[Tokhtamish]

So if "free trade" is what caused the moral collapse, why was there no moral collapse in the poorer communities in the 1930s (as you claim)?

To a degree there most definitely was. "Dead End Kids" hinted at the problem, gangs and delinquency rising as the family structure breaks down. Remember the scene in "Gold Diggers of 1936" where Joan Blondell pleads that if Dick Powell backs out of financing the Broadway show they desparately need a lot of the chorus girls are going to be hooking ?

By 1940 things were sorting themselves out. In the booming wartime economy the damage was healed. It takes more than 10 years for a working class to sink to underclass level. But then again, that was in the context of the more Christian culture of pre-1965 America. Things move quicker now.

[Texas_Dawg]

To a degree there most definitely was.

So which is it? Yesterday you were saying it was one of the most moral and church-going times in our nation. What was different about that period of extreme poverty than now (even though we really are much wealthier)?