Stats of the day

Excerpted from Winston's War:

...It was a matter of fact that Britain and France provided the surge of investment that launched America's wartime boom. In 1939, US gross national output was still below its 1929 level. Anglo-French weapons orders and cash thereafter galvanized US industry, even before Roosevelt's huge domestic arms program took effect. Between 1938 and the end of 1942 average income per family in Boston rose from $2,418 to $3,618 and in Los Angeles from $2,031 to $3,469, figures admittedly boosted by inflation and longer working hours. It could be argued -- and indeed was, by the likes of [some British officials] -- that Britain exhausted its gold and foreign currency reserves to fund America's resurrection from the Depression.

An interesting exogenous factor worth considering, and one that appears to dovetail with this unemployment graphic which shows something of an inflection point around 1940.