"Hard Times" by Studs Terkel
462 pages
Short review: Excellent book. I credit it with softening somewhat my attitude towards FDR's dealing with the Great Depression. I'm still no great fan of his, but, I can see and respect the many people in this book who undoubtedly were.
When people were talking about this book and "oral history", I kind of figured out it was a bunch of people remembering the Great Depression. Both from personal experience and from hand-me-down anecdotes from parents and grandparents. That it is.
However, it is also a lot more.
I was surprised, once I get my curious mitts on it, on several issues:
1) how many people were actually involved. Terkel interviewed hundreds and hundreds of folk. Of this vast amount of material, he whittled it down to just over one hundred and sixty unique individuals. These range across all social strata, and -in outlook and political sympathies- cover the broad political spectrum. That makes it a sort of unique "historical time capsule".
2) Terkel wrote very little in this book; a one-liner here, a question there, a short paragraph somewhere else by way of explanation. Putting all his scattered comments and questions together, he still probably wrote less than 20 pages out of the 462. His skill, or genius if you like, was the way he gently prodded people here and there, and then wisely shut up and let them do the talking. He then arranged the material very interestingly. I quote some examples further below.
3) The book radiates humanity. Warmth. Compassion, idealism, sincerity. It is full of people who tried. Tried hard. And often failed.
It is uniquely inspiring.
4) The book contains a sinister background noise. Was the Great Depression a man made thing? Who was at fault? Could it have been prevented, ameliorated? Nobody is really sure. Were people used and abused? Humiliated? Yes. Was there bitterness and great anger, hatred even? Yes. Did everybody see that? No. Did everybody suffer? No, many prospered.
5) If, like me, you are interested in FDR, and what kind of person he really was, saviour or devil incarnate, or something in between, then you will find many tantalizing glimpses of him in this book. Some speakers hated him, others loved him. Of his many public programs, some people curse them as wasteful and frivolous, and mere ploys and bribes to ensure political re-election.
Others however are clearly sincerely grateful -emotional- to this day for those Federal initiatives, and imply that without them, they might have starved.
6) If, like me, you are interested in the class struggle, and the emergence of the Trade unions from reviled rabble to formidable labour movements, and if, like me you are suspicious that there are those (then and now) who seek to fan the flames of class divisions for their own selfish ends, then you will find much to ponder. The Unions then and now are not all good, and not all bad. It's a lot more complicated. Shades of gray...
Long review:
If you are looking for a technical, theoretical, economic treatise of the causes of the Great Depression, then (heavens!) don't buy this book. Check out some of my other reviews for that.
This is a wandering, circuitous, snap shot in time of many different themes. It is a cacophony. But therein lies a magnificent, touching charm...
I'll give you just a few examples amongst a great many.
Consider Ed Paulsen, who was 14 in 1926. Despite the hardship, on page 31 he says:
"We weren't greatly agitated in terms of society. Ours was a bewilderment, not an anger. Not a sense of being particularly put upon. We weren't talking revolution; we were talking jobs..."
Mary Owsley (p. 46) "My husband was very bitter. That's just puttin' it mild. He was an intelligent man. He couldn't see why as wealthy a country as this is, that there was any sense in so many people starving to death, when so much of it, wheat and everything else, was being poured into the Ocean."
Country Joe McDonald (p.52) "I travel around and talk to some of the Mexican migrant workers. In a way, they seem closer to each other than most well-off middle-class people. Their impoverished condition somehow made them very real people. It's hard to be phony when you haven't got anything. I mean when you're really down and out. I think the Depression had some kind of human qualities with it that we lack now."
William Benton (p.69) "In 1929, most of your Wall Street manipulators called it The New Era. They felt it was the start of a perpetual boom that would carry us on and on forever to new plateaus."
Ruby Bates (p.92) "Roosevelt touched the temper of the black community..... He had tremendous support through his wife... The WPA and other projects introduced black people to handicrafts and trades. It gave Negroes a chance to have an office to work out of with a typewriter..."
Yose Yglesias (p. 111) "People would put off government aid as long as possible. Aunt Lila and her husband were the first in our family, and the last, to go on the WPA. This was considered a terrible tragedy, because it was charity. You did not mention it to them."
Sally Rand (p.174) "I truly believe we shall have another Depression. I think people will just go out and take what they need. I don't think there will be any more people queuing up on bread lines waiting to be fed by charity, God damn it......
The middle class look upon the deprived smugly: the poor we'll have with us always. Oh yeah?"
Aaron Barkham (p.204) "The county sheriff had a hundred strike breakers. They were called deputies. The company paid him ten cents a ton on all the coal carried down the river, to keep the union out."
This book gave me many vivid mental pictures. They continually leap from the pages, and made me realize just how complex the truth of those times really is. There are many shades of gray to try and understand. Politically, nothing was black and white. I think it leaves me with more compassion for the ordinary people and some of the politicians of the Great Depression. It's too easy to totally condemn FDR and the WPA, from the comfort of the twenty first century. But something had to be done... Was it perfect? No. Was it a complete failure? No. Somewhere in the middle lies the answer, and, more importantly, the crucial lessons for our generation, and the current fiercely debated Obama New Deal. I don't envy him his job...
Christopher Lasch (p.340) put into words an impression I've been getting myself. He says:
"To talk in retrospect is to do so coldly, and,in a sense, to falsify what people experienced in the Thirties. While one can say, in the relative comfort of the sixties, that the New Deal measures were palliatives, they were more than that to the people living in the Thirties. They were, in many cases, matters of life and death."
For me, an excellent, wonderfully challenging book. One of the best I've read in the last few years. I think it's made my views a bit more balanced. I'm neither Democrat or Republican. What am I?
Oh dear. Guess I'd better go read a whole lot more books and see if I can find out.
I'm open to suggestions...
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More Detail For
Hard Times An Oral History of the Great Depression- ISBN13: 9781565846562
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
