The Great Depression and the New Deal
The stock market crash opens a decade of mass unemployment; Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal builds a welfare state and redraws American politics.
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 — David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press (1999)
- Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 — William E. Leuchtenburg, Harper & Row (1963)
- Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s — Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, University of New Mexico Press (2006)
The Wall Street crash of October 1929 set off the worst economic collapse in modern history. By 1933 about a quarter of the workforce was unemployed, thousands of banks had failed, and drought turned the southern Plains into the “Dust Bowl”, driving families west to California. Shanty towns of the homeless were nicknamed “Hoovervilles” after President Herbert Hoover.
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 — David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press (1999)
Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933 declaring that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. In a burst of legislation he regulated banks and the stock market, put millions to work through programmes like the Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration, protected workers’ right to join unions, and in 1935 created Social Security.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 — William E. Leuchtenburg, Harper & Row (1963)
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 — David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press (1999)
The New Deal built a coalition of workers, city immigrants, Southern whites and, increasingly, Black voters that kept Democrats dominant for a generation. The hard times also had a darker side for Mexican Americans: in the “repatriation” campaigns of the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent, many of them US citizens, were pushed or deported to Mexico.
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 — David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press (1999)
- Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s — Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, University of New Mexico Press (2006)
Roosevelt's experiments relieved suffering, restored faith in democracy when much of the world turned to dictatorship, and built a safety net that lifted millions of old people out of poverty.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 — William E. Leuchtenburg, Harper & Row (1963)
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 — David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press (1999)
Conservatives argued the New Deal expanded federal power far beyond the Constitution's design and failed to end the Depression, which lasted until wartime spending. Others note its programmes often excluded Black workers, especially farm and domestic labourers.
- Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 — David M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press (1999)
Why it matters today
The New Deal created Social Security, bank deposit insurance and the idea that Washington is responsible for the economy. The argument it began, how big government should be, is still the basic divide between Democrats and Republicans. Grandparents' Depression habits, saving string and never wasting food, live on in family memory.