s America, which arose in specific response to the military needs of the war. This is reflected in the remembrance of a small-town girl from Illinois who saw the town change from a rural backwater to a war-driven boom town.
Around late 1940, we began hearing rumors that the government was going to build a shipyard here. The men who did not have work were excited. We were still feeling the Depression. The trucks began rolling in with great loads of material. In my lifetime, we never had this traffic. Then came the new people, cars and cars and cars . . . All of a sudden Seneca and the surrounding area had about 27,000 . . . Everybody took in boarders. Then the government built barracks and new housing for the workers . . . Oh yes, the war changed my life. I went to work in a doctor's office. Otherwise, I would have lived my life out keeping house and washing clothes (Terkel, 1984, pp. 305-306).
The wide-ranging demands of the government offered a number of opportunities to those with a little capital and a lot of willingness to take a risk in such areas as government contracting or real estate speculation. The government in many ways subsidized the whole of the economy in pursuit of its goals. The demand for war products and services that would make the government bureaucracy run smoothly proved decisive even before America entered the war. This is the background for one storekeeper-accountant's recollection of the post-depression economy.
The Depression ended with the war in Europe. The (food) market business at once ceased to be competitive. The problem of making money disappeared. It became automatic. The immediate concern was how to avoid taxes. All of a sudden, there was an excess-profits tax. It was avoided by increasing officers' salaries, inflating expense accounts, and handing out large bonuses. I remember salesmen coming in to sell you gadgets or systems. Their first selling point was: "It d...