Detroit hasn’t always been on the ropes. Back in 1935, when we still hadn’t completely recovered from the Great Depression, an article appeared in “The American Mercury” entitled “Detroit the Dynamic.” In those days, morale in Motown was high. The workers were the best in the country and knew it. America was leaving the hard times behind, and Detroit was leading the way. Optimism prevailed, and “Detroit the Dynamic” reflected it. Some excerpts:
“This life, to be known and appreciated, must be experienced as Detroit commoners live it, and witnessed with their vision. Then it appears as the best that America has to offer.”
“Detroit calls up the most intelligent and energetic laborers of the land, even as California lures the bums. Candidates for jobs are rigorously culled in the great shops. The survivors are, beyond question, the pick of plain Americans.”
“…Detroit was agitated by the Dionne quintuplets to a degree reached by the folk of no other region. The appeal was simply to Detroit’s ruling spirit – mass production.”
“This is the Detroit of the Detroiters: first, of course, the automobile capital of the world; then, the city of champions – Joe Louis, the Tigers, the Redwings; …the patriotic community that put on the most monstrous of American Legion parades; the music capital that presents Gargantuan outdoor festivals of song; the financial center that produced the most prodigious banking crash of the Depression;… the scene of the colossal spectacle and the nations’s hugest crowds; the city that calls itself Detroit the Dynamic.”
You can read the whole article here. It makes you think. Times change. The changes aren’t always in the direction of “progress.” If what’s happened to Detroit is what Greenspan refers to as “creative destruction,” then the destruction part has spun out of control. The last time I was driving through the area, I heard a radio announcer scornfully proclaim there was no one left in Detroit now but the mice. May the day never come when a radio announcer can say that about America.
