From the OAH President

Reflections on the Great Depression

Elaine Tyler May

This October marks the eightieth anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression. I thought I would mark that occasion by reflecting on then and now. I asked several historians who have written on the culture and politics of the 1930s if they would be willing to suggest ways in which that era might help us understand and respond to the crisis we face today. A few of them generously took time out of their busy lives to respond to my request.

Robert McElvaine noted that the warning signs were obvious as early as the 1980s to anyone familiar with the excesses of the 1920s, but that nobody noticed because of the mesmerizing complacency of the Reagan era. McElvaine commented, “Since 1981, policymakers have been systematically unlearning the lessons of 1929. As the zombie arguments that the Market is God, any regulation is evil, and it is good to concentrate wealth and income at the top, arose from the dead and began to walk among us again, the conditions of the 1920s were recreated. By 2007, the share of national income going to the richest 0.01 percent (each making at least $11.5 million) had risen to 6 percent, well above the previous high it had reached in 1928, and the end in a consumption-based economy was, predictably, the same. The question now is whether President Obama can break away from the influence of his Goldman-Sachs advisers and do at least as well as FDR did in reversing the consequences of glorified, unfettered greed.”

While McElvaine focused on greed at the top, Lewis Erenberg commented on downsizing everywhere else, and how the popular arts reflect the change in circumstances: “The first thing that strikes me is that while there is a major difference between a Great Depression and a Big Recession, one of the key similarities is the theme of downsizing. Not only are men and women (this time) let go, but people were then and are now forced to downsize their lives. Hence the drop in SUV, Hummer sales, the slowdown in home sales and construction, and for people more on the margin, turning to rummage sales and community sales to outfit their children for school rather than buying new items. The emphasis on the economic troubles has diminished the power of the culture warriors, and heightened the emphasis on economic issues and policies. We see some of this in the music business in both eras. In the 30s record sales collapsed, partly due to the new format of radio. Today we see the CD market down because of the recession and the new format of downloading. Touring has been affected as has the big music festivals. Many artists are dejected as the music business melts down, which bears some similarity to the early 30s. While it is hard to tell where music is going, there are signs that the recession has affected the themes, much as we had Dust Bowl ballads and ‘Brother Can You Spare a Dime’ in the ‘30s. Along with that, there’s real anger toward the wealthy Wall Street stock brokers and big bankers in general. For example, Neil Young’s Fork in the Road CD mentions that we’re all being downsized, including his sales after ‘The Crash of Bucks,’ in which he asks, where did the money go? In the song ‘Fork in the Road,’ he sings, ‘there’s a bail out coming, but it’s not for you/ It’s all for those creeps hiding what they do.’ In country music there’s more common man themes, and in rap, there’s less emphasis on glitz and misogyny and fancy cars and Rolexes. In Rugged N Raw’s new CD and video, they are playful about empty pockets, and the video ends not with bucks showering down like rain, but coupons. Perhaps we’ll see more movies like Public Enemies which retells the John Dillinger legend of the last American outlaw who robs banks and expresses the anger of ordinary people against the banks. At the same time, there’s the merging of politics and pop music with Obama’s posters everywhere, including on T shirts, the jazz pieces dedicated to him, and the ways rappers, soul artists and some rockers make reference to him. Is this the hopeful side of the day, parallel to FDR’s unprecedented appearances on radio and his picture in so many movies? This will depend on how the economy and his policies fare and where the Afghanistan War goes.”

Like Erenberg, Lary May comments on the ways in which the popular culture expressed political ideas. He observed that “in the last depression, those who had dominated public life saw their power and ideas failing. People who had formerly been excluded generated a cultural renaissance in the popular and high arts that helped to reshape American politics and identity itself. In the 1930s, the most dramatic example was Will Rogers. Born and raised a Cherokee Indian, he became by l935 the major political commentator, film star and radio personality of the day, known as the ‘Number One New Dealer’ and ‘Citizen Rogers.’ And he did not pull any punches. He expressed his radical views in his newspaper columns, radio shows, political speeches and movies. Typical was his message to radio listeners in l934 that it was ‘not the working classes that brought on the economic crisis, it was the big boys that thought the financial drunk was going to last forever, and over bought and over capitalized.’ The result was that ‘the difference between our rich and poor grows greater every day. The Big Men tell us there is as much as we had and all that. But what they don’t tell us is what’s the matter with us is the unequal division of it. Our rich are getting richer all the time.’ Today we have a similar crisis, after thirty years of a ‘financial drunk’ that led to an ever wider gap between the rich and poor. Yet what appears to be different is the lack of social movements or popular art animated by the desire for a more equal distribution of wealth. After a long cold war and conservative ascendancy, the popular language of Americanism that Will Rogers evoked in the 1930s is now seen as ‘communist’ or ‘socialist’ and thus “Un-American.” One could despair at this political vacuum, despite the great appeal of President Obama. Yet one thing that the study of the last depression and the recent election can teach us is that American life and culture is incredibly creative and filled with surprises. That alone gives one hope that out of this depression we too can seize the chance, as Will Rogers said, to ‘reorganize and redeem ourselves.’ ”

Gary Gerstle agreed that the critical difference between then and now is the lack of a popular insurgency to push the nation’s leadership to respond to the needs of the people. While that insurgency might still appear, it is not clear at this point where it might lead. Gerstle wrote, “Missing from most comparisons between the Great Recession and the Great Depression that I have seen is an appreciation for the role that popular insurgency played in shaping the politics of the New Deal. The Roosevelt administration and the Democratic party that supported it generated not one but two New Deals: the first, in 1933, was far more solicitous of the interests of big business than was the second, which took shape in 1935 and was far more oriented to the interests of ordinary Americans (through such measures as Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act). Why the difference? The limitations and then failure of the first New Deal triggered popular unrest and mobilization in 1934: labor organizing and strikes surged, Americans elected that year what was arguably the most radical House of Representatives in American history, and third party challenges to the Democratic party proliferated. FDR came to fear these challenges, thinking they might undermine his campaign for re-election in 1936. Only in this climate did he embrace a harder-hitting liberalism and lend his support to a New Deal that today we remember as fundamentally restructuring American life. Many expect a similar kind of restructuring politics from Obama today. But it will only occur if a grass roots liberal insurgency gathers force and pulls Obama to the left. Absent that, the forces pulling Obama to the right will be too strong for him or the Democratic Party to resist. From where will this liberal insurgency emerge? To date, the labor movement lacks the vitality it possessed in the 1930s, the grassroots internet movement on which Obama built a successful campaign has lost its focus, and the other popular mediaradio and televisionare dominated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Lou Dobbs. Should a populist insurgency develop in the second year of Obama’s administration, as it did in Roosevelt’s, it seems far more likely, as of this moment, to take a conservative rather than a liberal form. Yet, it is also true that in moments of crisis, new forms of political mobilization can develop with uncommon speed. Whichever way the country moves politically, 2010 is likely to be the decisive year of Obama’s presidency, much as 1934 was for FDR’s.”

Like Gerstle, Jeffrey Brooks also wonders whether the United States can reclaim the legacy of the 1930s. As a historian of the Soviet Union, Brooks offered a comparative perspective: “The Europeans have worked out a new social contract that extended the liberal-labor alliance that brought in democracy in some of Europe in the nineteenth century and which war-weary Europeans re-energized after World War II. Since we have no consensus and will not have one barring a Pearl Harbor scale defeat or a Sputnik-scale challenge, I cannot see us solving our problems regardless of what Obama may or may not want to do. He brought in too many of the old boys and old girls on day one to change the system on day two or three. The big payouts to Wall Street tycoons set the formula months ago. By doing that our leaders have, I fear, lost the chance to form a new Roosevelt-type coalition for change. Think about it. Europe has its advanced infrastructure, its fast trains, its good social net. And where are we with our tens of millions who have no health insurance and our countless unemployed to say nothing of our faltering transportation systems? You can add Canada and Australia to the countries that have moved beyond our political dead end. It is almost as if we began years ago to mimic the disastrous policies of our old Soviet enemy by putting aside quality of life issues such as education, the environment, and health care to focus on military solutions to our problems. Many then and even now seem to have forgotten that the Soviet Union collapsed not in a grand military debacle but because it failed its own citizens, who hoped, however naively, for something better, something equivalent to what they believed they saw in Western Europe and yes, also ironically in the United States.”

These scholars share the view that there are lessons to learn from the 1930s that can guide us today, particularly the need for active citizenship, creative thinking and artistic expression, vigorous opposition to those whose greed brought us to this point, and holding ourselves as well as our leaders accountable. As historians, we have a particular opportunity to bring the lessons of the past into our work as teachers, scholars, and public historians. It is an old cliché that those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately, that old cliché may be staring us in the face.