The Great Depression

During the 1930’s the United States of America underwent its worst economic hardship ever. It was a disaster for our country and drove America into poverty. Stock markets crashed, factories and banks closed down. People had no food, jobs or money; the country was producing more merchandise than there were being sold. President Wilson appointed Mr. Hoover as a Food Administrator, but he took so much from the United States that people were starving while helping other countries such as Europe. People were forced to move into bad communities nicknamed “Hooverville”.

My parents can remember things about the depression that changed their outlook on hard times. As I sat with my dad listening to him talk about the hard ships he experienced, I can see his expression change with painful memories. Dad can remember living on a farm where he helped with the livestock and worked in the cotton fields. They didn’t have any money because my grandfather could not sell the cotton so it piled up on the porch causing it to cave in. The cotton was even stacked in the smokehouse or the shed and it went on like that for a long time. They grew their own vegetables and killed game for meat, such as deer, rabbits, squirrels and wild turkeys. When night fell they had to lock up the chicken houses to keep the townspeople from stealing the chickens.

Dad said the townspeople had it rougher because there were no jobs in town and no such thing as unemployment. Even the larger cities was in bad shape. The people from town would wander out to the country to find a farmer with a garden and beg for food. Women with small children would walk the road and beg for food to feed the children. Grandpa even showed some young men from town how to catch fish from the creek so that they could go home and help feed their families. People would strip bark off of certain trees and boil it to make it eatable or be seen eating grass. They did anything to keep from starving to death.

Cornbread and sorghum syrup was eaten at almost every meal along with powdered milk. The neighbors helped each other out but some were already living in tents or living in a big hole in the ground. Fights would break out in town over barrel of garbage, kids would be seen eating filth from the garbage cans. During that time the gangsters from Chicago started coming to different places in hopes of finding goods. Moonshine started up in Georgia and North Carolina. My mom said that the Yankee’s would steal meat out of the smokehouses and they had to hide it in a hole to keep them from finding the meat. Some court houses got burnt to the ground. Folks would have a coupon book to acquire toothpaste but the empty tube had to be turned in first. One could use a coupon for razor blades too. Dad can remember a time when they were working out in the field and went home to find someone had came into the house and changed clothes for some that was a little better for wear.

When Roosevelt came into the Presidency, things started to look rosy. He got the Works Progress Administration (WPA) started which was a relief measured offering work to the unemployed. When the World War II started and the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor things got rationed out which lasted about 4 years. The suffering American economy was given a boost when the fighting countries needed supplies so America was the one to make them.