Leftist myths about the Great Depression debunked

Leftists always portray it as a crisis of capitalism. In fact it was a normal cyclic depression made much worse by the socialist and anti-business meddling of FDR. Now it appears that it was much less of a crisis than we have been told as well

A new history of the Great Depression challenges the commonly accepted accounts of hardship and misery, claiming historians have focused on extremes rather than what happened to the great majority of Australians. "Tradition has it that the Great Depression of the 1930s swept through Australia like a raging flood, tearing up the garden of the 1920s and imposing terrible suffering on the population at large," writes David Potts in The Myth of the Great Depression. "Thus emerged the legendary Depression, on a par with Ned Kelly, Gallipoli and the death of Phar Lap; tragedy makes a rattling good yarn."

In a controversial revision, Potts claims the popular images of the Depression - men and women evicted on to the streets, eating out of rubbish bins, queuing for the dole, living in humpies, and men tramping the countryside in search of work - were extreme rather than typical. He writes: "In reality, during the Great Depression, no one died of starvation due to poverty; malnutrition declined; infant mortality and general death ratesfell; health improved; and most people remained housed much as usual and were adequately clothed. "On the issue of truth, so great is the passion of historians of the Depression to dramatise hardship that many of them have gone well beyond available evidence. "They heavily raise, even double, the extent of unemployment, incorrectly claim increases in malnutrition and suicide as the Depression deepened, and exaggerate the extent of evictions and homelessness. They overgeneralise the worst cases."

Potts does not deny that the jobless rate rose to about 25 per cent, that bankruptcies doubled, that relief work and dole payments were miserly and that many people experienced difficulties feeding, clothing and housing their families. But he says many people spoke of the Depression years with affection, saying they coped well, that it "gave life meaning" and that "people were happier then". Most of the evidence, he says, points to food deprivation seriously affecting only 5 per cent ofthe population, while less than 1 per cent were turned out onto the street.

At his home in Melbourne, Potts, whose Myth formalises a view expressed in his teaching at Melbourne and La Trobe universities over the past 40 years, says that traditional histories "which are overwhelmingly left-wing (although right-wing historians think the Depression was a terrible time, too) all emphasise the worst moments". He says oral historian Wendy Lowenstein, author of the celebrated Weevils in the Flour, was "dramatically wrong" on the extent of suffering, while Manning Clark, who described a ragged army of men tramping the countryside as the "soldiers of despair", presented a traditional left-wing view.

Another historian, Janet McCalman, author of Struggletown, wrote of the Depression breaking on working class people "as a cancer" and of "an army of outcasts ... not carrying leprosy or syphilis but poverty". But Potts says that for many Australians, the Depression was marked by resilience and happiness.

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments containing Chinese characters will not be published as I do not understand them