Great Depression Dbq

During the Great Depression, in 1929 when the stock market fell, many Americans were greatly affected in a negative way. Among those negative effects were the closing of thousands of banks, millions of unemployed people, shortage in money, and the loss of many people’s homes. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt fortunately had a way to help, and fix the problems with the closed banks and unemployed persons. In the beginning people began to lose their steady jobs, and had to resort to finding a days work here and there by filling in those days with little odds and ends jobs wherever and whenever they could. Most people were barely making enough money off these jobs to live by, so they had to cut back on the things they could do without. Such things included; receiving the evening paper, paying for city water instead of using well water, cars, ice and milk delivery, and gas according to the memoir by Robert J. Hastings. They also had to find different uses for common

Roosevelt was elected president, in 1932, things started to look up for all those who had been living in poverty for the past few year. In a short text about the New Deal it states; “During the first 100 days of his presidency, a never-ending stream of bills was passed, to relieve poverty, reduce unemployment, and speed economic recovery.” Within 100 days of Roosevelt being in office he had already started to fix the problems of the Great Depression because, unlike his precursor Herbert Hoover, he felt that it was the obligation of the federal government to help the people of America, and not vice versa. In 1933 the Civil Conservation Corps (CCC) sent three million single men from the age of seventeen to twenty-three to the nation’s forests to work, and paid these men $30 a month. Also the Works Progress Administration (WPA) employed more than 8.5 million people to build bridges, roads, public buildings, parks, and airports as claimed by the short text about the New