Great Depression & New Deal Study Sheet

Big Questions
1. What factors and events caused the Great Depression?

2. Why was FDR such a successful politician? Why was Hoover a failure?
3. Describe the differences between the First, Second, and Third New Deals.
4. Describe the new Democratic coalition created by FDR?
5. How did the war New Deal affect the labor movement?
6. How did the New Deal change government?
7. Why did the FDR’s “court-packing” scheme fail?
8. How did the New Deal affect African Americans?
9. What is Keynesian economics?

Know the significance of the following:
New Deal Programs: Emergency Banking Relief Act; Glass-Steagall Act.; Civilian Conservation Act; National Industrial Recovery Act; National Recovery Administration; Agricultural Adjustment Act; Soil Conservation Act; Farm Credit Administration; Tennessee Valley Authority; Rural Electrification Administration; Truth in Securities Act; Public Works Administration; Works Progress Administration; Resettlement Administration

Economics: Roosevelt Recession ; Francis Keynes

Labor: Section 7a of NIRA; Wagner Act; National Labor Relations Board; AFL; CIO; John L. Lewis; Trade union; Industrial Union; UAW; Walter Ruether; Sit-down strike; Fair Labor Standards Act; National Housing Act

Politics: FDR; Frances Perkins; Harold Ickes; Al Smith; Herbert Hoover; Fr. Coughlin; Dr. Townsend; Huey Long; Court-packing scheme; Alf Landon

1920s Study Guide

1. Why was there great and prolonged prosperity throughout the 1920s?

2. How had the economy changed?
3. What happened to the labor movement?
4. What happened to the women’s movement?
5. What were the prevailing political moods, policies, and issues of the 1920s?
6. How did consumerism and “mass culture” affect American culture?
7. What new entertainments emerged during the 1920s?
8. What were the prominent developments and authors in literature?
9. Was this a period of increasing personal freedom and liberty, or of social control and oppression?

Know the significance of the following: open shop; welfare capitalism; National Association of Manufacturers; Henry Ford; Warren Harding; Calvin Coolidge; Smoot-Hawley Tariff; Teapot Dome; Kellog-Briand Pact Herbert Hoover; “rugged individualism”; Al Smith; jazz; Jelly Roll Morton; Louis Armstrong; Duke Ellington; the Charleston; George Gershwin;  F. Scott Fitzgerald; Ernest Hemingway; Sinclair Lewis; T.S. Eliot; Langston Hughes; Thomas Hart Benton; Edward Hopper; Georgia O’Keefe; Alfred Steiglist; Social Conflicts; Red Scare; National Origins Act; Ku Klux Klan; Great Migration; Harlem Renaissance; Marcus Garvey; Scopes Trial; 18th Amendment; Volstead Act; Margaret Sanger

World War I Study Guide

Major Questions:
• Why did the United States finally get involved in a European war when we had resisted them for so long?
• How did our involvement in World War I change the United States at that time?
• Did it in any way change us permanently?

Tues, 3/6; The Road to War: Read pages 688-694.
1. What factors caused the war?
2. How did the U.S. government and public respond to the war?
3. What challenges were there to the U.S. remaining neutral? Were we ever really neutral?
4. Why did the U.S. enter the war? Why did we enter on the side of Britain and France?

Wed, 3/7; The War and American Society: Read 696-710.
1. How did the U.S. raise an army?
2. What did the federal government do to supply the troops with the proper material and food? What long-term effect might this have had?
3. How did the war affect the economy?
4. What effect did U.S. troops have on the war? What effect did the war have on American soldiers?
5. What did the government do to get Americans to support the war?
6. Who opposed the war? What happened to those who opposed the war? Why? Was the government responsible?

Thursday, 3/8; The Search for a New World Order: Read 710-719 and handouts
1. What were Wilson’s Fourteen Points generally aiming at doing? Was this a new idea? Was it a good idea?
2. Why did Wilson fail to get his Fourteen Points into the Treaty of Versailles?
3. Was the League of Nations a good idea? Why did the Senate reject it? Was it the Senate’s fault, or Wilson’s?

Explain the significance of the following:
Lusitannia; Sussex; Jane Addams; George Creel; General John Pershing; Eugene V. Debs; Bernard Baruch; Herbert Hoover; Zimmermann note; Selective Service Act; Committee on Public ; Information; Espionage and Sedition Acts; Industrial Workers of the World ; “Wobblies”; War Information Board; War Industries Board; National War Labor Board; Sixteenth Amendment; Eighteenth Amendment; Nineteenth Amendment; Food Administration; Russian Revolution; Bolshevism; Big Four; Henry Cabot Lodge; collective security; Irreconcilables; Reservationists; Fourteen Points; self-determination; Treaty of Versailles; Article 10; League of Nations.

2/29 Homework

Write an outline for an essay that would answer the question, "Does Teddy Roosevelt belong on Mount Rushmore?" In your answer be sure to address both domestic and foreign policy. Your answer should an outline of an essay and may be in "bulleted" form. It should start with a thesis that addresses both domestic and foreign policy. You must present specific evidence to support your evidence. Since this was not posted until after school on Tuseday, it is not due until Thursday. The reading(664-677) is still due by Wednesday.

2/28 Homework

2/28; The Muckrakers and the Beginnings of Progressivism; Read pages 656-664. 

1.      In the views of the progressives, what was wrong with American society, and what did they propose to fix it? 

2. Were their views revolutionary?

3. Progressivism is generally viewed by most historians as a positive movement in American politics.  Were their any negative sides to progressivism?

Know the significance of the following:

Muckrakers; McClure’s; Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives; Lincoln Steffens, Shame of the Cities; Ida Tarbell; Upton Sinclair, The Jungle; Triangle Waistshirt Factory fire; Social Gospel; Jane Adams; Hull House; Eugene V. Debs; Socialist Party; Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W. or “wobblies); commission plan; city manager; initiative; referendum; recall; direct primary; Robert LaFollette; Margaret Sanger; 16th Amendment; 17th Amendment; 18th Amendment; Theodore Roosevelt; Square Deal; Northern Securities Act; Hepburn Act; Meat Inspection Act; Pure Food and Drug Act; New Nationalism; Bull Moose Party; Conservation; John Muir; Gifford Pinchot; Forest Reserve Act; William Howard Taft; Ballinger-Pinchot incident; Payne-Aldrich Tarif; Mann-Elkins Act; Woodrow Wilson; New Freedom; Louis Brandeis; Underwood-Simmons Tariff; Federal Reserve Act; Federal Trade Commission; Clayton Antitrust Act; Workman’s Compensation

Extra Credit Opportunities

Your February Break may give you the opportunity to get away from the rush of daily homework assignments and do something away from your textbook that you’ll enjoy and will help give you a deeper understanding of the period we are currently studying.  Do one of the following and write a 2-page reflection on the movie/book/visit and what insight it gives you into America at the turn of the century. The project is worth ten points if done well (i.e. an 85 on a test would turn into a 95 if the project is done thoroughly and with some intelligent thought).

Watch Episodes 3 "Sunshine and Shadow" and 4 "The Power and the People" of the PBS docmentary film New York, by Ric Burns.  This will fill in many of the blanks that we did not cover in our discussions about urbanization in new York City from 1865-1918.  You can find these on netflix, etc. as well as youtube.  This is the series that I have often posted on our class blog.


Watch the movie Matewan which is an excellent film about a community of coal miners who struggle to organize a union against a brutal and abusive mining company. It gives a good insight into the challenges for workers and unions at the turn of the century.  You shoudl be able to find this on both netflix and youtube.

Read the book The Alienist. It’s long, but it’s a great murder mystery that takes place in New York City in the 1880s. The novel is a real page-turner and it exposes the seedy side of New York City better than any history book I’ve read. Everyone who reads it loves it.

Visit the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. Visits to the museum have to be arranged in advance as the visit is a guided tour of an authentically recreated tenement. The tour is led by actors who actually play the role of the people who lived in the tenement 100 years ago and tell you their story of life on the Lower East Side at the turn of the century.

Due date is March 23.

Wednesday 3rd Period Assignment

Simply pair up with a classmate to do a peer review of each other's papers. Read the essay and make comments based on the following questions:

1. Is there a clear thesis? Does the thesis answer the specific question asked? Is it too simple, or does it make an interesting, well defined argument? Does the writer develop/explain the thesis in the first paragraph.

2. Does each topic sentence refer to and advance the thesis?

3. Is each topic sentence explained and proven with specific historical evidence throughout the paragraph?

4. Does the writer use at least half of the documents? Does the author refer to each document by name? Does each document actually support the argument in that paragraph?