Depression of the 1930s affected small towns, big cities - 1st of 2 parts

By Don Cosby Washington Times-Herald

WASHINGTON — I realize that many of you who take the time to read this article are too young to have personally lived through the Depression years which lasted from 1929 until World War II which started in 1941. Nevertheless, chances are your parents and grandparents did. Currently, we are attempting to recover from what has been described as a recession which has lasted around a year and a half. The Depression actually was far more severe and lasted more than 12 years. In the 1930’s, you didn’t necessarily have to lose money in the collapse of the stock market in order to experience the hard times that followed. The subsequent 12 years that followed has gone down in history as a time that millions of families felt the pain of poverty due to no fault of their own. The entire nation was affected financially in a variety of ways. Our family never went hungry but some families did. Mom always had ways of providing for a bunch of hungry kids, even if it meant doing with less for herself. There were only so many pieces to a fried chicken and Mom would always say that the “part that flew over the fence last” was her favorite piece. She would even fry the chicken feet. When butchering a pig, they often joked that they used all the parts, even the “squeal.” Beans cooked with jowl bacon were stretched to go farther by adding “dropped dumplings” when an extra kid or two from the neighborhood showed up at supper time. Now you know how I got so smart, having such a Mom. Some families were more affected than others obviously but times were tough, with hardships that most might find hard to comprehend today. Most families didn’t have too many dollars left after buying the family necessities, such as groceries, coal for the stove, paying the rent and buying shoes for the kids. A sack of hard candy and oranges and apples at Christmas were a real treat. I enjoyed Christmas like all kids and making a list of things out of Sears Roebuck Catalog was fun even though I knew Santa had no more money than Dad and Mom. Nearly half of all Americans still lived on farms or in small towns. Window shopping was cheap too. Large cities had thousands of men without employment. Farm and rural communities seemed to be able to adapt to these hardships by thanking God for what they had instead of complaining about what they didn’t have. Social programs were non existent. Social Security for the elderly was not available until 1935. Many older citizens had too much pride to accept Social Security even when it did become available, considering it charity. Most kids went barefoot until school started in the fall. Store bought clothes for the kids were a rarity except for extra special events. Nearly all little girls wore feed sack dresses made by their mother. If there were two or three girls, the dress was made for the oldest. Guess what, the same dress was handed down to the younger sisters for the next three or four years. When socks developed a hole in the toe, Mom would stick a light bulb in the sock toe and darn the hole, “good as new,” maybe not “good as new” but usable for a while longer. Barn raising, butchering, threshing and harvest times were special times for families since neighbors and friends gathered together to exchange work. The adults enjoyed these events in spite of the work involved and the kids got to visit and play with the neighbor kids. This was generally an arrangement between two or three families, “exchanging my labor for your labor.” Despite the depression, modernization and travel progressed thanks to the railroads. Many persons, prior to 1930, had rarely traveled beyond the county boundaries. A trip to Indianapolis, St. Louis or Cincinnati was a topic for community discussion. Locally, the B and O shops were the area’s largest employer even though work was sporadic. The Hincher factory, Vincennes Packing Company and Corcorans Manufacturing also provided needed jobs. The W.P.A. was a federal works program designed to provide jobs for infrastructures such as road projects. Highway 50 through Washington was paved in 1938 as was the construction of Washington’s Hatchet Hollow, the Allen field’s concrete stands and the upgrading of the sewer system in Washington. Somehow people got by and one could argue that people were just as happy, if not more so, in spite of the depressed economy. President Roosevelt’s administration also implemented other national federal jobs programs in the early 30’s such as TVA which created jobs and electricity for one of the poorest regions in Tennessee. The building of Hoover Dam project became a reality playing an important part in transforming the divide between urban and rural America in the western states. Although a gradual improvement could begin to be seen in parts of the country, states in the south, such as Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana with a large black population of share croppers, found the programs of the “New Deal” inadequate in improving their living standards to any measurable degree. Likewise the poor and destitute in West Virginia and Pennsylvania only means of support of their families revolved around coal mining. The safety danger to the miner was of secondary importance. Providing the necessities of life came first, before personal safety. I suppose that every family who lived through the 1930’s would have a similar story to tell and I have heard others say that their family was poor but “we didn’t know it for all our friends were poor too.” There probably was some truth in that statement. The house we lived in during that time only had two closets. When you opened the closet door the closet was only about 18 inches deep and two or three foot long. When I got a little older, I asked Dad, “Why would anyone build a clothes closet like that?” He said, “Son, when this house was built, it was plenty big enough! All you needed was two spike nails inside the closet, one to hang your dirty overalls on and one to hang your clean overalls on.” Now that’s what you call poor. We have always been told, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” This is probably true for recently I saw a collection of pictures, taken during the 1930 Great Depression. Obviously the plight of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas due to the depression was magnified 10 fold due to three years of drought and excessive winds. Farmers experienced consecutive crop failures. There were gigantic dust storms in 1933 through 1936. Winds stripped top soil from the plain states with dust reported so dense a person could not see five feet in front of them at certain points. Mass migration to California and adjacent states resulted in more than 500,000 being left homeless. “Grapes of Wrath,” a novel written by John Steinbeck in 1939, won the Pulitzer Prize and was made into a film starring Henry Fonda, showing the plight of one such family. The film, in spite of being old and black and white is still available and still worthy of seeing again. Will Rogers I think it could safely be said, without challenge, that one person could be credited more with lifting the spirits of the American public during the dark depressing days through out the early 1930’s. That person was Will Rogers. He was one of the most interesting and entertaining characters of the past century. Of course, most of the readers of this column will say “Who in the world was Will Rogers?” Long before most of us were born, Will Rogers was a household word in virtually all of this country. His name was recognizable as far back as 1917. He became famous by defying all reasonable assumptions as to “what is required to make a person successful as an entertainer.” Rogers was one of the United States’ most renowned and respected national figures in the 20th Century. He was born on Nov. 4, 1879, near Oologah, Okla., to a prominent Indian Territory family. He was a Cherokee since his mother’s family was of Cherokee heritage. He was known as Oklahoma’s favorite son, a comedian, humorist, lecturer, social commentator, Vaudeville performer and actor. He traveled around the world three times, made 71 movies, and wrote countless numbers of nationally syndicated newspaper columns. He was the leading political wit of that era. He starred in the Ziegfeld follies. He possessed an uncanny ability to make Americans laugh at themselves and as a result earned the title, “prince of wit and wise cracks.” His folksy style allowed him to successfully poke fun at elected officials, gangsters, prohibition, government programs and a host of other topics of the day in a way that could be readily appreciated without the audience becoming offended. An avid democrat himself, he often commenting “I’m not a member of an organized political party, I’m a democrat. Will’s mother died when he was 11 years of age and his father was a leader in the Cherokee society, a judge and a member of the state senate. He had high hopes for Will but after the death of Will’s mother, the relationship between Will and his father deteriorated during those formative boyhood and teenage years. Will’s father felt him to be irresponsible and too easygoing to ever become successful. Years later they reconciled and became close once again. Will was a good student but dropped out of school at an early age. He however said “I was a poor student; I studied the fourth reader for 10 years.” At one of Will’s performances someone asked how he had become famous as an entertainer? He told them, “I was too lazy to work and too scared to steal.” As a young boy he worked as a cowboy on his father’s ranch and in 1901 he and a friend left home with aspirations to work as gauchos in Argentina. They spent five years trying to make it as ranch owners in Argentina. Both he and his friend, eventually needed money desperately and in Will’s own words, “I was ashamed to send home for more money,” so the two separated. Will eventually ended up back in the U.S. and had become extremely talented with the lariat or lasso and started his show business career as a trick roper. He did things with a lasso that no one could duplicate. On one occasion, at a performance at a rodeo he told the audience that he next would lasso the two front legs of the horse while the rider brought the horse past him in a full gallop. The most amazing part was that he actually did it. In 1908, Rogers married Betty Blake and the couple had four children, Will Rogers Jr., Mary, James Blake and Fred who died at age 2 of diphtheria. Will Jr. became a WW II war hero and became a member of congress. Mary became a Broadway actress and James was a newspaper man. Success and fame finally came calling in the mid 1920s and 30s. Will had refined his act to a science. His on stage monologues on the news of the day followed a similar routine every night. Even though the Will Rogers era pre-dates the Johnny Carson era by 40 or 50 years and the advent of television, drawing comparisons to Carson, Jack Parr, Jay Leno and Dave Letterman is obvious. He would appear on stage in his cowboy outfit and old slouchy hat, nonchalantly swinging his lasso and say, “Well what shall I talk about tonight. I ain’t got anything funny to say, all I know is what I read in the newspapers.” He then began by making jokes about what he read in the day’s newspapers. Rogers was the master of one liners and nearly all his material was spontaneous. Unlike most stand-up comedians of today, who employ a battery of writers, Will wrote most of his own material. Here are a few of the many of one liner’s he used at various times in his performances. •If you don’t like what’s going on in Washington DC, write your congressman. Even if he can’t read, write him! •You’ve got to admit that each political party is worse than the other, the one that’s out, always looks the best. •You know George Washington was a politician and a gentleman, that’s a rare combination today. •There are two theories to arguing with a woman, NEITHER ONE WORKS! By the mid 1930s Rogers was adored by the American people because he made them laugh and forget their troubles. He was the top paid movie star in Hollywood at that time and had become quite wealthy. Rogers loved to fly to his lecture tours and personal appearances, speeches and benefits for dozens of victims of floods, droughts or earthquakes in various communities. He was generally accompanied by Willy Post, a one eyed famous aviator and close friend. On one such occasion he and Post were flying a small plane on Aug. 15, 1935, near Point Barrow, Alaska, and both were killed when the plane crashed, thus ending the career of one of America’s most loved, respected and unique entertainers of all time. See Part 2 in Wednesday’s paper.

Text Only