Electricity To Many Farmers example essay topic

Review of Frederick Lewis Allen: Since Yesterday: the 1930's America. (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1939), 362 pp. Frederick Lewis Allen's book tells in great detail how the average American would have lived in the 1930's. He covers everything from fashion to politics and everything in between. He opens with a portrait of American life on September 3, 1929, the day before the first major stock market crash.

His telling of the events immediately preceding and following this crash, and the ensuing panic describe a scene which was unimaginable before. He quickly moves from the panic of 1929 to the '30's and how many of the popular governmental sentiments during the election were no longer so. Hoover quickly moved from a position of public acceptance and admiration to that of a scapegoat. That the Depression was his fault is not entirely true, though.

Hoover did not have much of the information needed to foretell the economic situation. In the laissez-faire form of government he prescribed, there was no place for a department that would document these things for the use of the president's office. Hoover is also vilified repeatedly for his inaction with the Depression. His personal policy and his party's policy were designed to let the country find its own way, for if it became dependent on government aide, it would be a weaker nation that if it found it's own way. This was a flawed assumption on their behalf though, because even in the 1920's, there was a movement from many of the nation's younger voters advocating change. The overall feeling that Mr. Allen explains so well is that of fear.

Many Americans were afraid of what might happen to them economically. There were cities where eighty-four percent of the working population was unemployed. Everywhere in the nation, banks were closing because of their inability to collect from debtors. This not only affected those working for the bank, it affected most people in the city as well. In small cities where there were only two or three banks, a third or half of the population could be without their life savings. Add to that high unemployment, and many people were left starving.

Mr. Allen also speaks in depth of the farmers. The Farmer's Holiday occurred when Milo Reno organized Iowan farmers and got them to "refuse to bring food into Sioux City for thirty days, 'or until the cost of production had been obtained" (86). The farmers flooded ditches with milk and left piles of wheat at their farms. A local even compared their actions to the Boston Tea Party. However, it did not stop there. They threatened judges and helped neighbors whose farms had been foreclosed by going to the auction, buying items for little money and them returning them to the owner.

The, or Agricultural Adjustment Act, was met with mixed results. Its first iteration did not appease the broken farmers, and left many of them going about their ways. However, it was successful in that it did raise farm prices and offer aide to struggling farmers. It also brought electricity to many farmers, an important item for production, obviously.

The electric companies did not deem it price effective, but the government paid for the poles and labor hours, and new power plants where necessary. Crime was rampant before in the early part of the '30's, with gangsters running much booze. However, J. Edgar Hoover found ways to bring down the most wanted men in America, de glamorizing the life of crime greatly. This can be seen through children's games.

At one point, many children would play as gangsters, but this shifted to the glamorous position in these games being that of the law enforcement officers. In 1936, faced with an election, FDR's New Deal came to a vote. The industrial average, which had plummeted from 125 to 58 in 1929, had risen back to around 100. Many voters saw the election as a way of fighting increased intervention from the government, but most readily accepted the changes and increased size and power of the government.

FDR won in the largest landslide ever, over 500 electoral votes to just 8, with those 8 votes coming from the "live free or die" states of Vermont and New Hampshire. Much of this can be attributed to confidence rather than actual government intervention. Allen continuously mentions that when FDR became president, people immediately gained confidence in the economy and the government, though many people did not actually realize what his plans were. As the government grew, so did the confidence of the nation, allowing the economy to right itself, just as Hoover had wished, but with government action rather than inaction.