Millions of unemployed adults, and their families, survived because of effective assistance from neighbors and strangers.
Evelyn Martin lived in Lowndes County, Alabama, during the 1930s. She was being raised by her grandparents. She called her grandfather “Granddaddy” and “Nannie” was her name for her grandmother. Her grandparents operated a store not far from the family home.
Working in the store, Nannie often saw wanderers: people with no work and no money. They wandered, hoping to find a job and earn a little money, but days and weeks could pass between the occasional short-term work. Evelyn writes:
Nannie had a warm, loving heart, and she couldn’t bear to see hardship; she had to do something to help. Whenever she spotted those wanderers, she’d send them to our house 2 blocks away for a hot meal.
Nannie “kept a big table set up in the backyard, and there was always a big pot of beans on the stove and hot corn bread in the oven.” The family had a large garden, and “much of that food was shared with others who were less fortunate.”
The families who helped were not naive. They fed the wanderers outdoors whenever possible. This avoided both improprieties and the appearance of improprieties. It also avoided making the hosts vulnerable to crime.
Pauline Clark lived near Helena, Montana. During the 1930s, hobos would walk through her neighborhood frequently. She gave them food. Some of them wanted to do some work to thank her. They cut wood for the stove.
She writes that she would make her “guest a big beef sandwich.” The men enjoyed conversation, too. She adds:
Sometimes I’d send the men off with an extra sandwich and cookies.
Pauline had a sense of responsibility, because she had more than the unemployed men who were constantly looking for work. She reports:
I had no money, as those were hard times even with my husband working, but I could share what food we had.
Although unemployment was high, and wages were low, the majority of the workforce in the United States had employment. This enabled them to have something to share with those who had nothing.
Jean L. Jones was a child in Carterville, Illinois, during the 1930s. She recalls the pattern which repeated itself often: a wanderer “knocked on our door late one morning and asked if we could share some food with him, perhaps a sandwich.”
Like many homemakers of the Depression Era, Jean’s mother had a habit of providing something:
Mother had not yet fixed lunch and had no meat ready, but said she could give him a bread-and-butter sandwich if that would help. He accepted it gratefully.
The written first-person accounts of Evelyn Martin, Pauline Clark, and Jean Jones provide the insight that it was independent individual initiative which helped millions of people survive the Great Depression. Many small personal actions added up to gigantic effort. Personal responsibility and an ethic of charity yielded concrete specific actions which were extremely effective in addressing the needs of the era.
