Depression Diary: Benjamin Roth's chilling chronicle of hard times

(The Big Money) - Benjamin Roth was born in New York City in 1894 and moved shortly thereafter to Youngstown, Ohio. He received a law degree and moved back to Youngstown after serving as an Army officer during World War I.
When the stock market crashed in 1929, he had been practicing law for approximately 10 years, largely representing local businesses. After nearly two years, he began to grasp the magnitude of what had happened to American economic life, and in June 1931, he began writing down his impressions in a diary that he maintained intermittently until he died in 1978. His perceptions and experiences have a chilling similarity to our own era, and The Big Money believes that Roth's words—though they are 75 years old—have much to teach us today; we'll be serializing several excerpts.
Here is the first installment: Continued

Photo: Dorothea Lange