Margrethe Johnsen

SOCI3324

05/01/19

Assignment 2: Forgotten Men and Poor Folk

The chapter written by Nancy Isenberg titled Forgotten Men and Poor Folk: Downward

Mobility and the Great Depression discusses the media representations, the influence of social

scientists, and political developments that were brought about after the stock market crash of

1929 that triggered the Great Depression. The “forgotten man” is a term used often throughout

the text that became a powerful symbol for an American facing economic struggles during these

times.

The Great Depression was no doubt a devastating time for the United States and the

American people suffered greatly. During this time, the media used their influence to try and

convey the conditions that American’s were living in. Warner Brothers created a movie called I

Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang to try and depict the story of a WWI Veteran who is now the

“forgotten man” and out of work. The character represented is a white man who is a product of

the failing southern economy and then gets caught up in the prison system. The government

made promises to take care of its soldiers, but instead they failed to provide jobs, housing, and

veterans were left starving. This film is significant because the main character is considered

“white trash” and in this era white convicts held the same status as black’s in the criminal justice

system. As stated on page 1, “more poor whites found themselves swept up in the system”. Class

insecurity was on the rise.

 Some even wrote novels to convey the conditions of American’s living in the Depression.

Edward Newhouse’s novel You Can’t Sleep Here captured the notion that the poor, working, and

middle class defining lines were starting to dissolve. In other words, no one was safe from the

same fate. Many others used photography to create snapshots into the reality that was faced by

American’s. Margaret Bourke-White took pictures for Life magazine that sent the message that

“most Americans had already come to accept the uncomfortable truth about their national

situation: equal opportunity was a grand illusion” (Page 3). She shot a group of black men and

women who were victims of The Ohio Valley Flood waiting for relief, while in the background is

a billboard showing an image of the smiling, idealized, white, middle class family. She also took

photos of the inside of American homes in one community to showcase the ‘typical’ American

family, even though there was no way to represent that.

Dorothea Lange’s photo-essay captured the massive and destructive blow that the

agriculture industry took during the Depression. In her An American Exodus, she showed images

of the landscape turning into a wasteland. The economic disaster that caused valuable topsoil to

wash down the rivers goes hand in hand with the washing away of different classes of people.

The Dust Bowl is used as a metaphor for swept up clouds of soil, and dislodged humans were

driven down the road like “particles of dust” (Page 4). The Depression exposed just how

dependent America was on the agriculture industry.

Milburn Lincoln Wilson was a social scientist and also the first director of the Subsistence

Homesteads Division in 1933. He wanted to help rehabilitate the rotten soil and help farmers in

the rural area up the agricultural ladder. Wilson argued that land was important not because of

profit, but because it is part of a “well integrated democratic community” (Page 5). His
rehabilitation plan would contribute to better housing programs as well as improving living

conditions for poor whites. For Wilson, the disorganizing force for the Depression was the danger

of an unregulated economy: downward mobility and the ruin of countless lives (Page 7).

Unfortunately, the Subsistence Homesteads Division was not successful and was replaced after

running into serious difficulties.

Henry Wallace, FDR’s secretary of agriculture, also agreed with Wilson. Wilson and

Wallace both stated class was not biologically preordained. On page 7, Wallace said “the

willingness of Americans to tolerate waste was the real cause of human erosion. It reflected the

larger social problem of devaluing human labor and human worth”. Wallace emphasized the

importance of understanding class insecurity. Another man was named Arthur Raper who did a

study in 1936 called Preface to Peasantry. He discussed the conditions of living in the South and

how the tenant system was in a reoccurring cycle of landowners locking in their tenants. Tenants

were in the hole with debt and could not overcome it.

Howard Odum was a very important sociologist and psychologist who worked to change

the meaning of the south and “the poor folk” (Page 10). He published 25 books and hundreds of

articles, along with the journal Social Forces studying new approaches to the South. Southern

Regions of the United States was his most comprehensive study and became a very important

document for New Deal planning. Odum’s study was very influential during this time because of

how much data he collected and the strength of the conclusions he reached from it.

As a response to problems that the Great Depression caused, many new political

developments were created to try and counteract these problems. The main development during

this time was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s the New Deal. The New Deal was a series of
programs implemented to restore the economy and create jobs for suffering American’s. The

New Deal had many critics and ultimately failed after only lasting a few years, but brought many

different approaches to solving America’s growing issues.

One of these new developments in 1935 was The Resettlement Administration (RA).

President Roosevelt issued an executive order to create this new agency in place of the failing

Homesteads Division. Rexford G. Tugwell was to lead the new agency with a new approach to the

New Deal’s poverty crisis. The RA had a clear goal of helping the rural poor, it purchased land,

resettled tenants, brought relief to drought victims, provided health care, and restored ruined

lands (Page 7).

Like the New Deal, Tugwell also faced many critics who opposed his beliefs and

approaches. He knew that changing the south required shifting the balance of power and

therefore would mean poor whites challenging the status quo (Page 7). The RA was replaced by

the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1937 and Tugwell was replaced by Will Alexander who

was the first southerner put in charge of a New Deal rural poverty agency. Even though Tugwell

was criticized heavily and he was with the RA for a short time, he was still very influential.

The Great Depression incited a lot of new conversations regarding the idea of classes in

society and the symbol of the “forgotten man”. It led a lot of American’s to have these difficult

conversations that have been mentioned and be aware of what it meant to be an American

during this time. It is very important to our history and it brought along with it valuable

information that we would not have access to without the help of social science.