The New Deal dramatically changed the role of the US government in the economy and society by expanding the social welfare state and moving away from laissez-faire policies. FDR introduced programs like Social Security, the WPA, and the TVA to provide relief, jobs, and infrastructure during the Great Depression. These programs established precedents for an active government role in regulating markets and supporting citizens' basic needs that differed sharply from earlier limited government approaches. Political factors like public support for relief during the economic crisis led to the New Deal's success in enacting these transformative policies and programs.
1. this is due in 7 hours....... must have done in 7 hours....
must write at least 5 paragraphs
Essay Question:
How did the New Deal change the role of government in the
economy and society of the United States? Why did the change
come about? In your answer, make clear the major achievements
and limitations of the New Deal and the political factors that led
to its success. It will be helpful to use the concepts “social
welfare state” and “laissez faire,” and to contrast the New Deal
with earlier government policies.
Write an original essay of about five paragraphs that
makes use of the sources provided
to answer the prompt. Structure your answer with a clear thesis
statement in the first sentence, and supporting examples and
reasoning in subsequent paragraphs. Choose specific examples
from the sources provided below (1-7). ONLY use the sources
below. You can not use other sources
1. Franklin Roosevelt, "First Inaugural Address" (1933)
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no
unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can
be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government
itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a
war, but at the same time, through this employment,
accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and
reorganize the use of our natural resources.
Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the
overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by
engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to
2. provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land.
The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of
agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the
output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically
the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small
homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the
Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the
demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped
by the unifying of relief activities which today are often
scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by
national planning for and supervision of all forms of
transportation and of communications and other utilities which
have a definitely public character. There are many ways in
which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by
talking about it. We must act and act quickly.
Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require
two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order:
there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and
investments, so that there will be an end to speculation with
other people's money; and there must be provision for an
adequate but sound currency.
Source: Franklin Roosevelt, "First Inaugural Address." March 4,
1933.
2. Franklin Roosevelt, "Statement on Signing the Social
Security Act" (1935)
Today a hope of many years' standing is in large part fulfilled.
The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling
industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life
insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be
their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has
wondered how long the job would last.
3. This social security measure gives at least some protection to
thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits
through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions
and through increased services for the protection of children
and the prevention of ill health.
We can never insure one hundred percent of the population
against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of
life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some
measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family
against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.
This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is
being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure
intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It
will act as a protection to future Administrations against the
necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the
needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of
deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take
care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United
States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.
Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Statement on Signing the Social
Security Act. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,
The American Presidency Project
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/209017
3. Franklin Roosevelt, "Re-Nomination Acceptance Speech"
(1936)
That very word freedom, in itself and of necessity, suggests
freedom from some restraining power. In 1776 we sought
freedom from the tyranny of a political autocracy—from the
eighteenth century royalists who held special privileges from
the crown....And so it was to win freedom from the tyranny of
political autocracy that the American Revolution was fought.
4. That victory gave the business of governing into the hands of
the average man, who won the right with his neighbors to make
and order his own destiny through his own Government.
Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.
Since that struggle, however, man’s inventive genius released
new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people.
The age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the
telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution....
...[O]ut of this modern civilization economic royalists carved
new dynasties...built upon concentration of control over
material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and
securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor
and capital—all undreamed of by the fathers—the whole
structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service....
...[T]he privileged princes of these new economic dynasties,
thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government
itself....
A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost
complete control over other people’s property, other people’s
money, other people’s labor—other people’s lives....
Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen
could appeal only to the organized power of Government. The
collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The
election of 1932 was the people’s mandate to end it. Under that
mandate it is being ended.…
Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no
half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal
opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity
in the market place.
5. These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow
the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that
we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American
institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In
vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In
their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution
stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not
tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship
by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.
Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Acceptance Speech for the Re-
Nomination for the Presidency,” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
June 27, 1936.
4. Franklin Roosevelt, "Second Inaugural Address" (1937)
Our progress out of the depression is obvious.... By using the
new materials of social justice we have undertaken to erect on
the old foundations a more enduring structure for the better use
of future generations.
…We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad
morals; we know now that it is bad economics. …
We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of
power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies
of life.…
True, we have come far from the days of stagnation and despair.
Vitality has been preserved. Courage and confidence have been
restored. Mental and moral horizons have been extended.…
But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see
tens of millions of its citizens–a substantial part of its whole
population–who at this very moment are denied the greater part
of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities
6. of life.
I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager
that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.
I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue
under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society
half a century ago.
I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity
to better their lot and the lot of their children.
I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and
factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness
to many other millions.
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.
It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you
in hope–because the Nation, seeing and understanding the
injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to
make every American citizen the subject of his country’s
interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-
abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our
progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those
who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who
have too little.…
In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our
seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all
go up, or else we all go down, as one people.
Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Second Inaugural Address,”
January 20, 1937.
5. Xavier Gonzalez, "Tennessee Valley Authority," Huntsville,
7. Alabama (1937)
Source: https://flic.kr/p/pdmPRz
6. Gavin Wright, "Number of Persons Employed by WPA, in
1936-1941"
Source:
Wright, Gavin. "The Political Economy of New Deal Spending:
An Econometric Analysis."
The Review of Economics and Statistics
56, no. 1 (1974): 30-38. doi:10.2307/1927524.
7. U.S. Union Membership as a Share of Non-agricultural
Employment (1900-2000)
Source: https://rwer.wordpress.com/2017/06/22/what-do-unions-
do/