“I have not had One Fact Disproven”: Elizabeth Dilling's Crusade Against Communism in the 1930s

2002 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTINE K. ERICKSON
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Personal A ◽  
Personal Source ◽  
Unique Style ◽  
The Right

Who, then, is Mrs. Dilling? Upon what strange meat has she been fed that she hath grown so great: And what inspired her, she who might have taken up knitting or petunia-growing, to adopt as her hobby the deliberate and sometimes hasty criticism of men and women she has never even seen.1To see the lady in action, screaming and leaping and ripping along at breakneck speed, is to see certain symptoms of simple hysteria on the loose.2May God strengthen and uphold you, [Mrs. Dilling] … May your wonderful work grow and help save our Republic, … a time is coming when you will be blessed … You deserve a place in history comparable to Washington and Lincoln.3Hysterical and demented, saintly and just, these were just some of the characterizations of the most prominent female activist on the right during the Great Depression. Elizabeth Dilling embraced them all. For Dilling and her supporters, service in the cause of Christianity and Americanism demanded vigilance and determination, as well as a tough skin.Dilling's story is a fascinating one and deserves telling, if only because of the passion she provoked in her audiences. Yet her story has larger historical significance. Dilling created her own unique style of politics – distinctly gendered and explicitly personal, a feminine counterpunch to her male colleagues on the far-right who were relatively more aloof from their constituents. For Dilling, involvement in the politics of anti-communism was not only a personal source of strength and satisfaction but also a ticket to what she hoped would be a long and respectable career as an authority on subversive movements.

scholarly journals Finding wisdom in the life of a humble man: Lessons learned from my father

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Academic Success ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Paternal Grandmother ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

In truth, it feels rather pretentious of me to consider my life to be a meaningful source of wisdom that might guide future scholars. Perhaps that is why I have chosen to draw on the life of my father, William Cecil Mullins, as the inspiration for the guidance I proffer here. I rarely speak about this good man and only few of my friends and colleagues ever had the pleasure of meeting him while he was alive. Yet, forever etched in my memory are his stories about growing up in the hills of Southwestern Virginia during the Great Depression, the survival instincts that those years instilled in him, and the abiding love he had for his mother, eight siblings, and for those hills he called home.Because I spring from such humble roots, I have always felt different from those I regarded as born to a career in the academy. Indeed, I see the fabric of my life as more akin to the quilts that my paternal grandmother, Creecy Lou, made from feed sacks and the remnants of tattered garments rather than to the rich tapestries I have seen adorning the halls of academia. That is not to disparage my upbringing or my grandmother’s quilts. In fact, the one quilt I have of hers that has survived all these passing years remains among my most cherished possessions. Every faded or worn piece carries memories and feelings that are truly precious to me. Like that quilt, my life is a patchwork that is not easily stitched together to form a clear or coherent tale of academic success that others might wish to emulate. Yet, I have achieved success. That I must admit. I also do not believe that my success came in spite of my humble roots. Instead, if I merit the right to stand among renowned scholars in education research contributing their acquired wisdoms, it is because of those roots and the insights they have afforded me.With that backdrop in place, let me share several basic “truths” that I have stitched together from my father’s words and deeds. These patchworked lessons have been instrumental to my academic success. Perhaps these lessons might inspire others seeking guidance. Whether these lessons represent “wisdom,” I cannot say. Yet, as with my grandmother’s quilt, I am confident in their practical value.

Recovering from the Great Depression

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wuthnow
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Dust Storms ◽  
World War ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Middle America ◽  
Middle West ◽  
Smith County

This chapter examines how the Middle West recovered from the ill effects of the Great Depression. The Great Depression was something Americans hoped they would never experience again. In the rural Midwest, foreclosures and sheriff's auctions were common. The worst drought years devastated the land. Dust storms blew with such intensity that crops failed and machinery broke down. World War II sparked the economy, revived agriculture, and coincided with better weather. However, the war took millions of men and women away from their families, necessitated mandatory rationing, and drove up prices. When it was over, rural communities faced continuing challenges. The chapter considers the case of Smith Center, Kansas, to illustrate the challenges rural communities faced as they overcame the setbacks of the Great Depression and prepared for the era ahead. Recovery from the Great Depression varied across middle America, but many of the dynamics evident in Smith County occurred elsewhere.

Regulating Greed

2019 ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Saul Levmore
Keyword(s):  
Stock Market ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
John Dos Passos ◽  
Social Response ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Stock Market Crash ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Biographical Sketches ◽  
The Right

John Dos Passos’ The Big Money (1936) is hardly the only important American work to see greed as a cause of the stock market crash and then the Great Depression. It is packed with the problem of distinguishing greed from ambition, and it raises the question of the right social response to unattractive impulses. Prior to losing his idealistic fervor, or exchanging it for conservative passion, Dos Passos freely associated ambition with corruption, and acquisitiveness with antisocial self-interest. His deployment and biographical sketches of industrialists and other notable Americans suggest the difficulty of distinguishing avarice from ambition. Dos Passos’ treatment of ambition presupposes an economy where one person’s gain is at the expense of another; artistic accomplishment is, however, freed from this assumption. The novel speaks more to individual excesses than to their regulation, but it offers an opportunity to think about both.

Vladko Maček and the Croat Political Right, 1928–1941

2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-213
Author(s):  
MARK BIONDICH
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Political History ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right

AbstractThe Croat Peasant Party was arguably the most important Croatian political party during the existence of the first Yugoslavia (1918–41). Under the leadership of Vladko Maček (1879–1964), it entered the most difficult period of its history: it was forced to contend with the royal dictatorship (1929–34) of King Aleksandar Karadjordjević, the Great Depression, growing nationality tensions and an increasingly volatile political climate in which the extremes of the right and left, represented in Croatia by the Ustaša and Communist parties respectively, contended for power. This article examines the contentious relationship between Maček's Croat Peasant Party and the fascist Ustaša movement between 1929 and 1941, and assesses Maček's legacy and his place in Croatia's 20th-century political history.

Working People’s Responses to Past Depressions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Broad Overview

This chapter sketches out a broad overview of economic panics and workers' responses to them in the United States from Jacksonian times to the Great Depression. Since the founding of the Republic, working men and women have been all too familiar with alternating periods of boom times and hard times, with seasonal unemployment, with marked differences in availability of jobs among various parts of the country, and with general depressions abruptly precipitated by overproduction of wares or by bank panics. Not all downturns struck with the same severity. The crisis of the early 1840s pitched nine state governments into default (primarily in the rapidly expanding cotton kingdom), while the depression that began in 1873 sent ten state governments into default over the ensuing eleven years. The sharp collapse between the spring of 1907 and the spring of 1908 so crippled the economy that for many months more immigrants left the United States for their homelands or other countries than disembarked here. The depressions of 1873–79, 1893–98, and 1929–40 set the stage for fundamental restructuring of industrial, agricultural, and political life.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document