J.T. Castelow
US/VA History
Zachary Landis

The New Deal

New Deal: Success or Failure?
How successful was Roosevelt's New Deal? After the Wall Street crash in 1929, America sunk into a deep depression and unemployment levels were high, growing to a rate of 12,000 people per day, losing their jobs as many companies went bankrupt. The president at the time Herbert Hoover did little at all to help the situation and by the end of his term in office the state of both the American economy and American public was horrible. In a bid to restore America back to the way it was, the American public turned to the Democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt who promised a new deal and vowed to help them out of this slump. Roosevelt brought a new deal to America at a critical point in time and I think that this is the reason why Roosevelt appealed so much and won the election with a landslide victory. In the case of Herbert Hoover, I believe it was a case of too little too late and this was just not good enough.
During Roosevelt's first hundred days as president the American public saw more action being taken at end the depression then they had seen during the whole of Herbert Hoover's presidency. The first step, which he took on the road to recovery, was the Emergency Banking Act, which was immediately put into action, as congress voted unanimously for it. It consisted of, closing all the banks down until their finances had been put into order and only those with sufficient money and well-managed accounts were allowed to reopen. He then introduced the economy act which meant that the pay of everyone in the government was slashed by 15% and budgets were cut by 25% which altogether saved $1 billion. In addition to this he added the beer act which legalized the manufacture and selling of alcohol, therefore prohibition was ended. Roosevelt then goes on to introduce the 13 acts that make up the alphabet agencies.
The alphabet agencies were a fundamental part of the first new deal as they helped more people than any other acts. One of the main agencies was the PWA which was a long term agency that lasted until 1939 and provided jobs for millions of people. The