1933 - America's Most Dramatic Year

America's Most Dramatic Year

Bainbridge News, December 28, 1933

It is the annual custom on New Year's Eve to speed the departing year with quip, song and flowing cup, and to welcome the New Year with hilarity, hope and enthusiasm, but few men now living can recall a year with which most people are willing to more cheerfully part than the year 1933, which will next Sunday night pass into history, going unmourned if not unsung into the past.

 

Nineteen-thirty-three goes down in history as the most dramatic year in American history and, as future historians will record, a year of the most momentous importance politically and socially.  No living man can recall a year in the history of this nation when the horizons were more frequently clogged with clouds of evil portent; no year when the days were fraught with greater possibilities of good or ill.

The year 1933 opened with the nation tasting the bitter dregs at the bottom of the cup of fortune.  Four years of depression had brought all of the people face to face with stern realities.  Marking time between the casting down of one administration and the assumption of power and responsibility by a new administration offering vague promises of a "new deal," the country was in the throes of a destructive negativism which had resulted in well nigh complete industrial and business paralysis.  The people waited for a new hand at the helm in Washington and the uncertainties to come with the shift of political power; a shift mandated by the voters in the polling booths as an answer to the way the situation had been handled or not handled in the years of the depression.

 

Then came March with the new President [Franklin Roosevelt] taking command at the capital just as the economic fabric of the country was torn asunder by further great bank failures and chaos seemed lurking just over the hill.  What a drama!  A new President taking office with the entire banking structure of the country crumbling, and turning from the inauguration ceremonies almost instantly to take pen in hand and order every bank in the nation closed in order to salvage the remnant of credit and save such banks as were worth salvaging, to the end that confidence might not be absolutely destroyed.

 

Did anything ever happen in this or any other land more astounding or dramatic?  And the American people took the blow on the chin and smiled.  No disorder, no disturbances, noise or confusion; just a good-natured acceptance of the fact and a seeming confidence that it was a wise move, that the crisis of the national fever had been reached and that improvement was on the way.

 

Then followed rapidly a series of Congressional actions at the request of the new President, who was determined to lift the nation out of the slough of despond and institute a new prosperity in the land.  These measures earned the support of the people as they were enacted. Business, which had survived a most terrific blow responded to the new feeling.  Then came measures to conserve the banks, to save private homes, to help the farmer, to aid great and small businesses, followed by the industrial Recovery Act, under which it was proposed to put millions to work by shortening the hours of those already employed so that what work there was might be shared by all. Whatever may be one's private opinion of this measure it must be admitted that it is working and that the condition of the worker is better under the act.  More lately, evidencing that he meant what he said when he promised to do what he could to alleviate the condition of "The Forgotten Man," the President instituted the Civil Works Administration, which is charged with the duty of seeing to it that "there shall not be another winter like the last" and discharging that task by opening up civil works throughout the land to put millions of men to work throughout the winter at real wages.

 

All this activity has earned commendation and it has earned criticism.  The year closes with the friends of the President claiming a large measure of success for his endeavors, and pointing to indications that the success is real.  But the President has made enemies as well as friends.  Powerful forces are stirred against his policies, particularly the monetary policy of his administration.  A new Congress will shortly sit in Washington and in all likelihood the administration's activities will come in for discussion and criticism.  Congress will be divided into three camps on the money question; the middle-ground fellows who believe, like the average run of American citizens, that the President has no intention of permitting uncontrolled inflation and who believe with him that a sound dollar evaluated to proper proportions is best; then on the one side the radical inflationist, who want to see the printing presses started and the obligations of the government paid off in fiat money, and on the other side the dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, who want the country returned at once to the gold standard, and decry artificial means of restoring the semblance of life to the near-corpse of American business.

 

In the meantime the depression drags on toward a brighter day.  Better times must come whatever the policy of the government.  Whether the Roosevelt administration is building a sound recovery or whether it is building a house of cards--an artificial and synthetic prosperity--remains to be seen.

 

Yes, 1933 has been a dramatic year!  Most people say goodbye to the waning year without regret.  Few would care to live it over again.  It may be that 1934 will be more dramatic, although that would seem to be impossible.  We shall see what we shall see.  But let us not forget that it is a privilege to be alive in so portentous an age.