Jason Warhurst

11/15/2015
History 1700
Document Analysis #3

The first article is from what is called a fireside chat. President

Roosevelt started these fireside chats to communicate with the American
people. He used the radio to talk to America on a personal level, and
because he talked on a personal level he was very successful with his
fireside chats and the people loved him for it. He brought a different sense
compared to former presidents, they had never talked to the people like this,
but they didnt have the means to do it either. President Roosevelt took office
in 1933 during the Great Depression, and he used cleaver tactics to win the
office. The former president was Hoover and he wasnt very popular because
the people felt that he didnt do enough to try to combat the Great
Depression. President Roosevelt said that he had a New Deal for the
American people and he would get started on making a change. He had a lot
of work to do, so he got started right away.
President Roosevelt tried anything and everything to try to improve the
situation of the people. Some of the things that he did were to start certain
agencies to help with unemployment. There were many of the agencies that
would help temporarily because there were so many people out of work they
could only work with groups of people for so long and then the next group of

people would come along. Having said that, he received a lot of criticism
about what he was doing because the number of unemployment hadnt
changed. This specific fireside, he was talking to the people about some of
the criticism that he had received. He compared our nation to others and
said that they might be fine with a high percentage of unemployed but he
wasnt. He said, I stand or fall by my refusal to accept as a necessary
condition of our future of a permanent army of unemployed. For this very
reason President Roosevelt was a very loved and successful President.
The second article talked about the migrants and their struggles.
During the Great Depression farmers were hit twice as hard as others.
Apparently in the 1920s the economy was booming and that was due to the
war that had just ended. During the war farmers expanded their fields and
crops to meet the demands of this country and others. After the war farmers
were still making just as much but not selling it. This was the first hit and the
second hit was during the great depression. Farmers had a lot of food and
debt and werent able to pay the bills from their expansions during the war.
With these expansions workers were needed to help maintain the crops and
the fields. Migrants were good workers and they were in high demand.
During the 1920s farmers and their workers were struggling and it only got
worse during the Great Depression. John Steinbeck said Thousands of them
are crossing the borders in ancient rattling automobiles, destitute and
hungry and homeless, ready to accept any pay so that they may eat and
feed their children.

I feel like these to article work together. President Roosevelt

implemented a lot of things to help farmers, Steinbeck only focuses on the
terrible condition that the migrants were in but with Roosevelt helping
farmers regulate their production to stay in business he was also
inadvertently helping the migrants with maintaining their jobs. Both of these
are during a very dark time in American history, but there were also a lot of
lessons learned in order to keep the economy headed in the right direction.