But Harriet continues, “We’re the educated classes. We’re the strength of the nation! What’re we going to do about it? What’re we going to do about the drought?”
Harriet’s friends say nothing. Finally, the orchestra ends the awkward silence, striking up the tune “Just a Gigolo.” The final scene takes place in the drought-stricken South. Ed Wardell and his wife, fearing retribution from government troops for the attack on the food supply, send their two young sons away to keep them from trouble. “Try to remember all you’ve seen here,” Ed Wardell tells his sons. “Remember that every man…ought to have a right to work and eat. Every man ought to have a right to think things out for himself.”
The Vassar production of Can You Hear Their Voices?, in May of 1931, came just a few months after an historic debate in Washington about how to deal with the growing desperation of people on farms and in cities throughout the country. On one side were President Herbert Hoover and his allies, who insisted that private charity could handle the problem. Hoover looked to the past for reinforcement, quoting President Grover Cleveland’s dictum that “though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.” Government loans, which promoted self-help, were all right, but direct aid to hungry people was dangerous. The “dole,” Hoover darkly insisted, would lead to an “abyss of reliance in future upon government charity.”
Hoover had powerful allies in Congress. “Isn’t it better,” asked Senator Hiram Bingham of Connecticut, “to follow the regular American procedure and give the people a chance to feel the joy of giving voluntarily?” If federal aid were given, argued House Republican floor leader James Q. Tilson, the “principled…will cripple themselves…in an attempt to repay it, and the idle and shiftless…will live off the Federal Government as long as the opportunity exists.” Besides, Tilson insisted, the drought was a temporary setback which “a sturdy class of Americans possessing…an indomitable will” could overcome in a matter of months.
On the other side of the debate were those who believed the federal government had an obligation to its citizens in time of need. In the words of Senator Alben Barkley, “the people have the right to relief from the treasury which they have helped to fill.” These Democrats and insurgent Republicans argued that the situation required extraordinary measures. “We have just gone through the most devastating drought in history,” Senator T.H. Caraway of Arkansas told his colleagues, “and are in the throes of the greatest depression since the Civil War.”
The position of Hoover and his allies led them to absurd extremes. They were willing to support a bill which gave millions in farm loans for purchasing seed and food for livestock, while vetoing a measure that would feed farmers. As one senator observed during the proceedings, “you cannot rehabilitate farms with dead farmers.”
