Use Cohen’s interpretation to explain how working-class Chicagoans’ political participation and support for Roosevelt’s Democratic coalition reflected broader changes between 1932 and 1945. Support the interpretation with a separate development from that period and explain how it points toward a more active federal role.
Practice adapted from: College Board · AP Us History 2023 Set 1 ↗ · AP U.S. History 2023 Set 1, Section I, Part B, Question 1(b), page 3
Between 1932 and 1945, working-class Chicagoans’ political participation and support for Franklin Roosevelt’s Democratic coalition reflected a broader change in how Americans understood the responsibilities of national government. Historian Lizabeth Cohen describes workers from varied racial, gender, and immigrant backgrounds becoming more active in public politics and voting Democratic more consistently and in greater numbers during the 1930s. She interprets their support as connected to their expectation that Democrats would promote federal activism and public benefits. The Social Security Act of 1935 provides a separate development that helps explain the historical significance of this expectation: the federal government established a durable role in social insurance. Together, workers’ political alignment and the creation of federal benefit programs point toward a government increasingly expected to address economic insecurity.
In the margins Why this passage works +
“The Social Security Act of 1935 provides a separate development that helps explain the historical significance of this expectation: the federal government established a durable role in social insurance.”
This introduces a distinct policy development rather than treating coalition growth or welfare-state expectations themselves as the separate example.
Cohen’s account presents participation as a form of political agency, not simply as a change in election results. She includes men and women, Black and white Chicagoans, and immigrants from eastern and southern Europe or their children. This range matters because it prevents the working class from being treated as a single group with identical experiences or motives. Cohen’s interpretation is that people from these different backgrounds increasingly entered public politics and joined a growing Democratic coalition. Their participation helped make working people a more visible constituency. As a result, questions about economic security and government responsibility could carry greater weight in political debate, even though Cohen does not claim that every voter acted from the same calculation.
The electoral change Cohen describes was substantial in its direction: during the 1930s, Chicago workers and other Americans voted Democratic more consistently and in greater numbers, joining Roosevelt’s New Democratic Coalition. Such support could give party leaders reason to respond to the interests of a broader electorate. But increased Democratic voting, by itself, does not prove why an individual cast a ballot. Cohen goes further by interpreting workers’ support as linked to their belief that Democrats would foster a more activist federal government and provide public benefits. Her account therefore connects participation to expectations about policy, while leaving room for voters to have had varied personal reasons for supporting Roosevelt.
The Social Security Act of 1935 illustrates the separate development of federal responsibility for economic security. It created a national system of old-age benefits and unemployment compensation, establishing federal involvement in areas previously addressed more unevenly through states, employers, families, or private charity. This example matters to Cohen’s interpretation because it shows that the expectation of public benefits belonged to a wider political transformation, not merely to a shift in party preference. Federal action could make assistance a public responsibility embodied in national policy. The Act did not eliminate hardship or provide identical protection to every person, but it demonstrates how government’s role could expand beyond responding to crises with temporary measures.
In the margins Why this passage works +
“This example matters to Cohen’s interpretation because it shows that the expectation of public benefits belonged to a wider political transformation, not merely to a shift in party preference.”
The sentence explicitly explains how the Social Security Act supports the argument instead of leaving the example unconnected to the thesis.
The connection between workers’ support and federal policy was political, not automatic. A vote for Roosevelt did not guarantee that a particular worker would receive a benefit, and a federal law did not mean that every voter supported every detail of it. Nevertheless, a large constituency that associated Democratic government with activism could help make federal responsibility a more consequential issue for party leaders and voters. The Social Security Act supplies an example of what an expanded role could mean in practice: national government took responsibility for parts of economic security through a lasting program. Read together, Cohen’s interpretation and this development suggest that electoral participation and federal policy reinforced a public expectation that national government should act.
The period’s changes should not be described as complete or uniform. Cohen’s passage emphasizes a voting shift during the 1930s and interprets Democratic support as reflecting expectations of federal activism and benefits; it does not establish each Chicago worker’s motive or trace every person’s political behavior through 1945. Nor did a national program ensure equal security or prove that all working-class people benefited in the same way. Those qualifications sharpen rather than undo the argument. Cohen identifies a broad political trend, while the Social Security Act shows one concrete form federal responsibility took during the New Deal. Together they support a claim about expanding expectations and government action, not universal agreement or equal results.
In the margins Why this passage works +
“Those qualifications sharpen rather than undo the argument.”
This transition keeps the conclusion appropriately qualified while showing that limitations on individual-level claims do not erase the broader historical interpretation.
Cohen’s interpretation thus connects working-class political participation to a broader redefinition of government’s role. Diverse Chicago workers increasingly supported Roosevelt’s coalition during the 1930s, and Cohen argues that they associated Democratic government with federal activism and public benefits. Separately, the Social Security Act of 1935 made federal responsibility for aspects of economic security more concrete. The two developments are related but not interchangeable: coalition growth describes political alignment, while the Act illustrates a policy expansion. Together, they show how workers’ participation could reflect and strengthen a changing expectation that national government should address economic insecurity, while leaving individual motives and outcomes varied.
How the argument works
The essay separates electoral change from policy change. Cohen’s interpretation explains why workers’ growing Democratic support mattered, while the Social Security Act supplies a distinct example of federal responsibility taking institutional form. The reasoning connects participation to political pressure and policy to an expanded public role without claiming that all workers shared one motive or received equal benefits.
The revision, explained
A separate development in Cohen’s account is the growing significance of benefits associated with a welfare state.
The Social Security Act of 1935 provides a separate development that helps explain the historical significance of this expectation: the federal government established a durable role in social insurance.
The revision replaces an abstract restatement of Cohen’s interpretation with a concrete New Deal-era policy development and explains how it demonstrates a more active federal role.
Try the idea.
In a short paragraph, explain how Cohen’s interpretation of working-class Democratic support differs from the Social Security Act as a separate development. Connect both to a more active federal role, and include one qualification about what the evidence does not establish.
See the self-check +
Cohen interprets workers’ Democratic support as connected to expectations of federal activism and public benefits; the Social Security Act of 1935 is a distinct policy development that established federal involvement in social insurance. The first describes political alignment and its possible meaning, while the second shows one way federal responsibility took institutional form. Together they suggest an expanding public role in economic security. They do not establish that every worker had the same motive or received equal benefits.
Sources and evidence
- AP Us History 2023 Set 1 · College Board