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‘Diary’ proves to be popular
YOUNGSTOWN — Atty. Daniel B. Roth’s first assignment when he joined his father’s Youngstown law firm in 1956 was to read his parent’s diary about the Great Depression.
“I didn’t have any clients of my own, and he said the only way I could help his clients was to understand what happened to them during the Depression. I never knew the diary existed before that,” Roth said.
Roth, of Canfield, is chairman of Roth Blair Roberts Strasfeld & Lodge, the firm founded by his father, Benjamin Roth, in the early 1920s when he settled here after serving in the Army during World War I.
The diary remained relatively unknown outside the Roth family until the recent publication of a 10-year portion of the document, “The Great Depression: A Diary,” which chronicles the elder Roth’s observations on the economy during the Great Depression from 1931 to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Benjamin Roth’s diary is no longer unknown.
The book, released to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Oct. 29, 1929, stock-market crash, which set the stage for the Great Depression, has attracted national and international attention.
Roth said he is “blown away” by the reception the book has received. He said national publications have praised it; he received a call from an official in Brazil expressing interest; and several universities, including Notre Dame, are carrying the book.
One reviewer said “Benjamin Roth has left us with a vivid portrait of the Great Depression that is all the more powerful for the similarities and differences with the financial upheavals of today.”
“You can pick up this book and turn to almost any page and see something that you read that day in the Wall Street Journal. Quite frankly, it’s frightening to me,” said Roth, who began editing his father’s diary about a year ago along with James Ledbetter, editor of The Big Money, a financial site run by Slate.
The first entry in the diary was June 5, 1931. On Aug. 5, 1931, he wrote, in part: “The town [Youngstown] is stunned by the news” that several savings and loans had suspended payments and would demand 60 days’ notice of withdrawals.”
Roth wrote: “All of these loan companies paid 51‚Ñ2 percent on savings deposits and earned their money by lending on real estate. With the coming of the Depression, people stopped payments on the mortgages. Mortgages became frozen, and the banks had no way to get cash. Mortgages are a safe investment but cannot be liquidated quickly and are not a good investment for a bank which has agreed to pay out its deposits on demand.”
Roth and Ledbetter participated in a book-signing event Saturday at the Youngstown Center of Industry and Labor hosted by Barnes & Noble booksellers.
Roth said there is no personal information in his father’s diary about family and friends even though he struggled to feed his family through 10 years of the Great Depression.
Neither does he criticize people or their ideas. Rather he studied them to determine whether or not they worked or failed, Roth said.
His goal was to chronicle and understand what causes economic crises such as the Great Depression and how people should try to protect their own capital.
He watched the stock market closely at a time when he had no money to invest, in an attempt to understand. He studied past depressions and how financially successful people invested, Ledbetter said.
Roth said his father continued to write in the diary until shortly before his death in 1978.
Among the more interesting aspects of the diary, Roth said, are the times when his father went back in time and added comments.
“He was very quick to correct himself. You will find annotations saying ‘I was wrong,’” Roth said.
What comes out of this is the picture of a man desperately trying to figure out how to feed his family, yet he comes to the office every day and writes about local, national and global economies, Roth said.
“He never lost faith in America and the capitalistic system and in Youngstown,” Roth said.