GREAT DEPRESSION AND NEW DEAL

DOCUMENT-BASED QUESTION
Your essay must include the following:
a thesis statement that addresses the critics (counterargument), states a clear position and
provides a preview of your argument
2-3 body paragraphs
usage of three documents as evidence to support your position
3-4 pieces of specific historical evidence not covered in the document list
analysis of all used evidence (documents and outside) that show how they support your
argument
brief conclusion

Prompt: Evaluate the effectiveness of the changes in the role of

government to address the challenges of the Great Depression.

DOCUMENT A
Lexington Remonstrance
New Haven (Connecticut) Journal-Courier-Time
April 19, 1934
Fifteen hundred doughty burghers of Lexington, Mass., celebrated that shot heard round the
world with a great remonstrance to the capital. They were tired of government interference, they
said, over-expenditures, of presidential advisers not chosen by the people. They wanted an
immediate end of much that the New Deal is or promises to be. When a free people feel that
their rights are begin trespassed upon, they declared, it is a duty as well as a right of the
people to express determined disapproval. This they proceeded to do after a form and with a
vehemence that recalled their ancestors.

DOCUMENT B
"I tried several places after losing the job in the bank to get other private work but failed. As a
last resort I made application for WPA work ... I don't know what I would have done had not
there been a chance to work on WPA. Likewise I don't see what most of the folk would do if
there was no WPA. It has given great numbers of people courage and self-respect, wherein they
wouldn't have had anything to look forward to."
Geneva (female) Tonsill, October 27, 1939

DOCUMENT C

DOCUMENT D
Excerpt from: A Negro Nation Within a Nation, a speech by WEB Du Bois, June 26, 1934
Since 1929 Negro workers, like white workers, have lost their jobs, have had mortgages
foreclosed on their farms and homes, and have used up their small savings. But, in the case of the
Negro worker, everything has been worse; the loss has been greater and more permanent.
Technological displacement, which began before the depression, has been accelerated, while
unemployment and falling wages struck black men sooner, went to lower levels and will last
longer.

DOCUMENT E
Mrs. Roosevelt,
I suppose from your point of view the work relief, old age pensions, slum clearance and all the
rest seems like a perfect remedy for all the ills of this country, but I would like for you to see the
results, as the other half see them. We have always had a shiftless, never-do-well class of people
whose one and only aim in life is to live without work. We cannot help those who will not try
to help themselves and if they do try a square deal is all they need, and by the way that is all this
country needs or ever has needed: a square deal for all and then, let each one paddle their own
canoe, or sink.
M.A.H. (female), Columbus, Ind. (Dec. 14, 1937)

DOCUMENT F