Great Depression Chronicled in Diary of Lawyer Who Lived Through It
The diary of Ohio lawyer Benjamin Roth shines a light on the history of the Depression through the eyes of a man who lived through it.
The short diary entries, written in the 1930s, “brim with the frustration of a man trying to save his failing law practice,” the Washington Post reports. The account has been published as a book, The Great Depression: A Diary.
The Post review characterizes Roth as “anti-interventionist, anti-whiner and anti-Roosevelt.” A New York Times review provides examples. Roth fears that the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt will fuel inflation through deficit spending. In reality, the Times says, the Depression was prolonged because FDR didn’t spend enough.
Roth disdains personal revelations in the diaries. His son, Daniel Roth, told the Times his father was able to keep food on the table by borrowing against his life insurance policy. Daniel Roth also spoke to the Youngstown Vindicator.
“Here was a man who was personally strapped so badly he wondered how he would feed his own family,” Daniel told the Vindicator. “But he was still able to passionately describe what was going on.”
The diaries contain many predictions that the Depression is nearing an end—predictions that proved wrong. “Today, we’re all a little like Benjamin Roth, asking questions we don’t know the answer to, and wondering, as he did 70 years ago, whether the crisis is, indeed, over,” the Times writes.
