United States History DBQ Essay

Directions: The following question requires you to construct a coherent essay that integrates your interpretation of Documents A-N and your knowledge of the period referred to in the question. High scores will be earned only by essays that both cite key pieces of evidence from the documents and draw on outside knowledge of the period.

Question: Describe and interpret the effects of the Great Depression on American society and analyze Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response, the “New Deal” to these effects. How effective were these responses? How did they change the role of the federal government?

Document A

Document B

Document C

Source: Press statement of Herbert Hoover. February 3, 1931.

This is not an issue as to whether people shall go hungry or cold in the United States. It is solely a question of the best method by which hunger and cold shall be prevented. It is a question as to whether the American people on one hand will maintain the spirit of charity and mutual self help through voluntary giving and the responsibility of local government as distinguished on the other hand from appropriations out of the Federal Treasury for such purposes. My own conviction is strongly that if we break down this sense of responsibility of individual generosity to individual and mutual self help in the country in times of national difficulty and if we start appropriations of this character we have not only impaired something infinitely valuable in the life of the American people but have struck at the roots of self-government.

Source: The Great Depression, Robert J. Samuelson, Concice Encyclopedia of Economics

Document D

Source: America: Past and Present Revised Seventh Edition. Writers Robert A. Divine, T. H. Breen, George M. Frederickson, R. Hal Williams, Ariela J. Gross, H. W. Brands.

Document E

Document F

Source: Virginia Durr Reflects on the Depressions Lessons, ca. 1930s

Have you ever seen a child with rickets? Shaking as with palsy. No proteins no milk. And the companies pouring milk into gutters. People with nothing to wear and they were plowing cotton. People with nothing to eat, and they killed the pigs. If that wasn’t the craziest system in the world, could you imagine anything more idiotic? This was just insane. And people blamed themselves, not the system. They felt they had been at fault:… "if we hadn’t bought that radio"……

Source: President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Second Inaugural Address. January 20, 1937

Let us ask again: Have we reached the goal of our vision of that fourth day of March 1933? Have we found our happy valley?

I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of natural resources. Its hundred and thirty million people are at peace among themselves; they are making their country a good neighbor among the nations. I see a United States which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence.

But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.

I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.

I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

Document G

Source: Print and Photograph Division, Library of Congress, 1935.

Document H

Source: Robert Miller’s account of his experiences enrolled in the CCC, 1937

1. " These things I have mentioned are benefits derived by every young man who has been a member of the Civilian Conservation Corps. But my personal achievement is the one glorious gift I have received from my association with the young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

2. I enrolled as a boy, unsteady, groping, unsure. I wanted something, but could not describe it or discover a means for attaining it. Then I discovered what it was I was seeking- it was the right to call myself a man. My life at camp has given me that right, and I shall be ever grateful to President Roosevelt and the C.C.C. Now that I am a man, with my feet firmly planted on the steps of life, I feel sure of a reasonable amount of success.

Source: Library of Congress

Document I

Document J

Source: Radio Address of President Roosevelt delivered March 12, 1933 at 10 p.m.

"By the afternoon of March 3 scarcely a bank in the country was open to do business. Proclamations temporarily closing them in whose or in part had been issued by the Governors in almost all the states.

It was then that I used the proclamation providing for the nationwide bank holiday, and this was the first step in the Government’s reconstruction of our financial and economic fabric.

The second step was the legislation promptly and patriotically passed by the Congress confirming my proclamation and broadening my powers so that It became possible in view of the requirement of time to extend the holiday and lit the ban on the holiday gradually...I want to tell our citizens in every part of the nation that the nation Congress - Republicans and democrats alike - showed by this action a devotion to public welfare and a realization of the emergency and necessity for speed that it is difficult to match in our history."

Source: Library of Congress

Document K

Source: Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, “Trying to Change the Umpiring”, February 10, 1937.

Document L

Document M

Source: PWA, Golden Gate Bridge. Library of Congress.

Source: WPA artist Lucienne Bloch, Women’s House of Detention, New York.

Document N

Source:

Map of repatriates from across the United States;While California had nearly 53,000, Texas had over 132,000 repatriates