The New Deal and Opportunities in the World Wars - Assignment Example

Question One Response To many, the New Deal was merely an extension and an end to progressivism. In the beginning, the New Deal seemed to pick up where progressivism left off, and built upon the Hoover program for fighting the depression. While the New Deal was taking over what progressivism missed, it was also doing work of its own. It was not long before Roosevelt took control of the New Deal, and well beyond progressivism. Roosevelt created a precedent for larger social programs and for government participation in economic activities. The New Deal’s biggest achievement was restoring faith in American democracy in a time when there was very little, if any, faith, when people thought that they could only turn to communism or fascism. The greatest failure of the New Deal was its inability to bring full recovery to the economy. The New Deal set out to finish the work of progressivism, but succeeded in more than it had been planned to. It would not be considered an actual revival, but something even greater than what it had been before. Many accomplishments brought on by the New Deal owe much to the Progressive movement. Even so, progressivism also brought along many major events and changes by itself, without the need of the New Deal. The New Deal merely finished the work of progressivism and made a few changes of its own, such as the unfair civil welfare practices that the progressive era brought being noticed and eliminated. Without progressivism, the New Deal would have never come into existence. While separate, they are each a branch of the other. The changes that took place during the progressive era and the New Deal, when compared to the events and changes that took place in the 1920s, only set up a foundation for what was to take place during the 1920s. 1Historians refer to progressivism as an influential social movement that started in the later 1800s and came to and end with the United States entering into the first World War¹. Progressivism succeeded in many things; some of these things concerned state and national income tax, minimum wage laws, increased business regulation, and the creation of the Federal Reserve System. One of the biggest successions of progressivism was the passing of antitrust laws, broke up numerous trusts and set things in the right direction for future prosperity. This was passed because huge businesses were heightening up their prices and monopolizing the economy. With these laws passed, the economy was able to be at a more average and solid rate. The progressive era wouldn’t have had their social and legal effects if the Constitution had not been reworked through the amendment process. With the changing of the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th amendments, the political landscape expanded greatly the central government, which had been one of the goals involved with progressivism. That was one of the few successes made in the effort to make the governments more democratic. One of the things that progressivism set out to do was to grant women the right to vote. This did not come to pass until the end of progressivism in 1920, after World War I came to an end. It was also during this time that many other changes were made concerning the rights of women, African Americans, and job employment, payment, and racial discrimination. Progressivism set out to accomplish many things to make life a little bit easier, and to help the government, the economy, and the citizens. Progressives wanted to make the government more alert to the voice of the citizens. They wanted the governments to be able to better serve the people’s needs by making operations and services better organized and balanced. Progressives also hoped that by influencing big corporations they could release human energies from the limitations imposed by industrial capitalism. Progressivism was more of a “spirit reform embraced by Americans with diverse goals and backgrounds then it was an organized movement.”² What progressivism could not accomplish, the New Deal took over and completed. The events and the changes of the 1920s did alter the political and social landscape to the point that the comparison between the New Deal and the progressive era was quite insignificant. While the former accomplished a bit more than the latter, the same plans, as well as others, had been sought and followed through. The two may have seemed different, and while they did have their differences, they still had the same ultimate goal: to create a caring government that could do more help than damage, and to listen to the needs of the citizens. The impact that the 1920s had on people’s ideas about the state and its relationship with society had went from good to bad. Progressivism and the New Deal were around to try and improve things, and that worked for a time, succeeding in their many plans and ideas. However, progressivism eventually led to the Great Depression, putting people not back to where they had started, but to an even worse state. In an attempt to fix and put things together, everything simply fell back apart. 2 Question Two Response From the two World Wars arose numerous opportunities for many Americans, as well as wonderful opportunities for woman and African Americans. Many job opportunities came about, as did the chance for equal rights, including the right for women to vote and the right for women and African Americans to hold proper, high-paying jobs. During the First World War, women were given the rare opportunity to work a man’s job. This was due to the fact that so many millions of men were off fighting, leaving many jobs unattended and unfinished. Office, industrial, commercial, and transportation work had such a great decline in male workers that the government propaganda begged women to take the jobs. However, only a few of these jobs were made available to nonwhite women. After the war, the government made a few attempts to protect the rights of workingwomen, but hardly succeeded. Women took issues into their own hands and eventually achieved the right to vote in 1920. During World War II, again many jobs opened for women, but these were in the industries of engineering, other professions in sciences, and manufacturing – jobs that were considered to be too weak for women. The women entered the jobs, making warships, planes, and tanks, and they excelled in and enjoyed what they did. Though after this war ended, many of the women were fired so that the returning veterans could get their jobs back. The women were still employed in the “pink collar” work force, being employed as waitresses or secretaries. These jobs were not favored, but the women took them because they needed the pay. During the two wars, propaganda posters began showing up, exclaiming that is was patriotic and not unfeminine for women to be working in non-traditional jobs. Not only did women work industrial jobs, but also thousands of them went to Washington, DC to take government office jobs. It was also during this time that the All-American Girls Baseball League was created. African Americans, at first, had a harder time at getting better employment. After their great migration to the United States, they were able to access many wartime factory jobs that paid well. Unfortunately, due to the ongoing racial discrimination, they did the lowly work, as did the women. As the wars went on, more job opportunities developed, enabling African Americans to work better and to be paid better. For the first time, a large amount of black women were able to hold industrial jobs. They worked in industrial plants that produced goods for the war and for the ever-growing domestic consumer market. And as the black communities grew in the North, so did the amount of opportunities for jobs – many became politicians, lawyers, teachers, and newspaper publishers. As with the women, once the wars had ended, so did all available opportunities for jobs, as well as the respect that the African Americans had been receiving. This caused uproar amongst the African American community, prompting Phillip Randolph to seek a meeting with Roosevelt administration officials to demand equal employment opportunities for blacks. His threat was that if this weren’t seen through, Randolph would put together a protest of 100,000 African Americans on Washington, DC to protest job discrimination. After much heated argument, Roosevelt issued an order forbidding discrimination based on color, national origin, and race in the work area. The order quickly opened up thousands of well-paying jobs for black workers. Also, as white workers left their jobs, employers were quick to hire black workers, men and women alike. The war virtually ended unemployment in the United States. The need for workers led manufacturers to hire women, teenagers, and minorities that were previously excluded by discrimination³. Due to the military and economy growth creating shortages in labor, the government and industry encouraged women to enter the workforce. African Americans and other minorities also had the chance at the high-paying industrial jobs that had been previously reserved for whites. After World War I, disappointed by the failure of the war, the people of the United States chose isolationism – a policy of nonparticipation in international economic and political relations. American commercial interests did finance Germany’s rebuilding efforts up until the Great Depression, but did not continue once the Nazis rose to power in Germany in the early 1930s. After the wars, the United States became the most powerful nation on Earth. The United States had benefited politically, financially, and militarily from the war. America had a closer bond to Europe and to the United Kingdom. World War II also played a huge role in leading to the end of racial segregation and to the growth of suburbs. 3 Read More