Mrs. Ruland's Advanced Placement United States History Class
Unit 11 — Boom and Bust, 1920-1941
Hard Times: Voices of the Great Depression by Studs Turkel
Those whose voices you hear on this tape are recalling an epoch, some thirty, forty years ago; experiencing pain in some instances, exhilaration in others. Often it was a fusing of both. In Their remembrances are their truths. The precise fact or the precise date is of small consequence. It is simply an attempt to get the story of the holocaust known as the Great Depression form an assorted battalion of survivors. It left upon them an "invisible scar" as Caroline Bird put it.
There are young people's voices also. They did not experience the Great Depression. In many instances they are bewildered, wholly ignorant of it. And it is time we know, too -- what it did to us. And to them.
Fear of losing things, of property, is one legacy of the Thirties. An elderly civil servant in Washington buys a piece of land as often as she can afford. "If it comes again, I'll have something to live off." She remembers the rotten bananas, near the wharf of New Orleans -- her daily fare.
That, thanks to technology, things can make things today, in abundance, is a point psychically difficult for Depression survivors to understand. And thus, in severe cases, they will fight, even kill, to protect their things (property). Many of the young fail to diagnose this illness because of their innocence concerning the Great Depression. Its occasional invocation, for scolding purposes, tells them little of the truth.
The suddenly idle hands blamed themselves rather than society, True, there were hunger marches and protestations to City Hall and Washington, but the millions experienced a private kind of shame when the pink slip came. No matter that others suffered the same fate, the inner voice whispered, "I'm a failure." True there was a sharing among many of the disposed, but, at close quarters, frustration became at times violence, and violence turned inward. Thus, sons and fathers fell away, one from the other. Except to the more articulate, outside forces were in some vague way responsible, but not really. It was a personal guilt.
Mention must be made of the portable tape recorder and its role in this matter. On occasion, it might have been an inhibiting factor, making for self-consciousness, were it not for my mechanical ineptitude. My colleagues (the great majority of whom had never spoken into a machine of this sort) helped me through. When the recorder went wrong, I swore at it; at times, I kicked it. During each of these instances my companions laughed and felt more relaxed. I soon became aware that this helped break whatever tensions may have existed. (It came naturally to me since I have never been able to drive a car, roller skate, swim, or engage in any sort of coordinate activity.) Yet, paradoxically, without my absurd mechanical ally, the capturing of these voices and memories would not have been possible.
The locals of these encounters are varied. Whether in Manhattan or on a farm in Iowa, a hurt of a long ago delight was easily recalled. Because it was a home, a place of work, or the front seat of a car, and because of my haplessness, the voice levels were not always constant. But I hope you may hear a truth that is constant -- at least to the rememberers.
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Last updated December 27, 2002
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