Peter Golden 12

September 8, 2003

Abstract

Peter Golden, Max Fisher's biographer, relates what life was like for young Fisher in the 1930s.
Credit: Mort Crim Communications

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By 1933 or ’34, he’s living with his parents. He’s not married. He owns nothing. He drives a company car. And they’re making thousands and thousands of dollars a week, which he just keeps reinvesting in his business. He doesn’t need it; he has no expenses. I tell him he’s the first yuppie, except there was nothing to buy. You have to remember, again, this is part of Max’s experience. What people thought of as middle-class, lets say, in 1930, and what people think of as middle-class today is very, very different. People thought themselves fortunate. And Max will tell you this, and his sisters, who I interviewed. They had clothes, they had enough to eat, his father had a job, and they weren’t sick. That was about as good as it got for most Americans.