Studs Terkel #3

Jane Yoder:
My first thoughts were about how psychologically abusive the Great Depression was to Americans. This story really shows how it life was during the Great Depression. The Great Depression was especially hard on Jane and her family. "We were struggling, just desperate to be warm. No blankets, no coats." (127) There was nothing they could do when they got sick. Because life was so difficult for everyone, everyone at the time was struggling. She said, "We're middle class. Not upper and not lower either." They would be considered very poor if they were living now with those conditions. What was the hardest challenges for the poor families? What did colleges do to make it available to more people? The majority was living in poverty while only the extremely rich survived. Families had to work together during hard times to get threw them. That is why the Great Depression was so psychologically exhausting and abusive. 


Peggy Terry:
Terry describes how the Great Depression affected her life and how poor her family was. They struggled to get any kind of food to eat. It was not simply her family that was poor, almost every family around struggled to find food to eat. She compared that life to what it is now, "it's different today, People are mad to feel ashamed now if they don't have anything." (141) She felt that it was normal to be very poor those days. She feels, if your poor today it is because you are lazy and its your own fault. She got married at age fifteen. They worked any jobs they could find.  Then, they traveled around. She hitch hiked with her husband while she was pregnant. She was kind of racist against black people and Mexicans. This kind of life was very difficult, but it was not uncommon. Unemployment was the highest it has ever been in America during the Great Depression. The government created jobs for almost anyone that worked on improving society. For my temple, I have donated my time to give back to charity in different ways. I have given some of my close to poor people, I have helped out at soup kitchens, and my family has donated a lot of money. I disagree with her opinion of how people became poor. It is much different than in the Great Depression but it is not completely the person fault.

Studs Terkel Entry #2

Author A. Robertson:

Author Robert was a very wealthy investor and a casino shark. He was directly impacted when the stock market crashed, but he luckily to pulled out most of his money before this even. He knew many people that suffered from the crash including his very close friend. His friend killed himself because he felt that there was no way to make much money anymore. Before his friend died, his friend’s last words were, “What’s the use having ten million if you can’t have big money.” 103) Robertson said, “on Wall Street, people walked around like zombies.” (101) Because of the stock market crash in 1929, lives were ruined and almost everyone was negatively affected. Pictures prove that the faces after the stock market crashed were like everyone had just saw a ghost, and they were all given a death notice. Many people committed suicide and murders, and the general attitude of America had dramatically changed in less than twenty-four hours. What I wonder is, who were the people that were not negatively affected by the stock market crash and the Great Depression, if any? This story reminds me of good investors. My grandparents always talk to me about their stocks and what they do with them. They say that a good investor needs to know when to sell their stocks at the highest rate and buy stock when they are low. People would make smart decisions in the 1920s sold their stocks before the stock market crashed. People that made bad decisions sold their stocks at the lowest value, which meant they lost money.

Oscar Heline:

Heline worked on a farm in Iowa his entire life. He was greatly affected by the Great depression. The prices of crops dropped while coal prices increased. Some people even fired their crops and their corn to heat their homes. To improve the economy, the government decided to pay the farmers to get rid of their crops and animals because a decrease in stock would result in an increase in price. Heline and the farmers around him were told to burn and kill their crops. When Heline thinks about the hard times, he remembers “the struggles people had to go through are almost unbelievable.” (120) He lived in poor conditions as well. “I didn’t know from a day to day whether somebody might come along and cause harm to my family.” (122) People would do anything to make money during the Great Depression, which meant nobody was safe. Were all farmers willing to get rid of their crops? Would the farmers’ lives have increased as much as it did when they killed and burned their crops if they did not do this and kept selling their low priced items? This story connects to what were have talked about in class. We talked about all of the ways the president desperately tired to improve the economy. Paying the farmers to get rid of their crops was one of the many ideas that I learned about in class. 

Studs Terkel Entry #1

Vine Deloria:
It starts off as the author reminiscing about the beginning of American and how whites treated Indians. Indians did not know anything about the white people, so the white people had an advantage. The author had visited Native American land that was very important to the Native American culture; like the land where the wounded Knee took place. The author goes into her family's history and their Native American history.  The Author believes that American is now the strongest nation and will only fall if it is because of self-destruction. "If were destroyed, it will be self-destruction."(37) The last argument by the author is that their is hope that white people will eventually accept minorities. "Maybe the American dream is in the past, understanding who you are instead of looking to the future..." A question that arose after reading this was; How do the Native Americans ever want to be treated fairly if they do not treat themselves as par of the Americans? Deloria has similar feelings that African American's had towards white people. White people have historically mistreated blacks, and many African Americans have written books and have delivered many speeches that argued for equality. Also, many immigrants form Europe during WWI did not feel like they were part of America. I have known many people at my camp that have been excluded from activities because they were different in some way. I remember a time where I saw a younger kid be excluded from eating with a group of people because they were not in the same cabin as them. There have always been people that have been excluded from a group in every situation, and most of the time, circumstances changed and less people are excluded.


Andy Johnson:
Andy Johnson was born in Finland and moved to America as a child. " the poorest,, the most miserable come here because they had no future over there."(38) His father was going to be drafted in the Russian-Japanese war. Then, the author describes his travels to America. From a ship to a train across England to liverpool to New York city by the a ship called the Lucania. Johnson explains his first experiences and beginning life in America. He described his first time seeing a black guy and the difficult jobs his family took to survive. He worked in a mine as a boy and eventually went to school where learned english. They moved during WWI to the country side of America. The problem was that families were struggling to survive and not accomplishing the "American Dream" while others are living in super expensive houses. The author wonders, "I see a wonderful future for humanity, or the end of it."(42) He feels restricted, and the only thing he can do is write in the newspaper. Questions I had: How bad were the conditions in Finland? How hard was it to get life started from scratch in a new developing country during a difficult time? During WWI, many European immigrants were being mistreated and were being killed. One incident was the lynching of Robert Prager. A large issue developing during the war was that many European immigrants and basically most immigrants are being mistreated and taken away from their first amendment rights and securities. Many people from foreign countries were treated horrible and in a way that made it seem like it was their fault their home country was in war. People were being killed and separated from society, which is completely against the core values of what America has developed. I remember the first time I met someone who was black. It was in a store, and I was with my mom. I turned to my mom and said, "he is really tan." This experience is very similar to the first time Andy Johnson meet a black man for the first time.