New Deal DBQ STUDY

Great Depression and Causes

In 1929, on a day known as Black Tuesday, the stock market crashed (though the crash was weeks in the making).

Overspeculation (a financial term for buying an asset that risks losing value - in the hopes that it will gain value instead) on the stock market caused the Depression. Investors took out loans to speculate on the stock market, but when the stock prices dropped and the market collapsed, they lost all the money they had borrowed and invested.

Overproduction of crops: During WW1, output increases for crops increased, but After WW1, demand decreased and output stayed the same, so there was an overproduction. Price decreases because there was an overproduction of crops Farmers felt Great Depression first.

High rates of debt

Economic disparities

Election of 1932

The Depression's worst year, 1932, was the same year as the presidential election.

The Republicans renominated Hoover as their candidate, who warned that a Democratic victory would result in worse economic problems. Hoover was considered a "lame duck" president because he was powerless to cope with the Depression. He thought the government should continue to have a SMALL ROLE IN THE ECONOMY.

The Democrat candidate was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who promised a "new deal" for the American people and that the government should have a LARGE ROLE IN THE ECONOMY.

Voter's most important issue was the Depression, and which candidate could do a better job of ending it. A majority voted for Roosevelt, desperate for change.

FDR’s New Deal and 3 Rs

When FDR was elected in the Election of 1932, he sought to respond to the Great Depression with the New Deal, a series of programs and reforms aimed to repair the US economy by promoting the 3Rs:

1. Relief- provide people with basic necessities and what they need immediately,

2. Recovery- bring the economy back to where it was before the Depression and fix the economy in the short term

3. Reform- regulate the economy to ensure future economic depressions do not occur

Emergency Banking Relief Act/Emergency Banking Act

Banks had been failing at high rates and had used consumer deposits to speculate on the stock market, losing the money.

This act authorized the government to close the banks during the Bank Holiday, examine the finances of the banks and reorganize them, and reopen those that were good.

National Industry Recovery Act

Established an agency that set industry standards for production, prices, and working conditions 

Sought to create security for workers by establishing a (liveable) minimum wage and shorter working hours.

Public Work Administration

Created jobs by employing Americans to do federal infrastructure work like building roads and bridges.

Relief for people out of work because providing unemployed people with jobs.

Social Security Act

Provided a safety net of income for workers over the age of 65.  

Unemployed and disabled workers and poor families with children also got aid from this act.

Court Packing Plan

Conservatives who believed FDR's New Deal was federal overreach took Roosevelt's New Deal to the Supreme Court on multiple occasions, won a few of the cases, and narrowed the scope of what part of the New Deal was constitutional.

Roosevelt was unhappy about the narrowing of his New Deal efforts, so the Courtpacking Plan, a bill would allow the president to appoint new Supreme Court Justices for every justice that was older than 70 years.

At this time, it meant FDR could appoint 6 additional judges to the Supreme Court.

Roosevelt aimed to fill the Supreme Court with judges sympathetic to the New Deal so that judicial limitations on the New Deal programs would stop.

Both parties in Congress strongly opposed it, seeing it as an abuse of constitutional checks and balances, so it was never passed.

Continuities for African Americans (COUNTERCLAIM)

Counterclaim: While treatment of African Americans remained the same…

Counterclaim Evidence: SOURCE 3, Many White Southerners want to exclude African Americans from New Deal benefits like an established (liveable) minimum wage and shorter working hours for workers.

Counterclaim Reasoning: Groups in the government, such as white Southerners, continue to try to restrict the freedoms of African Americans,

Outside Evidence: Jim Crow laws in the South segregated almost every facet of Southern society and remained in place with the New Deal

Essay Outline

Intro: Context (Great Depression and causes), definition of New Deal, thesis

Thesis: While government treatment/discrimination of African Americans remained the same, government responses fostered great change in the role of the federal government from 1930-1945 because the government’s involvement in the economy and creation of laws to support the people increased.

BP 1: Increase in government involvement in the economy

Doc 1 and Doc 2

BP 2: Increase in creation of laws to support the people

Doc 4 and Doc 6

BP 3: Counterclaim - while treatment of African Americans remained the same, the role of the federal government still changed greatly because the government gained a lot of power

Doc 3 and Doc 7

Conclusion: What happens next: WW2 and end of Depression, continued changes like social security