USA in the 1930s- Ending the Great Depression

by dann0dann (student)

There were many contributing factors that got USA out of the Depression in the 1930s.

President Roosevelt’s New Deal had three main goals. The first was to provide help to millions of suffering Americans. The second was to improve the economy. The third was to pass new laws so that there were not so many poor people. People called these the “three R’s of relief, recovery and reform”. Several relief measures became law during the Hundred Days. One law set up a program that gave jobs to hundreds of thousands of young men. Their jobs included planting trees, fighting fires and working to control floods. Another law set up an agency that gave money to states to help the needy. There were two major laws that were to aide economic recovery. One set up the National Recovery Administration. Its job was to get businesses, workers and the government together. The National Recovery administration set up rules to control competition between businesses. It also protected workers who wanted to organize unions. However, it was not successful. It favoured large businesses over small ones, and many businesses did not follow the codes. The same law that created the National Recovery Administration created a program that spent billions of dollars on large building projects. The projects included highways, public buildings and dams. Businesses that worked on the projects hired more workers. The most famous was the Grand Coulee Dam on the Colorado River.

The New Deal improved conditions for some Americans after 1933. Unemployment dropped by two million by 1935. Still, over nine million were without jobs. Roosevelt was not about to give up. “It is common sense to take a method and try it”. “If it fails, admit it frankly and try another”. But above all, try something, he said. The president introduced a new series of New Deal Laws during 1935. One law put millions of people to work around the country. They built or repaired thousands of roads, hospitals, schools, airports and playgrounds. Over the next eight years the government gave jobs to over 8.5 million people.

The Social Security Act of 1935 was one of the New Deal’s most important reforms. It provided pensions to retired Americans. The law also set up a system of unemployment insurance. This protected Americans who lost their jobs. The government would give them money for a certain period of time. The social security also provided payments to disabled or needy people. These payments are known as welfare. The system was not perfect. It did not give all retired Americans pensions, nor did it give all Americans unemployment insurance. However, it was a giant step toward improvement in the lives of ...

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In 1936 Franklin Roosevelt was re-elected president. The New Deal programs continued. But all the New Deal’s laws and programs could not end the depression. In fact from 1937 to 1938 the depression grew worse. It lasted until the beginning of World War II. The huge amounts of government spending on the war effort finally got the economy going.

The New Deal was not popular with all Americans. Some believed that the programs would make people too dependent on the government. Others feared the programs would make the government too powerful. However, most thought that the New Deal was a success. It provided much needed help to millions of Americans. The New Deal made the government take responsibility to help those in need. Its reforms reduced the differences between the rich and the poor.

An important part of the second phase of the New Deal brought about an anti-monopoly philosophy. Congress established a Temporary National Economic Committee. It conducted an investigation into American business practices. The Committee collected testimony and evidence that revealed some businesses engaged in price-fixing, in the deliberate creation of scarcity, in agreements not to compete, and in the abuse of patent laws. But by the time action could take place in order to provide some assistance, the country was again at war, and there was little interest or time in enacting new legislation.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the most towering president of the twentieth century. He changed the relationship of government to the American people. Before 1933, Americans had not looked for help of any kind. Because of Roosevelt and his New Deal, however, Americans came to see the government as a potential employer and provider. The New Deal brought jobs and relief to millions of Americans.

It did not end the depression though. The depression ended because of World War II. During the war the nation’s economy was devoted to the production of weapons and other materials necessary to win the conflict. Roosevelt presided over an enormous change in American and the presidency of the United States. The war only helped to increase the size and power of the presidential office. The presidency would never be the same nor would the world.

In the late 1930s, the Great Depression was weakening, but many Americans were still poverty stricken. Americans watched as German forces became more powerful and took over neighbouring countries. With the invasion of Poland, World War II erupted in Europe.

The impact of the Second World War on the depression was very important this was also successful. Source 27 shows this because it’s saying that WW2 put people in jobs and started to sort out some of the unemployment issues in America. Jobs such as farmers, factory workers and medics were becoming needed a lot more. This source is very useful because it shows Roosevelt giving ‘new hearts and a new vigor’. This source might not be reliable because the book ‘The United States of America since the world war’ was published after the war was finished. Although the United States of America did not enter the Second World War until December 1941, it sold goods to Britain and France. This increased the demand for the American manufactured goods and food produce. This also meant that unemployment fell once again. The New Deal helped reduce many harsh aspects of the Great Depression but it was World War II that made the real difference. As European nations went to war American factories began to make war goods to sell to nations like Britain.

Migration was a major social-economic trend. The 15 million Americans who joined the military who became employees of the military all moved to and between military bases; 11.25 million ended up overseas. Continuing the movements of the depression era, about 15 million civilian Americans made a major move (defined as changing their county of residence). African-Americans moved with particular alacrity and permanence: 700,000 left the South and 120,000 arrived in Los Angeles during 1943 alone!! Migration was especially strong along rural-urban places. Especially to war-production centers around the country. Despite the focus on military-related production in general and the impact of rationing in particular, spending in many civilian sectors of the economy rose even as the war consumed billions of dollars of output. Hollywood boomed as workers bought movie tickets rather than clothes or cars. Americans placed more legal wagers in 1943 and 1944, and racetracks made more money than at any time before. Department-store sales in November 1944 were greater than in any previous month in any year. Black markets for rationed or luxury goods, from meat and chocolate to tires and gas, also boomed during the war.

The suffering American economy was given a boost when the fighting countries needed supplies and looked to America to make them. After Pearl Harbour was bombed on December 7, 1941, America entered the war. The U.S. enlisted more than 10 million men and women into the military. Since so many were fighting in the war, it was left for those left at home to work in the factories to make supplies for the war effort. The ten million American men that went into the service as soldiers, medics, mechanics and many other jobs. Which also meant the demand at home was getting bigger, America needed more factory workers, electricians and plumbers. This gave opportunity for America’s unemployment to be cut down by a huge amount. After the war the rest of the world was badly damages and the American economy set the pace for the rest of the world. Source 11 also backs the reason up how the Second World War made a positive impact on the depression. The graph shows that unemployment was at and all time high and the percentage of labour forced unemployment when the new deal first started was at 24.9% but when America entered the was unemployment fell all the way to 9.9%, then a year later fell again to 4.2%. The graph also show that just before the war started production started to rise slowly and steadily.

At a huge scale, the war not only ended the Great Depression, but created the conditions for productive collaboration after the war between the government and labor. The U.S. came out of the war completely fine and economically strengthened by wartime industrial expansion, which placed the United States at absolute and relative advantage over both its allies and its enemies.