Hard Times - an oral history of the Great Depression
Hard Times - an oral history of the Great Depression
'Hard Times' is a collection of interviews about the Great Depression in America, the massive economic downturn that happened from 1929 to 1939 (roughly, obviously the effects never stop cleanly at any one year, but it's the common year attributed to its end).
The strength of the book is also its weakness: it collects interviews from all kinds of people living in vastly different situations, which is good to get a kaleidoscope of what America was at the time, but as a result, it's also difficult to get any clear and coherent sense of what was happening and experienced at the time in the entire country.
Obviously the vast majority experienced hardship in one way or another, though some people got wealthier through their specific business or idiosyncratic living situation—investments weren't increasing in value at that time unsurprisingly. Some people thought that the New Deal was necessary and delivered amazing results, others thought that it was terrible precisely for those it was supposed to help. Some people felt personal shame from being now dirt poor, while others recognized that it was a societal problem. Some people thought that America expressed comradery and resilience during those hard times, others thought that the Great Depression showed just how selfish people really were. And some people thought that the optimism of the roaring 20s was good overall, even despite its excesses and its problems that led to the Great Depression, while others thought that America was naive at that time and wouldn't learn from its mistakes moving forward.
One of the few points that they all seemed to agree though is that the war was good for the country, for both the economy and the motivation of the workers, even if some of them obviously didn't support the moral aspect of warfare. Another one is the importance of human dignity, because otherwise chaos and despair would settle in, and a great deal of movements would focus on empowering people in one way or another. "Bread lines lead to despair, but picket lines lead to hope", a quote from book 3 chapter 4.
In a sense this is what life looks like when viewed without the filter of history, a lens which is necessarily oversimplifying because it compresses years of real life events and the lives of radically different people, into a few hundred pages or so. But still, I want to write down a few takeaways that I've noticed, most notably about working class people, as I am not particularly interested in how rich people lived through this type of crisis.
Notes
There was a deep need for stability in the people who lived through those times. Wanting to own their own farm and land so that they could provide for themselves instead of relying on a system which is uncertain in its stability and good intentions
Some people were still obsessed with status and appearing somewhat rich even during the Great Depression! That's how deep status runs in society
The dust bowls were the nail in the coffin for many farmers. I would read from The grapes of wrath by Steinbeck to get more of an opinion about them, but they were absolutely devastating in terms of the crops and the cattle
There was many dust bowl refugees (hundreds of thousands) who travelled the country to look for work and more stable living conditions
Many farmers experienced times where their crops were basically worthless. Corn which was cheaper than coal to burn. Animals which they couldn't sell. All of this is why the American government felt the need to do something, because the volatility of markets is very high, but you need a stable environment for people to be motivated to grow food
This led to farmers organizing their own version of a strike: the farm strike, which consisted in holding off food from the market to increase the price, which understandably led to conflict because people needed the food to eat, and the farmers needed the money
Unions became a big deal for a lot of people at that time, workers or unionizers. I don't know to what extent they were actually effective, especially in the long term, but at the very least company owners and managers had to take them seriously, otherwise they would be faced with strikes and other nasty things
Welfare and government projects were also huge at that time, as those were the big things put on the table by the New Deal, which was radical for America at that time to have a government intervene so much
Another thing that the government had to intervene on to stabilize the economical situation was to prevent bank runs and the massive amount of banks closing (about 600 a year in the twenties, and in the thousands in 1929 and 1930), such as in the form of a bank holiday in 1933
Unemployment was incredibly high. Many jobs had entire queues of people for them, and only a few people would be allowed to work
War veterans complaining about how they fought the Germans, but their own country is treating them even worse in a sense. "Brother, can you spare a dime?" as the song goes
Notable differences between that crisis and now
There is an impending set of crises ahead of us, because our ways of living are utterly based on fossil fuels, but those resources cannot be extracted forever. Will there be a second Great Depression? I would say so, but in a way it will be worse because the crisis will be about energy, and not just overspeculation.
Some of the differences I can think of between then and now (2026):
People nowadays have far less practical skills. They don't farm, or work in factories, so the local production of each country, much less more local regions, is quite dire in Europe
I also don't think that people could travel as much to find jobs as the people back then could. Everything is much more rigid now because of the bureaucracies we have, and of course a collapse would undermine many of those, but I don't think that the willingness to travel across a continent and hope to get a job would exist in our times
Communication was obviously very sparse in those days. Many rural folk simply did not know what happened on the stock markets, they simply saw that jobs were much harder to get and that prices were becoming worse for them. Nowadays we have almost the opposite problem which leads in the same outcome funnily enough: hundreds of interpretations of what is going on, none of which really help you make sense of the situation,1 meanwhile regular people see that jobs are harder to get, and prices are becoming worse, but they're told that the "economy" is doing well because the stocks of certain hi-tech companies are going up (totally not a bubble by the way)
Crime syndicates were a thing during the Prohibition, and organized crime was of course very much a thing in those times (Al Capone was active from 1925 to 1931), and I think that nowadays they would be significantly worse. Criminal gangs would have access to phones to communicate with one another, and can coordinate around shared goals for looting, robbing and hold their own turfs, whereas for most people it's much harder to use communication technologies in the same way during a time of crisis, because they don't know who to reach for, or who to trust
Funny anecdotes
That story in book 1 chapter 3 where cops try to arrest people for selling booze (during the Prohibition), got tricked into checking the content of the bottle, and it was filled with piss
There was a version of 'technocracy' (as an idea, not as something which was implemented) which existed in those times, which still had the idea of having engineers and scientists rule people, but it also had the idea of having energy dictate prices, which made me smile because it is entirely correct since energy is more fundamental than money, yet is something that most "intellectuals" nowadays ignore or even scoff at (book 1 chapter 5)
The doctor in book 1 chapter 7 who says that people were shot in the back, and had to explain and demonstrate to the attorney, in front of court, what the 'back' is
"One could sit there nursing a teacup filled with bootleg gin or whiskey. But it was all elegant. In teacups, china cups" (book 5 chapter 1)
People who owned cars in the Great Depression for status, but couldn't drive them anywhere because gasoliene was too expensive (book 5 chapter 1)
How an audience was denied access to a theatre, and the actors contacted another theatre to play in, and marched with their entire audience across the streets to relocate to the new place. They managed to acquire even more spectators than were initially there because they were curious about where everyone was going. (book 5 chapter 1)
"A few men drifted in, and the first thing you find out is that many of them do not understand or speak English. And this was written in, supposedly, common American speech. Here we were preparing an opera for the proletariat, and the proletariat neither wants nor understands it. It's a rather shocking occurrence." (book 5 chapter 1)
How the organizer of a theatre play (called Cradle will Rock) found a picnic of church ladies and asked them if they wanted to attend it. "It begins on a street corner at night, and enter the whore. When he said those words, our audience got up and packed up their picnic baskets and left us." (book 5 chapter 1)
An enforcement agent coming to take personal goods from someone because they couldn't pay, and a young girl undressing, saying "You'll have to leave, I'm in the nude" to try to get him out of the house (book 5 chapter 3)
"We formed a ring around a huge tree and each one's head had for a pillow the butt of the fellow in front of him. (Laughs)" (book 5 chapter 3)
"Another guy said 'Look kid, they don't know who the hell they hired. Just get in the crowd.' So I got in the crowd. As we moved through the door, he said 'What's your name?' I said 'Ray.' He said 'We didn't hire you.' And I said 'Yes, you did hire me.' He said 'You're full of shit.' I said 'So help me God, you really did hire me!' He said 'All right.' and he gave me a batch of flowers. This is the way I became a flower vendor." (book 5 chapter 5)
Not so funny anecdotes
The infants who didn't get proper food because there was no milk. Some infants dying during the train rides because of the smoke and soot
The husband in book 2 chapter 2 who reported an issue in the boiler of a mining company, told his boss but nothing was done about it, (supposedly because it would cost money to fix it) which led to 3 people dying because of it
"This neighbor woman lost her husband, and of course, he was owing in the bank. So the auctioneers come out there, and she served lunch, and she stood weeping in the windows. 'There goes our last cow ...' And the horses. She called 'em by names. It just pretty near broke our hearts. They didn't give her a chance to take care of her bills. They never gave her an offer. They just came and cleared it out. She just stood there crying ..." (book 2 chapter 3)
"I sat on one side of the long table by myself, and Mr Mellon and his twelve layers sat on the opposite side" trying to report a conflict of interests, because a secretary of treasury owned government bonds. Then some people robbed his office because of that (book 3 chapter 2)
Some notable quotes
It's amazing the kind of lines that regular people can deliver, in many ways far better than so-called "writers" of our times.
"The farmer was a ping-pong ball in a very tough game" (book 1 chapter 3)
"There'd be this kind of futile struggle, because somehow you never expected to win. We had a built-in losing complex" describing people making demands from the government, or for rent (book 1 chapter 3)
"You hear the same kind of talk about student demonstrators today. It's all right for them to protect peacefully, but they must do it in accordance to the rules" (book 1 chapter 6)
"Double standard of laws being made for the protection of money and not the protection of human beings." Still the case today (book 2 chapter 1)
"I never suffered economically because I never looked at economics" (book 2 chapter 1)
"I'm not knocking it. I have been what society generally refers to as a parasite. But I don't think I'd be a nicer fellow if I held two jobs" (book 2 chapter 1)
"Cash had a language on its own" (book 2 chapter 1)
"The young today are feminized, embryo homosexuals. Stool pigeons" The eternal complaints of the young, a classic. Later: "Those people today—the fall of Rome could be compared with it. Because they were the strongest nation on Earth, and they disinterrogated2 into nothing. Through debauchery, through moral decay. They need a narcotic to do anything, they can't do it on their own. They need a drug. Back in my era, we could cold-bloodedly do it." (book 2 chapter 1)
"They didn't have the privilege of calling their souls their own. Most people by that time was in debt so far to the company itself, they couldn't live. [...] They fired the guy that got the mule killed. They told him a mule's worth more'n a man. They had to pay for $50 for a mule, but a man could be got for nothin'." (book 2 chapter 2)
"We give the land back to the mortgage holder, and then we're sued for the remainder. [...] In South Dakota, the county elevator lists corn as minus three cents. Minus three cents a bushel." (book 2 chapter 3)
"It's a strange thing. This is only thirty-five years ago—Roosevelt, Wallace. We have a new generation in business today. Successful. It's surprising how quickly they forgot the assistance their fathers got from the government." (book 2 chapter 3)
"You'd go to the auction and what would you see among the 'articles too numerous to mention'? A doll, a couple of books, a basket with the Bible in it, the kid's wagon... Here you have the whole history of the family in all this junk. People pawing over it and buying it for a penny on the dollar." (book 2 chapter 4)
"The attitude of people today is bad enough even though they're gainfully employed. It's difficult for me to understand the attitude of the youth." The eternal generational gap huh? (book 3 chapter 1)
"We were all affected by the Crash. My salary was cut fifteen percent" Oh wow! Feel free to tell that to the farmers who lost most of their possessions (book 3 chapter 1)
"In the late 20s, the farmers were in distress because all the money went to Wall Street. They were using it up there, manipulating. They were not using money out in the country. The same thing's happening right now—a repeat performance of the 1929 deal. Less than two hundred men are controlling everything, the fixing of interests, bonds, everything" still happening to this day (book 3 chapter 2)
"We have two governments in Washington: one run by the elected people—which is a minor part—and one run by the moneyed interests, which control everything" (book 3 chapter 2)
"At bottom, the unemployed worker was uninterested in communism. he was interested in one thing only: a job" I don't think anything changed: people by and large only care about politics for their short term power, but they don't really care about it specifically. It's just TV drama for them mostly (book 3 chapter 4)
"If somebody set out to take the errors and stupidities of the Old Left and multiplied them to the nth degree, you would have the New Left of today ..." (book 3 chapter 4)
"I never could see a set of people killing off one another set of people to bring a better society" (book 3 chapter 4)
"There's a wide difference in point of view of the students then and young people today. State universities were cheap in those days. You could go to a state university and get yourself a degree easily enough. But there were no jobs. Now there are plenty of jobs, and most young people are wondering what's worth doing. They don't want to be part of the system. The war hangs over their heads, the Bomb. They have a sense of constant crisis" The sense of 'constant crisis' is even more true today with light-speed communication (book 3 chapter 4)
"[The Wobblies] were a very serious bunch of men with understanding: even if we do win our immediate demands, the boss and I will still have a fight. Let's run the works for our own good, so we won't have to fight any more. They had this notion: someday ... But right now, let's clean up these camps, let's raise the wages" (book 3 chapter 4)
"Unionism by permit [...] The President wants you to join the union. Radicalism was replaced by something else. The government had set up a way. Just sign your name, your authorization card. You can do it quite secretly, you don't have to be a hero any more. [...] We're even told what the hell to be dissatisfied with these days. (Laughs)" (book 3 chapter 4)
"Today there is a chronological cutoff for the kids. They don't believe anything happened in the past. It's a wonder these kinds don't reinvent the wheel" (book 3 chapter 4)
"I found organized crime to be a huge, quasi-public utility. [...] Everybody owned stock in it: City Hall, Democrats, Republicans, the world ..." Because people wanted gambling, drinking and prostitution (book 3 chapter 4)
"As a kid was telling me of an A&P store he robbed and another of a gas station he heisted, Hitler and Mussolini were robbing whole countries and killing whole peoples." (book 3 chapter 4)
"They wanted to sell us on the Marxist philosophy. The moment we repulsed them, they called us Fascists. The moment we repulsed the reactionaries, we were called Communists" (book 3 chapter 5)
"It wasn't starvation. They called it malnutrition. It woulda been starvation if they died quick from malnutrition. They just barely gave you enough to keep you alive. You lost weight. They made you lose weight until the doctor got after them and said they have to get at least one meal a day. A thousand men woulda died if it hadn't been for that doctor." Describing life in a prison (book 4 chapter 1)
"I lost myself in my art. The pain that came with economic loss, I felt would pass. These things, like the eclipse of the sun ... people first observed it and committed suicide, not realizing that this would pass" (book 5 chapter 1)
"Social work at that time was beginning to get psychiatric. I found this absolutely obnoxious. I got taken by some of my clients in a way that made me keenly aware of how stupid were some of our approaches. The irrelevance of the kind of goodies we were handing out. It was the psychiatric approach. Sit, be passive, and let your client tell you what's wrong. It was my first contact with poverty. I found out the hard way." (book 5 chapter 2)
"Welfare has broken up families because of the man-in-the-house rule. It's venal. The damage we've done to human beings is incredible. Today, we don't build homes. We build institutions. The New Deal was an enormous step. It was a leap forward. The government assumed a responsibility toward subsidized housing. But we didn't realize that the house is not enough. There's the person. In ignoring his possibilities, we have a welfare generation. We begot it" (book 5 chapter 2)
"My brother, a tailor, like my father, was working one day every three months." (book 5 chapter 2)
At that time, few policemen drove automobiles, instead they took the bus. He adds about the policemen of today (1970): "They come here to work in all kinds of cars, Fords, Chevies, Chryslers, you even seen 'em come up in Cadillacs, Mustangs. At that time, we lived within our means. We didn't live over our heads. These young fellows in the police department today, ninety percent of them are living over their heads. They have cars they can't afford. They have colored televisions they can't afford. And some of 'em are talking about summer houses. And every one of 'em I will say are in debt over their heads." (book 5 chapter 2)
"An alderman from a West Side ward accused [black people] of being lazy: 'That's why so many of them are on relief' he said. I replied 'It's like tying a man's hands behind his back, beating him on the head and accusing him of being a coward because he doesn't fight'" (book 5 chapter 2)
"I had a woman who asked for an increase in the supply of milk for her children. She became very impatient and began to remonstrate. [...] Naturally she was arrested. She was taken over to the psychopathic hospital. It was a never development in administration tactics at that time. Before it was just straight out-and-out prosecution, subjecting you to fine or imprisonment. This was a new technique: the judge and two psychiatrists, no jury." (book 5 chapter 3)
"Someone once said to me: the worst thing that can happen to a man is to have a good job. Because when you have a good job, you're in a safe, secure, snug harbor. People will stay where it's nice and warm and cozy. A man really does better for himself if he's thrown to the wolves, so to speak." (book 5 chapter 5)
"I don't think we're basically a revolutionary country. We have too large a middle class. The middle class tends to be apathetic. An apathetic middle class gives stability to a system. They never get carried away strongly, one way or another. Maybe we'll have riots, maybe we'll have shootings. Maybe we'll have uprisings as the farmers did in Iowa. But you won't have revolution." (book 5 chapter 5)
"The father who had been a doctor took a janitor's job. They would do anything rather than take public money" (book 5 chapter 5)
"Oh no, the Depression was not a romantic time. It was a time of terrible suffering. The contradictions were so obvious that it didn't take a very bright person to realize something was terribly wrong. Have you ever seen a child with rickets? Shaking as with palsy. No proteins, no milk. And the companies pouring milk into gutters. People with nothing to wear, and they were plowing up cotton. People with nothing to eat, and they killed the pigs. If that wasn't the craziest system in the world, could you imagine anything more idiotic? This was just insane. And people blamed themselves, not the system. They felt they had been at fault: 'if we hadn't bought that old radio' ... 'if we hadn't bought that secondhand car.' Among the things that horrified me were the preachers—the fundamentalists. They would tell the people they suffered because of their sins. And the people believed it. God was punishing them. The children were starving because of their sins" (Epilogue)
"A great many of these [contemporary] kids—white kids—seem to have somebody in the background they can always go to. I admire their spirit, because they have a strong sense of social justice. But they themselves have not been deprived. They haven't experienced the terror. They have never seen a baby in the cradle crying of hunger. [...] What frightens me is that these kids are like sheep being led to the slaughter. They are romantic and they are young. I have a great deal more faith in movements that start from necessity—people trying to change things because of their own deprivation." (Epilogue)