Although some of these technical and conceptual aspects are ambiguous, the Great Depression was quite real, and concrete evidence of specific details is plentiful. Among these are the words of the women and men who lived through it.
First-person accounts are an important part of historiography. Although few people are now living who were old enough to have accurate insightful memories of the Great Depression, there are many of their writings which are preserved.
In California, near the city of Redding, Singer Lane was a child on a family-owned farm. She recalls that her parents lost all their money when the local bank collapsed, and when only a day later, the family’s house was completely destroyed in a fire.
They had nothing but the bare ground of the farmland. She writes:
The family moved in with relatives temporarily. One day Dad and Mother looked up and saw a caravan of cars coming, led by a car with a mattress tied on top.Their friends and neighbors were bringing whatever items they could spare from their own households to help them set up housekeeping again.
Not long after that, Mother received word that her mother wanted her to come for a visit. When she arrived, she found a quilting party in progress in her honor. The ladies spent the day making quilts to replace those that Mother had lost.
The helping hands that assisted my parents encouraged them to keep farming, and they stayed at it for many more years.
Families, friends, and neighbors were the main source — and perhaps the only source — of support. Unemployment peaked at around 25% in the United States, and while that is a catastrophic level, it also implies that around 75% of the workforce was employed.
There were enough people who had an income that personal generosity and voluntary contributions to local charitable organizations were able to provide support for those who’d lost income, lost property, or lost both.
In Kansas, near the town of De Soto, Cecile Kulp’s father owned and operated a general store. Unemployed men, moving from town to town by railroad, sought work. She writes:
Many of these men came into the store to ask for food. My father always fed them.
Also in the town, there were charities and “missions” operating:
Soon there were bread lines — hungry people standing in lines a block long just to get a bite of food. Some of the missions offered one free meal a day.
Many small acts of goodwill, multiplied by the millions across the United States, sustained individuals and families who had been financially devastated.
In Texas, in the town of Falfurrias, Roberta Ferguson and her family were able to keep their house; her husband was able to keep his job. Having these resources, they were able to help:
During the winters of 1931 and ‘32, hardly a day passed that I didn’t have one or more hobos at my door, asking for a cup of coffee and a bite to eat or a small job they could perform for a quarter or 50¢. If my husband was home, we often invited the man in to eat at our table and visit a bit. If he wasn’t home, I didn’t invite the men in, but I always had something to give them.
Like many young men in the early 1930s, Raphael Magelky was travelling by railroad from town to town, looking for work. Such men depended entirely on the kindness of strangers for weeks on end, between the occasional weeks when they were able to find some employment. He writes:
I remember one very generous lady who had just served a meal but hadn’t cleared the table yet. She asked me to come in and wash up, and then served me chicken, potatoes, and homemade gravy. It reminded me of the days when I was living at home and my own mother cooked food like that.
Due to the writings of people like Singer Lane, Cecile Kulp, Roberta Ferguson, and Raphael Magelky, there is concrete evidence, both of the conditions of the time, and of the ways in which people helped each other to survive.
