I’m a Baby-Boomer. My parents were teenagers during The
Great Depression of the 1930s. Of course that means my grandparents were adults
during that trial of economic poverty in America and globally for that matter.
You may have heard the old story from your parents or
grandparents (depending on the generation you were born from) about the days
they to walk to and from to school up hill both ways in the snow? Perhaps with
little clothing or decrepit shoes? With no lunch or perhaps a stale dried
biscuit? Though I suspect a little exaggeration to get their point across, this
was the Depression era of which they were speaking.
So, what was the point being hammered into my thoughts?
If you want something in life, you have work for it. If you
desire a decent future, you have to plan for it. Why? If you are looking for
free lunch, you’ll probably starve to death.
Justin Smith addresses this issue of the Leftist preaching
of everything must be made free or the end of the world as we know it is upon
us. Life DOES NOT work that way.
JRH 7/23/18
**********************
It Could Always Be Worse
By Justin O. Smith
Sent: 7/22/2018 11:26 PM
Keep complaining about not having enough. It could always be
worse.
Today, we hear so many complain about needing $15.00 per
hour and "free" this and "free" that, never understanding
that nothing is "free" and someone, somewhere, ends up having to pay
for it. They demand free healthcare, free college education, free housing and
even free money. Some cities, like Stockton, California and Chicago, Illinois
are even considering handing out free money, calling it a "universal basic
income" for doing nothing.
A group of migrants waiting
for relief checks outside of building. Calipatria, California. February 1937.
Credits: Dorothea Lange; The Library of Congress
The Depression Era and
the Dust Bowl Days were terribly hard and tough days. My dad, his
siblings and my Grandparents lived through the worst dust storm in U.S.
history. They were in Springfield, Colorado, one-hundred and sixty miles north
of Amarillo, TX and eighty miles north of Guyman, OK, in the middle of the Black
Sunday dust storm of 1935. There were many people who did not make
it to shelter in time, and they died after being caught out in it.
Migrant man and woman
walking along road. Crittenden County, Arkansas. May 1936. Credits: Carl Mydans
The Great
Depression itself took a massive toll on everybody. Millions of
Americans barely survived those years. The economic collapse was terrifying in
its scope and impact. The average family income crashed from an average of
$6132.22 in 1929 to just $1550 four years later. In Pennsylvania coal fields,
three or four families crowded together in one-room shacks and lived on wild
weeds. In Arkansas, families were found staying in caves, while whole families
in Oakland, CA were living in sewer pipes.
Migrant family walking on
road, pulling belongings in carts and wagons. Pittsburg County, Oklahoma. June
1938. Credits: Dorothea Lange; The Library of Congress
Incredibly, while there were millions of cases of
malnutrition, the death toll from starvation was supposedly surprisingly low,
as the government had interceded as best it could and soup lines and charitable
kitchens were found in every city across the country. However, millions of Americans
did too often come close to the edge of death by starvation, and according to
many researchers, starvation deaths were very often attributed to some other
affliction, for a litany of medical explanations.
President Herbert Hoover declared:
"Nobody is actually starving. The hobos are better fed than they have ever
been."
But, in the New York City of 1931, there were twenty known
cases of starvation, and in 1934, one-hundred and ten people starved to death.
There were so many accounts of New Yorkers starving that the West African
nation of Cameroon sent $3.77 in relief.
Tenant farmer family. Hale
County, Alabama. 1936. Credits: Walker Evans; The Library of Congress
Despite the hardships it inflicted, the Great Depression
drew some families closer together. They lost their cars and homes, often
everything they owned and found their true nature, their true character and
their souls. Families had to think outside the box in ingenious manners through
the hard times, because their survival depended on it. They moved in with
relatives to cut expenses, combined their incomes, bought day old bread and did
without many necessities just to scrape by. And, while many people and families
placed their faith in themselves and their own dogged determination to survive,
many other families drew comfort from their faith and sustained themselves with
hope for the future, that everything would turn out well in the end.
Today, far too many Americans no longer believe that our
nation's problems can be solved by people acting alone and through voluntary
associations. Increasingly, they look to our federal government, the Nanny
State, and currently, there are millions of Americans afforded massive amounts
of aid, one-fifth of the population according to the 2012 Census Bureau report.
America's poor now live better than some
"affluent" leaders in Third World countries. They all have government
housing and food assistance, along with scores of other programs designed to
help clothe and educate them too.
Children on porch, leaning
on railing. Pursglove, West Virginia. September 1938. Credits: Marion Post
Wolcott; The Library of Congress
Today's "poor" are millionaires in comparison to
the real poor of the 1930s Depression Era.
And as my Dear Ol' Lil Granma would tell me, right up until
she passed from this world at age 96, "I cried because I had no shoes,
until I saw a man who had no feet."
by Justin O Smith
__________________
Edited by John R. Houk.
Embedded source links are by
the Editor.
© Justin O. Smith
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