[Cid_Yama]

Most people these days can't even imagine what the Great Depression was like. Since we are heading there or worse, it's time for a reality check. As they say, a picture's worth a thousand words, so here's a few.
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[Arsenal]

Only the hard will survive. Most of the fat lazy Americans will either harden real quickly or put a bullet in their brain. Those pictures are haunting and I really hope we never get to that point.

[smallpoxgirl]

That boy with the ribs showing is pretty gruesome. None of the rest of it bothers me that much. Some of those kids could have used a good washing, but otherwise, not a big deal.

[Cid_Yama]

<b>The Great Depression, the Credit Crisis and the Future of your Food</b>

One of the most chilling things I’ve ever read was a description of the dual crisis that farmers and the urban poor faced during the Great Depression. During the period, the ability of the poor to pay for food dropped like a stone. At the same time, farmers couldn’t afford to transport food to markets. While there was more than enough food produced in the US during the whole of the Depression millions went hungry, and a surprisingly large number actually starved. Consider this testimony given by Oscar Ameringer before Congress in 1932.

<i>“During the last three months I have visited…some 20 states….In the state of Washington I was told that the forest fires raging in that region all summer and fall were caused by unemployed timber workers and bankrupt vfarmers in an endeavor to earn a few honest dollars as firefighters. The last thing I saw on the night I left Seattle was numbers of women searching for scraps of food in the refuse piles of the principal markets of that city. A number of Montana citizens told me of thousands of bushels of wheat left in the fields uncut on account of its low price that hardly paid for the harvesting. In Oregon I saw thousands of bushels of apples rotting in the orchards because of the cost of transporting them to market. …At the same time there are millions of children who, on account of the poverty of their parents, will not eat one apple this winter.

While I was in Oregon, the Portland Oregonian bemoaned the fact that thousands of ewes were killed by sheep raisers because they did not bring enough in the market to pay the freight on them. And while Oregon sheep raisers fed mutton to the buzzards, I saw men picking for meat scraps in the garbage cans of New York and Chicago. I talked to one man in a restaurant in Chicago. He told me of his experience in raising sheep. He said he had killed 3,000 sheep this fall and thrown them down the canyon, because ti cost $1.10 to ship a sheep to market and then he would get less than a dollar for it. He said he could not afford to feed the sheep and he would not let them starve, so he just cut their throats and threw them in the canyon.

The roads of the West and Southwest teem with hungry hitchhikers. The camp fires of the homeless are seen along every railroad track. I saw men, women and children walking voer the hard roads. Most of them were tenant farmers who had lost their land and been foreclosed. Between Clarksville and Russellville, Ark., I picked up a family. The woman was hugging a dead chicken under her ragged coat. When I asked her where she had procured the fowl, first she told me she had found it dead in the road, and then added in grim humor, ‘They promised me a chicken in every pot, and now I got mine.’

In Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas I saw untold bales of cotton rotting in the fields because the cotton pickers could not keep body and soul together on 35 cents for picking 100lbs. The farmers cooperatives who loaned the money to make the crop require $5 a bale in payment. That means 70 cents a day for a picker who can pick 200lbs, and that doesn’t provide enough pork and beans to keep the picker alive in the field, so that there is fine staple cotton rotting down there by the hundreds and thousands of tons.

AS a result of this appalling overproduction on one side and the staggering underconsumption on the other side, 70 percent of the farmers of Oklahoma were unable to pay the itnerests on their mortgages. Last week one of the largest and oldest mortgage companies in that state went into the hands of the reciever. In that and other states we have now the interesting spectacle of farmers losing their farms by foreclosure and mortgage companies losing thier recouped holdings by tax sales that could never meet the value of the land.

The farmers are being pauperized by the poverty of the industrial population and the industrial population is being pauperized by the poverty of the farmers. Neither has the money to buy the product of the other.”</i> (David Shannon, _The Great Depression_ 26-28 )

One of my greatest fears is that the story is about to be repeated. Right now, farmers are struggling to get credit just like all small business owners. The wheat crop is being planted right now - and next year’s food depends on this year’s credit. High energy and fertilizer prices have already eaten up much of farmer’s profit for this year - the point at which it is no longer feasible for farmers to grow our food is not so very far away, nor is it really so alien to imagine that again we might see the failure of the linkage between city and country, the poor digging in the garbage, the farmer unable to plant, unable to keep their land, or throwing food out to rot.
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edited: punctuation created unintentional smiley

[Spanktron9]

That boy with the ribs showing is pretty gruesome. None of the rest of it bothers me that much. Some of those kids could have used a good washing, but otherwise, not a big deal.

SPG-

I have to disagree. The structures in those photos were their HOMES. They probably weren't living on Maui. Gaping holes in your structure lead to all kinds of dangers from climate and disease bearing pests. No shoes? ever try to go about your day (working hard!) with no shoes? Split open your big toe or step on some glass and see how productive you are.

In a side note, one of the preps I got early one was several high quality pairs of leather work gloves (summer and winter). I know from experience how hard life gets with a bad cut or other injury to your hands. People who haven't been there have no idea how hard life will be.

[Arsenal]

Not to sound callous but it is along the same mantra we have been talking about at PO for quite a while. Obviously the farmer had enough food to slit the sheep's throat and throw it down the canyon or to let the apples rot.

If you produce your own food the hardship will still be difficult but you will be fed.

Got gardens/crops?

[kokoda]

My grandfather used to talk about the depression ... I hope we never have to go through anything similar.

He said the worst thing was that he felt like he had failed his family since he was unable to guarantee food on the table for his children.

He and my grandmother often went hungry to ensure that the children ate.

I am not sure that any of us today could even really contemplate not being able to afford to eat.

[smallpoxgirl]

I have to disagree. The structures in those photos were their HOMES.

I get that. I've lived in some ramshakle structures too. I lived for three years in a cabin in the woods of Montana complete with an outhouse. The only indoor pluming was a sink that was hooked up to a garden hose and stayed frozen from October to April. Obviously it's not good to have the wind whistling through your house, but IMHO the average garden shed would make a darned fine house.

No shoes? ever try to go about your day (working hard!) with no shoes? Split open your big toe or step on some glass and see how productive you are.

I have. It's not much fun. Then again, I've also got a set of drawings stashed away for building sandals out of tire treads. Last I checked not only were worn out tires free, but they were charging to dispose of them.

People who haven't been there have no idea how hard life will be.

I'm sure most don't. I'm just not convinced it's gonna be that big of a deal. Mostly it's an ontological crisis. You experience pain because things aren't the way you think they should be. Honestly most of those pictures make me nostalgic for my childhood. I grew up redneck. Poverty doesn't scare me much.

[Jellric]

Farmers unable to sell their produce and livestock. Is that the forecast for the presumed looming Depression or will it be different this time?

[Pretorian]

That boy with the ribs showing is pretty gruesome. None of the rest of it bothers me that much. Some of those kids could have used a good washing, but otherwise, not a big deal.

That pic is from Ukraine from the period called Holodomor. I wonder how Cid-Yama picks his pics? If he wanted to recrout Ukrainians to impress us with future American poverty, he could have picked better pics really.
Like this one





or this

[TheDude]

Your second pic ain't happening, Pretorian. Easy enough to find more pictures of this, however:



This was an artificial famine created by Stalin roadblocking supplies into the Ukraine, to break any remaining nationalist will there. 6-10 million starved as a result, to little notice then or since; Russophiles and Communist apologists looked the other way or denied it was Stalin's doing.

My father grew up in the Depression, north of prime Oregon sheep ranching country. Mostly he talks about simply how different a time it was; not exactly a lush part of the country so I don't think peoples' lives were impacted as much as elsewhere. My family were one of the first in the area with electricity, courtesy of home generators.

[pana_burda]

1929?

Why go back in time?

This is us TODAY, after TEN years of mediatic lies, national and international looting of our resources and macroeconomic distortions.

The question should be "WHEN" instead of " IF "!!

[Beignet2]

I saw this link over at Ticker Forum.

5 Pieces of Advice for New Paupers

http://www.alternet.org/story/102992/

[sittinguy]

Well if forecast come true about 09 we might get to find out. I can't wait to see how x-mas sales turn out.
We still have a long way to go down until things are considered bad. No one has even had to give up thier cell phone yet.

I can see alot of people moving in together and sharing expences, Doing that alone could keep peoples quality of life steady for a long time, imagine splitting your rent and utilities in half.

Although I see jobs hard to come by in my area now. Average starting wages here are around $8, with all the BS, 2 people making that is enough to get by, buy throw a kid in the mix and they are screwed

Most Americans (including me) have such a high sense of entitlment, Here's a perfect example

My half brother has a 2 year old, and he does not get along with the baby momma, she is thinking of going in the Navy, because she said she can't afford her car pmt and cell phone, on top of rent. So we might not get to see our nephew grow up. I'm NOT HAPPY about it. She is a total POS.

Letting go of the phone and the car pmt is something that never probably crossed her mind. She, like SO MANY OTHERS just think its thier right to have these things and that they are a neccesity

[Cid_Yama]

<i>5 Pieces of Advice for New Paupers</i>

That piece is too funny. I went through a similar experience when I went against Dad's wishes in choosing a major at college.

Think bread, eggs, cheese and rice; and cheese is a luxury. Think lots of rice.

Rice is an amazing food. You can mix it with just about anything and make something different. Rice gives you variety so you are not eating like a dog.

Fortunately, I was living in the dorms Fall and Winter, soon to learn I could stay year round and borrow to stay.

I was fortunate, most will be not so.

[WisJim]

We have family pictures of my dad and his sisters, and my grandparents, that look a lot like the pictures in Cid_Yama's first post here. They have talked about the depression, but they were poor northwoods farmers before the depression, so it didn't change their lifestyle much, and as long as no one objected to them shooting an occassional deer, they ate okay.

Most people can't imagine living like that, or not having multiple pairs of shoes, or never having new clothes, etc., but they need to get their priorities straightened out.

[Pretorian]

My half brother has a 2 year old, and he does not get along with the baby momma, she is thinking of going in the Navy, because she said she can't afford her car pmt and cell phone, on top of rent. So we might not get to see our nephew grow up. I'm NOT HAPPY about it. She is a total POS.

If all she does is barely paying her bills, joining military is the best idea she ever had.

[vision-master]

My parents went through the great depression.

Hope I learned my lessons from childhood.