Analysis of The secret gift

Secret Gift, By Ted Gup

In 1933, the town of Canton, Ohio had plunged into abject poverty. Its residents were suffering a kind of privation that makes the recent recession look mild. Children did not know the meaning of breakfast. People patched their shoes with old tires. In the midst of this misery a philanthropist using a pseudonym asked people who might otherwise be afraid to ask for charity to write in and give him information about their plight. Letters poured in from people of every walk of life, spanning from families with many children who had no source of support to men who had not had steady jobs in more than two years and who were living on bread and coffee. The 5 dollars that was ultimately given to the many recipients filled stomachs and warmed houses. It also, writes Ted Gup in his chronicle of this munificence, The Secret Gift, showed the letter-writers that someone cared about them, even though they had no idea who this mysterious 'B. Virdot' was -- a man who claimed to have known hard times himself but had overcome them.

Gup's book began by a chance revelation -- he discovered that the 'B. Virdot' was actually his grandfather. After reading the letters that had been sent to 'B. Virdot' (whose real name was Sam Stone), Gup was determined to bring the stories of the letters back to the light of day. The poverty chronicled in The Secret Gift recalls more that of a Third World country than what we would recognize today as America. There was also a spiritual poverty -- people were loosing faith, given their level of desperation. What is so striking about the letters of Gup's book is the level of psychological as well as physical misery chronicled by the subjects. People literally had no hope -- they felt that they had exercised every possible chance to get a job and to improve their circumstances. This stands in profound contrast to the famous stoicism and optimism that the Greatest Generation of Americans was said to have exhibited during the Depression.

A number of systemic factors contributed to the extremity of suffering during the Great Depression. There was no system of public relief, and the indigent were left to rely largely on private charities. There was also a strong moral resistance to taking 'handouts' amongst the poor, which is one reason that B. Virdot said he was particularly interested in hearing from people who might not normally solicit aid. Many of the families were very large, far larger than is the norm today, and sometimes children would write on behalf of parents who were too proud to pen letters themselves. One of the most frequent requests in the letter was for money for food. Many chronicled sickness, like T.B. And polio, reflecting the poorer state of medicine of the era. Some were very short, because of the limited literacy or youth of the writer while others were very long, as if the writer was taking advantage of the opportunity to unburden himself of his emotional angst as well as ask for money.

The wide social stratum represented in the letters, from the uneducated writing on the back of envelopes to executives writing on the stationary of businesses that had gone bankrupt show how the Great Depression had affected every level of American society. Unlike our current recession, which tended to affect specific demographic groups and professions more than others, the Great Depression was pervasive. This may have been why people were more supportive of deeper and systemic reform to address the abuses that had caused the Crash.