Was
the New Deal a Success?
Whether the New Deal was a success or not depends, like so many things in history, on how you look at it.
| Did the New Deal get rid of unemployment? | No |
| Did the New Deal make all people rich? | No |
| Did America begin to recover under the New Deal? | Yes |
| What would have happened without the New Deal? | No idea! |
How
can sources help us figure out if the New Deal was a success?
Take a look at the following table:
|
|
1928 |
1933 |
1939 |
|
$
spent in shops |
$80
billion |
$45
billion |
$65
billion |
|
$
invested in industry |
$15
billion |
$2
billion |
$10
billion |
|
Unemployment |
2.6
million |
15
million |
9.2
million |
Before
you let numbers and figures put you off take another look!
In
1928 (the blue column) we can see what America
was like before the Wall Street Crash.
Now
this might not mean much to us on its own, but now compare the figures to those
from 1933 (the pink column).
We can see that money spent in shops almost halved, industrial investment
fell dramatically and unemployment rose rapidly.
|
People
had no money to spend or invest, probably because loads of them no longer
had a job. |
To
figure out if the New Deal was a success we now need to consider figures from
1939 (the yellow column). By 1939 the New Deal had been running for about 6 years so we
should be able to tell what sort of impact it had made.
Well
if you compare 1939 to 1928
things don’t look too good. But
if you compare 1939 to 1933
the situation looks a whole lot better. Spending
was up, investment was up and unemployment was down.
|
Things
weren’t as good as they had been back before the Wall Street Crash but
they were a whole lot better than during the Depression years. |
