Contact

Understanding our Grandparents Today

Dec 7, 2009
Ryan Gofus
Uncategorized

Studs Terkel’s work, Hard Times, removes that degree of separation that we often find in history between the modern day reader and the real life historical figures themselves. Through a collection of oral histories, Terkel effectively captures the trials and tribulations of the Depression. We all know the broad strokes of the times, but he gives us the minutia, the daily stresses and hardships. This technique of presenting a variety of oral histories is relevant to our edited collections in the sense that it is one large compilation of primary sources.

To fully appreciate Hard Times, it’s important to know a brief history of Terkel himself. He was in his early 20’s during the Great Depression, our age. He joined a specialized division of the Work Projects Administration called the Federal Writer’s Project. It was one of a number of New Deal projects focused on the arts. The group focused on compiling oral histories, and is best known for producing the American Guide Series, a 48 State guide to America. It is from these experiences that Terkel draws upon to produce Hard Times.

Terkel interviewed a great swath of people from the homeless to the affluent, from the veterans’ at the Bonus March to the politicians themselves. I want to highlight two stories that I found most powerful. Ed Paulson was a young drifter from the Mid-West looking for work. He recounted an average day spent searching for a job in vain. In reference to society and the job market, Ed claims, “There’d be this kind of futile struggle, because somehow you never expected to win. We had a built-in losing complex” (pg. 31). He talks about surviving through stealing. “It wasn’t a big thing, but it created a coyote mentality. You were a predator. You had to be.” (pg. 34). Ultimately, he claims that Roosevelt’s program changed his life and saved him from going to prison.

The second history that stood out to me was of Congressman Patman. His story draws many parallels with our own economic situation. “…the farmers were in distress because all the money went to Wall Street. They were using it up there, manipulating. They were not using money out in the country” (pg. 282). This rhetoric of Main Street vs. Wall Street prevails today. There was a rift between those who manipulated the money, and those who needed the money.

Terkel’s forward warns those who are overly optimistic about the economy. He and others who lived during the depression have been there; they know how quickly things can change, “like a thunder clap.” He warns against over optimism. Ironically, he wrote this forward in 1986, just over a year before the single largest market decline is history. I think it’s interesting that people need to live through an event themselves to fear its occurrence and fully understand its ramifications. I once heard someone say, “Humans are the only animals that will trip over the same rock twice.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard my grandparents talk about the Hard Times they experienced growing up after the Depression. Their frugality always baffled me, until this year when I was met with both an understanding of how grave our current situation is as well as a realization that the financial “real world” for me is right around the corner.

3 Comments
Tags

3 Comments

  1. Rawson Rebecca  •  Dec 7, 2009 @10:18 pm

    In Hard Times, Studs Terkel uses a unique approach to recapture the Great Depression of the 1930s, interviewing hundreds of people across the United States. He describes the collection of oral histories as more of “a memory book rather than one of hard fact and precise statistic” (3), for he emphasizes the ordinary, yet significant details that concerned his subjects’ experiences, rather than providing a sweeping textbook history of the time period. His accounts include everyone from the wealthy and powerful of society, including businessman Bill Benton and politician James Farley, to everyday strikers, impoverished farmers, writers, racketeers and speakeasy operators. Most of Terkel’s questions invite people to recollect the major events of the Depression like unemployment, the 1929 crash, organized labor issues, and FDR’s New Deal programs.

    What I found most compelling about these stories is how Terkel pulls out of his interviewees their innermost reflections, painful as some of them are. Not only did he ask about how they managed financially through the economic slump, but also about the ways in which their personal qualities and values emerged in the face of such hardship. In “A Personal Memoir,” he emphasizes the recurring theme of Americans who blamed themselves for their misfortune:

    “That there are some who were untouched or, indeed, did rather well isn’t exactly news. This has been true of all disasters. The great many were wounded, in one manner or another. It left upon them an ‘invisible scar’….The suddenly-idle hands blamed themselves, rather than society. True, there were hunger marches and protestations to City Hall and Washington, but the millions experienced a private kind of shame when the pink slip came. No matter that others suffered the same fate, the inner voice whispered, ‘I’m a failure’” (3).

    Eileen Barth, a case worker at the height of the Depression, remembers such anger and sense of personal guilt among her clients. A railroad worker who had lost his job headed one of the first families she worked with. As she spoke with the father to calculate the supplies he might need, she recalled that “he was very proud. He was so deeply humiliated. And I was, too…” (420).

    Similarly, Ward James, a private school teacher, describes how the Depression forever changed his sense of security: “Before the Depression, one felt he could get a job even if something happened to this one…I suspect, even now, I’m a little bit nervous about every job I take and wonder how long it’s going to last—and what I’m going to do to cause it to disappear….There’s a little fear in me that it might happen again. It does distort your outlook and your feeling. Lost time and lost faith…” (423).

    Hard Times is not only a rich source of information, but also a fascinating look at the relationship between memory and fact in the recording of history. As Ryan points out, Turkel’s work acts as a store of primary source material, showing how the Depression affected the lives of those who experienced it firsthand and often transformed their most difficult memories into a livable history that continues to live on through its survivors. My grandfather, for example, recalls the Depression with both bitterness and nostalgia. He still speaks of, as a child, having to create makeshift toys with scrap metal off the streets. To me it’s a disheartening story, but for him, it represents a significant moment in which he learned lessons of resourcefulness that shaped his personhood. Does anyone else’s grandparents talk about their experience of the Depression? How do you think the interplay between memory and fact affect oral histories?

  2. Caroline Moore  •  Dec 7, 2009 @11:33 pm

    Hard Times, Studs Terkel’s oral history of the Great Depression, recounts the American experience during a time of exacerbated hardship through the countless different voices. As both Ryan and Becca mention, Terkel successfully incorporates an all-encompassing variety of voices—all of which comprise an extensive survey of wide-ranging status position—to construct a greater understanding of the Depression. Using the subjective “memory book” approach, Terkel enables people from all walks of life to share a common bond as Americans that transcends the normally binding implications of socioeconomic status. As Lizbeth Cohen mentions, to understand the Depression as a laundry list series of events underscores the full reality of the disaster (214); instead, Terkel roots this catastrophic American event in the very real personal experiences and recollections of those he interviewed.

    I thought the scope of memories and remembrances of the interviewees was extremely fascinating. While the general consensus of the public when considering the Great Depression seemed woeful, Terkel’s history points out that this was not always the case. In E.Y. Harburg’s perspective on the Depression, he expresses gratitude for the way he “became alive” (20). At a time so often described in words of defeat, the Depression enabled individuals to also feel hope as they discovered themselves through adversity: “when I lost my possessions, I found my creativity. I felt like I was being born for the first time.” (20). Though Harburg may occupy the minority with his enlightened, grateful approach to understanding the Depression, his individual story offers readers a positive outlook and appreciation for the time—something typically lost in Depression-era histories.

    One aspect of the oral history that piqued my interest was the way in which the subjective experience of many individuals addressed a notion of collective identity and camaraderie. Having heard my own grandmother’s take on an oral history of the Depression, she always uses “we” to describe anyone who lived during the 1930s. I’m not sure why she adopted a mentality reminiscent of the ‘we’re all in this together’ school of thought, but I think it certainly echoes Jim Sheridan’s statements. “That’s one of the things about the Depression,” he said, “there was more camaraderie than there is now” (14). Desperate to help the hungry family, he and his fellow soldiers go to great lengths to procure a nipple for a baby bottle, only to feel like they “had lost one of their own” following the baby’s death (15). Perhaps there was comfort in knowing that others could relate to the challenges and predicaments countless people faced.

  3. Jessica Begen  •  Dec 8, 2009 @1:54 pm

    When reading Studs Terkel’s Hard Times, what most interested me was the variety of interactions that took place between Americans. Those interactions spanned a wide spectrum—from charity to brutality, generosity to fear, and nearly everywhere in between.

    I was touched by the stories that emphasized the interaction between Americans to help each other along the way. Kitty McCulloch, and Dawn, Kitty’s daughter, recall the visitors who would frequent their house asking for clothes, money, or food. Kitty would always help those who came to her door, whether it was giving them one of her husband’s suits or making a sandwich for them to eat. Dawn remembered that their house was “marked” with symbols on bricks near their back porch as a sign that they were people who would help those who came to their door. “My mother was hospitable to people, it didn’t matter who they were” (40). It’s inspiring to think that even in times when hardship struck everyone, a sense of humanity was still alive that impelled people to be selfless and act toward a common good.

    At the other end of the spectrum, Terkel captures the brutality of human nature that can exist when persons are placed in survival situations. Louis Banks recalled that men would do anything just to get by. “One fella named Scotty…they killed ’im and throwed ’im in the river, trying to get the $15 or $20 from him. They’d steal and kill each other for fifty cents” (40).

    Similarly, Pauline Kael described the (female) fear and threat of potential violence that existed during the era. She recalls that her mother would feed hungry men from the back door of her home, enraging neighbors who warned it would attract crowds of hungry men. Kael makes the important connection that the anger of her neighbors was an anger based on fear. “It wasn’t until years later, I realized the fear people had of these men…I understand why these neighbors were afraid. They had lived with domestic violence all their lives. They were beaten up by their husbands every Saturday night. You could hear them screaming. So their fear of men was generalized” (35).

    I was also interested in how the Depression changed interactions among whites and blacks. After reading Banks’ “memory,” it was interesting to think that the Depression—and the poverty it created for so many Americans—became almost a leveling tool that created a sense of equality, or at the very least a sense of shared experience, between whites and blacks. “Black and white, it didn’t make any different who you were, ’cause everyone was poor. All friendly, sleep in a jungle. We used to take a big pot and cook food, cabbage, meat and beans all together. We all set together, we made a tent. Twenty-five or thirty would be out on the side of the rail, white and colored. They didn’t have no mothers or sisters, they didn’t have no home, they were dirty, they had overalls on, they didn’t have no food, they didn’t have anything (41). Did the Great Depression facilitate racial integration or tolerance?

    Like Ryan, (and some who posted on Cohen) I was interested in the parallel between the themes of Terkel’s work and the themes we hear today regarding our economic condition. Do we see similar interactions among Americans today? Are people more willing to help each other? Are unlikely groups sharing the common experience of being financially burdened?