He was the man who paid for the big projects, who got make-work instead of real work. He was the Depression-era man who was not part of any political constituency and therefore lived the negatives of the period. But it is even more the story of C, the American who was not thought of. “This book is the story of A, the progressives of the 1920s and ‘30s whose good intentions inspired the country. C was the forgotten man, the man who paid, the man who is never thought of.” What was wrong was the law, and the indenturing of C to the cause. But what about C? There was nothing wrong with A and B helping X. Their law always proposes to determine what A, B, and C shall do for X’.
Sumner wrote, ‘As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. “About half a century before the Depression, a Yale philosopher named William Graham Sumner penned a lecture against the progressives of his day. The Forgotten Man at the Beginning of the Depression: It was an amazing read and I cannot recommend it enough.
I needed sleep but found myself spending an hour staring at the cover, re-reading Shlaes’ bio, and flipping through the dozens of dog-eared pages. The last paragraph literally left a lump in my throat. I finished this book on a weeknight at 1:30 AM. Maybe Wood is right about history, but Shlaes work clearly shows that politics and human nature never change and that creates outcomes that are sadly predictable.
The striking thing about The Forgotten Man is that, even though it was published over 18-years ago, the policies, decisions, economics, and social conditions it describes in the 1930s are mirror images of what’s happening today. But if you spend any time reading good history books, it’s impossible to not recognize that the emotions, desires, and ambitions that motivate mankind have gone largely unchanged for millennia. Gordon Wood has repeatedly said that, in spite of popular opinion, history does not repeat itself. She writes in a style that is pleasing to read, and at times, almost poetic. Amity Shlaes’ background as a distinguished economic historian at the Council of Foreign Relations and syndicated columnist for Bloomberg gives her insight that is often missing in other histories of the period. The Forgotten Man is considered by many to be a benchmark history of the Great Depression in America.
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