Реферат: The Depression Essay Research Paper Depression of

who could find no work, the New Deal extended federal relief on a vast scale. The Civilian

Conservation Corps took young men off the streets and sent them out to plant forests and

drain swamps. The government refinanced about one-fifth of farm mortgages through the

Farm Credit Administration and about one-sixth of home mortgages through the Home

Owners Loan Corporation. The Works Progress Administration employed an average of

over 2 million people in occupations ranging from laborers to musicians and writers. The

Public Works Administration spent about $4 billion on the construction of highways and

public buildings in the years 1933-39. The depression years saw a burst of union

organizing, aided by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. New industrial unions

came into existence through the efforts of organizers led by John L. Lewis, Walter

Reuther, Philip Murray, and others; in 1937 they won contracts in the steel and auto

industries. Total union membership rose from about 3 million in 1932 to over 10 million in

1941.

The expanded role of the federal government came to be accepted by most

Americans by the end of the 1930s. Even Republicans who had bitterly opposed the New

Deal shifted their stance. Wendell Wilkkie, the Republican presidential nominee in 1940,

declared that he could not oppose reforms such as the regulation of the securities markets

and the utility holding companies, the legal recognition of unions, or Social Security and

unemployment allowances. What bothered him and other opponents of the New Deal,

however, was the extension of the federal bureaucracy. The depression caused much

questioning of inherited economic and political ideas. Sen. Huey P. Long of Louisiana

found a national following for his “Share the Wealth” program. The socialist writer

Upton Sinclair was nearly elected governor of California in 1934 with a similar program

for redistributing the state’s wealth. Many writers and other intellectuals swung even

further left, concluding that capitalism was on its way out; they were drawn to the

Communist party by what they supposed to be the accomplishments of the USSR. In other

countries the depression had even more profound effects. As world trade fell off, countries

turned to nationalist economic policies that only exacerbated their difficulties. In politics

the depression strengthened the extremes of right and left, helping Adolf Hitler to power