Author: DAVID YUSUPOV

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David Yusupov

04/29/22

HIS 3410

Professor Griffin

Blog Assignment #4

Among the presidents in American history, none is more polarizing than Franklin D. Roosevelt. Supporters credit him with ending the Great Depression and ending World War II, while critics maintain that he had created a big government bureaucracy and was a quasi-dictator. Either way, nobody can deny that he was influential. One of the ways that supporters of FDR say he combatted the depression and brought an era of prosperity for the country was through the New Deal. This is precisely what the historian Eric Rauchway argues in the fourth chapter of his book  on the Great Depression and the New Deal. Essentially Rauchway’s main point was that Roosevelt was an innovator not afraid to use government power when necessary to go where no other President had gone before, to do what was necessary to alleviate the sufferings of the common man, and to save capitalism.

 Among the arguments that Rauchway uses to support his point that FDR was innovating is when he says “The Roosevelt agenda grew by experiment: the parts that worked, stuck, no matter their origin. Indeed, the program got its name by just that process: Roosevelt used the phrase “new deal” when accepting the Democratic nomination for president, and the press liked it. The “New Deal” said that Roosevelt offered a fresh start, but it promised nothing specific: it worked, so it stuck.” Essentially, Rauchway is portraying FDR as a man who was totally dedicated to fixing the crisis. He did not care about whether something was untried or untested, as long as it works. This is further confirmed when Rauchway writes: “As Isaiah Berlin afterward noted, Roosevelt’s “great social experiment was conducted with an isolationist disregard of the outside world.” So basically he is saying that Roosevelt was unbothered by what critics had to say. He stuck to his agenda.

To support his thesis about Roosevelt appealing to the common man, Rauchway says that :”Ever since the 1890s, when the Democratic Party first began to shift from its historic support for limited government, and when, under the leadership of William Jennings Bryan, it began to stand for the ordinary man against the great manufacturing corporations, the Democrats also had a soft spot for soft money. Bryan stood for the farmer and the worker against the gold standard, adherence to which was driving down the price of agricultural commodities. Instead, Bryan argued, the country should coin silver, inflating—or, properly, reflating—the currency and relieving the downward pressure on prices. Forty years on, the situation looked similar. Roosevelt not only depended on the farm vote, but like Bryan and many if not most Americans, he thought fondly of the nation’s long-vanishing family farms, and he hoped to provide them the same relief that Bryan had proposed: more money in circulation, higher dollar prices for their produce, and an easier time repaying their debts. As he said in January 1933, “If the fall in the price of commodities cannot be checked, we may be forced to an inflation of our currency. This may take the form of using silver as a base, or decreasing the amount of gold in the dollar. I have not decided how this inflation can be best and most safely accomplished.” Essentially Roosevelt was trying to emulate earlier progressive figures like WJB in support of helping the farmers.

David Yusupov

Professor Sean Griffin

03/21/22

HIS 3410

Blog Post #2-Creative Destruction

Throughout history, many inventions influenced the course of history. The Chinese invented the wheel which helped the world to build carriages to transport people and goods quicker. Conversely, they also utilized gunpowder for fireworks but the Europeans used it to make weapons of war. Essentially, technological progress is inevitable. However, as much as technological progress is certainly beneficial there is a trade-off. The famous Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter described a phenomenon called “creative destruction” which is basically recognizing the fact that yes, there is advancement in society, however this comes at the expense that others lose their jobs. So for example, there was the horse and the buggy and then the automobile came out, yes the automobile revolutionized travel but it led to all the workers who make buggies to be out of work. Much the same way in Richard White’s Creative Destruction there is a clear development of these trade offs.

The development and history of the railroad in the United States with relation to the idea of creative destruction is visible in Richard White’s article. Firstly, it is noted in the article that the railroad aided troops to fight Native American rebellions. Analyzing this from a creative destruction viewpoint it is easy to see that before the development of the railroad troops had to move either on foot or horse and buggy. Therefore with the advent of the railroad those professions are no longer as necessary and that creates a loss of work for those people. There is also that the railroads in Mexico for example was described as an assault on the landed people by the elites, and in the United States it caused the dispossession of the Native Americans, the degradation of the environment, waste of resources and business failures. 

These changes took place because as described before, the advent of the railroad made it possible. The railroad greatly aided in American and other colonial powers expansions. It helped troops to move around quicker, thus conquering land faster. For the railroads to be built it needed to destroy natural habitats. There were naturally going to be a waste of resources and business failures because mishaps happen when doing large scale constructions. These changes took place rapidly because the nature of the railroad was that it, as was stated before, made it possible to do activities quicker. The railroads affected many different types of people in different ways. There was a lot of use of cheap labor from the Chinese to construct the railroads. Businessmen relied on railroads to expand their businesses. As was stated before many Native Americans were unfortunately displaced.

David Yusupov

HIS 3410

Spring 2022

Professor Griffin

Response #1

Trade is an important function of a country’s economy. People have been trading in every system imaginable from simple bartering, to mercantilism, to socialism,  all the way to modern day capitalism. Unfortunately though, throughout history, countries have engaged in rather barbarous or unethical methods to gain resources to trade with. Walter Friedman’s American Business History paints a picture of the suffering that native populations went through because of colonization. What was interesting was the figures, for example in the 15th century there were 50 to 100 million natives living in America, by 1800 though there were only 600,000 Native Americans lived throughout the U.S.A. and Canada. This was very informative because I know that the population has decreased however I did not know to what extent.

Another thing that I was not aware of was trading companies like the Muscovy Company. I found this interesting because I was not aware that Russia was involved with New World trading except for the fact that I knew that they had colonized Alaska. What also was interesting to me was that an American company was involved in fur trading, I was always under the assumption that that was exclusively a French dominated trade. 

One question I had while reading this was with regards to the printing press and its role in the American War for Independence. I understand that the press frequently published pro-patriot material, however I wish that the author had mentioned what the British may or may not have done to squash these pieces from circulating, after all wouldn’t that be a natural reaction given that the British would not want the colonists to secede? 

An event that stuck out to me was the immigration from England to the colonies beginning with the 7 years war. This stuck out to me because I connected it with what I know about men like Thomas Jefferson and his non-interventionist foreign policy. Many immigrated to the colonies to escape the constant wars of Europe and the framers had that in mind when they had constructed the constitution and their approaches to foreign policy. I also found the demographics that arrived, specifically the Germans. The reason why the Germans are interesting is that as far as I know, life in Germany was rather good for the most part. I cannot imagine that a German/Austrian would wish to trade that for the agrarian lifestyle of America.