Customer Reviews

Since Yesterday: The 1930's in America, September 3, 1929 to September 3, 1939

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The best thing about this book is that unlike most other ones about the depression it was written by someone who experienced it at the time they experienced it - 1939. Spanning 1929 to 1939 it gives you a you-were-there feeling.

Most of the political commentary is just matter-of-fact with very little bias. Many depression books seem to be left-leaning and written by authors with political agendas, not this one. The fact is that many things actually were very corrupt in the years leading up to the depression.

Allen obviously liked FDR very much and yet he still always countered accolades for him with opposing opinions and even agrees with them at times.

This is not a hard-hitting expose' of the Depression years, but it is a highly informative book that is a great lesson in history.

Frederick Lewis Allen begins this short book (346 pages) where he left off in his last book (Only Yesterday) - with the stock market crash of 1929 - and ends it with the
advent of World War II in 1939. Allen skillfully weaves the minor events of this decade (the fads, books, crimes, machines, gadgets, personalities, movies, fashions, etc.) together
with the major events (the stock market crash, the Great Depression, and the New Deal) in a delightfully entertaining, informative fashion - assuming, of course, that you
enjoy American history!
The '29 crash had been immediately preceded by the Big Bull market that had carried investors and stocks onward and upward for some 2 years before it finally peaked. Investors, by then, were programmed to buy, buy, buy. All feared that they might miss one last opportunity to get richer. Stock transactions sometimes became so hectic that Wall Street could not keep up with the paperwork (no computers!). Some pundits of that
day were issuing warnings that stock prices were overvalued, that investors were investing too much borrowed money, but few investors were heeding these warnings. When stock prices began falling, nothing could stop them. By the time stock values hit
bottom on 13 November investors had lost enough money to finance World War I once, or pay off the national debt twice! In a matter of months 25% of the work force was unemployed; many of them were now standing in the ubiquitous breadlines, or peddling
apples for 5 cents on street corners.
The market crash triggered another major event of the 30s - the great depression. President Hoover insisted that the economy was only experiencing one of those cyclical
business cycles, that it would eventually self-correct, and that life in America would again be just great. He approved some actions to aid businessmen and failing banks, and
to create some jobs by expanding some federal work programs, but basically Hoover opposed any kind of relief for the unemployed or their families. The government, he thought, should do nothing to damage Americans initiative and rugged individualism. Later, Hoover approved some expenditures for seed and for animal feed, but vetoed any proposals to help the cold, the starving, or the unemployed. Hoover was above all
determined to balance the federal budget and he was certain that nature (and economic problems) would eventually run its course and that his hands off (laissez-faire) economic policy would prove to be the proper government response to the depression.
Between the crash of 29 and the presidential election of 1932, however, there was no visible improvement in the economy. Consequently, Hoovers defeat in the upcoming 1932 election was preordained. Thats what happened; Franklin Delano Roosevelt
became president.
FDR and Hoover had diametrically opposed views with regard to the federal governments role vis-à-vis the national economy and the depression. Once elected FDR immediately launched his various (alphabet soup-like) New Deal programs: they
included the NRA (to deal with economic planning, wages and working conditions, child and womens labor, etc.), the CWA and the WPA (to provide jobs); the AAA (to deal with farm problems); the CCC (to provide jobs related to environmental protection, tree planting, etc.); the PWA and the TWA (to build dams - thereby creating jobs, electricity, water for irrigation, flood controls, etc.). He also created the RFC, the FHA, the FCA,
the NYA, etc., etc. FDR was unafraid to create a government agency to deal with a problem. If one approach fails (frequently the case), he would say, Well try another.
The unemployed, he maintained, are not bums! They are victims of an economy over which they have no control. (A 1933 congressional investigation - a la Enron, Anderson, et al) indicated that the crash had to a considerable extent been generated by wheeling-dealing brokers, bankers, financiers, corporate managers and their pyramiding
schemes, mergers, etc.). FDRs role model cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, had said earlier that it was the governments responsibility to protect those who were unable to protect
themselves. FDR, in turn, said something similar, using different words: It is not the governments duty to further enrich those who already have much, but, rather, to assist
those who have little. FDRs words resonated with most Americans. They re-elected him again, again, and again. The Republicans soon recognized that FDR and his Democratic New Deal programs were basically anathema to what Republicans stood
for (small federal government, low taxes, etc.), and they began fighting FDR and his programs (the Democratic-Republican fight that FDR started continues to this day.), but FDR won most of the battles because he always enjoyed great majorities in both houses of congress and eventually he also had a friendly Supreme Court - because he personally made a total of 9 appointments to the court.
There is much more to say about this book, about FDRs struggle with those 9 old men of the Supreme Court, about the repeal of Prohibition, about the rise of organized crime,
etc., -- but you get the idea. My final word: Lewis is a delightful writer and the material is fascinating!

When it comes to a structured review of life in America in this time period, they don't come any better than this tome by Frederick Lewis Allen. Along with its companion volume "Only Yesterday," this book gives a practical and educational view of the period. I love re-reading both books every three years or so, just to reacquaint myself with "a kindler, gentler time."

Allen covers the period from September 3, 1929, to September 3, 1939. Interestingly, the first date is when the Bull Market reached its peak, and the last date is when England and France declared war on Germany. The book is an excellent contemporary account of the 1930's. The topics that Allen thought were noteworthy in 1939 are still noteworthy today. Anyone who reads this book should also read "Only Yesterday" which is Allen's account of the 1920's.

Completed in 1939, Frederick Lewis Allen's "Since Yesterday" was a sequel to his immensely successful "Only Yesterday: an Informal History of the 1920s". Writing in the same jaunty, gossipy style, Allen mingles serious political history with such ephemera as the invention of miniature golf, fashion parades, and candid camera. Even so, this sequel never achieved the perennial popularity of the earlier book, perhaps because the foibles of life in the '30s could never match the iconic insanity of the '20s. But "Since Yesterday" is an immensely valuable primary source for social historians, providing an in-depth portrayal of what Americans thought of themselves and their deeds during the decade of the Great Depression.

Along with the may-flies of trivia, Allen also delves into the social significance of phenomena such as gangsterism, the rise of team sports to a national passion, the mania for dam construction, swing jazz, and science fiction. On a more earnest level, he wrestles with what to make of charismatic eccentric figures such as isolationist/proto-fascist Charles Lindbergh, thorough fascist Father Coughlin, and Populist demagogue Huey Long. The dominating figure of the book and of the era, however, is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Allen's portrayal of Roosevelt is detached, admiring yet critical, quizzical to the end, and well aware that the end as of 1939 was probably the beginning of a much darker and more dangerous decade. Allen's Roosevelt was always in the lead but never quite in charge, a depiction later historians have largely confirmed.

"Since Yesterday" begins with the financial crisis of 1929, and covers Hoover's opera buffa term as President in four solid chapters. The New Deal arrives in chapter five, in 1933. The various programs for recovery proposed by the Roosevelt administration are analyzed with sharp skepticism, and yet Allen demonstrates clearly that, from the contemporaneous perspective, recovery did occur, the New Deal did work... until 1937, when once again the financial markets crashed and the gains of the reformers were temporarily erased. From Allen's perspective in 1939, there was not one Great Depression but rather an uphill-and-down succession of crises. What caused the second crash? Allen grudgingly suggests that silk-stocking and southern reactionaries finally blocked any progress toward the ideals of reform. The balance sheet of the decade, nevertheless, showed clear long-term gains for the interests of organized labor, despite violence surrounding major strikes and efforts to unionize America's industrial serfs.

Stated with bold oversimplicity, the glittering prosperity of the Roaring Twenties was based on relatively high wages, newly-developed easy credit mechanisms, installment-plan buying, and the marketing of radios and automobiles. Once everyone had bought a radio and a Ford on credit, the properity stalled. Lack of fiscal responsibility and weak regulatory mechanisms magnified the recession of '29 into Hoover's Depression, as it was called by people who lived in it. Sound at all familiar and relevant?

Frederick Allen wrote this wonderful followup of his book "Only Yesterday" as news of Germany's invasion of Poland was anounced. He brings the era alive with descriptions of what people wore, the movies they went to see, the books they read and how people felt about their everyday life. Allen used information from papers, magazines and even advertisements in a refreahing descriptive way that will draw you into the 30s and make you want to dance the Jitterbug and vote for FDR.

While I found this book a bit less engaging than his previous effort on the 1920s, it was nonetheless a fascinating look at the decade by someone who had just lived through it. As an author who sets some pulp-style stories in the era it provides an invaulable overview and copious research opportunity.

Previous reviews have sufficiently captured the contents of this book, one written in 1939. But what differentiates this book is that its sentiment is distinctly nonpartisan, something unlikely were it to have been written in more modern times. As to its contents one can find a major difference with our current economic landscape in that government spending in America was less than 3% of GDP in 1929 (though it rose to 10% in 1940.) Today? It's 21% and rising. That said it sounds strangely like it was written today, a reflection of our troubled financial times. All that and a president with FDR-alike advisors waiting in the wings, bent on retrying the same policies that failed in the 1930's, right down to a Keynesian stimulus package of colossal size.

The book itself is a narrative of events as they occurred in the 30's with a fair and balanced picture of their cause and effect. Subsequent studies have averred that private venture investment, the kind that finances small businesses making them the net providers of new jobs, remained on the sidelines due to the fear that FDR's seemingly chaotic economic solutions would tank any venture they backed. Absent that, FDR's infrastructure spending was insufficient to take unemployment below 14%, a rate which was usually stuck on 20-25% except in 1936 and 1940, both election years, years where FDR engaged in huge-for-the-time deficit spending.

Beyond the economics of it, the depression, government caused or otherwise, was a dreadful time replete with many stories of broken and starving men selling apples on the street corner. You'd have to be a pretty hard hearted Libertarian free-marketer not to suffer along with the stories told in this book. In truth they're more like observations of the author, but he does a good job of bringing you into the emotion of the moment in a way that you won't forget. I recommend it to anyone who wishes to understand the situation we're in today. Companion reads would be "the Forgotten man" by Amity Shlaes and "FDR's Folly" by Jim Powell.

'Since Yesterday' (1940) is a journalistic history of the 1930's in America. Frederick Lewis Allen also wrote 'Only Yesterday' (1930) about the 1920's, and these two books are probably his most well known and popular. It is written in a conversational tone for a popular audience and at times is really entertaining and fascinating. It's at its best discussing popular culture and the changing zeitgeist of America, the political and economic history is often a bit dry. It's valuable for learning about the era because it was one of the first attempts at writing a history of the 1930's, when the events were still fresh, the episodes Allen focuses on are what the people of the time found the most important and foremost in their conscious. Thus one gets a sense of how events flowed together, how one thing effected the next, a more holistic view. The 1930's were very dynamic for a lot of reasons, probably one of the most rapidly changing of the 20th century despite it's sordid reputation for gangsters, dust bowls and the depression - World War II was largely a product of the (failed) politics of the 1930's and that war defined the rest of the century (and beyond). My interpretation (not Allen's) is that empowering technological innovations had spread to the masses: cars, radio, machinery, electricity - these things created more free time (5-hr work week, leisure time), rising rates of education and political involvement - all part of a bigger continuing process that can be seen in the world today in China, India, etc.. we have much to learn about the changes other countries are going through by looking back at the changes in our own country in the 1930's.

Allen, having just come out of the 1930s, sets down the important events of that decade. His description of the pathos of those struggling to survive the upside-down economy is evocative and fresh -- not something written by a boomer or post-boomer who never lived thru the era.

One would do well to read both this work and his 1920s history, "Only Yesterday," to see that the bubbles and manias of the 2000s had their predecessor then. It took 80 years for those with living memory of the great catastrophe to die off, so that their cocky great-grandchildren could destroy our economy all over again