Utopian Movements And Ideas Of The Great Depression

In the 1930s, the United States was beset with an economic crisis so serious that it threatened the future of the nation. On the national level, Franklin Roosevelt initiated and developed a variety of reforms and experiments as part of the New Deal. Some Americans looking for change believed Roosevelt was going in the wrong direction, while others believed he was too timid in his reforms. Still others thought he had not broken free of the restraints placed on him by the financial interests of the country. Many Americans had their own ideas about how to address the financial crisis and took matters into their own hands. In Utopian Movements and Ideas of the Great Depression, Donald W. Whisenhunt explores several lesser-known movements for change and reform in the Great Depression Era including communal societies, proposals for reform, and analyses of several books that propose solutions to the nation's economic ills. Arguably, America has been a Utopian experiment from its beginning; the movements and ideas of the 1930s were simply the latest manifestations of that experiment. Though not well known, the people and events studied represent the thinking of some of the most articulate and driven Americans during the economic crisis. Despite their lack of obvious success, they represent an important American idea—that an average person can devise solutions to society's problems. These movements and ideas embody the American belief in progress and the power of the individual.

During the Great Depression, the Los Angeles area was rife with radical movements. Although many observers thought their ideas unworkable, even dangerous, Southern Californians voted for them by the tens of thousands. This book asks why. To find answers, author Errol Wayne Stevens takes readers through the history of such movements as the Utopian Society, Dr. Francis Townsend’s old-age revolving pension plan, Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California gubernatorial campaign, and Retirement Life Payments, known as Ham and Eggs. The book also examines the Los Angeles Communists and the free-market capitalists, both quasi-religious movements with large followings, as well as the self-help cooperatives, a spontaneous upsurge of neighbors who came together to help one another in a time of desperate need. As to these movements’ extraordinary popularity, Stevens finds the standard explanations unpersuasive. He debunks the idea that naïve, unsophisticated Southern Californians, living aimless, empty lives, suffering from ennui, and longing for community, readily supported charismatic leaders who promised a way out of the Great Depression. In Stevens’s telling, Southern Californians supported these movements because they spoke to their needs. Fearful or desperate, some elderly and hopeless, Angelenos cared less about the programs’ feasibility than about their promise of relief. As one Ham and Eggs supporter succinctly explained: “It may be a racket and maybe it won’t work more than a couple of weeks, but that will be $60 more than I ever got before for one vote.” Finding parallels between past and present, readers might wonder why people remain loyal to programs that prove unrealistic, or why voters continue to support leaders who reveal, time and again, their ignorance or dishonesty. In its illumination of a troubled time in American history not so long ago, this book offers insight into our own.

During the Great Depression, the Los Angeles area was rife with radical movements. Although many observers thought their ideas unworkable, even dangerous, Southern Californians voted for them by the tens of thousands. This book asks why. To find answers, author Errol Wayne Stevens takes readers through the history of such movements as the Utopian Society, Dr. Francis Townsend’s old-age revolving pension plan, Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California gubernatorial campaign, and Retirement Life Payments, known as Ham and Eggs. The book also examines the Los Angeles Communists and the free-market capitalists, both quasi-religious movements with large followings, as well as the self-help cooperatives, a spontaneous upsurge of neighbors who came together to help one another in a time of desperate need. As to these movements’ extraordinary popularity, Stevens finds the standard explanations unpersuasive. He debunks the idea that naïve, unsophisticated Southern Californians, living aimless, empty lives, suffering from ennui, and longing for community, readily supported charismatic leaders who promised a way out of the Great Depression. In Stevens’s telling, Southern Californians supported these movements because they spoke to their needs. Fearful or desperate, some elderly and hopeless, Angelenos cared less about the programs’ feasibility than about their promise of relief. As one Ham and Eggs supporter succinctly explained: “It may be a racket and maybe it won’t work more than a couple of weeks, but that will be $60 more than I ever got before for one vote.” Finding parallels between past and present, readers might wonder why people remain loyal to programs that prove unrealistic, or why voters continue to support leaders who reveal, time and again, their ignorance or dishonesty. In its illumination of a troubled time in American history not so long ago, this book offers insight into our own.

'Fascinating and richly documented . . . Few books manage to be so informative and so entertaining.' – Sunday Times 'Thanks to Neima’s rigorous research, each chapter offers something new.' – Spectator 'Neima ranges with impressive confidence across the world'. – Literary Review Santiniketan-Sriniketan in India, Dartington Hall in England, Atarashiki Mura in Japan, the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in France, the Bruderhof in Germany and Trabuco College in America: six experimental communities established in the aftermath of the First World War, each aiming to change the world. The Utopians is an absorbing and vivid account of these collectives and their charismatic leaders and reveals them to be full of eccentric characters, outlandish lifestyles and unchecked idealism. Dismissed and even mocked in their time, yet, a century later, their influence still resonates in progressive education, environmentalism, medical research and mindfulness training. Without such inspirational experiments in how to live, post-war society would have been a poorer place.

 Father James R. Cox became the voice of Pittsburgh’s poor and jobless during the worst years of the Great Depression. Long lines of needy people were showing up daily at St. Patrick’s Church in the city’s historic Strip District but Cox turned no one away. He served more than two million meals to the hungry and was the “mayor” of a shantytown of homeless men. In 1932, Cox led one of the first mass marches on Washington, D.C., confronting President Herbert Hoover in a face-to-face White House meeting. He later ran for president himself on the Jobless Party ticket—a quixotic campaign that ended in the deserts of New Mexico. Father Cox’s reputation as a humanitarian was ruined after he barely escaped a mail fraud conviction for running a rigged fundraising contest.

Two Depression-battered nations confronted destiny in 1932, going to the polls in their own way to anoint new leaders, to rescue their people from starvation and hopelessness. America would elect a Congress and a president—ebullient aristocrat Franklin Roosevelt or tarnished “Wonder Boy” Herbert Hoover. Decadent, divided Weimar Germany faced two rounds of bloody Reichstag elections and two presidential contests—doddering reactionary Paul von Hindenburg against rising radical hate-monger Adolf Hitler. The outcome seemed foreordained—unstoppable forces advancing upon crumbled, disoriented societies. A merciless Great Depression brought greater—perhaps hopeful, perhaps deadly—transformation: FDR’s New Deal and Hitler’s Third Reich. But neither outcome was inevitable. Readers enter the fray through David Pietrusza’s page-turning account: Roosevelt’s fellow Democrats may yet halt him at a deadlocked convention. 1928’s Democratic nominee, Al Smith, harbors a grudge against his one-time protege. Press baron William Randolph Hearst lays his own plans to block Roosevelt’s ascent to the White House. FDR’s politically-inspired juggling of a New York City scandal threatens his juggernaut. In Germany, the Nazis surge at the polls but twice fall short of Reichstag majorities. Hitler, tasting power after a lifetime of failure and obscurity, falls to Hindenburg for the presidency—also twice within the year. Cabals and counter-cabals plot. Secrets of love and suicide haunt Hitler. Yet guile and ambition may yet still prevail. 1932’s breathtaking narrative covers two epic stories that possess haunting parallels to today’s crisis-filled vortex. It is an all-too-human tale of scapegoats and panaceas, class warfare and racial politics, of a seemingly bottomless depression, of massive unemployment and hardship, of unprecedented public works/infrastructure programs, of business stimulus programs and damaging allegations of political cronyism, of waves of bank failures and of mortgages foreclosed, of Washington bonus marches and Berlin street fights, of once-solid financial empires collapsing seemingly overnight, of rapidly shifting social mores, and of mountains of irresponsible international debt threatening to crash not just mere nations but the entire global economy. It is the tale of spell-binding leaders versus bland businessmen and out-of-touch upper-class elites and of two nations inching to safety but lurching toward disaster. It is 1932’s nightmare—with lessons for today.

Intended for AP-focused American history high school students, this book supplies a complete quick reference source and study aide on the Great Depression and New Deal in America, covering the key themes, events, people, legislation, economics, and policies. The Great Depression and the New Deal remain key topics in American History that come up often as testing subject material. This book—comprising an introduction, encyclopedic A–Z entries, a chronology, thematic tagging, more than a dozen primary sources, Advanced Placement (AP) exam resources, and a bibliography—provides a complete resource for studying the themes, events, people, legislation, economics, and policy of the Great Depression and New Deal in America. It is ideally suited as a study resource for high school students studying to take the AP U.S. history course as well as undergraduates taking an introductory U.S. History survey course. The Great Depression and the New Deal: Key Themes and Documents supplies an easy-to-use guide to the central concepts, themes, and events of a pivotal era in American history that presents the Great Depression and New Deal in 10 thematic categories. While the focus of this book is on the AP course content itself rather than on the exam, it also features exam preparation-specific content, such as a sample documents-based essay question, a list of "Top Tips" for answering documents-based essay questions, and period-specific learning objectives that are in alignment with the new fall 2014 AP U.S. History curriculum framework.

In the depths of a depression in 1894, a highly successful Gilded Age businessman named Jacob Coxey led a group of jobless men on a march from his hometown of Massillon, Ohio, to the steps of the nation's Capitol. Though a financial panic and the resulting widespread business failures caused millions of Americans to be without work at the time, the word unemployment was rarely used and generally misunderstood. In an era that worshipped the self-reliant individual who triumphed in a laissez-faire market, the out-of-work "tramp" was disparaged as weak or flawed, and undeserving of assistance. Private charities were unable to meet the needs of the jobless, and only a few communities experimented with public works programs. Despite these limitations, Coxey conceived a plan to put millions back to work building a nationwide system of roads and drew attention to his idea with the march to Washington. In Coxey's Crusade for Jobs, Jerry Prout recounts Coxey's story and adds depth and context by focusing on the reporters who were embedded in the march. Their fascinating depictions of life on the road occupied the headlines and front pages of America's newspapers for more than a month, turning the spectacle into a serialized drama. These accounts humanized the idea of unemployment and helped Americans realize that in a new industrial economy, unemployment was not going away and the unemployed deserved attention. This unique study will appeal to scholars and students interested in the Gilded Age and US and labor history.