Writing a Letter of Appeal

During the Depression years, thousands of Americans wrote directly to President Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt describing in great detail their personal situations, as well as proposing solutions to the nation’s economic crisis. These letters frequently were referred to the appropriate Government agency for reply.

Louis Kroll’s letter is typical of this correspondence; and it was referred to the Subsistence Homesteads Division, then in the Department of the Interior. Under the National Recovery Act (1933), the Division had been set up to assist destitute workers by relocating them from cities where employment opportunities were limited to small communities where they could find work and supplement their income through farming.

Suggestions for Teaching

Activities 1-3 seek to emphasize writing skills in social studies, while activities 4-6 focus primarily on historical observation and research skills. Select from these ideas those activities that best serve your objectives.

1. Ask each student to read carefully Louis Kroll’s letter and write a short paragraph paraphrasing it. When the paragraphs are complete, discuss the following points with the students:

a. Are the writer’s points clearly stated? Why or why not?

b. What is the style of the letter? What determines the style?

c. How do you identify tone? (Consider vocabulary, sentence structure, and the like.)

In light of the students’ paragraphs and your subsequent discussion, what is the impact of Kroll’s style, tone, vocabulary, and sentence structure on the facts presented in the letter?

2. Using one of the following profiles, direct students to write a similar letter to President Roosevelt or Eleanor Roosevelt.

a. You are a veteran of World War I, partially disabled, with a large family. You live in Oneida, Pennsylvania, and before the war you were a coal miner.

b. You are an eighth-grade student writing on behalf of your family. Your father is unemployed and your mother is ill. Your six-year-old brother has quit school to work at odd jobs to help support the family.

c. You are a woman writing from Iowa, where farmers are unhappy about the Government’s apparent indifference. You want to see more done for small family farms.

Students might exchange their letters and compare them in terms of style, tone, and content.

3. Ask students to read carefully the Kroll letter and discuss it as a source of historical information. Direct them to write a paragraph (based on answers to the following questions) that describes the letter as a historical source:

a. What information in the letter places it in a particular time period?

b. Does the letter provide details about the writer’s personal situation?

c. What is the purpose of the letter?

d. What factual information is in the letter?

e. What inferences, generalizations, and conclusions might be drawn from the letter?

If students have completed the secondactivity, they might direct these questions to their own letters.

Click the image to view a larger version

4. Use Kroll’s letter as the basis for a discussion of the sources of history and how historians use primary and secondary sources in writing history.

5. Use Kroll’s letter as the basis for an opening discussion of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Review the letter carefully as evidence of the nation’s needs during the Depression.

6. Students might further investigate the Subsistence Homesteads Division to discover more about it and evaluate its work. They might also compare this New Deal project with current urban homesteading efforts.

The letter reproduced here is found in File Kai-Las, Drawer 37, General Correspondence, 1933-35, Subsistence Homesteads Division, Farm Security Administration, Records of the Farmers Home Administration, Record Group 96.

Related Readings

Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. New York: 1974. Paperback edition. Difficult reading for some students, but has excellent photographs.

Hunt, Irene. No Promises in the Wind. Chicago: 1970. Fiction.

Lange, Dorothea, and Paul Taylor. American Exodus. New Haven: 1969. Excellent photographs.

Steinbeck, John. Grapes of Wrath. New York: 1939. Fiction.

Terkel, Studs. Hard Times. New York: 1970. Oral histories with much local color.