Public Griefs and Personal Problems: An Empirical Inquiry into the Impact of the Great Depression

From Olympus, Samuel Eliot Morison (1965) reminds us that “we owe admiration as well as pity to the simple folk of America who suffered so grievously under the depression.” And no doubt we do. But those who would understand the long-term political and social impacts of the Great Depression must gain a fuller understanding of the ways in which Americans made sense of their Depression experiences. The critical passage through Roosevelt’s Hundred Days largely satisfies most historians’ appetites for understanding the impact of the Great Depression upon Americans’ personal attitudes. The effects of the whole Depression era upon the ways Americans felt are assumed to be congruent with changes in political institutions and ethos. In particular, the durable partisan realignment and its concomitant “New Deal coalition” occurring in the middle of the Depression calls up images of major modifications in attitudes. Thus Clubb, Flanigan, and Zingale (1980) explain the endurance of the New Deal realignment with reference to the “vital and active concern for a suffering citizenry” that FDR and the New Deal came to connote.