Deck 31: The Great Depression and the New Deal

Question 1

Identify and state the historical significance of Frances Perkins.

Answer 1

Secretary of Labor and first female cabinet member.

Question 2

Identify and state the historical significance of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Answer 2

First Lady whose philanthropy and actions raised the profile of women on the national stage.

Question 3

Identify and state the historical significance of John Steinbeck.

Answer 3

Novelist who exposed the conditions of poor people in the Dust Bowl with his novel The Grapes of Wrath.

Question 4

Identify and state the historical significance of the election of 1932.

Question 5

Identify and state the historical significance of George W. Norris.

Question 6

Identify and state the historical significance of Alfred M. Landon.

Question 7

Identify and state the historical significance of Ruth Benedict.

Question 8

Identify and state the historical significance of Robert F. Wagner.

Question 9

Identify and state the historical significance of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Question 10

Identify and state the historical significance of Pearl Buck.

Question 11

Identify and state the historical significance of John Collier.

Question 12

Identify and state the historical significance of parity.

Question 13

Identify and state the historical significance of John Maynard Keynes.

Question 14

Identify and state the historical significance of Huey Long.

Question 15

Identify and state the historical significance of John L. Lewis.

Question 16

Identify and state the historical significance of Harry Hopkins.

Question 17

Identify and state the historical significance of Francis Townsend.

Question 18

Identify and state the historical significance of Charles Coughlin.

Question 19

Identify and state the historical significance of Harold Ickes.

Question 20

Identify and state the historical significance of "the forgotten man".

Question 21

____ contributed the most to Franklin Roosevelt's development of compassion and strength of will.

A) Education
B) Domestic conflicts with Eleanor Roosevelt
C) Family ties with Teddy Roosevelt
D) Affliction with infantile paralysis
E) Service in World War I

Question 22

Identify and state the historical significance of the "three Rs".

Question 23

The group that had experienced the worst suffering as a result of the Great Depression was

A) women who worked outside the home.
B) financial professionals connected to Wall Street.
C) African Americans.
D) skilled factory workers.
E) recent immigrants.

Question 24

Identify and state the historical significance of the Grand Coulee Dam.

Question 25

Identify and state the historical significance of the Brain Trust.

Question 26

Identify and state the historical significance of the Hundred Days.

Question 27

The phrase Hundred Days refers to the

A) worst months of the Great Depression.
B) time it took for Congress to begin acting on President Roosevelt's plans for combating the Great Depression.
C) flood of legislation passed by Congress in the first months of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency.
D) "lame-duck" period between Franklin Roosevelt's election and his inauguration.
E) time that all banks were closed by FDR.

Question 28

Identify and state the historical significance of the New Deal.

Question 29

One striking new feature of the 1932 presidential election results was that

A) the South had shifted to the Republican party.
B) Democrats made political gains in the normally rock-ribbed Republican western states like Kansas.
C) despite the calamity of the Great Depression, the popular and the electoral vote for president was surprisingly close.
D) a clear gender gap opened up in which more women favored the Democrats.
E) African Americans shifted from their Republican allegiance and became a vital element in the Democratic party.

Question 30

Identify and state the historical significance of the Public Works Administration.

Question 31

Eleanor Roosevelt had honed her own skills and developed a personal network of reform activists through

A) running for local offices in New York State.
B) her experience in settlement houses and women's reform organizations.
C) her long resistance to Franklin Roosevelt's personal infidelities.
D) her personal association with women's colleges and sororities.
E) sitting in on Franklin Roosevelt's cabinet meetings when he was governor of New York.

Question 32

In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt campaigned on the promise that as President he would attack the Great Depression by

A) nationalizing all banks and major industries.
B) mobilizing America's youth as in wartime.
C) returning to the traditional policies of laissez-faire capitalism.
D) continuing the policies already undertaken by President Hoover.
E) experimenting with bold new programs for economic and social reform.

Question 33

The Works Progress Administration was a major ____ program of the New Deal; the Public Works Administration was a long-range ____ program; and the Social Security Act was a major ____ program.

A) relief; recovery; reform
B) reform; recovery; relief
C) recovery; relief; reform
D) relief; reform; recovery
E) reform; relief; recovery

Question 34

Identify and state the historical significance of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Question 35

While Franklin Roosevelt waited to assume the presidency in early 1933, Herbert Hoover unsuccessfully tried to get the President-elect to commit to

A) maintaining a balanced federal budget.
B) renewal of the extremely high Hawley-Smoot Tariff.
C) an anti-inflationary policy that would have made much of the New Deal impossible.
D) appointing some Republicans to his cabinet.
E) a policy of not offering direct welfare to the unemployed.

Question 36

Identify and state the historical significance of the Works Progress Administration.

Question 37

The Democratic party platform on which Franklin Roosevelt campaigned for the presidency in 1932 called for

A) extensive social reforms and a balanced budget.
B) deficit spending and a higher military budget.
C) higher tariffs and support for American manufacturers.
D) a 60 percent tax on the income of the highest tow percent of American income earners.
E) breaking up monopolistic corporations and supporting small business.

Question 38

Identify and state the historical significance of the Glass-Steagall Act.

Question 39

When Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency in March 1933

A) Congress refused to grant him any legislative authority.
B) he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
C) he received unprecedented congressional support.
D) he rejected a pragmatic approach to governing the country.
E) he at first proceeded cautiously.

Question 40

Identify and state the historical significance of the National Recovery Administration.

Question 41

Roosevelt supported the repeal of Prohibition because

A) he thought it was unconstitutional.
B) he believed the problem of drunkenness could be solved by restricting alcohol content to 3.2 percent by weight.
C) he thought that it afforded the opportunity to raise needed federal revenue and provide jobs.
D) he needed support from the repeal movement to gain reelection.
E) drys - those who opposed alcohol - were an increasingly small segment of the population.

Question 42

All of the following are true statements about the men who joined the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) EXCEPT

A) there were about three million men in the program.
B) the men were mostly young, hired to work in fresh-air camps.
C) many of the men had criminal records.
D) they worked on reforestation, flood control and swamp drainage projects.
E) CCC workers helped families by sending most of their paychecks home.

Question 43

Probably the most radically economic New Deal program that provoked widespread charges of creeping socialism by Republican and conservative critics of President Roosevelt's administration was the

A) Indian Reorganization Act.
B) Social Security Act.
C) Agricultural Adjustment Act.
D) Federal Housing Administration.
E) Tennessee Valley Authority.

Question 44

The Glass-Steagall Act

A) took the United States off the gold standard.
B) empowered President Roosevelt to close all banks temporarily.
C) created the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the stock exchange.
D) permitted commercial banks to engage in Wall Street financial dealings.
E) created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to insure individual bank deposits.

Question 45

The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) proposed to solve the farm problem by

A) reducing agricultural production.
B) subsidizing American farm exports overseas.
C) increasing agricultural production for certain crops in high consumer demand.
D) helping farmers to pay their mortgages.
E) creating farm cooperatives.

Question 46

Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana gained a large national following by promising to

A) nationalize all banks and public utility companies.
B) make Jews pay for causing the Great Depression.
C) help farmers and workers organize to resist the power of corporations.
D) provide the unemployed and elderly a $200-a-month social security payment.
E) "share our wealth" by raising taxes on the rich and giving every family $5,000.

Question 47

Match each New Deal critic below with the cause or slogan that he promoted.

A) A-l, B-2, C-4, D-3
B) A-2, B-1, C-3, D-4
C) A-3, B-4, C-2, D-1
D) A-4, B-3, C-1, D-2
E) A-1, B-4, C-3, D-2

Question 48

Match each New Dealer below with the federal agency or program with which he or she was closely identified.

A) A-1, B-2, C-3, D-4
B) A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1
C) A-3, B-1, C-4, D-2
D) A-4, B-3, C-1, D-2
E) A-2, B-4, C-1, D-3

Question 49

The most immediate emergency facing Franklin Roosevelt when he became president in March 1933 was

A) the collapse of nearly the entire banking system.
B) runaway inflation.
C) the growing power of demagogues such as Huey Long and Father Coughlin.
D) the near collapse of international trade.
E) riots by unemployed workers and farmers unable to sell their goods.

Question 50

All of the following contributed to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s EXCEPT

A) dry-farming techniques.
B) unprecedented drought and wind storms of the trans-Mississippi Great Plains.
C) farmers' failure to use steam tractors and other modern equipment.
D) the cultivation of marginal farmlands on the Great Plains.
E) soil erosion.

Question 51

The early New Deal experiments borrowed rather freely and randomly from

A) Marxism, Leninism, and European socialism.
B) the principles of early 20^th-century laissez-faire economists such as Freidrich Hayek.
C) Mussolini's fascism and Hitler's Nazism.
D) U.S. wartime and pre-war agencies and European social reform models.
E) the late nineteenth-century utopian literature of Henry George, Edward Bellamy, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Question 52

President Roosevelt's chief "administrator of relief" and one of his closest advisors was

A) George Norris.
B) John L. Lewis.
C) Mary McLeod Bethune.
D) Harry Hopkins.
E) David Lilienthal.

Question 53

Franklin Roosevelt took America off the gold standard and adopted a managed currency policy designed to

A) stimulate inflation.
B) reduce the traded price of gold.
C) reduce the traded price of silver.
D) reduce the amount of money in circulation.
E) shake up the Federal Reserve Board.

Question 54

______ proved to be immensely popular among those Americans it served by putting thousands of people immediately to work at good-paying jobs and providing access to low-cost electricity to a region lacking cheap electrical power,.

A) The Public Works Administration
B) The Agricultural Adjustment Act
C) The National Recovery Administration
D) The Civilian Conservation Corps
E) The Tennessee Valley Authority

Question 55

Prominent female social scientists of the 1930s, like Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, brought widespread contributions to the field of

A) economics.
B) political science.
C) psychology.
D) sociology.
E) anthropology.

Question 56

The New Deal program of the following agency represented the most economically complex, managerially ambitious, and unsuccessful New Deal effort to achieve recovery and reform the entire American economy.

A) Public Works Administration
B) National Recovery Administration
C) Tennessee Valley Authority
D) National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act)
E) Social Security Administration

Question 57

Both ratified in the 1930s, the Twentieth Amendment ____ and the Twenty-first Amendment ____.

A) shortened the time between the presidential election and inauguration; ended Prohibition
B) limited a president to two complete terms in office; repealed the Eighteenth Amendment
C) rendered most New Deal programs unconstitutional; limited a president to two complete terms in office
D) ended prohibition; shortened the time between presidential election and inauguration
E) expanded the size of the Supreme Court; ended Prohibition

Question 58

The first Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) raised the money that it paid to farmers not to grow crops by

A) raising the tariff.
B) imposing a tax on the sale of farms.
C) selling government surplus grain.
D) increasing taxes on the wealthy.
E) taxing processors of farm products.

Question 59

The National Recovery Administration (NRA) failed largely because

A) businesses and labor aggressively and universally resisted any regulation of wages, prices, and hours by the agency.
B) it required too much self-sacrifice on the part of industry, labor, and the public.
C) Harold Ickes, the head of the agency, proved to be an incompetent administrator.
D) it did not provide enough protection for labor to bargain with management.
E) the agency did not have enough power to control business.

Question 60

Immediately after taking office, President Roosevelt responded to the banking crisis by

A) restoring the gold standard to guarantee the soundness of American currency.
B) nationalizing the ten largest banks in the United States.
C) providing major federal loans to the largest and soundest banks.
D) establishing a new Bank of the United States to guarantee deposits.
E) closing all American banks for a week, while reorganizing them on a sounder basis.

Question 61

In 1935, President Roosevelt set up the Resettlement Administration to

A) help farmers migrate from Oklahoma to California.
B) place unemployed industrial workers in areas where their labor was needed.
C) move Indians from land that could be farmed by victims of the Dust Bowl.
D) find jobs for farmers in industry.
E) help farmers who were victims of the Dust Bowl move to better land.

Question 62

The federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority was seen as a particular threat to

A) the entire capitalist system.
B) the Republican party.
C) the automobile industry.
D) the private electrical utility industry.
E) white Southern racial practices.

Question 63

President Roosevelt's Court-packing scheme in 1937 reflected his desire to ensure that the Supreme Court

A) became more conservative.
B) became more independent of Congress.
C) upheld the constitutionality of legally challenged New Deal programs.
D) less burdened with appellate cases.
E) more respectful of the Constitution's original intent.

Question 64

Recently, some historians have argued that the New Deal had a more radical effect on men than women for all of the following reasons EXCEPT

A) Social Security was designed to assist male breadwinners, who were expected to share benefits with their families.
B) married women were rarely favored for jobs in New Deal agencies.
C) social and economic programs of the New Deal maintained or reaffirmed women's traditional roles as wives or mothers.
D) social and economic programs of the New Deal tended to provide more opportunities to men than women.
E) many men were required to assume significant child rearing responsibility because of the millions of women who went to work for New Deal agencies.

Question 65

By 1938, the New Deal

A) had lost most of its momentum.
B) turned more toward direct relief than social reform.
C) had plainly failed to achieve its objectives.
D) had won over the majority of business people to its policies.
E) was prepared to embark on ambitious new initiatives.

Question 66

The Social Security Act of 1935 provided all of the following EXCEPT

A) unemployment insurance.
B) old-age pensions.
C) economic provisions for the blind and disabled.
D) support for the blind and physically handicapped.
E) health care for the poor.

Question 67

The fate of most of the Okies and other Dust Bowl migrants who headed west to California was that they

A) acquired farms in the San Joaquin Valley.
B) found steady work in the canning industry.
C) found themselves mired in poverty, squalor, and lack of economic opportunity in the San Joaquin Valley.
D) joined reactionary, quasi-fascist organizations in protest of Roosevelt's economic policies.
E) formed mutually supportive evangelical religious communes.

Question 68

As a result of the 1937 Roosevelt recession

A) Roosevelt cut income taxes as part of a supply-side economics experiment.
B) Social Security taxes were reduced.
C) Republicans gained control of the Senate in 1938.
D) Roosevelt adopted Keynesian (planned deficit spending) economics.
E) much of the early New Deal was repealed.

Question 69

The National Labor Relations Act proved most beneficial to

A) small business employers.
B) skilled workers.
C) the long-term unemployed.
D) trade associations.
E) unskilled workers.

Question 70

Most Dust Bowl migrants headed to

A) Oklahoma.
B) Arizona.
C) Nevada.
D) Oregon.
E) California.

Question 71

Some Native Americans denounced the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 because its provisions

A) encouraged Native Americans to create and promote a faux museum piece livelihood and embrace certain native traditions and lifestyles incompatible with the modern 20^th-century world.
B) continued to promote coercive assimilation policies.
C) discouraged the establishment and sound management of local self-governments.
D) ignored the increasing loss of Indian lands to real estate and commercial development and environmental degradation.
E) None of these choices are correct.

Question 72

Franklin Roosevelt's qualities as a leader included

A) persuasive and effective public communicator of his political messages.
B) empathy and compassion for Americans struggling to survive the Great Depression.
C) confident optimism in the face of the dire social and economic circumstances facing the country.
D) personal charm and a sharp wit.
E) willingness to experiment.

Question 73

Before he was elected president in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt had already

A) served as governor of New York.
B) run for Vice President of the United States.
C) been assistant secretary of the navy.
D) been the American ambassador to Britain.
E) been a United States senator.

Question 74

The most controversial aspect of the Tennessee Valley Authority was its effort to

A) provide cheap electrical power in competition with private industry.
B) control floods in the Tennessee and Cumberland valleys.
C) prevent soil erosion throughout the region.
D) build housing for poor and middle-class citizens in the region.
E) provide moderately priced electrical power in collaboration with private industry.

Question 75

The primary interest of the Congress of Industrial Organization was

A) the effective enforcement of yellow dog contracts.
B) the organization of trade unions.
C) the maintenance of open shop industries.
D) the organization of all unskilled and semiskilled workers within an industry.
E) maintaining existing wage levels.

Question 76

The Wagner Act of 1935 proved to be a trailblazing law that

A) gave labor the legal right to organize and bargain collectively.
B) established the NRA.
C) established the Social Security system.
D) authorized the Public Works Administration (PWA).
E) established a national minimum wage law.

Question 77

The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 attempted to

A) reverse the forced assimilation of Native Americans into white society by establishing tribal self-government.
B) encourage Native Americans to give up their land claims.
C) reinforce the coercive assimilation policies since the Dawes Act of 1887.
D) pressure Native Americans to renounce self-government.
E) persuade Native Americans to give up their native crafts and tribal traditions.

Question 78

The American Social Security System, established by the New Deal, differed from most European social welfare systems primarily because it

A) was opposed by large sectors of the public.
B) did not permit the Social Security number to be used for identification and security purposes.
C) did not address the issue of single mothers in the home with dependent children.
D) linked unemployment and disability insurance to old age pensions.
E) did not initially cover all categories of workers.

Question 79

After Franklin Roosevelt's failed attempt to pack the Supreme Court

A) Roosevelt was unable to make any changes in the Court.
B) the Democrats lost the next election in 1940.
C) Congress permanently set the number of justices at nine.
D) much New Deal legislation was ruled unconstitutional.
E) the Court began to rule that New Deal programs were constitutional.

Question 80

The Federal Securities Act and the Securities Exchange Commission aimed to

A) prohibit completely the sale of stocks on margin (i.e. with borrowed funds).
B) force stockbrokers to register with the federal government.
C) prevent interlocking directorates and business pyramiding schemes.
D) provide full disclosure of information and prevent insider trading and other fraudulent practices.
E) stop the practice of establishing interlocking directorates on America's corporate boards that produced controversial conflicts-of-interest in the governance of American businesses.