Gangs of youths, whose families could no longer support them, rode the rails in boxcars like so many hoboes, hoping to find jobs. Industry was badly shaken by the Depression.
Factories closed; mills and mines were abandoned; fortunes were lost. Business and labor alike were both in serious trouble. Unable to help themselves the American people looked to the federal government. Roosevelt as their president in after a campaign that promised activism and "bold persistent experimentation. This group of men was known as the "Brains Trust. Within one hundred days the President, his advisors and the U. Congress passed into law a package of legislation designed to help lift the troubled nation out of the Depression.
Roosevelt's program was called the "New Deal. This new relationship included the creation of several new federal agencies, called "alphabet agencies. Later on came the creation of the Social Security System, unemployment insurance and more agencies and programs designed to help Americans during times of economic hardship. Under President Roosevelt the federal government took on many new responsibilities for the welfare of the people.
The New Deal marked a new relationship between the people and the federal government, which had never existed to such a degree before. Although the New Deal was criticized by many both in and out of government, and seriously challenged by the U. Supreme Court, it received the overwhelming support of the people.
This massive waves of public investment helped to underwrite the war effort and postwar prosperity. Because it was well built, most New Deal infrastructure is still in use today.
The New Deal touched every state, city, and town, improving the lives of ordinary people and reshaping the public sphere. New Dealers and the men and women who worked on New Deal programs believed they were not only serving their families and communities, but building the foundation for a great and caring society.
In less than a decade, the New Deal changed the face of America and laid the foundation for success in World War II and the prosperity of the postwar era — the greatest and fairest epoch in American history. Most of all, the New Deal inspired a civic, cultural, and economic renaissance. Unfortunately, the New Deal is fading from the collective memory of Americans — a casualty of time, neglect, and politics.
Private utilities would not bear the expense of rural electrification, so Cooke had to look elsewhere. Read: The Democratic party wants to make climate policy exciting. Cooke found a middle path between big corporations and big government in the form of rural cooperatives.
While urban cooperatives in industrial America had fitful starts, rural cooperatives had been a big deal since the late 19th century. They pulled together agricultural crops, branded them think Sunkist , and then sold them around the world. Under Cooke, the REA offered new cooperatives year loans, at an interest rate of 2. It just provided the capital and the technical support, empowering Americans to get together and take control of their local economy. Their work made possible the modernization of the American farm and farmhouse, which in turn made it possible for rural America to buy electrical goods from private companies.
They also returned a modest profit to the RFC. Most small businesses, then and now, are imitative rather than innovative. That is fine. Small business can replicate best practices rapidly through the economy, which is exactly what happened in rural America. Installment lenders stepped in to provide new services, and even the electrical utility companies began to string lines out into the country.
As late as , 90 percent of rural homes had no electricity. By , 40 percent of rural America had electricity—a rise of 30 percent in only a few years. Ten years later, in , 90 percent had electricity. Housing filled a social need, and rural electrification enabled country folk to buy electrical goods. But to really get the economy on a sounder footing, New Dealers would have to encourage investment in new industries, an imperative that dovetailed with the need to prepare for war with the Nazis.
While it is now conventional wisdom that World War II ended the Depression, amateur historians rarely consider the contrary example of World War I, which brought not prosperity but ruin. The disparity lies in the fact that, in World War I, firms invested their own capital to expand weaponry production, only to confront the collapse of demand a year and a half later with the armistice.
Manufacturers were left with overflowing inventory and a demilitarized America. In the run-up to World War II, private companies were not going to get suckered again. The government, for its part, did not want to spend billions of dollars on state-owned weapons factories, which smacked of the fascism they sought to fight.
Since the late s, conventional wisdom has held that President Franklin D. The series of social and government spending programs did get millions of Americans back to work on hundreds of public When confronted by the crisis of the Great Depression, the American president knew that doing nothing was not an option. Live TV. This Day In History.
History Vault. New Deal for the American People. Recommended for you. New Deal Programs. Artists of the New Deal. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Roosevelt on New Deal Programs. Roosevelt Reports to the New American Congress. Great Depression History The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, lasting from to
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