Jan 22, 2009

Getting America Back on Its Feet, the 1933 Version

(NYTimes) - By the time Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as president on March 4, 1933, banks were closed in 38 states, and withdrawals were limited in the other 10. The stock exchange had announced that it wouldn’t open that morning and wouldn’t say when it would reopen.
Unemployment was, officially, over 25 percent and actually far higher as many of those counted as employed were working only part time. Farms were being foreclosed at the rate of 20,000 a month. Hundreds of thousands were living in “Hoovervilles” and eating at soup kitchens or scavenging food from garbage cans. Farmers could not find a market for their crops. Many thought the end of the American experiment was near. Adam Cohen’s new book, “Nothing to Fear,” shows why it was not. Continued

"Nothing to Fear" excerpt: Edmund Wilson, the well-known writer, toured Chicago in 1932 and found a "sea of misery." On one stop, he saw an old Polish immigrant "dying of a tumor, with no heat in the house, on a cold day." In the city's flophouses, Wilson encountered "a great deal of t.b." and "spinal meningitis" that "got out of hand for a while and broke nine backs on its rack." Worst of all were the garbage dumps, "diligently haunted by the hungry." In the summer heat, when "the flies were thick," a hundred people descended on one dump, "falling on the heap of refuse as soon as the truck had pulled out and digging in it with sticks and hands." Even spoiled meat was claimed, since the desperate foragers could "cut out the worst parts" or "scald it and sprinkle it with soda to neutralize the taste and smell." A widowed housekeeper who was unable to find work showed up with her fourteen-year-old son. "Before she picked up the meat," Wilson wrote, "she would always take off her glasses so that she would not be able to see the maggots." Continued

Photo: Frances Perkins by Jean MacLane (U.S. Department of Labor)