Explain the main features of the New Deal.

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  1. Explain the main features of the ‘New Deal.’

The American President Franklin D Roosevelt, promised the people of America during his presidential campaign a ‘New Deal.’ It was clear that Roosevelt planned to use the power of the American government to get the US out of the Depression. He had many different ideas on how this could be done, but his main priorities were; getting the American people back into work; protecting peoples’ savings and property; providing a helping hand for the infirm, sick or elderly; and getting the American Industry and Agriculture back to its full potential.

In order to protect people’s savings and property, Roosevelt spent the first one hundred days of being president working with his advisors to produce a solution, which became known as ‘The Sweeping Measures.’ The day after his full inauguration, Roosevelt closed down all of the banks n America. Each one was then inspected by a government official and if proven to be trust worthy with the people’s money they were then re-opened. This meant that out of hundreds of thousands of banks only 5000 were allowed to re-open. These actions were called the Emergency Banking Act and the Securities Exchange Act. This gave the American citizens a glimpse of what the ‘New Deal’ was going to be like and restored faith in banks which had previously squandered the publics’ money on the unpredictable stock market.

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 Roosevelt also wanted to get as many people back into work as possible, as this allowed them to spend money on products thus putting more money into the economy and boosting the overall welfare of America. To get people back into work Roosevelt set up two main ‘Help Groups:’ The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Public Works Administration (PWA). The CCC was aimed more at unemployed young men, they would sign up for six months at a time and if they still hadn’t found work they could renew the time. Most of the work done by the CCC was on ...

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