What was the conservative response to the Great Depression

The Conservative Response: Let the Economy Stabilize

A conservative is someone who cherishes and seeks to preserve traditional customs and values. For conservatives in the 1930s, these values included self-reliance, individual responsibility, and personal liberty. Conservatives tend to prefer the status quo, or current conditions, to abrupt changes. They accept change, but only in moderation. Depression-era conservatives opposed large governmental efforts to effect change, which they felt challenged their values.

As the Depression worsened, conservatives resisted calls for radical changes to the free enterprise system. Left alone, they argued, the economy would soon stabilize and then begin to improve.

Some economists supported conservatives’ hands-off approach. They insisted that economic downturns and periods of low economic activity—known as panics—were normal. They were part of the business cycle, a pattern in which economic growth is followed by decline, panic, and finally recovery. These lows were natural in a capitalist economy, economists argued. They noted that good times followed even the severe panics of the 1870s and 1890s. The economy would also recover from this severe period.

At the start of the Depression, many Americans shared this outlook. Most preferred to suffer in silence rather than admit they needed help. But as the Depression progressed, people ran short of food and fuel. Many had no choice but to seek aid. Conservatives insisted that charities take on the growing task of providing basic necessities to the needy. If government had to step in, they argued, it should be local governments’ responsibility to care for their own.

Explanation:

swe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. — that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. "

- declaration of independence

  according to this passage from the declaration of independence, who gives government the power to exist?

a) the king

b) the people

c) their creator

d) their governmenthook

e. all of em

~courtney