{"id":474,"date":"2005-10-25T23:24:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-26T05:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=474"},"modified":"2013-06-11T07:29:48","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T13:29:48","slug":"forgetting-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/forgetting-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgetting the past"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.
\nElmore wrote for The Evening Star from the late 1980\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s till at least 1997.
\nThe columns I read were filled with great stories of yesteryear.
\nStories of Bell County\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s past, which have brought us to where we are today.
\nNow while I personally am a history nut, I wonder how many people would take the time to read her columns today?
\nIn our fast paced lives where we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re so interested in information, that we have the Internet on our cell phones, how interested are we in where we came from?
\nDo we really care what our grandparents went through? Or our great-grandparents?
\nAs 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?
\nFrom 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.
\nAs 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.
\nIncidentally, Hoover told the Republican National Committee after his nomination, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nAs a result of his failed policy Hoover was defeated by Democratic nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 election.
\nRoosevelt had promised Americans a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153new deal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d if elected president.
\nRoosevelt and his running mate, John Garner of Texas took 57-percent of the vote and carried all but six states.
\nThe 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.
\nIn his inauguration speech Roosevelt asserted his firm belief that the depression was caused by a lack of confidence. He touted, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And with 13-million unemployed at his inauguration, Roosevelt went to work to set the country back on its feet.
\nHe quickly called for a bank holiday to end a run on the banks.
\nHe created the Federal Reserve System to guarantee the money held in those banks.
\nHe created the Emergency Relief Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.
\nHe initiated the National Industrial Recovery Act, which initiated a vast amount of state control on industry and guaranteed a roll for trade unions.
\nHe 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.
\nAnd of course one of Roosevelt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most well known initiatives was the Social Security Act.
\nIf you ask most historians across the country, most will tell you that Roosevelt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s New Deal was the direction the country needed to pull it out of the depression.
\nBut 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.
\nRobert Tracinksi<\/span> wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What 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.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nBut then again, the Great Depression, the New Deal? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all history \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and nobody should really care about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s till at least 1997. The columns I read were filled with great stories of yesteryear. Stories of Bell County\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s … Continue reading Forgetting the past<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-7E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10667,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions\/10667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}