Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

“Edward A. Ryerson”

The Depression hit Ryerson’s steel company hard. In addition to his role in the company, a Ryerson family business for decades, Edward A. Ryerson headed Chicago’s Council of Social Agencies. He secured federal relief from President Hoover, whom he knew and regarded as a humanitarian. Ryerson also knew Tom Girdler, the hard-line head of Republic Steel during the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937. Ryerson believes that men such as Girdler failed to understand that there had to be a new way of doing things that involved fair treatment of workers and recognition of unions.

“Diana Morgan”

Morgan’s father had been a prosperous merchant and owned a general store in a small North Carolina town. She was preparing to go to college when the Depression hit, the banks failed, the store closed, and her family home was lost. She began working in a relief office and saw the way truly destitute people lived. She encountered a good deal of bigotry, both class- and “race-”based, from people who thought that welfare recipients were simply lazy. When the legislature discontinued the relief program, she became a social worker. She graduated from the New York School of Social Work, married, and in 1934 moved to Washington, DC She believes that her own experience of losing her family home awakened her to the realities of grinding poverty and dictated her life’s course.