The Great Depression

             When the Great Depression began in 1929, millions of Americans soon became unemployed and poverty-stricken. The Stock market crash, caused by over-speculation, cost many Americans all their money and savings and soon even those not involved in the Stock market began to suffer. Not long after, the Dust Bowl, a series of powerful dust storms caused by drought and bad farming techniques, soon decimated the farming economy in the Midwest. In response to the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1941, Franklin Roosevelt experimented with many plans to assuage the economic panic. These plans, known as the "New Deal", were highly successful and greatly improved the government's role in citizens' lives by creating jobs for the unemployed and agencies to aid the impoverished.
             When Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) took the office of President in 1932, he inescapably inherited former President Hoover's problems. During the first hundred days of FDR's presidency he pushed hundreds of programs through Congress to provide relief, create jobs and try to mend the economy. These programs came to be known as the "New Deal". The political cartoon in Document C depicts the hundreds of programs and agencies FDR created to combat unemployment and widespread poverty. Several examples of these programs were the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Civil Works Administration, and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. Another popular program FDR created was the Social Security system depicted in Document E. This system allowed American citizens over the age 65 to have Social Security benefits and slightly helped to ease some of the economic turmoil. Overall, the FDR administration created hundreds of programs to combat the economic cataclysm, unemployment, and poverty created by the Great Depression.
             When the New Deal programs had begun they were extremely popular. However, after the new programs failed to si...

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The Great Depression. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 07:49, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/27936.html