The New Deal :: essays research papers

The New Deal"How well did the New Deal combat the Depression?" I think that theanswer to this question is that it did very well and I would give it a grade ofan A.When Roosevelt took office, in 1933, he had three goals in mind, to savethe banks, save the people, and to rebuild the economy. He set his sights onreturning the banks to their friendly days of the pre-depression age.     Since the beginning of the Depression, banks were closing faster thanthe people could withdraw all of their money. He countered this by closing allthe banks and had Congress pass an Emergency Banking execute that made federal impartsavailable to private bankers. At the same time he passed an Economy Act thatrequired the government to balance the budget. These helped ease the pecuniaryproblems throughout the nation and then he began to restructure the bankingsystem with such acts as The Glass-Stegall Act and the creation of the FederalDeposit Insurance Corporation. He too s et up the Securities Act and thesecurities Exchange Act that were overdue regulations for the Stock Market. Inorder to enforce all these new acts, he started the Securities and ExchangeCommission. These actions got the banks and the monetary system started in theright direction of what would be a slow recovery process.     Roosevelts next objective was to take care of the people. ThoughRoosevelt was a conservative, he realized the extreme need to help the poor. Hehad Congress respond promptly, and established the Federal Emergency ReliefAdministration that gave $500 million in relief to the poor people of thecountry. Roosevelt then went on to create organizations that would offer jobsand a sense of self-esteem to the unemployed of the country. One of theseorganizations was the Civilian Conservation corps that provided young men withjobs to improved the environment. They had such jobs as planting trees andhelping to stop erosion. Another government activity was t he Civil WorksAdministration that remunerative unemployed people $15 a week to perform governmentprojects. Many people during this time were also in jeopardy of losing theirhomes. To this, Roosevelt established the Homeowners loan Corporation thatallowed people to restructure or take out another mortgages on their homes. Hisensuing step was to rebuild the economy.     Roosevelt felt that recovery would not altogether come from relief efforts,but also with the cooperation from agriculture and industrial groups. Probablythe most significant acts by him and Congress were the Agricultural Adjustment