The Myth of the Great Depression

The Myth of the Great Depression PDF Author: David Potts
Publisher: Scribe Publications
ISBN: 1921372648
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Tradition has it that the Great Depression of the 1930s swept through Australia like a raging flood, tearing up the garden of the 1920s and imposing terrible suffering on the population at large. In measures used at the time, unemployment peaked in 1932 at 29 per cent, and rates of bankruptcy doubled. Ever since, popular images of impacts have included men and women evicted onto the streets, eating out of dustbins, queuing for the dole, living in humpies, and tramping the countryside in search of work. When David Potts began teaching history at the University of Melbourne in 1965, he ran a program for students to interview anyone who remembered the period. Many of the respondents recalled painful experiences, as he anticipated. But others spoke of the early 1930s with affection. They said that they had coped well, that the Depression ‘gave life meaning’ and that ‘people were happier then’. Surprised by these comments, Potts went to contemporary sources to disprove what he saw as romanticism. However, despite reports in the daily press about increased malnutrition and homelessness, there was evidence overall that health improved and death rates declined. Suicide rates, after a sharp rise in 1930, kept falling as the Depression deepened — though the press still carried many stories of people killing themselves because of the Depression. Potts wondered how these apparent contradictions might be explained. After his students interviewed 1,200 Depression survivors, and Potts himself trawled through many first-person accounts, it became evident that adverse impacts of the depression had been over-emphasised — that good things occurred in the 1930s which the Depression itself did not undermine, and to which it might even have contributed. What Potts discovered has led to this thorough and lively social history of the early 1930s that covers not just the usual stories of suffering, but extends into compelling tales of resilience and happiness even among people who were poor and unemployed.

The Myth of the Great Depression

The Myth of the Great Depression PDF Author: David Potts
Publisher: Scribe Publications
ISBN: 1921372648
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Get Book Here

Book Description
Tradition has it that the Great Depression of the 1930s swept through Australia like a raging flood, tearing up the garden of the 1920s and imposing terrible suffering on the population at large. In measures used at the time, unemployment peaked in 1932 at 29 per cent, and rates of bankruptcy doubled. Ever since, popular images of impacts have included men and women evicted onto the streets, eating out of dustbins, queuing for the dole, living in humpies, and tramping the countryside in search of work. When David Potts began teaching history at the University of Melbourne in 1965, he ran a program for students to interview anyone who remembered the period. Many of the respondents recalled painful experiences, as he anticipated. But others spoke of the early 1930s with affection. They said that they had coped well, that the Depression ‘gave life meaning’ and that ‘people were happier then’. Surprised by these comments, Potts went to contemporary sources to disprove what he saw as romanticism. However, despite reports in the daily press about increased malnutrition and homelessness, there was evidence overall that health improved and death rates declined. Suicide rates, after a sharp rise in 1930, kept falling as the Depression deepened — though the press still carried many stories of people killing themselves because of the Depression. Potts wondered how these apparent contradictions might be explained. After his students interviewed 1,200 Depression survivors, and Potts himself trawled through many first-person accounts, it became evident that adverse impacts of the depression had been over-emphasised — that good things occurred in the 1930s which the Depression itself did not undermine, and to which it might even have contributed. What Potts discovered has led to this thorough and lively social history of the early 1930s that covers not just the usual stories of suffering, but extends into compelling tales of resilience and happiness even among people who were poor and unemployed.

Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal

Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal PDF Author: Robert P. Murphy
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 159698113X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
In this timely new P.I. Guide, Murphy reveals the stark truth: free market failure didn't cause the Great Depression and the New Deal didn't cure it. Shattering myths and politically correct lies, he tells why World War II didn t help the economy or get us out of the Great Depression; why it took FDR to make the Depression Great; and why Herbert Hoover was more like Obama and less like Bush than the liberal media would have you believe. Free-market believers and capitalists everywhere should have this on their bookshelf and in their briefcases.

Myth of Liberal Ascendancy

Myth of Liberal Ascendancy PDF Author: G. Williams Domhoff
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317255801
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Based on new archival research, G. Williams Domhoff challenges popular conceptions of the 1930's New Deal. Arguing instead that this period was one of increasing corporate dominance in government affairs, affecting the fate of American workers up to the present day. While FDR's New Deal brought sweeping legislation, the tide turned quickly after 1938. From that year onward nearly every major new economic law passed by Congress showed the mark of corporate dominance. Domhoff accessibly portrays documents of the Committee's vital influence in the halls of government, supported by his interviews with several of its key employees and trustees. Domhoff concludes that in terms of economic influence, liberalism was on a long steady decline, despite two decades of post-war growing equality, and that ironically, it was the successes of the civil rights, feminist, environmental, and gay-lesbian movements-not a new corporate mobilisation-that led to the final defeat of the liberal-labour alliance after 1968.

A Great Leap Forward

A Great Leap Forward PDF Author: Alexander J. Field
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300168756
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
This bold re-examination of the history of U.S. economic growth is built around a novel claim, that productive capacity grew dramatically across the Depression years (1929-1941) and that this advance provided the foundation for the economic and military success of the United States during the Second World War as well as for the golden age (1948-1973) that followed.Alexander J. Field takes a fresh look at growth data and concludes that, behind a backdrop of double-digit unemployment, the 1930s actually experienced very high rates of technological and organizational innovation, fueled by the maturing of a privately funded research and development system and the government-funded build-out of the country's surface road infrastructure. This significant new volume in the Yale Series in Economic and Financial History invites new discussion of the causes and consequences of productivity growth over the last century and a half and on our current prospects.

FDR's Folly

FDR's Folly PDF Author: Jim Powell
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 030742071X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
The Great Depression and the New Deal. For generations, the collective American consciousness has believed that the former ruined the country and the latter saved it. Endless praise has been heaped upon President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for masterfully reining in the Depression’s destructive effects and propping up the country on his New Deal platform. In fact, FDR has achieved mythical status in American history and is considered to be, along with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, one of the greatest presidents of all time. But would the Great Depression have been so catastrophic had the New Deal never been implemented? In FDR’s Folly, historian Jim Powell argues that it was in fact the New Deal itself, with its shortsighted programs, that deepened the Great Depression, swelled the federal government, and prevented the country from turning around quickly. You’ll discover in alarming detail how FDR’s federal programs hurt America more than helped it, with effects we still feel today, including: • How Social Security actually increased unemployment • How higher taxes undermined good businesses • How new labor laws threw people out of work • And much more This groundbreaking book pulls back the shroud of awe and the cloak of time enveloping FDR to prove convincingly how flawed his economic policies actually were, despite his good intentions and the astounding intellect of his circle of advisers. In today’s turbulent domestic and global environment, eerily similar to that of the 1930s, it’s more important than ever before to uncover and understand the truth of our history, lest we be doomed to repeat it.

Hall of Mirrors

Hall of Mirrors PDF Author: Barry J. Eichengreen
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199392005
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
"A brilliantly conceived dual-track account of the two greatest economic crises of the last century and their consequences"--

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.

The World in Depression, 1929-1939

The World in Depression, 1929-1939 PDF Author: Charles Poor Kindleberger
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520055919
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
"The World in Depression is the best book on the subject, and the subject, in turn, is the economically decisive decade of the century so far."--John Kenneth Galbraith

Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression

Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression PDF Author: Morris Dickstein
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393338762
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 625

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Book Description
A cultural history of the 1930s explores the anxiety, despair, and optimism of the period, exploring how the period culture provided a dynamic lift to the country's morale.

The Great Depression and New Deal

The Great Depression and New Deal PDF Author: Eric Rauchway
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0195326342
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
The Great Depression forced the United States to adopt policies at odds with its political traditions. This title looks at the background to the Depression, its social impact, and at the various governmental attempts to deal with the crisis.