参考译文：

大萧条中，人们被恐惧所笼罩

1929年美国股票市场的崩盘标志着美国历史上最为严重的经济危机的开始。数百万人失去了工作，数以千计的人失去了家园。在此后的几年里，这个地球上最富裕的国家终于知道了什么叫贫穷。工人们因工厂倒闭而失去工作，企业主们失去了他们的店面，有时甚至失去了家园，农民在与不断下跌的农产品价格和自然灾害抗争中失去了土地。然而，美国并不是唯一一个在此大萧条中遭受摧残的国家。本周，我们就向你讲述这场后来演变成大萧条的经济危机。

约翰.斯坦贝克(John Steinbeck)，美国最著名的作家之一，他这样描写此次大萧条：“我无法想象在美国历史上任何一个十年会在如此多的方面，发生如此大的变化，猛烈的变化，我们的国家在发展，我们的生活在变化，我们的政府在重建。”斯坦贝克，这位于1962年获得诺贝尔文学奖的作家曾经说道：“当股票市场崩溃后，工矿企业关门，因而没有一个人能够去买什么东西，甚至是食品。”

在密歇根州的底特律，有一位汽车工人这样描述当时的情景：“天还没亮，我们就行走在前往雪佛兰汽车公司 (Chevrolet factory) 找工作的路上，而警察已经在那了，他们向我们挥手，示意我们离开，他们说：“没有什么可做的，没有工作，没有工作!”于是我们心情沉重地离开，在大雪纷飞之时，我们又慢慢地前往道奇汽车公司(Dodge auto company)找工作。一位高大肥胖、穿着厚重大衣的人站在大门口对我们说：“没有，没有，这里没有工作!”一位德克萨斯州的农民失去了自己的农场，于是他们迁移到加州，他说：“我无法让我的孩子上学，因为他们连衣服都没有。”

这场经济危机始于1929年10月的股票崩盘。在危机发生的第一年，美国经济下降还是缓慢的，但到了1931年和1932年，美国经济急速下滑，到1932年底，美国经济几乎陷于崩溃。在股票市场崩溃后的三年里，美国生产总值下降了近一半，美国人的生活水平甚至比25年前还低。在上世纪二十年代美国所创造的财富完全消失。失业率急剧上升，失业人数从3%急剧上升到25%，1932年，在三到四个人中就有一个在寻找工作。

这些寻找工作的人还不包括农民，这些为国家种植粮食的男男女女在大萧条时期遭受到严重的损失，特别是在俄克拉荷马州和德克萨斯州。由于农产品价格下跌，农民收入下降，又遭受严重的自然灾害，连续多年的干旱，风一刮，到处的都是沙尘。有一位俄克拉荷马州的农民后来回忆道：“严重的风沙使得一些农民离开了这里，但我们家没有离开，我们为生活而斗争，尽管风沙严重，我们仍然在种植，但我们没有什么收成，在五年中，我们连续五年歉收。”

生产下降，失业率上升，人们开始上街乞讨。但在大萧条中，悲惨的事还远不止这些。在当时，联邦政府没有为储蓄银行设立存款准备金，因此，当人们无力偿还贷款时，银行就关门了。在1929年，有659家银行关门歇业，这些银行总共有2 亿美元存款。第二年，有两倍的银行倒闭，而到第三年，又有近两倍的银行歇业。数百万人失去了他们的银行存款，他们没有钱了!

大萧条还引起了人们的健康问题。全国的医院里住满了病人，这些病人主要是由于食品的缺乏而生病的。纽约市的卫生局发现，该市每五个孩子中就有一个食品缺乏。据报道，美国一个煤矿区的一所学校里的孩子，99%的孩子体重不足。在一些地方，已经出现了饿死人的现象。

人们的居住质量也在下降。为了节省费用，人们不得不挤在小房子里或挤在公寓里，而许多人根本就没有住房，他们就住在大街上、公交车上或火车上。1931年，有一位芝加哥的官员报告说，有数百名无家可归的妇女睡在该市的公园里。在许多城市，无家可归的人，利用一切他们所能找到的材料来自己建房，他们用空箱子或金属片在空旷区建他们的掩体。

人们把这种临时性的小小的住房区称之为“胡佛村庄”，他们因自己所面临的处境而指责胡佛总统，他们在晚上就睡在公园里，身上盖的是纸片，于是他们又把这称之为“胡佛毯”。身无分文的人把他们的裤子称之为“胡佛旗”。人们之所以指责胡佛总统，是因为他们认为胡佛总统没有尽力帮助他们。胡佛为改善经济状况采取了一些措施，但他反对以联邦政府提供援助为主要措施的建议，他拒绝让联邦政府的预算出现赤字。

胡佛对国民说：经济衰退不能通过立法或行政手段来治愈。“许多保守的美国人同意他的观点，但不包括数百万忍饥挨饿和四处寻找工作的人，他们指责胡佛不关心普通民众。有一位来自阿拉巴马州的国会议员说：“在白宫，有一个人，他对富人的财富的兴趣要远大于对穷人的胃的兴趣。”

大萧条在持续。当然有一些美国人还是很幸运的，他们保住了他们的工作，而且，当时绝大多数商品的价格都非常低，他们有足够的钱尽情地享受，他们中的许多人帮助他们的朋友。几年后，约翰.斯坦贝克写到：“现在说我们几乎没有工作似乎是多余的，但那时真的没有什么工作。”但他接着说道：“送给你大海和花园，我们几乎没有什么小偷，我们不必去偷什么东西。”他解释说：“农民无法出售他们的农产品，所以他们就把所有的水果蔬菜都扔了，因而人们就可以把这些水果蔬菜捡回家。

还有些人通过抗议胡佛政府的经济政策来表明他们对这场经济危机的态度。在1932年，一大群退伍士兵聚集在华盛顿，要求政府为他们提供帮助。他们中的8000多人在白宫的附近建起了美国最大的胡佛村庄。最后联邦军队用武力赶走了他们，并烧毁了这些临时住所。

下周，我们将看看大萧条对其他国家的影响。

简评：

都说上世纪二十年代末三十年代初的经济大萧条非常严重，但到底如何严重法，我们不得而知。今天看到这篇文章，想一想都感到可怕。美国辉煌的二十年，在大萧条的短短三四年中，其成就殆尽。国内生产总值下降近半，人们的生活水平倒退二十五年，衣不遮体、沿街乞讨、无家可归、银行存款消失、因饥饿而死的大有人在。这场经济危机，其破坏程度、影响范围远远超过一场大地震。

因此，保持经济持续健康稳定的发展，对于一国来说至关重要。不要让欲望冲晕了我们的头脑，不要让悲剧再一次上演。

Fear Takes Hold During the Great Depression 

The son of a Depression-era refugee from Oklahoma who moved to California 大萧条时期的孩子从俄克拉荷马向加州迁移

The stock market crash of nineteen twenty-nine marked the beginning of the worst economic crisis in American history. Millions of people lost their jobs. Thousands lost their homes. During the next several years, a large part of the richest nation on earth learned what it meant to be poor. Workers lost their jobs as factories closed. Business owners lost their stores and sometimes their homes. Farmers lost their land as they struggled with falling prices and natural disasters. And Americans were not the only ones who suffered. This week in our series, we talk about the economic crisis that became the Great Depression.

One of America's greatest writers, John Steinbeck, described the depression this way: "It was a terrible, troubled time. I can't think of any ten years in history when so much happened in so many directions. Violent change took place. Our country was shaped, our lives changed, our government rebuilt." Steinbeck, winner of the nineteen sixty-two Nobel Prize in literature, said: "When the market fell, the factories, mines, and steelworks closed and then no one could buy anything, not even food."

An unemployed auto worker in Detroit, Michigan, described the situation this way: "Before daylight, we were on the way to the Chevrolet factory to look for work. The police were already there, waving us away from the office. They were saying, 'Nothing doing! No jobs! No jobs!' So now we were walking slowly through the falling snow to the employment office for the Dodge auto company. A big, well-fed man in a heavy overcoat stood at the door. 'No! No!' he said. There was no work." One Texas farmer lost his farm and moved his family to California to look for work. "We can't send the children to school," he said, "because they have no clothes."

The economic crisis began with the stock market crash in October nineteen twenty-nine. For the first year, the economy fell very slowly. But it dropped sharply in nineteen thirty-one and nineteen thirty-two. And by the end of nineteen thirty-two, the economy collapsed almost completely. During the three years following the stock market crash, the value of goods and services produced in America fell by almost half. The wealth of the average American dropped to a level lower than it had been twenty-five years earlier. All the gains of the nineteen twenties were washed away. Unemployment rose sharply. The number of workers looking for a job jumped from three percent to more than twenty-five percent in just four years. One of every three or four workers was looking for a job in nineteen thirty-two.

Those employment numbers did not include farmers. The men and women who grew the nation's food suffered terribly during the Great Depression. This was especially true in two states, Oklahoma and Texas. Farmers there were losing money because of falling prices for their crops. Then natural disaster struck. Year after year, little or no rain fell. The ground dried up. And then the wind blew away the earth in huge clouds of dust. "All that dust made some of the farmers leave," one Oklahoma farmer remembered later. "But my family stayed. We fought to live. Despite all the dust and the wind, we were planting seeds. But we got no crops. We had five crop failures in five years."

Falling production. Rising unemployment. Men begging in the streets. But there was more to the Great Depression. At that time, the federal government did not guarantee the money that people put in banks. When people could not repay loans, banks began to close. In nineteen twenty-nine, six hundred fifty-nine banks with total holdings of two-hundred-million dollars went out of business. The next year, two times that number failed. And the year after that, almost twice that number of banks went out of business. Millions of persons lost all their savings. They had no money left.

The depression caused serious public health problems. Hospitals across the country were filled with sick people whose main illness was a lack of food. The health department in New York City found that one of every five of the city's children did not get enough food. Ninety-nine percent of the children attending a school in a coal-mining area of the country reportedly were underweight. In some places, people died of hunger.

The quality of housing also fell. Families were forced to crowd into small houses or apartments to share costs. Many people had no homes at all. They slept on public streets, buses or trains. One official in Chicago reported in nineteen thirty-one that several hundred women without homes were sleeping in city parks. In a number of cities, people without homes built their houses from whatever materials they could find. They used empty boxes or pieces of metal to build shelters in open areas.

People called these areas of little temporary houses "Hoovervilles." They blamed President Hoover for their situation. So, too, did the men forced to sleep in public parks at night. They covered themselves with pieces of paper. And they called the paper "Hoover blankets." People without money in their pants called their empty pockets "Hoover flags." People blamed President Hoover because they thought he was not doing enough to help them. Hoover did take several actions to try to improve the economy. But he resisted proposals for the federal government to provide aid in a major way. And he refused to let the government spend more money than it earned.

Hoover told the nation: "Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive decision." Many conservative Americans agreed with him. But not the millions of Americans who were hungry and tired of looking for a job. They accused Hoover of not caring about common citizens. One congressman from Alabama said: "In the White House, we have a man more interested in the money of the rich than in the stomachs of the poor." 

On and on the Great Depression continued. Of course, some Americans were lucky. They kept their jobs. And they had enough money to enjoy the lower prices of most goods. Many people shared their earnings with friends in need. Years later, John Steinbeck wrote: "It seems odd now to say that we rarely had a job. There just weren't any jobs." But, he continued, "Given the sea and the gardens, we did pretty well with a minimum of theft. We didn't have to steal much." Farmers could not sell their crops, he explained, so they gave away all the fruit and vegetables that people could carry home.

Other Americans reacted to the crisis by leading protests against the economic policies of the Hoover administration. In nineteen thirty-two, a large group of former soldiers gathered in Washington to demand help. More than eight thousand of them built the nation's largest Hooverville near the White House. Federal troops finally removed them by force and burned their shelters.

Next week, we will look at how the Great Depression of the nineteen thirties affected other countries.

http://www.21voa.com/path.asp?url=/201102/se-nation-177-great-depression-24feb11.mp3