Monday, December 30, 2013

Canada: King's Responses to the Depression

Again, consider how Canada experienced the Great Depression with your previous knowledge of the United States.  Pay particular attention to Prime Minister Mackenzie King's speech on p. 153.  How would you evaluate King's response to the depression?   How would you compare it to Hoover and FDR?

11 comments:

  1. King thought that it was the fault of the provinces to aid their own citizens. He definitely wasn't prepared for the depression, as many political leaders weren't, so he didn't take an interventionist approach to the economy. He believed that the crisis would pass, refused to provide federal aid to the provinces, and only introduced moderate relief efforts. Whereas FDR, proposed the New Deal to restore the nations confidence, help the poor and homeless, restore the economy and prevent another financial depression from happening again. Hoover on the other hand took the "hands-off" approached and forced the people to fend for themselves denying any government intervention of any kind. I think that out of all three reactions to the great depression FDR had the best ideas. At least he actually introduced a way to help the poor state of the economy, where Hoover and King just kind of wrote it off as being something that the people had to figure out and restore themselves.

    ReplyDelete
  2. king was a caring man who set the foundation of the Canadian welfare state. he wanted to help those who could not help themselves. king however lacked many qualities that a learder like FDR had, he fundamentally lack charisma. king had great timing and feel for canada's moral and was a very hard worker. this allowed him to keep the faith of the country and stay in office as long as he did.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kings motto ever since he was a kid was to help those who could not help themselves. As Sifiso said he was a caring man. He was caring man, however, he was not a very good leader. He lacked certain traits that a leader needs and this is one of the many Canada was failing to stay strong during the great depression. With a leader like him it was hard for the country to handle this because it was a very difficult time and he wasn't proactive at all. FDR was a good leaders and had traits that a good leader should have such as being very involved in everything that was going on and coming up with good plans. Hoover wasn't really a good leader because he didn't make good decisions and he basically just let everything happen and didn't take any action at all.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It seems that none of the leaders were really expecting the depression to be that significant. The king says that there always has been and there always will be unemployment problems in the winter. He said he wouldn't pay anything to help out the Tory governments. FDR truly helped the people and improved the economy. He set up the New Deal, which focused on the 3 R's: Relief, Recovery, Reform. What this did was give relief to the unemployed/poor, recovery to the economy, and reform of the economy/finance system in hopes that it would help prevent future depression problems. Hoover tried to help but ended up creating even more financial problems. Instead of giving direct aid to the people, he gave indirect aid to banks and or local public work projects.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mckenzie thought that every state had to aid their own citizens. Since he was not ready for the depression (usually none of the leaders were) he did not intervene in the economy. Therefore as Sifiso and Tina said, he lacked of the attributes that a good leader has to have to guide a country through a depression (specially the Great Depression). As Phoebe mentioned, on his speech p.153, he excuses part of the unemployment by saying that it's winter and there will always be unemployment in winter. Saying that, I think he shows his unability to be a good leader and to try to do something against it instead of making up excuses with no sense

    ReplyDelete
  6. Kings' response to the depression is very passive and hopeless. Even though the unemployment rate was ridiculously high so that 10 percent of the population needed some degree of relief, Mackenzi King thought unemployment problem exists in every country and therefore it is not right to give the unemployed not even "five cent". Plus, I would say that even though the depression struck the U.S bad, It was generous compared to Canada. Because of the over-reliance on staples for export, overproduction, and stock market crash, the collaspe in the price of and demand for wheat hit Canada hard. In addition, as countries looked to protect their own economies during the depression, they had issued protective tariffs, such as Hawley Smoot Tariff, that attacked Canada's economy.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mackenzie King just is a different guy (with different personality) from Roosevelt more and Hoover less, in my opinion. I think that King did not have the sympathy towards the people. He couldn't step into the same shoe with ordinary people. And that can also be why that his charisma was not as charming as FDR. In the speech, he excused himself of not doing anything by saying unemployment has and will always be there. In some way, King was like Hoover who didn't intervene the depression much but I feel Hoover wanted to do good to the people but King was less caring.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Overall I agree with Phoebe when she said that none of these leaders really understood the depression completely because while they are all privileged citizens, they see that there is tons of unemployment every year and all they keep doing is spending money which ultimately hurts the people and the depression more even though they seem to care for their people (somewhat). However I have to disagree with Christina and Sifisio when they say that King is a VERY CARING person because really i think he is just doing his job and doesn't care for the people as much as he should. Even more importantly he was a leader during one of Canada's worst times and all he did was make it worse with his awful leadership skills. Compared to FDR, FDR was very pleasant and charming in his speech, and right from he start he lets his people know that he is there for them and will try hard to make a change even though in the long run he can not change the unemployment but the will help in other ways. Between King and FDR, King was more in it for the power and FDR was more in it for the people.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oh man, King was not one of the best leaders. Like people have been saying he lacked many things that would make him a great leader. So he was a big reason for the failure during the depression. He just sat back and watched the show and did nothing. He is very similar to Hoover because Hoover did the same thing, he believed that the people would fix these problems themselves and that was not the case. But then came FDR a great leader who was fill of ideas that could fix this problem and which did and got the United States out of the depression

    ReplyDelete
  10. King's speech delivers one clear message: unemployment is not a new-emerging problem. It has always been there every year. What King believes is that economy has its own pattern of ups and downs. People should not be panic during the down time. It seems like King truly had no doubt about the laiseez faire policy. Hoover had the same idea about US economy when things started to get rough. Although he did not apply much government intervention, later he did eventually try to help the economy by using federal power. After Hoover's term was finished, FDR was enforcing different policies. He strongly involved his government into the economy and focus a lot on the individual financial situations. It is obvious that FDR did turn out to be more successful in turning the economy.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I sympathize with Prime Minister King. He had to run a country as big as Canada in one of the harshest time periods in history. King took an approach that was very different than FDR. FDR created the New Deal programs, doing all he could to stimulate the economy and create more jobs for all those who were willing to work. King decided to let the depression run its course. He was strongly against communism, which is exactly what it would've looked like if the government intervened. King also believe the economy always had its period of ups and downs and it was just a "down" period.

    ReplyDelete