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Ref: MAT2_K01 |
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Part K01 ;
Excerpts from .. The Great
Depression: |
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from Sources Consulted for O ral Hist Project: |
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Historical Context Subject
Mater 1920-1950 |
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K01 |
GDA |
McElvaine Robert S.. The Great Depression: |
Originally appeared as annex
b in akp99013.rft
“The president insisted, though that his first priority was to prevent suffering. “I am willing to pledge myself. The declared in February 1931, That f the time should ever come that the voluntary agencies of the country together with the local state governments are unable to find resources with which to prevent hunger and suffering in my country, will ask the aid of every resource of the Federal Government….” But Hover said he had faith in the American People that such a day would never come” Exactly Hover by this time was acting on faith, not facts.p.51
A poorly educated New Yorker said in late 1930, “I am neither an anarchist, socialist, or communist –but by God, at times I feel as if I should affiliate myself with the radicals. P. 81
Experimentation:
“Try something if it fails admit frankly and try another…. His experimentation was often aimed a particular if vague results” p117
FDR had an understanding, perhaps an instinctive one, that what would have been political suicide a few years before was just what many Americans wanted to hear in 1932. They had seen enough attempts at roof repair and were anxious for some foundation work. Pp125-136
Marxism seemed to many American intelligentsia of the thirties to support their own moral condemnation of the marketplace economy and to uphold the values of community, justice and cooperation that some many writers of the period favored. The goal was, as progressive historian Charles Beard put it in 1935, the “subordination of personal ambition and greed to common plans and purposes.” 205
In the Fall of 1937 more than 42 percent of the poor in another Fortune poll said that “the federal government should follow a policy of taking money from those who have much and giving money to those who have little.” When those who favored such a program “ if it doesn’t go too far “ are included, more that 64 percent of the poor endorsed redistribution.
“What was evident in the films of Capra and Ford, as well as in many other Depression-era movies, was a call for a kind of cooperative individualism that recognized individuals could achieve a degree of independence and self respect only by cooperating. P 221
Not Ideology – just
rejection of greed
Americans in the 1930’s may
not have known much about ideology, but they knew what they liked – and what
they did not like. Their rejection of greed egoism and the unfettered
marketplace led them toward values through which they could “remoralise” the
American economy and society. P.223
Child labor a gradual
approach to progress
[Fair Labor Standards Act]
outlawed, at long last the use of child labor in interstate commerce…The Fair
Labor Standards Act was less than the President wanted, but it did establish
the principal of government regulation of these matters. The defects and
exclusions might be remedied in the future. P 304