Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man
Down and Out in the Great Depression is a moving, revealing collection of letters by the forgotten men, women, and children who suffered through one of the greatest periods of hardship in American history. Sifting through some 15,000 letters from government and private sources, Robert McElvaine has culled nearly 200 communications that best show the problems, thoughts, and emotions of ordinary people during this time.\ Unlike views of Depression life "from the bottom up" that rely on...
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Down and Out in the Great Depression is a moving, revealing collection of letters by the forgotten men, women, and children who suffered through one of the greatest periods of hardship in American history. Sifting through some 15,000 letters from government and private sources, Robert McElvaine has culled nearly 200 communications that best show the problems, thoughts, and emotions of ordinary people during this time.Unlike views of Depression life "from the bottom up" that rely on recollections recorded several decades later, this book captures the daily anguish of people during the thirties. It puts the reader in direct contact with Depression victims, evoking a feeling of what it was like to live through this disaster.Following Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration, both the number of letters received by the White House and the percentage of them coming from the poor were unprecedented. The average number of daily communications jumped to between 5,000 and 8,000, a trend that continued throughout the Rosevelt administration. The White House staff for answering such letters—most of which were directed to FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt, or Harry Hopkins—quickly grew from one person to fifty.Mainly because of his radio talks, many felt they knew the president personally and could confide in him. They viewed the Roosevelts as parent figures, offering solace, help, and protection. Roosevelt himself valued the letters, perceiving them as a way to gauge public sentiment. The writers came from a number of different groups—middle-class people, blacks, rural residents, the elderly, and children. Their letters display emotional reactions to the Depression—despair, cynicism, and anger—and attitudes toward relief.In his extensive introduction, McElvaine sets the stage for the letters, discussing their significance and some of the themes that emerge from them. By preserving their original spelling, syntax, grammar, and capitalization, he conveys their full flavor.The Depression was far more than an economic collapse. It was the major personal event in the lives of tens of millions of Americans. McElvaine shows that, contrary to popular belief, many sufferers were not passive victims of history. Rather, he says, they were "also actors and, to an extent, playwrights, producers, and directors as well," taking an active role in trying to deal with their plight and solve their problems.
Foreword to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition xiPreface xvAcknowledgments xixIntroduction 1The Early Depression 33Reactions to Hoover and Economic Breakdown 35Conditions of Life in the Thirties 49Proud But Frightened: Middle-Class Hardship 51The Grass Roots: Rural Depression 67A Worse Depression: Black Americans in the 1930s 79To Be Old, Sick, and Poor 95The Forgotten Children 113Reactions to the Depression 121Attitudes toward Relief 123The Conservative 143The Desperate 155The Cynical 173The Rebellious 183The "Forgotten Man" Looks at Roosevelt 201The Unconvinced 203"Our Savior" 215Notes 235Sources of Letters 243Index 247
\ From the PublisherA New York Times Book Review Books for Vacation Reading & Notable Book of the Year\ There's nothing more deeply moving than reading the words and thus hearing the voices of the actual survivors of hard times. McElvaine has captured these voices as no one else ever has.\ —Studs Terkel\ The book is unique. Nowhere else can we read of despair as recorded by those who were feeling it hardest, unfiltered by memory.\ Southern Living\ First-rate explanatory essays by the editor.\ The New Yorker\ [This] book is easily the best thing of its sort ever done.\ —David Shannon, Commonwealth Professor of History, University of Virginia\ \ \
