What is the dilemma of working people in the United States?

Start a new word document, saving that document as “YourLastNameRO4.” Then do the following for this week’s assigned readings:

I. In 1-3 sentences define and explain the significance of these key terms using the Zinn text and/or by looking them up on the internet. Make sure to use your own words; cutting/pasting without quotes/citing is plagiarism.

Hoovervilles
The New Deal
National Recovery Act (NRA)
Wagner Act of 1935
Memorial Day Massacre
The CIO
The Social Security Act
Federal Theater Project, Federal Art Project, Federal Writers Project
Harlem Renaissance
American Isolationism
The Atlantic Charter
“Fat Man”
The Smith Act
II. Answer the following questions for A People’s History of the United States. http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)

Zinn chpt 15 (Links to an external site.)(everything AFTER “the stock market crash of 1929”):

What does Zinn quote Ford as saying a week before laying of 75,000 workers?
Why would the dispossessed be dangerous as Steinbeck put it?
Including the PA coal miners name 2 ways people helped themselves directly during the Great Depression?
How/why was the NRA criticized and attacked and why did the Supreme Court declare the NRA unconstitutional? (not the National Rifle Association! the National Recovery Administration!)
What were the 2 …sophisticated ways of controlling direct labor action developed in the mid thirties?
Did the Wagner Act help workers? Government? Employers? How did the Act stabilize industry?
What is the dilemma of working people in the United States? and what really ended the immense unemployment of the great depression?
The minimum wage of 1938 had 2 other effects (besides setting a minimum wage); what were they?
What does Zinn mean when he says that, “When the New Deal was over capitalism remained intact.
Zinn chpt 16: (Links to an external site.) Everything UP TO “The Truman administration, however, presented the Soviet Union as not just a rival but an immediate threat.”

What finally provoked the US entry into WWII?
Why did the historian Thomas A. Bailey believe that FDR had to “deceive the American people?”
What does it mean that the US had an ambivalent policy towards Indochina?
Name 2 ways that American business filled the void left by the decreasing influence of English imperial power.
Zinn states that “The plight of the Jews… was not a chief concern of Roosevelt.” What evidence does Zinn provide to corroborate that statement?
What was Executive Order 9066?
How many worker strikes occurred in the US during the war?
What is the strategy of saturation bombing? How was it used (specifically) during the war?
Zinn provides a convincing argument against the US use of the atomic bomb (on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Do you agree with his reasoning? Why or why not?
What does Lawrence Wittner mean when he writes that, “The war rejuvenated American capitalism,” and how might that have led to “a permanent war economy?”
III. Answer the following questions for “The Great Depression: America 1929-1941: Chapter 8, ‘Fear Itself'” (Links to an external site.)

What sources does the author discuss using in order to understand the Depression era minds/experiences of working-class Americans?
The author states that, “Modern industrial society does not provide a place or position for a person; rather, it requires him to make his own placeand to strive to better it. This is taken to be the measure of ones individual worth. Americans had been brought up on the belief that meaningful work is the basis of life. Without such work, people felt they had no reason for being.” How might a financial crisis like The Great Depression work to undermine this assumption that “meaningful work is the basis of life”?
What reasons does the author provide that it was easier for women to beg for assistance than men?
What is “the dole” and how did it contribute to the shame, despair, apathy, and resentment of those on it?
Describe the dilemma women on relief faced for having children.
How did, “Unemployment upset the traditional roles of father, mother, and children?”
Explain the following quote used by the author: ” ‘The Negro was born in depression,’ Clifford Burke told Studs Terkel. ‘It only became official when it hit the white man.'”
Name two ways New Deal programs had a negative impact on African-American employment.
Name two ways the Great Depression improved race relations and decreased discrimination in the US.

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html

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