Kansas in the Great Depression

Kansas in the Great Depression PDF Author: Peter Fearon
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 082626574X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
No part of the United States escaped the ravages of the Great Depression, but some coped with it better than others. This book examines New Deal relief programs in Kansas throughout the Depression, focusing on the relationship between the state and the federal government to show how their successful operation depended on the effectiveness of that partnership. Ranging widely over all of Kansas¿s 105 counties, Peter Fearon provides a detailed analysis of the key relief programs for both urban and rural areas and shows that the state¿s Republican administration led by FDR¿s later presidential opponent Governor Alf Landon effectively ran New Deal welfare policies. As early as 1933, federal officials reported the Kansas central relief administration to be one of the most efficient in the country, and funding for farm policies was generous enough to keep many Kansas farm families off the relief rolls. Indeed, historically high levels of social spending ensured that New Deal initiatives were radical for their day, but Fearon shows that, especially in Kansas, fears of the debilitating effects of the dole and the insistence on means testing and work relief served as conservative balances to the threat of a dependency culture. Drawing on extensive research at the county level, Fearon examines relief problems from the perspective of recipients, social workers, and poor commissioners, all of whom had to cope with inadequate and fluctuating funding. He plumbs the sometimes volatile relationships between social workers and their clients to illustrate the formidable difficulties faced by the former and explain reasons for and effects of strikes and riots by the latter. He also investigates the operation of work relief, considers the treatment of women and blacks in the distribution of welfare resources, and assesses the effects of the WPA on employment showing that the majority of those eligible were unable to secure positions and were forced to fall back on county relief. Kansas in the Great Depression is an insightful look at how federal, state, and local authorities worked together to deal with a national emergency, revealing the complexities of policy initiatives not generally brought to light in studies at the national level while establishing important links between pre Roosevelt policies and the New Deal. It reaffirms the virtues of government programs run by dedicated public officials as it opens a new window on Americans helping Americans in their darkest hours.

Kansas in the Great Depression

Kansas in the Great Depression PDF Author: Peter Fearon
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 082626574X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book Here

Book Description
No part of the United States escaped the ravages of the Great Depression, but some coped with it better than others. This book examines New Deal relief programs in Kansas throughout the Depression, focusing on the relationship between the state and the federal government to show how their successful operation depended on the effectiveness of that partnership. Ranging widely over all of Kansas¿s 105 counties, Peter Fearon provides a detailed analysis of the key relief programs for both urban and rural areas and shows that the state¿s Republican administration led by FDR¿s later presidential opponent Governor Alf Landon effectively ran New Deal welfare policies. As early as 1933, federal officials reported the Kansas central relief administration to be one of the most efficient in the country, and funding for farm policies was generous enough to keep many Kansas farm families off the relief rolls. Indeed, historically high levels of social spending ensured that New Deal initiatives were radical for their day, but Fearon shows that, especially in Kansas, fears of the debilitating effects of the dole and the insistence on means testing and work relief served as conservative balances to the threat of a dependency culture. Drawing on extensive research at the county level, Fearon examines relief problems from the perspective of recipients, social workers, and poor commissioners, all of whom had to cope with inadequate and fluctuating funding. He plumbs the sometimes volatile relationships between social workers and their clients to illustrate the formidable difficulties faced by the former and explain reasons for and effects of strikes and riots by the latter. He also investigates the operation of work relief, considers the treatment of women and blacks in the distribution of welfare resources, and assesses the effects of the WPA on employment showing that the majority of those eligible were unable to secure positions and were forced to fall back on county relief. Kansas in the Great Depression is an insightful look at how federal, state, and local authorities worked together to deal with a national emergency, revealing the complexities of policy initiatives not generally brought to light in studies at the national level while establishing important links between pre Roosevelt policies and the New Deal. It reaffirms the virtues of government programs run by dedicated public officials as it opens a new window on Americans helping Americans in their darkest hours.

The Forgotten Depression

The Forgotten Depression PDF Author: James Grant
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451686463
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
"By the publisher of the prestigious Grant's Interest Rate Observer, an account of the deep economic slump of 1920-21 that proposes, with respect to federal intervention, "less is more." This is a free-market rejoinder to the Keynesian stimulus applied by Bush and Obama to the 2007-09 recession, in whose aftereffects, Grant asserts, the nation still toils. James Grant tells the story of America's last governmentally-untreated depression; relatively brief and self-correcting, it gave way to the Roaring Twenties. His book appears in the fifth year of a lackluster recovery from the overmedicated downturn of 2007-2009. In 1920-21, Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding met a deep economic slump by seeming to ignore it, implementing policies that most twenty-first century economists would call backward. Confronted with plunging prices, wages, and employment, the government balanced the budget and, through the Federal Reserve, raised interest rates. No "stimulus" was administered, and a powerful, job-filled recovery was under way by late in 1921. In 1929, the economy once again slumped--and kept right on slumping as the Hoover administration adopted the very policies that Wilson and Harding had declined to put in place. Grant argues that well-intended federal intervention, notably the White House-led campaign to prop up industrial wages, helped to turn a bad recession into America's worst depression. He offers the experience of the earlier depression for lessons for today and the future. This is a powerful response to the prevailing notion of how to fight recession. The enterprise system is more resilient than even its friends give it credit for being, Grant demonstrates"--

A Square Meal

A Square Meal PDF Author: Jane Ziegelman
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062216430
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner From the author of the acclaimed 97 Orchard and her husband, a culinary historian, an in-depth exploration of the greatest food crisis the nation has ever faced—the Great Depression—and how it transformed America’s culinary culture. The decade-long Great Depression, a period of shifts in the country’s political and social landscape, forever changed the way America eats. Before 1929, America’s relationship with food was defined by abundance. But the collapse of the economy, in both urban and rural America, left a quarter of all Americans out of work and undernourished—shattering long-held assumptions about the limitlessness of the national larder. In 1933, as women struggled to feed their families, President Roosevelt reversed long-standing biases toward government-sponsored “food charity.” For the first time in American history, the federal government assumed, for a while, responsibility for feeding its citizens. The effects were widespread. Championed by Eleanor Roosevelt, “home economists” who had long fought to bring science into the kitchen rose to national stature. Tapping into America’s long-standing ambivalence toward culinary enjoyment, they imposed their vision of a sturdy, utilitarian cuisine on the American dinner table. Through the Bureau of Home Economics, these women led a sweeping campaign to instill dietary recommendations, the forerunners of today’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans. At the same time, rising food conglomerates introduced packaged and processed foods that gave rise to a new American cuisine based on speed and convenience. This movement toward a homogenized national cuisine sparked a revival of American regional cooking. In the ensuing decades, the tension between local traditions and culinary science has defined our national cuisine—a battle that continues today. A Square Meal examines the impact of economic contraction and environmental disaster on how Americans ate then—and the lessons and insights those experiences may hold for us today. A Square Meal features 25 black-and-white photographs.

Depression

Depression PDF Author: D. Jerome Tweton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description


Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression

Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression PDF Author: Abraham Hoffman
Publisher: VNR AG
ISBN: 9780816503667
Category : Mexican Americans
Languages : es
Pages : 226

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Book Description


No Depression in Heaven

No Depression in Heaven PDF Author: Alison Collis Greene
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199371873
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
A study of the inability of the churches to deal with the crisis of the Great Depression and the shift from church-based aid to a federal welfare state.

Understanding Teenage Depression

Understanding Teenage Depression PDF Author: Dr. Maureen Empfield
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN: 1466850094
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Based on the latest scientific findings, a comprehensive guide to the diagnosis and treatment of teenage depression. Each year thousands of American teenagers are diagnosed with clinical depression. If ignored, poorly treated, or left untreated, it can be a devastating illness for adolescents and their families. Drawing on her many years of experience as a pychiatrist working with teenagers, Dr. Maureen Empfield answers the questions parents and teens have about depression, providing detailed information on: *Identifying the different types of depression *How depression is diagnosed *Which teenagers are most at risk *Suicide *The effect of depression on other teenage problems *How depression is treated and by whom *The drugs used to treat teenage depression - what they are and how they work *When a teenager needs to be hospitalized for depression *and more Understanding Teenage Depression provides the latest scientific findings on this serious condition, and the most up to date information on its treatment. The book includes numerous vignettes drawn from Dr. Empfield's clinical practice as well as first person accounts from teenagers who have themselves suffered from depression. Understanding Teenage Depression is a book that anyone who's been touched by this disease - whether parents, teachers, family members or teens themselves - will find invaluable.

Hard Times

Hard Times PDF Author: Studs Terkel
Publisher: New Press/ORIM
ISBN: 1595587608
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Good War: A masterpiece of modern journalism and “a huge anthem in praise of the American spirit” (Saturday Review). In this “invaluable record” of one of the most dramatic periods in modern American history, Studs Terkel recaptures the Great Depression of the 1930s in all its complexity. Featuring a mosaic of memories from politicians, businessmen, artists, striking workers, and Okies, from those who were just kids to those who remember losing a fortune, Hard Times is not only a gold mine of information but a fascinating interplay of memory and fact, revealing how the 1929 stock market crash and its repercussions radically changed the lives of a generation. The voices that speak from the pages of this unique book are as timeless as the lessons they impart (The New York Times). “Hard Times doesn’t ‘render’ the time of the depression—it is that time, its lingo, mood, its tragic and hilarious stories.” —Arthur Miller “Wonderful! The American memory, the American way, the American voice. It will resurrect your faith in all of us to read this book.” —Newsweek “Open Studs Terkel’s book to almost any page and rich memories spill out . . . Read a page, any page. Then try to stop.” —The National Observer

Killing the Poormaster

Killing the Poormaster PDF Author: Holly Metz
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613744218
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
On February 25, 1938, in the early days of the welfare system, the reviled poormaster Harry Barck—wielding power over who would receive public aid—died from a paper spike thrust into his heart. Barck was murdered, the prosecution would assert, by an unemployed mason named Joe Scutellaro. In denying Scutellaro money, Barck had suggested the man's wife prostitute herself on the streets rather than ask the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, for aid. The men scuffled. Scutellaro insisted that Barck fell on his spike; the police claimed he grabbed the spike and stabbed Barck. News of the poormaster's death brought national attention to the plight of ten million unemployed living in desperate circumstances. A team led by celebrated attorney Samuel Leibowitz of &“Scottsboro Boys&” fame worked to save Scutellaro from the electric chair, arguing that the jobless man's struggle with the poormaster was a symbol of larger social ills. The trial became an indictment &“of a system which expects a man to live, in this great democracy, under such shameful circumstances.&” We live in a time where the issues examined in Killing the Poormaster—massive unemployment, endemic poverty, and the inadequacy of public assistance—remain vital. With its insight into our social contract, Killing the Poormaster reads like today's news.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression PDF Author: Edmund O. Stillman
Publisher: New Word City
ISBN: 1612309038
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description
The event that defined the 1930s in the United States came before it started. On October 29, "Black Tuesday," stock-market investors lost more than $30 billion in the Great Crash. The ten-year Great Depression that followed was not the product of a single day or week. Nonetheless, it came as a shock to the American people and to the man they looked to for relief: President Herbert Hoover. Soon, as banks failed, mortgages were foreclosed, and unemployment soared, bread lines formed throughout the country in grim testimony to the state of the economy. The policies of Hoover and then Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal started a long road to relief, recovery, and reform. Here, from the respected historian Edmund O. Stillman, are the stories of The Great Depression, the 1930s, and an American people defined by their resilience in the face of debilitating despair.