Great Depression Dbq

Beginning with the Wall Street stock market crash of October 24, 1929, the Great Depression was a time in United States history that continued for a much longer period than panics the country had experienced before. Although the unemployment rate vacillated for the following decade, it was highest in the recession of 1937. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the man the people of the United States called upon in order to pick up the copious economic and social problems left behind by Herbert Hoover. Roosevelt had both effective and defeasible responses to these problems that in turn, altered the government greatly.

Many of Roosevelt's responses to a number of problems created by the Great Depression increased the size of the federal government. As shown in document A, Lesueur discusses how the government set up programs that gave out food and had places for men to buy beds at extremely inexpensive prices. One such program was the Civil Works Administration, which provided temporary jobs and also repaired roads and bridges. But because these opportunities were generally only offered to men, this response by Roosevelt failed. The court case, shown in document F, was a controversial case known as Schechter v. United States. In this case, it was declared that there was to be no interstate commerce which allowed it to be controlled by the government. Also, the tenth amendment was referred to during this case because everything not stated in the constitution is up to the states. In document C, the government started to offer more jobs, relief and reform and actually started doing something towards the termination of the Great Depression. As you can see, these are just some of the few examples of how Roosevelt's responses to problems during this time led to the increase of the size of the government.

Even though Roosevelt is known as one of the greatest American presidents, many of his reactions towards some problems during his presidency were ineffective. As shown in document B, some people believed that Roosevelt's attempts at curing the depression were instead steps towards socialism and communism, two terms relating to the government that was prevalent during the time of Nazi Germany. People were also saying that many of the steps that Roosevelt was taking was for the increase in the power of the government, and many people began to feel that the government had more power than they should. In a document D, William Garrison explains why he's against the New Deal. He states the term "Utopia", relating to communism which is a type of government almost all Americans are against. Garrison believes that as a result of the New Deal, the government increased negatively and states that they are buying "Utopia" for money. In document I, the government did do a number of things that helped fix the depression but discriminated against certain people. Towns were built but black weren't allowed to live in them and nothing was done to help the African American individuals during this time.

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