The New Deal

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Do you know what it’s like to live in a cardboard home, starve, and raise a family in poverty? Unfortunately, most Americans in the 1930s went through this on a day-to-day basis. In 1929 the stock market crashed. Many people lost their life savings; they invested everything they owned in a failing stock market. The country was falling, everyone needed strong leadership and help from the government.

Devastation and desperation started on Thursday, October 24, 1929. There was a strong sense of panic in the air at the Stock Exchange. The stocks were dropping, alarmingly fast; the worried American tried desperately to keep their savings. Markets began to steady again on Friday and Saturday only to sweep back down the following Monday. By Tuesday the twenty-ninth all doubt was erased, many Americans lost everything they had on Black Tuesday (Andrist and Stillman 190). President Herbert Hoover made a decision and refused to provide emergency relief. Hoover believed that it was “strictly a state and local responsibility.” Most local organizations were far too small to handle this big of a situation (Andrist and Stillman 193). America needed a change, a change that would come at the next election time.

Immediately following Herbert Hoover in the presidency line, Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) became America’s 32nd president. This democrat, inaugurated on March 4, 1933, won the 1932 election against Hoover by a landslide. The new president made a promise to his citizens, “I pledge you, I pledge myself, a new deal for the American people.” He reassured Americans that he would change their lives. He promised to get people back to work and back in their homes (“New Deal Timeline 1).

For the hundreds of thousands of unemployed work...

... middle of paper ...

... 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).

Works Cited

Andrist, Ralph K., and Edmund O. Stillman. The American Heritage History of the 1920s & 1930s. New York: American Heritage/Bonanza, 1987. Print.

"Franklin D. Roosevelt - American Heritage Center, Inc." FDR Heritage. Web.

McElvaine, Robert S. The Depression and New Deal: A History in Documents. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.

"New Deal." The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History. Ed. Wilma Mankiller, Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro, Barbara Smith, and Gloria Steinem. n.p. Web. 6 Mar. 2012.

"New Deal Timeline." Xroads.virginia.edu. Web. 9 Mar. 2012.

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