Franklin D Roosevelt introduced similar schemes when he was State Governor of New York. One of the ways in which the new deal helped people was to create new agencies to share out money and start initiatives in many parts of American life, both rural and urban. Agencies were created such as the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) to help the suffering grain farmers of the US. The AAA bought surplus produce and destroyed it to get the market working again. This did help.
Another agency was the PWA (Public Works Administration) which was charged with the task of building new schools, hospitals etc… This shows how the new ‘alphabet’ agencies were trying to improve like both in the country and in the cities. One general agency set up, which was the biggest and some would say the most beneficial was the NRA, National Recovery Administration. The NRA tried to encourage employers to allow Trade Unions, give workers better pay and better working conditions. This helped greatly and soon by 1940 unemployment had fallen by 40%.
Many would say that these agencies were the best thing to help America recover but many of them had problems. Although the agencies tried to help most people they did not do enough to help the really poor. Also many of them were only short-term help and as soon as funding was cut in 1937 unemployment rose again. Generally people in the later 1930s were better off. Although as I have said before, there were still masses of poor communities such as the Blacks, Chinese and other ethnic minorities living in America.
Of course, there were other factors that helped America come out of the depression and make most Americans better off. One of these was the outbreak in 1939 of the Second World War. Even though the U.S.A. did not enter the war until 1940 when the Naval Base at Pearl Harbour was attacked, the requirements of food, weapons and other items increased in war-torn Europe. This increased demand and the unavailability of items in Europe helped give American industry the much-needed boost for it to recover quicker. Many thousands of men (and women) were employed in building ‘Liberty Ships’, which would carry food, and other trade items across the U-boat patrolled waters of the Atlantic Ocean safely. Also the natural order of economies is that after a “Boom ‘n Bust” things eventually get better.
In the end America also has a huge amount of natural recourses that are much needed in other parts of the world.