The Great Depression – Page 3 – Old Magazine Articles

Prosperity’s Return
(Newsweek Magazine, 1940)

A quick read about the return of prosperity by economist turned journalist Ralph Robey:

Majority opinion among government economists at present, according to all reports, is that the current decline of business has another six or eight weeks to run and then there will be an about-face which will start us on an upgrade that by the end of the year will wipe out all the recent losses and bring production back to the high level of the final quarter of last year.

Prosperity in Sight…
(Newsweek Magazine, 1940)

The optimistic year-end forecast – numerous authorities predicted at least a 25 percent rise in residential contracts and officers of the John Manville Corp. forecast the erection 400,000 privately financed homes, largest volume since 1929 – have been buttressed by several important developments since the turn of the year.

Harold Ickes Wrote the Relief Checks
(New Outlook, 1935)

When Harold Ickes (1874 – 1952) assumed his post as FDR’s Secretary of the Department of the Interior he found himself in charge of three distinct governmental concerns. The first of these elements to be lorded over was the public lands (mines, forests and Indian reservations). His second responsibility was involved with the drilling of oil. The third and most observed cell in his official asylum was that of Administrator of Public Works Three Billion Dollar Fund. He was under instruction to spend this as rapidly as possible…It would give work to the workless, get money into circulation and encourage business.

Click here to read about President Harry Truman…

The Plummeting Salaries
(New Outlook Magazine, 1933)

In this article, Dorothy Dunbar Bromley (1896 – 1986) addressed one of the preeminent issue of her day: the rapidly decreasing salaries of the American worker:

If we are fatuous optimists, it is because we have only the vaguest idea of how appalling the situation is. We have read a great deal about the return of of the garment sweatshop of fifty years ago, with the same abominable conditions and the same exploitation of women and children for a few cents an hour, or for no pay at all…

More on this exploitation can be read here…

The Poor Are Everywhere
(The Chicagoan, 1932)

Three years into the Great Depression a citizen of Chicago realizes that there is nowhere he can go to escape the uneasy presence of the hungry poor in his city:

They’re on the boulevards and in the parks. They’re on the shady streets in nice neighborhoods and around the corner from expensive restaurants. You can tell they’re starving by looking at them. Their nerve is gone – they don’t even beg. You see thousands every day… Young men and old women never begged in this country before.

The Era of Bartering
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1934)

Scrip (sometimes called chit) is a term for any substitute for legal tender and is often a form of credit – so reads the Wikipedia definition for those items that served as currency in those portions of the U.S. where the bucks were scarce.
The attached news column tells a scrip story from the Great Depression – the sort of story that was probably most common on the old frontier.

Why All The Sidewalk Apple Vendors?
(The Age of the Great Depression, 1948)

A single paragraph from the late Forties explains who was behind the rise and fall of the oft-photographed sidewalk apple vending stands in New York City.

Click here to read about the end of the Great Depression…

The Forgotten Child
(Literary Digest, 1935)

This magazine article from 1935 documented the Federal aid that was made available for America’s poorest children. The malnutrition visited upon the boys of America’s indigent would render some of them unfit for military service in World War II.

With nearly one-sixth of the nation’s child population in families dependent upon emergency relief, welfare agencies call for a solution of their grave problem.

The problem was laid before the recent National Conference on the 1935 Needs of Children held under the auspices of The Parent’s Magazine in New York City. Before them Katherine F. Lenroot, Chief of the United States Children’s Bureau, made one of her first public appearances since taking office:

…These children have a right to expect that Federal, State, and community relief policies of 1935 will provide more adequately for essential items in the family budget.

Another article about children of the Great Depression can be read here…

When the Depression Caught Up With Doctors
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

Some people have maintained that doctors weren’t hit so hard by the economic slump. The claim was that people couldn’t help getting sick and their misfortune was the doctor’s gravy. But the Committee on the Cost of Medical Care, a non-governmental committee, of which Secretary Wilbur is chairman, reports a rapid decline in the income of doctors during the Depression… In 1930, the first [full] year of the Depression, physician’s incomes decreased 17% and they have been decreasing ever since.

The author also included some other elements gleaned by the committee – such as the average sum paid by the families in their study, the approximate cost of the nation’s medical bills and an approximation concerning the number of medical professionals at work in 1931.

During the Depression, many doctors and nurses worked entirely for free; to read about that, click here…

Scandal
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1938)

The New Deal’s Works Progress Administration, with its millions of employees and billions of dollars in relief funds, has long been recognized as a potential cesspool of graft where the unscrupulous are concerned. Last week, in the fierce heat of the 1938 campaign’s closing days, the stench of scandal began to penetrate the WPA administrations of two states…

The W.P.A. Arts Projects Closed Due to Communist Tampering
(Ken Magazine, 1939)

This 1939 magazine article addressed the matter of the communist organization Workers Alliance perverting the arts organizations that operated within the Federal Works Projects Administration (WPA), thus forcing the government agency to close:

When the arts projects of the WPA were instituted, many capable and culturally progressive individuals throughout the country hailed them as a banner raised against the gloomy depression sky to form a rallying point for youthful and ambitious artists whose task it was to carry the torch of aesthetic advancement on to that future time when we envisaged the return of ‘prosperity’…yet the obvious control of the arts projects by the communist party through its stooge, the Workers Alliance has forced the hand of Congress to abolish the agency.

CLICK HERE to read about African-Americans during the Great Depression.

Government Subsidized Art
(Direction Magazine, 1938)

This 1938 editorial by the artist Philip Evergood (1901 – 1973) stated that the Federal Arts Project of the Thirties had not simply made the lives of artists a little better, but had also created a far better society:

The Federal Arts Project has pointed the way to an American Culture. It has set a weight in motion, it has let loose a force that has affected hundreds of thousands of lives. It has made murals depicting the history of our country and the lives of our people have been placed on the walls of our schools, hospitals, libraries and public buildings making them of greater beauty and of greater community interest – monuments and small sculpture have been added in equal numbers, easel paintings and prints now hang in thousands on the walls of public buildings…

Evergood likened this government funding to the Renaissance, when the church served as the artist’s patron and culture flourished.

Rejecting Socialism During the Depression
(American Opinion, 1963)

Novelist Taylor Caldwell (Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell: 1900 – 1985) recalled the bleak days of the Great Depression – and the perpetual appearance of American socialist who seemed always to be in recruitment mode.

Open or crypto-Communists, they had one unwavering theme: Communism was a System with a Heart. Communism was the new Christianity. Communism was the savior of the working people. America must become Communistic, if it was to pull out of the Great Depression. The Light of the World was not in my church. It was in Moscow.

Click here to read further about American Communists during the Great Depression…

In 1887 the NEW YORK TIMES reviewed the first english edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx, click here to read it…

Soak the Rich States, Too
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)

This is an interesting article that assesses the financial abilities of each of the 48 states in 1935 in an effort to illustrate that the ten richest states, as a result of their minority status on Capitol Hill, were in no position to cry out about majority tyranny when the insolvent 38 states rigged a deliberately unfair tax code that would see to it that they alone would pay the nation’s bills.

The ‘rich’ people may howl and growl and moan at having to foot the bills for everything, but there’s no remedy for it… The reason is this: our parade of poor states totals 38, while the rich states number only ten. The figures show that these rich states, which have only one-third the population, have to pay two-thirds of the taxes. The 10 richest states have only 20 Senators in the Senate, while the 38 poor states have 76. The rich are decidedly in the minority and there is no way for them to change the set-up.

The Degraded Lives of American Reds
(Script Magazine, 1935)

This article was written by an anonymous soul who wanted the Script readers to understand that the life of an American Communist during the Great Depression was not a good one. Their lives often involved constant police surveillance and harassment to say nothing of blacklisting.

What boon can membership in the Communist Party confer upon them in exchange for the martyrdom they almost inevitably suffer? But is any membership card ever printed worth having one’s skull fractured for?

More about American Communists during the Great depression can be read here

Reds Among Us
(Scribner’s Magazine, 1930)

When the market crashed in the Fall of 1929, the Communist Party of America really thought their hour had arrived. They took to the streets with their red banners and set to work fomenting unrest in whatever factories were still afloat. Most Americans recognized their blarney as mere pie in the sky and would have none of it; still their membership lists were growing and many Americans were wondering how they should be dealt with. This article examined how the communists were organized, what they were up to and recommended that Americans should keep in mind that the Reds will go when prosperity returns – and not before.

We also have an article on The Daily Worker.

Low-Wage Pay Scales for Working Women
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

Click here to read about an American woman who grew heartily sick of the socialists who loitered on every street

The Economic Collapse of the World
(Literary Digest, 1933)

Published in May of 1933, the attached article concerned the much anticipated London Economic Conference which was scheduled to convene the following month in London. The world leaders who agreed to assemble were all of one mind in so much as their shared belief that collectively they would stand a better chance in defeating the economic depression that was bedeviling all their respective countries. It was their intention to meet and review all existing international trade and tariff agreements and to make an effort at stabilizing the currency exchange rates.