Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 34

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Popular Culture Review

prices to the small number of people who could afford such purchases.
This deprivation of the worker equated with "grinding down the
masses to benefit the rich" (p. 409).
The America that Dreiser found was ruled by a Wall Street
oligarchy that conducted business by force. The people he encountered
had produced and produced for big business, and when the bottom fell
out of the economy, they were discarded because their material
worth had diminished. In an America that worshipped capitalism
and excessive competition, Dreiser emphasized, "m oney... has
always been ... used lawlessly to force the other fellow to do or not to
do such things as meant either profit or loss to the one with the most
money" (p. 50).
Whereas Wilson and Dreiser contended that individualism
was stifled in the Thirties by big business interests, Anderson
maintained that individualism flourished during the Depression in
rural America. In his travels, Anderson found people who were
meeting the demands and sacrifices of the Depression in highly
individualistic ways. He did not view them as victims, nor as pawns
in the hands of greedy corporate America. Instead, Anderson found
Americans coping with social disorder in ways that retained basic
human dignity and expressed individuality. Amidst the poverty and
desperation, Anderson documented a pervasive American pride and
willingness to try to rise above the squalor.
For Anderson, his documentaries stood as a reaffirmation of
individualism in time of national crisis. He devoted a number of
pages to the eccentricities of small-town residents, reveling in their
deviation from the norm. For example, there was Henry Horner, a 45year-old widower who lost all of his money in a chick food business
venture. "Now Henry dresses shabbily and has let his hair grow
long," Anderson wrote. "He carries a heavy cane and as he goes
through the streets of the town boys crow at him. They imitate the
cackle of hens that have been at the business of laying eggs and the
clarion cry of the rooster. Henry grows violently angry. He waves his
cane about, he swears, he pursues the boys furiously but never catches
them" (Anderson, 1940, p. 86).
Then there was the mysterious woman who came to a small
town, rented a house on a quiet street, and kept to herself, making no
acquaintances. The shades of her house always were drawn, and
Anderson said that the town "is convinced that she is a wicked sinful