THE Great Depression Thread (merged)

[J-Rod]

Maybe I misconstrued what I was doing. It's nothing I would ever publish for profit without her knowledge, and I certainly don't think I am a good enough writer to get to that point anyways. If I did, of course she would be presented with the book and asked for permission. She'll be informed about it in any case once I have plenty of audio. Her daughter is the one actually that suggested if I wanted to do this, that it's better she not be told she's on tape.

It's mainly a project to collect her thoughts and experiences into a book we can keep in the family, as well as the audio recordings. We all don't like to think about it, but she's old as dirt, I'd like to have stuff beyond pictures to remember her by. I only posted here because of the quasi relevance of the depression she lived through and the good chance of that happening again in the future. The audio I shouldn't have posted, but I don't like being called a liar and a plagiarist, with a make-believe grandmother.

[cmlek]

Hey JRod, I'm going to go ahead and apologize for Novus - I've read TKAM several times too, and I don't remember anything about a bean bag. I do think the stories you're recording are neat though, and I'd love to hear more.

Melissa

[Novus]

Since I can't find an online link I am just going to appologize.

J-rod, I am sorry I called you and your grandmother liars.

[DomusAlbion]

The whole peak oil...end of the world thing is starting to get to me. I can't tell you how angry I am at past generations. Nothing against you or your grandmother personally.

Novus, quit being a baby and blaming others, especially prior generations. Each generation has had its trials and has had to face a life and world built upon previous generations' triumphs and failures. Forget that and use your energy to make a better future for yourself and those you care about.

[rogerhb]

Was it from a book called "To Kill A Bean Bag"?

[J-Rod]

Apology accepted.

[Falconoffury]

I blame the greedy bankers from the early days of the industrialized age who created a growth based system of currency. The average person consumed resources out of ignorance, so he is not to blame.

[RonMN]

Is this what we're headed for? Worse?

Link

[gnm]

US Population in 1930 ~124 million...

US population in 2006 ~300 million...

Never mind the world population or per capita energy consumption....

Yup, worse..... MUCH WORSE.



-G

[seahorse2]

Its obvious from the pictures of the abject poverty why people were so willing to rush into a world war.

[swingbolder]

One thing that always strikes me when viewing photos of that era is the relative lack of fat people, compared to today.

Poor people are much fatter these days.

[cube]

One thing that always strikes me when viewing photos of that era is the relative lack of fat people, compared to today.

Poor people are much fatter these days.

PO will solve the obesity problem.

[rogerhb]

Poor people are much fatter these days.

Shock horror, poor people are less healthy than those with more income.

Go back to the good old days, what was infant mortality like, how many died during child-birth, what was the life expectancy?

[rogerhb]

Its obvious from the pictures of the abject poverty why people were so willing to rush into a world war.

Hm, US certainly did everything to avoid WWII.

Remember Chamberlain, Munich and Peace in our Time.

Nobody rushed into WWII. Not even Germany who did not want another world war, and were rather surprised when the UK and France declared war following invasion of Poland.

[elocs]

Poor people are much fatter these days.

Shock horror, poor people are less healthy than those with more income.

Go back to the good old days, what was infant mortality like, how many died during child-birth, what was the life expectancy?

I think because of the high infant mortality rates in the past that the longevity stats were skewed. I think that if a person survived childhood that their life expectancy was probably pretty decent for the time. Many of our founding fathers in the U.S. lived to an old age.

[rogerhb]

Many of our founding fathers in the U.S. lived to an old age.

.... and were rich landowners with slaves to do the back breaking work while they pondered the issues of state.

[elocs]

Many of our founding fathers in the U.S. lived to an old age.

.... and were rich landowners with slaves to do the back breaking work while they pondered the issues of state.

I am not disputing that, but my point is that if a person surivived childhood they probably were going to live to be beyond 40, particularly if they were male and did not risk dying in childbirth. I am the 12th generation in the U.S. and I had a number of great, great...grandfathers who lived to be in their 60s or longer and they were not wealthy slaveholders. They did seem to outlive their first wives after the women had many children, then remarried and had more.

[Loki]

Its obvious from the pictures of the abject poverty why people were so willing to rush into a world war.

The pics of migrant farmworkers are not representative of how the vast majority of people lived during the Depression. Hell, a lot of migrant farmworkers today don't live a whole lot better. One of the captions says there were 4 million "on the road" at the end of the 1930s. There were 132.2 million people in the US in 1940--4 million is 3% of that population. Statistically insignificant.

Not that that the 1930s wasn't a hard decade for many Americans, but most were not living in cardboard shacks, eating rotten peas and turtles. What really whipped up public support for WWII was Pearl Harbor. Prior to that there was a very strong sentiment among a lot of Americans against our entering the war.

Whether the next Great Depression will be worse than the last one, I have no idea. My crystal ball is in the shop. It wouldn't surprise me, though. And it's not unlikely that, like the last one, it will result in another world war.

[elocs]

Its obvious from the pictures of the abject poverty why people were so willing to rush into a world war.

The pics of migrant farmworkers are not representative of how the vast majority of people lived during the Depression. Hell, a lot of migrant farmworkers today don't live a whole lot better. One of the captions says there were 4 million "on the road" at the end of the 1930s. There were 132.2 million people in the US in 1940--4 million is 3% of that population. Statistically insignificant.

Not that that 1930s wasn't a hard decade for many Americans, but most were not living in cardboard shacks, eating rotten peas and turtles. What really whipped up public support for WWII was Pearl Harbor. Prior to that there was a very strong sentiment among a lot of Americans against our entering the war.

Whether the next Great Depression will be worse than the last one, I have no idea. My crystal ball is in the shop. It wouldn't surprise me, though. It's not unlikely that, like the last one, it will result in another world war.

I think the next depression will be worse since our population has more than doubled and the people are more separated from the land now and fewer people grow any of their own food. We are also a generation separated from the Great Depression. If I remember correctly, I think they chose to call what was happening a "depression" because they did not want to use the scare word "recession".

[MonteQuest]

Hm, US certainly did everything to avoid WWII.

The American people did, but not the ruling elite or the government.

“For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan…And, of course, if we go to war against Japan, it will inevitably lead us to war against Germany.” —Secretary of Interior Harold L. Ickes, October 18, 1941

Yet still, on October 7, 1941, a national poll found that two-thirds said it was more important to keep out of war than to defeat Germany. On October 27, in his famous “Navy Day” address, Roosevelt riveted the nation by claiming he had come into the possession of a “secret map” made in Nazi Germany that proved Hitler was lying when he said he had no designs on the Western Hemisphere. “ I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler's government-by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America as Hitler proposes to reorganize it.”

As has often happened, the truth about the map did not emerge until many years after the war: It was a forgery produced by the British intelligence service, most probably at its technical laboratory in Ontario, Canada. William Stephenson (code name: Intrepid), chief of British intelligence operations in North America, passed it on to U.S. intelligence Chief William Donovan, who gave it to Roosevelt. This map, the President explained, showed South America, as well as “our great life line, the Panama Canal,” divided into five vassal states under German domination. “That map, my friends, makes clear the Nazi design not only against South America but against the United States as well.”

On November 25, 1941, Secretary of War and CFR member, Henry L. Stimson wrote in his diary: “In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that, in order to have the full support of the American people, it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there could be no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who were the aggressors… The question was, how we should maneuver them into firing the first shot without allowing too much damage to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition.”

Remind anyone of 911?

Sacrificing only the old and marginally useful ships was the solution to that problem. Some will say that it was a necessary horror we had to endure to make the world safe for democracy. Pearl Harbor, this view holds, was a pawn sacrificed to capture a king—a master stroke. I invite you to finish this paragraph with your own words.