The great depression forced society and president Franklin D. Roosevelt to make major changes in government organization to relive the lives affected by the great depression. The great depression left millions of American citizens unemployed or underpaid and overworked. Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to the great depression was the new deal and the three R's (relief, reform, and recovery). Following the stock market crash in 1929, unemployment spiked and the great depression began. According to the graph in document one, the number of s of unemployment increased to nearly forty percent by 1938. This shows that FDR's programs started to make a positive impact on the extremely poor people and the huge poverty that will soon start because