How Far do you agree that the New Deal was a sucess up to 1941

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How far do you agree that the New Deal was a success up to 1941?

I do agree that the Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal was a success as it created jobs, saved banks from an upcoming crisis and restored confidence in millions of Americans, but I only agree that it was successful to a certain extent. Even though the New Deal has been praised for its ‘three R’s’ plan (Relief, Recovery and Reform) America was never able to get past the relief stage, although this never hindered plans and works of relief and recovery e.g. The Civilian Conservation Corps were initially a relief project which was supposed to give immediate help for jobless Americans. However, it lasted for eight years, until World War Two stopped the depression. Since the Second World War ended the depression the recovery part of the New Deal did not contribute in helping the country as it was intended too, but rather improving the state of the country. I think that the New deal was definitely successful when it focussed on Reform e.g. The blue eagle badge, the NIRA established the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which attempted to stabilize prices and wages through cooperative "code authorities" involving government, business, and labour. The NRA allowed business to create a multitude of regulations imposing the pricing and production standards for all sorts of goods and services. With these set prices there was sales distribution between different, competitive companies and initially, American would buy from blue eagle badge stores as it is presidentially approved.

One of the most important aspects of the New Deal was people’s attitudes towards it and the government. In many ways this aspect was a success as it had a generally positive effect and helped to restore faith in the government. Although the government used a lot of tax payer’s money, the majority of the money was spent on improving America’s economy and the American people’s lives. This allowed the public to have a positive attitude of the government as they were now being an active government (compared to Hoover’s ‘laissez-faire’ concept which meant the republicans thought would sort itself out), and using the money to improve the lives of the population. This is in comparison to the previous republican president who mainly believed in the concept of “laissez-faire” which meant that this government was not an active one and believed that the economy would sort itself out without any government aid. This took advantage of the ‘American dream’ (based on the idea of being an individual where you are responsible for your own success or failure with no government intervention). However, Roosevelt and his government worked on a basis of government intervention as they believed that a capitalist society would create problems and would not be able to solve the crisis.

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The New Deal had its critics which were negative to the New Deal, but this was foreseen and the Democrats were able to punch back at the critics e.g. Roosevelt telling a critic that if he is wrong then so are the majority of the American people who voted for him. These critics claimed that the New Deal divided the country, as these people believed that Roosevelt and his officials were acting like communists and undermining American Values. People blew out of proportion that the Democrats were acting like communists because the New Deal was similar to Russia’s economic ...

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