Research Paper
Introduction
Americans used many techniques to search for work in the hard times of the 1930s--walking to the factory gate, talking to friends and relatives, consulting employment bureaus and school referral services, and, of course, poring over newspaper want ads. By the 1920s, about two thousand employment notices appeared daily. While the want ads could be a source of opportunity, they were also a mechanism for discrimination.
In this assignment, we will use the online version of the New York Times to build a database of information on what kinds of people employers deemed appropriate--and inappropriate--for particular jobs. Using this collected information, we will then try to draw useful conclusions about what opportunities and restrictions people looking for jobs faced during the Great Depression.
Assignment
Download this database spreadsheet. Click the right mouse button to save a copy to your disk, or, on a Macintosh, click and hold the mouse button and choose "download link to disk." It runs in Microsoft Excel. Mason students can use a personal copy of Excel or the version provided at Concordia computer labs.
Begin searching the online version of the New York Times. In this period, the Times was the most important newspaper in on the East coast of the United States. Begin your search with the period 1929-1932, then search the period 1933-1936, then finally the years from 1937 through 1940. Enter "help wanted" as your search term and choose "citation and document text" from the pulldown menu. In search results, view items with "Classified Ad" or "Display Ad" in the title.
Enter the information you find into the "job ads" database you downloaded. You should enter information for at least fifty job ads.
Questions
Consider these questions as you begin to compile your database:
1. What were the occupations advertised for the most? What do these jobs tell you about the local occupational structure in New York?
2. Which jobs most often required particular qualifications in addition to job experience? Why?
3. Did ads for men or for women have more special requirements? Why?
4. Did household or commercial ads have more special requirements? Why?
5. What kinds of people would have better chance getting a job in New York during the 1930s? What kinds restrictions by gender, age, or race existed for various kinds of jobs in the 1930s?
6. Judging from the requirements listed in the ads, what do you think the conditions of work would be for people employed in these occupations during the 1930s?
7. Did the requirements, occupations, salaries listed in the job ads, or the number of ads per day change over time during the decade? If yes, how?
Task
Write a three page analysis of the data, due on Tuesday, April 15. The paper should be no more than three pages, double spaced, with a cover page, using 12pt Times or Times New Roman font and with standard margins. You must also email a copy of your database to me (erazlogo@alcor.concordia.ca) by the deadline. You may print out a copy of a database as well, and attach it to the paper.
After you have read and considered the guiding questions, you need to begin a careful analysis of the data. There is no right or wrong answer in this assignment: instead, you will be graded on how well you support your conclusions. Here is a general guide to writing historical papers.
It's often useful to begin by considering if anything you found was unexpected. Were you surprised by anything you found--or didn't find? Historians pay special attention to these "gaps" between what we expect as "normal" and what we seem to find in the material. Some historians argue that the past itself is a foreign country, with very strange and different customs. Consider those things that surprised you--what can you conclude from them?
Finally, consider whether there has been any change over time. Did you notice anything different in the last set of ads? If so, what did it mean? Your goal here is not just to report what you see, but to try to figure out what it means. You should feel free to speculate, as long as you have evidence.
Here is a guide to analyzing historical documents: analysis of representative ads; and a first paragraph of an essay.
This next part is crucial: Your paper should have a thesis, a conclusion you have drawn about the job market constraints in the 1930s. You should support that thesis with evidence drawn from the information in your database. Your thesis needs to be more than the obvious, more than something like "ads for stenographers most often asked for women." You should try to be as precise as possible and to take account of any change that occured over time. When you are describing or quoting from the evidence you have found, you must give the source in a footnote or endnote.