Learning more about the Great Depression ...

**ironmaiden** · 10-26-2008, 02:11 PM

I'm reading The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan.
It's about the Dust Bowl.

The cause of the Dust Bowl was the tearing up of the prarie grass to plant wheat. Prices for wheat were high, so the more land you tore up and planted, the more money you'd earn. There were "suitcase" farmers. People who'd stop by a town, buy land on credit, plant it and then return at harvest time to reap their harvest and make a buck. At the height, there was a rainy season, $2 per bushel - so on 80 acres they made $4000. Times were good, so they bought more land on credit, the newfangled motorized tractors on credit and enjoyed the high life. Then the price of wheat crashed. So they made $400 off the same land that they made $4000 a couple years before. At first they thought the answer was to plant even more, so they tore up more of the plains. They had debts to pay, so they needed money badly. The silos had rotting grain while others in the country were starving. But the price got so low, that it cost more to produce than they got for selling the wheat. So the suitcase farmers didn't return to plant. Regular farmers didn't plant as much as it wasn't worth their while. Acres unplanted, nothing to hold the topsoil down. So the Dust Bowl was all the topsoil blowing around that used to be anchored down by prarie grass. I'm an easterner, so I didn't know this.

So one of the things FDR did was to get rid of excess surplus so that the supply and demand equation would result in a decent price for crops, meat. The government paid farmers to kill cows, pigs and not to plant too much. So that is where paying farmers not to farm came from and the government getting involved in setting prices.

"Hoover believed the cure for the Depression was to prime the pump at the producer end, helping factories and business owners get up and running again. Goods would roll off the lines, prosperity would follow. Roosevelt said it made no sense to gin up the machines of production if people could not afford to buy what came out the factory door."

Oh and it took about 2 years from the stock market crash to get to 25% unemployment.

**Denvergirlie** · 10-26-2008, 02:31 PM

Yes, the government loves to dable in the markets instead of letting the free market fix itself as that might be "painful" to the population.

**Momof3girls** · 10-26-2008, 03:40 PM

Interesting! Thank you!

**Lori Biever-Launder** · 10-26-2008, 06:16 PM

Unemployment eventually got up to (on average) 35%. In some places it was HIGHER.

I know that if I had lived during this time, I would have wanted to live on a farm. Yes, it was hard, HARD work, but at least you had food. In the city, people had very little.

The Depression was actually ended because of WWII. The factories producing was material were the reason this country was put back on its feet. yes, times were still tough since people were going without rationed good (very little meat, butter, gasoline, silk, tires, etc.) but people were getting steady paychecks and finally having enough to eat and decent clothes.

This is an area I have studied extensively, so if you want more inof, LMK. I can pontificate for hours!

**Clutterbug Jen** · 10-26-2008, 10:50 PM

Thanks for this post ... I love hearing/reading anything to do with the depression era.

**mrsmac62** · 10-27-2008, 01:09 AM

Interesting thread, thanks. I've been reading lately about the depression here in NZ. As in the US, people in the country were often better off becuse they could grow their own food.
Thousands of men, even highly qualified, were put on work programmes and used to plant many of the big forests we now have. They lived in tents in sub-zero temperatures and often their health never recovered.
What little money they made went to family back home.
Only men could register as unemployed, many women starved.
When you read of things like children in a family taking turns to go to school because they shared a pair of winter boots, and dead babies being found in sewers, it helps us to appreciate the riches we have.
And we can learn a great deal from their ingenuity and endurance

**mamamia** · 10-27-2008, 02:01 AM

Originally Posted by Clutterbug Jen

Thanks for this post ... I love hearing/reading anything to do with the depression era.

Same here! Thank you!!

Theresa

**DonnainME** · 10-27-2008, 07:21 AM

We really do learn from times like that.

**ironmaiden** · 10-27-2008, 08:55 AM

I'm still reading ...

The book also said that many of those who did keep their jobs during this time had no choice but to accept pay cuts and thus their salaries were down about a 1/3rd.

Like I said, I'm an easterner and thus never learned anything about the Dust Bowl - FIL grew up in it and all he's ever said to me was that he got out as soon as he could. I didn't know how often these dirt storms blew or how pervasive they were, getting into all the houses, that there were snowdrifts of dirt or how many people got sick and how many died from inhaling all the fine particulates in the air. Animals died as what grass remained was buried under the falling dirt. A couple of these dust storms were so big, that they stretched all the way to the east coast dumping dirt on Boston and NYC. So those on farms in this region didn't have much for food after a few years.

Under lessons learned, it is either feast or famine and for some reason during feast time we always believe it will last forever, take out loans to expand and buy the good life and then we are surprised when it doesn't last.

Lori Biever-Launder - we welcome pontificating!! It's how we learn around here, by listening to others.

**DonnainME** · 10-27-2008, 09:10 AM

Originally Posted by ironmaiden

I'm still reading ...
Under lessons learned, it is either feast or famine and for some reason during feast time we always believe it will last forever, take out loans to expand and buy the good life and then we are surprised when it doesn't last.

I agree as a society when we are in "feast mode" we think it will last forever.

One thing comes to mind - when you grocery shop - if you buy goodies. When you do that, they all get eaten up quickly then you don't have any to last until you go shopping again.

On a side note - I take packages of say ritz bitz sandwiches and put them in individual serving baggies then put them back in the box. That way, I can pull out a "serving" and not worry about over eating. I'm a diabetic and have to watch what I am eating. I could sit down and eat a whole box of something but if it's packaged as a serving size I will eat that. You can buy the 100 calorie packs but those are more expensive. I can buy a box of 100 sandwich baggies for cheap an even re-use then since I don't do this with wet things - in the baggies. I also take canned fruit and portion them out in ramekin bowls with lids or small plastic containers with lids.