FOREWORD4
FORTUNE.COM// JA N.1.
IN MARCH 1961, JOHN DAVENPORT,a venerable writer who for years sat on
Fortune’s erstwhile “board of editors,” wrote a nearly 6,000-word feature
for the magazine titled, “In the Midst of Plenty.” Its premise was straight-
forward: Although poverty in the U.S. had been eased substantially in the
previous generations, there were still 32 million Americans living “below
the line,” as Davenport put it.
“To diminish poverty has always been the American business—the
business of the individual, the corporation, private philanthropy, and, by
changing means, the business of government,” he wrote. Such a mission
was very much in the service of the nation’s ideals, and also ofFortune’s.
This is the publication, after all, that dispatched writer James Agee and
photographer Walker Evans to chronicle the hardscrabble life of sharecrop-
pers in Alabama—the story that ultimately became the bookLet Us Now
Praise Famous Men, though it never appeared in the magazine’s pages. This
is the brand that sent a writer in 1932 to investigate a nationwide epidemic
of dilapidated housing; and that, in 1989, assigned John Huey—a charis-
matic Southern journalist who would later sit atopFortune’s masthead and,
thankfully, hire me some years later—to write a thoughtful and enterprising
feature on how to win the war on poverty. The notion that “American pov-
erty” persisted, in spite of what was then the longest peacetime economicpowerful special report on the
shrinking middle class (please
see page 52). The effort brought
together the talents of 19 writ-
ers, five editors, three copy
editors, 12 photographers (in 12
different cities), three photo edi-
tors, four video producers, two
illustrators, two designers, and
one data visualization artist—
people in all.
But in that phenomenally tal-
ented and tireless crowd, there is
one who stands out—and that’s
Fortune digital editor Andrew
Nusca, who conceived of this
important editorial conversation
months ago and, with a keen eye
and intellectual rigor, guided the
army of journalists above from
start to finish.
The story, at its heart—as with
all the other great features cited
above—isn’t really about the di-
viding lines of class and wealth;
it’s about a nation’s soul. As John
Davenport wrote in 1961, “the
continuing struggle against dis-
tress is still the great ‘unfinished
business’ of America.”
I’m so grateful I can count on
my brilliantFortune colleagues
to carry on the work.expansion in history, “stands as
the nation’s most conspicuous
failing,” Huey wrote.
Funny how history repeats
itself.
These stories were neither
“left” nor “right”; for all the
shock of the subject matter,
Fortune’s frequently conserva-
tive writers and editors offered
(mostly) nongovernment rem-
edies and feared the specters
of regulation and aggressive
redistribution. The magazine’s
primary roles, rather, were to
probe, to scrutinize, and to
stand witness.
That, indeed, is the spirit
that motivates this issue’sCLIFTON LEAF
Editor-in-Chief,Fortune
@CliftonLeafHotel worker Larrilou Carumba displays
a 21st-century American rallying cry.UNFINISHED BUSINESS