La Grande Dépression

In August 1929, the Great Depression hit the United States, but it wasn’t until the Wall Street Crash, in October 1929, that the Great Depression made an impact on America. The American stock market crashed, plunging the country into the most severe economic downturn. Speculators lost their investments, banks failed, the nation’s money supply decreased and companies went bankrupt. The market crash resulted in a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, and the end of economic growth as we knew it. President Hoover believed that the Great Depression was just “a passing incident in our national lives” and that the government was in no possible way responsible to resolve the situation. However, when President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, he acted with optimism and determination to stabilize the economy as a promise to the country: “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people”. Since then, Roosevelt’s policies, that aimed to restore some measure of dignity and prosperity to the American population, have been remembered as “The New Deal”.

The New Deal was the name given to the US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s plan in response to the Great Depression from 1933 to 1938. At the time, Roosevelt’s reforms were both criticized from some quarters and praised from others. But it was obvious that drastic measures were needed, thereby resulting in a complete change for the “laissez-faire” Republicans. The New Deal was a series of social, economic and governmental reforms which relied on three aspects: relief, recovery, reform. Relief meant giving direct help to the millions of poor who were without food and homes. As for recovery, it consisted of reducing unemployment, stimulating the demand for goods and getting the economy back on track. Reform included taking whatever measures were necessary to prevent another economic disaster. The New Deal also included programs that enabled Americans to go back to work and that also gave a safety net for the elderly and retired workers. Among the programs were the Works Progress Administration, Federal Writers Project, National Recovery Administration and the Social Security Act.

The New Deal also resulted in radical change, making it a revolutionary event. Roosevelt’s years in office were a remarkable period. An American government had never intervened so directly in the lives of ordinary people, nor had so much attention been focused on a President. Roosevelt’s methods and new laws led the New Deal to be responsible for changing the United States and the people themselves. Roosevelt’s government to “save the country” rather than use it as a political machine was a revolutionary idea. The government working as one strong group to save the country had never been seen before. Roosevelt’s government created radical changing programs. The Civil Works Administration revolutionized government paid jobs. It consisted of a nationally funded arts program, which allowed literature to become a strong entity. This helped many authors, at the time, to gain prominence and be known internationally. The construction of parks, roads, bridges, etc gave millions of Americans work as well. The various laws were revolutionary as they didn’t only concentrate on reform but also on recovery and relief. Moreover, the President’s management of the banking system resulted in drastic change. He extended the

...