Public Griefs and Personal Problems: An Empirical Inquiry into the Impact of the Great Depression

1985 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 399
Author(s):  
John Modell
1985 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 399-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Modell

From Olympus, Samuel Eliot Morison (1965) reminds us that “we owe admiration as well as pity to the simple folk of America who suffered so grievously under the depression.” And no doubt we do. But those who would understand the long-term political and social impacts of the Great Depression must gain a fuller understanding of the ways in which Americans made sense of their Depression experiences. The critical passage through Roosevelt’s Hundred Days largely satisfies most historians’ appetites for understanding the impact of the Great Depression upon Americans’ personal attitudes. The effects of the whole Depression era upon the ways Americans felt are assumed to be congruent with changes in political institutions and ethos. In particular, the durable partisan realignment and its concomitant “New Deal coalition” occurring in the middle of the Depression calls up images of major modifications in attitudes. Thus Clubb, Flanigan, and Zingale (1980) explain the endurance of the New Deal realignment with reference to the “vital and active concern for a suffering citizenry” that FDR and the New Deal came to connote.


1992 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Haber

This article employs previously unused accounting data and manuscript censuses to determine the impact of the Great Depression on Brazil's most important cotton textile manufacturers. It argues that the Great Depression, when viewed at the level of the individual business enterprise, had far more serious consequences than the previous literature, which relied on aggregate statistical data, suggests. The analysis presented here leads to the conclusion that Brazil's major cotton firms were in serious trouble prior to the 1929 Crash and that they took longer to recover than most other studies of Brazilian industrialization have indicated.


Author(s):  
Patricia O'Brien

This chapter explores the immediate aftermath of the Black Saturday Massacre through the experiences of Ta’isi. Though New Zealand forces tried to stop the Mau through exiling Ta’isi and then the killing Tupua Tamasese (which may have been intended or not) the Mau continued to disrupt New Zealand’s rule. The Women’s Mau, in which Rosabel played a prominent role, also came to the fore in 1930. Administrator Allen enraged these women, Ta’isi and Sāmoans generally, when he wrote in the annual report to the League of Nations that these women were of ‘light moral character’. The crisis of the Great Depression began to impact Sāmoa and for Ta’isi personally; his enforced absence from Sāmoa began to bite into his business operations. This chapter explores the New Zealand’s part in continuing attempts to publically damage Ta’isi’s status amongst Sāmoans. It also explores the impact on Ta’isi and the Mau with the death of Sir Māui Pōmare, who had been Samoa’s staunchest supporter.


Author(s):  
Robert Wuthnow

This chapter examines how Kansas experienced a long slide from being the “kernel of the country” to becoming a mere outpost far from the centers of national economic and political influence—a shift that was rooted in economic and demographic changes, but was primarily a matter of cultural redefinition. On those rare occasions in the nineteenth century when the Kansas Republican Party lost power, it regrouped and made a comeback in the next electoral cycle. The chapter first considers how the influence of Republicans and Methodists peaked in 1924, a banner year for the Kansas economy, before discussing the consolidation and further expansion of Kansas churches. It then describes the separation of church and state, along with the rise of fundamentalism and the impact of the Great Depression on Kansas churches. It also explores the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 and the emergence of smaller political and religious movements in Kansas.


Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith

This chapter examines the impact of the Great Depression on classical economic ideas. When the Great Depression struck after the stock market crash of October 1929, economists in the classical tradition such as Joseph Schumpeter and Lionel Robbins chose to do nothing. They argued that the depression must be allowed to run its course. The chapter first considers U.S. economic policy under Franklin D. Roosevelt, focusing on how he addressed three visible features of the depression: deflation in prices, unemployment, and the hardship depression suffered by especially vulnerable groups. It also discusses the views of two scholars who belonged to the group known as the Roosevelt Brains Trust (later the Brain Trust), Rexford Guy Tugwell and Adolf A. Berle Jr. Finally, it explores how depression and price deflation led to two efforts to raise prices, one through the National Recovery Act and the other through agriculture.


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