No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Unlonesome Highways: The Quest for Fact and Fellowship in Depression America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Extract
Woody Guthrie managed to capture much of Depression America in his songs. In “This Land Is Your Land” of 1940, he reflected the leftist sentiments of many thirties Americans. Singing that it was the blank side of a “Private Property” sign that “was wrote for you and me,” Guthrie echoed the conclusion that others had reached in the preceding decade — America belongs to the working masses rather than to a few wealthy owners. For all his insight, however, Guthrie missed part of the Depression experience when he set his “Private Property” sign beside a “lonesome highway.” Rather than deserted places, the nation's roadways were virtually teeming with dispossessed people. Millions of foreclosed farmers, evicted renters and unemployed workers crowded the thoroughfares, desperately searching for new lives. Despite what Woody Guthrie had to say, America's Depression highways were far from lonesome.
A certain number of those folks jamming the nation's highways were not homeless drifters. They were instead more like author Erskine Caldwell. Soon after the 1932 publication of his novel, Tobacco Road, Caldwell had taken to travelling. He continued on the road until one day in 1940 when he pulled his car into a Missouri gas station. As had been his habit for the past years, he asked the attendant not for gas or oil, but for an analysis of the state of the nation. The attendant knew Caldwell's type. For years writers had been stopping and asking him “all sorts of fool questions” without purchasing anything. Well prepared, he silently handed Caldwell a neatly printed card describing his life and thoughts, ridiculing with its detail the questions writers asked him.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984
References
1 Klein, Joe, Woody Guthrie: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), pp. 140–41Google Scholar. “As I was walking that lonesome highway / I saw a sign – said Private Property” is one of the many variant verses of “This Land Is Your Land.”
2 Caldwell, Erskine and Bourke-White, Margaret, Say, Is This the U.S.A. (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1941), pp. 8–14Google Scholar.
3 Clurman, Harold, The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theater and the Thirties (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950, 1945), p. 83Google Scholar. Brenner, Anita, “Rorty Reports America,” Nation, 142 (12 02 1936), 194Google Scholar.
4 Sherwood Anderson left fiction for a time in the early thirties, and gave himself over to traveling and writing the reports that eventually became Puzzled America (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935)Google Scholar. Ben Apple took time off from his novels about New York's Hell's Kitchen to traverse the nation and describe it in The People Talk (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1940Google Scholar; Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1972). All of Theodore Dreiser's earlier novels had strong journalistic content, but with the Depression he dropped the façade of fiction from his work. He edited Harlan Miners Speak (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932)Google Scholar, and wrote Tragic America (New York: Horace Liveright, 1932)Google Scholar, a rambling effort to bring comprehensible form to the Depression. Nathan Asch left his twenties novels to travel the country by bus and write The Road: In Search of America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1937)Google Scholar. James Rorty had earned his living in advertising while writing poetry, but during the thirties he stopped publishing poems and wrote a report of his trip around the country, Where Life Is Better: An Unsentimental American Journey (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1936)Google Scholar. James Agee had also been intrigued with poetry, but under the Depression's economic pressures took a journalistic job at Fortune. Increasingly interested in actual events rather than the symbolic ones of his earlier poems, Agee eagerly accepted the 1936 assignment that became Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Boston: Houghton Mufflin, 1941)Google Scholar. In the mid-thirties Erskine Caldwell stopped writing fiction, launched into traveling and reporting, and eventually produced collaborative works, such as You Have Seen Their Faces (New York: Arno, 1975, 1937)Google Scholar, with Margaret Bourke-White.
5 Anna Louise Strong had a life-long interest in radical politics that took her to Ireland, China, Soviet Russia and eventually into the Communist Party. She interrupted her world traveling to come home for a tour, and entitled her report My Native Land (New York: Viking, 1940)Google Scholar. During the thirties John L. Spivak wrote exposés on Georgia prison corruption and American anti-Semitism. By mid-decade he considerably broadened the scope of his studies to include the entire nation, and published his findings as America Faces the Barricades (New York: Covici-Friede, 1935)Google Scholar. Mauritz Hallgren shared Spivak's concern for the national temper, left his desk at The Nation, traveled through the country, and fashioned his reports into Seeds of Revolt: A Study of American Life and the Temper of the American People During the Depression (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1933)Google Scholar. Lorena Hickok left journalism and became a traveling investigator reporting to Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Deal Administrator Harry Hopkins. Her 1933–35 reports were published as One Third of a Nation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981)Google Scholar. Jonathan Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News and Observer, took off to tour the South and write a report entitled A Southerner Discovers the South (New York: Macmillan, 1938)Google Scholar.
6 A black college teacher, J. Saunders Redding received Rockefeller Foundation support to travel and examine the values of other Southern blacks. He called his account No Day of Triumph (New York: Harper and Row, 1942)Google Scholar. Louis Adamic's efforts to understand America expanded with the thirties, and he called the journal of his struggle My America, 1928–1938 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1938)Google Scholar. Gilbert Seldes entitled his book The Years of the Locust: America, 1929–1932 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1933)Google Scholar
7 Seldes, , The Years of the Locust, p. 12Google Scholar. Anderson to Baroness Marie Koskus, 15 December 1930, in Jones, Howard Mumford and Rideout, Walter B., eds. Letters of Sherwood Anderson (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1953), p. 232Google Scholar. Strong, , My Native Land, p. 123Google Scholar. Rorty, , Where Life Is Better, p. 13Google Scholar. Dreiser, , Tragic America, p. 2Google Scholar; Dreiser, Helen, his companion and wife, quotes Dreiser on his commitment to writing about economics in My Life with Dreiser (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1951), p. 271Google Scholar.
8 Dreiser, , Tragic America, pp. 16–17Google Scholar. Caldwell, , Some American People (New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, 1935), pp. 118–23Google Scholar. Agee to James Harold Flye, 18 August, 1932, and 14 August 1932, Letters of James Agee to Father Flye (New York: George Brazillier, 1962), pp. 58, 56Google Scholar. Anderson to Edward H. Risley, Jr, 24 02 1938, Letters, p. 395Google Scholar. Rorty, , “The Silent Land,” Nation, 132, 13 05 1931, p. 533Google Scholar. Adamic, , My America, pp. 279–82, 289–90, 113, 416Google Scholar.
9 Wilson, Edmund, The American Jitters: A Year of the Slump (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries, Inc., 1968, 1932), p. 303Google Scholar. Wilson, Edmund, The Thirties, Edel, Leon, ed. (New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980), p. xviiGoogle Scholar. Wilson, Edmund, The Triple Thinkers: Twelve Essays on Literary Subjects (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977, 1938), p. 210Google Scholar.
10 Seldes, , The Years of the Locust, title page, pp. 6, 11Google Scholar.
11 Rorty, , Where Life Is Better, pp. 157, 49–50, 13, 271–73Google Scholar.
12 Nathan Asch, “Cross-Country Bus,” p. 301. Asch, , “Overland Reporter” (review of John L. Spivak's America Faces the Barricades), New Republic, 84, 4 09 1935, p. 108Google Scholar.
13 Dreiser, , Tragic America, p. 14Google Scholar; Spivak, , America Faces the Barricades, p. 49Google Scholar; Seldes, , The Years of the Locust, p. 18Google Scholar; Hallgren, , “Easy Times in Middletown,” Nation, 132, 6 05 1931, p. 499Google Scholar. Hallgren knew of Robert and Helen Lynd's Middletown, and that it was a study of Muncie, Indiana. However, he chose to study nearby South Bend, Indiana, and called it “Middletown, America.”
14 Adamic, , My America, p. 339Google Scholar. Caldwell, Erskine, Call It Experience: The Years of Learning How to Write (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1951), pp. 58, 163Google Scholar. Caldwell, , Some American People (New York: R. M. McBride & Co., 1935), p. 9Google Scholar. Caldwell, , Tobacco Road (Savannah: The Beehive Press, 1974, 1932), p. viiiGoogle Scholar.
15 Anderson to Charles Bockler, 12 Nov. 1930 and 13 Dec. 1930, and to Ralph Church, 19 Dec. 1930, Letters, pp. 225, 230, 233. Dreiser to Dorothy Dudley Harvey, 7 April 1932 in Elias, Robert H., ed., Letters of Theodore Dreiser (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959), 2, 583CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Dreiser, , Tragic America, p. 167Google Scholar.
16 Spivak, John L., A Man in His Time (New York: Horizon Press, 1967), p. 170Google Scholar. Caldwell, , Tobacco Road, p. viiGoogle Scholar. Asch, “Cross-Country Bus,” p. 304. Agee, , Let us Now Praise Famous Men, p. 234Google Scholar.
17 Susman, Warren, “The Thirties,” in Coben, Stanley and Ratner, Lorman, eds., The Development of an American Culture (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1970), pp. 188, 213Google Scholar. Anderson, Sherwood, “Explain! Explain! Explain Again!” Today, 1, 2 12 1933Google Scholar. Anderson, Sherwood, “Listen, Mr. President—,” Nation, 135, 31 08 1932, 191–93Google Scholar. Redding, J. Saunders, No Day of Triumph, pp. 139, 100Google Scholar. Rorty, James, Our Master's Voice: Advertising (New York: John Day Company, 1934), pp. 75, 280Google Scholar.
18 Rorty, , Where Life Is Better, pp. 9–10Google Scholar; Adamic, , My America, pp. 281–93Google Scholar; Hickok, , One Third of a Nation, pp. ix–xGoogle Scholar: Anderson, , “Nobody's Home,” Today, 3, 30 03 1935, 20–21Google Scholar.
19 Anderson to Roger Sergel, 18 June 1932, Letters, p. 260. Rorty, , Our Master's Voice, p. 280Google Scholar; Rorty, , Where Life Is Better, pp. 15–17, 56, 106–07, 119, 309–15Google Scholar.
20 Asch, , The Road, pp. 29, 269, 232, 85Google Scholar. Strong, Anna Louise, I Change Worlds: The Remaking of an American (New York: Garden City Publishing Company, 1937, 1935), p. 10Google Scholar. Strong, , My Native Land, p. 12Google Scholar.
21 Asch, , The Road, pp. 10–11Google Scholar. Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, pp. 64–65, 7–8.
22 Strong, , I Change Worlds, pp. 155, 384, 375Google Scholar. Spivak, , A Man in His Time, pp. 11–24, 166, 284Google Scholar. Spivak, , America Faces the Barricades, p. 287Google Scholar. Hallgren, , Seeds of Revolt, p. 350Google Scholar. Hallgren, “Easy Times in Middletown,” p. 499.
23 Strong, , My Native Land, pp. 22–23Google Scholar. Spivak, , America Faces the Barricades, p. 32Google Scholar. Hallgren, , Seeds of Revolt, 153–55Google Scholar.
24 Strong, , My Native Land, pp. 293, 280Google Scholar; Spivak, , America Faces the Barricades, p. 287Google Scholar; Haligren, , Seeds of Revolt, pp. 349–51Google Scholar.
25 Anderson to Charles Bockler, 13 Dec. 1930 and 12 Nov. 1930, Letters, pp. 230, 225; Anderson, , “A Writer's Notes,” New Masses, 8, 08 1932, 10Google Scholar. Anderson to Maxwell Perkins, 6 Oct. 1934, Letters, pp. 307–08. Anderson to Theodore Dreiser, 12 Jan. 1936, Letters, p. 344. Anderson to Theodore Dreiser, 12 Jan 1936, Letters, p. 344; Anderson to John Hall Wheelock, 24 March 1930, Letters, p. 217.
26 Adamic, , My America, pp. 113, 301Google Scholar. Seldes, Gilbert, Mainland (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936)Google Scholar, dedication, no page number. Daniels, , A Southerner Discovers the South, pp. 293–344Google Scholar.
27 Anderson, , Puzzled America, pp. 40, 164, 153, 65, 5–20Google Scholar; Anderson, , “New Paths for Old,” Today, 1, 7 04 1934, pp. 12–13Google ScholarAnderson, , “At the Mine Mouth,” Today, 1, 30 12 1933, p. 21Google Scholar; Anderson, , “I Want to Work,” Today, 1, 28 04 1934, p. 10Google Scholar; Hickok, , One Third of a Nation, pp. 96, 223, 362–3Google Scholar; Adamic, , My America, pp. 299–300Google Scholar.
28 Rorty, , Where Life is Better, pp. 129, 117, 33Google Scholar. Nathan Asch, untitled review of Rorty, 's Where Life is Better, New Republic, 86, 26 02 1936, pp. 281, 321Google Scholar, Asch, , The Road, pp. 7, 195, 58Google Scholar.
29 Dreiser to Dallas McKown, 9 June 1932, and Dreiser to Evelyn Scott, 17 June 1938, Letters of Theodore Dreiser, 2, 588 and 3, 799. For Dreiser's departure from determinism see his introductory essay in Harlan Miners Speak, pp. 4–16.
30 Rorty, , Where Life Is Better, pp. 53–57, 13Google Scholar. Redding, , No Day of Triumph, p. 288Google Scholar. Caldwell, , Some American People, 25–30Google Scholar.
31 Caldwell, , You Have Seen Their Faces, p. 169Google Scholar; Asch, “Cross-Country Bus,” p. 301; Asch, , The Road, pp. 10–11Google Scholar; Redding, , No Day of Triumph, pp. 256–57, 340Google Scholar.
32 Beard, Charles A., “Written History as an Act of Faith,” American Historical Review, 39 (01 1934), p. 220CrossRefGoogle Scholar.