24. The New Deal Experiment, 1932

Chapter Chronology

Quiz for Experiencing the American Promise: Textile Workers Strike for Better Wages and Working Conditions

Select the best answer for each question. Click the “submit” button for each question to turn in your work.

Question 24.6

1. In the 1920s, mill owners increased their productivity (and thus their profit) by

starting to use textile machines in their mills.

making their workers tend more looms at a time.

employing children, who had small and efficient hands.

converting their mills to assembly line production.

Question 24.7

2. During the Great Depression, textile workers experienced such low wages and poor working conditions that some workers compared their situation to

slaves in the pre-Civil War South.

Mexican immigrant workers.

Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany.

the livestock owned by farmers.

Question 24.8

3. Why did the passage of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) in 1933 fail to improve the working conditions and wages of textile workers, as the NRA’s textile code promised to do?

The textile code did not actually improve on the realities of working conditions in the mills.

The NRA was quickly undermined by local bureaucrats who adjusted its provisions.

Mill owners simply ignored the NRA’s textile code and continued business as usual.

The NRA exempted female workers from coverage and most textile workers were women.

Question 24.9

4. Which of the following is one reason why the textile workers’ strike of 1934 ultimately failed?

Not enough workers decided to participate in the strike.

Mill owners stubbornly refused to bargain with the union.

The federal government sent in troops to stop the strike.

Local communities were unsympathetic to the strikers.

Question 24.10

5. How might unionization have actually harmed some textile workers in the 1930s?

Being involved with the union caused them to take time away from work.

Many textile unions became corrupt in the 1940s and began siding with the bosses.

Unions focused so much on work hours that they neglected other kinds of conditions.