[jasonraymondson]

What this country and world need, is another hitler.

Nothing like Hitler to make people forget about the little things, like no food

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FloridaGirl', 'W')hat strikes me was how well dressed the people in the bread lines were. Makes me think that these were pretty properous people just before the depression.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jasonraymondson', 'W')hat this country and world need, is another hitler.

Nothing like Hitler to make people forget about the little things, like no food

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('IanC', '
')That's what scares me most about the coming collapse - we have no strong norms of behavior and civility to fall back on.

[seahorse2]

I noticed those guys standing in the bread lines were wearing suits and ties, not baggy pants with their underwear hanging out. Somehow, I just don't see guys in baggy pants with their underwear hanging out standing in line for "bread." In fact, I think they will be looking to take the "bread" of anyone dumb enough to wear a suit and tie.

[Cid_Yama]

There won't be anyone handing out bread. Or soup. This will be so overwhelming, that those expecting help will die waiting.

[deMolay]

Gee looks like Hoover was a big spender on social programs and a big Gubmint interventionist in the economy. Kinda like what we are doing right now. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1225760 ... 5545.html#

[kjmclark]

There have been a lot of articles about myths from the great depression lately. Thanks for this one, I appreciate the additional information about Hoover.

Here's a question: these days, we tend to blame Smoot-Hawley for much of the problem, since it supposedly set off a tariff war and shut down international trade. But right now, international trade is falling off, even though we have no equivalent to Smoot-Hawley. The unstated assumption of Great Depression history is that if they hadn't passed Smoot-Hawley, international trade would have quickly recovered and the Depression would have ended much earlier. But we don't really know that, do we?

There are actually quite a few things we think we learned about the Great Depression that are really untested assumptions. Right now, the Fed is trying to apply the "learned" lesson that if banks stop lending, the whole economy will shut down. But what if Mish is right, and the economy will shut down anyway, because we're in the midst of a massive deleveraging that will happen whether banks have money to lend or not. We *assume* that the cessation of bank lending caused the deleveraging, but what if it's the other way around? If most people/companies need to reduce their debt, to whom are the banks going to lend?

[DaleFromCalgary]

"If most people/companies need to reduce their debt, to whom are the banks going to lend?"

I think this sums up the basic concern of the after-effects of the Panic of 2008. We have developed a society that depends on consumer spending, instead of putting its money into more useful things such as better roads and bridges or social services.

Knowing human nature, I am cynical about for how long people make the effort to reduce their personal debt. Once the Panic blows over about 2010 or 2011, I can see the mass media proclaiming "Happy days are here again!", and everyone goes back to treating themselves to $5 coffee and the latest videogame.

Peak Oil on a worldwide basis appears to have been about 2006. Demand destruction will ensure that as we recover from the Panic, we won't go completely back to business as usual because we are also currently going into the next Kondratieff long wave nadir.

[ReverseEngineer]

What is lacking in this analysis is the presence of any workable alternative solution. All the reasons the policies did not work are identified, but no alternative policy which WOULD work is postulated.

Propping up the banks doesn't work, but does allowing them to fail work better? That hasn't been tested yet, though since it appears it will be tested this time regardless of the propping up schemes, we will get to see how that one works also

What do you do in the ABSENCE of creating Public Works projects? Just let the people starve? The Free Market will magically come up with new jobs?

Ben Bernanke, brilliant student of the Great Depression is of course making about all the same mistakes, because the Goal is to Save the System. This time, the system can't be saved though. What nobody here or elsewhere can come up with though is an exact timeline for when it actually comes to a crashing halt and what if anything will come in the aftermath of that.

Reverse Engineer

[gt1370a]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', 'W')hat do you do in the ABSENCE of creating Public Works projects? Just let the people starve? The Free Market will magically come up with new jobs?

[Blueberry]

Typical. We'll be seeing more of this. There is a grey zone of responsible regulation and social program out there, ya know. It's not just socialism or back to Hoover. Big business needs to realize that they have an interest in protecting the people who buy their crap and work in their companies.

For instance -- the US has sent manufacturing overseas. CNN has a current video report. According to their sources, someone in (probably) China (not sure if it's govt or private) has accessed offical US Govt computers 50,000 times in 2008 alone.

Why, they ask, can the Chinese get through the massively complex encription? Because they manufacture it -- if you can even believe that.

The very foundation of our country is being jeopardized by outsourcing. Nudge, nudge, that affect you in the end, too, big biz, and WSJ.

Maybe they'll learn in the end, but maybe they'll Easter Island themselves and everybody else.

[patience]

What can you remember from what survivors of GD told you, that would help us plan and dig in to make it through the current hard times? Not everything is relevant, but I think not much of our needs have changed regarding how we live, cook, stay warm and dry, dress, and get food.

Old folks I grew up with were fond of homely proverbs. Waste not, want not. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Save everything; it will come in handy. Save some money for a rainy day. Such sayings typified how they lived their lives.

A lot of handicrafts and DIY skills were popularized then, such as quilting, whittling, carpentry, weaving (rag rugs, especially), and simple metal work. Even my old Aunt could solder a hole shut in an old pan. Grandma stuffed all the red peppers she could in an old Dr. Pepper bottle (sense of humor there), and filled it with vinegar to make hot sauce for otherwise bland meals. Grandpa cut up an old tin can and following a cardboard pattern he'd worked out, soldered together a small funnel to save a dime. He was a furniture maker, and begged old apple boxes and crates for material to make some homely items like shelving, and birdhouses. In a tiny backyard, they grew tomatoes, and salad stuff. They shut off unused rooms in winter, and never heated bedrooms.

My farmer uncle, after losing one farm when his cannery customer went bankrupt, saved and bought another very poor 40 acres. The ground lacked any fertility, so he and the boys took the farm truck, some barrels, and a big seine to the river and brought home a couple truckloads of fish. The good one went into his pond for future meals, and the trash went onto the corn field for fertilizer, which he plowed under ASAP. Next, he volunteered to clean the houses at the local chicken broiler enterprise, and got several truckloads of free chicken manure. The result was a fine corn crop on what everyone said was a "wore out" farm.

When WWII came along, he needed a tractor, but none were being produced. He built his own with the front half of a Model A Ford, and the back half of a 1 1/2 ton truck, retaining both transmissions to gear it down for slow plowing speeds. Tires were rationed, and expensive, so he used the bald ones he had, and wrapped them with log chains for traction.

Another aunt started a dressmaking business with only a needle and thread, graduating to a treadle sewing machine in a few months. When the brass plating wore off the metal doorknobs in her house, she spent 15 cents on a small bottle of gold paint to spiff them up. A widow, she did everything herself, including making patches for window screens that developed holes. Oatmeal was standard for breakfast at her house, 20 years after she had no pressing need to save money. She squirrelled away money in cash, hidden in vast bookshelves of dress patterns she had collected. My folks found over $500 in $1 bills there, and wondered what they missed.

What ways have you heard, of how people coped back then? Should be instructive for us today.

[Rod_Cloutier]

I can remember stories told to by elder members of my extended family about the great depression.

My great grand father had homesteaded a farm with his wife in southern Saskatchewan in 1898 in Canada. By the 1930's they had raised a family there, pre-birth control years of course with kids of all ages. During the great depression they lost ownership of their land bacause they couldn't pay their taxes. The government auctioned off the land and their neighbor who was concerned about them bought the land from the government at the auction. The neighbor then leased the land back to my great grand father and his family until my great uncle (his son) came to age in the late 1940's and was able to buy the land back with money he made going service in world war II.

During the depression, I've head stories about all the family's kids (ie my grandmother, her sisters and brothers all having to take jobs off the farm to help support the family). My grandmother told me she used to babysit for couples in the nearby town of Redvers; and she witnessed all kinds of horrors; from kids being neglected, kids going hungry, and outright abuse (including sexual abuse) while she worked as a nanny.

I was told their land was low lying by what used to be a swampy area so they always had water (unlike some families that had better farmland with no water). Another great aunt spoke that she does not like to remember about the times when plagues of locust would arrive and devastate everything. You couldn't walk outside without being hit by jumping/flying grasshoppers everywhere. They were so numerous some years they could not even be kept out of the house, so they had to be contended with inside as well.

I will remember things like dandelion salad. (Dandelion leaves are edible and quite good) If things become very bad people will have to learn what is edible in their local enviroment. The 1930 survival skills are just too long gone though, they mostly haven't been passed down through the years.

A depression now would be different, we have computers, and entertainment that will survive from the good years past, pesticides they never had, infrastucture to fall back on that had not be built yet in the 30's, and a greater scientific and technical knowledge than people had back then. It could be a painfull time to live through but it will be very different than the depression of the 1930's.

[oxj]

Mother lived in Brooklyn. Their house was foreclosed in 1933. They lived there another three years without making payments, because it took so long to evict everyone. (Lesson: one doesn't own the house, anyway, the bank does. All one has done was pay rent. They've made their money, yet they still own the house. Let them evict.)

She remembered living on the street for a year. Once her dad got an apple and she was the one to eat it. (Take care of the children.)

When she saw something in a store window, she told her mother that she wanted it. She was slapped across the face without another word from her mother. (Never tempt yourself.)

They never bought another house and lived in an apartment until her parents were deceased. (Apartments offer more freedom and the rent responds to the economy.)

Father lived in Johnson City. Deda i baba came in 1913. Their house was much less costly and was purchased by the depression. (No house is really worth taking more than ten years to pay off.)

Baba grew grapes in her backyard, made wine, and sold it to the police during prohibition because they didn't think she could speak English. (Having one's own language offers a survival advantage.)

[RedStateGreen]

This might have been posted before, but Studs Terkel did a project back in the 70's where he talked to people of all socioeconomic levels about the Depression. You can listen to a lot of them at that link.

My in-laws (who are in their 80's) don't talk about the Depression much, but they both compulsively save stuff and refuse to consider moving (the house is paid off).

My father in law dropped out of school in 10th grade (around 1935-36, I guess, he was born in October 1920) and got into trouble, earning him a stint in the Conservation Corps. He didn't like it much. When he finally ran away from that, he signed up with the military and ended up in the South Pacific in WWII. It was after that when he met my mother in law, who was eight years younger and in high school at the time.

He ended up driving a truck for Safeway for 35 years, then worked as a handyman around the neighborhood until he was 83. He's the sort of guy who can make anything out of anything.

My husband hated their 'cheap' ways, and rants about how they would 'spend three hours to save a nickel'. But then I guess a nickel was worth a lot back in their day.

It seems to me that kids will have a hard time, especially those who are in grammar school right now. The younger ones will be more protected, but those that hit high school when it gets really bad are going to have a rough time of it, as they're not going to find it very relevant to their lives.

[patience]

Great replies! The feet-on-the-ground aspect is what I hoped for here.

RedStateGreen, thanks for the link! It went in my favorites right away.

Some other things I remembered:
Scraps of old harness leather nailed on an uncle's outhouse for door hinges, and him telling of using white Karo syrup to glue his grandad's fiddle back together, after a leaky roof damaged it. My Dad having to move in with my Mom's parent's, when he was out of work, to help Grandpa build wood school bus bodies and coffins--the only work they could get. Later, Grandpa moving from their small town to New Albany, IN, when work ran out altogether. Dad had a truck, so that saved money moving Grandpa's woodworking machines. Since he had no shop building, and no customers there, Grandpa luckily found a job in a furniture factory (he had experience) about 2 miles from his house. He walked to work that winter, to the unheated factory with windows broken out. Always took a couple freshly boiled potatoes as part of his lunch, and carried them in his pockets to keep his hands warm on the way.

Meanwhile, an uncle was working for CCC, I think, as a carpenter building concrete forms for a dam across the Ohio River. The only man he ever knew to QUIT a job during the Depression was a hard-hat diver, who was diving to align pilings they were driving for a cofferdam. He yanked his rope early, and they pulled him up. The boss Threatened to fire him for stopping before his time was up, but he said to hell with that, he quit! The boss was in a bind because divers were hard to find, and asked him to stay then, and was refused. The diver explained that he had been having trouble dodging logs on the river bottom to set the pilings, at least he thought they were logs until one opened its' MOUTH. He said there were catfish down there big enough to swallow him whole, and he wasn't planning on letting that happen. The crowd called him a liar, until he said if you find me a big wrecker truck and gaff hook, I'll show you where to catch one!

edit to add: I have been told when I worked for Ohio River Sand and Gravel Co., that one of their clamshell dredges brought up 400 lb.+ catfish a couple times.

[vision-master]

Corn Flakes with hot water. Milk is for the little ones........

[Schneider]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Repent', '
'). Another great aunt spoke that she does not like to remember about the times when plagues of locust would arrive and devastate everything. You couldn't walk outside without being hit by jumping/flying grasshoppers everywhere. They were so numerous some years they could not even be kept out of the house, so they had to be contended with inside as well.

I will remember things like dandelion salad. (Dandelion leaves are edible and quite good) If things become very bad people will have to learn what is edible in their local enviroment.

The 1930 survival skills are just too long gone though, they mostly haven't been passed down through the years.

[Pops]

Good topic.

The main lessons I think are about want, waste and work.

In the teens my grandfather got oil on the homestead and things were good but by the mid '30s it had dried up for the most part - at least the ROI. This was the hard part, going from poor cattlemen to small-time oil men to flat broke.


My grandmom Bessie sucked the marrow from chicken bones till the day she died. She still saved fabric: my sister made me a quilt from the last squares in her trunk after she passed.

She used salt to keep away ants, bacon fat for shortening and an old window weight heated on the stove and wrapped in newspaper and a towel to keep my feet warm in bed.


I have a little diary my Mom kept when she was around 14 (probably 1938) and traveled with Mom Bessie and my Uncle Em' (no relation to Auntie Em') from South Mo. to Ca to cut apricots. They were gone all summer and arrived back at the homestead in OK with something like $11 and considered the trip a good effort. Her wrist bothered her till she died from that summer vacation.

At about that age my Dad was working the wheat and cotton harvests - this was still in the transition time when it was still mostly stoop labor.


Lots of work and lots of making do and few "wants" had been the rule before GD 1.0 so I think they had a leg up on us. Mom Bessie (born in 1898) never seemed to get out of the old time mode before they had a little oil money but my Mom (1921) never seemed to get over once having stuff and then not.

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure my 5 Rules came from me or them.