History of the United States II / Unit 11 USH2 1559 review, 2 to 3 minutes
Whether the New Deal Ended the Depression
The idea
Whether the New Deal ended the Depression is the question most often asked of it, and the sources answer no while treating the question as too narrow. Digital History states it flatly: the New Deal did not end the Depression, nor did it significantly redistribute income. The record supports that verdict. Employment rose from twenty-four million to twenty-seven between nineteen thirty-three and nineteen thirty-five, and by nineteen thirty-seven unemployment had fallen from twenty-five percent to fourteen, but fourteen percent is still a depression. When Roosevelt cut spending in nineteen thirty-seven the economy fell back, and the Yawp judges the renewed spending of nineteen thirty-eight perhaps too late.
In practice
The recession of nineteen thirty-seven as a test: spending withdrawn and the economy falling, spending restored in the spring of nineteen thirty-eight, and advisers urging Keynes's case that deficit spending sustains employment.
Where people slip
Two misreadings sit on either side. The first says the New Deal failed because it did not restore full employment; that ignores what the sources treat as its lasting result. Digital History lists unemployment insurance, old-age insurance and insured deposits, and credits the Wagner Act with reducing violence in labour relations and the Securities and Exchange Commission with protecting small investors. The anchor says the laws of nineteen thirty-five still define the country today. The second misreading says the New Deal cured the Depression; the anchor's own numbers, fourteen percent unemployment at the best point and a relapse after, contradict it. The course's position is the sources': the New Deal did not end the Depression, and it changed what Americans expected of their government. The Yawp describes a government once out of sight becoming a potential ally, and Digital History calls that shift in philosophy the New Deal's greatest legacy. What came after nineteen thirty-nine belongs to unit twelve.
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