Depression and World War II, 1929-1950
During the Depression, the Commonwealth attempted to fund public works through passage of the Pennsylvania State Authority Act in 1936. The Act provided for the incorporation of the General State Authority, which would purchase land from the state and add improvements to that land using state loans and grants. The state expected to receive Federal grants and loans to fund the project under the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in Kelly v Earle, found the Act violated the state constitution. This prevented the state from receiving federal funds for Works Progress Administration projects and making it difficult to lower the extremely high unemployment rate.
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Famous quotes containing the words depression and, depression, world and/or war:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it’s damn hard to smile.”
—Judith Guest (b. 1936)
“All the world over, the picturesque yields to the pocketesque.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“... near a war it is always not very near.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)