420 Final Exam Study Guide
Exam conditions
The final exam will be exactly like the first exam: a long essay based on a prompt like one of those above, and four brief term-ID essays. The ID terms will be taken from the lists above. Different sections will likely be taking different exams, so it will do you no good to find out which terms & essays were on a different section's exam. Students will be required to turn in their phones and smart watches before the exam period begins. They will also not be allowed to leave the room to use the rest room, so please use the bathroom before the test begins.
For some tips on taking this kind of exam, see my "In-Class Essays" page.
Essay questions that might be on the test
Explain what was unsettling about the rise of modern culture in the 1920s and what was heroic about William Jennings Bryan from the viewpoint of a traditionalist from Dayton Tennesee (where the Scopes Trial took place).
The stock market may not have caused the Great Depression, but it played a role. Explain how the underlying weaknesses in the 20s US economy were catalyzed by the crash and helped to bring on the depression.
Explain the difference between explanations offered by Paul Johnson and John Maynard Keynes for why the German economy recovered so much more quickly than the US? Which theory offers a better model for dealing with future downturns in the economy in the US? Why?
Whose judgement of the New Deal makes more sense: Bernstein or Degler?
How and why did the world descend into a second world war in 1939? Was FDR's vision for a future peace well designed to prevent such a thing from happening again?
The Twenties, crash & Depression
Themes: 1. Explain the culture war of the 1920s. 2. Narrate the economic history of the 1920s from early prosperity to crash and depression. 3. How was Hoover's approach to recovery different than and similar to FDR's?
Scopes Trial
William Jennings Bryan
Normalcy
Protective Tariff
Department Stores
Installment purchasing
Model-T
New Morality
Prohibition
Christian fundamentalism
National Origins Act
Modernism
KKK
Birth of a Nation
Black Tuesday
Speculative bubbles
Worker productivity
Smoot-Hawley
Federal Reserve
Bank runs
Consumerism
Brokers' loans
Margin calls
Herbert Hoover
Volunteerism
RFC
Laissez Faire
Associationionalism
Bonus Army
Hooverville
Dust Bowl
Okies
The New Deal
Themes: 1. Who is closer to correct in their assessment of the New Deal--Johnson, Bernstien, or Degler? 2. How were the reform measures of the New Deal likely to prevent future depressions? 3. Roosevelt failed to take decisive action to dismantle Jim Crow and Blacks were excluded from many key New Deal programs; so why did Black voters switch their votes from the party of Lincoln to FDR's Democratic Party? 4. Explain the theories of the causes and cures of the Great depression of Johnson and Keynes.
Bank Holiday
Fireside Chats
Relief, Recovery, Reform
Glass-Steagall Banking Act
CCC
FERA
TVA
WPA
NIRA
NLRA (Wagner Act)
Fair Labor Standards Act
Social Security
Payroll tax
Dole
Minimum wage
Appalachia
Huey Long
CIO
Sit-Down Strike
Progressive income tax
Regressive levies
Collective bargaining
Fiscal orthodoxy
Deficit spending
Balanced Budget
National debt
Direct relief
Work relief
New Deal coalition (217)
Barton Bernstein
GI Bill
Redlining
Restrictive covenants
Pluralistic politics
A. Philip Randolph
Harvard Sitkoff
March on Washington
John Maynard Keynes
Roosevelt recession
Countercyclical action
Four Freedoms
Second Bill of Rights
Court Packing
Guarantor state
The U.S. in a Troubled World
Themes: 1. How and why did the world descend into war in 1939. 2. What did the Four Freedoms and the Second Bill of Rights have to do with national defense?
Manchuria
Pearl Harbor
Dec. 7, 1941
Chiang Kai-shek
Rape of Nanjing
Mao Zedong
Weimar Republic
Spanish Civil War
Lebensraum
Sudetenland
Appeasement
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Poland
Sept. 1, 1939
Blitzkrieg
Stalingrad
Operation Sea Lion
Battle of Britain
The Blitz
Barbarossa
Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere
Battle of the Atlantic
Four Freedoms
Second Bill of Rights
"Necessitous men"