Please read "HARD TIMES" by Studs Terkel, an oral histroy of the Great Depression

[McCamy Taylor]

I recommended this book last spring, but I want to do so again. Anyone who wants to know what the stakes are if we elect John "Herbert Hoover" McCain, should read this book. Over the course of years, Studs Terkel interviewed people who lived through the Great Depression. Some were homeless. Some were rich.

You can hear some of the interviews here

http://www.studsterkel.org/htimes.php

This is a quote from the book:

“This is a memory book rather than one of hard fact and precise statistic….The precise fact or the precise date is of small consequence. This is not a lawyer’s brief nor an annotated sociological treatise. It is simply an attempt to get the story of the holocaust known as The Great Depression from an improvised battallion of survivors.”

“That there are some who were untouched or, indeed, did rather well isn’t exactly news. This has been true of all disasters. The great many were wounded, in one manner or another. It left upon them an ‘invisible scar’….The suddenly-idle hands blamed themselves, rather than society. True, there were hunger marches and protestations to City Hall and Washington, but the millions experienced a private kind of shame when the pink slip came. No matter that others suffered the same fate, the inner voice whispered, ‘I’m a failure.’”

“True there was a sharing among many of the dispossessed, but, at close quarters, frustration became, at times, violence, and violence turned inward. Thus, sons and fathers fell away, one from the other. And the mother, seeking work, said nothing. Outside forces, except to the more articulate and political rebels, were in some vague way responsible, but not really. It was a personal guilt.”

Terkel does not analyze the causes of the Great Depression. Instead, he gives us the effect. Over and over, we see Americans who blamed themselves for their own misfortune. Unemployment was the single greatest problem during the Hoover administration. Able bodied, skilled people wandered from city to city riding the rails, lured by rumors of jobs. A posting for a single position would draw hundreds of applicants. Everyone longed for work. But, with the economy in a shambles, there was no work.

Living on the "dole" did not compensate for the loss of esteem that came from the inability to support families with meaningful labor. People became despondent, angry, bitter. These feelings did not end until FDR was elected and began his works projects and other programs designed to address the affects of the Depression on the people of America, not just the Market.

This is why we need a Democrat in the White House. The Stock Market only exists to serve us, the people. We keep it strong so that it can generate economic prosperity so that we can invest for the future and so that we can have good jobs and so we can get loans for houses and so our kids can go to college.

No president should ever again demand that the American people suffer as they did under Hoover while the rich stay rich and all efforts are confined to nursing the "Market" and the investments of the elite----but that is what Bush, McCain, Davis and Gramm want to do.

The economic strength of the American middle class is the strength of America.

[ixion]

1. Also: "Grapes of Wrath" and "In Dubious Battle"

both by John Steinbeck.

[EFerrari]

2. At this point, I think I'm afraid to. But will rec and mark. n/t

[ThomWV]

3. My father was a child of the Great Depression, it framed every aspect of the rest of his life

He was not one of the ones who came out of it well.

[bamademo]

4. My Grandparents lost a farm in the depression...

Later, my Grandfather became a farm manager for a rich lady in Huntsville, Alabama so they moved there from Tenneesee.

She kept aluminum foil, rubber bands and paper bags squirreled away. To this day I do the same. She taught me how to make butter, raise chickens and grow a garden. I will always be grateful to her for teaching me to be so self sufficient. But I won't wring a chickens neck and clean it. I'll buy it from the store, thank you very much.

[Bozita]

5. Studs Terkel is a living American treasure.

[catnhatnh]

6. "Working"

...Is also worth a read...Dad was born in '26 and Mom in '28...they remember the depression. Mom's folks were early unionists and Dad's were quite frankly rumrunners when it paid. People did whatever seemed a viable course. In case everything collapses you should have a "plan B"...