Killeffer 1

Zan Killeffer

Ms. Linsenbigler

CP U.S. History

December 17, 2016

The Response to the Great Depression

The Great Depression was a terrible time for many Americans in the 1930s. Many

people lost the entirety of their wealth and quickly blamed the government. The President, at the

time, was Herbert Hoover, and he did very little to help the countrys economy. During Hoovers

Presidency he wrote the speech Rugged Individualism which was about how everyone had the

ability to become successful, but it had to be without the help of the government; Franklin

Roosevelt was elected as President in 1933, after Herbert Hoover, and he promised change for

the American people; John Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath explores the lives of the people

that lived in the west and their journeys of finding riches, and fertile land. Hoovers Rugged

Individualism and Franklin Roosevelts First Inaugural Address have a great

many differences between each other, which is explains why FDR was

favored much more than Herbert Hoover post Great Depression.

In the early years of the Great Depression, the time that it could have

most easily been stopped, President Hoover did little to nothing to stop it.

Rugged Individualism was a speech he gave near the beginning of the

depression in hopes that it would explain what was going on, and how he

planned on proceeding when fixing it. He said things like When the Republican

Party came into full power...it restored the government to a position as an umpire instead of a

player in the economic game, this can be interpreted as a form of laissez-faire economics
 Killeffer 2

because hes saying that the government is like an umpire; umpires dont actually play a role in

baseball they merely stand by and observe to make sure everything is functioning according to

the rules. Hoovers plans for the future are what dug the economy during the Great Depression

into an even deeper hole. Conversely, Franklin Roosevelts New Deal played a significant role in

reversing the Great Depression. Unlike Hoover, Roosevelt promised more government control in

the economy and thats just what he did. He promised a new and different approach to the

problem at hand than Hoover, which was all he needed to win in the elections of 1932 and

introduce his New Deal.

In the time leading up to the Great Depression life seemed very

enjoyable. Many people moved towards the west because it was said to have

a plentiful amount of land for farming, and it did. Huge conglomerates of

people migrated over, often times they would join together at night as they

did in John Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath. Little did they know that once they finally built

their lives in the plains to the west the worst drought ever, at the time, would hit; due to

overspending and the Great Depression, almost no one would be able to afford to keep their

farm.

The Great Depression took its toll on politicians, farmers, workers, businessmen,

and artists alike; they all had over spent and were now facing the consequences of a poorly

structured economy and a President who refused to help. Roosevelt did much more to help the

United States, but he was also accused of trying to take advantage of the situation and gain

complete control of the government for the Democratic Party. It was an unfortuitous time for

everyone, and even though Franklin Roosevelt tried to manipulate the people he did much more

for the economy during the Great Depression than his predecessor Herbert Hoover.