Forgetting the past

As I wrote and updated my annual Halloween story this week, I came across a folder of old columns, written by Bell County Historian Polly Peaks-Elmore.
Elmore wrote for The Evening Star from the late 1980’s till at least 1997.
The columns I read were filled with great stories of yesteryear.
Stories of Bell County’s past, which have brought us to where we are today.
Now while I personally am a history nut, I wonder how many people would take the time to read her columns today?
In our fast paced lives where we’re so interested in information, that we have the Internet on our cell phones, how interested are we in where we came from?
Do we really care what our grandparents went through? Or our great-grandparents?
As Halloween nears, I start to see orange lights on houses, pumpkins carved everywhere and horror movies advertised on T.V., but how many of us remember another major event that took place this week?
From Oct. 24 to Oct. 29, 1911, the U.S. Stock Market took its largest crash in the history of the country. The results of that crash are still felt and debated in barbershops, town halls and on talk radio today.
As a result of the crash, President Hoover decided to increase interest rates in hopes to lower wages and lower the cost of production. With a lower production cost, Hoover and his administration predicted production would increase as well. He hoped the depression would be self-correcting. Instead it only worsened the situation.
Incidentally, Hoover told the Republican National Committee after his nomination, “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.”
As a result of his failed policy Hoover was defeated by Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 election.
Roosevelt had promised Americans a “new deal” if elected president.
Roosevelt and his running mate, John Garner of Texas took 57-percent of the vote and carried all but six states.
The 1932 election was the first time since Abraham Lincoln that the Republican nominee did not receive the majority of the African American vote. The trend holds till this day.
In his inauguration speech Roosevelt asserted his firm belief that the depression was caused by a lack of confidence. He touted, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” And with 13-million unemployed at his inauguration, Roosevelt went to work to set the country back on its feet.
He quickly called for a bank holiday to end a run on the banks.
He created the Federal Reserve System to guarantee the money held in those banks.
He created the Emergency Relief Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.
He initiated the National Industrial Recovery Act, which initiated a vast amount of state control on industry and guaranteed a roll for trade unions.
He led the construction of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which created jobs, built dams, power stations and controlled floods in one of the poorest areas of the country.
And of course one of Roosevelt’s most well known initiatives was the Social Security Act.
If you ask most historians across the country, most will tell you that Roosevelt’s New Deal was the direction the country needed to pull it out of the depression.
But even still, many see it as the downfall of an American society. A time when people stopped depending on their own hard work and expected more and more handouts from the Federal Government.
Robert Tracinksi wrote, “What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider “normal” behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don’t sit around and complain that the government hasn’t taken care of them. And they don’t use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.”
But then again, the Great Depression, the New Deal? That’s all history – and nobody should really care about that.