LITMIR.BIZ

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       ‘WHAT THE COUNTRY NEEDS IS A REAL BIG LAUGH’

      To the disappointment and astonishment of Communists, the American working people did not rise up en masse during the Great Depression to demand even the overhaul – much less the overthrow – of their system of democratic capitalism, despite the failure to relieve their sufferings for more than a decade. Arriving at the height of the economic misery, a confident Gertrude Klivans held court in her stateroom on SS Bremen at the New York docks. She was back at long last in the United States, a returning political pilgrim and a secret convert to Communism. While she was already an agent of INO, Klivans did not consider herself a traitor to the US, but rather a contributor to helping the peoples of the Soviet Union.

      Her courtiers were a small crowd of journalists, fans of the small-town socialite-turned-adventurer. She was a Youngstown, Ohio celebrity. Local magazines had serialised parts of the letters she had written to her family from the mysterious, godless USSR describing most of her adventures. Exposure to the socialist experiment had transformed her in just a year from a frustrated English Literature teacher at the local high school into a confident woman, delighted to be sought out for her views on the world. She was secretly engaged, if not already married, to her fellow agent Alexander Gramp. She adroitly ducked answering questions from the wire services on international politics, but was more than happy to announce that the first Soviet Five-Year Plan was a resounding success. Joseph Stalin must have been pleased. The journalists asked her if it was possible to teach the Soviet leaders anything. She replied, ‘Indeed yes, in fact, they are the most teachable people to be found.’¹

      Amid America’s worst ever socio-economic crisis, Klivans delivered the message that a socialist future was the answer to her society’s ills. Before October 1929 the United States had believed that it would enjoy an uninterrupted period of increasing prosperity. This mirage was not an invention of the people but was what they had been told by their leaders. In his last State of the Union address in 1928, President Calvin Coolidge had said: ‘No Congress of the United States ever assembled, on surveying the state of the Union, has met with a more pleasing prospect than that which appears at the present time.’² He had overseen an expanding economy based on easy access to consumer loans for housing, its citizens buying vast numbers of new automobiles on credit instalment plans. The vehicles, once a luxury, were now commonplace and seemingly affordable; there was even a fear that the car would create an amoral society as young couples were now out of sight of their parents. That great barometer of America’s health, the stock market indices, were not merely soaring on the back of the credit bubble; they went through the roof. The Dow Jones Industrial Average quadrupled between 1924 and 1929. America appeared to be on the brink of economic greatness.

      Led by New York, the modern cities of the USA were a bustling hive of theatre, movies, arts, food and sober fun. Based on its global leadership in technological innovation, mass production and consumerism, America had overtaken the British Empire as the pre-eminent economic power in the world. When Herbert Hoover campaigned for the presidency in 1928, he assured the country it could expect ever greater economic prosperity. In a campaign speech, he said: ‘We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. We shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.’³

      Hoover would later quip that he was the first man in history to have a depression named after him. For all these dreams came crashing down in just a few days in 1929, and for the next decade, even the Big Apple became a sombre city of hopeless, desperate people. The stock market crash began on 24 October and ended on the 29th. In a matter of four days, America saw $30 billion of its wealth wiped out for ever. Within months New Yorkers were starving to death. Large crowds of bewildered investors, bank workers and concerned citizens wandered around Wall Street in a daze during the crash. In an attempt to exercise some control the police began making arrests. After the initial panic, worse was to follow.

      The administration estimated that any recession resulting from the crash would be shallow, like the one the United States had experienced after the Great War. Despite the high drama, the conservative President Hoover believed that ‘anything can make or break a market … from the failure of a bank to the rumor that your second cousin’s grandmother has a cold’.⁴ He and his laissez-faire economist advisors thought it was just a small setback and the market would soon bounce back. It didn’t. Publicly, Hoover continually downplayed the nation’s agony, retreating into his dogmatic shell and refusing to act. At this most difficult time, he offered his wounded people no leadership. In the face of the suffering and bewilderment, the White House appeared distant and unmoving.

      Throughout the crisis, Hoover would display terrible judgement. One of his most passionate causes was to deny combat veterans an increase in their benefits. When it came to providing depression relief, he insisted that private charity, not state aid, funnelled through the Red Cross was sufficient. He went further, expressing the belief that charity was the sole answer to the enormous and growing needs of America’s army of unemployed and starving. He kept up this

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