The Depression & the New Deal Practice Questions

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

Interpretation A: From a book defending the Republican record in government, written in 1936 by a man who had worked as an official in Hoover's administration.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

It is simply untrue that the President stood by and did nothing. He cut taxes so that people would have more to spend, he urged employers not to cut wages, and he pressed on with great public works such as the dam on the Colorado River. In 1932 he created a corporation to lend federal money to banks, railroads and businesses so that jobs might be saved. No president could have cured a depression that struck the whole world. He was blamed for a storm he did not raise.

Interpretation B: From an interview given to a local radio station in 1971 by a man who lost his job in a Detroit factory in 1931 and joined the veterans who camped in Washington in 1932.

Written for practice: not a real historical interpretation.

I was thrown out of the motor works in 1931 and there was nothing for us. We put up shacks out of packing crates and tin on the edge of town, and everybody called them Hoovervilles, because he was the man who had let it happen. He kept telling us that prosperity was just around the corner. When we veterans went to Washington in 1932 to ask for our bonus to be paid early, he sent the army against us and our camp was burned. That is the Hoover I remember.

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.