America’s confidence was slowly draining and towards the end of the 1920’s trade had slowed internationally as many countries were also suffering from the bankruptcy of America’s largest banks, leaving countries with less money to be able to afford to import goods the USA’s international trade had drastically been reduced over three years (1929 – 1932) from $10billion to $3 billion. This situation had slowed the economy systems everywhere else also! This problem led to more closures of firms and industries leaving many unemployed with no income what so ever. By 1933 just under 25% of America’s population was unemployed that is almost a 20% increase from 1929. This meant that many people were not putting any money into the economy because they didn’t have any money to live on let alone spend on extra things. Roosevelt wanted to help his people get back onto their feet and he hoped that the ‘New Deal’ would create jobs for those who were unemployed.
By creating jobs for the unemployed this would eventually lead to people having more money to spend. This meant that there should be money going into the economy making it able to slowly recover and repair itself, another reason why Roosevelt introduced his ‘New Deal.’ America needed to have money going into the economy for it to stabilise and increase itself, and with one quarter of the population unemployed this was quite hard to start. This is why the ‘New Deal’ needed to be introduced to give America some hope.
Roosevelt wanted to have better care for America’s people, and so the ‘New Deal’ would have brought people something to lean back on for support when they needed it, it introduced insurance, pensions and help for the sick.
Something needed to be done when Roosevelt became the president, as the former president Hoover hadn’t done anything. Hoover had believed that we should Ride out the storm, so to speak, and wait for the depression to pass, however with so many people unemployed and in poverty this hadn’t been the best idea. So Roosevelt introduced this ‘New Deal’ to help people rebuild their lives, help them get jobs and feed their family also to help America as a whole recover from the Depression and the Wall street crash. He also wanted to have a more active government and the ‘New Deal’ needed many people to organise it all and so it did help bring the confidence back into America and the slow process of recovery.
