How a Different America Responded to the Great Depression

[ProSense]

How a Different America Responded to the Great Depression

by Jodie T. Allen, Senior Editor, Pew Research Center

Were confirmation needed that the American public is in a sour mood, the 2010 midterm elections provided it. As both pre-election and post-election surveys made clear, Americans are not only strongly dissatisfied with the state of the economy and the direction in which the country is headed, but with government efforts to improve them. As the Pew Research Center's analysis of exit poll data concluded, "the outcome of this year's election represented a repudiation of the political status quo.... Fully 74% said they were either angry or dissatisfied with the federal government, and 73% disapproved of the job Congress is doing."

This outlook is in interesting contrast with many of the public's views during the Great Depression of the 1930s, not only on economic, political and social issues, but also on the role of government in addressing them.

Quite unlike today's public, what Depression-era Americans wanted from their government was, on many counts, more not less. And despite their far more dire economic straits, they remained more optimistic than today's public. Nor did average Americans then turn their ire upon their Groton-Harvard-educated president -- this despite his failure, over his first term in office, to bring a swift end to their hardship. FDR had his detractors but these tended to be fellow members of the social and economic elite.

<...>

Bear in mind that while unemployment had receded from its 1933 peak, estimated at 24.9% by the economist Stanley Lebergott,2 it was still nearly 17% in 1936 and 14% in 1937.3 By contrast, today's unemployment situation is far less dismal. To be sure, despite substantial job gains in October, unemployment remains stubbornly high relative to the norm of recent decades and the ranks of the long-term unemployed have risen sharply in recent months. But the current 9.8% official government rate, as painful as it is to jobless workers and their families, remains far below the levels that prevailed during most of the 1930s.

more

Fascinating information.

[stray cat]

1. I will take the current situation over the great depression

Although wold war II.was great for getting the economy started again

[BlueJac]

5. War is really working for us now..........

taking us down financially

[FreakinDJ]

2. The BIG difference is the FUX News Propaganda Machine

As with the Great Depression and FDR's New Deal we had then as we do now the RATpubliCON detractors which now as it was then sought to prevent FDR from implementing his hard fought provisions of Regulation and a Social Safety Net.

1 of the "Hard Fought Battles" FDR won was his "Photo Commission" who captured events taking place all across America and exposed them through the "then Non-Propaganda Media" for ALL Americans to see. RATpubliCON law makers at the time fought, as did the Greedy Robber Barons to keep the photos from being published.

Throughout the struggle of the Depression, businesses attempted to counter the photographic justification from federal agencies that gained public support for social programs. Americans discovered the industry as deceptive, but still disliked the idea of centralizing their farms rather than obtaining loans for private work. Big businesses ran with this opposition and tried turning the public’s enthusiasm back by expressing corporations as the needed progress however superficial it truly was. For example, GM’s Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair claimed “future credit” for universalizing health and cleanliness without compromising free enterprise.

Industries fought against FDR’s New Deal package that planned to build homes, provide temporary jobs, and lower production with higher costs. They did this intending for citizens to turn their eyes back to the appeal of big, private business and the money it artificially promised, despite the ringing truth that they caused the horrible existing conditions. Machines claimed abilities to improve dangerous working conditions, low pay, and little food by sweeping their own responsibility in the situation under the rug. Industrial deception continues today, as the documentary Manufactured Landscapes shows through beautiful photojournalism.

http://designhistorylab.com/?tag=the-great-depression

[MBS]

3. YES: many thanks for this

My New-Deal Dem parents, who experienced all those statistics at first hand, said this many many times; they also talked a lot about how there was more a can-do spirit, of the country being in this together, and working together to solve problems. . . unlike the last few fearful, narcissistic, can't-do decades. And they worried about the future of our country precisely because of this difference in the country's spirit that they sensed.

For those who haven't done so yet, it's worth clicking on the link and looking at the original. In addition to the rich data, the illustrations -- vintage posters, photos, etc --are fantastic.

Thanks again for posting this.

[lunatica]

4. Contributors were the Dust Bowl then, climate change now

Dust Bowl


Climate change

[jwirr]

6. Contributing to the present feeling is oil depletion and outsourcing.

They had their climate problems back then also but it was not in all parts of the country. So if you put these three problems of today together and no one is even acknowledging most of it then you end up with some real hopelessness.

I have lived in both eras. I still have a signed photo of FDR hanging in my desk area. He gave us hope and told us the truth. He addressed the real problems. I felt the same about President Obama and I do not blame him for what he does not accomplish as long as he tries. What really upsets me is that the government does not directly address the three above problems. Some encouragement and direction would be helpful. Maybe when the repugs start in on their denial issues that will change - I hope so.

[ProSense]

8. There is another contributor:

The mortgage crisis is a new phenomenon, weighing heavily on the economy, and the solution is not going to be a quick or easy fix.

[jwirr]

10. Yes, and I forgot credit card debt. Which is ironic since I am drowning

in it.

[craigmatic]

7. In the 30's Americans didn't have mass media to tell them what to think.

They had seen what happens when the government did nothing because most of them were alive during the guilded age. They were tired of suffering and having nothing and realized that they needed the government to step in. Now we're so used to being told that we can have it all right now that we've forgotten what real suffering is. We've also had an activist government for the last 70 years even though the last 30 were activist conservative government. In short we're bombarded with so much information from the media that it affects our perception of reality. We don't know what we need anymore without being told by our corporate masters.

[Bluenorthwest]

9. If you want to know why people felt strongly about FDR

listen to what he said to the nation during that first term. No one then, nor now, expects a swift end to difficult times, and that is an excuse that really does not play at all. That is not what is expected. To suggest such is to slander the American people for the sake of politicians, and that's not my trip. The sun was in their eyes, the wind was against them. Whatever.
Listen to FDR. Learn.

[ProSense]

11. Actually,

there was a lot more cooperation in those days. Roosevelt historian David Woolner:

<...>

Unfortunately for all of us, but especially for President Obama, who is no doubt sincere in his desire to move the country toward a shared sense of economic prosperity, the Congress he inherited in 2009 was nothing like the Congress that FDR faced in 1933. In FDR’s day, some of his strongest critics were conservative Democrats, while some of his strongest supporters were liberal Republicans. Congress also understood and agreed that the country was indeed facing an “unprecedented national emergency,” and as such tended to put the needs of the nation ahead of partisan political interests. In this much healthier political environment, the filibuster was a rare event and it was not only possible, but fairly common, for New Deal legislation to pass with both Republican and Democratic support. That is something for which all of us can be thankful, as many of the measures passed by Congress and the President more than seventy years ago have helped stop today’s Great Recession from becoming a second Great Depression.

[krawhitham]

12. wasn't unemployment messured different in the 30's

Plus the population for the USA in 1930 was 122,775,046

now it is 308,745,538


btw Gallup has unemployed at 19% currently

[hayu_lol]

13. I have posted several times now that it is only the ...

social programs designed by FDR and approved by a congress that have kept this recession from being a full-blown depression...the various sorts of aid available: unemployment compensation, welfare, social security, food stamps and the like bring new money into every hamlet and city in the country. Without these, another depression.

What the possibility of $4/$5 gas/oil products will do if they occur is return us to something possibly worse than than what took place in the early 30s.

Today's glorious leaders have their heads in the sand and will not act.

Yeah, most people in the 30s were much more neighborly than the general population of today. Somehow, we lost that over the years.

b. 1935

[boppers]

14. My grandfather went on the road to find *any* work.

My grandmother cut the household electrical bills back by using one lightbulb in the entire apartment. They rarely bought new clothes (a sewing machine and fabric was cheaper), didn't pay for a cell phone, cable, a television, a car, etc. They didn't buy pre-made foods, they actually cooked everything, and ate everything.

Contrast this with a couple "under-employed", living in a freestanding home, with two cars, who has to take HBO off their brazillion channels, because $30,000 just can't buy all the luxuries that they're used to having.

There's very much a sense of entitlement now, where even the slightest hardship is a reason for rejection, possibly because we had such a good run that most of the living have never had a hard life, compared to life during the depression...

When I was so broke two years ago that I was down to one lightblub myself, I had lots of time to think about this. In the last two years my annual clothing budget has been $60 a year, my food/drink budget $3,650 a year ($10 a day). I finally got rich enough, scrimping and saving, that I finally got a newer car (a 2000), cable, TV, and splurged on HBO.