The Frontier Thesis and the Great Depression

Abstract

There was a crisis in America at the end of the 1920's. The Crash was only part of it, though the Depression played a major r1le in its reinforcement. It was a cultural crisis, and the economic crisis served only to confirm its existence. Basically, the idea was that the American way of life had reached the end of its road, that America's uniqueness was fast disappearing. World War I not only killed progressivism as a political and social movement, it destroyed the whole notion of the inevitable progress of mankind towards a better life. The effect was delayed in America by the shaky prosperity of the 1920's, which kept alive the hope that the old order of capitalism and free enterprise were leading America towards a utopian existence free from poverty and want. There were those who saw beneath the surface, however, and many of them left the country to establish colonies in societies that were more openly decadent. Parrington, at the height of the speculative boom, characterized the modern age as one of mechanistic pessimism. Emersonian optimism, .. . fullest expression of the romantic faith, is giving way to Dreiserian pessimism, and the traditional doctrine of progress is being subjected to analysis by a growing skepticism.... [We] are in the way of repeating here the familiar history of Europe, with its coercive regimentations reproduced on a larger scale and in a more mechanical fashion. Once more a gloomy philosophy stands on the threshold of the American mind. 1 It was a basic and far-reaching change of mood, and coming at a time of great surface flamboyance it foreboded ill for the future. Once the Depression was in full swing, the forebodings bore fruit. The twenties had proved that the end of the XIXth century was not the era of absolute plenitude; they showed that more could be expected. But now that image, too, was definitely shattered, and there was a general fear that the old way of life had outlived its usefulness. This new economic crisis was unlike its predecessors, for it seemed that not just one sector, but the whole structure, was breaking down. Despite Marx and Turner and a host of others, most people saw that American capitalism had continued to expand beyond 1900. People came to expect better conditions, higher wages, greater productivity, and more leisure. But now there were doubts. They began to wonder