the plan found strong backing among the elderly” (The Americans, pag. 494). This shows that the New Deal wasn’t successful because it didn’t make a positive impact on everyone. We are also able to see its failure by noticing that the program didn’t even accomplish its objective of relieving the needy. We can comprehend that this program algo failed by not helping minorities, and so not achieving one of its main objectives, to give relief to the
In his presidential acceptance speech in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed to the citizens of the United States, “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.” The New Deal, beginning in 1933, was a series of federal programs designed to provide relief, recovery, and reform to the fragile nation. The U.S. had been both economically and psychologically buffeted by the Great Depression. Many citizens looked up to FDR and his New Deal for help. However, there is much skepticism and controversy on whether these work projects significantly abated the dangerously high employment rates and pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression. The New Deal was a bad deal for America because it only provided opportunities for a few and required too much government spending.
... still be living in a time very similar to the Great Depression. However, the New Deal did help to solve America’s problems, it did not end the depression, unemployment, or poverty; it did provide a sense of security to American citizens, and insure hope in their country (“New Deal” 3).
The New Deal period has generally - but not unanimously - been seen as a turning point in American politics, with the states relinquishing much of their autonomy, the President acquiring new authority and importance, and the role of government in citizens' lives increasing. The extent to which this was planned by the architect of the New Deal, Franklin D. Roosevelt, has been greatly contested, however. Yet, while it is instructive to note the limitations of Roosevelt's leadership, there is not much sense in the claims that the New Deal was haphazard, a jumble of expedient and populist schemes, or as W. Williams has put it, "undirected". FDR had a clear overarching vision of what he wanted to do to America, and was prepared to drive through the structural changes required to achieve this vision.
The New Deal reforms transformed the government in the long run but failed to accomplish immediate recovery from the Great Depression, it was not until World War 2 that the economy recuperated completely. The reforms were a landmark in US history, for the first time the government interfered, for the prosperity of the people. Works Cited Foner. I am a fad. Give Me a Liberty.