Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

Elected president of the United States four times (1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) headed the executive branch of the US government for most of the 1930s, the Depression decade. As president, Roosevelt initiated “New Deal” policies, a series of measures aimed at providing economic relief and recovery. Roosevelt’s New Deal achieved some goals and failed in others. Above all, it forever changed the federal government’s role in American economic life.

In the memories of those whom Terkel interviewed for Hard Times, President Roosevelt towers over his contemporaries. While other political figures receive occasional references, Roosevelt appears in dozens of recollections. Thanks to the book’s structure and diversity of perspectives, sentiments regarding Roosevelt range from adoration to loathing. There are several matters, however, on which nearly all interviewees agree. First, Roosevelt possessed a personal charm and soothing influence that revealed itself in his “fireside chat” radio broadcasts and helped restore hope during the Depression’s darkest days. Second, Roosevelt had no fixed program or ideology, so his pragmatism allowed him to experiment and improvise with New-Deal policies at a time when political flexibility was essential. Third, Roosevelt’s swift action during the first hundred days of his presidency saved the American banking system, and perhaps even capitalism itself. Finally, whatever his virtues, Roosevelt and the New Deal failed to end the Depression, which most interviewees believe subsided only after the start of World War II.

Father Charles Coughlin (1891-1979) was a Catholic priest who hosted one of the Depression era’s most popular weekly radio programs. A political populist, Coughlin thundered away each week against capitalists and communists alike, whom he regarded as enemies of ordinary working people.

While Coughlin initially supported President Roosevelt, the “radio priest” broke with the president in 1934 and founded the National Union for Social Justice, which teamed with other populists to support a third-party candidate in 1936. Coughlin’s populism appealed to millions of listeners, but his repeated denunciations of bankers and moneyed interests carried undertones of anti-Semitism that diminished his influence with American audiences following the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany.

In his introductory “personal memoir,” Terkel recalls hearing Coughlin on the radio in the lobby of his mother’s rooming house. Dawn McCulloch, a child during the Depression, remembers that the kids had to “keep quiet while this man was screaming over the radio” and that she “hated him,” though she did not know why at the time (100). Coughlin also appears in Book 3 as a kindred spirit of fellow populists Huey Long and Dr. Francis Townshend.

Coughlin and his allies achieved no electoral success, but some interviewees speculate that President Roosevelt moved in a more radical direction over time in response to populist-inspired pressure from Coughlin and others.