American Great Depression

This is a chapter from a book I am working on that takes a look at the political and cultural context of Scott Fitzgerald's last five years alive in Asheville, North Carolina and Hollywood where he comes up against the polar ideologies of Communism and Fascism.

5 part podcast series here:
https://www.monocledmutineer.co.uk/scott-fitzgerald-calverton-asheville/

Topics include Scott's casual affair with Marxism, V. F Calverton, The Modern Monthly, William Dudley Pelley, Laura Millar Guthrie, Anthony Buttitta, Scott's stories for Esquire Magazine,  V.F. Calverton's relationship with Scott's first biographer V.F. Calverton and the Modern Monthly, Budd Schulberg, Three Comrades, MGM and anti-fascism and the author's death in Sheilah Graham's apartment in December 1940.

SAH Virtual Conference 2024
September 21st 2024
12:00PM - 1:50 pm Chicago Time (GMT-5)
Online

Session Chair:
Demetra Vogiatzaki, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Papers and Presenters:

Fiske Kimball: Biography and Autobiography, Marie Frank, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA

Sydney Fiske Kimball and the Settler Colonial Imaginary, Charles L. Davis II, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Le baroque et les bons allemands. The Frenchness of Rococo after WWII, Maarten Delbeke, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Fiske Kimball and the Aesthetics of the Period Room, Jean-François Bédard, Syracuse University, USA

The Great Depression in Austria was longer and more severe than in most other countries because its successive governments prioritized exchange-rate stability over economic growth. The dire economic crisis Austria subsequently experienced accentuated the weakness of parliamentary democracy and strengthened the call for fascist rule.

This article examines the role of the female film editor in the production of German silent cinema, turning to the depiction of editing in a little-known short comedy from 1926, ( , dir. O. F. Mauer), also known as ( ). This film, about a distracted editor who mixes revue film and newsreel footage to produce an avant-garde montage film, hands authority over the film to the editor while suggesting that the film she has produced is simply a mistake. Situating the film within discourse on silent-film production practices and Weimar-era montage techniques, the article uses the film as a magnifying glass through which to consider female labor and its relationship to mediation and aesthetic form. It shows how the film offers a remarkable—and relatively early—feminist theory of montage as disruption that hinges on unruly women workers.

The Neutrality Act of 1794 is one of the earliest examples of municipal legislation codifying the obligations of neutrality. The act advanced international law, making noninvolvement in foreign conflicts, not just impartiality, an obligation of neutrality. It influenced Great Britain's Neutrality Act of 1794

Paper was written for class during academic studies.

Abstract:

This paper investigates the causes of the Great Depression and its resolution through the framework of Keynesian economic theory. Through the analysis of primary and secondary sources, including the seminal works of John Maynard Keynes, this study demonstrates how inadequate aggregate demand, deflation, and insufficient government intervention precipitated the Depression. Furthermore, it elucidates how Keynesian policies played a crucial role in facilitating economic recovery.

This paper casts light on the historian Sydney Fiske Kimball's multifaceted debt to his French allies, drawing material from his personal correspondence, held at the archives of the Philadelphia Museum of Arts, and at the collection of his papers at Harvard. Of interest are not only his sustained, intricate, and evolving ties with notable historians and art dealers across the ocean, but also his interactions with unsung heroes, such as the freelance photographers and researchers who helped him during the years he was cut off from traveling.

Key episodes from his work on French architecture in the 1930's are examined here against the backdrop of his early research collaborations, which centered on post-colonial buildings in the United States. Considering that some of Kimball's greatest contributions to the field pertain to themes of creative authorship and labor distribution in 18th-century architecture, this closer look at his own relationships and dependencies is an opportunity to reflect on the historiographical ramifications of authoriality, and the often unstated value of collaboration in historical research. Most importantly, ti enables us to question the singularity of the creative subject, looking at the broader networks of support that make writing history possible.

This was the talk I delivered at UAW Local 600 at an event recognizing the 90th anniversary of the Ford Hunger March of 1932.  A shorter version of it was published in the Detroit Free Press on March 6, 2022.  (The numbers inserted into the text indicate the location of PowerPoint slides.)

The outstanding internal economic problem of the interwar period in all countries studied was undoubtedly unemployment. Next to war, unemployment has been the most widespread, most insidious and most corroding malady of our generation; it is the specific disease of western countries in our time. It varied in intensity in the different countries but in nearly every industrial country it held the center of the social and economic stage in the interwar years. It was a social evil more than an economic evil. Its effects in terms of personal insecurity, maldistribution of income, and the deterioration of health, technical skill and morale were probably greater than the waste of resources and potential wealth involved. At the same time the pressure of the problem on national government was perhaps the most decisive disrupting factor in international economic relations (Arndt, 1944, p. 250).

Great question. Unfortunately, there isn't a standard answer, although there is a well-known joke economists like to tell regarding the difference between the two. But, let's come back to that later. Recession Let's start by defining a recession. As I mentioned, there are several commonly used definitions of a recession. For example, journalists often describe a recession as two consecutive quarters of declines in quarterly real (inflation adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP).

The impact of the US 1933/34 Acts, the …rst national …nancial regulation acts in the world, on …nancial markets have been under debates since Stigler (1964). Major …ndings in the literature is that …nancial regulation enacted by these laws is at best being ineective to improve …nancial markets until some recent studies imply indirectly that they could be eective. By studying daily returns of NYSE data from 1890 to 1970, this paper provides systematic evidence that the 1933/34 Acts have substantially reduced market volatilities after controlling for Great Depression eect and macroeco- nomic variables. Moreover, we show that even when we treat the existence and the date of the volatility changes as unknown, statistically identi…ed structural changes are fully consistent with the above results that the volatility reduction time coincide with the enacting of the Acts.

Screwball komedija najvjerojatnije nastaje kao oblik eskapizma nakon Velike ekonomske krize.te kao pokušaj da se zaobiđe cenzurakoju je nametnuo Motion Picture Production Code. Tradicionalna američka obitelj doživljava krizu te životinje kao zamjenska djeca pridonose slici nekonvencionalne obiteljske zajednice karakteristične za screwball, a ujeno i omogućavaju neke cenzuri nerihvatljive oblike obiteljskog ponašanja.
Screwball-majka rezultat je .pojave "nove žene" i promjene modela ženske seksualnosti koja više nije strogo vezana uz majčinstvo i brak te se radije odlučuje za animalnog "potomka". Screwball-otac reakcija je na nemogućnost muškarca da u vrijeme ekonomske krize izdržava obitelj. Screewball-muškarac previše je nezreo da bi podizao ljudsko potomstvo te prolazi ritualno poniženje i promjenu identiteta, preuzimajući bilo ženska, bilo životinjeka svojsta.

We live in a country with a very complex economy with a wide variety of transactions happening every day. Whether they're small or large transactions, from an economic point of view, they all represent the same thing: an exchange of ownership for a money-the U.S. dollar in this case. The management of the U.S. dollar is therefore crucial to our country. The Federal Reserve (Fed) is in charge of handling the money supply. It was created after past financial crises to develop a better control of the money and the country's economy in general. The Federal Reserve is run by non-elected bodies. Perhaps some questions may arise in minds such as the following: what is the Fed? What is its job? How does it manage to do it? Or How does it help the country's monetary system? These all are some of the questions we will be trying to bring light upon in this paper.

I thank Monique Ebel, Robert Himmelberg, David Levine, Nelson Lichtenstein, Fabrizio Perri, Albrecht Ritschl, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Rob Shimer for helpful discussions. Very special thanks to Bob Lucas, Ed Prescott, Nancy Stokey, and two referees for detailed comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and to Hal Cole for joint work on the topic of union hold-up. Giang Ho, David Lagakos, Ruy Lama, and Paulina Restrepo provided excellent research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the Federal Reserve System, or the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The Great Depression is known as one of the biggest crises in economic history which caused serious economic consequences expressed through increased unemployment, high rates of deflation, bank panic, banking crisis and bankruptcies of many companies and households. The fascination of many economists from this crisis was the main cause of the preparation of this work that aims to capture the overall crisis and to see different views of numerous economists about the reasons that led to the appearance of the same, but also the solutions to overcome it. The paper reviews the different posts of economists, beginning with those who felt that the crisis was caused by monetary factors (tight monetary policy, the gold standard, vulnerable banking system), other authors who considered that the reasons lie in the real sector, and third in the insufficient aggregate demand. Furthermore, the paper examines the Keynesian theory and her attempt to explain and overcome the crises and their views o...

The Dead Hand of the Great Depression. On Dance Marathons and Spectacles of Death and Survival

The article’s main subject is the complex mechanism of observation and participation in the spectacles of sadism and cruelty prevalent during the Great Depression in the United States. A particular focus was given to They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? by Horace McCoy among other literary and art cases. Literary narratives focused on dance marathons are analyzed, apart from a literary-critical perspective, in the light of the history of theater and entertainment, and the history of economics. An in-depth presentation of the circumstances of the economic crisis allows us to see the dynamics of changes in literary conventions (including Hollywood narratives) as part of the historical-literary process, as well as the collapse of the American narrative about success and liberation through a career in the entertainment industry. The article proposes to consider cultural representations of the dance marathon as a sadistic spectacle in which the suffering of others becomes a shortterm entertainment – enabled by a clear division between participants and spectators, and the common understanding of the competition as a springboard to success in Hollywood. Tracing the collapse of this narrative (as well as the lethality of this promise) is an essential point in the essay’s conclusion.

The present paper studies the theme of racial discrimination and economic inequality in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The Grapes of Wrath portrays the plight of the working class during the Great Depression (1929). It highlights the problems faced by the farmers and migrant workers. The novel exposes the dehumanized and antipeople nature of the American economy, especially the financial institutions. The story is about the agricultural labourers whose livelihood has been taken away by machines and technology. They became jobless and shorn of resources for their survival. It is a story of the dispossessed Oklahoma family and their struggle to carve out a new life in California at the height of the Great Depression. Steinbeck is not openly calling for revolution or relying entirely on attacking the rich or supporting the poor; he is merely struggling to find a way to illustrate the necessity of one man to be willing and able to rely on another for support. The present paper focuses on the plight of economically underprivileged sections of society during the Great Depression era.

ter and other freshwater schools? These days, commentators tell us that we should scrap all that we hold dear-neoclassical growth models, asset pricing models, and the efficient market hypothesis alike. And not just run-of-the-mill journalists. No less than the Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman argued this September in the New York Sunday Magazine that we are "mistaking beauty for truth," dismissing "the Keynesian vision of what recessions are all about," falling "in

As many viewed Hitler as a monster and a tyrant eighty years ago, today many view Putin as another war criminal. Both men had developed the same intent. Hitler had an overriding ambition for territorial expansion, which was largely driven by his desire to occupy Europe. In his diabolic mind, Hitler launched the war in Europe to allow Germany to become economically strong and military secure. To do so, he extorted the capital from the Jews after killing several millions of them in the concentration camps. He invaded Poland, France, Belgium, and many other territories during WWII.

Putin wants to occupy Ukraine to stop the West for taking control military of this territory via NATO. His long term goal is to disrupt American politics in Europe. As Hitler, Putin has an overriding ambition for territorial expansion. He wants to secure Russia by building a Russian empire.

As many viewed Hitler as a monster and a tyrant eighty years ago, today many view Putin as another war criminal. Both men had developed the same intent. Hitler had an overriding ambition for territorial expansion, which was largely driven by his desire to occupy Europe. In his diabolic mind, Hitler launched the war in Europe to allow Germany to become economically strong and military secure. To do so, he extorted the capital from the Jews after killing several millions of them in the concentration camps. He invaded Poland, France, Belgium, and many other territories during WWII.

Putin wants to occupy Ukraine to stop the West for taking control military of this territory via NATO. His long term goal is to disrupt American politics in Europe. As Hitler, Putin has an overriding ambition for territorial expansion. He wants to secure Russia by building a Russian empire.

Down in the Dumps: Place, Modernity, American Depression Jani Scandura Mucking around in the messy terrain of American trash, Jani Scandura tells the story of the United States during the Great Depression through evocative and photo-rich portraits of four locales: Reno, Key West, Harlem, and Hollywood. In investigating these Depression-era "dumps," places that she claims contained and reclaimed the cultural, ideological, and material refuse of modern America, Scandura introduces the concept of "depressive modernity," an enduring affective component of American culture that exposes itself at those moments when the foundational myths of America and progressive modernity-capitalism, democracy, individualism, secularism, utopian aspiration-are thrown into question. Depressive modernity is modernity at a standstill. Such a modernity is not stagnant or fixed, nor immobile, but is constituted by an instantaneous unstaging of desire, territory, language, and memory that reveals itself in the shimmering of place.

The present paper studies the theme of racial discrimination and economic inequality in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The Grapes of Wrath portrays the plight of the working class during the Great Depression (1929). It highlights the problems faced by the farmers and migrant workers. The novel exposes the dehumanized and antipeople nature of the American economy, especially the financial institutions. The story is about the agricultural labourers whose livelihood has been taken away by machines and technology. They became jobless and shorn of resources for their survival. It is a story of the dispossessed Oklahoma family and their struggle to carve out a new life in California at the height of the Great Depression. Steinbeck is not openly calling for revolution or relying entirely on attacking the rich or supporting the poor; he is merely struggling to find a way to illustrate the necessity of one man to be willing and able to rely on another for support. The present paper focuses on the plight of economically underprivileged sections of society during the Great Depression era.

We test for differences between the Great Recession and the Great Depression in the US, using unemployment rates. The test used is ANOVA. The hypothesis advanced is that the early phases of the recession and depression are non-different. At first we reject the hypothesis. But by incorporating government involvement for the two periods, we obtain moderate arguments for the acceptance of the hypothesis. The paper starts out with background ideas of the two periods, then proceeds to the testing based on actual data, deviation of actual from normal or NAIRU rates, and adjusted data for government capital injection and subsidies.

For many years newspapers were locally owned by editors and publishers. However, today many are run by corporations from out of state. As a result, many communities have lost the personal relationship between the family owned publication and the community. Gene Howe, who served as editor, publisher and columnist of the Amarillo Globe-News from 1926 until his death in 1952, believed the community was where the focus should be and the newspaper should do all that it can to help their readers. Despite the fact that Howe was not born in Amarillo, Texas, his passion and love for the city and its inhabitants compensated for it. During the Dust Bowl and Great Depression Howe and the Globe-News helped Amarillo survive the dust and economic storms that blew through the Texas Panhandle, an area that has not been written as much as other parts of Texas. Through his “Tactless Texan” column, which served as a pulpit to the community, to the various contests and promotions the newspaper sprang up...

The interrelationships among nature, humans, and technology in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath reveal the characters’ responsibility for the destruction of nature in the novel. The critique of technology is explicit: throughout the narrative, technology is portrayed as possessive of monstrous qualities, emphasized as something “uncanny” disrupting the familiar landscape. Implicitly, however, the novel criticizes the tenants’ attitudes toward the land. By exposing the migrants’ contradictory behavior toward nature, the novel lays bare the irony behind the tenants’ pastoral discourse. The incoherence of the pastoral ideal preached by the tenants emerges in several passages that show, for instance, that despite the discourse of love and respect for the land, they regard the earth as something to be used and exploited as well. Drawing from a number of scholars that have looked into the environmental aspects of Steinbeck’s work, Sigmund Freud’s theories on the “Uncanny,” and Leo Mar...

When identifying the "greatest presidents," historians consistently rank Washington and Lincoln in the top two slots; the third spot almost always goes to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who served as chief executive longer than any before or since and shepherded the nation through twin existential crises of economic depression and world war. FDR left an indelible legacy upon America that echoes loudly both forward to our present and future as well as back to his day. Lionized by the left today-especially by its progressive wing-far more than he was in his own time, he remains vilified by the right, then and now. Today's right, which basks in the extreme and often eschews common sense, conflating social security with socialism, frequently casts him as villain. Yet his memory, be it applauded or heckled, is nevertheless of an iconic figure who forever changed the course of American history, for good or ill. FDR has been widely chronicled, by such luminaries as James MacGregor Burns,

Steinbeck's earlier works, "The Vigilante" and In Dubious Battle are described with a tangibly cynical tone towards the nature of man, and the destructive potential of misguided "phalanxes." However, his later works, The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row offer a positive and even hopeful view on the potential of these phalanxes. The reason for this shift lies within Steinbeck's development of "influential actors" and their ability to cultivate democratic communities.

This article writer analyzes how recession condition in 1930 in United States that can be described in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath because historical background of recession 1930 in United States can be seen in the relation between main character that appears in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and her society where she is described to live in United States. Main character is not a real person but she is seen as a member of society where she lives in recession 1930. The recession in 1930 in United States causes Oklahoma people migrate to California as a promised land that condition really happened in 1930. Abstrak Artikel ini menganalisa bagaimana kondisi resesi ekonomi di tahun 1930 di Amerika Serikat yang dapat di gambarkan dalam karya John Steinbeck dalam novelnya The Grapes of Wrath karena di dalam novel karya John Steinbeck menceritakan kondisi sejarah dari resesi ekonomi tahun 1930 di Amerika Serikat, dimana ada hubungan antara karakter utama yang ada di dalam nov...

A worthy man who dedicated his life to the welfare of children, Dr. J. Calvitt Clarke (1887-1970) was one of the twentieth century’s most successful charitable fundraisers. Clarke had a second life of exceptional merit. He was a successful author, publishing many novels and short stories. In the short story, “City Girl,” two young people deceived each other as to their true station in life—that they lived the farm life rather than a city one. Yet, the heroine worried that she would have to live on a farm to be with the man she loved. The characters straightened out their mutual deception on the manuscript’s last page.  Submitted to a pulp magazine, "Sweetheart Stories," editors rejected Clarke's effort.

Non fu il liberismo a far cadere valore e produttività, fu al contrario la caduta di valore e produttività a instillare nella testa degli uomini l'esigenza di cercare qualche espediente, uno qualsiasi pur di sfuggire all'incubo della caduta del profitto: ecco perché si è rispolverato il liberismo, già morto e sepolto fra le due guerre (ammesso e non concesso che sia mai esistito), ovvero l'illusione che si potesse, con il miracoloso mercato, con le leggi selvagge della "mano invisibile" di Smith che tutto aggiusta, rimediare alla dittatura inesorabile della legge del valore.

The Purple Rose of Cairo is a Meta film which shows the illusionist world of the Hollywood industry during The Great Depression period in America. The movie industry seems to be the only affordable escape from the harsh reality and cruel survival instinct. Woody Allen used such the perfect duality in the movie to reflect the depression duration perfectly. That duality is that even if the people of the depression had lived their day in the worst state they find themselves in the movie theatre as if it is their pacifier and they could not wait any more time to get their distraction, Cecilia even cannot fulfill her job’s duties because of her movie fanaticism. Indeed the film industry is their pacifiers because the audience is a mass of people who got face to face with the great depression, in a way economic crisis thus by paying and buying the ticket to the movie is like they are buying a ticket to the heaven as the “American Dream” asserted. In Cecilia’s status, movies are very generous in terms of the romantic feeling that she lacks. Apart from the movie’s being a fiction, as the opposite of reality, in fact the movie a ritual, hypnotization to let the audience escape from the reality thus the movie turns out to be the lullaby of those people who are in need of listening and watching the movie before their return to their own lives to feel the strength to start a new day to play their particular roles in unity to complete the cycle by using the connectors such as the foreshadowings.

This paper analyses the story "Secret Life of Walter Mitty". Mitty's daydreams are  analysed in relation to 1930s real-life characters and materials such as Alexander Flaming, hydroplanes, Red Baron and Waterbury Trial. The topic also touches on women's impact on society in the Great Depression and WWI and WWII

Though Steinbeck’s fictional novel does make some incorrect predictions about the future of the Okies, his Joads could be a case study for what an average Okie went through from the time they were removed from their farms, through their journey west, how they were treated in the West, and how they reacted to the West.

In order to understand trade between the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK), it is important to have a brief history of the two nations. The UK is the mother country of the US and many countries around the world. At the height of its power, the British Empire was the largest empire or world power on earth. It was often said that, " The sun never sets on the British Empire. The UK (Great Britain) has always been a nation of industrial might, and a world naval power. The industrial revolution started in Britain and spread to the northeastern United States. The British have never considered themselves part of Europe or the " Euro zone. " This is the reason they did not change their currency from the Pound Sterling to the Euro, and because the Pound is one of the world's strongest currencies. In fact, the UK has not been conquered by a foreign power since William the Conquer in 1066 AD. This moves the paper back to trade. The United States and Great Britain have been huge trading partners since Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) Keynesian economic policy of the 1930's. At the time, the US was in a Great Depression that had spread globally, similar to the economic situation we face today. Roosevelt started various programs such as the lend lease program to help the British defend themselves from Nazi Germany. This was a type of counter trade, where the US loaned Britain ships in exchange for 100 years of US military base rights in the British Commonwealth. Not wanting to get into too much detail, most of our trade partners today are former WWII allies, or NATO members (North Atlantic Treaty Association). Today we are faced with a crisis of epoch proportion. The US economy is recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression, and it has spread to the UK and Western

The narrative of the American Liberty League embodies the last stand for traditional Jeffersonian Constitutionalism, marking an inflection point whereafter the tide of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal would forever change America’s understanding of the constitution. In 1816, Thomas Jefferson writing to Samuel Kercheval famously said “The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property in their management.”  No philosophy could better encapsulate pre-progressive American thought than this one. However, with widespread social change altering the fabric of American identity, people started to view their contract with government cast under the light of effective freedom and social responsibility. The culmination of this shift in thought was the ratification of the New Deal which undermined strict constitutionalism in order to form the proto-welfare state that would see America through the Great Depression. As with every major action in policy, an equal and opposite reaction quickly took place among conservative America. At the forefront of this reactionary movement was the American Liberty League (ALL), formally created in 1934 to “uphold and preserve the constitution” in times of crisis.  Its founding members, notably Democratic National Committee Chairman John J. Raskob, former Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee Jouett Shouse, 1928 Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith, General Motors Executive Alfred P. Sloan, and the infamous DuPont family, were united in their faith in American individualism and thus vehemently opposed to the changes propelled by the New Deal.  The League drew its members largely from those who had thrived in the laissez-faire world of past days, and consequently was painted as a coalition of wealthy, corrupt businessman who were determined to protect their fortunes by perverting the constitution. This sentiment was greatly emphasized by Franklin D. Roosevelt who, shortly after the League’s founding, declared it a “lover of property.”  By the end of 1936 the American Liberty League was a laughingstock, jokingly dubbed the “American cellophane league” by Postmaster Farley as “first, it’s a DuPont product and, second you can see right through it.”  However, the League’s true motivations were far more complicated than contemporary critics were led to believe. By investigating the history of the American Liberty League’s operations, we are offered a window into not only the most infamous New Deal reactionary movement, but a glimpse at the shifting notions of the role the constitution should play in ages to come.

The Great Depression of 1929 devastated the U.S. economy. Half of all banks failed. Unemployment rose to 25  percent and homelessness increased. Housing prices plummeted 30 percent, global trade collapsed by 60 percent and prices fell 10 percent. It took 25 years for the stock market to recover.

This paper explores three areas in which the experience of the Great Depression might be relevant today: monetary policy, fiscal policy and the systemic stability of the banking system. We confirm the consensus on monetary policy: deflation must be avoided. With regard to fiscal policy, the picture is less clear. We cannot confirm a widespread opinion according to which fiscal policy did not work because it was not tried. We find that fiscal policy went to limit of what was possible under the conditions as they existed then. Our investigation of the US banking system shows a surprising resilience of the sector: commercial banking operations (deposit taking and lending) remained profitable even during the worst years. This suggests one policy conclusion: At present the authorities, in both the US and Europe, have little choice but to make up for the losses on 'legacy' assets and wait for banks to earn back their capital. But to prevent future crisis of this type one should make sure that losses from the investment banking arms cannot impair commercial banking operations. At least a partial separation of commercial and investment banking seems thus justified by the greater stability of commercial banking operations.