The 4th Turning
In Part One of this article, I made a fact-based case that most Americans are experiencing an economic depression on par with the Great Depression of the 1930’s. In Part Two I will compare and contrast two very different men who raised the spirits of the common man during difficult economic times. As we approach the perilous portion of this Fourth Turning, it will take more than hope to get us through to the other side.
Cinderella Man
Likening Braddock to Trump might seem far-fetched until you think about parallels between the economic conditions during the 1930’s and today, along with the deepening mood of crisis, despair, and anger at the establishment. Braddock’s career coincided with the last Fourth Turning. James J. Braddock was born in 1905, to Irish immigrant parents Joseph Braddock and Elizabeth O’Toole Braddock in a tiny apartment on West 48th Street in New York City. His life personified that of a GI Generation hero. One of seven children, Jimmy enjoyed playing marbles, baseball and hanging around the old swimming hole on the edge of the Hudson River as a youngster. He discovered his passion for boxing as a teenager.Braddock remembered the humiliation of having to accept government relief money and paid it all back with the prize money he earned from his fights. He also made frequent donations to various Catholic Worker Houses, including feeding homeless guests with his family. He never forgot where he came from. He was one of the common men. When his rags to riches story got out, renowned sportswriter Damon Runyon dubbed him “The Cinderella Man“, and before long Braddock came to represent the hopes and aspirations of the American public struggling during the Great Depression. The year was 1935, with the majority of Americans still facing a bleak daily existence.
Max Baer, the heavyweight champion, had a reputation as a destructive puncher and possibly the hardest hitter of all time. He had killed a man in the ring in 1930. On the evening of June 13th, 1935 at Madison Square Garden Braddock, an 8 to 1 underdog, entered the ring to face Baer. Jim knew he could beat Baer if he stayed away from his hammering right hand, and that’s just what he did. In an amazing feat of courage and determination, Braddock won the 15 round decision to become the new heavyweight champion of the world. It was considered one of the greatest upsets in boxing history. The “Cinderella Man” had fulfilled the dreams and hopes of the common people, giving them a reason to battle on through those tough times.
Damon Runyan described the event in newspapers across the country the next morning:
Coming into the ring on the short end of the unheard-of price of 8 to 1 with even money he does not come out for the tenth round, and with his chances so little regarded that the crowd does not half fill the “graveyard of champions,” Braddock fights from the opening bell with the desperation of a man leading a forlorn hope.
Brought back from Hasbeenville by the magic wave of the wand of sheer chance, after being such a down-and-outer that he had to go on relief in his home State of New Jersey at $24 per month to provide food for his wife and three children, James J. Braddock at 29 years of age suddenly finds himself occupying the pinnacle of the pugilistic heap, with an utterly new life before him.
At the close of the fight, while the fighters are awaiting the announcement of the decision, the crowd begins filing out, knowing beforehand what the verdict will be, and so ends the fistic fairy tale, as all fairy tales should end, with the poor abused hero finding his pumpkins of failure turned into prancing white steeds of glittering success and his feet incased in the glass slippers of happiness, if you can follow all this twisted metaphor.
Anyway, so ends the strange story of James J. Braddock “the Cinderella Man” of Fistiana. And you cannot match his story anywhere in the realm of the most fantastic fiction.
Braddock lost his heavyweight title two years later in an 8 round KO to “The Brown Bomber”, Joe Louis. He retired after a final win over Tommy Farr in 1938. The beacon of hope for millions had done his part to revive the spirits of a country in crisis. And in true GI Generation fashion, at the age of 37, Jim and his manager both enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942 where they became 1st Lieutenants. Upon his return, he helped construct the Verrazano Bridge, raising his family, and living out his life as a business owner, happily married to his wife Mae until the day he died in 1974. He was the epitome of everything noble, good, honorable and proud about this country.
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