A2: History

James Tobin, in an essay published on The Cutting Edge, describes the memoirs of Edmund G. Love, who wrote about his years in Ann Arbor attending UM during the 1930s, and the impact of the Great Depression: “By today’s standards his expenses look paltry – $49 for a semester’s tuition; $30 for books and fees; $80 for room rent; two meals a day at his fraternity for $10 a week; breakfasts at a diner totalling $1 a week – yet there was never enough to be sure of getting through the term. In the fall of 1932 ‘the Ann Arbor that I went back to was like a ghost town.’ Of 28 members of his fraternity’s pledge class, only six remained in school, while the fraternity as a whole had dropped from 70 to 32, and ‘all the campus gathering places had closed.’” [Source]