HOW DID PEOPLE SURVIVE THE GREAT DEPRESSION???

Here's a priceless resource for oldtime skills:

[link to waltonfeed.com]

I LIVED it, as a child of five, by 1933.

We were in a small town in Fairfield county, CT. There were still a number of farms, and almost everyone had a garden on their land ( of about an acre or more ) . Home from school ment a number of chores for my older brother and I. Hoeing out the weeds, hoeing UP the corn, feeding the chickens, rabbits and ducks.

In the fall, dad would take us to the deep woods to pick up hickory nuts ... FUN ! Cracking them late, by the hour, NOT fun ! QWe had 21 apple trees, and after spraying them in the spring/summer with arsenic of lead (one punping, one spraying ), we were also put to going through ALL the baskets of apples to weed out any rotten/turning so.
But, by the time I was seven, I was hunting and learning to trap muskrats in the streems. By the time I was nine, I came home from school, and with chores done, I took the twenty two rifle and hunted squirrel ( Sp ?), by walking down the main road for 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile before picking a spot to go into the woods.
There were NO police/swat teams to meet me when I came home. Eveyone one in the neighborhood KNEW who my father was AND that I had been taugh the responsible handling of guns.

Eagle

Go rent the movie "The Grapes of Wrath".

I LIVED it, as a child of five, by 1933.

We were in a small town in Fairfield county, CT. There were still a number of farms, and almost everyone had a garden on their land ( of about an acre or more ) . Home from school ment a number of chores for my older brother and I. Hoeing out the weeds, hoeing UP the corn, feeding the chickens, rabbits and ducks.

In the fall, dad would take us to the deep woods to pick up hickory nuts ... FUN ! Cracking them late, by the hour, NOT fun ! QWe had 21 apple trees, and after spraying them in the spring/summer with arsenic of lead (one punping, one spraying ), we were also put to going through ALL the baskets of apples to weed out any rotten/turning so.
But, by the time I was seven, I was hunting and learning to trap muskrats in the streems. By the time I was nine, I came home from school, and with chores done, I took the twenty two rifle and hunted squirrel ( Sp ?), by walking down the main road for 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile before picking a spot to go into the woods.
There were NO police/swat teams to meet me when I came home. Eveyone one in the neighborhood KNEW who my father was AND that I had been taugh the responsible handling of guns.

Eagle

They sold out their future sons and daughters to industrial slavery under communism

Go rent the movie "The Grapes of Wrath".


At least 1/3 of Americans did NOT live on farms or in rural areas; it's not as if Chicago, NY, et al just sprang up after WWII.
And the U.S. (especially in those urban areas) was busy absorbing European, and especially East European, immigrants -- due to the tail end of the big immigration boom, plus the global Depression.

Since I'm steeped in NYC history, and my family lived through it all:
It was NOT a Golden Age of Brotherhood.
There were crooks, slackers, gangs, thieves, and ripoff artists; "nice" people brewing illegal-toxic liquor in the basement, or getting odd jobs with neighborhood crooks, or selling things that fell of a truck; and dirt-poor new or recent immigrants with culture-clash problems (assorted Old World bigotries, language problems, and difficulties with sanitation, indoor plumbing, and American customs).

But people pulled through for very non-mystical reasons. Mostly, it's that a then-non-techie society ALLOWED people to do more to get out of a hole.
Such as:

-- Most used coal for heating. So they weren't in the gas/electric co's total grip: If things got rough, they sent their kids to railroad tracks and trainyards to pick up coal that dropped from the cars.
Some of my relatives remember those trains' all-black coal-car crews: When those guys saw "poor kids" scrounging for coal at trackside, they'd wave and heave some big shovelsful of coal down for the kids.

-- People could raise chickens, rabbits, etc (even in cities) for food, or have communal veg gardens. Today, "food animals" would be a zoning violation, and there's no unclaimed gardenable space in most cities.

-- Businesses were mostly mom 'n' pop shops, so the owners had say-so, and also felt responsible for the community (even though their shoe pinched as well). They'd give people a break, pay a kid to deliver small things, hire someone to sweep -- not because they needed the help, but since they knew that just one 10-cent job could make a difference.
As a kid, my grandmother would be sent to get stale bread, for a penny, from the little local bakery. The owners were a Jewish couple from Poland, and (though their business was struggling), they did the goofiest thing: They kept "regular" prices for the better-off folks, but virtually gave the stuff away to the have-nots (and they knew who was who). Instead of giving a kid stale bread for a penny, they'd give him/her a fresh loaf -- and throw in cookies or a pastry "for your mother."
Italian and Polish butchers did similar things -- because everyone was in the same boat; no one could be high and mighty, or oblivious to the people around them.
But today, most stores are chains, or run from afar, and the staff can't just "decide" to show a little mercy.

-- Somehow, somewhere, people could find some manual labor to do: deliveries, repairs, cleaning, housepainting, window-washing, doing "home work" (sewing at home, for garment factories), bricklaying, temp construction jobs, road crew, door-to-door sales, newspaper presses ... ANYTHING.
But those jobs don't EXIST today: They're handled by private companies, contractors, or unions; and "home work" is illegal.
And frankly, most people today
(a) would regard those jobs as beneath them, and
(b) couldn't do them right anyway, since we've lost the labor/tool "reflex." We're too used to pushing paper, or sitting at keyboards. Most people can't even change a drill bit or a vacuum-cleaner bag with any intelligence -- much less ad-lib their way through an unfamiliar laboring job.

-- It was "normal" for kids to not graduate from high school -- due to the era, the abundance of blue-collar jobs, lax labor laws, and the immigrant groups who still viewed secondary-ed as a luxury. (Anyone who graduated from high school in the Depression was NOT awfully bad off. Anyone who went to college -- !!! -- was either truly privileged, or came from a family that was REALLY willing to suffer, and placing all of its bets on the kid's education.)
So you'd have 16-year-old kids working full-time in some factory, or pasting together several PT jobs, to help out the family.

-- ADULTS WERE GROWNUPS. Even KIDS were grownups -- so teens could be TRUSTED with all those adult-type jobs. Life was tough, but you had some responsibility for someone(s) other than yourself. You didn't quit when things stopped being "fun," or say "eww!" and have a hissyfit, because no one around you did that, either.
The only people exempt from this Code of Responsibility were (a) the mentally ill; or (b) totally hopeless pathetic losers (since it was a waste of breath to nag them), whom you pitied and ignored.
But today, it's as if most adults want to be rich/hunky/gorgeous kids, and all kids just want to be "famous."

-- They cut to the chase: survival. Whatever their bigotries, people LEARNED to get along, HAD to get out of their own "ghettos," and learned that other groups/religions/ethnicities weren't all that weird ... and were in the same boat.
As kids, my very-white-Euro grandparents routinely ate Sunday supper in the local black-pentecostal church: Throughout the Depression, the church hosted free suppers for all, with no "preaching." They made a point of being fancy (with napkins and flowers), so that the "guests" felt respected, not "poor."
The local synagogue had a food pantry and baked-goods breakfasts -- for all. The Italian, Polish, and German social clubs had free-food block parties.
And when people were in dire straits, with rent in arrears, neighbors held rent parties -- blocked off the street, played music, danced, and had people put something in the hat to help a family avoid eviction.

-- Many immigrants, or first-generation Americans, KNEW that their survival was up to themelves ... because they were broke newbies, at the bottom of everyone's totem pole, had experienced real hardship/discrimination in the places they came from, and knew that "established" Americans and WASPs didn't give a s--t about them, and regarded many of them as vermin.
They knew that life wasn't a happy-ending movie, real s--t happens, and if they didn't do something, they'd be roadkill.

-- They had communities. People in the same boat (regardless of ethnicity-religion-etc.) would help each other out ... by taking turns watching each others' kids, or feeding them lunch or dinner, so the parents could work.
Today, we're so mobile (and paranoid) that we barely know if we HAVE neighbors, until they sue us or get arrested.

So it wasn't magic, and people weren't any more ethical, religious, moral, etc. than they are now.
But they WERE more grown up: They didn't whine, point fingers, blame everyone else, sit in some private bubble, live totally in their heads, or think that all would turn out OK if they repeated some mantra or believed they could fly or mentally created their own reality. They lived right smack-dab in the real world.

They sold out their future sons and daughters to industrial slavery under communism

they did??

I've wondered that also. I guess there were some jobs.

My grandfather worked on the railroad and people would come by their house asking if they could work for a meal. My grand parents never turned anyone away. They had them do small jobs around the house and then my grandparents would sit down with them and give them a good meal.

how did the usa pull out of it??? and end the depression ??

They were better people then...most were skilled in many practical fields unlike the overspecialized cubicle rats of today...even those in the cities knew how to garden and many gardens sprang up in vacant lots...compare them to the metrosexuals today and thats the reason things will get out of hand...the first day the welfare checks bounce in the hood will show what kind of people a nanny state produces...good luck to all...


Yeah, no kidding, huh.

Two years ago my sister and I decided to go to Walmart for their huge early morning sale the day after Thanksgiving. We got up at 4 am to drive over and buy a tv or something. When we got there, there was not a parking spot in the entire huge parking lot...she dropped me off so I could get a place in the line while she looked for parking. My gawd, the line wrapped all the way around the building, and this was at 4:30 in the morning. Let me tell you, I didn't know there were that many thuggish looking folks in my town! It was a real eye-opener, cuz I figure that was actually only a small percentage of them. I thought about what it would be like if all of them were starving and I had some food. It's not going to be pretty.

I have to respectfully disagree. The vast majority of people nowadays just don't have the skills that the depression era folks had.

These days you'd be hard pressed to find someone who knows how to pluck a chicken or store food without refrigeration, etc.

How can they survive if they don't even know how to anymore?