The Great Depression

Find archive articles on the Great Depression from the 1930’s. Our site has great information from old magazine and newspaper articles on the Great Depression.

”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.”

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…

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