by W. H. Auden

Riding the Rails
W. H. Auden's early poetry reflects his concerns about the Great Depression and its adverse affects upon England's working-class citizens. In the United States, nearly every family was affected by the Depression's economic slump. This PBS site describes the story of 250,000 teenagers who were forced by economic necessity to take to America's railways during the 1930s. With a small group of classmates, lead a discussion about how your lives would change if another economic crisis caused unemployment to rise to 30 percent.