This week I chose to focus on the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) program and the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIA) as part of the new deal. The New Deal was created in response to the great depression. The First New Deal had specific goals to regulate the economy, create new jobs, facilitate bank reform and regional planning (Corbett et al., 2014).
Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) -President Roosevelt realized that the need for jobs was at an all-time high. The CCC was a work program that provided government jobs for fourteen- to twenty-four-year-old men from relief families (Corbett et al., 2014). After only two months, the CCC had employed 250,000 men and grew to have about twenty-five hundred camps (Corbett et al., 2014). These young men were employed to refurbish historical sites and parks, fight forest fires, plant trees and build infrastructure for thirty dollars per month (Corbett et al., 2014).
National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA)– While the initial focus of the new deal was creating jobs through federal programs, Roosevelt realized there were existing problems within the American economy that needed addressing (Corbett et al., 2014). The NIRA was developed to make jobs available to a larger amount of people by enforcing a maximum amount of work hours and a minimum wage (Terrell, 2020). Issues of price setting and minimum wages still needed addressing. It was thought that the best was to accomplish this would be to allow businesses and industries to work together by suspending antitrust laws in order to establish codes of fair competition (Corbett et al.,2014). The NIRA allowed for workers to unionize, eventually backfiring, and leading to striking (Corbett et al., 2014).
Consider workers, immigrants, and African Americans. Explain how minorities were represented by the New Deal. Analyze to what extent you think that the New Deal effectively ended the Great Depression and restored the economy.
The new deal was developed to help all Americans regardless of race or background. African Americans and immigrant were greatly affected by the Great Depression (Corbett et al., 2014). The New Deal helped alleviate the burden of the depression by opening up jobs and improving conditions for all workers (Corbett et al., 2014). I think the New Deal was key to ending the Great Depression because it created new opportunities and standardized employment. With the new legislations, work hours and conditions were standardized creating many new jobs which produced income, production of goods, and consumption of goods eventually growing the economy. The new deal provided aide to farmers as well who were struggling to stay afloat due to a failing manufacturing division (Corbett et al., 2014).