Louisiana State University - HIST 2055

Chapter 28 New Deal America

TRUE/FALSE

1)During the 1932 presidential campaign, the Republican and Democratic candidates both promised gen- erally to balance the budget.

2. The Twentieth Amendment moved the presidential inauguration date from March to January.

3. Early in his presidency, Roosevelt carried through on his promise to end Prohibition.

4. The CCC addressed the problem of overcharging by doctors and others in the medical and health pro- fessions.

5. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath told of Wall Street businessmen brought to their knees after Black Tuesday.

6. The AAA required farmers to donate surplus crops and livestock to feed the poor.

7. By 1935, the NRA had become unpopular.

8. The American Liberty League opposed New Deal measures as violations of personal and property rights.

9. FDR made black civil rights a major priority, ordering that New Deal programs not practice racial dis- crimination.

10. The Wagner Act helped dramatically boost union membership.

11. FDR called the Social Security Act the “supreme achievement” of the New Deal.

12. Eleanor Roosevelt was a shy person who shunned attention, but she did much work behind the scenes to raise support for her husband’s New Deal.

13. By the end of the 1930s, FDR’s New Deal had pushed the country a large way toward socialism.

14. Despite the New Deal, full recovery from the Depression did not come until the crisis of World War II.

15. The Fair Labor Standards Act forbade racial discrimination in hiring.

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. Franklin D. Roosevelt:
   1. was permanently disabled after contracting polio
   2. was twice elected governor of Georgia
   3. was born into a family of sharecroppers
   4. supported the continuation of Prohibition
   5. was a graduate of the Naval Academy

2. In the presidential election of 1932:
   1. radical Socialist and Communist party candidates won nearly 1 million votes
   2. FDR’s training as vice president under Herbert Hoover helped him win the Democratic nomination
   3. Republican Alfred Landon won the electoral votes of only six states
   4. FDR promised to continue the economic policies of  Herbert Hoover
   5. FDR lost the popular vote but won the electoral college

3. Whose campaign song was “Happy Days Are Here Again”?
   1. Al Smith
   2. Herbert Hoover
   3. Theodore Roosevelt
   4. Eugene Debs
   5. Franklin D. Roosevelt

4. The main purpose of the Civilian Conservation Corps was to:
   1. train young men for the Army Corps of Engineers
   2. provide work relief for young men

1. 3. give young women an opportunity to earn money for higher education
   4. promote conservation practices by the general public
   5. build environmental education projects at the first national parks

5. This organization sought to set workplace standards, such as child labor restrictions:
   1. AAA
   2. FERA
   3. NRA
   4. WPA
   5. CCC

6. All of the following writers but two (listed as a pair below) found work writing travel guides for the Federal Writers’ Project:
   1. Ernest Hemingway and John Cheever
   2. Ralph Ellison and Saul Bellow
   3. John Cheever and Eugene O’Neil
   4. Eugene O’Neil and Ernest Hemingway
   5. Saul Bellow and John Cheever

7. The goal of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 was to raise farm income mainly through:
   1. cutbacks in production
   2. intensive farming
   3. a government takeover of the commodity trade in Chicago
   4. state and federal subsidies
   5. marketing quotas

8. Among the objectives of the Tennessee Valley Authority were all the following EXCEPT:
   1. the production of cheap electric power
   2. opening rivers to boats and barges
   3. flood control
   4. soil conservation and forestry
   5. the development of Smoky Mountain National Park

9. Codes of fair practice were part of:
   1. FDIC
   2. HOLC
   3. NRA
   4. PWA
   5. WPA

10. Huey Long:
    1. developed a program called Share the Wealth
    2. founded the National Union for Social Justice
    3. challenged FDR for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1936
    4. complained that the New Deal had gone too far by infringing on “the rights of persons and property”
    5. called Social Security a “socialistic share-the-wealth program”

11. In the case of Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States, the Supreme Court:
    1. overturned the Farm Credit Act
    2. overturned the National Industrial Recovery Act
    3. decided that Schechter was involved in interstate, not local, trade
    4. upheld the constitutionality of the second Agricultural Adjustment Act
    5. said that the Agricultural Adjustment Act was unconstitutional

12. The National Labor Relations Act:
    1. was upheld by the Supreme Court in United States v. Butler
    2. gave jobs to several thousand unemployed miners
    3. was often called the Wagner Act
    4. was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1935
    5. gave employers the right to control union activities

13. Which of the following statements about the Social Security Act is NOT true?
    1. It was, according to Roosevelt, the “supreme achievement” of the New Deal.
    2. It committed the national government to a broad range of welfare activities.
    3. It provided old-age pensions.
    4. It was based on a progressive tax that took a larger percentage of higher incomes.
    5. It was a regressive tax that pinched the poor more than the rich.

14. The Revenue Act of 1935 (sometimes called the Wealth-Tax Act):
    1. provided for a regressive tax
    2. increased federal revenue significantly and thus helped finance the New Deal
    3. raised taxes on incomes above $50,000
    4. created a more equal distribution of wealth in America
    5. was an FDR response to Long’s “soak-the-rich tax”

15. In the case of Norris v. Alabama, the Supreme Court:
    1. upheld the state’s Democratic white primary
    2. overturned a state law restricting the sale of petroleum products beyond certain quotas
    3. upheld Alabama’s claim that the Scottsboro Boys were not entitled to public defenders
    4. dealt a major blow to FDR’s New Deal
    5. ruled that the systematic exclusion of blacks from juries denied defendants equal protec-

tion of the law

16. What made the dust storms worse than normal was the transition during the early twentieth century from:
    1. widespread industrial agriculture to scattered subsistence farming
    2. fertilization to naturalization
    3. widespread scattered subsistence farming to industrial agriculture
    4. forests to clear cuts across the Great Plains
    5. plowing with iron blades to plowing with steel blades

17. In the presidential election of 1936:
    1. African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican for the first time since Reconstruc- tion
    2. Republicans won most of the western farm vote and almost upset Roosevelt
    3. Republicans hoped that third-party candidates might split the Democratic vote and throw the election to them
    4. Socialist and Communist candidates together received over 2 million votes
    5. Roosevelt’s illness put vice-presidential candidate Harry Truman in the spotlight

18. Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme became unnecessary when:
    1. the Supreme Court ruled that the president, and not Congress, has authority to adjust the number of justices
    2. the Supreme Court agreed to an extension of the number of justices
    3. Congress removed cases involving the New Deal from the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction
    4. the Supreme Court began reversing previous judgments and upholding the New Deal
    5. he began using executive orders to circumvent the Supreme Court

19. The “sit-down strike” was used successfully in 1937 by:
    1. black workers
    2. southern workers
    3. steel workers
    4. automobile workers
    5. western miners

20. Labor’s new direction in the late 1930s was toward:
    1. decentralization of union organization
    2. industrial unions
    3. women in unions
    4. the Republican party
    5. craft unions

21. The 1937 economic slump was caused in part by:
    1. a sharp decrease in government spending
    2. a sharp rise in private spending
    3. the huge government deficit
    4. the repeal of the Revenue Act of 1935
    5. the announcement that Social Security payroll taxes would be postponed

22. By the end of 1937, which group had coalesced against the New Deal?
    1. African Americans
    2. liberal Democrats
    3. all western Democrats
    4. Populist party members
    5. a bipartisan conservative bloc

23. In the elections of 1938:
    1. Roosevelt was defeated in his bid for reelection
    2. Roosevelt’s attempts to “purge” the Democratic party were largely unsuccessful
    3. Republicans won control of the House and the Democrats kept a majority of only two in the Senate
    4. Republicans won control of the Senate and Democrats kept a majority of only two in the House
    5. Roosevelt’s decision to run for a third time led to Republicans calling him a fascist

24. The Farm Security Administration:
    1. administered the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1937 (the “Second AAA”)
    2. offered loans to marginal farmers (so they could avoid falling into tenancy) and to tenant farmers (so they could purchase their own farms)
    3. provided federal subsidies for the expansion of large farms
    4. established educational programs to teach farmers new agricultural methods
    5. concentrated on rehabilitating devastated soils on the Great Plains

25. The conservative Democratic opposition to the New Deal in the late 1930s:
    1. was heaviest in the South
    2. succeeded in removing three of Roosevelt’s cabinet members
    3. supported plans to replace Roosevelt with Henry Wallace as the Democratic presidential candidate in 1936
    4. supported plans to replace Roosevelt with Huey Long as the Democratic presidential can- didate in 1936
    5. was heaviest in New England

26. Charles E. Coughlin:
    1. was the “radio priest”

1. 2. headed the TVA
   3. headed the BIA
   4. wrote Uncle Tom’s Children
   5. ran on the Union ticket with Huey Long

27. Who was the economist whose ideas provided a theoretical justification of the New Deal?
    1. Henry Morgenthau
    2. Arthur Laffer
    3. Milton Friedman
    4. John Maynard Keynes
    5. Harold Ickes

28. The Indian Reorganization Act:
    1. attempted to reinvigorate traditional Indian cultures
    2. broke up tribal lands and allocated them to individuals
    3. had the support of western congressmen and assimilated Indians
    4. was the brainchild of Henry Dawes
    5. reorganized tribal leaders into nonvoting members of Congress

29. The literary work that best captured the ordeal of the Depression was The Grapes of Wrath by:
    1. Lucy Mercer
    2. Margaret Mitchell
    3. Paul Muni
    4. William Faulkner
    5. John Steinbeck

30. Richard Wright:
    1. led the conservative outcry against New Deal business regulation
    2. starred in the original version of Scarface
    3. wrote Native Son, a story of racial prejudice
    4. was the outspoken head of the Farm Security Administration
    5. was the economist who originally dreamed up Social Security

31. Just before his election to the presidency in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was serving as:
    1. secretary of state
    2. vice president
    3. governor of New York
    4. national chairman of the Democratic party
    5. a professor at West Point

32. At the outset of his presidency, to deal with the banking crisis, Roosevelt:

1. 1. pushed through a bank bailout bill worth more than $7 billion
   2. used his emergency powers to nationalize the banking industry
   3. put strict limits on the issuance of paper currency
   4. ordered the Federal Reserve Board to lower interest rates
   5. declared a bank holiday, shutting the banks down briefly

33. The social worker who headed the WPA at its creation in 1935 was:
    1. Frances Perkins
    2. John Nance Garner
    3. Henry Wallace
    4. Hugh Johnson
    5. Harry Hopkins

34. The fair practices codes of the NRA did all of the following EXCEPT:
    1. prohibit child labor
    2. establish minimum wages of $13 per week
    3. set a forty-hour work week
    4. break up large corporations
    5. establish minimum wages of $12 per week in the South

35. The dust bowl can be associated with:
    1. large migrations from the impacted area to the Atlantic coast
    2. terrible storms that plagued the Great Basin
    3. a severe blow to farmers in Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin
    4. the blowing away of millions of acres of topsoil
    5. a movie made by the WPA filmmaker Ansel Adams

36. Eleanor Roosevelt:
    1. primarily played the role of White House hostess
    2. had more influence than her husband in shaping New Deal policies
    3. was an official member of FDR’s cabinet
    4. was especially supportive of women, blacks, and organized labor
    5. became most famous for her “fireside chats”

37. Huey Long’s program to end the Depression:
    1. was a plan to “share the wealth”
    2. emphasized tax breaks for big business
    3. involved the creation of a fascist dictatorship
    4. called for unadulterated free-market capitalism
    5. involved closing down Wall Street brokerage firms

38. Which is true of the 1936 presidential election?
    1. FDR was reelected, but Republicans made big gains in Congress.

1. 2. Huey Long ran one of the strongest third-party campaigns in history.
   3. FDR defeated Alf Landon in a landslide.
   4. Concerns over the coming war in Europe dominated the campaign.
   5. FDR won every state but Texas.

39. In early 1937, FDR proposed to reform the Supreme Court by:
    1. requiring justices to retire at age 70
    2. adding up to six additional members
    3. removing justices appointed by previous presidents
    4. making justices regularly run for election
    5. requiring Senate-confirmation hearings

40. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938:
    1. set a minimum wage of forty cents an hour
    2. protected workers’ right to form unions
    3. was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
    4. required equal pay for female workers
    5. prohibited the employment of children under the age of twelve

41. The Marx Brothers:
    1. came up with the most revolutionary theory in the history of labor relations
    2. consisted of Curly, Larry, and Moe
    3. produced some of the most serious dramatic films of the thirties
    4. typified the German communists at work in Detroit’s unions
    5. produced plotless masterpieces of irreverent satire

42. In 1938, Martin Dies, a congressman from Texas, used         to brand New Dealers as            .
    1. the radio; too conservative
    2. the Ways and Means Committee; spendthrifts
    3. the Republican national convention; socialists
    4. the Committee on Un-American Activities; Communists
    5. a newspaper column; traitors

43. One drawback of the Tennessee Valley Authority was that:
    1. a drought could cause electricity rates to increase
    2. it forced people to move if their land was needed for dams and lakes
    3. Tennessee became one of the most polluted states in the nation
    4. it put all of the private power companies in the South out of business
    5. Alabama refused to accept “socialized electricity”

44. One third of the “Okies”:
    1. died in California in 1937 and 1938
    2. faked their status in order to get free food
    3. returned to their home states
    4. ended up working as miners in the Sierra
    5. never made it to California

45. To earn the federal payments for reducing crops:
    1. tenants and sharecroppers had to stick with lucrative staples such as cotton
    2. farmers had to let fields go idle for three years in a row
    3. many landowners kicked off black tenants in favor of whites
    4. farmers often starved because they were not allowed to grow even small vegetable gardens
    5. many landowners took their leased lands out of production

46. During the Depression, the U.S. government deported 500,000 Mexican Americans and their Americ- an-born children because:
    1. officials wanted to protect them from the KKK in Texas and New Mexico
    2. officials wanted to avoid the costs of providing them with public service
    3. officials wanted to put Okies to work in the California cotton fields
    4. officials felt that the race tensions in American cities was too great
    5. officials were worried that Mexico might attempt to reclaim Arizona

47. Who came up with the metaphor of a government “frozen in the ice of its own indifference”?
    1. Huey Long
    2. Eleanor Roosevelt
    3. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
    4. Charles Coughland
    5. Francis Townsend

48. All of the following is true of the National Youth Administration EXCEPT:
    1. it provided part-time employment to students
    2. it was part of the WPA
    3. it set up technical training programs
    4. it was the parent organization for the CCC
    5. it provided Richard Nixon with a job

49. The term New Deal comes from:
    1. a history published sixteen years after FDR died
    2. a newspaper editorial in the New York Times
    3. a line in “Happy Days Are Here Again”
    4. a speech FDR gave on the campaign trail
    5. a famous line from The Grapes of Wrath