Numbers soon proved the optimists incorrect. The depression steadily worsened. By spring of 1933, when FDR took the oath of office, unemployment had risen from 8 to 15 million (roughly 1/3 of the non-farmer workforce) and the gross national product had decreased from $103.8 billion to $55.7 billion. Forty percent of the farms in Mississippi were on the auction block on FDR's inauguration day. Although the depression was world wide, no other country except Germany reached so high a percentage of unemployed. The poor were hit the hardest. By 1932, Harlem had an unemployment rate of 50 percent and property owned or managed by blacks fell from 30 percent to 5 percent in 1935. Farmers in the Midwest were doubly hit by economic downturns and the Dust Bowl. Schools, with budgets shrinking, shortened both the school day and the school year.
The breadth and depth of the crisis made it the Great Depression.
No one knew how best to respond to the crisis. President Hoover believed the dole would do more harm than good and that local governments and private charities should provide relief to the unemployed and homeless. By 1931, some states began to offer aid to local communities. FDR, then governor of New York, worked with Harry Hopkins and Frances Perkins to begin a direct work relief program. This helped only a very few. By 1932, only 1/4 of unemployed families received any relief. In 1932, only 1.5 percent of all government funds were spent on relief and averaged about $1.67 per citizen. Cities, which had to bear the brunt of the relief efforts, teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. By 1932, Cook County (Chicago) was firing firemen, police, and teachers (who had not been paid in 8 months). Breadlines and Hoovervilles (homeless encampments) appeared across the nation.
http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/great-depression.htm
The New Deal was presented with horrendous economic situation. Worse than any other administration. After having the economy buried for 4 years, a quick turn around is unreasonable expectation. They did lower unemployment and alleviate the suffering Two of the three authors you site are from the rightwing Ettinger Family Foundation.
Their great bugaboo the National Recovery Administration lasted less than two years and was gone by June, 1935.
The statement about the workweek are ridiculous gage of prosperity at the time because in 1929 there was no legislation about the length of the workweek. The 50 plus hour workweeks of the 1920s were no more permanently because of the 40 hour workweek legislation. If you went on that statistic as a measure of prosperity, we never regained prosperity because we never went back to the average workweek being over 50 hours.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/whaples.work.hours.us
George Soros is only one person in that group of super rich. Buffett is of course one of the most respected financiers in our nation. All this group realize the threat to our nation of these lingering fortunes.
The New Deal acted to “promote the general welfare.”
