1930s America Research Paper

Interviews with individuals from across the economic spectrum about the heady years after the Wall Street Crash in 1929 reveal a socially transformational period of time. Unlike previous busts, the sheer hopelessness and economic damage was almost unheard of. Furthermore, another difference when compared to previous economic downturns is the incredibly productive economy that had developed as industrialization resulted in mass-market products like automobiles and washing machines becoming accessible to many Americans in the roaring 1920s. The United States’ leadership community, whether in business or politics, was totally ill-equipped to handle such a change in circumstances when, before the Great Crash, production growth was considered the penultimate method to increase prosperity, as exemplified by the spread of Taylorism and also President Hoover’s inept attempts to stabilize the economy at the turn of the 1930s. In turn, many individuals began to view the economy as a rigged system that benefitted the well-connected and

The first among those individuals to experience the turmoil was Arthur A. Robertson, a wealthy businessman from New York City that witnessed numerous suicides of colleagues and friends as, for example, “one day you saw the prices at a hundred, the next day at $20, at $15.” (page 66). Ed Paulsen, a transient young man from rural South Dakota during the Great Depression, however, stated that “in small towns out West, we didn’t know there was a Crash” (page 30). He continued by stating that the stock market did not mean “a dang thing” (page 30). Peggy Terry, an elderly woman living in Chicago during her interview, witnessed a Hooverville roughly ten square miles in size when driving with her family through Oklahoma City; “Here were all these people living in old, rusted-out car bodies…One family with a whole lot of kids were living in a piano box” (page