Conversations About Fear: The Bonus March of 1932

“WARSHIPS AT HAVANA”

“Their Assembling is Favorably Regarded Here.”

          These were headlines from the Evening Star, January 26, 1898.¹ The newspaper lays out the situation as relayed by Consul General Fitzhugh Lee: the United States Armored Cruiser (referred to as a battle ship) USS Maine (ACR-1) had arrived to Havana, Cuba, for a good-will port visit, and the city received them well. Lee anticipated that German, British, and French ships would soon be joining them in the Spanish city, from which he had returned observing no signs of disorder. The intent of the international force was to show the Spanish government, currently contending with Cuban nationalists, that the Maine's visit was well intended.

          Less than a month later the Evening Star would be trying to make sense of the explosion aboard the Maine that destroyed the ship. Headlines like “The Maine Blown Up” sat next to “Officers Puzzled,” and “The Cabinet Confer: Members Discuss the News With the President” that reported the buzz of activity at the White House following the arrival of telegrams.² Included in those were regrets from the Spanish government and assurances that they were not responsible for the explosion. War drums quickly drowned out whatever good will the Maine had intended to convey. One week after the explosion, well before official investigations were complete, newspapers began publishing telegrams and letters of support for war with Spain. In Oklahoma The Wichita Daily Eagle ran an entire column on their front page of offers to serve, requests to the governor for authorization to raise companies of troops, and pledges of armed support to the President.³ By March, Lehigh University students paraded through the town with the slogan “To hell with Spain.”⁴ The phrase, sometimes amended with “Remember the Maine,” morphed quickly into songs and stories (many about children) that appeared around the country.⁵

Book Review of "And a Time for Hope: Americans in the Great Depression" by James R. McGovern.

Book Review

And a Time for Hope: Americans in the Great Depression. By James R. McGovern. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2001, pp. 368. $35.00.

          James McGovern's book shows that the way we view the lives of Americans during the Depression is far from how they saw themselves. There is a well-understood narrative about the Great Depression built from photography, literature, and collective memories, which places the American people in the role of the victim, helplessly hobbled by economic forces they could do nothing about.¹ The Farm Security Administration's Historical Section produced photographs documenting small town life and the plight of the poor to demonstrate to the American people the problems the New Deal was meant to fix.² John Steinbeck's 1939 Grapes of Wrath and the 1940 film adaptation by John Ford adds to the FSA's photographs a story of poor Oklahoma farmers that migrated to California, but the characters' overwhelming victimization never allows them to become clear representations of the real “Okies”.³

          McGovern's attempt to break the reader away from the culturally approved narrative of the story was far from easy. The feelings images and stories create are notoriously difficult to shift. Dorothea Lange's iconic photograph, “Migrant Mother,” which shows Florence Thompson, deep worry lines etched into her face and three of her children clutching at her, produces an immediate emotional reaction.⁴ The effects of her photographs were intentionally aimed at lawmakers, according to Lange's private correspondence with another FSA photographer.⁵ To break the spell of the powerfully emotive pictures, McGovern had to turn away from them, and look at the photographers and the FSA to find their motivations and aims.