Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

“No, I don’t see the Depression as an ennobling experience. Survivors are still ridin’ with the ghost—the ghost of those days when things came hard.”

Ed Paulson of South Dakota recalls traveling the country on freight trains as a teenager during the Depression. Like everyone else who rode those trains, he was looking for work. His experience took him across the central and western US, from San Francisco to a transient camp in Nebraska. This quotation has significance for two reasons. First, Paulson identifies the people who lived through the Depression as “survivors,” which supports Studs Terkel’s description of the Depression as a “holocaust” (3). Second, Paulson’s “ghost” highlights another of Terkel’s major themes, which is that the Depression shaped the people who endured it and still haunts them decades later, speaking to The Depression as a Psychological and Familial Catastrophe.

“It was just unbelievable, the bread lines. The only thing I could compare it with was Germany in 1922. It looked like there was no tomorrow.”

Arthur Robertson, a New York City businessman who made more than a million dollars in the 1920s and fared reasonably well even during the Depression, recalls the scene in 1932, when nationwide unemployment hit 25% and hungry people stood in long lines hoping to receive food from charitable organizations. This particular passage highlights one of Terkel’s running themes: the question of Political Turmoil and the Prospect of Revolution. Robertson’s reference to Germany in the Weimar Republic (1919-33), which preceded the Nazi dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, suggests that the economic conditions that gave rise to Nazism in Germany were also present in the US.

“I don’t remember any serious black opposition to Roosevelt.”

Robin Langston, a forty-three-year-old social worker and jazz musician who grew up in segregated Hot Springs, Arkansas, during the Depression, summarizes one of the book’s major undercurrents: overwhelming support for President Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, from a Black community that had voted Republican since the Civil War era. Although he was a patrician who hailed from one of America’s oldest and most privileged families, there was no “serious black opposition to Roosevelt” in part because of his wife Eleanor’s enormous popularity among the poor, and in part because President Roosevelt at least appeared to be doing something to try to help (92). This passage highlights the theme Aspects of “Race” During the Depression.

“A lot of kids felt the stigma. While it wasn’t your fault, they’d feel: I’d rather it’s a closed door, those times.”

In 1933, at the age of ten, Dorothe Bernstein entered an orphanage. More than three decades later, she recalls chance meetings with a well-dressed woman whom she recognized from the 1930s but who pretended not to know her. Bernstein concludes that this woman, like so many others, felt shame over the way she had been forced to live in the 1930s and would have preferred not to be recognized. Many of Terkel’s interviewees describe the Depression’s psychological impact, even on survivors who prospered in later years.

“The younger generation has simply forgotten the history of these periods. It’s being covered up.”

Joe Morrison, who worked in both coal mines and steel mills, recalls that Americans “were talkin’ revolution all over the place” (123). Here, Terkel highlights The Generational Gap that separated young people in the 1960s from their elders who lived through the Depression, and many of his interviewees note that the gap exists on the psychological level, that it prevents communication, produces misunderstanding, etc. Morrison, however, insists that the true history of the Depression is “being covered up,” which suggests something closer to a tacit conspiracy on the part of America's political and economic elites to suppress revolutionary sentiment by preventing young people from learning the truth about the corrupt system in which they live.

“In the late 1930s, I’d say our society was saved again. By Hitler. Because the stopgap wasn’t working, and things were sliding back. The war, in a sense, ended the Depression.”

Dr. Lewis Andreas, who tended to wounded men during the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago, suggests what many of Terkel’s interviewees also believe: only the Second World War brought an end to the Depression. The “stopgap” was the New Deal, and the economy began “sliding back” again in 1937, which is roughly when President Roosevelt started paying close attention to developments in Europe and making public statements to that effect. The question of whether or not it took the most calamitous war in world history to bring an end to the worst depression of the modern era troubles some of Terkel’s interviewees, for if the answer is “yes,” then it follows that much of America’s postwar prosperity was built on war.

“I felt the fever period was unreal. And the Depression was so real that it became unreal. There was a horror about it, with people jumping out of windows.”

Surrounded by numerous books and paintings inside her Chicago apartment, Julia Walther recalls the “fever period” of the 1920s and the ensuing Depression that “wiped out” much of her husband’s fortune (164). The Depression’s psychological destruction, illustrated by the number of people who died by suicide, is a running theme among Terkel’s interviewees. Intelligent and empathetic, Walther recalls feeling “so horrified, so overwhelmed” at the sight of people sleeping under bridges (164).

“I don’t think we ever mentioned them.”

In the late 1930s, Jerome Zerbe took photographs of celebrities at New York City’s ritzy El Morocco club. Zerbe claims never to have seen beggars or bread lines, and he believes that the Depression probably ended around 1934. The people he and his fellow socialites never “mentioned” were those on relief—in other words, the masses of the poor and unemployed. This passage highlights the deep economic divisions between the wealthy and the many who faced economic hardships during the 1930s.

“It was close in spirit to the American Revolution.”

Emil Loriks, a South Dakota farmer, recalls the agricultural ferment of the 1930s, speaking to the theme of Political Turmoil and the Prospect of Revolution. In Iowa and South Dakota in particular, the farmers’ grievances produced revolutionary conditions. Militants blocked railroads and highways to prevent shipments of farm goods at low prices. Judges who foreclosed on farms were threatened with lynching. Terkel’s interviewees are split on whether the US faced the real possibility of revolution during the Depression, in part because the most extreme revolutionary ideologies never took root. Most agree, however, that discontent reached its most threatening intensity in the rural Heartland.

“Most important, laissez faire in the Nineteenth Century manner was ended. The Government had a role to play in industrial activity.”

Gardiner C. Means, who served as an economic advisor for multiple New Deal agencies and committees, explains the New Deal’s significance, which he views in philosophical terms. For decades, progressive theorists had argued that America’s industrial economy had outgrown its government institutions, creating a chaotic situation in which capitalists, free from restraint, engaged in cutthroat competition and ran roughshod over the masses. According to this theory, a modern industrial economy requires some regulation, or central planning, in order to preserve capitalism’s economic dynamism while at the same time ensuring both efficiency and a wider distribution of resources. Hence, Means regards the simple fact that the US federal government now “had a role to play in industrial activity” as the New Deal’s “[m]ost important” consequence.

“The Second New Deal was an entirely different thing. My disenchantment began then. Roosevelt didn’t follow any particular policy after 1936. Our economy began to slide downhill—our unemployment increased—after that, until 1940. This is something liberals are not willing to recognize. It was the war that saved the economy and saved Roosevelt.”

Raymond Moley, a New Deal advisor and speechwriter who later split with President Roosevelt, offers a counterpoint to Gardiner C. Means’s description of the New Deal as a success. Moley credits Roosevelt with rescuing the banks and creating an atmosphere of optimism in the early days of his presidency. Unemployment figures from 1937 through the end of the decade, however, show that nearly one-fifth of the American workforce remained jobless. Few of Terkel’s interviewees discuss the New Deal in terms of “First” or “Second” phases, but Moley, an Administration insider, sees a clear difference between the emergency actions taken in 1933 and those of a later date that appeared calculated to change the entire system. Finally, Moley joins many other interviewees in concluding that the Second World War ended the Depression. Moley sees this as conclusive proof that Roosevelt’s later policies failed.

“He saved our free enterprise system, he saved the banks, he saved the insurance companies. There ain’t any doubt but what Roosevelt in those first hundred days…this was a tremendous job.”

James A. Farley, who managed Roosevelt’s presidential campaigns in 1932 and 1936, credits Roosevelt with saving the entire American economic system. Nearly all of Terkel’s interviewees agree that Roosevelt saved the banks in 1933. Otherwise, opinions vary as to the New Deal’s ultimate economic impact. Whereas Moley clashed with Roosevelt over economic philosophy, Farley objected to Roosevelt’s decision to seek a third term in 1940.

“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.”

Texas Congressman C. Wright Patman, who served in the US House of Representatives for nearly 50 years, offers a populist view of American government. During the Depression, Patman supported the Bonus Marchers and led the impeachment of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. These actions helped make an enemy of “big business fellas,” who, according to Patman, “got their own paid people around here” (284). Patman’s view that “moneyed interests” dominate the US federal government resonates with populists on both the left and the right. During the Depression, this included Socialists and labor leaders, as well as supporters of Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin. The common thread among all these groups was that wealth and power reinforced one another and were concentrated in too few hands.

“The kind of labor movement that grew up, that we have today, still has this birthmark. Unionism by permit—the NLRB, things of that sort.”

Fred Thompson, a member of the ultra-left Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), offers a radical view of the 1935 Wagner Act, the New Deal’s great achievement on behalf of organized labor. While the Wagner Act guaranteed the right of workers to unionize, it also created the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which acts as a kind of arbitrator between employers and unionized employees while also maintaining legal oversight over all aspects of organized labor. Thompson laments this compromise, which he regards as “[u]nionism by permit.” Thompson’s IWW clashed with more moderate unions whose members supported the Wagner Act.

“But there were no clear lines of policy followed. The whole New Deal, as far as I can see, was really chaotic. All kinds of experiments were being tried constantly. The immediate aim of all the reforms was simply to end the Depression by whatever means came to hand. It’s a case study of what can happen if you don’t have a clear policy.”

Christopher Lasch, author and historian of American leftist radicalism in the 1960s, expresses a view widely shared by New-Deal radicals in the 1930s: the New Deal lacked the necessary ideological focus. The key word in this passage is “simply.” Roosevelt and other reformers “simply” wanted to end the Depression. To Lasch, however, the Depression was a symptom of a diseased system, and the disease required stronger treatments akin to an overhaul of American capitalism itself.

“When I attended Berkeley in 1936, so many of the kids had actually lost their fathers. They had wandered off in disgrace because they couldn’t support their families. Other fathers had killed themselves, so the family could have the insurance.”

Pauline Kael, a college student in the late 1930s, describes the Depression’s devastating impact on fathers, many of whom either abandoned their families or died by suicide. Kael’s observation that “so many” of her fellow students had suffered the same fate suggests that the Depression had a catastrophic impact on both individual mental health and on families as a whole, reflecting the theme The Depression as a Psychological and Familial Catastrophe.

“Their faces, I’d stand and watch their faces, and I’d see that flat, opaque, expressionless look which spelled, for me, human disaster.”

Herman Shumlin, an accomplished Broadway director and producer, describes the scene in Times Square, where lines of desperate men seeking charitable relief extended for multiple city blocks. Shumlin fared well during the 1930s. His observations are noteworthy, however, because he is one of the few interviewees who remained unhurt by the Depression while still expressing horror over its human costs. “The Depression didn’t affect me financially,” Shumlin says, “[b]ut it did affect me in everything I saw” (381).

“Do you realize how many people in my generation are not married?”

Elsa Ponselle, an elementary-school principal who began teaching in 1930, notes one of the oft-overlooked human costs of the Depression: lengthy periods or even lifetimes of solitude for those who lacked the means to build serious relationships and make commitments. Her own boyfriend simply “disappeared” when the Depression hit and he was laid off from his job as a commercial artist, while other young men “were supporting mothers,” not wives and children of their own (389).

“Few people are aware that brutality did not start yesterday.”

Max Naiman, 65, provided legal aid to workers during the Depression. He recalls instances in which police physically assaulted labor leaders and would-be organizers. From the perspective of the 1960s, Naiman’s comment conjures images of segregationists unleashing police dogs on civil-rights marchers, which is why Naiman claims that the police have always been encouraged to deal harshly with anyone regarded as a threat to the system.

“One of the reasons the Communists flopped is they didn’t know how to deal with the Negro church.”

Horace Cayton, author and sociologist who arrived in Chicago in the early 1930s, here makes an observation that no one else in Terkel’s book makes, and it produces an important insight. Many of Terkel’s interviewees describe the Communists’ activities in the US during the Great Depression, and many more interviewees share memories and perspectives unique to Black communities, but only Cayton explains why the world’s most revolutionary leftist ideology never took root among the one group of people in the US with the lengthiest history of enduring oppression. Cayton notes that the “church was the first Negro institution, preceding even the family in stability,” and the atheistic Communists “came in flat-footed with this vulgar Marxist thing” (436).

“So why in the billy hell has this happening taken the limelight for me over all the others?”

W.L. Gleason, 80, lives alone and keeps a daily diary to stave off boredom. He recalls doing very well in the 1920s and then suffering through a divorce. One “happening,” however, stands out above the others in Gleason’s long memory, and he cannot figure out why. During the Depression, his oldest son took a job doing heavy yard work for a wealthy older woman, who, when the job was finished, refused to pay the young man because she claimed he neglected to trim the trees. Gleason wonders why, of all the things that happened in the 1930s, this single incident “sticks out in my mind like a damned sore thumb” (438). While Gleason never does answer his own question, it is clear that he resents the wealthy old woman’s treatment of his son. In fact, many of Terkel’s interviewees recall the callousness often exhibited by wealthy people toward their less-fortunate neighbors.

“The whorehouses on Sand Street were the only thing that saved my sanity. I had no relationship to the rest of the world. I lived in a world completely alone.”

Ray Wax, a middle-class stockbroker from the New York City suburbs, describes his Depression-era experience of loneliness and desperation. In his introductory comments on Wax’s interview, Terkel observes that Wax seemed self-effacing, as if his Depression-era recollections had no value, and yet Wax spoke at length, with ease, and in a state of apparent agitation. The entire interview conveys the Depression’s illusion-shattering ugliness. One senses that the other people in Wax’s story, from the ruined father who abandoned him to the prostitutes who served him and fifty other clients per day, felt the same things he did. This is the irony Terkel highlights through Wax’s memories: the Depression made millions of people suffer in the same way and yet somehow also made them feel alone.

“We didn’t start talking about the Depression. We were talking about a raft. He started talking about the Depression.”

This passage speaks to The Generational Gap between the old and the young regarding the Depression. Reed, 19, a middle-class college student from Chicago, planned a rafting trip down the Mississippi River with his friend Chester. This quotation, in Chester’s words, describes what happened when the two young men told Reed’s father about their plans. Reed’s father grew very emotional, talked about the dreams he had as a young man, and bemoaned the fact that young people in the 1960s do not understand how difficult things were during the Depression. To the two young men, the father’s reaction seemed entirely disconnected from what they viewed as a harmless excursion. Terkel features this interview in the book’s Epilogue because it showcases the Depression’s psychological impact on a man who survived it, made a life for himself and his family, and then buried his memories of the era’s suffering, only for those memories to resurface in an unexpected context.