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.

          Lizbeth Cohen’s Making a New Deal; Industrial Workers in Chicago 1919-1939, gives us a lot to work with. Cohen examines some of the greater consequences of the Great Depression, by looking at the industrial workers in Chicago from 1919-1939. Cohen argues that during the depression, industrial workers lost more than employment, homes, insurance plans, but that they also lost a sense of security as well, security that had been provided by family, employers, and ethnic communities. People were use to relying on them in times of need. Ethnic benefit societies, churches, banks, building and loan associations, and neighborhood stores, workers’ welfare capitalist employers, and paternalistic families were so damaged by the depression that they were unable to meet the level of support so many expected. Cohen feels that they then lost faith and harbored distrust for them when this occurred, but most importantly also lost a sense of security they had been use to. I wonder, after reading this, how much was it a loss of security and how much was it a general shift in the distribution of power in American society, that allowed organizations federally funded to interfere eventually? Did this loss of security have any other consequences on American society?
        

              A federal welfare state was virtually non existent in America until the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Maybe it was a combination of America’s ideals about self reliance or maybe it was an innate distrust of “big government”, but whatever it was, people didn’t have and didn’t want support from their federal government. Many of these industrial workers were first and second generation immigrants, and so that may have contributed to their reluctance to seek support from anything federally funded. There was also a distrust and annoyance for federal employees and social workers, Mr. Goich’s experience with the social workers is an illustration of this tension between the two. (214) People instead relied on closer connections, like family, employers, and ethnic communities for survival. Cohen suggests that it was tradition to do so. It was expected. Whatever the reasons behind it, people had to turn to these alternative support systems.

        Traditionally, Cohen argues, people turned to their closest connections for support, most often family. Yet, families were overwhelmed. Never before had so many people been out of work or in financial crisis at one single time. “When one family faced an emergency like illness or death, neighbors and other close associates could usually afford to help. But the effects of the Great Depression were so pervasive that people could no longer count on much assistance from these old networks.” (218) With family unable to aid them, they had to look elsewhere.
There were private charities they could in desperate times, rely on. These usually included churches and other ethnically based clubs and organizations. They raised funds and worked with the local government to do so, but one usually had to belong to these organizations to benefit and they could only do so much. Cohen writes, “At the same time that the depression increased the demand for welfare services, it also undermined the financial resources of many religious and ethnic welfare agencies.” (229) When the Church was unable to meet the financial needs of so many, people, instead of rationalizing that these programs funds had just been exhausted, lashed out at the church and accused it of stealing. Not only were Catholic churches affected, but all churches that provided any type of social service. General distrust grew, reflected in lower church attendance. (226)

         While it was interesting reading about how the Great Depression affected people’s relationships with local ethnically run banks and local neighborhood stores, what I actually found to be one of the most interesting topics was how the depression affected people’s relationships with their employers. I had never heard of welfare capitalism before and certainly had never thought of employers as administering any support during tough times. Looking at the photograph of the Oscar Meyer company distributing food is very shocking as that it’s hard to believe. Yet, Cohen provides photographic support and good evidence, so I don’t question it. Cohen says these employers actually felt it was a duty to help their employees as the depression deepened.(238) I guess these are just words that employees are not familiar seeing today.

       Finally, Cohen examines some of the depression’s consequences on the family structure. The depression was hardest on fathers and husbands trying to support their families and be breadwinners, and eventually this led to a break down in the family structure Cohen argues. Employers were more likely to hire women and children, because they would work for less. Now instead of husbands being the breadwinners and controlling the purse strings, now wives did. “Evidence abounds that men suffered severely from their loss of status as the family’s chief breadwinner,” Cohen explains. Evidence shows men withdrew emotionally, became angry and violent, and some even committed suicide. (247) Children lost respect for fathers, transferring it to their mothers. Evidenced by one child’s own words, “”I certainly like my mother lots more, for she buys me everything.” Wives began asserting themselves more in the household, in the bedroom and elsewhere. One woman explained, “I am the boss in the family for I have full charge in running this house. You know, who make the money he is the boss.”(248) If this is not the most blatant evidence that their was a shift in the distribution of power, during the Great Depression, I don’t know what is.

         The Great Depression seemed to cause shifts in the distribution of power in all areas of people’s lives. When no longer able to seek support from their church, people looked elsewhere and the church lost some of its authority. The same happened with the local banks. Cohen asserts, “For many working people, the failure of what was often a local bank owned by a member of their ethnic group meant more than the loss of hard-earned dollars. It also meant loss of faith in the ability of their ethnic communities, particularly their leaders, to support them in times of trouble.” (231) So, as a result their leaders lost some of their authority. Finally, on a smaller scale we can look to the decline in the Patriarchal family as an example of a power shift.
         

        Over the last year or two, families have been suffering from hard economic times as well. The Great Depression seemed to cause not only security issues, but also bigger changes in society. Could we see similar trends develop today if we looked? Or are we somehow more protected from the changes in society, because we have welfare and unemployment checks, so we’re not as reliant on family or churches anymore, and we don’t expect assistance from employers, local stores, and local banks? Or are we just as vulnerable as were before?

Somehow we missed this…

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2009/11/20/costello.
cameron.evolution.cnn.html

The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-mindedness discusses heredity and the negative impact that feeble-minded individuals have when they join “normal” families. The basic take-away from Goddard is that the feeble-minded are dangerous to the normal, dominant society

One theme from the book that stood out to me was the conflation of feeble-mindedness with moral behavior. Paired with an individual’s assessment as feeble-minded, there are additional assumptions regarding that individual’s likelihood to pursue sex, alcohol, and crime. As Goddard writes: “They are people we can scarcely recognize as normal; frequently they are not what we would call good members of society” (34). This quote posits “normal” and “good members of society” as opposites; in other words, if you are not normal you are not a good member of society. The book directly claims that criminality, prostitution, and alcoholism are outgrowths of feeblemindedness (70). According to the text, this creates a social burden or social problem that demands segregation of the feeble and non-feeble minded.

The dynamic between feeble-mindedness and morality is especially interesting with regard to women. Feeble-winded women are frequently judged as immoral or sexually loose, in contrast to “a respectable girl of good family” (43). In the story of Deborah, they discuss her education and abilities, none of which pertain to her moral behavior, but immediately jump to the moral consequences that they presume will follow. “They are wayward,” writes Goddard. “…they get into all sorts of trouble and difficulties, sexually and otherwise …today if this young woman were to leave the Institution, she would at once become pretty to the designs of evil men or evil women and would lead a life that would be vicious, immoral, and criminal…because she has no power of control, and all her instincts and appetites are in the direction that would lead to vice” (28). Goddard says that one of the easiest things for feeble-minded women to fall into is prostitution. This sexual immorality can be passed down from the feeble-minded mother to her daughter. As Goddard describes the case of one woman he writes: “She had already followed the instinct implanted in her by her mother, and was on the point of giving birth to an illegitimate child” (40). Thus sexual immorality is linked to heredity.

There is a noticeable binary between good/bad, moral/immoral, and normal/feeble-minded. And when those two groups, it results in dangerous degeneracy. As this quote explains: “We have here a family of good English blood of the middle class, settling upon the original land purchased from the proprietors of the state in Colonial times, and throughout four generations maintaining a reputation for honor and respectability of which they are justly proud. Then a scion of this family, in an unguarded moment, steps aside from the paths of rectitude and with the help of a feeble-minded girl, starts a line of mental defectives that is truly appalling. After this mistake, he returns to the traditions of his family, marries a woman of his own quality, and through her carries on a line of respectability equal to that of his ancestors” (64).

In addition to all of the topics above, here are some thoughts for discussion: How would Goddard’s book be perceived by modern society? How and to what extent have our thoughts regarding heredity, “feeble-mindedness,” and degeneracy changed?   Are there any forms of social control we can compare to the eugenics movement?