Why did Roosevelt introduce the New Deal

The financial and economic effects of the Wall Street crash were simple to say that the Wall Street crash caused the great Depression. The Wall Street crash sparked of the great Depression, the American economy went in to a vicious spiral of bankruptcy, Slumping production and unemployment. Which devastated normal economic life, first America then the rest of the world, the destruction of international trade.

This occurred because businesses needed money. They had to buy raw materials, equipment and machinery. They had to pay wages. Many people lost a great deal of money so they started to spend less. So companies started to produce less stock so they needed less workers. Unemployment rose rapidly. Borrowing money wasn’t easy, 5,000 banks closed in the three years of the Crash. As money disappeared, industries shut down. By 1932 a quarter of the working population was unemployed. The economy was ceasing to function. The impact of the depression was also a big problem for the USA. The depression, the Wall Street crash, bankrupted many. As banks went bust, people lost their savings. Companies closed, workers became unemployed. A vicious circle began as sales fell more became unemployed. The public lost confidence there was a total loss of confidence in the economy. As no one spent money, demand fell and industries suffered. By 1933 industrial production had fallen by 40% and unemployment reached 14 million. People were homeless so they built shantytowns built up of cardboard shacks and they became sarcastically nicknamed Hoovervilles. Farmers in the Depression saw a collapse in prices. Many, unable to keep up loan repayments were evicted and forced to leave. The situation for farmers in the mid west was made even worse. Over cropping led to a dust bowl. Farmers from Oklahoma went to California to find work. The bonus marchers, a crisis point was reached in the summer of 1932. Since May, destitute veterans and their families had been arriving in Washington DC and demonstrating for the bonus payment that had been promised to them by an act passed in 1924. The bonus was around 500, but not payable until 1945, but the veterans wanted it now. So the veterans started to gather, Hoover knew that they were a threat, so he ordered for them to be evicted. They wouldn’t move so he called the army in and threw them and their families out of the city.  President Hoover had a lot of problems in America that he could not solve. So Roosevelt had to solve these problems, so therefore he had to introduce the New Deal.

President Hoover couldn’t deal with the problems facing America. Hoover had many weaknesses and was in capable of solving the problems facing America. He made false accusations that there was no one in America who was staving but 5 thousand were. 250,000 people wanted pension, they started protesting peacefully out side the white house but Hoover called in the army to get rid of them. President Hoover was known as a UN carrying bully who had his own beliefs and acted far too late. The Republican Party was believed that they were not going to help the Americans during an economic crisis. The failure of Hoovers attempted schemes showed us that it made it possible for Roosevelt and the republicans to do well in the 1932 presidential election.

Franklin D. Roosevelt came from a privileged background, the only son in a wealthy Old Dutch family from a New York state. Nothing in his early life indicated what he would eventually achieve. He was a fairly aimless student, both at school and at Havard University. He worked for a law firm, but wasn’t too good at it. He was a typical rich boy; looking for a purpose in life he found politics. A distant relative of ex president Theodore Roosevelt, he had social contacts so he made rapid progress in his chosen career. He was first elected state senator of New York in 1910; by 1913 he was assistant secretary to the Navy in Wilson’s government. In 1920 he ran for vice presidential candidate, unfortunately for him 1920 was a republican landslide, which saw Harding elected president. Then in 1921, Roosevelt caught polio, which left him fighting for his health, but he refused to allow his illness to force him out of politics. In 1928 he felt strong so he ran for governor of New York State, and by a narrow margin.  President Roosevelt took vigorous action to help the unemployment in his state, setting up a Temporary Relief Administration, which used public money on schemes to create employment- a forerunner of the ideas he would later implement as president. To many people, it seemed clear that Roosevelt’s lengthily illness had given him some sympathy for problems for ordinary people in America. The public knows that Roosevelt is someone who will do whatever it takes to keep the American people happy.

The most important factor, I think was how Roosevelt dealt with unemployment because millions of people were out of work and because of this people became homeless. This was very important.

I think Roosevelt introduced the new deal to help America through all the problems in the 1920s and 1930s, like the Wall Street crash and the great Depression.