FDR Evaluation Homework

Oh yes!!! More of Mr. Faught's interesting and stimulating HOMEWORK!!! No more hours of tedious Atari games in front of the spare 12" tv... THANKS MR. FAUGHT !!

* title the homework sheet FDR Evaluation

* Go here to view a FDR spider diagram. On your homework sheet, draw or print out the diagram and fill in the most important issue covered in each box/area... in your opinion and briefly explain WHY in the box as well.

* Go here to read a discussion about the complex issues involved in evaluating FDRs successes/failures as the Depression era US President. On your homework sheet, illustrate the issues involved by summarizing them in a venn diagram. Are there any neutral issues?

* Go here to access a grid outlining successful New Deal programming. Contrast that account with this scathing appraisal of the New Deal:

Buying Votes

In this madness, the New Dealers had a method. Despite its economic illogic and incoherence, the New Deal served as a massive vote-buying scheme. Coming into power at a time of widespread destitution, high unemployment, and business failures, the Roosevelt administration recognized that the president and his Democratic allies in Congress could appropriate unprecedented sums of money and channel them into the hands of recipients who would respond by giving political support to their benefactors. As John T. Flynn said of FDR, “it was always easy to interest him in a plan which would confer some special benefit upon some special class in the population in exchange for their votes,” and eventually “no political boss could compete with him in any county in America in the distribution of money and jobs.”

In buying votes, the relief programs for the unemployed, especially the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Works Progress Administration, loomed largest, though many other programs promoted the same end. Farm subsidies, price supports, credit programs, and related measures won over much of the rural middle class. The labor provisions of the National Industrial Recovery Act and later the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act purchased support from the burgeoning ranks of the labor unions. Homeowners supported the New Deal out of gratitude for the government’s refinancing of their mortgages and its provision of home-loan guarantees.

In your homework book, write an essay (intro/body/conclusion) that is a balanced (pros and cons) evaluation of FDRs New Deal performance using information from both sources.

* View the YouTube account of FDRs battle with the Supreme Court

use it in your essay assigned above.

* you are finished!!!