WARM-UP QUESTION:

What were different views about how to help the poor during the Great Depression? (Read each source below, then answer the questions in the notebook. Ask your teacher for an inquiry organizer worksheet to help you think about the ways that the sources support and contradict each other.)

SOURCES:

READ: Of course We Can Do it!

Head Note: This 1931 advertisement appeared in Literary Digest, a popular weekly magazine. The President’s Organization on Unemployment Relief, a government group that helped coordinate President Hoover’s response to the Great Depression, wrote the advertisement.

Source: Advertisement from Literary Digest, a weekly magazine, November 21, 1931.

USE THE NOTEBOOK (instructions):

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Contextualizing: Situate the document and events it reports in place and time.

How did this approach to relief compare to earlier American ideas about helping the poor? Listen to Historian Mike O'Malley for help.

Close Reading: Read carefully to consider what a source says and the language used to say it.

The poster says, "Of course we can do it!" Who is "we"? What is "it"? What is the poster trying to do?

Close Reading: Read carefully to consider what a source says and the language used to say it.

Pick one phrase or symbol from the advertisement that is meant to persuade the reader. Identify your choice and then explain how it persuades.

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