Introduction
The United States of America changed most of its productive ways due to the Great Depression. Various government reforms assumed a design aimed at preventing another depression. The Americans faced tough economic realities during the Depression, compromising their psychological and emotional stature. The citizens undertook to write letters to then President of the U.S.A., Franklin D. Roosevelt, alongside his wife Eleanor Roosevelt, while expressing their feelings about the Great Depression, a scenario that the study explores.
Body
Question 1
The Americans faced several material problems during the Great Depression associated with the continual fall of market stocks in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The citizens experienced failures in businesses with a dramatic rise in unemployment rates influencing the depreciation of monetary flows (Pierce 30). United States of America’s banking institutions failed, thereby exposing the citizens to financial turmoil, leaving them destitute. Without jobs and savings, the people suffered losses in property such as their homes and hard-earned flocks.
The Great Depression saw the less fortunate and poor Americans congregating in cardboard shacks where thousands of unemployed personnel roamed in boxcars and on foot to seek jobs (Robert 19). Their limited savings triggered starvation, malnutrition and hunger. The Great Depression left deep emotional and psychological scars on the American psyche. For instance, the fluctuating and crashing of the stock market destroyed the United States of America’s feeling of invincibility. It left the citizens guilt-ridden and anxious about the undertakings to revive the economy. They experienced challenges of depressed moods denoting reduced motivation and hopelessness, cognition, the diminished ability to undergo pleasurable activities like food (anhedonia) and irritability.
The Depression left some people demoralized due to the hard times to the extent that they lost their will to survive. An increased rate of suicidal incidences occurred between 1928 and 1932 due to the psychological and mental challenges of the crisis. Several people were admitted to state mental facilities. The crisis subjected most of America’s vulnerable populations, including African Americans, the elderly and children, to discrimination. The White Americans felt entitlement to the few available jobs leaving the Blacks entirely jobless. Besides, the Depression influenced increased rates of crime that saw many unemployed service providers resorting to petty theft to meet their basic needs. Also, rates of prostitution went high since desperate women sought ways of paying their bills.
Question 2
The Great Depression affected Americans differently. For instance, the people’s social class was a distinguishing factor that displayed citizens’ inability to maintain their small fortunes. These people were forced to lower societal levels, certainly to the lower class, the poorest and largest class of people. The personnel in the middle class had to deal with the drastic changes during the Depression that led to the closure of more than five thousand banks. Even the affluent upper-middle-class professionals faced severe belt-tightening, including lawyers and doctors that saw a drop in their incomes at higher rates. Families who had previously enjoyed economic security suddenly faced financial ruin or instability. The worse-off societal challenge was reduced employment options, low financial security, discrimination and more social repercussions.
The context of racism manifested itself deeply during the Great Depression to change a person’s experience. For example, the whites called for firing blacks from works regarded as the black’s domain. Racial violence became common, with its depths remaining woven into every aspect of an individual’s life (Fagette 93). The minorities were discriminated against and deprived of their sustenance encompassing compromised housing and employment projects. Sometimes some minority personnel were threatened at the relief centers when applying for assistance or work. Particular charities refused to provide basic commodities such as food to the minorities on a racial basis, specifically the Blacks in the South. Racism displayed Black Americans being excluded from union membership, with the unions influencing Congress to keep anti-discrimination requirements out of New Deal laws.
Different Americans were also affected based on gender by the Great Depression. For instance, more women were forced to enter the workforce during the economically tough and complex era. The jobs considered were poorly paid and relegated as “women’s work.” The males were drastically removed and ejected from the positions of breadwinners. Conversely, several females were thrust into positions of working outside their homes. It is worth noting that a significant number of women comprised twenty-five percent of the workforce for the first time.
Question 3
The Americans recognized and remarked on Roosevelt and his championing for the relief programs, specifically the New Deal programs that focused on improving the lives of people suffering from the events of the Depression. For the President and his wife, relief denoted their objective of helping persons in crisis through creating welfare, bread lines and jobs. He established the relief mechanism with a recovery plan to fix the economy and end the Depression. Roosevelt’s New Deal provided at least $41.7 billion to fund domestic programs such as unemployment relief for workers (Robert 36). It had a series of regulations, public work projects, programs and financial reforms enacted by the President.
In Roosevelt’s government, the American populace from different backgrounds, specifically the women, had experiences marked by setbacks and victories. It was characterized by the continual migration of African Americans from the South to the Urban North, who felt recognized by Roosevelt’s government, even accelerating during the Great Depression. However, in the North, African Americans encountered de facto discrimination, racism and segregation in public and housing services. However, they were still able to vote and acquire better job opportunities in this government. This was not the case in the South, where they were disfranchised to finding fewer avenues to escape the crushing poverty.
Hence, the elucidations consider the viability of the reforms among the citizens who display mixed records of the New Deal. Even though worthy, the reforms provided insufficient aid to America’s poor. Racism reared its head in the reforms due to the administration of the federal programs by the community leaders or the local authorities who influenced their racial biases to the table. Even in the North, the Black population established that the reforms through Roosevelt’s New Deal did not treat them like Whites (Robert 39). Nonetheless, the reforms encouraged the beginning of the labor movement, fostering wage growth and sustaining power. It triggered the establishment of federal regulations and social security imposed on the financial industry.
Conclusion
Indeed, the Great Depression and its characterization of economic crisis adversely affected Americans by degrading their emotional and psychological stature. Yet, Roosevelt’s reforms through the New Deal program were responsible for important and powerful accomplishments in the season of the Great Depression. It put the citizens back to work and saved capitalism. The program enabled the revival of a sense of hope among Americans and the restoration of faith in the American economic system.
Works Cited
Fagette Jr, Paul H. “Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the” Forgotten Man. ” (1985): 92-94.
Pierce, Simon. The Great Depression. Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC, 2020.
Robert, S. McElvaine. “Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the” Forgotten Man.” Chapel Hill 18 (1983).
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