The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941
This month, I am generally exploring the Great Depression, so this weeks book is called exactly that, The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941 by Robert S. McElvaine.
So this book is not technically mine, it was loaned to me by my dad, along with last weeks book. Now, last weeks book was great. Had a lot of great information and explored the ramifications of FDR’s policies. This weeks book made me question if I am, in fact, my dad’s favorite. Because honestly, around page xix of the INTRODUCTION, I was wondering if my dad was mad at me or if I had in some way offended him.
This book actually has two introductions, the forward to the first edition, then the intro to the 25th edition. The author should not have added the intro to the 25th edition. It added nothing to the book, and made him look like a bitter angry man who could not stand that someone…namely, interestingly enough, the author of last weeks book, Amity Shlaes…might have a different opinion than him. Like, she might have read the same resources and reached a different conclusion. In fact, his entire intro to the 25th edition was spent smearing Shlaes book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. Except, it wasn’t her book, so much as a smear campaign against her, mocking her credentials as an economist, and pointing out, with a great deal of smugness, that HE is nothing so lowly as an economist, HE is a HISTORIAN, and thus the only one qualified to interpret history for those of us who studied something other than history.
I hated him already. Anyone who feels that knowledge only comes from those qualified to dispense it is an idiot. Like…there’s a reason books are a thing. Including yours.
He also makes it very clear, from the very beginning, that only democrats are good people. Democrat and liberal equals good. Republican and conservative equals bad. And Hoover, was the bridging gap between the two and an honorary liberal, in McElvaine’s book. Literal and metaphorical book.
Coolidge and Reagan are everything that is wrong with America. No joke…a book about the Great Depression was used to bash Reagan 50 years later.
Oh…remember how I said we were blessed to be in the presence of a great historian, who would not deign to sully his mind with anything as lowly as economics? He then spends the rest of the book trying to explain multiple economic theories, everything from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes, ultimately deciding that Keynesian economics is the answer to all historical woes. Laissez Faire had run it’s course and caused the stock market crash, and only government spending could bring us out of it.
Now, lets give you a brief run down of these terms, because if you don’t know what they are, you won’t understand how irritating this all was to read.
Laissez Faire is “Laissez-faire is an economic theory from the 18th century that opposed any government intervention in business affairs. The driving principle behind laissez-faire, a French term that translates to "leave alone" (literally, "let you do"), is that the less the government is involved in the economy, the better off business will be, and by extension, society as a whole.”
Laissez-Faire, which was Adam Smith’s theory, built America into an economic powerhouse that put us in a position to loan millions to the countries of Europe during and after WWI. McElvaine points out multiple other economic depressions in US history, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893….without ever connecting the dots that what caused these economic depressions was government interference in what was an otherwise functioning market. The depression of 1837 was caused by Andrew Jackson’s interference in banking. Same with 57, 73, 93….government interferes, the market crashes.
Now, the stock market crash is actually the anomaly here, because the government did NOT interfere. At least not directly in the form of bank interference or tariffs on products. And in this case, it was very much capitalism run amok. And the aftermath, with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and Hoover raising taxes on people, absolutely contributed to the coming shit show.
Keynesian economics is that demand drives supply. Meaning people should only be producing what is needed, like food. So from Investopedia.com, we get “The most basic principle of Keynesian economics is that demand—not supply—is the driving force of an economy. At the time, conventional economic wisdom held the opposite view: that supply creates demand. Because aggregate demand—the total spending for and consumption of goods and services by the private sector and the government—drives supply, total spending determines all economic outcomes, from the production of goods to the employment rate.
Another basic principle of Keynesian economics is that the best way to pull an economy out of a recession is for the government to increase demand by infusing the economy with capital. In short, consumption (spending) is the key to economic recovery.”
This is McElvaine’s pet theory on the proper way to run a country. Government just spends and spends, and we the people should just pay for it. Except he highlights incredibly asinine programs Roosevelt endorsed during his 4 terms. Programs like paying farmers to not farm. So…in a time where starvation is on the rise, there is literally not enough food to go around…the government is paying farmers, the producers of food, to not produce. And with some pretty predictable consequences. The big farms in the south, where sharecropping was still a thing, started accepting government money not to farm and evicting their tenants. Because hey, they were getting paid money from the government not to farm, so why would they allow sharecroppers to live rent free on their land?
I strongly suspect that the real reason FDR was elected four times had absolutely nothing to do with any level of competence on his part, because frankly every program he promoted was an absolute shitshow of bureaucratic incompetence….witness the details that Shlaes provided in last weeks book on Schechter vs the National Recovery Administration....and more to do with his successfully building up a cult of personality around himself. Learned about that back in 2022 with Frank Dikötter’s book, How to be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century. Because he didn’t actually DO anything. For anyone. Except himself, when he got himself elected four times.
McElvaine points out many times and many instances of absolute humanity in FDR, that FDR was not a perfect person, but he was a perfect politician. And I swear, McElvaine LOVES that FDR was such a great politician. Where I come from, politician is a dirty word. Apparently, McElvaine does not feel the same way.
Ok, the book. All of what I said above was in the book. There were like two chapters where I learned something interesting. Chapter 9 and Chapter 10. Chapter 9 was about culture, and he covered the movies that came out in the 1930’s and some of the overarching themes, how the movies represented the bad guys as capitalists and the good guys were always the common man. This, incidentally, may have also assisted Roosevelt with his re-elections. He discussed how the government provided funding for artists during this time. Look, it’s not that artists don’t need to eat. It’s that if what they are producing isn’t good enough to support themselves, then why do my tax dollars have to do it? For more on the topic of money and the arts, I would actually refer you to the Writer Dojo Podcast, produced by Larry Correia and Steve Diamond. They cover this topic A LOT.
You know what he did NOT mention in this book? That while FDR was so very concerned that the common man have access to the arts, no where in the book did McElvaine mention Andrew Mellon’s granting of the National Gallery, which happened during the Great Depression.
And I learned about how much union membership rose during the 1930’s, which I think I sort of knew about just from a logical point, but he covers how that came about. And that was useful knowledge to have.
The rest of the book was waxing poetical about how great and fantastic FDR was, and FDR’s ONLY failing was that he didn’t take Keynesian economic theory far enough. If he had spent more, the depression would have ended in year one.
His absolute lack of understanding of economics was phenomenal. He advocates deficit spending. THAT, if you don’t know, is where the government spends money it doesn’t have. Just keeps spending. For those of us who aren’t in the government, this would be where you don’t have money to buy what you want….like for example more books…so you put it on a credit card…only you keep buying more and more books until you’ve maxed out the credit card. Then you open a new card to keep buying books. And instead of paying off any of the credit cards, you just pay the minimum balance each month, allowing those interest rates to keep accruing higher and higher.
With the government, it’s usually military spending, not books, but you get the idea.
The other delightful bon motte that McElvaine put out there is that savings is good. But too much savings hurts your fellow man. So everyone who is actually good at saving and budgeting should be punished for being good at that by having their savings taxed at abnormally high rates to pay for that government military spending. This, incidentally, is exactly what’s going on today.
I…this book was a dredge to get through. I’m not sure what I did wrong to make my dad hand me this book to read, but I’m going to go apologize now, and hope I haven’t been written out of the will.
