It's 1873 and the Great Depression All Over Again

Reader Comments
Back to blog

I find it humorous that idiots fear mongering about America becoming socialist! What a laugh! When the government gave out 700 billion dollars it was not to the poor or even middle-class workers but rather the elite- white collar criminals that have been running the banking industry, mortgage companies and wall-street corporations.
If the government was serious about fixing things from the ground up they would have taken that 700 billion and given a million dollars to each unemployed homeless middle-class worker and required that they 1)buy an American home, 2)buy an American manufactured vehicle, 3) start their own business in this country and employ only fellow americans who are out of work. This kind of stimulus would be much more effective "trickle up economics" not trickle down which only benefits the rich. The only thing we need fear in this country are the elitists or fascists that keep telling us, they know what's best for us. We should do what John Kennedy wanted to do which was return control of the money system to congress (Federal Reserve), and not allow private european bankers to continue to run this country into the ground. The people of America should control the money supply thru congress not privately owned bankers, Jefferson warned us that those that control the money supply can ruin this country and he was right. Kennedy JFK wanted and tried to do the right thing by the American people but he was assassinated by big money interests, now look where their attempts to destroy the dollar and this country have taken us.

edmund samph of CA 6:04PM June 12, 2010

I'm a Depression Kid. I recall deprivations & how we "made do." FDR used taxes to make jobs in the CCC and public works jobs. In my area, neighbors aided others in a socialistic, sharing way. FDR was called a "traitor to his economic class," the owning class. If the Depression continued, i believe we would have advanced to public ownership of public utilities, transport and other daily needs. But along came the war and we were back to the neck in profiteering capitalism. We should demand more public ownership of natural resources and reverse bad decisions made during the Robber Baron era. At that time, Congress sold to private owners all the things that became daily necessities and we pay profits plus cost of operating them. The world "socialism" scares some folks but it simply means "we the people" own things.

auradawn veirs of CA 11:24PM September 18, 2009

Yea like bushes policies, the poor also must pay for. That is the story of history as it was in 1871-1914. The comments sound anti-obama but if we think about the poor paying anyway, we realize that these benefits that are necessary to keep food on the tables of the working class will eventually have to be paid back by the people.
I see no reason for arguments about overspending when the people who benefit are the ones paying back the money anyway.
Our system will never be accurate in the sense of benefit to humanity until there is a system accepted where basic needs of people are at the forefront of demand and economic policies are a second concern of the people. Until this happens revolution is unavoidable.

skoob of OR 7:44PM July 07, 2009

The general tone of Our Country regarding FDR remembering back over the 10 years or more since I read it, was positive but restrained. When I look at the economic performance of the 30's, I wonder how he got away with it, in the respect of having long maintained aura of economic savior in history books. So much recent analysis points to the policy mistakes that prolonged the depression, and FDR's dogma that apparently motivated it all, that excessive competition was to blame, is terrifying considering the coming ascendancy of the labor movement and Obama's Joe the Plumber dialogue. Did FDR's successful prosecution of WW II tend to so attenuate latter day criticism of him that his policies went unexamined? Did this set us up for the academic/ media enshrinement of leftist economic policy? I especially remember the theme of 60's-70's culture with regard to USSR : "We need to be more like them (economics) and they need to be more like us(personal liberties)." Because, to be honest, it looks like FDR's policies were loaded on the backs of the poor.

Paul of DE 10:03AM December 24, 2008

Omg what it that were to happen!? It would be terrifying!!

Alyssa of PA 10:01PM December 23, 2008

A tragically interesting side event of the Panic/Depression of 1873 was the gold rush to the Black Hills after gold was discovered by a survey and geologic expedition sent there in 1874. The group was under the protection of George Custer and the 7th Cavalry.
Soon the news of gold in The Black Hills swept across the nation and thousands of out of work immigrants swarmed into the region. However, this area had been ceded to the Sioux by the Laramie Treaty of 1868. Bloody conflicts immediately broke out between the miners and Indians. The Army attempted to keep the peace and control the miners, but the tide of desperate gold seekers continued.
President Grant asked Sioux Chiefs to come to Washington to negotiate a new treaty. Red Cloud and others came but failed to reach an agreement. Under mounting pressure from financially strapped railroads and a sagging economy, Grant then sent emissaries west in an attempt to negotiate the sale of the Black Hills with the Sioux... The majority of “free roamers” declined the treaty - vowing to fight for the hills. Agency Indians, however, bowed to the pressures that were brought to bear and agreed to the new terms.
Word was sent out to the “free roamers” under Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull to come into the agencies or be considered “hostile”. The Indians refused and the Centennial Campaign of 1876 ensued.
On June 25, 1876 Civil War hero, General George A. Custer, and a battalion of the famous 7th Cavalry was destroyed to the last man, by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors under Crazy Horse. Their naked, mutilated bodies scattered over the low hills above the Little Big Horn River.
Rumors of the disaster first reached the east on July 4th 1876. The Nation’s Centennial celebrations were cast into shadow - Confirmation came on July 5th and the nation mourned the dashing Civil War heroe’s death and the decimation of the 7th Cavalry.
A nation that had been divided on the “Indian Question” was galvanized to move against the last free Indians on the Great Plains. In less than a year, every Indian who participated was either dead, hiding in Canada or on a reservation. The Indian’s greatest victory transformed, by circumstance, and the Panic of ‘73 , into their greatest defeat ... Their last, free roaming country gone...forever.

R.L. Schaefer of CA 5:00PM December 22, 2008