The New Deal: An Unsuccessful Solution

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The New Deal: An Unsuccessful Solution Millions of American citizens were starving. In 1929, the stock market had just crashed, causing the amount of unemployed people to rise by the millions. The Great Depression had just begun. A plan needed to be made as soon as possible to fix this predicament. Fortunately, the newly elected president of 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came up with a constructed plan to fix the dilemma facing the United States. He called his strategy the New Deal, and it was meant to provide jobs and bring America back to stability. There was a total of two New Deals during the Great Depression, each with their own programs. Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) was later re-elected in 1936. The Great Depression finally ended in …show more content…

“Most New Deal programs discriminated against blacks. The National Recovery Administration, for example, not only offered whites the first crack at jobs, but authorized separate and lower pay scales for blacks” (African Americans and the New Deal). There are also many other instances of how African American’s were not included into the New Deal programs. “White landlords could make more money by leaving land untilled than by putting land back into production. As a result, the AAA’s [Agricultural Adjustment Administration] policies forced more than 100,000 blacks off the land in 1933 and 1934” (African Americans and the New Deal). Furthermore, some New Deal programs helped one certain group, but ruined other people’s lives. For instance, the political cartoon ‘DON’T CRUSH THEM’ depicts FDR and a U.S. farmer using the Farm Relief Bill to figuratively crush business men and women, consumers, and taxpayers. This proves that some New Deal programs favored some people more than others. Some may argue that nothing is going to be perfect and the New Deal could not have possibly helped every single person in the United States. However, this does not justify discriminatory acts towards one race or class. In general, discriminating against one group of people is seen as immoral, meaning that the New Deal did not complete its delegation. Therefore, the New Deal was not a …show more content…

Essentially, the New Deal did not work to include and employ as many people as it could or should have, even excluding major population types from any possible benefit from the programs. It failed to provide hard-working citizens with a steady job and food to eat. This question of whether or not the New Deal was a success has a substantial significance. If any country goes into a economic collapse like one of the Great Depression, one could use America’s experience as an example as to what steps should or should not be taken though such a time. Afterall, the importance of studying history is to learn from mistakes made in the

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