Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 25

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protest that turned to sudden violence. In the first scenario, members
of the People's Lobby in Washington were first promised, then
refused an appointment with President Hoover in an effort to convince
him to call an extra session of Congress for the appropriation of public
works funds. Even an appointment with a presidential aide fell
through, forcing group members to leave a written protest with a
clerk (pp. 143-149). Wilson paralleled the People's Lobby situation
with the protest of sorts waged by Pete Romano, a New York fruit
store owner who lost all of his money in the stock market crash.
Romano owed his landlord, Antonio Copace, two months' rent, and
was being threatened with eviction unless he came up with the
money. Romano raised half the rent, but Copace angrily demanded
the full amount. In an understated style, Wilson recorded the
"protest" staged by Romano: "On June 11 he (Copace) came himself to
the Romanos and demanded the money again. He threatened to have
the marshal in and put them out that very afternoon. Peter Romano
tried to argue with him, and Mrs. Romano went out in a last effort to
get together $52. She didn't succeed, and when she came back, she
found a lot of people around and the police in her flat. Peter had shot
Mr. Copace and killed him, and was just being taken off to jail" (pp.
149-150). Once again, Wilson reserved judgment and left it to the
readers to debate the moral implications of violent or nonviolent
protestation in times of national crisis.
Wilson observed that the place to study the causes and
consequences of the Depression was not "in the charts of the compilers
of statistics, but in one's self and in the people one sees. That is what I
have tried to do in this book" (p. 303). For Wilson, the discovery of
truth could be found in the faithful observation of daily life in the
streets, alleyways, union halls, slum dwellings, migrant shacks, and
coal mines. Unemployment statistics in government reports held little
or no hunnan significance for Wilson.
In Travels in Two Democracies, published in 1936, Wilson
recounted another cross-country odyssey from November, 1932 to May,
1934. Again relying on rigorous objectivity and a camera-like eye for
detail (although employing more of a first-person narrative than in
The American Jitters), Wilson continued to record the physical and
emotional Impact of the Depression. In a chapter titled "Hull-House
in 1932," Wilson examined the human drama unfolding in the
overflowing shelters and flophouses of Chicago. He offered