Trouble On The Land

It is a painful thing sometimes to read history books that are written for children, and to realize the view of the past that is being given them. Recently I happened upon Volume 14 of the American Heritage New Illustrated History of the United States. It was subtitled The Roosevelt Era. The author of Volume 14 provides his young readers with a year-by-year chronicle for the 1930's I quote from the section for the year 1935: During the year, Technicolor came to the movie screen, and the WPA Federal Arts Project came to the aid of hungry artists, many of whom had a built-in predilection for the "Ash Can School" of painting — stark slum scenes being a favorite subject. Plays expressed the same preoccupation with social messages in this period.... In the world of fiction, William Faulkner was gaining worldwide praise for his naturalistic novels portraying for the most part sordid slices of low-class life in the South. Within this realm, Erskine Caldwell had recently con- tributed Tobacco Road. The third book of James Farrell's Studs Lonigan trilogy appeared in 1935, looking at squalor further north, in Chicago

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