Was The New Deal A Success Or Failure

The New Deal: A Success Or Failure? During the 1930’s Americans were undergoing the most harsh economic crash in the history of the United States. This crash was known as the Great Depression, and it lasted from 1929 - 1939, receiving its name from how Americans felt during the time period, and how hard it was to break out of such hard times. The Great Depression left the American population with no money, and no hope. This is until 1932, when president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected into office under his campaigning of the “New Deal.” Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal was his plan to bring America out of the Great Depression. His New Deal fully achieved two out of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Three R’s.” Despite not completely achieving
Some of these programs were controversial, however, they did their job. The Tennessee Valley Authority is an example of this. The Tennessee Valley Authority “was by far the most revolutionary of all the New Deal schemes”(Bailey 791). The Tennessee Valley Authority was established to provide jobs, and at the same time, lower electrical bills for the people suffering financially from the Great Depression. “It gave jobs to the unemployed, helped the consumer with lower electric rates, and in some respect, deserved the accusation that it was ‘socialistic’”(Zinn 393). Howard Zinn is showing here, how the Tennessee Valley Authority was beneficial to the economy, but was controversial, being regarded as even socialistic. Franklin Delano Roosevelt also did many other things such as declare that the Great Depression is such an emergency that he receives power as if it was during a war. This was very controversial, and almost deemed unconstitutional, but ended up being very beneficial, allowing him to establish an unprecedented sixteen pieces of legislation in his first hundred days in
“Before World War II Came along and revolutionized all political and economical formulas, none of FDR’s exertions managed to wrestle the unemployment rate below fourteen percent”(Kennedy 3). This shows how Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not fully provide his second “R” of recovery. However, President Roosevelt did however somewhat provide recovery by bringing down the unemployment rate to an average of seventeen percent for the decade that he was president during the Great Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt also strived to provide recovery for the people by establishing the National Recovery Administration, or NRA. The NRA was created to set minimum prices and wages, helping the economy, but instead it mostly failed. “In part, its failure reflected the contradictions of the New Dealer’s analysis of economic failure” (Badger 3). This shows how the NRA failed because Franklin Roosevelt calculated the causes of the economic failures wrong. However, the NRA did create little new jobs, checked inflation, and benefitted coal mining, making it not a complete failure, and still providing some recovery during the Great