Oh, sure, we have another world war coming, and another great depression, but where are the leaders this time?

World War II ended the Great Depression with one of the great public-private industrial collaborations in the history of man.

The Great War proved how confused the world is. Depression is proving it again.

I am, as it happens, a baby boomer, but not one who feels any broad-gauge nostalgia for the '60s and '70s. My attitude resembles that of my parents, who were born in the '20s and lived through the Great Depression and World War II.

But through world wars and a Great Depression, through painful social upheaval and a Cold War, and now through the attacks of September 11, 2001, our Nation has indeed survived.

The Great Depression of the 1930s saw more American unmarried women working from nine to five, mostly in repetitive, boring, subordinate, dead-end jobs. But the number of working women doubled between 1870 and 1940. During World War II it doubled once again.