President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Ideas During The Great Depression

The Great Depression was a low point in American history that occurred during the 1930’s. During the time period, we were thankful to have a dedicated president that was willing to try unorthodox methods in order to get the country back and better than ever. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a series of ideas to gain American support in order to get out of the Great Depression. The New Deal was a collection of federal programs such as economic recovery, job creation, and investment in public works that were launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after being taken into presidential office in 1933 where all of his ideas were successful but eventually shifted as time went on.
Roosevelt's involvement in Public works was really a phenomenal idea to create jobs and to come together as a nation. As an idea of Roosevelt's I found that his objective was, “The New Deal built hundreds of thousands of highways, bridges, hospitals, schools, theaters, libraries, city halls, homes, post offices, airports, and parks across America” (Great Depression 2). Some of the most interesting projects that Roosevelt
created were right here in Topeka, Kansas. The Billard Airport and Harley Davidson building were both Public Works projects during the Great Depression. These investments helped lower postwar debt and most of the New Deal foundation is still in use today. The relation in public works can be classified as a large accomplishment but as time went on the projects began to slow down, but many of the structures built by the deal are still standing today.
During the Great Depression, economic recovery was the main overall goal in Roosevelt's “New Deal”.
Roosevelt stated the New Deal was designed for economic relief for our nation. The New Deal helped the banks and cleaned up the financial debt left over from the Stock Market crash of 1929 that was the start of the Great Depression. It stabilized prices of all industry and agriculture and helped state and local governments recover from the downfall. Although the New Deal got the United States of America out of the Great Depression, the after-effects of all the money spent, brought our country to great national debt, “The U.S. debt was $22 billion in 1933 and grew by 50 percent in the three years that followed, reaching $33 billion” (Treasury 3). Roosevelt gave his best effort to stick with his word in achieving economic relief but couldn’t control the national
debt.
As the Great Depression hit our country fell short and had to decrease the number of jobs. To compensate for unemployment, “Roosevelt brought the unemployment levels in the United States down 16.3 percent. That meant that over eight million Americans who wanted jobs could not find them. In 1939, after almost two full terms of Roosevelt and his New Deal proposals, unemployment had not dropped but had risen to 17.2 percent. Almost nine and one-half million Americans were unemployed” (Folsom). To help with job creation Roosevelt would actually pay farmers to hire new farm hands and would suggest that business leaders would start up new industries to create more jobs. Roosevelt's idea of New Deal efforts toward job creation would be classified as a success.
Although the Great Depression was a low point in history there was a very good leader for The United States of America. Roosevelt is notable for being a great leader and finding the good even when all there is, is bad. All the ideas proposed by Roosevelt are considered successful achievements but some shifted as time went on. As time went by many of the proposals such as the creation of jobs shifted in a rather bad way leading to raising the national debt. If someone was to evaluate the all-around achievements of Roosevelt's four terms he can be considered one of the best presidents in history.