The Role of Vilmos Tarján in the History of the Newyork Coffeehouse

The purpose of the study. To examine how the Newyork Coffeehouse was run between 1920 and 1936. What were Vilmos Tarján’s, the executive board member and main shareholder’s, business policies. What profile did he intend for the Coffeehouse? The Coffeehouses were struggling between the two World Wars. What were the Coffeehouse’s solutions for the post- World War challenges and the problems of the Great Depression? Applied methods. To get to know the Newyork Coffeehouse Company Limited, the sources were the documents of the Company Registry. These helped to reconstruct the list of the shareholders. The balance and profit loss accounts were used to examine the profitability of the Coffeehouse. The problems of the Coffeehouses in Budapest between 1920 and 1936 were examined through the articles of professional journals. To understand Vilmos Tarján’s aspirations, his own books and articles of the daily newspapers were used. Outcomes. Vilmos Tarján wanted to turn the Newyork Coffeehouse into a luxorious, highend Coffeehouse. In order to reach this goal, he renovated the interior, later refurbished and modernized it several times. He established one of the best kitchen in the city and engaged the audience with frequent performances and concerts. With these aspirations he could solve the post-World War problems successfully. However, his skills and role in the associations of the industry were not enough to face the challenges that arose during the Great Depression.

The Turn of 20th Contemporary Art under the Big Social Crisis

The current COVID-19 pandemic has immensely impacted artists and their artwork. Such as the spread of the epidemic has led to the emergence of a new art form-NFT and so on, and also made online art exhibitions and virtual spaces became a popular way of viewing exhibitions. The same applies to the 20th century, artists knew that they had entered a unique and modern age of artistic expression. The modern world would bring both opportunities and challenges to the people. Historical evidence has shown that art is a highly dynamic field characterized by its ever-changing nature. Characterized by various social crises such as the Great Depression, 1918 Influenza Pandemic, First World War, and the Second World War, among many others. The Great Depression of the 1930s influenced art, particularly painting, to a great extent. During the depression, art became a tool for reflecting the current conditions, social critique, and activism.

What Future for Inequality?

Because the struggle over inequality is the principal defining issue of history, it will also be the defining issue of humanity’s future. This concluding chapter briefly surveys reasons for pessimism and optimism concerning future inequality. On the side of pessimism, since the rise of the state 5,500 years ago, elites have almost always taken all of producers’ surpluses, leaving them with bare subsistence. Only partial delegitimation of elites’ ideology during the Great Depression led to 40 years of political measures reducing inequality. The resurgence of laissez-faire ideology and inequality over the past 45 years does not inspire optimism. Yet enormous progress has been made over the course of human history, and especially in the past several centuries. This has been especially impressive in the development of science and human critical faculties which privilege rule by reason. This book goes to press amidst growing awareness of inequality’s unfairness and negative consequences.

Entrepreneurship and Labor Absorption: Blacks and Whites in Northern U.S. Cities During the Great Depression

An extensive literature on newly developing societies shows that the urban economy's entrepreneurial sector can absorb a sizable share of persons who are unemployed and searching for work. Surprisingly, however, little research on the United States has examined entrepreneurship's labor absorption capacity. The present study fills this gap by analyzing Blacks and Whites in northern U.S. cities during the Great Depression, a time of widespread joblessness, particularly among Blacks. The results suggest that, if not for Blacks’ uniquely severe resource deprivation, Black entrepreneurship could have absorbed a large number of jobless Blacks. Labor absorption estimates, calculated with 1940 Census data, indicate that one-third of the Black-White unemployment difference is attributable to racial inequality of entrepreneurial outcomes. This historical evidence advances social-scientific understanding of racial inequality during the Great Depression and informs a longstanding debate about the merits of promoting Black business ownership as a strategy for improving Blacks’ labor market prospects.

The Great Depression in the Eyes of the Silesian Christian Democrats

Goal – The great depression forced changes in the economic program of the Christian Democracy (Silesian Christian Democrats). Indicating the exceptional role of the Upper Silesian heavy industry in the economic potential of the Second Polish Republic, the program emerged from the criticism of the Sanation (Sanacja in Polish) program of surviving the crisis. Research method – The study analyzes archival sources and literature on the subject, as well as statistical data. Results – In the years of the great depression, official state authorities, as well as individual political groups formulated their own programs for overcoming the economic difficulties that were faced. Christian Democracy was one of these groups, but its program to combat the crisis was limited only to ad hoc measures aimed at mitigating the negative effects of the crisis. The activists of the Silesian Christian Democrats did not properly interpret the sources of economic difficulties, as they did not understand the core of the problem.