kat's blog

Like most everyone else, I headed straight for the WPA guide written about a place with which I’m very familiar.  I lived in Hanover, New Hampshire for two years, and thus I opened up the “Guide to the Granite State” expecting to be amused by the many interesting facts spun to coax tourists northward to visit the state with the good ol’ motto “Live Free or Die.”  I was not disappointed, and I was surprised to find that while the guide was generally written in a romantic light, the facts and opinions still rang true.  They were simply written from the perspective of someone who may be visiting for the first time, before the novelty of a new place has worn off.
 
As I began skimming the introductory pages of the New Hampshire guide, my first impression included amazement at the amount of effort put into the guide by the team of WPA writers assigned to the state.  According to the preface of the New Hampshire volume of the American Guidebook Series, “for months a staff of fifty delved into the great variety of subjects to be covered” (ix).  Fifty different writers combed the state in and out for this book!  It must have been an incredibly daunting task to sit down and compile enough information to fill a 559-page guide, not to mention the fact that this was repeated with many other groups of writers for all of the other states in America.
 
My next stop in the guidebook was the town where I previously lived—Hanover.  Interestingly enough, the summary of the town could just as easily be published today, as much of the description is still relevant to this timeless, charming New England locale.  I found myself smirking as I read about how Hanover is overcome with college students from Dartmouth all year long, as “so large a part of the town’s population is connected with the college as faculty or students that ‘townies’ are hard to find… so closely interfused are town and college that it may truly be said that Hanover is Dartmouth College” (172).  This is a notion that is commonly remarked about by people who live there and visitors alike even today.
 
The tone and style of the WPA guide is not overly academic in its diction, remaining accessible enough that the information conveyed by the writers is as easily digestible now as it likely was for the traveling masses in the late 1930s when it was originally published.  I’m glad that so much effort went into creating the American Guidebook Series.  These books commissioned by the WPA paved the way for future guides of a similar nature that are written in the present day with the intention of informing people about places in their native country that they may not have known about or wished to visit otherwise.  Because of this original series of guides and the WPA’s foresight as to how this type of literature might be an appealing product to stimulate a travel habit, the "Travel” section at your local Barnes and Noble remains a hopping place!

While completing the readings for this week, I was struck by the fact that tourism and leisure travel was somewhat of a learned habit for those living in the early 20th century.  It’s hard to imagine a time when the working and middle classes didn’t have time off unless they were unemployed, or a time when it was unheard of to take a trip to simply go sightseeing.  These days, it’s like second nature to grab your family and hit the road when you’re able to take time off from work.  From the time I was a young child, I can recall being loaded into the car to “just go somewhere,” whether it was a day trip to the nearby Texas Hill Country or a weeklong drive trip through the Rocky Mountains.  This type of excursion was commonplace during my childhood.  When I think of my family, my favorite memories come from our various vacations—squabbling in the backseat with my siblings, buying souvenirs from tacky gift shops, swimming in hotel pools, and taking advantage of many photo ops along the way to memorialize our quality time together.
 
While taking a leisurely vacation is often at the top of everyone’s to-do list these days, prior to the trend of paid time-off a summer jaunt or a Spring Break-esque trip was commonly only enjoyed by the wealthy upper class.  In “A ‘New Deal’ For Leisure,” Michael Berkowitz talks at length about the new phenomenon of the paid vacation and how this affected life for the working and middle classes during the 1920s and 30s. 
 
Despite how ubiquitous the American road trip is now in popular culture, it was not a natural inclination at first for people to hop in the car and see the country back then.  Advertising promoting tourism aimed to coax these traveling “neophytes” to faraway towns and cities, since marketers believed that these vacationing newbies had “no idea how to plan, budget, or take a leisure trip” because the concept was so unfamiliar and new to them (199).  The improvement and creation of new roads and less expensive transportation also helped persuade people to venture from their hometowns. 
 
Whether they wanted to experience the “majesty of Mt. Rainier, the beauty of Miami’s beaches, [or] the excitement of New York City’s urban landscape,” people living during the Depression era were taught that vacations could not only be “easy and inexpensive,” but also “relaxing and restorative” (198).  Needless to say, these ideas have stuck with the American public.  Nowadays, it may not always be the most economical thing to drive across the country due to exorbitant gas prices or plan that rejuvenating trip to a tropical locale, but no one will dispute Americans’ collective desire to depart from the regular routine and go on a good vacation. 

Nathaneal West’s A Cool Million is an undeniably sad tale from beginning to end.  There is no semblance of hope present within the book’s nearly 116 pages.  The novel follows pitiful misadventure after misadventure of the story’s “hero,” Lemuel Pitkin, from his first experience of strife up to his eventual assassination.  All the while, West continuously takes strike at what he views as the vacuous optimism preached by Horatio Alger in his rags-to-riches stories from the 19th century.
 
In the first few pages of A Cool Million, West wastes no time in providing plenty of evidence against Alger’s reliance on optimism and the so-called American Dream.  After setting out on the road to New York City to raise money to prevent he and his mother from losing their house, Pitkin is duped by con artists and other scheming villains time and time again.  The supposed blinding effect of optimism is always the blame, leading to Pitkin’s boundless credulity that never dies in spite of the tragedies Pitkin continues to face. 
 
Pitkin’s lack of common sense seems completely ludicrous and his repeated failures are very frustrating to read, time and time again.  Just when you think Pitkin might be experiencing a stroke of luck, it’s exposed that he is once again being deceived and robbed of whatever money and dignity he has left.  Ex-President Mr. Whipple, the character who’s most responsible for Pitkin’s pathetic dismantling throughout the book, narrates the “rewards” of Pitkin’s search for success: “Jail is his first reward.  Poverty his second.  Violence is his third.  Death is his last” (178).  Mr. Whipple, who represents the notion of optimism in the book, kept telling Pitkin that he would eventually “make it” despite his trials and tribulations, but it is shown that this is false when Pitkin is finally killed at the conclusion of the book.  Optimism is thus associated with destruction and downfall.
 
However, I disagree with West’s denouncement of optimism for the most part.  Sure, solely relying on a positive attitude to get ahead without anything else to back you up will typically not yield fame and fortune.  But without any optimism, there is no drive to succeed at all.  Optimism should not be wholly mistaken for the sheer stupidity shown on Pitkin’s part throughout the novel.  
 
West repeatedly aligns being hopeful with blatant examples of unintelligence and gullibility.   Optimism can sometimes preclude you from seeing the full calamity of a situation, but it is not always foolish—sometimes it’s the only thing that people can believe in during trying times.  Without any optimism, people are just as likely to fall victim to the same tragedies that were endured by Pitkin.  Only in this case it is due to their lack of will to overcome the pitfalls of pessimism and depression rather than a purported overzealous, delusional pursuit of happiness.

During our last class, we briefly discussed that many of the food brands we take for granted these days were created during the 1930s as cheap, easy, timesaving meal alternatives.  In light of the fact that it was expensive to pay for electricity to keep food fresh in the refrigerator and homegrown food was sometimes impossible to come by, these new products were ready-to-eat and would last a long time due to manufacturers’ use of shelf life-increasing preservatives.  This led me to think of how resourceful and creative people were when they were forced to “make do” without food on hand that was formerly plentiful, garden-fresh, and less costly.
 
I recently had a conversation with someone about a trick she played on her dad when he requested a freshly baked apple pie one day several years ago.  She made him a pie with absolutely no apples in it—just Ritz Crackers.  This didn’t sound too appetizing to me, and yet the substitute recipe was so good, her dad couldn’t even tell the difference!  This was a lighthearted story of pulling the wool over someone’s eyes, but during the Depression and other economic declines, substitute recipes like this were commonplace and allowed people to eat familiar tasting foods they could no longer afford.  Nabisco used to print a recipe on the side of the Ritz Crackers box for this “Mock Apple Pie.”  Although the recipe was originally invented in the mid-1800s by “a group of pioneer women for their children who missed the apple pie they’d had ‘back east,’” the recipe rose in popularity during the Great Depression when apples became expensive commodities once again (Schnebel).
 
Penny-pinching cooks in the kitchen during the 1930s had to get creative with their entrees, coming up with other recipes such as “pigs in blankets, mushrooms made out of cream cheese and "bunny salad" made from a canned pear half" (Ganzel).  Although they weren’t made of gourmet ingredients, they provided some level of cooking creativity that would have been otherwise impossible without these manufactured foods now on the market. 
 
Products that were invented during this time period included Wonder Bread, Hostess Twinkies, Bisquick, Betty Crocker mixes, Spam, Lay’s Potato Chips, Nescafe Instant Coffee, a number of well-known candy bars, and countless other items that remain in production today (Olver).  Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup might be a kitchen staple these days when you’re trying to get over a cold or to merely cook an inexpensive dinner, but during the Great Depression, long-lasting, economical products like this were a saving grace. 
 
            

Although our previous readings touched on the difficulty of “living on the bum,” no piece of writing managed to shake me to my core like Tom Kromer’s autobiographical tale Waiting For Nothing.  There was no romanticizing the pain he felt after not eating for three days.  When Kromer winces with pain as he hobbles into town on his numb limbs in the freezing cold, you can’t help but wince along with him (96).  Near the end of the book, you swear you can almost hear the raspy, rattling breaths of the “stiff” at the mission who was on the brink of succumbing to death by starvation, just like many of his peers before him and an endless number of men who would undoubtedly follow in his footsteps (124).  This is not an exciting tale of vagabond adventure but a tragic account of “unmitigated depravity,” with Kromer sparing no horrific details in painting an ugly, realistic picture of life on the road when you’re without a home and have no more than a couple pennies jingling in your pocket (270).
 
This book is made especially gripping with the inclusion of numerous instances where examples of tremendous wealth are juxtaposed with the most striking examples of extreme poverty.  Near the beginning of his story, Tom Kromer finds himself looking longingly into a restaurant at a delicious roast chicken dinner being enjoyed by an affluent couple wearing their fanciest evening attire, dripping with diamonds and only nibbling at their bountiful dinner.  As Kromer has so eloquently surveyed the situation here: “These people are in the dough” (7).
 
We come to find out that this is not a rare scene, as Kromer describes many other situations where he is suddenly surrounded by the prosperous and well heeled.  In one restaurant, Kromer encounters tables sparkling with silver dishes and women wearing evening gowns during the day (55).  On the other hand, we also witness the other side of the economic spectrum.  Kromer’s friend Karl describes an instance when he stumbles upon a destitute young woman with a newborn baby.  As excruciatingly painful as it is, she chooses to abandon her baby on a park bench to be taken in by someone who can actually afford to feed it and give it a better life (74).
 
It is unbelievable how the scales are tipped so unevenly in one direction over another.  While one family may never experience a hungry night in their lives, a transient young couple with a sick infant may have to flop at the side of the road in frigid, wet weather night after night.  This book is based on experiences during the Great Depression, but its accounts of suffering and hunger are timeless.  Just look around you at the homeless people sleeping under newspapers in the dark eaves of buildings, or at the people jumping from car to car on the subway begging for just a penny.  The sad truth is that there will always be a gap between the rich and the poor, and it will always be a challenge for the down-and-out to try to get ahead.  Waiting for Nothing provides a rare snapshot into their lives and gives those people a voice.

I can't buy a job 'cause I ain't got the dough,
So I ride in a boxcar 'cause I'm a hobo.
 
I went to a bar and I asked for a drink,
They gave me a glass and they showed me the sink.
 
“Hallelujah, I’m a Bum” – Harry McClintock
 
At the height of the economic turmoil of the 1930s, people affected by the Great Depression reacted to being destitute a number of ways.  Some stayed close to the vest and hunkered down in one spot with their family and others became migrant workers in search of a better life, while some men went rogue and hid out on trains travelling across the country, begging for handouts.  This latter category of men is the main focus of the travel novel Hungry Men by Edward Anderson.  Despite the relative abundance of people who were not transient young men dependent on hitching rides on the railroad, writers favored this “floating population… to plumb the social depths of the Great Depression” by creating “dramas that could be more easily invested with references to the hallowed symbolism of pioneer Americana” (viii).
 
By writing about these defiant young men, Anderson sought to shed light on “what the nation most feared” during this countrywide crisis: the “transient unemployed male” who was “rootless, dispirited, and responsible to no one” (ix).  With this attitude, they are christened with an almost mythic, rebellious appeal that makes their stories seem thrilling to those who choose to read about them.  These men on the road are purported to have strength, willpower, and lots of “guts” (xi).  They may be breaking the law, but writers like Anderson make us root for the young rebels and shake our heads at the people who refuse to help them out or threaten to throw them in jail.
 
We want Acel Stecker to outrun the police.  We’re relieved when the woman kindly gives him some cold bacon and crumbly cake to eat.  We hope he makes it to New Orleans and doesn’t get caught by the “bulls” before he has a chance to contact his beloved Corinne (160).  While some believed novels like Hungry Man to be calling for political reform of relief policies by “recording social facts in order to change them,” I stop to wonder whether they glamorize the hobo lifestyle more than they criticize those who have the power to help resolve the economic crisis (xii).  While their lives were hard and they often didn’t know where they would be sleeping that night, transient men like Acel Stecker were framed with a certain “badass” appeal that made them look like the rugged cowboys of the Great Depression, revered for their courage and stick-it-to-the-man attitude.

It’s true: the written word is capable of providing readers with vivid imagery and igniting a reader’s imagination.  However, the addition of illustrations and photographs can really complement a nonfiction piece.  This is especially true when documenting a road trip.  Sometimes, it’s impossible to put pen to paper and explain exactly what you’re seeing at a certain moment with your own eyes—so why not let the camera help?  It’s one of the oldest clichés in the book, but a picture can really be worth a thousand words.  The meanings and associations conjured up by each individual viewing an image are different, and this brings a level of explanation to readers that often transcends anything the author could possibly convey in writing.
 
Sergei Tretyakov spoke about the importance of photographs, stating, “I don’t know what would be more difficult for me during a writer’s trip: to lose my pen and notebook or my camera?  My Leica film is my visual diary, without which the processing of collected material would be much more difficult for me” (xi).  Not only do photos help organize and remind someone of something they experienced, they are important records on par with a written diary.  Regardless if they are the highly emotional Dorothea Lange photos of the Great Depression or the more light-hearted snapshots accompanying Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip, all photographs have story-telling merit.
 
While reading the excerpt from Ilf and Petrov’s American Road Trip, I was struck by how differently the duo wrote their account of America in contrast to most other Depression-era stories we’ve been reading.  Their writing is very honest and straightforward, and seemingly every other line contains some sort of humorously sarcastic quip.  The piece somehow manages to be both complimentary and derogatory about different aspects of America at the same time, and some of the lingo and jokes read as if they could have been written in the present day.
 
The photos accompanying this essay are intertwined with the writing, in such a way that if you simply read the words without referencing the photos alongside it, a lot is left to be desired.  The words and pictures share a symbiotic relationship.  “Here is a typical American city out West,” they proclaim, sending the reader to look at Figure 12 to see this typical city and hypothesize just what makes it so typical before continuing to the written description (16).  Ilf and Petrov came to America with the purpose of showing their Soviet comrades what it was really like over here, and without the commentary intertwined with descriptive photographs, their experiences would surely have been lost in translation.

Sifting through the readings this week, I was particularly drawn to the selection from The Argonauts, a true story written chiefly by Lillian Ross (but with input from her four fellow travel companions).  As you dive into the first two chapters, it almost sounds like a fictional story as it’s written mostly in the third person, with a few random “we thought”s and “we didn’t haves” thrown in to remind the reader that it’s an autobiographical story of traveling across America.  I felt that this reading was especially easy to relate to as I, too, am an optimistic young college student, somewhat similar in mindset to these five young adults who piled in a small car to really see what their country was all about during the travel boom of the late 1930s.
 
This account of traveling the country has a very whimsical, fantastical feel to it, which is hinted at by even glancing briefly at the titles of the various chapters—“The Argonauts,” “Magic Land,” and “Journey to the Moon.”  While this group of travelers had read about America in their textbooks at school, they wanted to see what was out there that hadn’t been written about.  They wanted to see America for themselves, talk with people along the road, and see what everyday Americans really did to earn their living.  How hard could it be?  After all, “every roaming reporter from Homer to Steinbeck had done it… we could do it too” (Ross 3). 
 
In contrast to other writers on the road who left superfluous items at home with the expectation of slumming it and experiencing some elements of hardship, these young adults embarked on their cross-country expedition with a pair of rose-tinted glasses on.  They scrounged their pennies, and with what little money they had, they were determined to maintain their standard of living by continuing to purchase luxury items such as cigarettes and believing they were in no danger of starving to death simply because their parents had packed their car with a few cans of beans and packages of cookies.  It was reminiscent of a game of Monopoly—democratically voting which “department” each person would lead in the car, and using their trip as an excuse to escape their insular New York City lives and learn what it means to be a real American (whatever that means).  This is a far cry from the hardships seen along the road by many people who were more deeply affected by the crippling nature of the Great Depression.
 
However, this group’s journey proves to be an eye-opening and necessary experience in their process of growing up and being informed about the world-at-large.  They see firsthand how different parts of the country are in very disparate financial situations, and not everyone lives a carefree, happy-go-lucky life.  They see that people are struggling for real.  The "farm problem" is not just something they might have read about somewhere awhile back, and they discover the stark reality in which people are unable to get a job no matter how much education they may have under their belts (Ross 23-24).  The clan leaves on their trip with one idea in their heads about going to see the country, and they end up encountering more than what they had originally bargained for-- but they are undoubtedly better off because of it.

After enduring the seemingly endless drought that spurred the Dust Bowl and subsequent migration to the green valleys of California, the migrant families encountered a problem they hadn’t readily anticipated.  In Chapter 29 of The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck describes the epic rainfall experienced by those trying to better their lives by travelling westward.  The rain began to fall slowly but surely, at first quenching the dry earth’s thirst, and yet it kept raining and raining even “after the earth was full” (432).  In an almost biblical turn of events hearkening to Noah and his Ark, the “water whirled along the bank sides and crept up the banks until at last it spilled over, into the fields, into the orchards… then the water poured over the highways… [with the migrants] asking, How long’s it likely to go on?” (432-433).  They went from experiencing one extreme calamity to another.
 
Despite the optimism felt at the beginning of their travels to the west, the Joads find themselves at their wit’s end by the book’s final chapters.  Although not all of their problems are based in what Mother Nature has decided to throw at them, the flooding experienced by them and the other families in Chapter 30 doesn’t do anything but exacerbate the crises they’re facing as their family structure continues to crumble.  In trying to save what’s left of their shelter, the men attempt to build a bank to block the flood waters from rushing in, only to be foiled by “a great cottonwood toppling” causing the water to break through their futile attempt to fend off the inevitable disaster (442).  Haunted by the rampant spread of disease, Rosasharn’s stillborn baby, and the flooding of the truck in this portion of the book, the Joads and the other migrant families are forced to reckon with the fact that Mother Nature is truly in control.
 
The plight caused by natural disasters is not foreign to those of us living today.  Amid the frequent earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters, they strike when people least expect it, often causing humanity to buckle at the knees.  Most recently, Texas has become a victim of a series of giant wildfires spreading rapidly through the state, rendering many residents homeless.  Over 99% of the formerly vibrant and green Bastrop State Park has been burned.  This comes at the heels of Texas experiencing its driest, hottest summer ever, beating temperature records set during The Grapes of Wrath-era and causing many to wonder if this is the beginning of another Dust Bowl.   This goes to show that no matter what technological advancements are made and no matter how many years pass, these natural catastrophes will never cease to be the most powerful forces on Earth.

Sometimes, when the going gets tough, the idiom “It’s every man for himself” is thrown around, implying no one will help others in their time of need.  Other times, families and individuals are depicted coming together into larger units, almost as if they are one big family or community working for the common good.  John Steinbeck describes this latter scenario at length in Chapter 17 of The Grapes of Wrath.
 
The migrants on the road to California traveled independently during the day, but at night “they huddled together; they talked together; they shared their lives, their food, and the things they hoped for in the new country” (193).  As a result, if twenty families camped together at night, “the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all… the loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream” (193).  Likewise, the Joads adopted the Wilsons into their traveling expedition after the Wilsons lent a hand when Grampa died in their tent during Chapter 13.  Once you go through an experience like that together, you’re like family and you feel obligated to look out for one another.
 
The human inclination to help others in need is something that evidences itself in a plethora of situations.  Whether it is a death, a divorce, a recession, or something else entirely, the situation is more likely to improve and seem less hopeless if others are empathetic and work together to dig those who are suffering out of an abyss (emotional, financial, or otherwise).  Even if it is done with the hope and reinforcing one’s own “good karma,” the important thing is that there are times that people overlook their own needs and desires for a few minutes in the effort of making others have an easier time.  I recently lost a very close family member and thus I witnessed this phenomenon firsthand.  Friends, family, and people I didn’t even know dropped what they were doing in the initial time afterward and went out of their way to stop by my family’s home to deliver us freshly prepared meals and offer their support in general.
 
Human nature is often condemned for leaning toward the selfish side.  However, people do harbor the ability to genuinely care about others.  As the migrant families on the road during the Depression found out, sometimes people join hands and work together, play together, cry together, and share each other’s burdens.  Even if it is for a transient period of time, there are moments when the world isn’t comprised of 6.96 billion distinct individuals looking out only for their own survival.  Sometimes, if you take the time to really look, families join together with others to create one collective group in an effort to leave no one behind.  And in a story of humanity, that makes all the difference in determining how people are perceived.

During the Great Depression, many overextended farmers living in the Great Plains area found themselves in a state of crisis even worse than the one brought on previously by droughts, boll weevils, and a shortage of cash due to the plummeting selling price of crops.  With banks on the verge of being shuttered as the country barreled into an economic depression, loans were retracted and the masses found themselves “penniless, landless, and starving” as their farms (and self-sustaining livelihoods) were snatched right from under them.  In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck carefully crafts a vivid portrayal of one family experiencing this horror.  The Joads are kicked off their land by the bank and are forced to leave the majority of their worldly possessions behind.  With nowhere to go and nothing to eat, they find themselves lured to California by bright yellow handbills promising an abundance of work picking fruit and the prospect of being compensated with high wages.  Although the Joads are a fictional family, their plight is one that was all too real to thousands of displaced sharecroppers during the 1930s.  Despite a growing sense of doubt about these lofty promises made about work available in California, families trudged on in the hope of building a better life.  After all, they had nothing more to lose and everything to gain if the Promised Land were indeed a reality. 
 
The myth of California was set forth by word of the state’s long growing season and a number of fliers sent advertising a need for a high volume of workers to pick fruit, vegetables, and cotton, among other crops.  The Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the New Deal even worked to perpetuate these claims by publishing WPA guides touting California as a “fabulous land of sunshine and oranges” (v).  Woodie Guthrie’s popular folksong Do Re Mi tells the truth about this purported “garden of Eden,” singing warnings such as “don’t sell your old cow for a car” because you’ll find that you won’t be able to dip into the California “sugar bowl” without any money in the bank.  In The Grapes of Wrath, the Joads encounter a soothsaying man who is returning from California after his wife and two children starved to death following their migration there.  He warns them to turn back and go home, yet they decide to ignore his warnings (Steinbeck 188).
 
While California was not a bad place in itself due to the state’s comfortable climate and natural beauty, its perks were exaggerated to families on the move.  California did not prove to be a place with unlimited resources, as it had been affected by the depression just like the rest of the country, and if migrants weren’t turned away at the state’s borders upon arrival, they proceeded to live a transient life without any semblance of a stable income after moving there.   It was undoubtedly a letdown for the desperate and unemployed who ventured there expecting a land of absolute perfection and relief through well-paid work (The Migrant Experience).

The majority of Americans don’t like to think.  At least, this is what James Rorty purports in “Where Life is Better” with the analysis of his encounters with people during his seven months on the road, traversing nearly 15,000 miles in his car.  While Sherwood Anderson and Nathan Asch tout the importance of hope and optimism inherent in the attitude with which Americans are raised as being the key to prosperity, Rorty is quick to dismiss the validity of the American Dream in accordance with the current state of society.  He serves up a big dose of a reality check.  According to what he witnessed on the road, the rags-to-riches Horatio Alger story has generally been shown to be false and nothing but a myth due to a lack of action.  People are quick to accept relief packages and stay mum about what would truly help them in the long run.  People can be as hopeful as they want, but nothing will happen without taking a stand.
 
Capitalism has always been the reigning power in America, and well-meaning young boys who should become our future senators and presidents will never amount to much without a vastly different political and fiscal landscape, no matter how hard they try.  There will be very few stories of "Farm to Fortune."  Rorty claims that, in his experience, only 5 percent of the population actually acknowledges that this is the root of America’s problems during the Great Depression.  The rest of America passively accepts the impoverished state of the migrant workers and the unemployed, rather than thinking for a minute and choosing to figuratively fight back and protest the unbalanced state of society during this troubled era with common sense and new ideas.
 
A better life is not often handed to someone on a silver platter without a great deal of intellectual effort being expended.  This is as true now as it was back in the 1930s.  Often, it’s easier to stick to the status quo, but in order to increase one’s personal financial prosperity and that of the country as a whole, people have to jump outside their comfort zones.  People can set out on the road in search of a better place and to find temporary work to put food on the table, but this is all for naught in the long term without a fundamental change in how society is run.  According to Rorty, California used to be the place where life was indeed better, with a temperate climate and a less class-based society.  But by the dawn of the Great Depression, where could destitute people go that life wouldn’t be a struggle?  In a bad economic state, the answer is nowhere.
 
As Sherwood Anderson proposes in “Puzzled America,” why not open the doors for everyone to live an extravagant life?  Why not let the Horatio Alger myth at last become a common truth?  This is a plausible feat according to Rorty, solved by becoming more thoughtful, reforming the economy, and increasing the accessibility to wealth and success for the down-and-out who are willing to put on their thinking caps and shed Rorty’s assessment of being “mentally soft and lazy” (22).  This is quite the challenge, and it is one that we continue to face in the present day.  It's unlikely Rorty's pro-communist stance is truly the best option, but it is never a bad thing to question the current state of affairs in the pursuit of a better society.