Was the New Deal A Success

1) People supported Roosevelt in 1932 election because he was positive, energetic and made the American people feel good. He was full of good news, or at least how good things would be if he were to be elected. He made it out to be a crusade, and not just one for him, one for the people. He almost made them feel that they were electing themselves, not Franklin. D. Roosevelt. He promised the Americans a new deal. He really made the American people believe that he was going to make everything all right again.

They trusted him greatly.

Another reason for him getting elected was because of the opposition. The opposition was Hoover. Many Americans felt he was to blame to the depression, and to top it all he wasn’t even acknowledging that there was actually a problem. People weren’t going to vote for someone who had made their lives awful, probably the only votes he did get was from the rich industrialists, whom he had helped.

Hoover just put forward the argument that businesses work in cycles of boom and bust and that prosperity would soon return. That was his solution to the problem. He didn’t help the people who needed help, he didn’t believe social security was the responsibility of the government. Many Americans felt he was heartless.

Roosevelt was the complete opposite to Hoover. He believed in an active government, he had plans to spend money on the needy, and he was more than happy to ask for advice, unlike Hoover who felt he knew best.

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Roosevelt was a man of the people, the people choice, he filled them with hope, and anything was better than the alternative.

2) The photo is of a line of black people queuing for government relief on front of a poster made by the government. The poster is of a white family driving in a car all smiles, with the slogan ‘There’s no way like the American way’.

The photographer is trying to show the hypocrisy of the government. In those days the blacks had life a lot worse then the whites. The depression hit them extremely hard.

In 1937 there was a recession. This damaged Roosevelt badly. A lot more republicans got into congress, making it harder for him to get his bills through, and people were losing faith in him. He also laid of a lot people who his organizations employed – a lot of them were black workers.

The photographer is also trying to make the point of there being very little racial equality in America – he’s pretty much calling the government racist (black people in front of a ‘white mans’ poster).

3) Source E is a Cartoon from an American newspaper. It shows Roosevelt working a pump to get the economy going again. Into the pump he keeps pouring millions of the taxpayers money. The pump is also very leaky.

This cartoon isn’t really for Roosevelt. Its saying that he’s wasting millions of dollars of the taxpayer’s money. The cartoonist is saying that Roosevelt is doing a bad job, he’s wasting taxpayer’s money trying to get the economy going again. The cartoonist is possibly a republican, and he’s definitely not a fan of Roosevelt. The taxpayer is holding all the money too, showing that he’s holding the burden of the nation too. This could make the cartoonist a rich taxpayer too.

Source F is a cartoon showing Roosevelt with a rubbish bin. The caption is ‘Getting rid of the rubbish’. In the bin he is throwing out all of Hoover’s principles, everything he said. Its got rugged individuals, a car in every garage, a pot of chicken, and a sign saying prosperity is just around the corner. There is a man (who is meant to be Hoover) and he’s walking around the corner towards prosperity looking at a timetable.

This cartoon is for Roosevelt. It shows how he’s throwing out everything Hoover stood for, all the unrealistic targets that Hoover had, especially with the way the American economy was. He’s also thrown out the sign that says ‘prosperity is just around the corner’. Its saying that Hoover was always saying that. He was always hoping, never taking action, unlike Roosevelt whom was taking action by throwing out the rubbish and the bad in America. It’s definitely anti Hoover.

Source G is another cartoon showing an old man and woman. The old man is meant to be the American public, the old woman congress, and the doctor Roosevelt. Roosevelt is issuing new remedies to the old man. On the table next to the old man are loads of bottles labeled with all the organizations he set up for the new deal. Roosevelt is saying ‘Of course we may have to change the remedies if we don’t get results’.

I think that this cartoon is both for and against Roosevelt.

I feel it is pro Roosevelt because it’s showing him trying to help. It shows he wants to help, and it putting a lot of effort and time in to helping.

I feel it is against Roosevelt though because it is saying he’s taking too long over it. He hasn’t got a clearly defined plan to get America out of the depression, he just keeps changing it and hoping something will work. Congress is depicted as an old woman purely because an old woman is something that can easily be ‘taken advantage’ of. They’re frail and weak. Roosevelt uses congress to get his bills through with no problem, congress is a pushover, but that’s because it’s made mostly from democrats.

I feel somebody neutral probably drew it, as he tries to show both sides of the argument, for and against Roosevelt.

4) I feel that both are useful sources in telling us about public opinion towards the new deal, but I feel source I is probably more informative and more of the real public opinion – less biased.

I feel Source I is more useful because it is from a popular song. Everybody was singing it. Also what is said in the song is backed up by other reports too. Its not praising the New Deal, saying it’s amazing, but it is saying that its helping people and things are better. The song is what the people were thinking, how they felt about Roosevelt. He got them working again, he got them their wages, and he made them feel better about life.

Roosevelt’s supporters wrote source H. It was used as part of his election campaign, and is quite clearly going to be biased. Bits of what is said can be backed up by other sources, but most of it is glorified to help make Roosevelt sound wonderful.

5) The main differences between Sources J and K are that Source J saying that.

Roosevelt was hurting people by giving. He was taking away their prowess. A quote from the source says ‘He didn’t understand that when you give to people, you hurt them’. This man is clearly stating that he feels The New Deal was a bad thing – it made self respecting men into nothing. It diminished them if you like, ‘Welfare kills a mans initiative. A dog you feed will not hunt.’ He feels the New Deal was almost making him out to be some kind of ‘loser’.

Source K on the other hand said that Roosevelt was helping the American people. It was saying how he was a real bonus to their lives. ‘The New Deal meant that ordinary people would have a better chance in life’.

Source K also said that people should be left to hunt for themselves, they should make something of themselves, not live of handouts, because after a while you become too dependent on the handouts and cant fend for yourself properly anymore.

Source K however contradicts this once again by saying that the ‘handouts’ were a good thing, and they were helping the people recover, and making their lives better, ‘The idea was that all the forces of the community should be directed to making life better for ordinary people.’

Source K was written by Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labour. Because she worked for Roosevelt she was of course going to be slightly biased. She was also a member of the government anyway, so she would have agreed with their policies (well, most of them). She also wouldn’t have been one of the people hit hard by the depression, so she would have more of an objective, non egotistic, view on things, and also maybe a bit of sympathy for them.

6) I agree with both the quotes, although I feel the second one is probably the truer of the two.

I agree with the first because the New Deal did help many Americans. It didn’t give them all self-respect but it certainly helped them to survive and get back on their feet. It did also give some people, not all, a boost in confidence.

An American historian wrote source B in 1945. One things he says to back up what was said in the first quote are, ‘What, then, are the major achievements of the New Deal? First comes the restoration of self-confidence’.

Source I has a line in the song which goes ‘He’s got things in full sway, we’re all working and getting our pay’.

Those two quotes back up what is said in the first quote.

I agree with the second quote more however mainly because of the last statement, ‘It did not solve all America’s economic problems – the Second World War did that’.

When the second world happened once again Europe was short of supplies. They needed goods which they could not get any more due to not being able to import them, or just not being able to produce them themselves. As America stayed out the war until the end it was able to supply these countries with goods, thus boosting trade dramatically. If the Second World War hadn’t happened America would have taken many years longer to fully recover from the depression – after all, it was the First World War that led to the boom in the first place, so obviously another world war would have the same effect. Source C says how if the Second World War hadn’t happened then Roosevelt would have been in real trouble, ‘The was rescued him and he seized on it like a drowning man’.

The are also sources to back up what is said earlier on in the quote. Source E for example shows how money is being wasted via a cartoon. Admittedly the cartoon is probably a bit biased, but at the same time it was clear from other sources and comments made from the time that many people felt that Roosevelt was wasting money on needless things. Source C also clearly backs this up. It says how before Roosevelt came into power there was a national debt of $19 billion, and after he’d made his mark there was a debt of $250 billion.

The government also may have become too powerful. Because of all the organizations it had formed, it was employing hundreds of thousands of Americans itself. This in turn meant it was paying these people too. So the government had a hand in everyone’s pocket if you like. They had control over the people’s money. Source C also says how 1 in 4 Americans relied on the government for employment. More evidence suggesting that Roosevelt had a little too much control.

I feel Source C is a fairly reliable source too as it was written by a historian and he had many more facts, and more of an objective view.

From this I feel that the New Deal was a success, but only at first. At first Roosevelt quickly helped many people by getting them jobs and helping them to survive. Unfortunately he may have gone too far with this and had too much control. He didn’t really encourage his people to fend for themselves enough and in the end America became dependent on itself, not its people. Roosevelt ended up leaving the country with a huge national debt and if the Second World War hadn’t happened I feel that Roosevelt would have kept pumping money into the schemes till America really was struggling and everything came back in his face.

I think that these two people disagree about the New Deal purely because of who actually wrote them.

Source J was written by a self made, proud, businessman. He had a lot of pride. He’d worked to get somewhere. When Roosevelt just started handing out money to people like him he didn’t like it. He saw almost as an insult. He felt he didn’t need it, he was able to find money and work for himself, and after all he was a proud man who was capable – even in the middle of a depression. He felt people should fend for themselves, not live on handouts, he didn’t like it one bit. It was almost as if Roosevelt giving him money was damaging his ego, it made him feel like he was being seen as a failure, when he felt he wasn’t and that he could sort it out himself. It made him feel small.