The Upside of the Great Depression
History largely records the 1930s as a bleak chapter in American life. But some famous survivors fondly recall a time of resourcefulness, altruism, and even joy.
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Early in Studs Terkel's Hard Times, before the tales of Depression-era woe get rolling, we hear from a startling young man. Jerome Zerbe, a celebrity photographer for Parade magazine, not only remained stylish during the downturn, he remembered it fondly. "The Thirties," he told Terkel, "was a glamorous, glittering moment." In Zerbe's New York City there were no bread lines, no apple salesmen, and certainly no worried faces as he partied in the Rainbow Room with Roosevelt's heirs. Central Park was a jungle of cardboard shacks, unemployment hung above 20 percent. Yet for him "there was never any sign of poverty," just a few nattering headlines in the newspaper.
Was Zerbe's experience unusual? It certainly departs from the usual Depression gloom. But it isn't unique in its distance—emotional, social, and economic—from the worst of the '30s. Every few pages, in fact, Terkel's award-winning oral history fluoresces with surprisingly positive testimony: alongside fear, hunger, and desperation, there was also "fun" in soup lines, "hope" and "excitement" in job queues, and light-hearted resilience in the face of "hard times."
Just a few months ago, stories comparing our current financial woes to those of the Great Depression were everywhere, as reporters dusted off all the stock images of a cratering economy: tent cities, drought, abandoned boxcars, mental breakdowns, crime sprees. These days the analogies seem less prevalent, as the same forecasters who last winter warned of another historic tar pit point to the first green shoots of recovery. The bright spots are limited, to be sure, and much of the country is still in an economic stranglehold, with 16 percent of the workforce unemployed or underemployed, 7 million additional homes at risk of foreclosure over the next year, and welfare rolls on the rise. "I don't think the worst is over," Larry Summers, the president's top economic adviser, told the Financial Times in July.
At the same time, the economic skies have cleared enough for musings to emerge about the shape of our postrecession world. ("More environmentally orientated" and "less consumption oriented," says Summers.) Which leaves a lingering question: was all the recent Great Depression talk completely off the mark? Not if we use it as a guide for how we may eventually recall our own so-called Great Recession—as a period of hardship, but also a time of hope and opportunity. In more than a dozen interviews conducted by NEWSWEEK, famous children of the Great Depression—Pulitzer Prize–winners, Supreme Court justices, entertainers, musicians, and scholars who shaped our postwar world—recall an era more Jerome Zerbe than John Steinbeck. Yes, there were pitchfork mobs, bank runs, suicides, and divorces. There were dropouts, hoboes, and millions of unemployed workers seeking government relief.
But interviewees also described a parallel history of good times as well as bad, victories as well as defeats, and a surprising sense of stability, safety and optimism amid the general chaos.
Read entire article at Newsweek
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Early in Studs Terkel's Hard Times, before the tales of Depression-era woe get rolling, we hear from a startling young man. Jerome Zerbe, a celebrity photographer for Parade magazine, not only remained stylish during the downturn, he remembered it fondly. "The Thirties," he told Terkel, "was a glamorous, glittering moment." In Zerbe's New York City there were no bread lines, no apple salesmen, and certainly no worried faces as he partied in the Rainbow Room with Roosevelt's heirs. Central Park was a jungle of cardboard shacks, unemployment hung above 20 percent. Yet for him "there was never any sign of poverty," just a few nattering headlines in the newspaper.
Was Zerbe's experience unusual? It certainly departs from the usual Depression gloom. But it isn't unique in its distance—emotional, social, and economic—from the worst of the '30s. Every few pages, in fact, Terkel's award-winning oral history fluoresces with surprisingly positive testimony: alongside fear, hunger, and desperation, there was also "fun" in soup lines, "hope" and "excitement" in job queues, and light-hearted resilience in the face of "hard times."
Just a few months ago, stories comparing our current financial woes to those of the Great Depression were everywhere, as reporters dusted off all the stock images of a cratering economy: tent cities, drought, abandoned boxcars, mental breakdowns, crime sprees. These days the analogies seem less prevalent, as the same forecasters who last winter warned of another historic tar pit point to the first green shoots of recovery. The bright spots are limited, to be sure, and much of the country is still in an economic stranglehold, with 16 percent of the workforce unemployed or underemployed, 7 million additional homes at risk of foreclosure over the next year, and welfare rolls on the rise. "I don't think the worst is over," Larry Summers, the president's top economic adviser, told the Financial Times in July.
At the same time, the economic skies have cleared enough for musings to emerge about the shape of our postrecession world. ("More environmentally orientated" and "less consumption oriented," says Summers.) Which leaves a lingering question: was all the recent Great Depression talk completely off the mark? Not if we use it as a guide for how we may eventually recall our own so-called Great Recession—as a period of hardship, but also a time of hope and opportunity. In more than a dozen interviews conducted by NEWSWEEK, famous children of the Great Depression—Pulitzer Prize–winners, Supreme Court justices, entertainers, musicians, and scholars who shaped our postwar world—recall an era more Jerome Zerbe than John Steinbeck. Yes, there were pitchfork mobs, bank runs, suicides, and divorces. There were dropouts, hoboes, and millions of unemployed workers seeking government relief.
But interviewees also described a parallel history of good times as well as bad, victories as well as defeats, and a surprising sense of stability, safety and optimism amid the general chaos.