DOCUMENT BASED DBQ Directions

question 39

Essay

DOCUMENT BASED
DBQ Directions
Directions: These questions are based on the accompanying documents.The documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise.
In your response you should do the following:
•State a relevant thesis that directly addresses all parts of the question.
•Support the thesis or a relevant argument with evidence from all,or all but one,of the documents.
•Incorporate analysis of all,or all but one,of the documents into your argument.
•Focus your analysis of each document on at least one of the following: intended audience,purpose,historical context,and/or point of view.
•Support your argument with analysis of historical examples outside the documents.
•Connect historical phenomena relevant to your argument to broader events or processes.
•Synthesize the elements above into a persuasive essay that extends your argument,connects it to a different historical context,or accounts for contradictory evidence on the topic.
-Evaluate the role of the New Deal in shaping political alignments and party systems in the United States during the period from 1932 to 1940.

Document 2
Source: Speech by Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 1932

Although I understand that I am talking under the auspices of the Democratic National Committee, I do not want to limit myself to politics… The present condition of our national affairs is too serious to be viewed through partisan eyes for partisan purposes…
[Our] objectives [include] restoring farmers' buying power, relief to the small banks and homeowners and a reconstructed tariff policy [as] a part of ten or a dozen vital factors. But they seem to be beyond the concern of a national administration which can think in terms only of the top of the social and economic structure… It is high time to admit with courage that we are in the midst of an emergency at least equal to that of war. Let us mobilize to meet it.
Document 3
Source: National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act), 1935

SEC. 7. Employees shall have the right of self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities, for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.
SEC. 8. It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer-
(1)To interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7…
(2)By discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization
Document 4
Source: Letter from Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes to Robert Fechner, Director of Emergency Conservation Work, 1935

My Dear Mr. Fechner:

I have your letter of September 24 in which you express doubt as to the advisability of appointing Negro supervisory personnel in Negro CCC camps. For my part, I am quite certain that Negroes can function in supervisory capacities just as efficiently as can white men and I do not think that they should be discriminated against merely on account of their color. I can see no menace to the program that you are so efficiently carrying out in giving just and proper recognition to members of the Negro race.

Granger, NYC €” All rights reserved.
Document 6
Source: Address delivered by Mrs. Ellen S. Woodward, Assistant Administrator in charge of Women's Activities, at the Democratic Women's Regional Conference for Southeastern States, held at Tampa, FL, March 19, 1936
I wonder whether the women in this country, and men too, realize just what the creation of the Women's Division in [the Works Progress Administration] signifies. It means the Administration is determined that women shall receive their fair share of work and that it has made special provision for the enforcement of that policy. When the President said that no able-bodied citizens were to be allowed to deteriorate on relief but must be given jobs, he meant women as well as men… We have learned to design projects which not only give women employment, but which increase their skill and keep them employable—so they will be ready to take advantage of the first opportunities for jobs in private industry.
Document 7
Source: Editorial, “Farmers and the Administration,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, October 1, 1937

The enthusiastic warm reception accorded President Roosevelt by the people of the west, from the state of Iowa to the state of Washington, would today be duplicated in any section through which the chief executive should chance to past… And nowhere would it be more real than in the great agricultural community of the nation… For the American farmer is well aware that the agricultural program of Franklin D. Roosevelt, dating back to the early days of 1933, is the first and only broad-range programs designed to help the farmer which really worked… Every farmer… knows that the prosperity returned to America when the A.A.A. began to work, then and only then.

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Definitions:

Average Wage

The median wage earned by workers, calculated by dividing the total payroll by the number of wage earners.

Personal Prejudice

An individual's preconceived opinion or bias against something or someone without reasonable justification.

Firm Profits

The financial gain a company receives after subtracting all its costs from its total revenue.

Earnings Ratio

Typically refers to the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, which measures a company's current share price relative to its per-share earnings.