Book 4: Merely Passing Through, Three o'Clock in the Morning, A Cable Summary and Analysis

This chapter concerns people that were not as overtly affected by the Depression. One man never bought anything on credit; so as prices dropped he bought a Studebaker and began investing in new businesses. Most affecting in the chapter is Scoop Lankford, who was in a federal prison in the thirties. He acknowledges that during the Great Depression, conditions inside worsened, but he feels that the walls essentially shielded prisoners from the worst of the degradation.

In this chapter, Terkel interviews the inebriated journalist Wilbur Kane, who recalls the joyous night when his leftist family sat in a room with a group of Nazi sympathizers and listened to Joe Louis defeat the German boxer Max Schmeling. By the end of the...