roosevelt

THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THE NEW DEAL, 1929-1939 THE CHAPTER IN PERSPECTIVE By the 1920s, the corporate industrial economy had grown for more than half a century. Along with its strengths, serious weaknesses developed. Few Americans noticed them because of the hot pursuit of material wealth. The consumer culture of the 1920s and a businessoriented government promoted the pursuit not only of money but of debt as well. When mass purchasing power could no longer sustain prosperity, the economy collapsed. The greatest depression in history dawned, bringing massive unemployment, withering prices, and a stagnated economy. Unlike his predecessors, Herbert Hoover took action. No president before him had dared to stimulate the economy for fear of throwing it hopelessly out of balance. But Hoovers policies, for all his good intentions, were too wedded to the old order to make any difference. The New Deal was no revolution in public policy. In many ways it was quite conservative. It sought ultimately to reform capitalism by modifying some of the excesses that led to the Great Depression. If there were a revolutionary aspect, however, it lay in the New Deals willingness to commit government to compensating for swings in the economy and to supporting those in need. The New Deal marshaled the government activism and executive leadership of Progressivism, but with none of the moralizing that often accompanied progressive reform. With the New Deal, the modern liberal state was born. OVERVIEW This chapter opens with federal investigator Lorena Hickok traveling across America in search of the New Deals impact on the lives of ordinary people. The deprivation, anguish, and courage she finds upsets the common stereotype of lazy loafers in search of government handouts. She also discovers that the New Deal is restoring hope and confidence, and because of it Americans are looking to Washington as never before for help. The stock market crash of 1929, one of the worst in the nations