LJ, the statistics are technically correct.
However, the statistics don't reveal what how far New Deal went to help ordinary people overcome the despair accompanying the Great Depression.
People today have forgotten (or never knew) how bad it was then. Starving families, with no hope, no home and no idea where their next meal would come from.
"Jobs" may not have been created, but make-work programs gave people rudimentary housing and schools, and alleviated the hopelessness infecting millions.
Have you ever spoken to people who lived through that time? I have. Many were permanently scarred; in the 70's I spoke with an elderly woman who began to cry at remembrance of gaining a place with her family, in a government-sponsored commune.
Loosely quoted, she said, "Oh my, it was wonderful! It was more like a camp; we had canvas roofs over frame buildings, and coal stoves. But we had 3 meals a day, we could go to school, and wash our clothes. My father had steady work; he didn't make much, nobody did. But at least we had our dignity again."
She said that later, when they moved to Vancouver, the unions met incoming travelers and checked their belongings for tools; if they had tools, they weren't allowed off the trains.
People starved. People begged for work. Any work, enough to put a meal in their stomach.
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When reading some of the posts on SI, by people who have "enough", I wonder. They brag about having their gold and their guns and their stockpiled food. But what will they do if a starving family comes by, begging for food? Shoot them?
So much has been forgotten, and lost in time. A depression is a tsunami. Dry statistics don't tell the story.
Jim |
