Wednesday, September 20, 2017

What federal actions were taken to resolve the Great Depression? How was the working class impacted? (Not including Hoover's unsuccessful actions.)

Federal actions to combat the Great Depression were part of a massive effort known as the "New Deal" that followed a campaign speech by Franklin Roosevelt. The New Deal consisted of hundreds of government programs, bureaus, agencies, and spending initiatives, each of which was intended to address the problems created by the Depression.
There were far too many of these programs to list in this space, but many were implemented in the so-called "Hundred Days" after Roosevelt's inauguration. These included measures taken in 1933 to address the bank failure crisis that gripped the nation, emergency loans to state governments, low-interest housing loans, and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), one of the New Deal programs that attempted to create work for jobless men. Many other programs were passed in 1935–1936, the so-called "Second New Deal," that included the Works Progress Administration, the Social Security Administration, and the Wagner Act, which protected the rights of unions to organize.
The New Deal in general tried to resolve the Depression through government action, which took several different forms. Historians usually accept that New Deal programs had three broad aims, sometimes categorized as the "three Rs": providing relief, promoting recovery, and reforming the American economy. Of the three, the final aim was the most successful. Reforms like the Wagner Act, the Social Security Act, the Securities Exchange Commission, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation fundamentally changed the relationship between the American people, the economy, and their government. These reforms created a "New Deal order" that persisted for much of the twentieth century.
As for how they affected the working class, the Wagner Act in particular had profound consequences, as it essentially established collective bargaining as a fundamental right. Unemployment rates declined in the short-term (with several blips) during the 1930s, partially due to New Deal spending. But American workers only saw the end of the Depression with the outbreak of World War II.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3439

https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/new-deal

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