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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 does Billy Green say he was unaffected by the Depression?

2. What shocking information did General Smedley Butler report to Congress in the 1930's?

3. What moment excited Wilbur Kane to the point of mocking his German neighbors?

4. According to Buddy Blankenship in Sixteen Ton, what was the state of coal miners before the Depression?

5. According to Samuel A. Heller, what did police often do with arraigned people awaiting trial in the 1930's?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did Jack Kirkland become famous during the Depression?

2. How does Max Shachtman explain the decline of Communism's popularity in America?

3. What safety concerns pervaded mines in the 1930's?

4. According to Horace Cayton, why did black Americans not join the Communists en masse?

5. Who was Martin Dies?

6. In the Depression-era Midwest, how did corn prices lead to corn being burned and pigs being slaughtered?

7. What role did Elsa Ponselle play in the forming of the Teacher's Union?

8. What does Dr. Martin Bickham discover about the American drive to work through his relief work in the 1930's?

9. How much power did coal companies have in the towns they inhabited?

10. How did Ray Wax's life disillusion him to the idea of strive-and-succeed?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Studs Terkel mentions throughout the book that the Roosevelt administration had a vested interest in chronicling the realities of the Depression as it was happening. Write an essay about three of these historical/artistic documents. What specific component of the Depression experience did each highlight? What was its medium? How was it received at the time and since? Why did the Roosevelt administration avoid publicizing that it was funding this sort of archiving work?

Part 1) Tobacco Road.

Part 2) The River.

Part 3) Dorothea Lange's portraits.

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

Studs Terkel interviews enough people who lived through the Depression that certain archetypes begin to emerge over the course of the book. Write an essay in which you choose an interview that fits each archetype:

Part 1) Choose an interview from an individual who lost wealth in the Depression and discovered a talent at making money through hard work. Where did this person turn to make money? What did he or she discover about society that this person did not know about before? What is this person's worldview after the Depression?

Part 2) Choose an individual who is disappointed by the fact that the country was not largely radicalized by the Depression. To what cultural-political ideology does this person subscribe? What was his or her personal experience during the 1930's? What hope does this person have for the future of America?

Part 3) Choose an individual who lived in a bubble of comfort in the Depression and was not aware of widespread suffering. What was the nature of the bubble in which this person lived? What is his or her impression of the Depression?

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