historical policy question - research paper

ok, i have this research paper thats due next monday. i'm having trouble finding sources that can help me with the paper. so i thought maybe you guys here could help me out a little bit. thanks a lot

so we had to read George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" and that would be one source for the paper.

now the paper topic is:
Compare and Contrast the social safety net available to Orwell in both Paris and London, 1930's. compare the European examples with the American model of the same era, early depression.

now the thing thats bugging me is that we can't use policies enacted from the New Deal, it has to be before that. So the social safety nets available in America before the New Deal happened is what i'm looking for.

thanks again for any help.

 

well look for the things the new deal provided, those were obviously not there beforhand, so you could say he had a lack of those things..

 

down and out and the new deal happened almost simultaneously i think give or take a year or so.
down and out is sometimes as funny as it is illuminating it is the european and english experience of the depression. george went on to write other books in a similar vein. have a look at "the road to wigan pier" this a much darker account of poverty.

 

ah i think i figured out what my prof. wants now...has nothing to do with actual gov't policies, just the way people in poverty lived...like the life of a plongeur (paris) vs the life of a tramp (london) vs the life of the american equivalient during that time period. the jobs they did, where they slept (example the spikes they had to travel to, embankments, benches...and so on).

 

Income tax was first passed during or after the civil war, i can't remember wich, but it was repealed and later re-instated.
And the economy reached pre-depression levels in 1937, not 1941.