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The Worst of Times: 1930 -1933

A little boy tried to hide his pet rabbit.

“He thinks we are not going to eat it,”

said his sister, “but we are.”

You could feel the Depression deepen, but you could not look out of the window and see it. Men who lost their jobs dropped out of sight. They were quiet, and you had to know just when and where to find them: at night, for instance, on the edge of town huddling for warmth around a bonfire, or even the municipal incinerator; at dawn, picking over the garbage dump for scraps of food or salvageable clothing.

The Worst of Times: 1930 -1933 by Caroline Bird

Galbraith on the Market Crash

The following essay is an example of analytical history at its best. Without relying on narrative techniques, the Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith takes apart the economy of the 1920s and shows us how its weaknesses led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the course of doing so, he also “takes apart,” in the colloquial sense of that expression, the presidents of the 1920s and a number of their leading advisers.

The effectiveness and power of the essay depend upon a number of factors. One is Galbraith’s mastery both of the facts he deals with and of the economic mechanisms of the society; he discusses few events that are not thoroughly familiar to students of the subject, but he has an unfailing eye for what is significant. Another is his gift for anecdote and the pithy phrase. As he says, the epigram that Elbert H. Cary of U.S. Steel “never saw a blast furnace until his death” is well known; but not everyone who writes about Cary knows enough to use it. Still a third is Galbraith’s ability to state his own opinions without qualification and at the same time without passion, to make the kind of calm, reasoned judgments that are characteristic of a convinced but unprejudiced and intelligent mind. All these qualities explain why his books, such as American Capitalism, The Affluent Society, and The Great Crash, 1929 (a fuller treatment of the subject of this essay), have been both popular and critical successes.

Galbraith on the Market Crash

Prohibition

Prohibition was the most ambitious reform ever attempted in American history. It was passed during an optimistic time, when the United States was fighting a war to end all wars and everything seemed possible. Those who supported it predicted radical changes in society. Alcoholism would be forever banished, healthier men and women would spend their days with clear eyes and steady hands, and untold sums of money would be avail able to enrich lives instead of being squandered on drink. What actually happened in our country made a mockery of such prophecies.

Read: Demon Rum by Robert Maddox

Response Sheet to Demon Rum

The Automobile Revolution

IN THE year 1906 Woodrow Wilson, who was then president of Princeton University, said, “Nothing has spread socialistic feeling in this country more than the automobile,” and added that it offered “a picture of the arrogance of wealth”. Less than twenty years later, two women of Muncie, Indiana, both of whom were managing on small incomes, spoke their minds to investigators gathering facts for that admirable sociological study of an American community, Middletown. Said one, who was the mother of nine children, “We’d rather do without clothes than give up the car.” Said the other, “I’ll go without food before I’ll see us give up the car..’ And elsewhere another housewife, in answer to a comment on the fact that her family owned a car but no bathtub, uttered a fitting theme song for the automobile revolution. “Why,” said she, “you can’t go to town in a bathtub!”

Read The Automobile Revolution

The Automobile Revolution Response Sheet

Q&A: The Myths of Reconstruction

Reconstruction may be one of the most misunderstood eras in American history. Versions of the era like the early motion picture Birth of a Nation (1915) and the novel Gone With the Wind (1936) — which was made into one of the best-loved American movies of all time — popularized a view of the Old South as a genteel society of gallant aristocrats, a lost world shattered by Northern violence. These myths, of course, ignored the injustices of slavery, the era’s rampant racism, and the shocking violence of the time. They also missed the significance of the era’s advances in civil rights and justice.

Historians review some myths and misconceptions about the Reconstruction era.

Q&A: The Myths of Reconstruction

Opposing Perspectives on Civil Disobedience

Howard Zinn’s essay, The Problem is Civil Obedience

Erwin Canham’s essay, How Civil Disobedience Erodes the Structure of Society

1. Summarize the thesis of each author in your own words
2. Discuss the argumentation of each author
3. Offer 1-2 quotes which exemplify the strength of the author’s position. Explain why this is a strong argument.
4. Offer 1-2 quotes which exemplify the weaknesses of the author’s position. Explain why this is a weak argument.
5. Offer one question you would like to ask the author.
Again, do this for each document (so 10 questions total)