Hard Times; an Oral History of the Great Depression Chapter Summary & Analysis - Book 3: Concerning the New Deal, An Unreconstructed Populist, Peroration Summary

Book 3: Concerning the New Deal, An Unreconstructed Populist, Peroration Summary and Analysis

The third book of Hard Times is concerned with the establishment of the 1930's. Concerning the New Deal looks at in the Roosevelt administration. Terkel interviews people in and around the administration and covers a large succession of events, from planned farm communities to the Bank Holiday.

The Bank Holiday is covered at the beginning of the chapter with Gardiner Means, who works under Henry Wallace. The Holiday was intended exclusively as a salve to prevent a run on failing banks. By closing them down and allowing the healthy ones to reopen in a couple days, the Roosevelt administration tacitly guaranteed people's savings. Means points out that laissez-faire economic policy basically ended with the Crash; government committed to take part in the process.

C.B. (Beanie) Baldwin, another aid to Baldwin, speaks of the Rural Rehabilitation Division. The most controversial component of this was the Resettlement Administration, which...
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