The Emotional Life of the Great Depression

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Stock Market ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
American Woman ◽  
American People ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Grapes Of Wrath ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
Structures Of Feeling ◽  
Stock Market Investment

The Emotional Life of the Great Depression documents how Americans responded emotionally to the crisis of the Great Depression. Unlike most books about the 1930s, which focus almost exclusively on the despair of the American people during the decade, The Emotional Life of the Great Depression explores the 1930s through other, equally essential emotions: righteousness, panic, fear, awe, love, and hope. In expanding the canon of Great Depression emotions, the book draws on an eclectic archive of sources, including the ravings of a would-be presidential assassin, stock market investment handbooks, a Cleveland serial murder case, Jesse Owens’s record-setting long jump at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, King Edward VIII’s abdication from his throne to marry a twice-divorced American woman, and the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. In concert with these, it offers new readings of the imaginative literature of the period, from obscure Christian apocalyptic novels and H.P. Lovecraft short stories to classics such as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Richard Wright’s Native Son. The upshot is a new take on the Great Depression, one that emphasizes its major events (the stock market crash, unemployment, the passage of the Social Security Act) but also, and perhaps even more so, its sensibilities, its structures of feeling.

Anatolian Peasants in the Great Depression 1929–1933

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 79-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elif Akçetin
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Stock Market ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Stock Market Crash ◽  
Sudden Drop ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Area Of Study

The effects of the Great Depression of 1929 on peasants in Turkey is an area of study that has remained neglected, despite the fact that peasants then constituted 75 percent of the population. The reason why the condition of peasants has not attracted much attention is the dramatic change between the economic policies of the 1920s and those of the 1930s. The immediate consequence of the stock-market crash and the sudden drop in prices was the shrinkage of international trade. Governments dealt with the depression by implementing quotas on imports, and liberal economic policies were no longer considered successful. Protectionism became the most popular policy for the management of economies in difficulty. The change in economic policies during this period constituted a break with the past and therefore has been the principal focus of studies on the Great Depression.

Depression and the Welfare State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Mayhew
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Social Provision ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ◽  
High Place

This chapter navigates the 1930s and groups two impulses into it: responding to the Great Depression and building a welfare state equipped with instruments of social provision. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats blended these two impulses when they executed their New Deal in the 1930s. However, on current inspection, the blend is confusing and sometimes contradictory, and there is a difference in time span. Responding to the Great Depression was clearly a 1930s drive; whereas the Social Security Act of 1935 still enjoys its high place at the top of the American welfare state. The chapter shows how the timeline on building U.S. social provision runs a lot longer before and afterward.

From Prosperity to Depression

Irvin S. Cobb ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Stock Market ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Stock Market Crash ◽  
Slowing Down ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Changing Times ◽  
To Receive

In the late 1920s Cobb’s popularity declined, due to the changing times. Although he continued to add books to his repertoire, they failed to receive critical acclaim. Other elements of Cobb’s life were still satisfying, such as his wanderlust and his love of spending time with friends. The stock market crash and the Great Depression took a toll on the Cobb family’s finances. While Cobb’s writing career was slowing down, Buff had become an accomplished writer. Cobb delved into work in radio and ventures in Hollywood.

scholarly journals The Repeal Of The Glass- Steagall Act And The Current Financial Crisis

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinne Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Stock Market ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Conflict Of Interest ◽  
Investment Banking ◽  
Too Big To Fail ◽  
Stock Market Crash ◽  
Financial Conglomerates ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Current Financial Crisis

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; color: black; font-size: 10pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">The Glass-Steagall Act was passed in 1933 in response to the failure of the banks following the Great Depression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>One out of every five banks failed in the aftermath of the stock market crash. Legislators and regulators questioned the role the underwriting of securities played in the financial collapse. Many believed these investment banking activities caused a conflict of interest in that banks often suggested that their customers purchase securities the banks had underwritten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They believed that this conflict of interest contributed significantly to the stock market crash and the bank failures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The Glass-Steagall Act forced banks to choose between being a commercial bank or an investment bank, in effect constructing a wall between commercial banking and investing banking activities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The Glass- Steagall Act was the first law signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt upon taking the oath of office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Almost immediately upon enactment, the financial community lobbied to have the Act repealed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Over the years, this persistent lobbying led to a continual reinterpretation and liberalization of the Glass-Steagall Act, until the Act was repealed in 1999.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>On the dawn of repeal, the late Senator Paul Wellstone made an impassioned plea on the Senate floor. He said the repeal of Glass-Steagall would enable the creation of financial conglomerates which would be too big to fail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Furthermore, he believed that the regulatory structure would not be able to monitor the activities of these financial conglomerates and they would eventually fail due to engaging in excessively risky financial transactions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Ultimately, he said, prophetically, that the taxpayers would be forced to bail out these too-big-to-fail financial institutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Clearly, Senator Wellstone was in the minority as the legislation repealing the Glass-Steagall Act was passed in both the House and the Senate with large majorities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>President Bill Clinton signed the legislation into law in late November, 1999.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It has now been over ten years since the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the United States is in the grip of the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Legislators and regulators are again questioning the role that the investment banking activities of commercial banks have played in a financial crisis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Some believe the repeal of Glass-Steagall contributed significantly to the current financial crisis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Others believe that if Glass-Steagall had still been in place, the financial crisis would be much worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This paper examines the role that the repeal of Glass-Steagall played in the current financial crisis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></p>

In the Eye of the Great Depression: New Deal Reporters and the Agony of the American People.

1990 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 555
Author(s):  
C. K. McFarland ◽  
John F. Bauman ◽  
Thomas H. Coode
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
New Deal ◽  
American People ◽  
The Great Depression

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.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
John Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Great Depression ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
The Great Depression

The introduction follows Lorena Hickok, a field investigator for the Federal Emergency Relief Agency, as she circulated about the country during the Great Depression, reporting back to Washington, D.C. what she discovered about how Americans felt during the decade. They felt, to judge by her reports, despair, anger, and pity. The introduction argues, however, that the emotional life of the period exceeded these admittedly widespread responses, and it lays out what a fuller account of the emotional life of the Great Depression would look like. It also describes and defends the study of emotions against recent challenges—made most forcefully by Walter Benn Michaels—that feelings only distract from a properly structural understanding of capitalism. It discusses, too, the continuing presence of the Great Depression, why it matters, and what an emotional history offers to a renewed understanding of it.

The Arc of National Confidence and the Birth of Film Noir, 1929–1941

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-414
Author(s):  
PHILIP HANSON
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Film Noir ◽  
American People ◽  
World War ◽  
Fallen Woman ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Film Genres

Early in the Great Depression, Gerald W. Johnson remarked on the “fathomless pessimism” that had overtaken the American People: “The energy of the country has suffered a strange paralysis … We are in the doldrums, waiting not even hopefully for the wind which never comes.” Film developments of the decade were entwined with the ongoing economic crisis. This article offers an analysis of the extreme shifts in confidence in this period and argues for their relationship with the evolution of film noir, which had its roots in two film genres prominent in the period, the gangster and fallen-woman films, but which breaks with these genres, not after the onset of World War II, which has long been believed, but in the closing years of the 1930s.

scholarly journals Deciphering the Liquidity and Credit Crunch 2007–2008

2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus K Brunnermeier
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Stock Market ◽  
Financial Markets ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Financial Market ◽  
Mortgage Market ◽  
Credit Crunch ◽  
Real Economy ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Great Depression

The financial market turmoil in 2007 and 2008 has led to the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression and threatens to have large repercussions on the real economy. The bursting of the housing bubble forced banks to write down several hundred billion dollars in bad loans caused by mortgage delinquencies. At the same time, the stock market capitalization of the major banks declined by more than twice as much. While the overall mortgage losses are large on an absolute scale, they are still relatively modest compared to the $8 trillion of U.S. stock market wealth lost between October 2007, when the stock market reached an all-time high, and October 2008. This paper attempts to explain the economic mechanisms that caused losses in the mortgage market to amplify into such large dislocations and turmoil in the financial markets, and describes common economic threads that explain the plethora of market declines, liquidity dry-ups, defaults, and bailouts that occurred after the crisis broke in summer 2007.

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