Some of the most enduring images of the great depression of 1929-1939 are those of long lines of obviously beaten-down men in soup lines… hungry women and children with haunted eyes. Shantytowns sprang up all over the country, called Hoovervilles in mocking derision of the disastrous policies that engendered the crash and the even worse schemes which perpetuated the depression until 1939 and the advent of the Second World War. Twenty five per cent unemployment… some eleven million three hundred thousand people lost their jobs, homes and farms, out of a pre-depression population of 120 million. Contrast that to today,...