New Deal – what was it and what went wrong with it? - K. Reusch

Roosevelt’s program was called the New Deal, this was his wish for the future of the United States, he knew that in order to restore the country to health many changes must be made. There were many individual parts to his project but as a whole they made up the recipe for the countries antidote to Depression.

The First New Deal sought to restore the economy in order to try and fix the problems of the Great Depression during 1930-1935. There were two acts passed during this time that were supposedly going to help stimulate the economy. The first of the two was The Agricultural Adjustment Act, also known as AAA, tried to inflate farm prices that were low due to overproduction. This was done by the government to pay farmers to produce less. This did not exactly work out as planned, so the act was corrected and passed in 1935. It did not help small farmers as much as it did the larger. Also, it never solved the problem of low demand due to falling wages and unemployment which needed to be corrected in order to get out of the Depression. The second of the two acts is the National Industrial Recovery Act. This act was an attempt to help businesses in general. Businesses were to avoid cutthroat competition, which was selling below the actual cost to gain customers and drive out other businesses. The government also had suspended the anti-monopoly laws for a short time. Public Works Administration worked on getting jobs for the jobless but very few jobs were created compared to the amount of people unemployed. The First New Deal also created the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) which provided dams, electric power, and flood and erosion control to several Southern states along the Tennessee River. After all the First New Deal had done, there was still weak consumer demand which was still causing the Depression.


In all the Great Depression was a time of hardship but out of the utter collapse of our economy came a bright new future with the help of Roosevelt and Hoover. Our country was unable to avoid the trials and tribulations associate with the Great Depression, but the programs, jobs, and lessons learned will be remembered throughout history as a time of growth and metamorphosis for a burgeoning empire.