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Title: Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man by Robert S. McElvaine ISBN: 0-8078-4099-8 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1983 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: Terrific Compilation Of Depression- Era Correspondance
Comment: This wonderful collection of depression-era letters from both ordinary men in the street as well as from celebrated people alike is offered by noted Depression era historian Robert McElvaine. In the opinion of most contemporary historians, the Second World War was the single most important event shaping and directing subsequent developments throughout the 20th century. Moreover, no single other event so shaped the 1930s world or influenced the events leading to WWII than did the great worldwide depression. Through the words of the survivors of those terrible time themselves we are introduced into the world of those times, and in the process are treated to a terrific account of the human ordeal of the 1930s, which, as noted historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Notes, "does justice to the social and cultural dimensions of economic crisis as well as to its political and economic impact." Here we take a busman's tour into a world literally turned upside down by the massive and systematic economic dislocations that suddenly arose in the late 1920s.

This collection of letters breathes life into the otherwise stale statistics of the times. Moreover, this is a quite interesting collection that imaginatively recreates the amazing social, economic, and political conditions of the Great Depression for the reader in a most entertaining and edifying way. Today it is difficult, especially for younger readers, to understand just how traumatic and dangerous the crisis in democracy that the events surrounding the Great Depression were, not only in this country, but also in all of the constitutional democracies of the west. To the minds of many fair-minded Americans, the capitalist system had failed, and it was the man in the street with his family who bore the cruelest brunt of this failure. Millions were set adrift, and everywhere ordinary human beings were stripped of their possessions, their livelihood, and their dignity as thousands and then millions of businesses and enterprises went bankrupt.

For a time it appeared the government itself would lost the confidence of the people, and that civil order would be sacrificed along with all of the material dispossessions millions had already suffered. Socialism and even communism flourished as alternative answers in academic circles, and no one seemed sure or even confident that the system could be saved or resurrected as it continued to fail. The rise from the ashes of the Great Depression was uncertain, fitful, and quite painful, and only the advent of the circumstances surrounding the Second World War really cured the economic ills that Americans struggled with in those times. The fact that we seem to have forgotten the fact that capitalism is a god that can and does fail is worrying to the author, and he examines some of the dangerous and misguided tacit assumptions of contemporary politicians such as the supply side "voodoo" economics of Ronald Reagan's administration.

I found the book to be a valuable aid in understanding how ordinary Americans, forged in the crucible of hard times and make-do, were given the character, self-reliance, and native ability to improvise that so influenced our conduct in the Second World War. Many scholars attribute our military success to the brilliant efforts by our young company and platoon leaders both in Europe and in the Pacific with providing the decisive ingredient to win the war in terms of the hand-to-hand combat. As David Kennedy argues so persuasively in "Freedom From Fear" (see my review), it was the young Americans whose characters were forged in the hard times of the Great Depression who so the moral courage and strength of character to rise up from their foxholes to win their war. This is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it.

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