Tom Yoder on Great Depression

Interviewer -Studs Terkel
Interviewee -Tom Yoder
Year of interview- 1971

In this interview Tom spoke about The Great Depression of 1929. Tom is a son of a suburban housewife. He mentioned that he had never gone to bed hungry. Tom spoke about food shortages and the poverty that reigned in the Great Depression.Apparently he was told by his family who were alive in this era. He said that the depression had left scars on many people. From his interview I gathered that the upper class were the ones mainly worried because they were never used to poverty and not used to not having enough. The poor on the other hand, had it even worse because even they were accustomed to poverty but they were feeling it greatly during the depression.

Tom mentioned that the generation who grew up in the Great Depression did not want to talk about it to their other after them generation. Tom said to that it appears as if the sufferers were ashamed of the poverty they endeavored at the time. He believes that people should not be ashamed because that was a great depressive time in America's economy and that it had taught America a lot and hopefully they have learned from it and hope that it will never happen again. He thinks that the government should be the ones to be blamed and should be concerned mainly.

From the interview I gathered that Tom maybe did not have enough information about the Great Depression in a sense. It sounded like he was repeating information about what was told to him by his family who maybe were a part of the depression.


Whatever it is and however it occurred, I do pray it does not happen again... Do you think we could possibly survive another Great Depression now?