Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal

The economy of the late 1920s was no longer the same as prior years when it was “driven on steel, coal, textiles, railroads, and other heavy industries” ; instead it was driven by consumerism and credit. When the stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, it wiped out people’s investments and caused major panic to the public. With banks across the country closing down and foreclosing homes without returning the money that belonged to their customers, it left nearly all Americans in poverty and struggling to survive. Thousands of unemployed Americans and their children slept in the streets and formed “breadlines” to eat some bread. The market for corn, wheat, beef, and pork collapsed and farmers were faced with a drastic drop in income . With …show more content…
Roosevelt became president of the United States in 1933, the economy was in its lowest point. More than 12,000,000 people were unemployed, homeless and eating from garbage cans. Shantytowns sprang up in cities all across the country. Soup kitchens and breadlines were always overflowing with people. Hospitals were crowded by starving patients and suicide rates increased. President Roosevelt saw the suffering of the American people and therefore created his plan to stimulate the economy but most importantly, to bring hope to the people. His plan, the New Deal, lasted from 1933 to 1938. The New Deal consisted of programs that beautified the country and helped bring back jobs. Many of the programs from the New Deal were successful and gave hope that was much …show more content…
They had no one to go to for help in case of financial hardships therefore President Roosevelt enacted the Social Security Act in 1935. President Roosevelt saw that the majority of Americans “faced a future full of economic hardship and uncertainty” . The Social Security Act was meant to provide pensions and unemployment insurance to workers but it also became a program that provided aid to blind, deaf, disabled, and dependent children. Some of the programs that came from the Social Security Act and still have today is the Unemployment Insurance, Workers’ Compensation, Medicare, Medicaid, SSI, Welfare, Food Stamps, Veterans Benefits and many more. “Although the Social Security Act was enacted in the middle of the Great Depression, it originally envisioned relatively small benefits that were not payable for several years” . But thanks to the Social Security Act, the Social Security program “has awarded benefits to more than 41 million children, 25 million widowers and has help drop the poverty rate among the elderly by 35 percent” . For vast majority of Americans, Social Security is still their only source of income as they retire and we owe it to President Roosevelt for caring for the welfare of the American