Studs Terkel 2: Hard Times

The first interview that I read was with Arthur A. Robertson, a wealthy mogul during the 1920's.  He talked about what made the 20's so flourishing and also what happened to him during the great depression.  His biggest point was that the stock market caused the largest amount of change in the 20's because it was an easy way to get rich.  During this time, banks also took over because of the use of credit in order to buy now and pay later.  Banks were also difficult to deal with as Robertson says, "The worst day-to-day operators of business are were bankers."  Banks gave out a lot of money in loans during that time as well.  The largest problem with society during that time however was that people followed what the big shots did.  When moguls realized the market was falling and they pulled their money out of stocks, so did the rest of the country causing the economic collapse.  Since moguls were able to pay off bank loans they turned out okay but the rest of the country did not.  I found it interesting that the country followed the hot shots because that's what happens today when celebrities do advertisements.  Following the 20's, Robertson talked about his experience during the depression as a scavenger.  He said that as a scavenger he used to buy broken down businesses that banks took over.  Unlike most, Robertson was able to stay successful during the depression and not fall into poverty.  This very closely relates to the occupy wall street movement because they movement points out that very few are in the upper class while the rest are in middle or lower classes.  Something that I learned from this is that a lot of modern day things such as credit cards all began back in the 1920's however they had many flaws that have been fixed today.

The second interview that I read was with Oscar Heline, A farmer during the Great Depression.  Oscar talked about how there was no food or money during this time and that every sale was a competition.  He told Terkel, "The farmer is a pretty independent individual."  I always thought that farmers grew most of their own food but of course they needed to feel that food to pay for other necessities and during the depression they had to sell to survive.  They also had to burn grain in order to stay warm.  When the government asked farmers not to sell, Oscar was effected for a short period of time before becoming more prosperous.  I feel that this was a necessary move by the government in order to drive up prices but if this hadn't worked then things could have gotten worse.  We discussed the laws mad during the new deal during class and until reading this I was always skeptical about why the government emphasized the role of farmers so much.  Even though crop prices were going up, other prices were still low.  At one point Oscar said he was so desperate that he "couldn't afford to feed $3 hogs so we went out and bought them and killed them.  That's how desperate we were."  They killed the hogs to make them more scarce and drive those prices higher.  Luckily, after enough time farmers began to make money and prosper.  From Oscar's story, I learned that the government can't deal with everything sometimes Americans need to take matters into their own hands.