Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

“Edward Burgess”

Burgess, 82, worked as a printer in Chicago during the Depression. He paid $600 cash for a car, had steady employment, and never suffered from the hard times, in part because struggling businesses turned to advertising, and advertisers needed printers. He never personally saw any bread lines in Chicago.

“Billy Green”

A bookmaker in the 1930s, Green escaped the worst aspects of the Depression. He attributes this good fortune to his having avoided the stock market and gone into business for himself, never relying on gambling or on other people to make decisions. He considers himself lucky and credits God.

“Scoop Lankford”

Lankford, 75, spent 31 years in prison. During the Depression, prisoners received barely enough food to stay alive. During the Second World War, they ate much better.

“Wilbur Kane”

Terkel and Kane, 39, “have been drinking rather heavily” (356). Kane, a journalist, insists that Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and others built up Hitler and appeased him at Munich because they wanted the Nazis to kill Communists. (Note: neither Roosevelt nor Churchill was present at the Munich Conference in 1938.) Kane further insists that this supposed preference for Hitler plunged the world into endless conflict and rendered his entire generation miserable.