Great Depression — solutions across the Americas (History (2028+) HL)

By 1932 a quarter of American workers had no job. Herbert Hoover, president since 1929, believed in rugged individualism and laissez-faire. He thought charity and local relief, not Washington, should carry people through.

Hoover did act — more than his reputation suggests. In 1932 he set up the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which lent government money to banks and railroads to stop them collapsing. But this was help for institutions, not for the hungry family down the street.

Why Hoover gets the blame: Hoover refused direct federal relief payments to individuals, fearing it would destroy self-reliance. When unemployed veterans (the Bonus Army) camped in Washington DC in 1932 demanding early payment of a promised bonus, he sent the army to clear them out. It made him look heartless and out of touch.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) won the 1932 election in a landslide, promising Americans a New Deal. Unlike Hoover, he believed the federal government had to intervene directly and urgently — famously acting in his first hundred days in office.

This burst of laws is usually called the First New Deal (1933–35). It was about emergency rescue — stopping the immediate bleeding in banking, farming and unemployment.

By 1935, with the economy still struggling and critics on the left demanding more, Roosevelt launched the Second New Deal. It shifted from rescue to lasting reform.

First vs Second New Deal: Paper 3 examiners love this split. First New Deal = emergency relief for banks, farmers, the jobless (1933–34). Second New Deal = longer-term reform of labour rights and social welfare (1935 onward). Naming both shows depth.

This is where Paper 3 essays live: not just what the New Deal did, but whether it actually solved the Depression. Historians and economists disagree sharply.

So which side is right? Most historians land somewhere in the middle: the New Deal did not cure the Depression, but it prevented worse suffering, changed what Americans expected from their government, and built institutions that outlasted the crisis itself.

Significance beyond economics: Even if you judge the New Deal an economic failure by 1939, its significance was huge: it permanently expanded the role of the federal government in ordinary Americans' lives — a change that stuck for decades.

Roosevelt himself is central to any judgement. His fireside chats — relaxed radio talks straight to the public — rebuilt trust that Hoover had lost. Personality and communication, not just policy, shaped how effective the response felt to ordinary people.

Canada: Mackenzie King and R. B. Bennett

Canada was hit hard too — the Prairies suffered drought (the Dust Bowl) on top of collapsed wheat prices. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (in power until 1930) largely followed Hoover's playbook: he believed relief was a provincial, not federal, responsibility, and famously refused extra funds to any province run by his political opponents.

King lost the 1930 election to Conservative R. B. Bennett, who promised bold action but delivered caution at first — raising tariffs to protect Canadian industry, which mostly deepened the pain by shrinking trade further.

Bennett's late conversion: Facing an election he was likely to lose, Bennett announced his own 'Bennett New Deal' in 1935 — inspired directly by FDR — proposing unemployment insurance, minimum wages and market regulation. It came far too late to save his government.

Mackenzie King returned to power in the 1935 election. Most of Bennett's New Deal laws were later struck down by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Britain (then Canada's final court of appeal) as overstepping federal power — a very similar clash to the US Supreme Court striking down the NRA.

Latin America: Mexico under Lázaro Cárdenas

Mexico, unlike the USA and Canada, was less tied to Wall Street and could take a very different path once Lázaro Cárdenas became president in 1934. His government combined four connected reforms.

Why oil nationalization mattered: The 1938 oil expropriation was risky — foreign companies threatened boycotts. But it became a symbol of Mexican economic independence, and PEMEX profits later funded further social spending. It is still celebrated in Mexico every March 18.