The Great Depression: A Book Review
Book:
The Great Depression, America 1929-1941, Robert S. McElvaine: Broadway Books, New York, 1993, ISBN:9780812923278), 402 Pages.
Reviewer:
Robert McElvaine, in his book The Great Depression, explains the worst depression in the United States from 1929-1941. Also, he discusses its causes, impacts to the American people, and the economy, as well as the governmental, political, and cultural responses to it. He has achieved to explain the experience of the Great Depression victim through the letters he collected from the Americans during that period. He has therefore been praised for his knowledge and fair-mindedness in that his work is eminently readable. Robert’s survey provides a welcoming synthesis of the Great Depression. In his first volume, Robert gives a general view of the effects of men and women, the white and the black as well. This paper is a review of the great depression by Robert McElvaine with its relation to the course work.
According to Robert, the great depression is the greatest nationwide downturn of the United States’ Economy in the 19th century. It lasted for around ten years and caused a lot of misery and suffering, from the political, social, and cultural organizational structure. Robert focuses on the quest for values and how it was affected by the great depression. He notes that workers and intellectuals realized the need for cooperating. Both groups developed a value of community sharing as opposed to their usual individualism of industrial capitalism. Rather than the letters he collected from ordinary Americans, he also studied movies and films to understand more ethos uncovered during that period. The depression started with a stock price fall in the market, which led to the stock market crash. Production was also declining significantly as people stopped purchasing goods in fear of more economic problems. This also affected the market prices as well as a reduction of the workforce. As a result, unemployment raised greatly, with the majority of banks being closed. Robert also explains how personal income, price, tax revenue, profits, and international trade dropped. He argues that the market crash was the main cause of the great depression. October 24, 1929, also referred to as Black Thursday, marked the beginning of the mark crash, and in five days, the stock market had reduced by six million dollars. In a month, the stock market had lost over three times its value, and people had lost confidence in the banks and other financial institutions. Robert argues that the people felt that the financial institution had become unreliable, thus withdrew their shares in stocks. Also, the closure of most banks led to the loss of savings in those banks. This was among the factors that worsened the depression. Stock Market crush reduced trading activities across the board, which also contributed to the recession. The high unemployment rate meant people could not afford their normal living standards, as most could not afford to buy food for their families. Besides, goods that have been acquired on credit were repossessed by their owners. Most renderers did this in fear of losing them as the economy was falling. Apart from the economic factors, Robert adds that, to some extent, drought also contributed significantly to the great depression. A large percent of the population could not pay taxes and debts and ended up selling their properties at a loss. In his opinion, the American Economic policy with Europe contributed to the Great Depression since the government increased the import’s tax rate to decrease international lending through the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. This reduced American trade with other foreign countries, thus protecting American companies.
Moreover, Robert explains in detail the impacts of the great recession from the information he had collected from the films and letters from ordinary Americans. According to him, human suffering was the significant impact of the Great Depression due to the high unemployment rate both for men and women. Three years since the start of the Great Depression, 25 percent of the labor force was unemployed. The unemployment rate was noticeable in all sectors. Over a quarter of workers in the industrial sector had lost their job. In the construction sector, more than half of the workers were now jobless. Unemployment was also noticeable in the metal sector as over forty percent had lost their jobs. Despite the reduced production in these sectors, company goods remained on the shelves while people were suffering from hunger as the living standards dropped. Robert, however, clarifies that the Great Depression raised a few positive impacts. First, it led to the development of the National Labor Relation Act. The Act led to the doubling of union membership in the U.S. The high unemployment rate led to substantial expansion of the welfare and labor union. British Economists also developed ideas on monetary contraction and reduced government spending.
Robert’s conclusion in need of cooperation of intellectuals and workers with the government as it would help to make the essential decisions in regards to the nation’s economy. This cooperation could have helped the U.S economy during the World War, thus reducing the economic constraints experienced during that period. Robert narrates America’s history during the Great Depression based on letters from ordinary citizens (McElvaine 263). Wills Garry, on the other hand, gives a historical analysis of his clan, explaining how power touched every part of people’s lives regardless of gender. In his book, he argues that men have different characters and personalities (Wills 54). Being an American, Robert McElvaine wrote this book to explain major factors that contributed to the Great Depression. Through the letters he collected from the citizens and movies available about the depression, Robert is able to get reliable information on the effects of the Great Depression. He aimed to combine all the information he had collected from the citizens about the recession. Also, he wanted to explain how the Great Depression affected the U.S. Economy and the extent of decrease in unemployment. However, the book could improve by telling the readers if the economy rose to normal after the recession and factors contributing to its rise. The readers could also want to know if the growth of the economy has led to more employment rates than it was before the great depression. The book does not tell how long it took the nation to get back to its normal economic position or if the living standards of citizens were recovered. I would recommend the book to be mainly by history students as it gives details of the causes and effects of the great depression. Also, the book has considered other people’s opinions and ideas by analyzing the letters from ordinary Americans. However, the book is too long, and most readers might find it tedious to read. Although there is no perfect book, this book seems to be explicitly written for history students, thus not interesting to general readers.
Work Cited
McElvaine, Robert S. The great depression: America, 1929-1941. Broadway Books, 1993.
Wills, Garry. “The Kennedy Imprisonment, Part II.” The Atlantic Monthly (1982): 54.