History 12
Ms. Lacroix
Name ___________________________________
FDR and the New Deal – DBQ
Source A – oral history – interview with WPA worker
Interview with Chris Thorsten, Iron Worker
Interviewee: Chris Thorsten
Birth: 51 years ago, on board a fishing boat moored to a dock in New Orleans
Ethnicity: Scandinavian
Education: No formal education
Occupation: Iron Worker
Location: Union Hall, 84th Street, New York City
Date: January 31, 1938, 1 PM to 3 PM
Interviewer: Arnold Manoff
Interview Excerpt: "Is your job dangerous?"
You ain't an iron worker unless you get killed... Men hurt on all jobs. Take the Washington
Bridge, the Triboro Bridge. Plenty of men hurt on those jobs. Two men killed on the Hotel New
Yorker. I drove rivets all the way on that job. When I got hurt I was squeezed between a crane
and a collar bone broke and all the ribs in my body and three vertebrae. I was laid up for four
years.
Excerpt from the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writer's Project
Collection, Transcript #22032106.
Source B – graph of unemployment in 1930s America
Source C – from text “Nothing to Fear” by historian Adam Cohen, 2009
“Roosevelt’s critics like to point out that the New Deal did not end the Great
Depression. Although it took World War II to restore the unemployment rate to where
it had been before the Great Crash, the New Deal did produce steady economic
improvement. The nation’s total production increased significantly between 1934 and
1936. By 1937, the gross national product reached 1929 levels. Unemployment had
fallen to 14% in 1937, still high, but far below the rate of March 1933. Just as
important, for people who remained unemployed, New Deal programs were providing a
safety net. Most of the 20 million Americans who received relief from the FERA at its
height, and the millions who took CCC, CWA, or WPA jobs, would have been destitute
if the nation had stuck by its Hoover era principles.
“It’s his baby now!”
Paragraph response (6)
To what extent was Franklin Delano Roosevelt successful in dealing with the Great
Depression through the legislation offered in his “New Deal”. Refer to each of the
sources, including an assessment of their reliability when answering the question.