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The USA 1919–1948: The People and the State

The state and the American people, 1919–1948

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 1

Overview

Republican aims in the 1920s, Roosevelt's three aims, the new agencies, the growing reach of Washington, the states' role, the poor, women, youth, Black Americans, persecuted groups, party support, wartime unity and the sources.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Numbers

Which religious and ethnic groups did policy bear down on most heavily?

Key term

On what grounds did Roosevelt's opponents attack the New Deal?

Key term

Why is it harder to find evidence of what poor and Black Americans thought?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What did Republican governments of the 1920s want their economic measures to achieve, and how did they go about it?

    Model answer

    They wanted business to grow with as little interference as possible, so they cut taxes on companies and the rich, shut out foreign goods behind high tariffs and left industry to regulate itself.

  2. 2

    What were the three aims of Roosevelt's programme after 1933?

    Model answer

    Relief for those in immediate need, recovery for industry and farming, and reform of the banking and welfare system so that a collapse on that scale could not happen again.

  3. 3

    Which method did Washington use again and again to put a new programme into effect?

    Model answer

    It created a new agency funded by Congress and headed by a presidential appointee to run the work directly, from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to the War Production Board.

  4. 4

    How did the reach of the federal government into daily life change between 1929 and 1945?

    Model answer

    Before the slump most citizens had almost no dealings with Washington; by 1945 it insured their bank deposits, paid their pensions, taxed their wages at source and had employed or conscripted millions of them.

  5. 5

    Why is it wrong to think only of Washington when explaining how Americans were governed?

    Model answer

    The individual states made and enforced much of the law that touched people most, including the segregation laws of the South, and state officials could blunt federal measures they disliked.

  6. 6

    How did the treatment of the very poor by government change between the 1920s and the 1930s?

    Model answer

    In the 1920s there was no federal relief and the destitute depended on charity or local funds, while from 1933 Washington paid them relief, wages on public works and later pensions.

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John presided.
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AFactories switched from consumer goods to weapons.
BCar plants turned out tanks, aircraft and jeeps.
CProduction outstripped that of every enemy.

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Whigs means party given almost every office by George I after 1714.
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