Journalist Bruce Ramsey unrolls the story of people facing disaster of the like most had never seen. Seattle in the Great Depression tells the story of how reckless risk-takers wrecked two of the city’s big savings-and-loan associations. He describes how local leaders grappled with the problem of providing for the idle, and the struggles over who should work and how they would be paid.
Of all the decades of the 20th century, the 1930s was the decade of radical and utopian ideas, of Technocrats, Townsendites and Communists, and the earnest and sometimes zany characters offering a new world. Seattle in the Great Depression tells the story of the radicals who took over the Democratic Party in King County and challenged the state’s Democratic governor, who wanted nothing to do with them. It tells the story of Seattle’s populist mayor, John Dore; Teamster boss Dave Beck, and J.D. Ross of City Light and his fight with the Puget Sound Power & Light Company for the loyalty of Seattle ratepayers.
Ramsey is a Washington writer and researcher retired from a 37-year career in newspapers and magazines as a business reporter, editor and columnist in Seattle and Hong Kong. He worked six years on this book. Seattle in the Great Depression offers readers stories they have never heard.