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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. What controversial action did the Rural Rehabilitation Division undertake in the 1930's?

2. According to historian Christopher Lasch, what was never a serious possibility in the Depression?

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

4. When were the collectivized camps outside of urban centers closed?

5. What two roles did Henry Wallace play in the Roosevelt administration?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe the incident with the Iowa Judge in The Father Is the Man?

2. How were the prisons affected by the Depression?

3. What strange dichotomy exists in Stanley Kell's interview in Honor and Humiliation?

4. What did Hiram Sherman do after The Cradle Will Rock?

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

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

7. Why does Myrna Loy think she never got to meet Roosevelt in person?

8. Describe Harry Hartman's experiences repossessing belongings in the Depression.

9. What was Edward Burgess's experience of the 1930's?

10. According to Elizabeth Wood, how did public housing develop the stigma it has today?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Write an essay about the far left in America. What were its expectations when the stock market collapsed in 1929? Did it expect that the American capitalist system was completely defunct? How did events in Europe throughout the 1930's affect the coalition of far left groups in the United States? What occurred politically and economically in America that rendered the left toothless by the time World War II started?

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay about the young people who are interviewed about the Depression in Hard Times. What information do most of them have about the facts of the 1930's? What current events - those of 1970 - concern these interviewees? How are the concerns of the 1930's connected to the present issues? Discuss how the more politically-active interviewees view the consumerist spirit that was born out of the Depression.

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