The Great Depression: America 1929-1941

When I began reading The Great Depression, I almost put it down after the first chapter. The incredible liberal bias and and irrelevant digs at President Reagan were a big turnoff. If you can over look his bias the author does provide a decent description of what happened during the period leading up to the depression and what happened during the depression. The author has no clue as to why the depression occurred. The best he can do is point to a maldistribution of income without explaining exactly how this caused the depression and why the maldistribution of income which liberals claim has always existed has not lead to a whole series of depressions.Much of the book is about the politics during the depression with Hoover bad and Roosevelt good. He does describe Roosevelt as the consummate politician who has a fatherly way of connecting to the forgotten man.. Roosevelt had no idea of how to get out of the depression, but knew he had to try something. So he stumbled from one inadequate program to the next, often helping the very people who did not need help and had not fixed the problem right up to the beginning of WWII. In the process he created the footprint for Johnson’s Great Society programs that destroyed Black families and created a permanent underclass of female led households that have been the source of so much crime and suffering. None of Roosevelt’s programs made any more than a nibble at resolving the maldistribution of income that the author seems to attribute to the cause of the depression. The author concludes that it was the deficit spending of WWII that got us out of the depression. This has not been a good precedent to set because future administrations have been happy to deficit spend during recessions but have generally put in place programs that they are not willing to reign in during the good times.Milton Friedman and Anna Swartz provide a much better analysis of what caused the depression and assert that if we had had The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation which protected the deposits of individuals, the disastrous runs on banks that caused so many of them to fail would have been avoided. The huge loss of banks resulted in a disastrous decrease in the money supply that ended in shutting down the rest of the economy. If these disasters could have been avoided the depression probably would have been little more than a typical recession. McElvaine seems to have no idea of how the collapse in banking was a prime cause of the depression. For him the banks are always the bad guys who do nothing but protect the rich.McElvaine also suggests that the farm problem was also a big factor in the depression. The reason there was a farm problem was because the farmers had become so efficient that they always produced an excess supply which drastically reduced prices and hence farmers income. Of course, governments continue to mismanage this problem because of the supposed need to protect family farms. Curious how the government never saw the need to protect the family drug stores or service stations. Even today, farmers are paid to not grow anything. When my father farmed, he would over plant the wheat crop and then destroy that part of the crop that was not growing as well until he got his acreage down to satisfy the government agent.McElvaine harangues the republican party for supposedly trying to protect the rich greedy capitalists. I wonder how he would feel today about the Democrat government protecting the incredibly rich communications, marketing and other large firms while seemingly trying to destroy the millions of small businesses that constitute the growth engine of the economy today and employ millions of people, but typically vote republican.McElvaine describes how the unionized labor movement was strengthened during the depression which was probably a good thing. Unions were very successful in industries that had large capital and material requirements relative to the labor requirement. On the other hand, unionization of industries with relatively large labor requirements has simply destroyed those industries in the US and caused the firms or industries to move to countries with low cost labor The loss of the textile industry in the US is a good example. Today the remanent of unionized labor is located in the government, so we now pay taxes to the government to pay predominantly democrat workers exceptionally high wages, who in return make contributions to democrat election campaigns. This causes republicans through their taxes to help finance democrat campaigns. It seems that Roosevelt was fully cognizant that this could be the end result of the programs he tried to implement as he was concerned about achieving a permanent democrat majority. Fortunately, we were saved from many of his disastrous programs by a conservative supreme court, which Roosevelt also tried to fix at the beginning of his second term by packing the court. In the process he used up a great deal of the good will of the American people and congress and inadvertently saved us from a slew of additional cockamamie programs that he might have thought up.

Robert McElvaine sets himself the task of writing a complete history of the Depression years, and he does so from the perspective of a liberal in the time of Reagan (the first edition was published in 1984 and a new forward added in 1993.) He attempts to include both the broad scope of politics and economics, as well as insight into every-day life and especially the values of American society as a whole. In his new forward, he chides himself for not including more about the Dust Bowl, radio, and sports, so his intended scope is wide.But what the book actually contains is mostly the Depression as viewed through the Presidency. He focuses a great deal of time and attention on the ideas and actions of Hoover (not as bad as you might think) and on Roosevelt (not an economic theorist so much as a politician and a pragmatist.)His attempt to also include the voices of ordinary Americans is rather awkwardly stuck mostly into one chapter and based mostly on the letters these Americans wrote to President and Mrs. Roosevelt, so the focus is still very much on the Depression as seen from the White House. He also includes an interesting chapter on the moral and economic meaning of popular films of the 30s.His analysis of "values" seems vague, general, and ultimately naive. In the 20s and 80s, the general tone was selfish. In the 30s, and to an extent throughout the post-War period, people were less selfish, less individualistic, more community-minded. It seems to me, from the perspective of someone who lived through both "selfish" decades and "selfless" decades, that people will be community-minded to the extent that they see themselves as also beneficiaries of that community. He admits that the sudden interest in "sharing" in the 1930s arose from those who expected to benefit by a more "unselfish" attitude towards wealth, not from those with power or wealth suddenly feeling generous with it. In my view, people are willing to be taxed for projects such as public schools and libraries and roads and social programs to the extent that they believe these projects will be of use to "us," but not if they see them as being of use to "them." That is going to be true no matter what happens. It is foolish to wish for selflessness as public policy. What perhaps matters most is the ability of political leaders to create a broader sense of "us."To the extent that the book provides economic analysis of the causes of the Great Depression, it suggests, as we hear suggested today, that people became "greedy" and individualistic, and that caused trouble. But people will always be greedy. This is not a trait that waxes and wanes, bringing us good times and bad times. The ultimate economic question is: Given human nature as it is, how can an economy best be run for the common good? The 1920s, the 1980s and the past 8 years have answered that question by saying, Get government out of the way, let people make as much money as possible, don't tax it, don't regulate business, and everyone will be better off in the long run. The 1930s and the present crisis suggest otherwise, that such a course of action will concentrate wealth in too few hands and will lead to an excess of financial, rather than economic, activity, which will create a bursting bubble that will slow overall economic growth and prosperity.Yes, this book is biased, but its bias is very obvious, and it is open about the fact that all history is biased, that no one can tell a story about the past without interpreting it in terms of the present. Reading a book written 25 years ago, we also interpret it in terms of our own present.

The book was in fair condition, arrived fast and I am happy with the purchase.

I am enjoying this book fairly long ,well written very informative

A thoroughly good read, with many insights into the USA during those bad years prior to the recovery of the early 40's.

Über die sehr kurze Lieferzeit konnte ich mich wirklich freuen, das Paket kam aus den USA und war innerhalb von 3 Tagen in Deutschland.Der schlechte und ekelige Zustand des Buches bringen aber diesem Produkt leider nur 2 Sterne. Das Buch hält vorne und hinten eigentlich gut zusammen, aber bei der Hälfte der Seiten ist der Buchrücken gerissen.Der Plastikeinband ist vielleicht praktisch um Verschmutzung von Außen abzuweisen bei einem weichen Einband wie bei diesem Buch, jedoch bei diesem Exemplar wurde dadurch die Zucht von Schimmel auf den Bücherseiten begünstigt. Jede Seite hatte am oberen Eck Schimmelflecken.Vielleicht um das Buch vor weiteren grau-grünlich-fettigen Stellen zu schützen haben sich die Vorbesitzer die Mühe gemacht, das Buch mit einem stinkigen (ich hoffe mal etwas das für den Menschen und die Umwelt verträglichen) anti-Schimmelmittel einbalsamiert, sodass das Buch auch wirklich chemisch - und gammelig - riecht.Ich kann das Buch nur im Freien lesen, Danach nicht vergessen Hände zu waschen!Wenn ich damit fertig bin ich überlege mir, wenn ich es nicht mehr benötige, das Buch zurück an die Bibliothek zu senden, von dem es vor Jahren entwendet wurde, wie es auf der Bücherrückseite vermerkt wurde.