The New Deal: A Response To The Great Depression

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On the 29th of October, 1929 the stock market crashed. A crash in stocks resulted in an unforeseen loss of a vast quantity of paper money. This disaster largely contributed to the beginning of worldwide hardships known as The Great Depression. The Great Depression was caused by the rapid decline of money invested in the stock market which sent Wall Street into a panic. The wealthy still received large quantities of income, but many from the lower classes didn’t have enough money to make ends meet. This loss of investments and lack of necessary funding caused many to spend more money per day than they were making, dropping them lower and lower into debt. The money ran out and multiple jobs were needed to maintain the family. Despite the necessity …show more content…
As a response to the tragedy, there was a new separation between those of different races and of gender. The time period heavily relied on “sex-type” work; work that is performed by a specific gender. Franklin Roosevelt tried to aid the unemployed by creating the New Deal; a program designed to provide the American people with relief from the hardships they faced, help to recover from theirs struggles, and reform to improve the economy. The New Deal was important because it established things such as retirement funds, social security, created more job opportunities, prevented corruption in the government, and kept the country from suffering like this in the future. Esther Naomi Newcomer was born April 1st, 1923. She had 5 brothers and 2 sisters. She was with her first family until she was three years old. At this point the Great Depression had become a large weight on the shoulders of the family of 10 and in consequence the youngest child was put up for adoption. A couple who was looking for a little girl to adopt met Esther, and she was adopted and moved from North Liberty to Elkhart. She was renamed Phyllis Jean Funkhouser. My great grandmother had quite the eventful beginning and this continued through the duration of the Great …show more content…
Her second family was fairly well off, and thus the effects of the depression didn’t have a huge effect on her childhood. In fact, her father had put away money and had decided to build their house during the depression to help some of the men find work. Her dad was very money wise and saved as much as they could. There weren’t many things that had changed in their immediate family, however, my great grandma’s aunt and uncle experienced some struggles and they could not afford butter. She said that when they visited her mother told her that she “had to eat some of the lard on her bread” and that she did, but she hated every bite of the lard. One thing that has carried over into her adulthood from the depression is that one will “never find a crumb of food in her trashcan. There are too many people without food to waste it.” Sometimes the only food my Great Grandpa Bob had was a sandwich that was two slices of bread with ketchup