During the Great Depression Millions of Americans were homeless and forced out of their homes. People were digging wooden blocks out of the street to use as fuel, and many Hoovervilles were set up all around the country, the USA had almost gone into a state of anarchy. However our savior FDR came to save the day. Many histories boil down the goals of the New Deal into three concepts Reform, Relief and Recovery. According to many of the sources that Mr Steward gave us, the main goal seems to be Relief. Relief is the 1st step in order to recover from such a horrible event like the great depression. You need to make sure everyone is safe before
people begin to recover, a wound wont heal very well if you dont clean it and patch it up first. For Reform, they both go hand in hand with relief efforts come reforms in order to stop something like this again but relief start fixes problems at the present moment unlike reform which fixes problems that could happen in the future. For example the Federal Emergency Relief Act which gave grants to state in order to help relief programs. For your information grants do not need to be payed back, which means that the government was giving states free money in order to help people get back on their feet. Also the Unemployment Relief Act, which gave young men jobs on conservation projects and gave them small temporary jobs to help them get back on their feet to find another job. In order to help the people get back on their feet they needed money and a place to live, however if people are unemployed it would almost be impossible for them to do that. So in order to get money back into circulation people needed to actually spend money. In order to get their homes back the government set up the Home Owners Refinancing act which gave home owners loans that could help them get their homes back.With the little push of the government Americans were able to get their homes back. All in all in order for a government to stop a problem like the great depression they need to start relief efforts before recovery and reforms start.
New Deal Alphabet
And Documentary Mr Stewart showed us
Interesting and well summarized post! I didn't know that people used wood blocks to provide fuel for themselves to use - it must have shown how impoverished they were around the time of the Great Depression. Maybe seeing people who were suffering from the Depression's effects influenced FDR to take bigger initiative to help the US improve. Another way that FDR helped to improve the economy was by implementing the PWA Act, which aimed to get people jobs in public construction or infrastructure projects.
ReplyDelete