Influences of the Times: The 1930s

The post-World War II period from 1919 to 1930 is sometimes referred to as the “Roaring Twenties”: which gives the impression of prosperity. However, it was only roaring for some. There was a difference between the affluent characters of The Great Gatsby and the poor in The Grapes of Wrath. The 1920s saw fluctuations in economic activity; and the 1930s saw the Great Depression upon which conservatives looked with fear and the Marxians with hope. To demonstrate the socio-economic and political influences on the era of the 1930s (the time when the Keyserlings were becoming active in political circles), I will choose two economists to set the stage. The first is Alvin Harvey Hansen (1887–1975) who influenced many economists such as Paul Samuelson (Nobel Prize in Economics, 1970); David McCord Wright; James Duesenberry; and John Kenneth Galbraith. Hansen, after he became a Keynesian, set the tone of economics and of economic policy until the early 1960s from his position at Harvard University (Brazelton, 1993). Thus, Hansen will be used to set the general tone of the times. The second, Rexford Guy Tugwell (1891–1979), was an important influence upon Leon Keyserling himself, as the study at the Truman Library (Brazelton and Wehmeyer, 1989) indicates in greater detail than is necessary here.