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JUNE, 1997.
Annotated August & October, 1999 (as memories refresh
themselves).
Typeface changed on August 19,2001
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MY MEMORIES OF THE GREAT
DEPRESSION, 1929 TO 1939.
WE GO FROM HERE TO HEAVEN OR TO HELL. IF WE GO TO HEAVEN WE STOP AT PURGATORY
FIRST. THE CHURCH IS WRONG. THIS IS PURGATORY."
poverty during the depression go here:
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and here: http://www.erroluys.com/BerkeleyHackett.htm
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War II combat!
of jobs, working conditions and social benefits in the depression!
1.FOREWORD
Just as many people have asked me about what it was like during World
War II so have many more people asked me what it was like during the great
depression of 1929 to 1939.
Many books have been written about that horror both from a personal
point of view and from an academics point of view. The worst book I know
about the depression was one written by John Kenneth Galbraith about the
causes of it. It is a poor book and I put it down after reading chapter
or so. A huge amount of garbage has been written about that depression and
those books cover the waterfront from the extreme left to the extreme right.
After you read (or scan) my experiences during that depression you may understand
why I am a political independent and don't belong to either party, particularly
the extremes of left and right!
THE DEPRESSION WAS SUCH A HORROR THAT IT BURNED ITSELF INTO MY MEMORY
AND I CAN STILL SMELL, TASTE AND HEAR SOME OF THOSE HORRORS. I AM NOT GOING
TO BE PERSONAL NOR AM I GOING TO TELL TALES OUT OF SCHOOL. I ONLY WANT TO
TRY TO GIVE YOU A TASTE OF WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO SOMEONE LIKE MY FAMILY, DOWN
ON THEIR UPPERS, AS THEY USED TO SAY.
EVERYTHING HERE IS TRUE. IT IS AS TRUE
AS MY MEMORY, NEITHER EMBELLISHED NOR MINIMIZED. JUST AS IT HAPPENED, AS
BEST I KNOW AND CAN RECALL.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY I STUDIED ECONOMICS AND FINANCE YOU WILL FIND
THE ANSWERS HERE. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY I REFUSE TO BELONG TO EITHER PARTY
THAT ANSWER IS HERE AS WELL.
NAME="anchor19333">2. FAMILY BACKGROUND.
emigrated to the United States from Canada on November 12, 1929. How do
I know that? Here is a scan of his green card; note the date of entry.
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The family consisted of my father, Alfred William Rinfret, my mother,
Laura C. Rinfret, my three brothers (Bill, Maurice and Alan), my sister,
Cora and myself. Seven in all!
We emigrated here because my father had gone bankrupt in his fur business.
In Canada that was the ultimate disgrace and he was forced out, socially.
He did not know a depression was coming in the U.S. and no one else did either.
And so he thought he would have a new start. Little did he know what was
ahead. He and all of us had gone from the frying pan into the fire!
We came into the United Sates with practically no money and no one
in the family had any marketable talents. My fathers skills as an entrepreneur,
a furrier and a salesman were not good for much in a country that was about
to go over the economic cliff!
I have no idea how much money my father and mother had in their pockets
when we got to New York from Canada. It could not have been much because
shortly (about three months) after we arrived we were in DEEP financial
trouble.
WITHIN THREE MONTHS ALL OF OUR FAMILY POSSESSIONS WENT INTO STORAGE
AND THEY WERE EVENTUALLY AUCTIONED OFF AT A PUBLIC AUCTION. THAT WAS DONE
WITHOUT MY PARENTS KNOWLEDGE OR APPROVAL IN ORDER TO PAY THE STORAGE BILL.
WE, THEREFORE, LOST EVERY FAMILY POSSESSION WE OWNED!
From 1929 until 1939 our family was separated in one form or another!
3.
SEPARATION
From 1929 until 1939 the family was pretty much
separated, broken into bits. On two different occasions for about 3 years
my father went back to Canada without the family in order to try to get
work. He had no costs in Canada and he lived for free since he boarded with
his parents, who lived until 1949. My brother Maurice lived with my fathers
parents also so that almost everybody was leaning on my grandparents!
I was domiciled with relatives on two different
occasions. One such occasion was with my mothers sister (Bertha) and another
was with my mothers brother (Alfred). Total time was about 9 months. There
were many reasons; one was that I would get to eat regularly, another was
that I would have a regular place to sleep, the third was that the immediate
family could not provide me with anything, particularly clothes.
My brother Maurice went back to Canada in order
to live with our Grandparents (fathers parents) since they could feed and
house him. My sister went to live with some friends and that lasted about
a year. My brother Bill ran away from all of us. He got married, which he
could ill afford, and what my mother could ill afford was the loss of his
$15.00 (yes $15 ) a week salary!
I was always sent away on the holidays, most
of the time to friends who were literally asked to invite me for the festive
meal, particularly Thanksgiving and Christmas. There is one scar I have
had for years (but no longer) and that was that I hated Christmas since
Christmas to us was a time to cry since there were no presents for anyone
until late into the Thirties.
NAME="anchor19025">4.FAMILY INCOME
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Almost all (90+%) the family income came from my brother Bill and
my sister Cora. Every once in awhile, but not often until about 1937, my
father sent us money. He did not, could not, contribute much money to the
household. He was, by and large, unemployed from 1929 until about 1937. In
other words he was basically out of any kind of work from about 1929 until
1937 or for about 8 years!
The money my mother could count on consisted of $15 from my brother
Bill and $12 from my sister Cora. My brother Maurice kept whatever money
he earned and refused to share it. My brother Alan and I were in grammar
school and whatever we could scrounge up on the street we gave to my mother.
My brother Bill got married in 1933 and that meant that my mother
was left with $12 a week on which to take care of a family of 5 (my brother
Maurice, Alan , myself, my mother and my sister Cora). You can understand
if I say that we lived all the years from 1929 until about 1937 in a state
of perpetual financial crises.
How did my mother cope? One answer is that she
did not, the other answer is that whatever personal possessions she had
were regularly hocked! We lived in what was then called Sunnyside, Long
Island. Sunnyside was about a 5 minute bus ride from Queens Plaza or about
a 40 minute walk. Mother would hock whatever she thought would get her a
few dollars.
She did have a lovely pearl necklace she hocked
regularly. When we were desperate for money we would walk to Queens Plaza
(Long Island) to the Hock Shop and get a few dollars for the pearl necklace.
To this day I can take you to the location of the store on Queens Plaza
since I knew it well and they knew me well, at that time!
For those who have never known or experienced
a hock shop it was marked by a sign that consisted of three gold balls dangling
from a single bar:
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Alan and I regularly contributed whatever we might have earned running
errands, delivering milk, working at the local deli for tips only on deliveries
etc. . That was only a few dollars a week. Neither Alan or I ever held back
one cent. My mother, therefore, had to keep together a family of 5 on about
$12 a week which was about 30 percent of the minimum
needed.
My brother Alan and myself did everything we knew how to earn a few
cents (yes, cents) a day. I used to go from store to store asking if there
was any need for help. After awhile most of the store owners got to know
me and they could give me some work; trumped up or not didn't matter to
me!
Money was the one thing that dominated our lives
or more accurately the lack of money dominated our lives for about ten years.
Every battle my parents had was over money. Every fight in our house was
the result of money problems and a money shortage.
"There is only one class in the community that thinks more
about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing
else." Oscar Wilde (1854-1900),
Anglo-Irish playwright, author. The Soul of Man under Socialism, in Fortnightly
Review (London, Feb. 1891; repr. 1895).The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations
is licensed from Columbia University Press. Copyright © 1993 by Columbia
University Press. All rights reserved.
Every tear I saw my mother shed was over the
lack of money. All we seemed to do was to, literally, count the pennies
in the house among all of us. We fought over money almost all the time, my
mother would go into a panic if she could not account for every penny. Not
one cent was ever foolishly spent and not one cent ever went for anything
that was not vital to life.
I used to get ten cents a day from my mother
to go to Long Island City High School which was in Queens Plaza, New York.
The subway cost 5 cents each way which meant that I got subway fare but
no lunch money. I would take the subway to school and the 5 cents burned
a hole in my pocket. The perennial choice I faced was this: should
I spend the 5 cents on something for lunch and walk home or go hungry and
take the subway home (the distance was about 4 miles)?
I invariably choose to spend the 5 cents for
something for lunch and walked home with a young girl who was in as dire
straits as I was.
Money was our constant headache and our greatest
worry. We frequently ran out of money and had nowhere to turn since borrowing
from neighbors was impossible as was credit from the local stores. If mother
got caught particularly short she would send my brother Maurice to Brooklyn
to touch up my Uncle Enos (her brother) for a ten dollar bill. But I remember
more than once where mother could not get the 5 cents subway fare for Maurice
to go to Brooklyn. So he walked to Brooklyn (about 10 miles) and took the
subway home since Uncle Enos never once said no.
But it scarred my brother Maurice all his life
since he could never ask anyone to pay him for work he may have done for
them! He was the one that was always asked to go hit up someone for money
and it was that which haunted him for his entire life!
Our entire life in the 1930's was centered around
money, it was our cross and we bore it day in and day out. It was a cross
from which there was no relief.
The memory that I retain to this day (77 years
old) is that of my parents crying, singularly and together, about money!
The irony, which I do not understand, is that
money per se has never interested me! Go figure that out!
5.Costs
Everything was cheap but everything was to expensive!
If you were unemployed everything was so expensive as to be totally
and completely out of reach. And since, at one time, one out of three people
were unemployed nothing was cheap!
In terms of today's prices the costs and the prices in the 1930's were
ludicrous; but the income levels were just as ludicrous. It is all, of course,
relative. If you have an income most things are somewhat affordable. If
you have no or very low income most everything is unaffordable!
For what it is worth here are some prices I remember:
- The movies were 10 cents.
- Lunch in 1938 cost 25 cents and consisted of 2 fried eggs, French
fries, 2 slices of toast with jam, coffee and apple pie.
- Rent for a 2 bedroom apartment with a living room, dining area,
bathroom and a full kitchen was $12.00 a month.
- Telephone service was $3.00 a month.
- Electricity ran about $1.00 a month.
- The subway in NY cost 5 cents.
- The NY Times newspaper cost 3 cents.
- A candy bar was 5 Cents.
- An ice cream cone was 5 cents.
- A cab cost 10 cents for the meter flag down and 5 cents a quarter
mile.
- A maid was $10.00 a week, not that we ever had one.
- A doctors visit was $3.00, at home!
- "Time" magazine was 10 Cents as was "Look",
"Life" and other weekly periodicals.
- A hamburger at the "White Castle" was 10 cents .
- A cup of coffee with cream and sugar was 5 cents.
NAME="anchor19999">6. FOOD.
The most vivid memory I have of food is that there was never enough.
In actual fact I have some rather horrible memories about food, at
least in the Rinfret family.
I remember one dinner where my mother, myself and my brothers and
sister sat down to a meal. The meal consisted of 3 boiled potatoes and one
slice of white bread which we divided up amongst us. I noticed my mother
was not eating and I asked her why she was not eating.
She answered that she was on a diet.
When I was about 50 years of age it hit me that she had not been on
a diet but was giving up what there was to us!
Our meals seldom contained any form of meat and when it did it was
either hamburger or flank steak, neither which I can eat to this day.
If it was hamburger you got a patty about the size of a 50 cent piece.
If you got flank steak it was sliced paper thin so that you could see light
through it. At most it might be about 4 inches long, an inch wide and paper
thin . Each persons portion was two slices and a one pound flank steak fed
6 people!
We ate tons of "nutritious" food all of which was bulk and
starches! We had pasta at least twice a week but never with meatballs. We
ate chicken on occasion but not often. Potatoes were a staple in our diet
as were various cabbages and carrots (in those days they were cheap).
Bread was day old bread which could be bought at the bakery for half
price. Cookies were 25 cents a pound but they were broken and a day old.
And in those days a day old meant stale!
We never but never got dessert except rice pudding and all the other
goodies such as candy and ice cream were unheard of by us.
After 1937 when things started to improve a bit my mother did bake
a pie (apple was her specialty) and an occasional chocolate cake.
My mother lived until 1976 but she remained as frugal with food as
she had been in the depression. It was a sin to waste
a shred of food and you were forced to consume everything but everything
on your plate. We ate for the starving children in China! We cleaned
our plates at every meal and that was almost obligatory.
All my bad food habits of today emanate from the depression and from
my formative years. I eat too much candy and far too much ice cream. But
since no one in the family could afford any liquor I don't drink to this
day, except for wine which I learned in France while on my Fulbright fellowship.
On the holidays we never but never had a turkey nor did we ever have
anything different and festive. That did change when my father found full
time work in 1937 (he had been unemployed for 8 years then) but to this
day I cannot stand either Christmas nor Thanksgiving which to me was always
an oxymoron!
I am finally over my dislike for those holidays but it took some 50
years!
What then did we eat?
Whatever the cheapest things my poor mother
could afford or find!
NAME="anchor19021">7. THE ESSENTIALS OF LIFE.
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When I talk about the essentials of life I mean
just that. The list is easy to put together and here it is:
- Rent
- Food, but no ice cream, candy, baked goods;
only the essentials.
- Electricity
- Gas for the stove
- Clothing
- Medicine
And that was it. There was no telephone, no
radio, no movies (I solved that one around 1938 by becoming an usher at
the local "Bliss" theater). All washing was done by hand (the
old fashioned scrub board) by my mother as was the ironing. We were limited
to one shower a week (saved soap) and we were limited on the use of electric
light after it got dark.
If our shoes wore through we bought rubber sole
replacements at the F.W.. Woolworth store which we glued on with rubber cement.
We nailed the heels on ourselves when needed . We sewed everything and made
do. I well remember my mother sitting by the hour darning our socks on a
darning sock ( a semi round wood support for the sock).
My mother would wash the clothes by hand on
a old fashioned scrub board. She then would stay up until 12 or so at night
ironing everything so that we would all have clean clothes in the morning.
To this day I can see her ironing one garment after another late at night.
She did everything and what clothes went to the cleaner went only because
they had been dirtied to the point where they could not be washed.
We traded clothes and I was clothed by hand
me downs since I was the youngest. If a shirt was needed it went to Maurice,
then to Alan and finally to me.
We all wore hand me downs. To this day I role
up the cuffs of my sleeves since I always got Alan's clothes which were always
too big for me (my sleeves are rolled up as I type this article).
Whatever my mother had to buy she bought on
the never-never plan. She frequently defaulted on her payment obligations.
She frequently failed to pay the rent, she frequently ran up bills she could
not pay. We owed everybody; the grocery store, the drug store, the doctor,
the ice man, the milk man, the egg man; name it or them; we owed and owed
some more.
WE GOT THROUGH THE DEPRESSION IN DEBT UP TO OUR EYEBALLS AND SOME
PEOPLE NEVER DID GET PAID! I went back after the war and the pharmacist
informed me we still owed them money. I paid it. Others not.
ASIDE. When I was mustered out of the Army in
1945 I got a $200 bonus. After I was home a few days my mother and I went
to the Roman Catholic parish of St. Theresa in Woodside, Queens. My mother
wanted to get the deed of my fathers burial plot. The Pastor took the deed
out a file drawer by his desk, detached a piece of paper and said "There
is an outstanding debt of $200 for the burial". My father had died
in 1941 just before Pearl Harbor. I took the $200 out of my pocket and gave
it to the Pastor. I paid for my fathers burial almost five years after he
was buried, but I paid it with ALL and the only money I had! END
OF ASIDE.
My fathers estate consisted of debts, more debts
and no assets.
8.
CHARITY: HELP FROM OTHERS.
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The only ones who ever gave the Rinfret family any help were relatives
and the Harritons.
Relatives gave us food, money and clothing to
say nothing of shelter after we had been thrown out on the street for the
non-payment of rent or evicted for some other reasons.
I recall, as if it were yesterday, our possessions
in suitcases on the street and I remember our walking down the street carrying
those suitcases just as DID the refugees of World War II.
Nobody else ever gave us a dime or any help of any kind whatsoever.
That includes the Federal government, the State government, the Red Cross,
the Catholic church and the local community.
We were on our own and if it had not been for
our relatives (family) we would not have survived! Family was (and is) everything.
Who were the Harritons? The Harritons were
Abe and Estelle Harritons who had two children, Abe and Marie. Marie was
beautiful and both were as nice as could be.
The Harritons "owned" the apartment
we rented in Sunnyside, Queens. They were avowed communists and he was an
artist with the WPA. He painted the type of art I always called "Workers
of the world, arise" . When my mother or father did not have the rent
the Harritons would always say that we could pay it when we had the money.
Never once did they do anything except be kind to us.
I have already talked about all the help we
received from our relatives but I have left out one uncle; my mothers brother
named Enos Chartrand. He was a very successful businessman throughout the
thirties and whenever my mother was up against the wall she could always
and did borrow from Uncle Enos. Borrow is a euphemism; I doubt that he was
ever paid back two cents. He never said "No" and he always gave
willingly (his wife was just the opposite). My mother, of course, never
took advantage of him. The very first dollar bill I ever got came from him.
I must say that the Catholic church in Woodside,
Queens
(where I went to school) would feed us kids who had had no breakfast. In
order, however, to be fed you had to admit before the entire class that
you had no breakfast. I was not one to do that even if I were starving!
I learned to create an artificial menu of what I had eaten for breakfast
so that I would not be ushered out with the rest of the poor kids. My family
was never poor; just temporarily down on their luck! I guess you would call
that pride!
I have to be honest with you; I do not know
for sure why we never received any charity. It may have been because it
was not available or because my mother and father refused it. Would they
have refused it when we had no food for several days? I doubt it.
All in all I do not remember any charity of
any kind ever helping us even when we were in the most dire of dire straits.
NAME="anchor19678">9. ENTERTAINMENT.
All of our entertainment was home made up to
about 1938.
We hung out in empty lots and sat on the local
park benches around the empty lots. My "buddies" were a young
strong man named Francis Foster (he's on the right) and a young handsome athletic type called
"Carl Muller" (on the left). We discussed the world in general and each of us
would argue like mad about a point of view. Later on we all went to war
and we all came home!
We built skate carts out of a plank, a wooden
box and a pair of roller skate wheels.
We played stick ball on the streets or in the
lots. The stick was an old broom stick which, if we broke it, we had to
wait a long time to find another.
We played roller skate hockey in the streets
using a large stone as a puck.
If we were lucky someone might get a potato
and we would roast it in a fire we built in the empty lots. Sometimes we
were lucky enough to get a "mickey" ( a fire roasted potato) for
everyone of the" gang".
We played hop-scotch on the sidewalk if someone
had a piece of chalk in order to draw the diagram.
Most of the time we "hung out" and if we showed up at the
local lot and nobody was there we would go home.
The "rich" kids belonged to "Sunnyside
Gardens Park" but the Rinfret's didn't because we didn't have the money
to pay the dues until about 1938.
We had no radio until about 1935, television
had not yet been invented, a telephone was an unheard of luxury (mother
always used 'the neighbors') and I became an usher at the local "Bliss"
theater in Woodside in 1938 so I could see the movies.
I don't remember ever going to the movies prior
to my being an usher. I got 25 cents an hour and once in a blue moon someone
would give me a 5 cent tip.
There was a local swimming pool, "Sunnyside
Swimming Pool", located on "Queens Boulevard" that cost ten
cents for a full day of admission. You would go to the pool (during the
summer) and bring your lunch in a brown bag and your drink was the water
from the fountain. I remember going to the pool about 3 times.
I spent an enormous amount of time in the "Woodside
Public Library" but not as much as most since I spent most of my "school
days" in the NY Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and
a cave in Central Park. I
only attended school if forced to attend by my mother (see
COLOR="#800000">my publication on "Education"
).
We could not afford magazines and only occasionally
afforded a newspaper (we always bought the N.Y.Times).
My sister bought me a bike around 1938 and I
took it apart each and every day to grease it and to wipe it down. As our
conditions improved I was able to ask my mother for small amounts of money
and I could buy a rubber band airplane model for ten cents. My first model
was a "Sopwith Camel" (French) from World War I. I finished it
and flew it after almost cutting my left index finger off!
We never were involved in drugs, violence or alcohol.
We belonged to a group of kids who liked each other and who hung out together
but that's all they were.
Nobody in our group could afford cigarettes
and no one was really interested in them. Later on after we had seen people
smoke and we got older and more curious we would go down to the empty lots
by the local railroad overpass and cut up the "silk-weed" stalks.
We would smoke the stalks but they were so bad nobody kept it up. All I
remember is coughing my lungs out (I don't think I have smoked a pack of
cigarettes in my entire life, maybe that's why!).
Did we play baseball, touch football or basketball?
Yes and no. I don't remember ever playing basketball. We played softball
if I could get into the local private park (I was frequently thrown out
since I was not a member). We played touch football but the trouble was getting
a football, no one had one and the Sunnyside Park was very chintzy about
letting the kids use it.
Sports were not a big deal and nobody but nobody
emphasized them.
NAME="anchor19024">10. SURVIVAL.
When I woke up in the U.S. Army hospital near
Paris in early January, 1945 after being brutally wounded the first thought
in my mind was "I survived".
Surviving the depression was more difficult.
My father didn't make it. He died of a heart
attack in late 1941. Two of my brothers and my sister, all of whom I adored,
were psycho cases for the rest of their lives.
My brother, Alan Herve''
Rinfret, was killed in combat around Florence in 1945 just before the war
against Germany was won.
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My family got kicked in the teeth, first by the depression
and then, by the war. They were stomped on, beaten down, psychologically
damaged and scarred forever.
The national cry in late 1941 was "You
owe us!" meaning that the country had a right to call on its citizens
to go to war because the citizens owed the country.
FOR WHAT? FOR A JOB, FOR FOOD, FOR EDUCATION,
FOR EMPLOYMENT, FOR HEALTH CARE?
FOR FREEDOM WHICH WAS DEFINED AS THE RIGHT TO POVERTY?
WHAT DID WE OWE A SOCIETY THAT WAS NOT ABLE
TO PROVIDE THE CITIZENS WITH THE MOST BASICS OF LIFE?
FOR THE RIGHT TO HAVE THE GOVERNMENT TO THREATEN
ITS VETERANS WITH RIFLE FIRE AND BAYONETS, AS DID GENERAL MACARTHUR IN THE
MARCH ON WASHINGTON IN 1933!
For the extreme right wing to call us lazy and
to imply that we were dumb and to blame for societies miseries and malaise?
For the left wing to ask us to give up our freedom
in exchange for a mess of potage (communism)?
My mother, my father and my two brothers and
sister were victims of a helpless society gone berserk.
The all-knowing, conceited, egotistical, self
-serving institutions failed and failed totally and completely.
In the mid-1930's we were playing with revolution
and Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew it.
What was the depression like? In the early 1930's:
white youths said they were seeking work; for the African-Americans the
percentage was even higher at 98 per cent. Fifty percent of the African-Americans
had been unemployed for two years or longer
I have a dear friend named Dr. Sam R. He was
a most eminent psychiatrist whose clients were the biggies of the world.
I once asked Dr. Sam to tell me about myself.
He answered that "You are the most disgustingly
well adjusted person I have ever known in my professional life but never
go into politics." I should have listened!
We did many things out of sheer desperation:
- You could go into the restaurant named Bickfords or Horn & Hardert
without being questioned. You would get a glass of water and then pour
the Ketchup into the glass. You then had a glass of tomato juice for free
since the ketchup was always on the table free of charge!
- If you were desperately hungry you would wander around looking for
plates on which someone left uneaten food and then you would surreptitiously
pick it up and gobble it down.
- If you were cold and out in the open you could stand over a grill
and get warmed by the hot air exhaust.
- If you were really cold you would stuff your coat, sweater or jacket
with newspaper which did insulate you somewhat.
- When you were out in the cold you learned to blow regularly on your
hands to keep them warm.
- We used to collect metal hangers from all the people on whose doors
we knocked on regularly. The local tailor would pay you 1 cent for ten
of them.
- We would scrounge the alley ways and the empty lots for the possibility
of finding an empty coke bottle. It was worth a 2 cent refund!
- We would sneak into the subway by running under the turnstile (while
the change maker was distracted)
- We would pick up cigarette butts in the street (if they were not
sopping wet), strip them of the paper, put the tobacco remnants in a tin
and smoke it as pipe tobacco.
- Stale bread was only 5 cents a loaf at the local bakery as opposed
to ten cents a loaf normally.
- Broken cookies were 5 cents a pound at the local Silvercup factory.
- One of my brothers used to open the milk bottles left on doorsteps
and in front of apartments, take a sip of the cream and replace the cover.
- One of my brothers used to steal from the F.W. Woolworth local store
on regular occasions.
- The local grocer used to ask us, on occasion, to go down into his
cellar and get cases of food. We used the occasion to steal something edible
and that we never got to eat (peanuts, for example). We would gobble it
down while we were in the cellar!
- It was not unusual to go through someone else's garbage to see if
they might have thrown away some clothes (or anything) that you could use
or wear.
- On occasion we would find good magazines in the garbage. We would
then stand at a subway entrance and sell the magazines for a penny or two.
Sometimes we would sell several of them as a group for a nickel.
- We walked everywhere and I do mean everywhere. If a trip was less
than 5 miles we would walk it.
- We were so proud we never asked for help.
No, not at all.
Am I resentful?
Yes.
Was it really that bad?
Worse, I have left out a scrutiny of our tears,
our emotions, our fears, our denigration, the destruction of our optimism,
our despair, our loss of faith, our loss of hope.
Do you resent your parents?
On the contrary, they had more guts than anyone
could ask for and they DID keep the family together no matter what it cost.
My parents were made of steel and they were never but never beaten! Bent
yes, beaten, NO. Mother lived until 1977 and died
a week short of 92. I adored both my parents.
Who was to blame for the failure of the country to get back on its
feet for so long a time?
Everybody that claimed they knew the answers
to a country in shreds. Read a wonderful book entitled "Oh, Yeah!".
The Republicans were against every major social change and improvement including
Social Security which they labeled "Communist". As an economist
who has studied non stop all my life all I can say is that the nation and
the world mishandled the depression totally and completely.
We failed on almost all counts because we were the victims of ideology
and ideological nonsense. The right wing had no answers and were heartless
and the extreme left wing thought they could bring communism and socialism
to America.
The Democratic party saved the United States
from revolution and if it had not been for Franklin Delano Roosevelt we
would have had revolution. His compassion made the difference and, in my
learned judgment, he saved the country as did the Democratic party. If the
Republicans had their way the depression would have ended in revolution.
What saved the country was the war.
(Now you may understand why I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican.)
Are you an optimist or a pessimist?
An optimist. If you survived both a depression
and a war sequentially wouldn't you be an optimist?
What was the heritage of my generation? What
did my sister my brothers and myself inherit?
There are two kinds of heritage:
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1. IN MATERIAL TERMS ALL WE INHERITED WERE DEBTS
AND NIGHTMARES. There was nothing to inherit except the debts and the nightmares.
Mother had no money and she was dependent on Social Security and my brother
Alan's insurance (he paid for it in the U.S. Army and mother got the money
because he was killed in action). Dad left us penniless and when mother
died there was nothing except some old furniture. She had no jewelry, no
rings, no diamonds, no watch, nothing at all. She had nothing of any value
(she died on January 20, 1976 just short of her 92 birthday). She had no
money since she lived on a month to month basis. I proudly paid for her
funeral and had supported her for years with a monthly allowance.
She left us nothing because there was nothing
to leave!
2. IN MORAL TERMS WE INHERITED A FORTUNE ALTHOUGH
SOME OF MY FAMILY SQUANDERED IT.
We were brought up to be honest, forthright,
dependable, responsible, honorable, loyal; imbued in us was a set of high
morals. We were taught to never cheat, lie, fake or to cheat anyone on anything!
Integrity was the one characteristic that was drummed into us.
ASIDE. My wonderful son Peter once said to me
that "You know Dad that we had the worst upbringing possible. In this
world our upbringing of honor, integrity, truthfulness is a distinct disadvantage.
The worst part is that neither my sister or I can change!" END
OF ASIDE.
My mother referred all the time to our family
line going back some 300+ years. She imbued in us a sense of having to continue
the honor of that family and to never forget our heritage. Her approach
was that it was a distinguished family line (on the part of my mother and
father) and we had a moral obligation to continue that heritage.
In other words we were brought up to be responsible human beings.
(the depression) Happen Again?
Can a depression happen again?
Why not, humans know no limits to their stupidity.
Unfortunately, I have to say "Yes, it can happen again."
The folly of man knows no limits as the bubble that used to be the
Asian boom now shows conclusively. It is never the forces of which you are
aware but the ones you don't think about that always get you.
As an historian of economic and financial affairs if there is one
thing I know it is that the follies and stupidities of man know no limits.
Yes, it can happen again. I hope and pray not but it is more than
stupid to think or say we have licked, forever, the horrible specter of
a domestic and world depression.
It appears that the most avid (and polite) readers of this article
I have posted on the "Great Depression", as I knew it, are the
young High School students. I get email all the time from them and they
ask questions and request my permission to reproduce and use this material.
I always give it since I wrote this for their education of history from
someone who has been there and done that!
I do have some after thoughts about the depression which might be
of interest:
- THERE WAS NOT ONE SINGLE PRIVATE OR
PUBLIC INSTITUTION THAT WAS UP TO THE TASK OF COPING WITH THE DEPRESSION.
EACH AND EVERY BIG SHOT INSTITUTION TOTALLY AND MISERABLY FAILED TO COPE
OR TO EVEN UNDERSTAND WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON! THEIR COMPREHENSION WAS
ZERO AND ALL THEY CONTRIBUTED TO THE DISASTER WERE MORE DISASTERS. I LEAVE
NOBODY, NO ONE, NO INSTITUTION, OUT OF THAT STATEMENT.
- The church preached perseverance, faith and all those wonderful
things while we starved and cried. The charitable institutions gave little
away since they had little to give. Above all everybody took care of themselves
first regardless of so-called altruism!
- If you had a high paying job you lived in
the lap of luxury since prices were cheap and labor was plentiful.
I knew then and later after World War II people who said that the best
of times was the depression and "why was there so much fuss?".
The foremost proponent of that idea was a man that was Treasurer of the
Hercules Powder Company in Wilmington, Delaware (he was a client of my
business).
- People would work for room and board only.
- The well-to-do appeared to have zero sympathy for the unemployed.
- The unemployed walked the streets looking for jobs and slept anywhere
and everywhere on those streets. The Police were never nice to the unemployed
and would hit them with their night stick to "move on".
- The Republicans blamed it on the American people themselves and
they took the position that if you were unemployed it was your fault.
- The rest of the world blamed the depression
on the U.S. That is a distortion of history and an outright set of lies.
I know that it is common to blame the depression on our high tariffs but
they came years after the depression started.
- The depression was kicked off, in part, by the failure of the "Credit
Anstalt" in Austria in 1928.
- I was amazed then and still am that we did not have a revolution.
- Nobody really knew how to cope with ending the depression except
for one man of the UK. I refer to John Maynard Keynes who had all the right
answers and who changed humanity, in my judgment, more than anyone else
of whom I have studied in history. Our prosperity, today, is the result
of Keynes. He was a proven communist but his ideas saved freedom!
- World War II saved us economically.
- Governments refused to work together and each and every country
took care of themselves first, regardless of the world disasters they created.
The Versailles treaty almost destroyed Germany but, in the heart of the
depression, the French refused to help a prostrate Germany.
of the depression in Germany.
- The United States suffered more than any country in the world since
we were the most industrialized.
- My family became totally and completely DYSFUNCTIONAL
in the years that followed and not one of them enjoyed their lives. They
passed on their dysfunctions to their children and their personal lives
were a total mess. I escaped and I do not know how or why.
Here is the Alta Vista link to the search for the subject of the "Great
Depression" (as it has become known). When you crank it up you can
access images as well.
I thank you for listening to me. I have no gripes, no complaints,
no hates and certainly no scars of any worth.
I am proud that I could deal with all the adversity of the depression
when a child is supposed to be at the most sensitive and formative age.
I was born in 1924 so that when we arrived in the U.S. I was about 5. The
depression ended with the onslaught of World War II and I was then 16 and
so I spent 11 years in the worst economic disaster the world has ever known.
They were my formative years!
But I survived the depression and combat in
World War II. After that magnificent sequence of events, in one lifetime,
there is nothing that is frightening, nothing, zero, zilch, notta. THAT
INCLUDES THE IRS!
Now you may understand why I studied economics and finance. Actually
I studied it in order to get an answer to the question my mother asked continuously
throughout the 1930's, to wit, "where did all the money go?".
I leave you with my personal and favorite wish:
"May you never know a depression and may you never have to fight
in a war".
I thank you again for listening and give you
my best regards and wishes. May your life be productive and pleasant.
"May you never know a depression and may you never have to fight
in a war".
Thank you for visiting me!
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