The document discusses the social impact of the Great Depression and programs under FDR's New Deal. It describes how the Depression affected family life, minorities, and health. It led to increased suicides, domestic violence, and discrimination. The New Deal provided relief through public works programs and social security. It helped the economy by boosting wages and infrastructure but did not fully end unemployment until WWII mobilization increased production and jobs.

1. Social Impact of The
Great Depression
And the New Deal
1. Impact on Family Life
2. Impact on Minorities
3. New Deal Programs
4. Successes
5. Failures
6. End of the Great
Depression!

2. Social & Psychological Effects
• People became demoralized
• Suicides increased 30% during 1928-1932.
• Tension visible in sharp rise in domestic
violence reports.
• Women told that domestic violence results
from men’s depression and women’s lack of
sympathy.

3. Impact on Family Life
• Many couples delayed
marriage
• Some forced to split up.
• But divorce rate dropped
sharply
• Birth rates dropped below
the replacement level for
the first time in American
history.

4. Impact on Men
• Men now jobless, had to rely on their wives
and children.
• Loss of power as the primary decision maker
and breadwinner.
• A 1940 survey revealed that 1.5 million
married women had been abandoned by
their husbands.
• Women were “advised to return home” and
make their men feel … more like men.

5. Impact on Women: Target of
Resentment
 Women forced to work
 took low-paying jobs as
domestics.
 often blamed for “taking”
jobs from men, Particularly if
married
 it was believed that if all
married women left the
workforce then there would
be enough jobs for men

6. Impact on
Women
DISCRIMINATION
• The Economy Act of 1932-
37 prohibited both
members of a couple from
holding federal jobs.
• dismissal of numerous
female civil service
employees
• Many states prohibited
hiring women whose
husbands earned a “living
wage” or simply hiring
married women

8. Impact on Children
• 300,000 students
out of school.
• to take low-
paying jobs or
leave home.
• 2,600 schools
shut down.

9. Depression’s Effect on Health
 “No one has starved.”
 President Hoover
 But some did.

10. Health
 Poor, hungry and without
shelter – more prone to
illness.
 children- suffered from poor
diets and lack of health care.
 Malnutrition rose from 18% in
1928 to 60% in 1931
 Many postponed treatment.

11. Discrimination Increases
 Hard times created
hostility against
minorities.
 Whites willing to
take low wages of
Asian-Americans,
Hispanics and
African-Americans
 Whites moving
West made it
harder for Hispanics
to find jobs

12. African Americans
“Last hired, first fired”
Faced discrimination
Many lost jobs to unemployed white
workers.
In 1930, about 50 percent of blacks
were unemployed.
Children sometimes put to work

13. Impact on Mexicans
• In California, local leaders and
unions convinced government
to deport Mexican-born workers
and their children.
• 1929 and 1939 Illegal
deportation of 500,000
Mexican-Americans so that
whites could get more jobs

14. Deportation of Mexican Americans at
Union Station

15. FDR &
THE NEW DEAL
1933-1940

16. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• US President from 1933 to 1945: longest
term of leadership in this nation’s history
• FDR aimed to restore confidence
• What were his first measures?

17. The New Deal’s 3 Rs
• Relief: providing jobs for
the unemployed and
protecting farmers from
foreclosure
• Recovery: getting the
economy back into high
gear
• Reform: regulating banks,
abolishing child labor, and
conserving farm lands
• Overall objective: saving
capitalism!

18. Immediate Responses, 1933
• Federal Emergency Relief Act
• Federal funds for relief
• distribute money, clothing,
and food to the unemployed
• National Industrial Recovery Act
• Fair work and competition codes
• Administration to enforce codes
• Guaranteed labor’s right to organize
• price controls
• high wages

19. Agricultural Adjustment Acts (AAA)
• Recovery of agriculture
• Paid farmers who agreed
to reduce production of
basic crops such as
cotton, wheat, tobacco,
hogs, and corn

20. New Deal Programs
• Civilian Conservation Corps
• Soil Conservation Service
• Soil Erosion
• Planting trees
• Irrigation and range management
• Gave outdoor work to unemployed
men between the ages of 17 and 29

21. Works Progress Administration
WPA
• Biggest agency
• 1935 employed 8 million and
$2 billion fund
• Bridges, reservoirs, irrigation, sewage, schools, playgrounds,
education, training
• Work Programs paid minimum wages,
pulled them off charity and soup lines
• “We Work Again”

22. 1935 Social Security Act
• Safety net for all
Americans
• Percentage of paycheck
• Based on shorter life-span
• Intended to supplement
(not replace) income
National Housing Act
● Provided loans to buy houses
● Reduced excessive rents.

23. Successes of the New Deal
• Relief :Gave Americans help and hope in a
time of severe crisis
• Roads & building: Economic infrastructure
• Reform : Expanded the role of federal
government
• Social reforms:Social security/ minimum wage/
labour relations and trade unions survived and
protected ordinary people’s rights and conditions.

24. Weaknesses of the New Deal
• Damaged minorities
• Determined Opposition BRAS:
Businessmen , Republicans, Activists,
Supreme Court
• No economic recovery
• And … Unemployment still high

25. Then what ended the Great Depression?

26. End of the Depression
• How did the Great Depression end then?

27. End of the Depression
• heavy demands of mobilization for World
War II restored country to full employment,
by doing exactly what the New Deal had
been attempting:
• 7 million new civilian jobs were created
• Industrial productivity increased by 96
percent
• Corporate profits after taxes doubled.
• Adolf Hitler probably did more than
FDR to end the Great Depression
in America.

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