There is no way to wrap our minds around a world of hurt and trouble. The numbers are too large and our sphere of influence too small. All we can do is what we can here locally. A look back at the past may offer some suggestions. How did our ancestors weather the Great Depression? How did that crisis affect people in different parts of the country?
These are some online accounts I found that might help enhance our perspective on life then and now. Maybe we can glean some insights into the mindset and creativity that enabled some to ride out the Depression better than others.
"My mother was reminiscing about her first washing machine, a Maytag with a gas engine. We were sitting in the kitchen of our Kansas farm home, where my parents had lived since a few months after their marriage in 1933. They had one child and another on the way when my dad brought home the Maytag. On washday, Mother would wheel it from the corner of the kitchen to a window, so the exhaust pipe could be put out the window. She pumped water by hand at an outside well, carried it to the kitchen stove, heated it over a wood fire, then filled the washing machine. Clothing was hung on a line outside to dry. On the same wood stove, she heated an iron for the pieces of clothing that required it. What a difference electricity would make!" (John Musbach)
"No one starved in Rockne during the years of the depression, but times were getting harder. The price of cotton had fallen considerably since the 1920's and the cotton gin in Red Rock was feeling the crunch from the fall in prices. Many farmers were left without a decent means to earn some cash money. Besides their cotton, their only other crops were corn and hay and this was used mainly to feed their mule teams and the few hogs and cattle they had. They did have plenty of chickens, however, and soon this became a quick and easy way to make some money and earn credit. In order to acquire the things they couldn't raise on the farm, farmers would bring their eggs to Fred's store and he would buy them for twenty cents on the dozen, in trade. Fred would then take the eggs into Austin and sell them for twenty cents in cash. By selling their eggs for trade, families were able to acquire things such as flour, sugar, coffee, cheese, kerosine and even starter feed for their chicks." (Kenneth Hilbig)
"The depression's immediate impact on Georgia was much like that throughout the nation as a whole. Bank failures were common, and in small towns and communities opportunities for loans dried up. Small business owners were especially vulnerable. Less money in local circulation meant fewer paying customers; with the absence of credit and financing, these business owners quickly went under.
Large landowners were usually able to ride the depression out; a small number of farmers who made the transition from cotton production to soybeans, peanuts, corn, livestock, and hogs had resources to fall back on. For the rest of Georgia's farmers (69 percent of the population was rural in 1930), the depression was a catastrophe.
First, the state Tenant Farmhouse experienced its worst drought on record in 1930-31. As the depression wore on, the defects and negative trends of cash-crop agriculture became magnified. The typical Georgia farm family had no electricity, no running water, and no indoor privies. Diets were inadequate, consisting mainly of molasses, fatback, and cornbread. The poverty of the state's most rural counties made the support of even minimal education standards impossible. There were few rural clinics, hospitals, or health care workers. Some counties had no health facilities at all. Naturally, sicknesses occurred, with pellagra, tuberculosis, and malaria being common." (New Georgia Encyclopedia)
Another lucrative practice during the Depression was that of hidden employment. Farming families had a tendency to draw on whatever income was available, so that their family was not completely dependent on farm production an activity known as “farm diversificationâ€. In the early pre-tractor days of rural Ontario, farms communities were well diversified so that within each community no two farmers were in competition and communities produced a variety of vegetables, meats and dairy products, which could then be sold among neighboring farms.[14] For the Leigh Family, situated along Ontario’s northern Highway 11, opening up a small general store allowed them to profit substantially from the highway traffic.[15] This form of diversification was of financial benefit to the Leigh family.
Easily the most common practice of bringing in indirect income was the ‘taking-in’ of boarders. According to Hilda Leigh, the term “boarder†described those who would pay money for a night’s rest on the Leigh’s farm, or referred to young men who traveled along the Canadian National Railway looking for seasonal jobs, generally known as hobos. The Leigh family always had a number of boarders because of their property’s proximity to local railway station. W.G. Leigh would typically ask any hobo staying for a day’s work on their family farm in return for the night’s rest in their barn and three hot meals. Hobos were an important indicator of the circumstances during the Depression; their pervasiveness alludes to the breakdown of the traditional family unit in urban areas, as young men left their families when they could no longer be supported.
Finally, the gradual introduction and application of technology to rural farming in Ontario generated higher incomes and contentment. According to Hilda Leigh, the purchase of a cream separator greatly assisted her family through the 1930s. The device allowed her family to separate their cow’s cream and skim milk from one another, to sell a high quality product. This investment provided the Leigh farm a comparative advantage, as no other farm within their community owned such a device.[16] " (Rural Ontario Families During the Great Depression)