Lesson Plan Format Using Understanding by Design Framework

Stage 1: Identify Desired Results

Title: New Deal SAC

Grade: 9
Author: Bre Hill modified from Stanford History Education Group
Number of Class Periods:1
Essential Questions: Was the New Deal a success or failure?
State of Michigan Content Standards (GLCEs/HSCEs):
P1.1 Use appropriate strategies to read and analyze social science tables, graphs,
graphics, maps and texts.

7.1.3 New Deal – Evaluate Roosevelt’s New Deal policies…

Learning Objectives: Students will be able to identify the multiple responses to the New
Deal, using historical evidence, and use that evidence to explain their own opinion on the
topic.

Content Rationale: The Michigan State standards require that students learn about the
New Deal policies, including the consequences/legacies of the New Deal and opposition
to the New Deal.
Instructional Strategy Rationale: This instructional strategy allows students to use that
information that they have learned, to understand the different perspectives regarding the
effectiveness of the New Deal.
Background and Context: Students have spent the last month learning about the causes
and consequences of the Great Depression, as well as the policies of the New Deal and
their effects on the economy. This lesson allows them to think more critically about the
New Deal policies, by reading accounts of people affected by it, in addition to other texts
which give insight into the level of effectiveness of the New Deal.

Stage 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence (Assessment)

Diagnostic/Formative Assessments: The ability to complete the work packet and

effectively argue their side in the SAC, shows understanding of the New Deal and its
effect.
Summative Unit Assessments: The understanding of the New Deal will be tested on the
Unit Test at the end of the month.

Stage 3: Plan Learning Experiences (Procedure)

Instructional Strategy (please include estimated time for each step):

 Opening/Activator: Introduction to the SAC schedule and documents. Pass out the
documents for students to use for research. (5 minutes)
 Activities:
o Step 1: Students will have 20 minutes to research their stance with their
partner and organize how they will present their side. (20 minutes)
o Step 2: Have students move their desks into groups of four as I have
instructed on the PowerPoint, and move to the spot where their group is
discussing. (2 minutes)
o Step 3: Team A will have 10 minutes to present their side, while Team B
takes notes on their argument. (10 minutes)
o Step 4: Team B will have 10 minutes to present their side while Team A
takes notes on their argument. (10 minutes)
o Step 5: Both teams will abandon their assigned side and discuss as a
group, to come to a consensus on the central question. (5 mins)
 Anticipated Students Interactions/Questions:
o “Why are we doing this?”: Because it is important for you to have this
skill of being able to research a position and use facts to argue for that
position, but also to be able to see the other side and come to an agreement
with your peers.
o “What if we don’t agree with our assigned side?”: That is perfect
because it will be a great practice of using documents to argue a
perspective that you might not know much about. It also forces you to
consider the views of the other side which is a great skill to have as a
democratic citizen.
 Closing/Summarizer: We will come back together as a class, with whatever time we
have left, and I will designate each of the four corners of the room as “Strongly agree”,
“Sort of agree”, “Strongly disagree”, and “sort of disagree”. Students will be able to go
to the corner of the room that represents their position toward the statement: “The New
Deal was a success”. This will wrap up the SAC by allowing students to demonstrate
their own personal opinion on the topic.

Anticipated Total Time Required: 55 minutes

Other Important Information

Materials: PowerPoint for instructions is attached. Stanford History Education Group

lesson material is attached in a PDF. My own (modified) material for the lesson is below
in this document, as well as the original documents that were modified and included in
the SHEG lesson document.

Modifications and Accommodations: I have grouped students strategically, to

accommodate for academic weaknesses and personality differences. The lesson is
outlined and scaffolded with worksheets, to assist with students who struggle to
formulate and articulate their ideas on a topic.

Extension Ideas: Students could write an essay on their personal view of whether the
New Deal was a success or failure, using the evidence they analyzed
during the SAC to support their stance.
Name: _____________________

Structured Academic Controversy:

FDR’s New Deal
President Franklin D. Roosevelt is best known for leading the country through the Great
Depression. The New Deal was a set of policies designed to provide “relief, recovery, and
reform” that would alleviate the suffering of millions of Americans.

During today’s SAC, you will work in teams to discuss whether the New Deal was a success or
a failure. The goal in doing a Structured Academic Controversy, is that you will look at the topic
as a whole, see both sides of the argument, and find common ground as a group.

SAC Question:
During the SAC, you and your group will try to answer the following question:

Was the New Deal a Success or Failure?

Team A will argue: The New Deal was a SUCCESS.

Team B will argue: The New Deal was a FAILURE.

Schedule:
20 minutes With your partner, use the New Deal document packet to research your stance.
Find five pieces of evidence that support your side. Decide who will present what
points.

10 minutes Team A presents. BOTH PARTNERS MUST PRESENT!!!

Team B takes notes on Team A’s main points, then repeats them back to Team A.

10 minutes Team B presents. BOTH PARTNERS MUST PRESENT!!!

Team A takes notes on Team B’s main points, then repeats them back to Team B.

5 minutes Everyone can abandon their assigned position. The group as a whole will attempt
to develop a consensus.
 Organizing the Evidence
Use this space to write your main points and the main points made by the other side.

The New Deal was a success: List the 5 main points/evidence that support this side.

1. From Document ______:

2. From Document ______:

3. From Document ______:

4. From Document ______:

5. From Document ______:

The New Deal was a failure: List the 5 main points/evidence that support your side.

1. From Document ______:

2. From Document ______:

3. From Document ______:

4. From Document ______:

5. From Document ______:

Name: __________________________

New Deal SAC Make-up Assignment

If you are doing this assignment, that means you missed class on November 21st, when
we performed a Structured Academic Controversy on the central question:

“Was the New Deal a success or failure?”.

This was an in-class, discussion based lesson in which students researched the topic using
evidence from primary and secondary documents to support their stance, and debated
their stance on the topic.

To make up for this lesson, you will need to perform this type of analysis, in essay format.

I will provide you with a packet of documents which provide evidence on each side of this
topic. You need to use these documents to find three pieces of evidence that support the
idea that the New Deal was a success. Then you need to find three pieces of evidence
that say that the New Deal was a failure. Then you need to tell me your personal stance
on the topic.

Your paper needs to include:

Intro: A brief overview of what the New Deal is as well as the idea that some
people believe it was a success while some people believe it was a failure.

Body Paragraph 1: Explain how the New Deal was a success, using evidence from
the documents to support the argument.

Body Paragraph 2: Explain how the New Deal was a failure, using evidence from
the documents to support the argument.

Conclusion: Explain your personal stance on the topic. Which side do you agree
with more and why? Which pieces of evidence were most convincing to you
personally?
 Documents
They were modified from these documents, to be used in the assignment.

Document A: Fireside Chat (Excerpted from Original)

On a Sunday night a week after my Inauguration I used the radio to tell you about the banking
crisis and the measures we were taking to meet it. I think that in that way I made clear to the
country various facts that might otherwise have been misunderstood and in general provided a
means of understanding which did much to restore confidence.

Tonight, eight weeks later, I come for the second time to give you my report; in the same spirit
and by the same means to tell you about what we have been doing and what we are planning to
do. . . .

First, we are giving opportunity of employment to one-quarter of a million of the unemployed,

especially the young men who have dependents, to go into the forestry and flood-prevention
work. This is a big task because it means feeding, clothing and caring for nearly twice as many
men as we have in the regular army itself. In creating this civilian conservation corps we are
killing two birds with one stone. We are clearly enhancing the value of our natural resources,
and we are relieving an appreciable amount of actual distress. This great group of men has
entered upon its work on a purely voluntary basis; no military training is involved and we are
conserving not only our natural resources, but our human resources. One of the great values to
this work is the fact that it is direct and requires the intervention of very little machinery.

Second, I have requested the Congress and have secured action upon a proposal to put the
great properties owned by our Government at Muscle Shoals to work after long years of
wasteful inaction, and with this a broad plan for the improvement of a vast area in the
Tennessee Valley. It will add to the comfort and happiness of hundreds of thousands of people
and the incident benefits will reach the entire Nation.

Next, the Congress is about to pass legislation that will greatly ease the mortgage distress
among the farmers and the home owners of the Nation, by providing for the easing of the
burden of debt now bearing so heavily upon millions of our people.

Our next step in seeking immediate relief is a grant of half a billion dollars to help the States,
counties and municipalities in their duty to care for those who need direct and immediate relief.

The Congress also passed legislation authorizing the sale of beer in such States as desired it.
This has already resulted in considerable reemployment and incidentally has provided much
needed tax revenue.

We are planning to ask the Congress for legislation to enable the Government to undertake
public works, thus stimulating directly and indirectly the employment of many others in well-
considered projects.
Further legislation has been taken up which goes much more fundamentally into our economic
problems. The Farm Relief Bill seeks by the use of several methods, alone or together, to bring
about an increased return to farmers for their major farm products, seeking at the same time to
prevent in the days to come disastrous overproduction which so often in the past has kept farm
commodity prices far below a reasonable return. This measure provides wide powers for
emergencies. The extent of its use will depend entirely upon what the future has in store.

Well-considered and conservative measures will likewise be proposed which will attempt to give
to the industrial workers of the country a more fair wage return, prevent cut-throat competition
and unduly long hours for labor, and at the same time encourage each industry to prevent
overproduction.

Our Railroad Bill falls into the same class because it seeks to provide and make certain definite
planning by the railroads themselves, with the assistance of the Government, to eliminate the
duplication and waste that is now resulting in railroad receiverships and continuing operating
deficits. . . .

I know that the people of this country will understand this and will also understand the spirit in
which we are undertaking this policy. I do not deny that we may make mistakes of procedure as
we carry out the policy. I have no expectation of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I
seek is the highest possible batting average, not only for myself but for the team. Theodore
Roosevelt once said to me: "If I can be right 75 percent of the time I shall come up to the fullest
measure of my hopes." . . .

To you, the people of this country, all of us, the members of the Congress and the members of
this Administration, owe a profound debt of gratitude. Throughout the depression you have been
patient. You have granted us wide powers; you have encouraged us with a widespread approval
of our purposes. Every ounce of strength and every resource at our command we have devoted
to the end of justifying your confidence. We are encouraged to believe that a wise and sensible
beginning has been made. In the present spirit of mutual confidence and mutual encouragement
we go forward.

Source: President Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chat,” May 7, 1933.

Document B: African Americans and the New Deal (Original)

Until the New Deal, blacks had shown their traditional loyalty to the party of Abraham Lincoln by
voting overwhelmingly Republican. By the end of Roosevelt's first administration, however, one
of the most dramatic voter shifts in American history had occurred. In 1936, some 75 percent of
black voters supported the Democrats. Blacks turned to Roosevelt, in part, because his
spending programs gave them a measure of relief from the Depression and, in part, because
the GOP had done little to repay their earlier support.

Still, Roosevelt's record on civil rights was modest at best. Instead of using New Deal programs
to promote civil rights, the administration consistently bowed to discrimination. In order to pass
major New Deal legislation, Roosevelt needed the support of southern Democrats. Time and
time again, he backed away from equal rights to avoid antagonizing southern whites; although,
his wife, Eleanor, did take a public stand in support of civil rights.

Most New Deal programs discriminated against blacks. The NRA, for example, not only offered
whites the first crack at jobs, but authorized separate and lower pay scales for blacks. The
Federal Housing Authority (FHA) refused to guarantee mortgages for blacks who tried to buy in
white neighborhoods, and the CCC maintained segregated camps. Furthermore, the Social
Security Act excluded those job categories blacks traditionally filled.

The story in agriculture was particularly grim. Since 40 percent of all black workers made their
living as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)
acreage reduction hit blacks hard. White landlords could make more money by leaving land
untilled than by putting land back into production. As a result, the AAA's policies forced more
than 100,000 blacks off the land in 1933 and 1934. Even more galling to black leaders, the
president failed to support an anti-lynching bill and a bill to abolish the poll tax. Roosevelt feared
that conservative southern Democrats, who had seniority in Congress and controlled many
committee chairmanships, would block his bills if he tried to fight them on the race question.

Yet, the New Deal did record a few gains in civil rights. Roosevelt named Mary McLeod
Bethune, a black educator, to the advisory committee of the National Youth Administration
(NYA). Thanks to her efforts, blacks received a fair share of NYA funds. The WPA was
colorblind, and blacks in northern cities benefited from its work relief programs. Harold Ickes, a
strong supporter of civil rights who had several blacks on his staff, poured federal funds into
black schools and hospitals in the South. Most blacks appointed to New Deal posts, however,
served in token positions as advisors on black affairs. At best, they achieved a new visibility in
government.

Source: This article is from the Digital History online textbook.

Document C: Interview with Cotton Mill Worker (Excerpted from Original)

I do think that Roosevelt is the biggest-hearted man we ever had in the White House. He
undoubtedly is the most foresighted and can speak his thoughts the plainest of any man I ever
heard speak. He’s spoke very few words over the radio that I haven’t listened to. It’s the first
time in my ricollection that a president ever got up and said, ‘I’m interested in and aim to do
somethin’ for the workin’ man.’ Just knowin’ that for once in the time of the country they was a
man to stand up and speak for him, a man that could make what he felt so plain nobody could
doubt he meant it, has made a lot of us feel a sight better even when they wasn’t much to eat in
our homes.
Roosevelt picked us up out of the mud and stood us up but whenever he turns loose I’m
afraid we’re goin’ to fall and go deeper in the mud than we was before. That’s because so many
of his own party has turned against him and brought defeat to lots of this thinkin’ and plannin’.
The Bible says, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand, a kingdom divided against itself will
end in desolation.’ If they keep abuckin’ against him and bigheads get in there that try to make
too quick a turn back, desolation will follow in our country.
Roosevelt is the only president we ever had that thought the Constitution belonged to the
poor man too. The way they’ve been areadin’ it it seemed like they thought it said, “Him that’s
got money shall have the rights to life, freedom and happiness.” Is they any freedom to bein’
throwed out of yore home and have to watch yore children suffer just because you joined a
organization you thought might better you? Does it make you think you’ve got liberty to be
treated like that when the you’re workin’ for has always had a right to join the association to
multiply his own good livin’? Yessir, it took Roosevelt to read in the Constitution and find out
them folks way back yonder that made it was talkin’ about the pore man right along with the rich
one. I am a Roosevelt man.

Source: George Dobbin in These Are Our Lives, Federal Writers’ Project, 1939.
Document D: Hot Lunches for Schoolchildren (Excerpted from Original)

One million undernourished children have benefited by the Works Progress Administration's
school lunch program. In the past year and a half 80,000,000 hot well-balanced meals have
been served at the rate of 500,000 daily in 10,000 schools throughout the country.

This work of rehabilitating underprivileged children is supervised in all instances by competent

WPA workers, who while earning money with which to clothe and feed their own families, are
given an opportunity for wider training to equip them to take their places in private employment
when the opportunity arises. On March 31, 1937, the projects employed nearly 12,000 needy
economic heads of families. . . .

The school lunch projects were originally intended to serve only children from relief families, but
experience taught that growing children need a hot mid-day meal irrespective of their financial
condition. It was found also that many children from homes where there was an adequate
supply of certain kinds of food, were not receiving the proper kind of diet. It has become the
policy in many communities, therefore, to serve a hot lunch to all the school children who care to
partake. Parent-Teacher Associations have been largely responsible for making arrangements
in many instances, whereby parents of children, who can afford it, contribute food supplies. This,
however, is generally voluntary, and in no case is any distinction made in the lunch rooms
between those who do and those who do not make a contribution.

Many of the children, who are fed on WPA projects, come from homes where milk is a luxury. In
some instances, teachers have reported that nearly all their pupils who partake of the school
lunch, have no meal during the 24 hours of the day other than that furnished on the project. For
many children, who are required to leave home early in the morning and travel long distances
after school hours to reach their homes, the WPA lunch constitutes the only hot meal of the day.
In an even greater number of cases, children come to school with either no breakfast at all or a
meager one at best.

Only those who have had occasion to witness the type of lunch that many of the children were
bringing to school before the inauguration of the WPA, can fully understand or appreciate the
value of those projects.

Insufficient or improper food takes not only a physical toll, but a mental toll as well. Children
after all are sensitive beings. In some instances, children, from underprivileged families have
been known to slip away along to eat their lunches in some secluded spot--ashamed to have the
other school children witness their meager fare.

In some of the poorer communities of Georgia, for example, many of the children brought only
cold bread or baked sweet potatoes. Sometimes a child's lunch consisted of a biscuit and a
piece of fried fish. If any meat at all was included, it was usually fat white meat. Prior to the
inauguration of the WPA school lunch projects, a cold sweet potato or a poorly cooked biscuit
spread with fat constituted the usual lunch of many children in the rural communities of South
Carolina.

Before the institution of the WPA projects, many children, in certain sections of Colorado, were
reported to be bringing for lunch a piece of corn bread with molasses or a cold pancake. The
common kind of meat found in the children's lunches--when there was meat--was salt pork. In
many of the rural districts the lunches which were brought, were frozen or half-frozen by noon.
Even after the establishment of the WPA project, an effort was made to have each child in
certain Colorado communities bring his or her own bread from home to supplement the hot
dishes. This had to be discontinued because the bread that the children brought was not fit to
eat. It was dirty, dry and even mouldy. . . .

School attendance has increased and classroom work has improved in every school in South
Carolina where the school lunch project operates. Satisfactory gains in weight have been noted
in previously undernourished school children. In Greenville County, for example, children, who
were weighed at the beginning of the project, have been weighed again at the end of each five-
week period. The records showed an average gain in weight of from three to eight pounds per
child for the first five-week period.

Teachers in Decatur County, Georgia, declare that the school attendance for children, who are
fed on three WPA school lunch projects, has increased 80 percent as a result of the wholesome,
well-balanced, nourishing noonday meals which are served daily in the schools. . . .

To further this work of overcoming malnutrition and preventing its further progress, certain public
tax-supported bodies in Minnesota have sponsored allied projects for which the WPA has
supplied the labor. In some instances, milk stations provide mid-morning lunches for the needy;
and in several poor districts, where children are known to leave home on almost empty
stomachs milk and graham crackers are served at school before the beginning of classes.

In New York City alone, one WPA project employs 2,346 persons who serve free lunches to
thousands of pupils in over 1,000 schools. Health records show uniformly marked improvement
in the children's physical condition, and scholastic records show a parallel upward trend.
Teachers state that pupils, who once exhibited sullen unresponsiveness, have become alert,
interested, and in many cases, above the average in intelligence. . . .

Through the daily service of warm, nourishing food, prepared by qualified, needy women
workers, the WPA is making it possible for many underprivileged children of the present to grow
into useful, healthy citizens of the future.

Source: Speech by Ellen S. Woodward, Assistant Administrator; Works Progress

Administration.
Document E: Unemployment Statistics

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE ESTIMATES, 1919-1941

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)
Year Meredith Paul Douglas: Daniel David As a Percent of the As a Percent of the
Givens: Transportation Carson: Wein- Civilian Labor Force Nonfarm Employees
Minimum , Coal Mining, Nonfarm traub
Nonagricultura Building, & Wage & Leber-Gott-BLS Leber-Gott-BLS Coen
l Labor Manufacturing Salary Coen Darby Darby
Workers
1919 -- 6.9 -- -- 1.4 -- -- 2.4 -- --

1920 5.1 7.2 10.1 6.0 5.2 -- -- 8.6 -- --

1921 15.3 23.1 22.3 25.0 11.7 -- -- 19.5 -- --

1922 12.1 18.3 16.4 22.0 6.7 7.3 -- 11.4 12.3 --

1923 5.2 7.9 9.9 11.0 2.4 4.5 -- 4.1 7.4 --

1924 7.7 12.0 12.7 13.0 5.0 6.0 -- 8.3 10.0 --

1925 5.7 8.9 9.4 13.0 3.2 4.9 -- 5.4 8.9 --

1926 5.2 7.5 6.6 11.0 1.8 4.1 -- 2.9 6.7 --

1927 6.3 -- 7.5 12.0 3.3 5.0 -- 5.4 8.2 --

1928 -- -- 8.0 13.0 4.2 5.5 -- 6.9 8.9 --

1929 -- -- 5.7 10.0 3.2 5.5 3.2 5.3 8.8 5.3

1930 -- -- 14.3 19.0 8.7 9.1 8.7 14.2 14.5 14.1

1931 -- -- -- -- 15.9 13.0 15.3 25.2 20.7 24.3

1932 -- -- -- -- 23.6 18.8 22.5 36.3 29.4 34.5

1933 -- -- -- -- 24.9 19.8 20.6 37.6 30.6 31.1

1934 -- -- -- -- 21.7 21.3 16.0 32.6 31.8 24.0

1935 -- -- -- -- 20.1 19.5 14.2 30.2 29.1 21.4

1936 -- -- -- -- 16.9 16.6 9.9 25.4 24.9 14.9

1937 -- -- -- -- 14.3 14.1 9.1 21.3 21.0 13.7

1938 -- -- -- -- 19.0 17.8 12.5 27.9 26.2 18.3

1939 -- -- -- -- 17.2 16.0 11.3 25.2 23.7 16.5

1940 -- -- -- -- 14.6 14.4 9.5 21.3 21.1 13.9

1941 -- -- -- -- 9.9 -- 6.0 14.4 -- 8.7

Col. 1: Givens’s estimates are from NBER, Recent Economic Changes, vol. II, p. 478.
Col. 2: Douglas, Real Wages, Table 172, p. 460.
Col. 3: The number of unemployed were reported in Lebergott and came from an unpublished 1939
WPA study by Daniel Carson. The number of nonfarm wage and salary workers came from Lebergott’s
data. Lebergott, Manpower, Table 9-2, p. 409.
Col. 4: The Weintraub unemployed rates were reported in Lebergott and came from David Weintraub,
Technological Trends and National Policy, National Resources Committee (1937). Lebergott, Manpower,
Table 9-2, p. 409.
Col. 5: From Historical Statistics, series D-9, p. 126.
Col. 6: From Coen, “Labor Force”, Table 2, p. 52.
Col. 7: From Darby, “Three-and-a-Half Million,” Table 3, p. 8.
Col. 8: From Historical Statistics, series D-10, p. 126.
Col. 9: From Coen, “Labor Force,” Table 2, p. 52 and from Lebergott, Manpower, Table A-3 and A-4, pp.
512-513. Lebergott’s number unemployed was adjusted as Coen did and the difference between
Lebergott’s civilian labor force and nonfarm employee estimates was subtracted from Coen’s civilian
labor force estimates.
Col. 10: From Darby, “Three-and-a-Half Million,” Table 2, p. 7 and from Lebergott, Manpower, Tables A-2
and A-3, pp. 512-513. Darby’s estimates of the number of unemployed were divided by Lebergott’s
nonfarm employees.
Sources: National Bureau of Economic Research, Recent Economic Changes in the United States (New
York, 1929). Paul Douglas, Real Wages in the United States, 1890-1926 (Boston, 1930). Historical
Statistics of the United States: Colonial times to 1970 (Washington, D.C., 1976). Stanley Lebergott,
Manpower in Economic Growth (New York, 1964). Robert Coen, “Labor Force and Unemployment in the
1920s and 1930s; A Re-examination Based on Postwar Experience,” Review of Economics and Statistics,
55 (Feb. 1973), 46-55. Michael Darby, “Three-and-a-Half Million U.S. Employees Have Been Mislaid: Or,
an Explanation of Unemployment, 1934-1941.” Journal of Political Economy, 84 (Feb. 1976), 1-16.

Source: Gene Smiley, "Recent Unemployment Rate Estimates for the 1920s and 1930s,"
Journal of Economic History, June 1983.
Document F: Song

“No Depression in Heaven”

Out here the hearts of men are failing

For these are latter days we know
The Great Depression now is spreading
God's words declared it would be so

I'm going where there's no depression

To the lovely land that's free from care
I'll leave this world of toil and trouble
My home's in heaven, I'm going there

In that bright land there'll be no hunger

No orphan children crying for bread
No weeping widows toil or struggle
No shrouds, no coffins, and no dead

I'm going where there's no depression

To the lovely land that's free from care
I'll leave this world of toil and trouble
My home's in heaven, I'm going there

This dark hour of midnight nearing


Tribulation time will come

The storm will hurl a midnight fierce

And sweep lost millions to their doom

I'm going where there's no depression


To the lovely land that's free from care

I'll leave this world of toil and trouble
My home's in heaven, I'm going there

Source: The Carter Family, “No Depression in Heaven,” 1936.

Document G: Whither the American Indian? (Original)

Congress is authorized to appropriate $10 million as a revolving fund from which loans may be
made to these chartered corporations for the purpose of promoting the economic development
of the tribes. Repayments are credited to the revolving fund and are available for new loans. It
was this fund which made possible the fresh start of the Mescalero Apache tribe. The record of
collections on these loans has been very good.

About seventy-five of the tribal corporations are now functioning, with varying degrees of
success, and the number continues to grow. The Jicarillas have bought their trading post and
are running it; the Chippewas as run a tourist camp; the Northern Cheyennes have a very
successful livestock cooperative: the Swinomish of Washington have a tribal fishing business.
There are plenty of others to prove these corporations can be made to work.

So far, however. it has shown up best where a small, close-knit group is involved, but less
satisfactorily on such large reservations as those of the Sioux, where distances are great and
there is a certain amount of mutual distrust and jealousy between communities. Smaller
cooperatives, at least for the present, may be indicated. In the case of the Blackfeet, the tribal
council, when elected, proved to be predominantly Indians of mixed blood, and the full bloods of
the reservation, amounting to about 22 percent of the population, complained that their interests
were being subordinated and neglected wherever they conflicted with those of the mixed bloods.
...

Indian families are definitely in the lower third of the American population, so far as income is
concerned. The average for a family of four during 1937 was $600 or its equivalent in
subsistence. Work relief and direct relief made up much too large a proportion of this. Only
some of the families getting oil royalties and a very few others are in the tenth of the United
States population with family incomes of more than $2500.

Indians at Work

About 40 PERCENT OF ALL INDIANS OVER TEN YEARS OLD ARE engaged for at least a
part of the year in pursuits which bring in cash. Half of these are unskilled laborers, the other
half do various types of semi-skilled and skilled work. Fishing brings in sizable amounts to some
tribes in the Pacific Northwest. Lumbering is carried on in Oregon, Montana, Arizona, Wisconsin
and other states. The sustained yield management of timber reserves now almost universally
applied should insure an income indefinitely for the relatively small number of Indians with
commercial forests. Nearly all Indians are farmers or stockbreeders, and as such raise at least a
part of their own food supply. The cooperatives which are springing up all over the Indian
country help with marketing and do much to improve farming methods and increase production
of saleable crops.

A growing source of income has been the sale of arts and crafts. This has long brought in
sizable sums to the southwest tribes, and everyone is familiar with Navajo blankets and jewelry
and with Pueblo pottery. In fact, the popularity of these products has brought out a flood of
inferior factory-made imitations which has hurt the sale of authentic items. . . .

Homes and Health

HOUSING HAS BEEN FOR YEARS AS SERIOUS A PROBLEM ON THE Indian reservations
as in city slums. Best housed are the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona, who escaped the
destructive effects of the allotment act and early white penetration of their traditional homeland.
Since they live in a mild climate, and have plenty of building materials—stone and adobe—they
have managed well, and still do. On the plains it has been a different story. Nearly land: less,
penniless, with no way to make a living, and no satisfactory natural building materials at hand,
such tribes as the Sioux, Winnebago, Cheyenne and Arapaho have lived through the cold
winters in dirt hovels, tarpaper shacks, ancient tents and other makeshift dwellings for many
years. . . .

The truth is that the New Deal Indian administration is neither as successful as its publicity says
it is, nor as black and vicious a failure as the severest critics would have us believe. Many Indian
problems remain unsolved, but every one has been attacked. If eddies have been stirred up,
there is still a powerful current in Indian affairs, and it seems to be in a direction which gives this
splendid race an opportunity to shape its own destiny.

Source: Alden Stevens, “Whither the American Indian?” Survey Magazine of Social
Interpretation, March 1, 1940.