What led Harburg to write the song, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”

• WorldlyGlass49: The correct answer is the second sentence actually "the realization that the prosperity of the past was completely gone and very unlikely to return"
  
  Harburg wanted to show that many people, including him, cannot comprehend how all these men who built the nation are now begging for money and can barely survive. The realization that America is falling apart is tragic for them.
• cnavia19:

  Answer:

  The correct answer is actually the second one: the realization that the prosperity of the past was completely gone and very unlikely to return.

  Explanation:

  "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" is a song that was composed by E.Y "Yip" Harburg and Jay Gorney, in 1930, and it was based on a lullaby that Gorney had known from his childhood. It was also highly criticized as it was seen by Republicans as an antti-capitalist propaganda. In an interview, one of the song´s creators, Gorney, explained himself the origin and reason for their song and he himself said that it was meant as a means to make Americans think about the situation of people who had lost it all, even after having given it all to their country, in benefit of their country, and were now ignored by their people. These were his exact words: "I didn´t want a song to depress people. I wanted to write a song to make people think. It isn´t a hand-me-out song of "give me a dime, I´m starving, I´m bitter." It wasn´t that kind of sentimentality." (Jay Gorney).