The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

A Review of Studs Terkel’s Hard Times

Louis “Studs” Terkel was born on May 16, 1912 in New York City. Terkel was a widely respected American historian, author, actor, and broadcaster that received a law degree from the University of Chicago in 1934 at an early age but then took up writing in order to express his beliefs. Unfortunately, Terkel passed away on October 31, 2008 at the age of 96.

BY WILSON JENG

The Great Depression was the culmination of a multitude of problems and was one of the darkest hours in American history. Studs Terkel’s Hard Times explores the conditions experienced by people during the time and contains a collection of interviews from people who had to live through America’s worst economic collapse. “Prosperity is just around the corner was a phrase many repeated during the times,” but it would take many years and a world war before America would pull itself out of its slump.1 Because his book contains a firsthand account of people’s experiences, Terkel’s Hard Times is the most famous documentation of the Great Depression, and from his book, we see how people from the entire socioeconomic spectrum—from soldiers and farmers to politicians and corporate executives—survived and felt during the hard times.

In the beginning of the book, Terkel places the interviews of typical Americans who are representative of the majority of the population of the time. He opens with interviews of soldiers during the Bonus March where they marched on Washington to demand the veteran bonus promised to them before World War I. These veterans had to put up with much hardship, but they also had much support in the form of sympathy from citizens living in the area. “Going to different grocers and giving them a tale of woe” is something many soldiers did in order to get food from the people in the city.2 When the soldiers reached Washington, they got together to petition President Hoover to grant the bonus. However, their efforts were futile, and all veterans were forced to return home, many of whom didn’t have the money to get back home. Next, Terkel introduces with interviews of those who suffered during the Great Depression. Through these interviews, Terkel shares how hard it was to survive during the times and how difficult it was to get and keep a job. In many cases, the poor would “bum rides from city to city” via freight trains.3 Hitchhikers such as professors, safe blowers, skilled mechanics, and many other tradesmen that were all down on their luck and were forced to find jobs in other cities, and in these hard times, the poor banded together since they all worked together to survive. It was common practice for bums and beggars to mark the residences of people in order to signal to their brethren whether or not the home was charitable or not. This sense of camaraderie was an important aspect of the Great Depression because all the poor were equal, thus all fought to survive together. Terkel then includes interviews with rich people who managed to strike it big during the 1930s. In these interviews, it is observed how many corporate executives rose to the top and despite losing much money during the stock market crash of 1929, still managed to hold on to a fortune. These interviews with the big money holders of the time show that the Great Depression wasn’t necessarily a bad time for all Americans, since some of the people Terkel interviewed led comfortable lives. Finally, Terkel concludes the first part of his book with interviews from the working class. The working class of this time period had to deal with many pay cuts and black listings due to unionization. At first, it might seem that the union workers are being unreasonable in their demands, but Terkel’s interviews show how hard the workers had it during the time and his interviews show the conditions the majority of Americans had to cope with during the Great Depression.

The book then explores how the Great Depression affected some of the more prominent members of society. Terkel starts off by giving the accounts of older families who were well established by the time the economic collapse hit by interviewing members of prominent households to see how the collapse changed their lifestyle. It is shocking to see that even some of the most well known families had to undergo drastic changes such as “suffering setbacks and doing away with many luxuries” in order to adjust to the change from the decades before.4 For some families who were used to living an easy life, it was difficult to let go of the servants that looked after them. Despite losing a large amount of their former wealth, the more established older families usually fared a lot better than the families of newly arrived immigrants and other poorer families during the Great Depression, but many of the richer families still helped their less well-off friends by providing them with food when needed. The Great Depression helped bring people together because the times did not discriminate against anyone, but rather affected everyone equally. Next, the book moves on with interviews of actors and musicians that lived the high life equal to celebrities of today. The interviews reveal that some had an easier time finding jobs than others, as was the case with singers compared to athletes since many athletes quit because “the managers couldn’t meet their fee.”5 Terkel then combines these interviews with recollections of people that lived during the Prohibition era. From those interviews and the interviews of some of the celebrities, Terkel paints another side to the Great Depression—one of corruption and extravagance.

The book then moves on to talk about the New Deal. Terkel includes the accounts of people who lived during and after the Great Depression and asks them about their stance towards President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. Many of the people who lived during the Great Depression felt that Roosevelt’s New Deal “saved the free enterprise system, business, and banks.”6 They felt immediate and gradual relief brought on by Roosevelt’s reforms, which included public works to provide jobs and checks to people. In contrast, the interviews of economists looking back on the Great Depression all share the belief that “Roosevelt didn’t do anything; America was already on the road to recovery.”7 These people felt that the reforms would have been better done by a small group instead of the government because it led to a sort of autocracy where Roosevelt passed anything he wanted. Next, the book talks about the experiences of students on campuses during the Great Depression. On the college campuses, there was a clear division between rich students who didn’t care and poor students who were struggling to survive. Some students were struggling to make ends meet while other students were just focusing on studying. Furthermore, many poorer students had lost their fathers because many men would either commit suicide or abandon their families to escape the problems of the Great Depression. The interviews reveal the extent of how the Great Depression affected everyone in the nation.

Finally, the book moves into talking about how public workers, including workers and performers, dealt with the times. The last part of the book opens with interviews with performing artists, sculptors, and painters. One performer accounts how “it is easy to survive on nothing and you could depend on the kindness of strangers.”8 Although many of the performers had lived extravagant lives during the Roaring Twenties prior to the Great Depression, many of them found that the economic hardships were not necessarily all that bad. They were still able to survive, and many actually enjoyed the unemployment because it gave them more time to practice and hone their skill. Next, the interviews with public servants and other public figures give a personal narrative of how life in the city was. Many of the interviewees, who were landlords, talked about how they had to evict tenants who could not meet the rent, or how they had to deny people welfare checks because the man of the house had fled. These actions did not come peacefully as many people resisted eviction with force and barricaded themselves in their residences. Next, the teachers and policemen explained how they felt when faced with an impossible task due to the lack of resources granted to them. Finally, the book ends with interviews with people that talk about the importance of striving in order to succeed. The end of the book contains the recollections of those who fought to survive and worked hard and managed to be successful despite the hardships and disadvantages they grew up with. Some of those interviewed observed that “in the worst hour of the Depression, if you were aggressive, if you wanted to scrounge, if you believed in Horatio Alger, you could survive.”9 Those that survived and succeeded during the Great Depression all had one thing in common—they didn’t give up.

This book shows the experiences of all types of people during the Great Depression. In Hard Times, Studs Terkel’s main thesis is that the Depression affected people in two different ways with the majority reacting by thinking about money all the time and the minority thinking about changing the system and how things were run in America. Terkel’s thesis is supported by his techniques when interviewing his subjects. He asks his interviewees questions about their lives and about their feelings, successfully dividing them into grounds based on their answers. The first group, the majority, includes people who hope that money will solve their problems. The second group includes those who are unhappy with the their less well-off friends by providing them with food when needed. The Great Depression helped bring people together because the times did not discriminate against anyone, but rather affected everyone equally. Next, the book moves on with interviews of actors and musicians that lived the high life equal to celebrities of today. The interviews reveal that some had an easier time finding jobs than others, as was the case with singers compared to athletes since many athletes quit because “the managers couldn’t meet their fee.”5 Terkel then combines these interviews with recollections of people that lived during the Prohibition era. From those interviews and the interviews of some of the celebrities, Terkel paints another side to the Great Depression—one of corruption and extravagance.

In his book, Terkel holds one major assumption and point of view. His main assumption is that the Great Depression affects everyone, from the poor to the rich, from the criminals to the judges since “during the Depression, there was much want for things that were in need, even the rich wanted something.”11 Because he holds this assumption, Terkel includes an interview with someone from every social and economic background in his book. He believes that the Great Depression doesn’t discriminate between those it affects, and that everyone affected in some way by the economic collapse is made equal under the depression.

While Terkel was writing his book, America was undergoing its most severe economic depression in the 1970s since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Terkel wants his book to serve as a sort of warning of what could happen again to Americans if they do not recognize how the last Great Depression was dealt with successfully. Terkel’s book contains bias because, while his book includes interviews from all ends of socioeconomic spectrum, his book includes more interviews on the poor and normal people as opposed to the rich. In doing so, he emphasizes the suffering of the average American during the time and puts too little emphasis on the hardship of the rich. In fact, many of the rich people weren’t affected too heavily by the Great Depression and “a lot of guys made some profits during that period,” thus giving off the idea that the wealth was unevenly distributed during economic hardships.12

When critiquing Studs Terkel’s masterpiece, it is common for many professional critics to tie it in to principles of oral history. In a review essay by Michael Frisch, he states how “Terkel includes a number of interviews with young people who can only talk about the Depression in terms of what they have been read or been told” in addition to the interviews of those who experienced it first hand.13 This depicts the Depression in terms of received memory as well as given. A second review by Karen Olson of the Social Science Division of Dundalk Community College in Baltimore, Maryland, asserts that Hard Times included a lot more about the Great Depression in terms of sheer volume of interviews compared to other oral history books at the time. She then goes on to comment on how Terkel’s use of many short interviews gives his story panoramic breadth with an excellent depiction of living during the depression. Both reviews praise Terkel’s work and hail it as an exemplary masterpiece worthy of recognition. Although Hard Times is composed of a collection of interviews, it is more than just that. The interviews themselves provide the reader with the intimate experiences of those who actually lived during the Great Depression. They convey emotions of human suffering, demoralization, despair, and agony from the past to the readers. Terkel’s book excels in providing a first hand and detailed account of the depression and how it affected all types of people. However, Terkel’s book lacks in his own interpretation of the interviews. While he asks many detailed questions that hint at Terkel’s opinions towards the depression, Terkel does not explicitly state how measures could have been done to prevent or alleviate the problems; he lets his interviewees inject their own opinions on these types of matters. For example, in the middle of the book, one interview stated how “the poor people would not hesitate to go to free clinics because there was no loss of self-respect for them.”14 While this is a comment Terkel himself would have made too, he only includes it in his book via an interview, thus making it harder on readers to immediately recognize Terkel’s view on things.

The Great Depression was indeed a watershed in American economical history because it brought many people from various backgrounds together as they banded to face the same struggles. Rich families saw their friends lose everything and become poor, and they “tried to help them the best they could.”15 The Great Depression changed the previously held ideas that people could spend recklessly without fearing for the future and that the rich were impervious to hardship. The depression altered both of these notions because those who invested the most in stocks lost the most and even the rich felt effects on their wealth and lifestyle because of the depression. This era has had an immense impact on America today because it serves as a constant reminder of our dark history and just how low our economy can fall. It reminds and warns readers that America could lose itself to the grips of another depression.

Studs Terkel’s Hard Times is a masterpiece that supplies readers with reflections, memories, and visions of the Great Depression. His book is not merely a book of facts or a history book, but a personal collection of interviews and experiences that present a holistic feeling of the decade. The information in his book was given by those who were both “directly and indirectly linked to the Great Depression,” and it is because of this that Hard Times is a timeless masterpiece.16

Endnotes

Student Bio

Wilson Jeng is currently a junior at Irvine High. He was born on February 17, 1993 in Torrence, California. His hobbies include reading and learning. He hopes to become a doctor one day in order to help make his contribution to the world by helping others in need.