Utah's Plight: A Passage Through the Great Depression

• Main Author: Darowski, Joseph F.
• Format: Others
• Published: BYU ScholarsArchive 2004
• Subjects: Depressions; 1929; Utah; History; 20th century; Mormon Studies; United States History
• Online Access: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4635; https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5634&context=etd

The Great Depression marked a fateful passage in the annals of the American people. President Roosevelt's New Deal, the nation's signature response, proved to be a determined but erratic reaction. Against the backdrop of a nation deeply mired in an unrelenting international depression, dramatic events played themselves out in the lives of the men and women of Utah. Throughout, fidelity to principles of independence, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency were sorely challenged.The people of Utah found succor in two almost diametrically opposed responses. The New Deal offered an amalgam of programs and panaceas through which the federal government attempted to deliver economic relief, recovery, and reform. Able to pour millions upon millions of dollars on troubled waters, the New Deal offered the nation and Utah a vision of economic security rooted in an expanded federal-state partnership. In contrast, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints fused the principles of independence, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency into a new program–the Church Security Plan.