What did the government try to do to stop the Great Depression from getting worse? Did it work

The outbreak of the Great Depression in the fall of 1929 caused much economic hardship in Newfoundland and Labrador. Most damaging was a breakdown in world trade, which caused the country's revenue to plummet. Despite its shrinking income, the government still had to make interest payments on a sizeable national debt and provide essential services to the public. Widespread unemployment during the 1930s exacerbated an already difficult situation by forcing the government to spend millions of dollars on various relief programs. Most, however, were ineffective. Dole rations, for example, were heavily policed and much too small to live on; land settlement also ended in failure.

At the same time the government increased relief spending, it also contributed to the crisis by laying off employees and making cuts to health care, education, and other social programs. When allegations of corruption surfaced against high-ranking political officials in 1932, it intensified the public’s mounting dissatisfaction with party politics and led to the swearing in of the Commission of Government in 1934. For the most part, however, the new regime proved equally incapable of improving the Depression’s impacts on the working class and on the country as a whole. It was not until the employment boom of the Second World War that the country recovered.