Building programs had been postponed. In a few communities school terms had been
considerable shortened, and in others some of the departments and services were being
lopped off. But, on the whole, the school world wagged on pretty much as usual.
11
During the 1932-33 term the deflation gathered momentum so rapidly that many
communities had to close their schools. By the end of last March nearly a third of a
million children were out of school for that reason. But the number of children affected,
shocking as it is, does not tell the story so vividly as does the distribution of the of the
schools. Georgia had 1,318 closed schools with an enrollment of 170,790, and in
Alabama 81 percent of all the children enrolled in white rural schools were on an
enforced vacation. In Arkansas, to site the case of another sorely pressed state, over 300
schools were open for sixty days or less during the entire year. By the last of February
more than 8,000 school children were running loose in a sparsely settled New Mexico.
And over a thousand west Virginia schools had quietly given up the struggle.23
The downswing which began in 1929 lasted for 43 months. The Great
Depression’ has the dubious distinction of being the second longest economic contraction
since the Civil War, second only to that which began in 1873 and continued for 65
months. The length of a depression, however, can only give a limited indication of its
impact; the amplitude and national ramifications of 1929-33 give those years a special
importance.24
Economists, historians, and others have argued for decades about the causes of the
Great Depression. But most agree on several things. They agree, first, that what is
remarkable about the crisis is not that it occurred; periodic recessions are a normal feature
of capitalist economies. What is remarkable is that it was so severe and that it lasted so
12
long. The important question, therefore, is not so much why was there a depression, but
why was it such a bad one.25
America had experienced economic crises before. The Panic of 1893 had ushered
in a prolonged era of economic stagnation, and there had been more recent recessions, in
1907 and in 1920. The Great Depression of the 1930s, however, affected the nation more
profoundly than any economic crisis that had come before not only because it lasted
longer, but because its impact was far more widely felt. The American economy by 1929
had become so interconnected, so dependent on the health of large national corporate
institutions, that a collapse in one sector of the economy now reached out to affect
virtually everyone. Even in the 1890s, large groups of Americans had lived sufficiently
independent of the national economy to avoid the effects of economic crisis. By the
1930s, few such people remained.26
Some economists argue that a severe depression could have been avoided if the
Federal Reserve system had acted more responsibly. Instead of moving to increase the
money supply so as to keep things from getting worse in the early 1930s, the Federal
Reserve first did nothing and then did the wrong thing: Late in 1931 it raised interest
rates, which contracted the money supply even further.27
At the time, a substantial majority of Americans and nearly all foreigners who
expressed opinions on the subject believed that the Wall Street stock market crash of
October 1929 had triggered the depression, thereby suggesting that the United States was
13
the birthplace of the disaster. The connection seemed to obvious to be a coincidence.
Many modern writers have agreed; for example, the French historian Jacques Chastenet
says in Les Annees d’Illsions: 1918-1931, “After the stock market crash on the other side
of the Atlantic came an economic crisis. The crisis caused a chain reaction in the entire
world.28
Many years after it ended, former President Herbert Hoover offered an elaborate
explanation of the Great depression, complete with footnote references to the work of
many economists and other experts. “THE DEPRESSION WAS NOT STARTED IN
THE UNITED STATES,” he insisted. The “primary cause” was the war of 1914-18. In
four-fifths of the “economically sensitive” nations of the world, including such remote
areas as Bolivia, Bulgaria, and Australia, the downturn was noticeable long before the
1929 collapse of American stock prices.29
Un solved economic and social problems, accumulated over many years, made the
Great Depression more of a culture crisis than can be measured in new laws or economic
statistics. Americans had always been confident that the unique virtues of their society-its
stronger economic base, its more alert citizenry, and its higher moral principals-would
protect it from the evils and failures of Europe and would inevitable lead to new levels of
civilization. In spite of the derision of a few artists and intellectuals, this “American
Dream” still persisted in the 1920’s. Somewhere in the dark passages of the Great
Depression, as the forces of world history weakened belief in the uniqueness of the
14
United States as a nation set apart, the dream faded and became indistinct. While
America would recover economically and would rise to new heights of material
achievement scarcely thought possible in the 1929, the myth of a unique destiny would
never regain its old force and certainty. Henceforth Americans would share some of the
realistic disillusionment of Europeans, some of the sense that survival alone was an
achievement in a world not necessarily designed for the triumph of the human spirit.30
15
Endnotes
1. Richard N. Current, The Great American History (CD-ROM) The Civil War to
WWII, (Carlsbad, CA.: Comptons New Media McGraw-Hill 1995) p.1
2. Dixon Wecter, A History Of America The Age Of The Great Depression, (New
York, NY.: The Macmillan Co. 1948) p.1
3. Current Opcit. p.2
4. Ibid. p.8
5. Ibid. p.6
6. Ibid. p.7
7. T. H. Watkins, The Great Depression America in The 1930s, (Boston, MA.:
Little Brown and Co. 1993) p.54
8. Current Opcit. p.16
9. Watkins Opcit. p.55
10. Current Opcit. p.4
11. Peter Fearon, War Prosperity & Depression The U.S. Economy 1927-45,
(Lawrence, KA.: University Press 1987) p.137
12. David A. Shannon, The Great Depression, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice
Hall Ins. 1960) p.6
13. Thomas C. Cochran, The Great Depression and World War II 1929-1945,
(Glenview, IL.: Scott Foresman and Co. 1968) pp.29-30
14. Michael E. Parrish, Anxious Decades America in Prosperity and Depression
1920-1941, (New York, NY.: W.W. Norton & Co. 1992) p.240
15. Shannon Opcit. pp.13-15
16. The Editors of TIME-LIFE BOOKS, This Fabulous Century 1930-1940, (New
York, NY.: Time-Life Books 1985) p.23
16
17. Richard N. Current, The Great American History (CD-ROM) The Civil War to
WWII, (Carlsbad, CA.: Comptons New Media Inc. McGraw-Hill 1995) p.20
18. Ibid. p.21
19. Ibid. p.22
20. Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression America 1929-1941, (New York,
NY.: Times Books 1984) p.122
21. Current Opcit. p.21
22. David A. Shannon, The Great Depression, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice
Hall Inc. 1960) p.93
23. Ibid. p.94
24. Peter Fearon, War Prosperity and Depression The U.S. Economy 1917-45,
Lawrence, KA.: University Press 1987) p.89
25. Current Opcit. p.9
26. Ibid. p.3
27. Ibid. p.17
28. John A. Garraty, The Great Depression, San Diego, CA.: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich 1986) p.4-5
29. Ibid. p.4
30. Thomas C. Cochran, The Great Depression and World War II 1929-1945,
(Glenview, Il.: Scott Foresman and Co. 1968) p.1
17
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