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The Great Depression: A Diary By Benjamin Roth, Read By Mike Chamberlain (Audiobook Excerpt)
A “compelling” (New York Times) and personal daily account of the experience of the Great Depression in the mid-west, full of anxieties about the economic future, with powerful echoes for today.
In the early 1920s, Benjamin Roth was a young lawyer fresh out of the army. He settled in Youngstown, Ohio, a booming Midwestern industrial town. Times were good—until the stock market crash of 1929. After nearly two years of economic crisis, it was clear that the heady prosperity of the Roaring Twenties would not return quickly.
As Roth began to grasp the magnitude of what had happened to American economic life, he set out to record his impressions in a diary—a document that would grow to span several volumes over more than a decade. Penning brief, clear-eyed notes on the crisis which unfolded around him, Roth struggled to understand the complex forces governing political and economic life, yet he remained eager to learn from the crisis. As he wrote of what is now known as the Great Depression, "To the man past middle life it spells tragedy and disaster, but to those of us in the middle thirties it may be a great school of experience out of which some worth while lesson may be salvaged."Roth's words from that unique time seem to speak directly to audiences today. His perceptions and experiences have a chilling similarity to those of our own era. Fearful of inflation and skeptical of big government, Roth yearned for signs of true recovery, and eventually formed his own theories of how a prudent person might survive hard times.
The Great Depression: A Diary, edited by James Ledbetter, editor of Slate's "The Big Money," and Roth's son, Daniel B. Roth, reveals another side of the Great Depression—one lived through by ordinary, middle-class folks, who on a daily basis grappled with a swiftly changing economy coupled with anxiety about the unknown future.
- Duration:
- 4m
- Broadcast on:
- 28 Jan 2025
- Audio Format:
- other
I was mustered out of military service on December 5, 1918, and returned to Youngstown to open a law office. I found business humming. The return of thousands of soldiers to civil life had brought a boom to real estate, clothing, and other retail trades. When I purchased my first civilian suit, I found I had to pay $70 for a suit that might have cost half that amount a few years before. Silk shirts with big candy stripes were in style for the men, and the usual price was $10 to $12 for an ordinary shirt. In a similar way, shoes and other items were expensive. I was amazed to find mill workers in Youngstown wearing these silk shirts without a murmur. I also learned that during the war and still in 1919, these mill workers had earned enormous wages, from $10 to $35 a day. This feverish prosperity and easy money continued through 1919 and 1920. In 1921 came a steel strike in Youngstown, and for a while it looked as though we were heading for a depression. But in 1922, things picked up again and continued in a hectic spiral upward until the big stock market crash in October 1929. As I look back now, I can understand how America, during the years 1919 to 1929, was called upon to supply the needs of both Europe and America, after five years of wartime destruction. In Europe, the industries and railroads had been destroyed, and America was called upon to rebuild Europe, supply her returned soldiers with food and clothing and other necessities. At the same time, the enormous similar demands of our own country had to be satisfied. I know now, but I did not know it then. America also supplied Europe with the money and credits to purchase our merchandise, and we have not been paid back to this day. At any rate, things began to hum again in 1922. Our steel industries and other factories turned from the making of war material to the making of automobiles, radios, etc. We had a real estate boom, and later in 1925, there was a tremendous boom of real estate in Florida. Prohibition was in effect, but actually the amount of bootleg liquor consumed exceeded that before prohibition. As I look back now to the 1922 to 29 period, it seems to me unreal and almost unbelievable. After the war pressure, people wanted to have a good time and to spend money. The flapper appeared upon the scene. Once dresses became shorter and shorter, until they hardly reached the knee, and in the latter stages of the delirium, they wore their stockings rolled and their bare knees rouged. Morality and religion were pushed into the background, and in its place came Negro jazz bands and nightclubs and all its attendant evils. To an older man, it must have seemed inevitable that we were heading for a crash, but to most of us, it seemed that we were in a new era, which would never end. On the industrial side of the picture, mass production led to the formation of larger and larger mergers. We began to hear of stock market millionaires, huge extra dividends, stock split-ups, and 99-year leases in real estate, shoestring financing and all manner of speculation. In my own law business, I began to feel a change in 1924, but did not know what was happening until several years later. My practice dealt largely with independent merchants. In 1924, these independent merchants began to be replaced by chain stores. The A&P and Kroger grocery stores probably put over 1,000 merchants out of business in Youngstown. Today almost every building on Federal Street is occupied by a chain store. For many of these independent merchants, I performed one last right, bankruptcy, and never saw them again.
A “compelling” (New York Times) and personal daily account of the experience of the Great Depression in the mid-west, full of anxieties about the economic future, with powerful echoes for today.
In the early 1920s, Benjamin Roth was a young lawyer fresh out of the army. He settled in Youngstown, Ohio, a booming Midwestern industrial town. Times were good—until the stock market crash of 1929. After nearly two years of economic crisis, it was clear that the heady prosperity of the Roaring Twenties would not return quickly.
As Roth began to grasp the magnitude of what had happened to American economic life, he set out to record his impressions in a diary—a document that would grow to span several volumes over more than a decade. Penning brief, clear-eyed notes on the crisis which unfolded around him, Roth struggled to understand the complex forces governing political and economic life, yet he remained eager to learn from the crisis. As he wrote of what is now known as the Great Depression, "To the man past middle life it spells tragedy and disaster, but to those of us in the middle thirties it may be a great school of experience out of which some worth while lesson may be salvaged."Roth's words from that unique time seem to speak directly to audiences today. His perceptions and experiences have a chilling similarity to those of our own era. Fearful of inflation and skeptical of big government, Roth yearned for signs of true recovery, and eventually formed his own theories of how a prudent person might survive hard times.
The Great Depression: A Diary, edited by James Ledbetter, editor of Slate's "The Big Money," and Roth's son, Daniel B. Roth, reveals another side of the Great Depression—one lived through by ordinary, middle-class folks, who on a daily basis grappled with a swiftly changing economy coupled with anxiety about the unknown future.