A rare 1932 government dossier reveals the exact receipts, rations, and anxieties of families fighting to maintain dignity during the Great Depression.
My Grampa had an auto shop with a warehouse and converted the warehouse to a granary; he bought the wheat from the local farmers at a better price than the disastrous market price, then put it into storage. He gave some cash to the farmer up front, and the rest was credit, often for gasoline for their farm equipment. When the market came back, he was able to recoup.
Thank you for this research. While this 1932 dossier details life for middle(?) class government employees, as I read this I recognized that my parents, neither of whom were government employees lived with much the same constraints in the 1950's and 60's. My mother told me of buying clothes for 2 growing boys from the Eaton's or Simpson's catalog, choosing the clothing to purchase on the revolving credit account, and if it all came to more than $6 per payment period, the order was reduced until it did.
My parents were born towards the end of the Great Depression and the impact never left them. Especially my father who wasn’t quite a miser but close. After he passed, I was cleaning out his workshop. He kept broken stuff to salvage parts. When he got a new furnace back in the 1990s, the electric motor from the air handler was removed and stored in case he might need one someday. Every nook and cranny was full of “stuff” most of which had value only in his imagination. Three full-size construction dumpsters later, the place was ready to be cleaned up for sale. That exhaustive process caused me to reassess my own place so I don’t leave a chore like that for my son.
My Grampa had an auto shop with a warehouse and converted the warehouse to a granary; he bought the wheat from the local farmers at a better price than the disastrous market price, then put it into storage. He gave some cash to the farmer up front, and the rest was credit, often for gasoline for their farm equipment. When the market came back, he was able to recoup.
Thank you for this research. While this 1932 dossier details life for middle(?) class government employees, as I read this I recognized that my parents, neither of whom were government employees lived with much the same constraints in the 1950's and 60's. My mother told me of buying clothes for 2 growing boys from the Eaton's or Simpson's catalog, choosing the clothing to purchase on the revolving credit account, and if it all came to more than $6 per payment period, the order was reduced until it did.
My parents were born towards the end of the Great Depression and the impact never left them. Especially my father who wasn’t quite a miser but close. After he passed, I was cleaning out his workshop. He kept broken stuff to salvage parts. When he got a new furnace back in the 1990s, the electric motor from the air handler was removed and stored in case he might need one someday. Every nook and cranny was full of “stuff” most of which had value only in his imagination. Three full-size construction dumpsters later, the place was ready to be cleaned up for sale. That exhaustive process caused me to reassess my own place so I don’t leave a chore like that for my son.