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Difficulty: HardThe New Deal: Policies, Reforms, and Debates

"The AAA [Agricultural Adjustment Administration] has worked a direct hardship on the negro tenant farmers and sharecroppers. When the government pays the landowner to reduce his cotton acreage, the landowner simply pockets the check and dismisses the tenants. The money that was supposed to bring relief to the farm worker has instead funded the mechanization of the plantation, leaving thousands of our people homeless and unemployed."

— John P. Davis, Joint Committee on National Recovery, testimony before the Senate, 1935

Which of the following conclusions about the New Deal is most directly supported by the excerpt?

  1. New Deal programs often reinforced existing economic and social inequalities because their local administration favored landowners over marginalized laborers.Answer
  2. B
    Federal agricultural planning successfully resolved the Great Depression's farming crisis by guaranteeing equitable economic recovery for both landowners and tenant farmers.
  3. C
    The Roosevelt administration addressed these inequities by introducing Great Society programs such as Medicare and the War on Poverty to provide direct healthcare and welfare to displaced sharecroppers.
  4. D
    The New Deal fully resolved the issues of Southern agricultural poverty through federal projects that guaranteed high-wage industrial employment to all displaced farmworkers.

Answer

New Deal programs often reinforced existing economic and social inequalities because their local administration favored landowners over marginalized laborers.
The correct answer is correct because the AAA aimed to raise crop prices by paying landowners to reduce crop acreage. In the Jim Crow South, local AAA administration was controlled by white landowners who routinely pocketed the federal checks and evicted Black sharecroppers who were no longer needed. This demonstrates that New Deal reforms often reinforced existing socioeconomic and racial inequalities rather than providing universal relief.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the stimulus document to identify the main argument and key historical actors.
The author, John P. Davis, argues that the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) caused hardship for Black sharecroppers and tenant farmers by providing landowners with subsidies that led to evictions and mechanization.
This establishes the perspective of the document and highlights the negative consequences of a major New Deal program on a specific marginalized group.
2
Contextualize the local administration of New Deal policies in the American South during the 1930s.
AAA local committees in the South were controlled by white landowners, giving them the power to pocket federal subsidy checks and evict tenant farmers when acreage was reduced.
This explains why the New Deal reforms did not benefit all rural workers equally and instead worsened existing class and racial divides.
3
Evaluate the choices to find the one that reflects the stimulus arguments and historical accuracy.
The correct answer accurately links the local administration of New Deal programs to the reinforcement of existing inequalities, while the distractors contain errors regarding the timeline of recovery and conflation with later reforms.
This confirms the correct option while eliminating choices that contain historical misconceptions.

Key Concept

The limitations and internal debates of New Deal policies, particularly how structural and local factors prevented marginalized groups from receiving equitable relief.
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Topics

The New Deal: Policies, Reforms, and Debates

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