The Great Depression
Industrial progress has given our society an unprecedented complexity, characterized by mass production, rapid transportation, and remote control in the realms of finance and of employment. We have been alert to make the most of the business advantages of this economic and social integration, but slow to take measures to forestall the human disasters that too often lie in the wake of industrial progress.
- Frank Bane (Executive Director, Social Security Board),1938
From 1929 to 1939 the Great Depression, a global economic crisis beginning with the crash of the New York stock market in October 1929, spiraled downward to the failure of the banks and the disintegration of the global economy.
The total economy had gone to pieces; just shook to pieces under us, beginning, of course, with the stock market crash. A banking crisis followed it. A manufacturing crisis followed it. Everybody felt it. In less than a year it was a terror.
- Madam Secretary Frances Perkins
With no comprehensive social safety net, the American working class fell hard. The myth underlying the American dream - the potential to achieve economic security - was dismally exposed, as unemployment and indigence plagued the country.
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Although Madison was not outstandingly hurt by the Depression, Witte was confronted with squalor and suffering. Above, desperate Madisonians flocked to find jobs or unemployment compensation. To Witte, America had an obligation to assist these people.
In other periods of depression, it has always been possible to see some things which were solid and upon which you could base hope, but as I look about, I now see nothing to give ground to hope—nothing of man.
- Former President Calvin Coolidge, 1932
They used to tell me I was building a dream |