Full Name: _____________________________ Hrm: _______ GRADE: ____/20 pts.DBQ - The Great Depression & The Dust Bowl – Analyzing Documents

Document 1

1) Why would Gordon Parks believe that the Stock Market Crash would have no effect on his “small world”?

2) Why was Parks unable to find a job in the weeks after the Stock Market Crash?

Document 2

3) Describe why the market continued to rise in the 1920s.

4) Why was Black Tuesday such a pivotal day in the history of the Stock Market?

“MARKET CRASHES—PANIC HITS NATION!” one headline blared. . . . I couldn’t imagine such financial disaster touching my small world; it surely concerned only the rich. But by the first week of November I too knew differently; along with millions of others across the nation, I was with out a job. All that next week I searched for any kind of work that would prevent my leaving school. Again it was, “We’re firing, not hiring.”. . . Finally, on the seventh of November I went to school and cleaned out my locker, knowing it was impossible to stay on. A piercing chill was in the air as I walked back to the rooming house. The hawk had come. I could already feel his wings shadowing me.—Gordon Parks

Document 3

5) Judging by the above quotations, was Hoover realistic in his assessment of the severity of the Great Depression? Why or why not?

6) What was Hoover’s attitude toward government intervention in the economy, based on the quotations above?

Document 4

7) Why did President Herbert Hoover follow a trickle-down theory in order to combat the Great Depression?

8) Why did President Franklin Roosevelt follow a theory of pump-priming to combat the Great Depression?

Document 5

“We in America today, are nearer to the final triumph over poverty that ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is vanishing from among us. . . .We shall soon . . . be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.”— campaign speech given by Herbert Hoover in 1928 “the fundamental business of the country . . . is on a sound and prosperous basis.”—Herbert Hoover during the first week of the stock market crash, 1929 “The Depression is over.”—Herbert Hoover in 1930 “The spread of government destroys initiative [independent action] and thus destroys character. Character is made in the community as well as in the individual by assuming responsibilities, not by escaping them.”—Herbert Hoover in 1930

“… Republicans followed a trickle-down theory… They reasoned that, if government legislation protected the wealth of big corporations and the well-to-do, their continued investments would expand the economy and a better life would ‘trickle down’ to workers and consumers in general.

FDR and his advisors viewed things differently. They felt that government would use pump-priming that government should take actions that would make the consuming public secure and optimistic… By increasing government programs, business activity would increase, thereby fostering consumer confidence and investment keeping the economy growing…”

-United States History & Government: Constitutional & Geopolitical I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision, which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves, which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days. . . .Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources. Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms.—Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1933)

9) Why does Roosevelt argue that “fear itself” is the greatest problem facing the country?

10) What is the main thing that the country has to do, according to Roosevelt?

11) Describe the tone of Roosevelt’s speech. Why do you think he used this tone?

Document 6This map depicts the areas affected by drought during the Dust Bowl.

12) Which states were directly affected by the Dust Bowl?

13) Which states were also affected by dust storms?

Document 7This Picture depicts a giant dust cloud engulfing a small mid-western farm during the Dust Bowl.

14) Why were mid-western farms vulnerable to dust storms?

Document 8 “It was such a nice clear Sunday. We had hung the laundry out on the line that morning, and mother had washed the upholstered chairs and set them out to dry. I walked up to our horse pond and had picked up a tone to skip across the water. While I was throwing I happened to look up and noticed this long gray line on the horizon. It looked like a thunderhead, but it was too long and flat and it was rolling toward me way too fast. I sprinted to the house to tell my parents that the dust was coming but they wouldn’t believe it until they went outside and looked for themselves. Then we started hauling in clothes as fast as we could just snatching them in armloads and running. The cloud caught me outside with a load of clothes. I couldn’t’ see anything at all. It was black as night. I got down on my hands and knees and tried to crawl toward the house. I finally felt the porch, and reached up and opened the screen door and crawled inside. “For a long time it was total blackness inside, except for one thing. When I looked out the window I could see our radio antenna outlined in static electricity. There were little balls of fire all over it caused by dirt particles rubbing together. Finally the sun began to shine as a faint glow of orange light coming in through the windows. As it got lighter, I could see baskets and brush sailing past us. It felt like we were flying through space.”

“I guess we had gotten used to it, because it had been that way for a long time. Our windows were taped up and the cracks in our walls were stuffed but nothing kept the dust out. Whenever we ate a meal we had to turn our plates and cups and glasses over until the exact time the meal was served. Even then, you could write your name in dust on your glass by the time the meal was done. Every night before we went to bed we scooped a little water into our noses and blew out the dirt. We put covers over our faces and a sheet over my little sister’s crib. Some people slept with masks on. “You didn’t want to get caught out in a storm, either. Some families strung clothesline between the house and the barn so that they could always find their way back to the house. We always made sure we had food and water with us when we left the house. When the dust started flying and I was away from the home I tried to find a fence-line to follow. My father used my brother and I as guides when he was plowing with the tractor in the fields. I’d stand at one end of the field with a kerosene light and my brother would shine a light at the other end. My dad would try to drive straight between us. The dust came so fast that it would cover up the tractor’s tracks.”

April 14, 1935: Black Sunday

Near Dodge City, KansasHarley Holladay

15) In which ways did the family take precautions against the dust storms?

Document 9

Those families who had lived on a little piece of land, who had lived and died on forty acres, had eaten or starved on the produce of forty acres, had now the whole West to rove in. And they scampered about, looking for work; and the highways were streams of people, and the ditch banks were lines of people… The great highways streamed with moving people… And this was good, for wages went down and prices stayed up. The great owners were glad… And wages went down and prices stayed up. And pretty soon now we'll have serfs again… And the little farmers . . . lost their farms, and they were taken by the great owners, the banks, and the companies… As time went on, there were fewer farms. The little farmers moved into town for a while and exhausted their credit, exhausted their friends, their relatives. And then they too were on the highways. And the roads were crowded with men ravenous for work, murderous for work. And the companies, the banks worked at their own doom and they did not know it. The fields were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads… The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line… On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.

The Grapes of Wrathby John Steinbeck

16) What is the setting of this passage from The Grapes of Wrath?

17) What is the cause of the farmers’ anger?

Document 10

18) Describe how the cartoonist depicts Roosevelt’s view of the role of government. What do you think the cartoonist thinks about the effectiveness of President Roosevelt’s attempts to deal with the Great Depression?