How did Roosevelt address the challenges of the Great Depression ?

« How did Roosevelt address the challenges of the Great Depression ? Introduction : After the economic crisis of 1929 in the United States, President Roosevelt, elected in 1932, had to deal with the Great Depression that hit the country through his series of New Deal programs. In this analysis, we will focus on two documents, the first document is a testimony realized by Oscar Ameringer to the US Government Committee dated from 1932 while the second document is a cartoon drawn by Clifford Berryman that appeared in the Washington Star on 5 January 1934. We will ask thus how did Roosevelt address the challenges of the Great Depression. To answer this question, we will first show the difficulties and challenges caused by the Great Depression and then look at the solutions employed by Roosevelt to deal with those difficulties. Document 1 : The first document is a text which describes the consequences of the Great Depression in different states in the United States in 1932, just before Roosevelt became president. It underlines the extent of the crisis of the Great Depression by showing the paradoxes, for example, between the richness of the country's resources, notably with the example of apples in Oregon, but at the same time the impossibility for Americans to buy them, with the sentence: "There are millions of children who, on account of the poverty of their parents, will not eat one apple this winter." Thus, there is both overproduction and underconsumption at the same time. Poverty is also shown with the example of the man who killed 3,000 sheep because they were too expensive to ship.

So Roosevelt had to address the economic and social challenges facing his country such as the failure of thousands of businesses, the inability of farmers to pay their mortgages, the division of GDP by 2 and an unemployment rate of 25%. Document 2: In Document 2, President Franklin D.

Roosevelt, who is the recognisable middle man with the initials F.R.

on his hat, is depicted here as a country doctor.

He is administering 'remedies' to a sick elderly person who is supposed to represent Uncle Sam as shown by the stars of the American flag on his trousers.

These remedies represented by some bottles Roosevelt's New Deal programmes, designed to deal with the damage caused by the Great Depression.

For example, the bottles are marked with labels referring to the Civilian Conservation Corps, the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.

Indeed, these measures created by Roosevelt as part of his New Deal policy were intended to help farmers, unemployed Americans and workers to fight poverty and consolidate the economy.

Finally, Congress is portrayed as a worried old woman concerned about ailing Uncle Sam.

+ critique Congrès ? As a conclusion, in order to overcome the economic and social difficulties of the Great Depression in the United States presented in document 1, Roosevelt implemented a series of programmes that can be seen in document 2, which belong to his New Deal policy to improve the conditions of Americans.

Although the New Deal was later criticized, it was nevertheless an overall success for the Americans and had a considerable influence on the US victory in World War II.. »