2023 (August): NY Regents - United States History and Government (Framework)
By Sara Cowley
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Last updated 3 months ago
37 Questions
Note from the author:
From the New York State Education Department. UNITED STATES HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT (FRAMEWORK). Internet. Available from https://www.nysedregents.org/ushg-framework/823/us-82023-examw.pdf on State Education Department Website; accessed 30, May, 2024.
From the New York State Education Department. UNITED STATES HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT (FRAMEWORK). Internet. Available from https://www.nysedregents.org/ushg-framework/823/us-82023-examw.pdf on State Education Department Website; accessed 30, May, 2024.
Passage One
Passage Two
Document 1
. . . This is not an issue as to whether the people are going hungry or cold in the United States. It is solely a question of the best method by which hunger and cold can be prevented. It is a question as to whether the American people on the one hand will maintain the spirit of charity and of mutual self-help through voluntary giving and the responsibility of local government as distinguished on the other hand from appropriations out of the Federal Treasury for such purposes. My own conviction is strongly that if we break down this sense of responsibility, of individual generosity to individual, and mutual self-help in the country in times of national difficulty and if we start appropriations of this character we have not only impaired something infinitely valuable in the life of the American people but have struck at the roots of self-government. Once this has happened it is not the cost of a few score millions, but we are faced with the abyss of reliance [trap of relying] in [the] future upon Government charity in some form or other. The money involved is indeed the least of the costs to American ideals and American institutions. . . .
(Source: President Herbert Hoover, Press Statement, February 3, 1931)
Document 1 (click to enlarge)
Document 2
[The following is an excerpt from a Senate speech given by Senator Robert La Follette opposing United States membership in the League of Nations.]
. . . We have already paid a fearful price for our participation in the late war. It has cost us the lives of more than 50,000 of our finest young men slain in battle, and over 200,000 maimed and wounded, and many thousands of others who lost their lives through disease growing out of the war. It has cost us some thirty billions of dollars, most of which still remains to be wrung from our people—principal and interest—by heartbreaking taxes which must be paid by this and succeeding generations. . . .
But, sir, there is one thing which is now demanded of us that we did not bargain for when we entered this war, and that is the surrender of our right to control our own destiny as a Nation.
After all, . . . that is what membership in this proposed league of nations is to cost us. Up until the present time we are still free to travel the road which the founders of our Government intended us to travel. We are still free to fulfill the destiny for which we are fitted by the genius of our people, the character of our institutions, our great
resources, and our fortunate geographical position. All this we are asked to surrender in order to become a member of this league of nations. . . . We are asked to depart from the traditional policy which our position on the American Continent has enabled us to pursue of keeping free from entangling alliances of European politics, and to become a party to every political scheme that may be hatched in the capitals of Europe or elsewhere in this world of ours. . . .
(Source: United States Senator Robert M. La Follette, Speech on the League of Nations,
November 13, 1919)