History Task 4 Essay a People & a Nation

1.          One major cause of the Great Depression was the huge decline in the economy.  Factories were closing their doors chasing cheap labor and raw materials of the South.  Consumers were spending less and less and as a result there were fewer and fewer jobs. Farmers were going into debt due to international competition.  Farmers started investing in new machines to try to keep up, but no more crops were being produced.  Crop prices plunged, and debts rose as incomes plummeted (Norton, 2015).
           Another major cause was the Stock Market Crash.  There was mass panic when prices plummeted twice in one week, and with prices hitting record lows, a worldwide depression set in.  The failing industries of mining and textiles had not been sustaining profits for way too long. The household goods as well as the automotive industry had been stagnant for almost 3 years.  The fall of these industries led up to the Great Depression.

1.          At the heart of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery Act (Norton, 2015).   The NIRA set precedents for prices and wages industrywide.  The act hoped that prices would stabilize, and consumers started spending more.  This act ended up being a failure.  The NIRA was set in place to address the problems of the Great Depression, but it only had the interests of major corporations in mind and was not the recovery program it had sought to be.
           Another program was the Public Works Administration.  This program used public funds to create jobs for men in building trades and the construction industry (Norton, 2015).  Funds were being used and NWA workers were creating schools, dams, and bridges.  In a little over three months, the United States was bouncing back, and unemployment was falling steadily.  
           One last way the New Deal sought to address the Great Depression was Roosevelt lowering tariffs.   Trade was increased internationally by lowering tariffs as much as 50 percent.  This would assist in pulling the United States out of debt and possibly boost chances for global peace.  

1.          America and the Soviet Union were in competition of creating the biggest bomb.  The Soviets believed the US was trying to create a nuclear monopoly. Neither country wanted to cease the making of bombs.  The United States even turned down a reconstruction loan request to the Soviet, but approved one for Britain.  Tensions ran high, and the Soviets and Americans were clashing on every level. It was believed that only toughness by America was the way to get through to fanatical Soviets.  

         The United States and the Soviet Union were very different nations.  The US was known as a capitalist nation and the Soviet Union was known as a communist nation.  Stalin and Truman were two very different leaders. Stalin dealt with paranoia and had a vision of “them” versus “us”.  And while Truman also had the “them versus “us” worldview, he did not have the same ruthlessness as Stalin.  The US was a proud democracy, giving a voice to the people, but the Soviet was a dictatorship and Stalin had the final say in everything (Norton, 2015).