The Great Depression

The Great Depression PDF

Author: Robert S. McElvaine

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2010-10-27

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0307774449

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One of the classic studies of the Great Depression, featuring a new introduction by the author with insights into the economic crises of 1929 and today. In the twenty-five years since its publication, critics and scholars have praised historian Robert McElvaine’s sweeping and authoritative history of the Great Depression as one of the best and most readable studies of the era. Combining clear-eyed insight into the machinations of politicians and economists who struggled to revive the battered economy, personal stories from the average people who were hardest hit by an economic crisis beyond their control, and an evocative depiction of the popular culture of the decade, McElvaine paints an epic picture of an America brought to its knees—but also brought together by people’s widely shared plight. In a new introduction, McElvaine draws striking parallels between the roots of the Great Depression and the economic meltdown that followed in the wake of the credit crisis of 2008. He also examines the resurgence of anti-regulation free market ideology, beginning in the Reagan era, and argues that some economists and politicians revised history and ignored the lessons of the Depression era.

The Unemployed People's Movement

The Unemployed People's Movement PDF

Author: James J. Lorence

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2011-03-01

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0820338761

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In Georgia during the Great Depression, jobless workers united with the urban poor, sharecroppers, and tenant farmers. In a collective effort that cut across race and class boundaries, they confronted an unresponsive political and social system and helped shape government policies. James J. Lorence adds significantly to our understanding of this movement, which took place far from the northeastern and midwestern sites we commonly associate with Depression-era labor struggles. Drawing on extensive archival research, including newly accessible records of the Communist Party of the United States, Lorence details interactions between various institutional and grassroots players, including organized labor, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, liberal activists, and officials at every level of government. He shows, for example, how the Communist Party played a more central role than previously understood in the organization of the unemployed and the advancement of labor and working-class interests in Georgia. Communists gained respect among the jobless, especially African Americans, for their willingness to challenge officials, help negotiate the welfare bureaucracy, and gain access to New Deal social programs. Lorence enhances our understanding of the struggles of the poor and unemployed in a Depression-era southern state. At the same time, we are reminded of their movement's lasting legacy: the shift in popular consciousness that took place as Georgians, "influenced by a new sense of entitlement fostered by the unemployed organizations," began to conceive of new, more-equal relations with the state.

Out of Work

Out of Work PDF

Author: Alexander Keyssar

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1986-03-31

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9780521297677

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Out of Work chronicles the history of unemployment in the United States. It traces the evolution of the problem of joblessness from the early decades of the nineteenth-century to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Challenging the widely held notion that the United States was a labour-scarce society in which jobs were plentiful, it argues that unemployment played a major role in American history long before the crash of the stock market in 1929. Focusing on the state of Massachusetts, Professor Kevssar analyses the economic and social changes that gave birth to the prevalent concept of unemployment. Drawing on previously untapped sources - including richly detailed statistics and vivid verbatim testimony - he demonstrates that joblessness was a pervasive feature of working-class life from the 1870s to the 1920s. The book describes the ingenious, yet quite costly, strategies that unemployed workers devised to cope with the joblessness in the absence of formal governmental assistance. It also explores the many dimensions of working-class life that were profoundly affected by recurrent layoffs and the chronic uncertainty of work. Finally, it demonstrates that the fundamental contours of the Massachusetts experience were repeated, sooner or later, throughout the United States.

The Homeless Transient in the Great Depression

The Homeless Transient in the Great Depression PDF

Author: Joan M. Crouse

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1986-11-21

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780887063121

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Years before the Dust Bowl exodus raised America’s conscience to the plight of its migratory citzenry, an estimated one to two million homeless, unemployed Americans were traversing the country, searching for permanent community. Often mistaken for bums, tramps, hoboes or migratory laborers, these transients were a new breed of educated, highly employable men and women uprooted from their middle- and working-class homes by an unprecedented economic crisis. The Homeless Transient in the Great Depression investigates this population and the problems they faced in an America caught between a poor law past and a social welfare future. The story of the transient is told from the perspective of the federal, state, and local governments, and from the viewpoint of the social worker, the community, and the transient. In narrowing the focus of the study from the national to the state level, Joan Crouse offers a close and sensitive examination of each. The choice of New York as a focal point provides an important balance to previous literature on migrancy by shifting attention from the Southwest to the Northeast and from a preoccupation with rejection on the federal level to the concerted effort of the state to deal with the non-resident poor in a humane yet fiscally responsible manner.

The House of Pain

The House of Pain PDF

Author: Monique Von Cleef

Publisher: Disruptive Publishing

Published: 2014-02-15

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 1626578354

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Legendary autobiography by Ms. von Cleef, the first modern dominatrix. Owing to the book's peculiar publishing history, our version, first commissioned by Girodias, lacks the account of Ms. von Cleef's time in the States, as well as her court case.