Recently, fear of recession has struck the heart of many economists as the prospects of an economic crisis is always present in the minds of people. No economic crisis; however, can match the devastation of the great economic crisis of the 1930s, popularly known as the Great Depression. A crash of the stock market caused by a speculative bubble combined with a drop of prices on farmed goods, staggering rates in unemployment and inflation, a sharp decrease of global trade and destructive natural disasters caused the late 1920s and much of the 1930s to be a time of desperation and poverty.The president in power at the beginning of the Depression, the Republican Herbert Hoover, was a man who firmly gripped to the laissez-faire spirit of the conservative
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One of the sectors that those agencies worked with was the labor sector. One of the many impacts the New Deal had in this sector was the creation of more jobs. If one is to look at a graph created by Department of Commerce, which shows the unemployment rates from 1936 to 1947, it is clear that unemployment grew dramatically during the years leading up to New Deal, only to begin decreasing gradually once the first New Deal was launched. This shows the change the New Deal programs had on employment rates. By increasing the number of people who had a job, these programs liberated the economy from the burdens of unemployment and poverty and added more individuals to the working class. As more people entered the workforce, it was important to ensure that the workers were productive. In order to achieve this it was essential to provide them with a good working environment and a decent living quality. Throughout the Depression, many agreed that it was necessary for the employers to respect the rights of workers. As John L. Lewis stated in a radio broadcast “Huge corporations such as United States Steel and General Motors [...] have no right to transgress the law which gives workers the right to self-organization and collective bargain” (Lewis). Here, it is obvious that there’s a general agreement to support the rights of the workers. In order to approach this …show more content…
Some conservatives were outraged about the way in which the federal government was regulating commerce and the way in which it was going against the capitalist zeitgeist. An example of this was the Supreme Court case Schecter vs United States, in which the supreme court invalidated the National Industrial Recovery Act. The NRA was an essential part of the first New Deal that dealt with providing workers with fair conditions, amongst them having a living wage. When delivering the majority opinion, Chief Justice Charles Hughes stated “[The workers’] wages have no direct relation to interstate commerce [...] The authority of the federal government may not be pushed to such an extreme” (Schecter vs United States). In this case, the conservative faction had its way of preventing the federal government from gaining any further powers, as conservatives sought to limit the role of it in everyday life. Furthermore, this decision was one of the best illustrations of the laissez-faire spirit the opposition had at the time. Besides the argument that the federal government was interfering too much into private affairs, many conservatives took their criticism one step further by reviving the spirit of the Red Scare and accusing Roosevelt of moving the country towards a totalitarian communist regime.
One of the sectors that those agencies worked with was the labor sector. One of the many impacts the New Deal had in this sector was the creation of more jobs. If one is to look at a graph created by Department of Commerce, which shows the unemployment rates from 1936 to 1947, it is clear that unemployment grew dramatically during the years leading up to New Deal, only to begin decreasing gradually once the first New Deal was launched. This shows the change the New Deal programs had on employment rates. By increasing the number of people who had a job, these programs liberated the economy from the burdens of unemployment and poverty and added more individuals to the working class. As more people entered the workforce, it was important to ensure that the workers were productive. In order to achieve this it was essential to provide them with a good working environment and a decent living quality. Throughout the Depression, many agreed that it was necessary for the employers to respect the rights of workers. As John L. Lewis stated in a radio broadcast “Huge corporations such as United States Steel and General Motors [...] have no right to transgress the law which gives workers the right to self-organization and collective bargain” (Lewis). Here, it is obvious that there’s a general agreement to support the rights of the workers. In order to approach this …show more content…
Some conservatives were outraged about the way in which the federal government was regulating commerce and the way in which it was going against the capitalist zeitgeist. An example of this was the Supreme Court case Schecter vs United States, in which the supreme court invalidated the National Industrial Recovery Act. The NRA was an essential part of the first New Deal that dealt with providing workers with fair conditions, amongst them having a living wage. When delivering the majority opinion, Chief Justice Charles Hughes stated “[The workers’] wages have no direct relation to interstate commerce [...] The authority of the federal government may not be pushed to such an extreme” (Schecter vs United States). In this case, the conservative faction had its way of preventing the federal government from gaining any further powers, as conservatives sought to limit the role of it in everyday life. Furthermore, this decision was one of the best illustrations of the laissez-faire spirit the opposition had at the time. Besides the argument that the federal government was interfering too much into private affairs, many conservatives took their criticism one step further by reviving the spirit of the Red Scare and accusing Roosevelt of moving the country towards a totalitarian communist regime.