The Great Depression – Old Magazine Articles

”The One Man Depression”
(Liberty Magazine, 1938)

Appearing in a few spots on this site are articles from 1937 written by journalists who were all of the mind that the Great Depression had finally reached an end. We all thought this was terribly odd because we all knew that the Depression lingered into 1940. However, this article showed up and explained it all to us: written by a Republican congressman and published in an anti-Roosevelt magazine, the author explained that since 1936, the economy was slowly getting better – and then it all went south during the late summer of 1937, plunging deeper in 1938.

Marathon Dancing in the Thirties
(Collier’s Magazine, 1932)

When marathon dancing first became popular in the Twenties there was an amusing, lighthearted aspect to it. However, when the Great Depression came, and the jobs evaporated, marathon dances took a darker turn. As desperation fell across the land, enrolling in a marathon dance contest became, in many cases, the only way to put bread on the table.

FDR and his Learning Disabilities
(Liberty Magazine, 1938)

Liberty publisher Bernarr MacFadden (1868 – 1955) was a reliable critic of FDR and his economic policies. In this column MacFadden lambasts the President for making error after error and learning from none of them. He points out that the open market economy of the United States has traditionally provided Americans with the world’s highest standard of living, and yet:

“They would like to ignore precedent… entirely cast aside and forget the extraordinary results of our experiences in following the American system. They hate business and everything connected with it.”

FDR and the Business Class
(Liberty Magazine, 1936)

“The attack on business so well popularized by the present administration at Washington unquestionably prolonged the Depression, perpetuated the dole, and added millions to the unemployed”

Passing the Buck
(Collier’s Magazine, 1932)

The attached editorial goes into some detail cataloging numerous U.S. presidents and their assorted excuses for the economic depressions that kicked-in during their respective administrations. Hoover is included.

Damaging Businesses was not Helpful
(Liberty Magazine, 1936)

“Business is just as important to this nation as food and drink is to the human body. And every effort that retards it in any way affects the entire nation… It was [the New Deal’s] attack on business that destroyed the confidence of businessmen generally.”

Why Was The U.S. Last to Recover?
(Liberty Magazine, 1940)

As editor-in-chief of Liberty Magazine, Bernarr Macfadden (1868 – 1955) asked an important question:

“What is the matter with this country? Why is it we are credited with being the last to recover from the world-wide Depression? As the wealthiest nation in the world we should have been the first?”

The Great Depression and the Failings of FDR
(New Outlook Magazine, 1934)

The columnist whose opinions are attached bitterly pointed out that the first year of FDR’s administration had marginalized the Congress – and further opined that Roosevelt’s rhetoric clearly implied his arrogant conviction that his administration alone was the only alternative to out right revolution, and should therefore to be seen as a mandate of the people. The article lists the numerous failings of FDR’s New Deal.

CLICK HERE to read more criticism from FDR’s loyal opposition…

When W.W. II began and the factories reopened, the reality of having money and full-time employment made so many people giddy with excitement it proved to be too much for them – click here to read about that…

Arson on the Rise
(New Outlook Magazine, 1933)

When economic opportunity disappeared from the American landscape during the Great Depression, it was replaced by numerous unheard-of options that would have been judged unthinkable in previous decades. Among these was the scheme to burn your own house down in order to collect the insurance premium check(s).

The Crash
(Coronet Magazine, 1946)

This is an article about the 1929 stock market crash – it was that one major cataclysmic event that ushered in the Great Depression (1929 – 1940). It all came crashing down on October 24, 1929 – the stocks offered at the New York Stock Exchange had lost 80% of their value; the day was immediately dubbed Black Thursday by all those who experienced it. When the sun rose that morning, the U.S. unemployment estimate stood at 3%; shortly afterward it soared to a staggering 24%.

In every town families had dropped from affluence into debt…Americans were soon to find themselves in an altered world which called for new adjustments, new ideas, new habits of thought, a new order of values. The Post-War Decade had come to its close. An era had ended. The era that followed was was the polar opposite of the one that had just gone down in flames: if the Twenties are remembered for confidence and prosperity, the Thirties was a decade of insecurity and want. The attached essay was penned by a popular author who knew the era well.

Yet, regardless of the horrors of The Crash, the United States was still an enormously wealthy nation…

The Increased Suicide Rate
(Literary Digest, 1933)

With the arrival of the Great Depression came an increase in American suicides. When this article appeared on the newsstands the Depression was just three and a half years old – with many more years yet to come. As the Americans saw 1932 come to a close, the records showed that 3,088 more acts of self-immolation had taken place than had been recorded the year before.

Read about the the mood of the Great Depression and how it was reflected in the election of 1932 – click here…

Prosperity Returns to Freeport, Texas
(Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

In 1940, when a defense plant moved into the Gulfport town of Freeport, Texas, the Great Depression came to a screeching halt. Within three months their population shot up from 3,100 to a whopping 7,500, and the economic blessing was not simply confined to that one region:

In Corpus Christi they have a nice little plum in the form of a $25,000,000 naval air base. Houston is getting a $2,000,000 refurbishing of Ellington Field. Randolph Field at San Antonio is getting a costly going over.

Life in Freeport was good. When a local shoeshine lad had found that his pockets were flush with cash after three day’s labor, he exclaimed –

We’re in high cotton now!

Threat of Nationalizing
(Liberty Magazine, 1938)

In the winter of 1938, when one of FDR’s anointed Brain Trusters made an off-the-cuff remark that the Federal Government would take over industry if the economy did not turn around, it must have alarmed many of the industry captains and sent the stock market through the floor. It also moved the eccentric Bernarr MacFadden (1868 – 1955) to put a fresh ribbon in his typewriter and have at it:

The present administration has made a ghastly failure of the business management of this government. It has increased the national indebtedness at the rate of five to ten million dollars every day. It has added more than twenty thousand million dollars to our national debt, and it probably has twenty million or more of our citizens on the dole, or in charity jobs, which is the dole in another form.

Youth at Risk
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

By the year 1937 it became a concern that an eighth of all those admitted to the nation’s state-run mental hospitals were between the ages of 15 through 24. On a similar note, it was revealed that 40% of employable youth were entirely unable to secure positions during this this same period. These matters were made known as a result of the efforts put forward by the Youth Commission of the American Council of Education – a group that began compiling such data in 1935.

Public Relief for Young Men
(Literary Digest, 1933)

During the Spring of 1933 articles like this one began to appear in the magazines and newspapers across the country serving to inform their readers about the creation of an additional Federal agency that was designed to help take some of the sting out of the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s New Deal intended to take a hefty percentage of unmarried young men off the streets of 16 American cities, feed them, clothe them and line their pockets with $30.00 a month for their labor. W.W. II created a host of other demands requiring Federal funding, and so Congress voted to dissolve the C.C.C. in 1942.

Click here to read about the end of the Great Depression…

‘Soak the Rich”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1935)

‘SOAK THE RICH!’ has been a popular slogan for generations. President Roosevelt knows the people and he knows that this cry is even more popular now than it ever was before. Taxes which increase the cost of living and hang so heavily on the poor cannot be popular… But pick some taxes that bear down on the rich and – and then you have something which everyone will hurrah for. The number of rich are comparatively few, and hence their votes and influence can be disregarded entirely.

President Roosevelt’s plan was to tax this minority for 75 percent of their income.

To read about the dwindling good fortune of the rich, click here…

‘The Forgotten Dollar”
(New Outlook Magazine, 1935)

Along with the host of other forgotten items in this historic age of trouble, to be classed with Sumner’s forgotten man and Uncle Sam’s forgotten Constitution, is the forgotten dollar.

– so saith Edwin Myers of NEW OUTLOOK MAGAZINE. His gripe was typical of most Americans who struggled to get by during the Great Depression – but FDR was not neglectful of the dollar; one of his first acts was to make American exports more attractive abroad – and he devalued the dollar to this end. Much to his credit, exports did indeed increase – but the decreased purchasing power of the dollar domestically contributed to the misery of the American consumer.

‘It was a Nice Depression”
(Scribner’s Magazine, 1937)

I always knew that I would one day find a reminiscence of the Great Depression – what I didn’t expect is finding it in a magazine from 1937. As mentioned in another part of this site, 1937 saw some measure of economic recovery (until it didn’t) and this reminiscence was penned by a fellow who wanted so badly to believe that the whole thing was finally over. He wished so earnestly that the Depression had ended that he listed just what he was missing about it already. Little did he know he had three more years to go.