What do intelligence tests, advertising circulars, and accounts of people impacted by the Great Depression have in common? They represent some of the main concerns in the United States during the 1920s though the late 1930s. The Roaring 20s was concerned mostly with consumerism and immigration issues, while the major question in the 1930s was how to survive the Great Depression. These sources paint a picture of some of the underlying issues that the United States dealt with when it went from a booming consumer nation teeming with immigrants to a nation with over 20% of its people unemployed.
The intelligence test is a strong example of Americans’ attitudes towards immigrants: Americans were suspicious and fearful of these newcomers. The question of who can/should be an America was a hot topic in the 1920s. The description of the puzzle talks about how Dr. Howard a. Knox diligently worked on creating intelligence tests that would give a fair evaluation on the aptitude of the new immigrants. This process decided who was fit to come into America and it also representative of how Americans hoped that new migrants would assimilate quickly and easily to American society. Americans who
…show more content…
One of the ways that the government provided jobs to all those who were left unemployed was through the Works Progress Administration during the Second New Deal. The article, “WPA Road” shows one of the ways that the WPA employed people: digging roads. The article illustrates the difficult work that WPA employees were doing and long hours that they work. It is interesting to note that most of the employees did farming on the side in order to make sure that their families were fed. This fact demonstrates how desperately the people who worked for the WPA needed the job and how much their families relied on the money that they