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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why was the Michigan governor Frank Murphy branded weak-willed regarding the sit-in strike?

2. How did Jim Sheridan travel to the Bonus March?

3. What did Terkel's parents do for a living before the Depression?

4. What did Slim Collier's father do before the Depression?

5. What famous Depression tune did Yip Harburg write?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why is Jerome Zerbe's interview oddly disturbing?

2. Why was psychoanalysis largely ineffective in the Depression?

3. Who is Bob La Follette?

4. How did blues and alcohol play a defining role in Terkel's college years?

5. How did the effects of the Crash become apparent in Terkel's parents' business?

6. How do interviewees who were young in the 1930's realize something bad happened in the country?

7. How did Mrs. Winston Roberts of Chicago survive the Depression?

8. How did the Bonus March end?

9. How was Dr. Lewis Andreas converted to union support in 1937?

10. What does Phyllis Mortimer do when her family falls on hard times in the 1930's?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In exploring the many divergent movements and personalities that shaped the 1930's, Terkel interviews his subjects about individuals who helped shape the national debate in this time. Write an essay about three dominant voices in America at the time of the Depression:

Part 1) What role did Dr. Francis Townsend play in the national debate regarding helping the poverty stricken? What plans did he offer for taking care of the elderly, and why was he vilified as a result of this plan? What government program eventually emerged from the ideas that Townsend offered in the 1930's?

Part 2) What message did Father Coughlin offer that made him the dominant radio voice, besides Franklin Roosevelt, in the 1930's? What was the appeal of this message to those affected by the poverty of the Depression? How did this populist message transform into something far more insidious as the US approached joining the war against Hitler?

Part 3) What role did Huey Long play in the 1930's? How did his populist policy-making find a national audience, and how did this sudden popularity force Roosevelt to reconsider his Depression policies? Why did Huey Long never run for president himself?

Essay Topic 2

The Great Depression was a time during which the most basic and reliable of systems in the United States failed. Though full-on revolution never broke out in America, dissident movements cropped up regularly. Write an essay about three such movements. What issue or injustice gave rise to this spontaneous act of dissidence? How did the movement grow in strength? What happened that finally put an end to the movement?

Part 1) The Bonus March.

Part 2) The opening night of The Cradle Will Rock.

Part 3) The farmers of Iowa stopping corn deliveries.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay on the psychological effects that the joblessness of the Great Depression has on men in America. What do interviewees recall their fathers doing to pass time and feel useful? Why did men of this era refuse to take government relief and turn so often to alcohol instead? How was America's psychiatric profession unprepared to deal with the effects of joblessness on the population? What obvious causation were psychiatrists ignoring?

(see the answer keys)

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