Post-War America Practice Questions

Read Interpretations A and B below, then answer parts (a), (b) and (c).

Interpretation A: From the memoirs of a State Department official who was dismissed in 1952, after Senator McCarthy's campaign against communists in government had led to an investigation of his loyalty. Published in 1979.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

In 1950 Senator McCarthy began claiming that the State Department was full of communists, and I had worked there for twelve years. I had never belonged to any group plotting against my country. It made no difference. I was asked to name my friends, and when I refused I was dismissed. No one in government would employ me again. Teachers, scientists and actors lost their livelihoods in the same way. The hunt found almost no spies, but it ruined a great many innocent Americans.

Interpretation B: From an article in a small-town newspaper in Wisconsin, Senator McCarthy's home state, written in February 1954 by the newspaper's editor, who supported McCarthy's investigations into communists in government.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

Ordinary, loyal Americans have nothing whatever to fear. In this town nobody has been questioned, nobody has lost a job, and life goes on as it always has. Only a handful of people, most of them in Washington, have been asked to account for their past friendships, and that is a small price to pay. The Russians have the atom bomb and our boys have been fighting communists in Korea. A government that did not search its own offices would be failing in its duty.

Read Interpretations A and B below, then answer parts (a), (b) and (c).

Interpretation A: From a book of memories written by a man who joined the Civilian Conservation Corps as a teenager in 1935 and who later worked as an official on one of President Johnson's anti-poverty programmes. The book was published in 1972.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

I was nineteen when I joined the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935, planting trees and sending most of my pay home to my mother. Before Roosevelt, Washington left families like mine to sink. The New Deal proved that the federal government could put men to work and give them back their dignity. That lesson was not forgotten. The Great Society's spending on Medicare, housing and schools carried on the same work, and it reached the poorest Americans of all.

Interpretation B: From an article in an American business magazine, written in 1968 by an economist who advised Republican politicians and whose readers were mainly company owners and managers.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

Thirty-five years of federal spending have not abolished poverty; they have simply made Washington bigger. The New Deal did not end the Depression. It was war orders and private industry that put America back to work after 1941. Today's Great Society programmes repeat the old mistake, handing out money that teaches families to depend on the government instead of on themselves, while the taxpayer and the businessman are left to pay the bill.