Author: BRANDON CRUZ

The New Deal Final Timeline

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1cRKDhWvE5p184HwLV65IW6B8gc8n_MxsMhiA8CW3nHY&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650

Works Cited

Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York, NY: Knopf, 2003.

The United States diminishing decade of its collapsed economy during the Great Depression led to years of nationalism and unification among the people who shared mixed sentiments of struggles and necessities of moving forward. War signified prosperity, a new hope of employment, and attempting to achieve success in leaving behind poverty. World War II employed many people who desperately needed a boom in the economy. More than 40 percent of civilians in the United States live in poverty (Stein, 1). It was essential for the economy of the United States to improve, and during the 50s and 60s, the dream of wealth and progression continued after regulations from the New Deal addressed by President Franklin D Roosevelt. The New Deal Program helped the economy grow, giving people opportunities in banking and housing and helping major airlines cooperate so investments could continue (Stein,4). Stein argues that the economy’s stability should have continued if the focus was brought upon problems on imports, international affairs, and increasing exports. The battle against communism and unwillingness to grow the economy allowed Japan and Germany to rise, taking advantage of the level of imports permitted in the States.  The fear of communism held back the United States and blew money on investments in militarization and discounting exports.  Even though the issues of recessions were brought upon the United States, the country only had limited options in protecting the free world. Communicating with other countries might have been the better option than taking alternative routes toward violence and mass spending on a war that wouldn’t end. Stein disagrees with the primary focus of the Democratic party on environmental and education, and medicare issues rather than the economy of the United States. Despite the Democratic poor execution of these policies, each of these programs was necessary for the people’s health, and shedding light on these issues could have been the one unifier of the country.  Stein criticizes the leadership of democratic presidents such as President D. Eisenhower for not repealing the New Deal and leaving exposed GDP growth only rising by 2.3 percent from 1955 to 1961 (Stein, 12). The effects of anti-war sentiments and protests from many organizations and university students had a significant impact on the separation of the country’s loyalty and trust in its government. Despite the constant protest, the United States obligation was to prevent the spread of communism, affecting people’s confidence and the economy.

David Montgomery’s chapter on Entrepreneur and Wage Earner portrays the image of the civil war era and its different social and economic changes. Montgomery goes in dept through the specific misconceptions of the 1860s and 1870s. The boom began from the late 1830s growing 1.62 cents per year (Montgomery, pg 3). He makes an argument that most of the growth was initially from industries but later from mining, that after the 1860s industries caused an increase in production but a stall in growth. Later in the chapter, he goes into depth about the different technological advancements that lead to the growth of mining such as the railroad and the telegraph. He describes the different entrepreneurs and companies and the differences between free labor and slavery. Lastly, the different social dynamics that made the civil war era so unique with women working jobs in cotton mills and the rise of different political parties. 

Montgomery goes into the specifics before the Panic of 1873 and the causes of the different sociological changes. The author provides us evidence of how after the 1830s, 40s, there is only so much progress and wealth you can have and after a peak limit, their success has to slow down and eventually fall. He states that unemployment was high during the year 1861 which leads to the conversation of industries being the cause of the panic (Montgomery, page 5). Major companies such as Lewis, Oliver, and Philips company were held at a halt in profits.  Montgomery makes the argument that mining leads to the demand of immigrants due to the call for labor giving them up to a 12-month contract. The debate of comparing the lives of black slaves and poor whites working in enslaved wages rose but the difference is the option to be free from working rather than being beaten or killed to work. Circumstances such as Andrew Carnegie prove that ordinary people could go from working for two dollars to living a rich and wealthy life (Montgomery, pg 30). Montgomery describes the effect women had on the social construct of the patriarchy. Women work in the cotton mills while the shops are run by men. Despite the harsh conditions and bad wages paid to support only themselves, women still preferred to work rather than depend on a man to provide for them. Ethnic classes and religion lead to different political parties due to the rise of immigrants.

Walter A. Friedman, America Business History: A Very Short Introduction, focuses on business revolutions and, innovations commencing from the very first colony to modern-day corporate America. Friedman accesses how the United States rose its economy to be a capitalist superpower. The author structures the book in a specific format enabling the reader to see the transformation in how America made its income and profits. Friedman makes it very clear not to disregard any of the unjust ways in which America makes money from taking land to slavery. The book makes a big emphasis on the differences each period had advanced technologically leading to America’s exponential income bloom. 

The book initiates with the discovery of the first encounters of capitalism on North American soil. The different joint-stock companies such as The Virginia Company or the Massachusets Bay Company commence the change of an era. This was the beginning of labor occupations in America, when cultivation of the land was needed for the growth of cash crops such as tobacco (Friedman, 8). The introduction of merchants arose and imports and exports created the next steps towards the innovations in capitalism. 

Friedman makes the emphasis on exports and imports and the effects it had on the newly formed United States. The discovery of having to find other methods of survival using the available resources that the colonies had. Each had different resources from the land. Not every colony had the same fertile soil of geographical landmarks. As the United States started to expand and gained more territory a more stable economy and the system started to form. Influential figures such as Hamilton started to create an impact after the independence. Hamilton Report on Manufactures lead to change for industries and the foundation of a National Bank led to a more progressive method of a democratic system of government (Friedman, 17). Other resources such as cotton, roads and canals, whale oil, and exports to other locations in the Caribbean marked the difference from grazing cash crops to expanding internally and being recognized as an independent nation.  Friedman makes a big emphasis that the changes do not occur instantaneously, instead, it took decades even centuries of labor to make progress in the next steps of capitalism.