Depression, Recession, Downturn—Whatever
Ancient Wisdom
My grandfather once said something to me around 1970 that I have never forgotten. He was born in my house in 1890 (or rather, I in his)—twenty years after his grandmother built the present home. He farmed continuously without a day lost to sickness from 1908, when he graduated from the local high school (the same one my children and I went to—but, of course, not the same school either [but that is an entirely different story]), until 48 hours before he died in 1976.
He had plenty of stories about the Depression. It started for farmers, he said, really in the early 1920s, when the boom prices and easy credit of the immediate post-Great War years led to rapid expansion in the planting of trees and vines, more debt, and—well, we all now know the familiar story. By 1933 he said sixteen relatives were living in the house, and another ten or so in various barns and sheds (the farm was only 120 acres).
They ate, he said, communal meals, worked a communal garden and met up in the evening after completing assigned “chores.” (I remember as a child a canned fruit storage room with concrete walls in the shed with old jars with tape on them labeled ‘freestone peaches—1933′, red plums 1936′).
Sometimes he would get a telegraph message delivered to go down to the local train station to pick up another jobless second cousin or sister-in-law. This was pretty much standard, he told, me until 1941 and the onset on the war when the bad times abruptly ended, and suddenly non-perishable items like raisins were needed overseas, labor was short, and nearly all his male relatives, from 18-40, disappeared into uniform and went off to Europe and the Pacific. (My uncle Beldon was injured on the Philippines, Holt died right after Normandy (I saw his grave at Hamm), another uncle went to Alaska, my father and his cousin to the Pacific, and so on).
My maternal grandfather was a rather eccentric farmer (in the 1940s he re-mortgaged his farm, right at the tail end of the Depression, in order to send his daughters to Stanford University). As I look back at some 55 years on his land, I confess I’m beginning to think that I haven’t met too many wiser souls, who combined abstract learning with knowledge of the stars, winds, smells in the air, flight of birds and geese, natural sense of barometric pressures to predict weather or compare climate with years past. In any case, back to the Depression.
He would drive me around in the late 1960s and early 1970s in his1946 international pick-up and point out the grand rural Victorian homes, built around 1918-19 that had bankrupt the farmer-owners, point out the farmers and packers who in reprehensible fashion sorta, kinda stole Japanese land during the war (and those fewer who had helped save the farms for their interned owners), and explained how some farmers on very poor soil had survived the Depression, while others on rich loam had gone under (yes, of course, character and industriousness and acceptance of tragedy with both resignation and determination were the keys, he said to survival).
In whispers, he also mentioned on our rural drives the names of local grandees (this was, again 1970) whose fathers in the late 1920s had burned down their majestic homes or barns (and even their wooden raisin trays) to garner pre-Depression insurance cash coverage. (I though of Balzac’s “Behind every fortune lies a great crime”.)
A poignant reminder of how much we still have now, and how much farther we are from want today, even as we tighten our belts, than our grandparents in the Depression.
Unlike my grandparents, I don’t have to take in laundry and fancy sewing to get eggs, or put on a tie and a well-blocked hat and head out at 6:00 AM to look for day work, loading vegetable crates or digging ditches.
That still, I hasten to add, doesn’t mean I have enough to keep making the payment on my upside-down mortgage and also pay the hundreds of $$ in higher taxes and fees Ahnold and the Democrats are loading up the howitzer with — and pointing it at me.
Dr. Hanson -
Thanks, again, for sharing your thoughts with us. You are very fortunate to have had someone like your grandfather provide you with wisdom and insight over a long period of time, and it shows in your writing.
Given that the agrarian ideal is largely lost today, how would you suggest inculcating our kids with similar wisdom? Clearly, it is not in the curriculum at government schools, and far, far too few get it at home.
Your lengthy piece last fall for City Journal (http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson121008.html) about the loss of classical education was very enlightening, and it left me with many more questions about the way forward with educating our kids. Any additional thoughts and insight on the subject would be greatly appreciated.
Best Regards,
GGA – Dublin, Ohio
After 26 years soldiering around the earth, I return to an election built on aphorisms & a disabled AVS (address verification system) on the campaign’s website. What have you done to our country, California?
My Dad worked as a butter maker and then sold Electrolux door to door throughout the 1930s. He always had money for rent and food. It wasn’t til the war years that he parked the car; Tires went to war, replaceable only with recaps; Gas was merely highly rationed. Dad put food on the table and we went out once a week to the local restaurant.
Times were tough. People who worked got by and those who didn’t leaned on family, those who had helped out. It was survivable. We were fortunate and had many good memories of that time.
Essential vdh
The most difficult thing is to distill down past the words and the actions to what was being said. What was being given and received. A grandfathers conversation with his grandson searching for meaning knowing what was being learned would provide protection for a beloved grandson past his life past his ability to be there to protect.
At its core; It is character, honor, honesty, family, facing the world with those core values tied to individual responsibility. A sense of duty. A sense that nothing was owed to anyone that was not earned. That all within the family should earn their keep. A sense that nothing should be taken from anyone to weak from sickness or injury to hold it. A sense that those that needed help within this family should be helped. All values born of generations of experience surviving in a demanding world. Honoring the father and mother in all its complex meanings.
All values designed to succeed–succeed especially in America where liberty and justice was the well spring needed for such a family to survive. It was all they needed and it was only available in America. And survive they did. As others who came to America’s shores for liberty and justice. To try their hand at the bounty of their labor protected by the constitution and a limited government. A paper on which humanity rested reviving itself knowing that this was all that was needed and it must be protected—all who came to America knew this. They knew what they had come “from”. They defended it with their blood and lives–because they “knew”.
How was this all lost we ask? “From within” comes the answer.
In her twilight years, my grandmother (1910 – 2002) would like to sit back and say, “Oh, the things I’ve seen.”
One time, I chirped, “Yeah, you survived the Great Depression!”
She snorted and said, “That was easy. All you had to do was sit there and wait for it to end.”
She also hated Roosevelt and never stopped blaming Leftist hero Harry Bridges for “ruining San Francisco.”
Dear Doc: Your grandfather was born the year George Fancher, of obelisk fame, died. Did his family know Fancher? A little more likely: did your uncle stationed in Alaska during the war meet Charlton Heston, who was sent there too?
In the late 1980′s the stock market dropped 500 points one day. I remember talking to customers about the Depression.
One man said that a lot of people weren’t working. Somebody said his father killed himself. There wasn’t social security or unemployment compensation. One woman told me that many people were working. That was her perspective.
My grandfather was a tailor and always had work. He said he bought a Pontiac the first year it came out. I remember he had a Hudson. Imagine if we had bailed out Hudson or DeSoto.
Great article in National Review Online today…Tuesday.
Keep ‘em comin’ Prof.
I’ve been thinking that our economic “downturn” may indeed reshape the fabric of our society…and that families will be recombining again, as you describe in your post.
That could be a silver lining to all this craziness…..?
Thank you for your ever thoughtful and provocative insights. I am a baby of the 1950′s and did not live through the depression. On the other hand, my father was born in 1910, and grew up in Oregon, the son of itinerant school teachers. By the time of the depression, he was in college, but he knew the basics of survival, how to make a car run, chickens and eggs, basic boating, and he could farm, building a significant operation growing alfalfa in Eastern Oregon. He was trained as a lawyer, but he was a woodworker, making boats and cabinetry for our house. An all purpose kind of guy. Many of us have lost that ability to fend for ourselves. sadly. And it is hard, even if you try — zoning that may not allow chickens, houses that are unrealistically large for heating with wood, etc. He was tough, resourceful, and economic.
The scary thing is that our liberal society now wont allow us to go fight a war overseas without massive protests as the good causes are all gone and our enemies arent made up of conventionl armies.
Therefore, the only event that can be comparable now to World War 2 getting the Depression to end is an invasion of our country by some kind of military force. The sad thing is that based on the reaction to 9/11, combined with the huge illegal alien problem, does not guarantee a unified response if that event even happens. This unified force will come from within in the form of a conservative revolution. Is that really likely though? Probably not any time soon.
Thus the transformation to Socialism. Its happening right before our eyes.
I remembered being told the same things. I want to know why 95% of mortages are paid why do we needed to help only the 5%. I will love to have 2,3,4% knock off of my mortage. It will be great if I could have 200 or 300 dollars less to pay every month. If 95% of us had that much money extra ever month; credit will loosen up spending wil grow. But the funny thing I never hear is that our saving should grow. But I guess not If we have to much saving or family to depend on we won’t need Barack Obama
Dr. Hanson,
Just a note to say how much I have appreciated your work. I own many of your books and treasure them highly.
And I am going broke buying ink to print your articles. Stop writing such excellent pieces, will ya ? Hah ha
God Bless.
Jack
“…My maternal grandfather was a rather eccentric farmer (in the 1940s he re-mortgaged his farm, right at the tail end of the Depression, in order to send his daughters to Stanford University). As I look back at some 55 years on his land, I confess I’m beginning to think that I haven’t met too many wiser souls, who combined abstract learning with knowledge of the stars, winds, smells in the air, flight of birds and geese, natural sense of barometric pressures to predict weather or compare climate with years past…”
That is poetry. Magnificient primitive poetry too. I thought you were just a historian :-)
Dr. Hanson:
Such insightful historical context is very welcome and I agree–we are shedding the excess off of our economy. It is unpleasant as it is necessary. An excellent piece, sir.
It says something when the greatest health problems the “poor” in America suffer from are obesity related. Heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes…
“Chin up” is the sort of message we should be hearing from our leaders.
Great piece.
Indeed we are shedding excess. Unfortunately some of the excess kept marginal players employed. For example, people are eating out far less. Restaurants will close and those employed will be laid off. This will feedback into the economy.
We are not done with the economic contraction and harder times are in store.
What Dr. Hanson says about jobs in the Depression is absolutely true. Philadelphia and its environs were such a diverse area that the Depression had, apparently, little effect. My mother (single at the time), all her surviving brothers, and her sister had jobs and made it all right, living in the house in which they all grew up. It was the farm areas and the one-industry or company towns which were hit hard.
I remember listening to my aunts and uncles about the 1920-40 period, and its interesting that in the urban setting of an industrial city, they had also opened their home to all the family that could not keep their places… and yet that was very few of them as at the low end of the working poor the downturn had been seen from the mid- to late- 1920′s. Even with only one regularly employed person, my maternal grandfather having a job on the railroad, my maternal grandmother took in laundry and everyone took odd-jobs in the neighborhood or wherever they appeared.
Being in Buffalo there was also the cross-border interest and the fact that the surface of Lake Erie and even the Niagara river froze over to the point of not just driving cars (with Canadian booze) but even to putting in temporary railroad spurs. One uncle worked as a trucker and even with the Depression there was still building going on, loads to haul, and a general need of transport across some quite bad roads. Another uncle picked up a job at a compressor factory and, soon, when the early 1940′s before WWII arrived, other family members were working there, too.
In all of that they never blamed big business, but saw it as a natural part of the system, and they saw the ‘make work jobs’ of the government as demeaning. Family pride kept them out of bread lines and soup lines as that was for the desperately poor, not just working poor. That distinction had a difference to them… and the famous quip from my uncle Edward still resides with me as they had also had news of what was going on in Germany: upon hearing how bad things were *today* he would look out the window and say ‘It can’t be that bad, no dead bodies in the street.’
Thus I had my measure set for when things go bad.
We aren’t there, not by a long shot… and weren’t there during the Great Depression, either. Let us hope that we can step back from this abyss where his measure becomes ours for what a ‘bad time’ is.
Considering all the talk about a Great Depression II, I’m surprised we haven’t been overwhelmed with media stories about what conditions were actually like in the 1930′s and how people adapted to them. Interviews with people who lived through the original cataclysm — and on my job, I meet a fair number of fully intact 80 – 90 year olds — might be helpful in assuaging our national sense of unease. Could it be the MSM doesn’t want us to hear sage advise from the likes of VDH’s grandfather? Well, they must have someone else in mind to provide us with comfort and guidance during our trying times.
You continue to impress me Dr. Hanson. And a Dire Straits/Mark Knopfler fan to boot! Greatest show I ever saw in my life, Dire Straits at the Pittsburgh Syria Mosque in 1985!
Great read. Am sharing it with my colleauges in history today.
It is a rich man who has the ancient wisdom of his (grand)father to delve into when he alone has to make important decisions.
Re: #20: “What Dr. Hanson says about jobs in the Depression is absolutely true. Philadelphia and its environs were such a diverse area that the Depression had, apparently, little effect.”
A very good point. Phila was home to one of the great Depression success stories, Philco and their low priced “cathedral” radios. They also had Atwater Kent and across the river in Camden, RCA. Then there was Baldwin Locomotive, the Budd company, various shipyards and Stetson Hats. And many more.
For me, the question is: Are we as a nation, as strong economically as the Philadelphia area alone was back then?
My families saga during this era Mr Hanson was very different in Western Pa. First my Great Grandfather (born 1871) built up 150 acres after surviving the Johnstown flood of ’89. His view was that being a farmer he’d survived successive depressions all his life. Unlike most of his neighbors he resisted selling mineral rights during various boom busts. When his oldest surviving son came home from serving in the Pacific, coupled with the New Deal programs, they prospered as never before.
The frugality Pap Overman championed was adopted by his six children, five girls and a son, already mentioned.
Their ‘product’ through the years reads like a tracking chart on the precarious ups and downs on crops and livestock; once one of the largest turkey farms in Indiana Co they went from hogs to cattle to massive laying hens while mainly planting corn. Besides being practically self-sustaining -other than dairy cattle – they never threw ANYTHING AWAY. Me and my cousins spent our summers (when not getting a taste of working) playing among four storage barns with every farm implement invention known to man since the plow & mule. In the 80′s when many families had leveraged themselves to the hilt with debt buying every new John Deer on the market – they still had their up-grade 50′s International Harvester. My Great Uncle NEVER took on debt – he leased land – had gas & oil grandfathered – and prospered to the point of sending seven neieces and nephews to advanced college degrees in three decades following WWII. All this on a postal worker supplemental salary and an estate that never went beyond about 400 acres. Everything was built by family hands; self-taught engineers and mechanics. To this day it remains – run by a second-cousin – his nephew. Besides my Great Uncles service in WWII, he and the two sisters who likewise never married (both teachers) took one vacation to Yosemite in the late 40′s. Recreation was a camp bought on the Alleganny river a few hours from home – ususally four or five trips a summer.
“What we are talking about is a reduction in excess, not mass deprivation.” Truer words were never spoken.
Doing my own polling, I do not find many losing jobs and not able to find work, in the South East. A relative was just fired, for excessive absences, but started at another job a few days later. A friend has been telling me that I could work for his security firm, but I’m not looking for any more work. My random queries about people out of work and unable to find work do not verify many at all. Nothing out of the ordinary there. There are many homes and condos on the market, but this is a result of the glut of easy mortgages and profiteering.
The media in this country, thinks it can drive any agenda it wants. And at the present, the media is only bolstering its pandering to Obama.
There are too many people, without mental courage, willing to be led to the fountain of ignorance.
The line that really rung true was VDH’s grandfather’s know-how. He knew how to do things, and he knew how to survive. And that reminded me of a concern a 22-year-old colleague mentioned a few months ago. She said that her friends and her were anxious that because they’d never known anything but good times, that they were spoiled and wouldn’t be able to strong enough to survive if the economy collapsed.
They didn’t feel they knew how to do anything — that they didn’t have the base level survival skills. I told to tell her friends that if the time came, they would figure it out. People are way stronger than they think, and are able to endure hardships they can scarcely imagine. And when the bad times are over, you will be grateful, and have a new confidence that only comes with testing by fire. She seemed surprised, and thought about it. In a few seconds, a resolve came over her eyes, and she said, “I have to feed my son. That’s all there is to it. I’ll have to do whatever it takes.”
Quote:
22. TLM:
Considering all the talk about a Great Depression II, I’m surprised we haven’t been overwhelmed with media stories about what conditions were actually like in the 1930’s and how people adapted to them.
/Quote
Don’t be surprised. A story describing how people adapted could only be written by journalists and published by editors who value self-reliance. All you will encounter today will be sob-sister whimpering on how people, from fat-cat corporate executives to radical “advocates” for the “disenfranchised,” go about clamoring for government bail outs.
The times, they’ve been a-changin’.
Mr. Hanson, you should think about screen writing. The story you told would make a great movie or tv series. Great for viewers who appreciate conservative values and would like some media to illustrate those principles to their kids.
401k’s are now 200.5e’s.
TLM states, “Considering all the talk about a Great Depression II, I’m surprised we haven’t been overwhelmed with media stories about what conditions were actually like in the 1930’s and how people adapted to them.”
What passes for media these days is too occupied orchestrating Obama’s “woe-is-us” policies to engage in anything resembling journalism. If the media actually researched and interviewed, they could report the present situation is somewhere north of the late 70′s-early 80′s recession and nowhere close to what the nation experienced in the 1930′s. Oil is cheap, interest rates are low, homes and autos are once again affordable, and jobs are out there, that is if one really wants to work. Meanwhile, Pelois, Reid, Obama & their media pets spread fear among the foolish to accomplish their dreams of absolute power through imposition of oppressive taxation, business-stifling regulation and redistribution of private wealth. Then we WILL have depression.
My sense of this time is the same, and I suppose that’s because I grew up on depression stories. The family was in western Kansas, though they were ones who managed to hold onto the land. Even growing up, the values in my upbringing were frugality. Watching people overspend during the past 20 years has been interesting.
This country’s consumerism has been excessive for a long time. Perhaps, we’re seeing a much-needed adjustment.
My grandfather owned a 120 acre dairy farm in northern New York state. When the Depression hit, my father (the oldest child) was a freshman in high school. He had to quit to work the farm (the hired hand was let go) and never went back. The farm, like yours, supported a number of relatives though few lived there. My Grandfather maintained a prized flock of White Leghorns and twice a week took a five galled bucket of eggs to a poor section of a local city and gave them to to the Catholic Church (he was Methodist)to pass out. He set aside five acres of the farm for anyone in town to come out and put in a produce garden — and they did, by foot, bicycle and crowded into old beater cars and trucks.
I often wonder if we still have that generosity and spirit left in us.
So the message is to have land fully owned when a depression comes. Not sure the agrarian life is for everyone.
On the flip side, my grandmother in her last months was often asked to talk about her childhood. She grew up (until about age 16 when the Germans came to take her for slave labor during WW2) on a “community” farm in Communist Ukraine in the 20s and early 30s.
She did not want to talk about it at all. I believe her words were: Why would anyone want to remember those times? They were horrible, terrible times.
Thank you Victor. I enjoy this wisdom repeated often. My Grandparents told me the same stories. My father worked shoveling coal on the night shift ‘black Gang’ at the powerplant.
Came home, slept for a couple of hours, then went to his job teaching elementary school, quickly graded papers then strapped on his 38 S&W, grabbed his shotgun and went hunting very busy, highly motivated poachers as a hated State Game Warden.
Got home just in time to head for the coal fired powerplant in the city. This was when unemployment was averaging 25%. Oh yea, in his spare time, he and my ‘on call 24-7′ private (Samuel Insul’s) chauffer Grandfather, built our house, one load of boards and a few spools of wire at a time, paid for with cash, no mortgage available. (unless you had an equal amount of cash in the bank)
One more thing, the family grew all of our own food, raised chickens, hogs and beef in their spare time. Thankfully no bodies in the street. Da Flikkers
Dr. Hanson often writes sentimentally of his home state of California-both past and present. So in that spirit, let me pose a question for Californians and Americans in general: We know that California is virtually bankrupt. The state, as Dr. Hanson has written, is hemorrhaging business people, entrepreneurs, ranchers and other taxpayers by the thousands. Meanwhile Arnold the Terminator is twisting legislators’ arms to approve billions in tax increases and government loans to keep the state from going under. At this same time, millions of illegal aliens are eating at tables, wearing clothes, sleeping under roofs and accepting medical benefits provided by California’s taxpayers. Where is the outrage from California’s taxpaying citizens? When will the Terminator terminate all benefits to illegals?
Dr. Hanson, This Is Classic. True lessons from a Classic Historian. Thank You. I was born in a small farming town in Kansas in 1930, where my Dad was a History Prof at a small college. In 1936-37 the college, being dependent upon farmer’s paying tuition, was only able to pay faculty $25 at Christmas, plus IOUs. Most of our food was from our garden. Dad managed in 1937 to get a $1000 fellowship at U Wisconsin toward finishing his Doctorate . It was more than his salary had been at the college. I remember his & mom’s celebration and thanksgiving, circa 1943, when he finally paid off the debt to the local small town grocery store left behind from 1936-37.
Another reason agrcultural prices fell during the 1920′s and beyond was the mechanization of farming. Tractors, fertilizers, rural electrification all vastly increased the productivity of our farms. Since production raced ahead of the # of mouths to feed (those with cash at least), prices naturally collapsed.
Samuel Insull was a great character. You can see his likeness on the Monopoly game’s “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Having built the biggest chunk of America’s electrical utility system and showing the rest how to do it, he was villified by FDR as one of the “malfactors of great wealth.” FDR made a campaign promise to put Insull in jail.
Think Obama will stoop to such demogrogy? Who’s next? Bill Gates?
How about the potential for a “Black Swan” event? The unforeseen event, the outlier, the earthquake, flood, pandemic or terrorist attack. We don’t live on family farms much less pack fruit in our own canneries anymore… What becomes of the massive urban area’s full of people with nothing to do much less eat? Will there come day when we get our peaches and raisins from Fresno instead of China and Chili? Perhaps we will buy our coffee and bread at the corner store or bakery rather than Walmart? Maybe Levi will manufacture our 501′s in california once again….
Wall Street and the politicians will borrow from our children and grandchildren so we can continue buying the SUV’s and the foreign oil to power them? Bail us out so we can build more $700,000 McMansions? We need to change the way we think to be more in line with our grandparents than we need to borrow trillions more in attempt to maintain the unsustainable status quo.
There are no decent jobs in town anymore. Who is going to pay the taxes that pay the interest on the bonds that keep the legions of government people working?
What the heck is going on???
I was very sorry to see this essay.
The entire country’s real estate market is *not* like California’s. All real estate is local and unique.
The mind easily goes to the worst outcome and this constant drumbeat of negativity will only feed on itself.
If the President and others say we will have a lost decade, we will then have a lost decade.
Your grandfather appears to have accepted the revisionist version of history along with a view that debt as such is bad.
The Great Depression “started for farmers, he said, really in the early 1920s, when the boom prices and easy credit of the immediate post-Great War years led to rapid expansion in the planting of trees and vines, more debt, and—well, we all now know the familiar story.”
It is time we all discard the “familiar story” and learn the true story before it’s too late.
The prosperity of the 1920s was real. Stock prices rose 385% from summer ’21 to summer ’29 because *profits* rose 387% in the same period. Americans were becoming more productive under more freedom (tax and regulatory cuts spearheaded by Harding, Coolidge, and Mellon). We were still on the gold standard and credit expansion, too, was real – not artificial like today.
As to the agriculture markets specifically, the full truth is that government interference in the economy was the cause of the farmers’ losses: a) Hoover’s tarriffs (Smoot-Hawley in June, 1930) which caused US farm exports to fall 60% from 1930 to 1933 as over 30 other nations retaliated against us, b) the payments by Hoover/FDR/Congress to farmers for destroying “surplus” crops and livestock, and for not planting, and c) the New Deal land conservation schemes.
As just one result, millions of once-fertile acres in the Great Plains eroded to the point where the topsoil was literally carried away by the winds in what was named the Dust Bowl.
Only uncoerced individuals in totally free markets can decide what’s best for them. And they can make those decisions only when government is limited to providing one value: the protection of inalienable individual rights.
And when we have the levels of freedom, as we did in the Roaring Twenties – the resulting prosperity is REAL, and infinitely sustainable – for everyone who’s willing to produce.
Americans don`t need to save money. Socialism takes care of all. Don`t you know that by now??
Government is now your mommy and daddy. This is what you voted for America.
Stop whining and get with the program. Those who don`t get on board will be left behind.
If you want capitalism, free markets and small manageable government then participate in your community and get involved!! Pay attention to who you elect to the school boards, city councils, etc. When you are not watching `they` are wasting……..
“Think Obama will stoop to such demogrogy? Who’s next? Bill Gates?”
Naw. Gates is on Obama’s team. So is Warren Buffet.
He’ll find someone else to demonize.
This sounds naive and maybe a little callous, but so far – at least in my neck of the woods – things just ain’t that bad. So far, most of the articles I’m reading in the local papers seem to concern a few yuppies who are sad because they aren’t making $100k+ a year anymore. I’m not seeing much about desperate minimum-wage workers scratching around for their next meal.
Are we still at the leading edge of the recession/depression or whatever you want to call it? Will the bread lines start tomorrow? Or are we panicking for no reason?
IB Bill at #28 — I agree, people are stronger than they think they are. I had the experience many times, when I was on active duty, of seeing the young kids discover that they could handle a lot more than they ever thought they could, and become men and women of confidence and character.
Too many kids today are hamstrung by the fact that they’ve never been challenged by anything they could possibly fail at. They don’t know that failure isn’t permanent, and doesn’t kill you, because they’ve literally never encountered it (unlike the old geezers of my generation). Many kids have been saved from false confidence and sloth by extracurricular activities like sports and music. But the classroom itself, the required K-12 path, doesn’t test them, or at least doesn’t do so honestly.
It’s harder to learn the basic lessons about failure later in life. But our kids do it, when they enter the military and discover that incoming rounds aren’t theoretical, you can’t just despise them and pass a law against them, and you really do have to do your job without error or you and your buddies could die.
They’ve got the “stuff.” The question is how our political authorities will handle this bad economy. That, unlike their own inherent capabilities, has the power to hold our young people back.
Yep! Obama’s worshipers like soldiers of idiocy jumping in the volcano for him.
Being about the same vintage as Dr. Hanson, but from an Iowa farm instead of vine country, I had similar experiences being tutored by a grandfather who had farmed during the Depression. We four kids were usually sent, or “sentenced” as we thought at the time to accompany grandpa and to help with weeding, fence building or hog tending work as needed and as directed. During this time we were regaled and chastened with constant stories of the Depression and hard times, all of which were true enough and maybe were even softened a bit in the telling, as we found out later. I live on that same farm today and think of him daily. In my engineering job, I am with a great many highly educated individuals who seem to have less grasp of economics than my grandfather’s 6th grade education and experience gave him.
That generation had its share of failings as do all, but as we head into this Depression we may be wise to recall those stories, and find strength and commitment to get through as they did. Time will tell if the most narcissistic generation in history will rise to the challenge as their grandparents did, or let some dictator talk them into something truly horrible as has happened in other countries in tough times. Obama is playing to Bush’s Hoover and the seemingly endless printing of money will impoverish not enrich us. Heck, why not just give us all “Obama-bucks” and a coupon to go to Kinko’s and copy off as much as we wish? It is painful to watch a nation one loves commit cultural, political and financial suicide all at the same time, but one thing about us Boomers, we do everything in a big and noisy way!
Prepare to be better friends, neighbors and family than you may have been in recent years. Even though government has tried desperately to be “family “to all, we’re going to need one another very soon.
MOST OF US KNOW THE MEDIA IS LYING… AGAIN!
The Dominant Negative Media has lost all credibility with most voters.
http://greensrealworld.blogspot.com/2009/02/media-lies-public-sighs.html
#46 Buffett Mr Buy American has sold a lot of shares oh J&J P&G etc. Do as I say not as I do
VDH a great article. Chances are in a household if one person is unemployed it is quite likely the spouse is still working.
We must stop rewarding failure and rewarding success. A house should cost no more than 3 times salary or the mortgage cannot be paid.
The good professor points out that conditions in our great republic have been far worse in the past. Indeed, my grandfather raised a family during the Great Depression off the proceeds of a chicken farm. My dad graduated from a small military college in 1951, and was commissioned immediately to serve in Korea. He was given command, at the tender age of 22, of an engineer company with an attached Korean labor battalion. Pennsylvania farm boy goes from two-thousand chickens to command of two-thousand men. Dad was a quick study and he early on recognized the value of master sergeants. Except for the day he sent a bulldozer through the middle of a Korean cemetery, dad’s career was largely a success. Ancestor worship wasn’t part of the curriculum at PMC in my dad’s time. Probably is now at the re-named Widener, but that’s not the point of my comment. Nope.
Today I am energized by the professor’s words. The flag has fallen at my feet, MY feet. I shall pick it up and carry it forward. Sound the bugle and call the charge, brothers and sisters, it is time to RALLY! Damn the pessimism. Times are tough, but not as tough as they have been. It’s time to shake off the poison. “No retreat, no surrender, that is Spartan law.” The sentiment is worthy of our highest aspirations.
So be it. My students will get tomorrow a full dose of VDH. Thanks you, professor, for the lesson plan. The flag was down for a minute, but it has not fallen. Not yet. Not as long as patriots of the American republic still breath and move. It is time to RALLY! You have my pledge. I will carry the flag forward.
~Paules
“…are we panicking for no reason?”
We’re being whipped into a panic and the reason why is pretty clear. Read Thomas Sowell’s article today at NRO. He has a compelling argument that hammers home the point Obama himself is not acting like he’s in crisis mode. Shove the legislation to save us all through Congress in two days, then take a holiday weekend off before signing it into law. And of course, there’s that Rahm Emmanuel statement: “Never let a crisis go to waste.” That’s the most truthful, and telling, statement anyone in this Administration has made thus far.
The Democrats find themselves in a win-win situation here. If the economy improves, they’ll take credit for their plans working. If it worsens, they’ll just ask for more “stimulus” money. The whole problem was caused by Bush’s policies anyway, so no one should complain, least of all the Republicans in Congress.
After the last seven years, you’d think the public would be a little tired of being whip-sawed by government fear-mongering. Biowarfare, threat alerts, Saddam Hussein and his WMD. I mean, just look at how panicky the Democrats in Congress were during Bush’s first term. They were so scared by the fear tactics they rolled over and fetched Bush an Authorization Bill allowing him to invade Iraq against their wishes. There is a downside to panicking. The Democrats know it, and so do we.
Lovely essay Professor Hanson
I like the trad song done by Ry Cooder –”taxes on the farmer feed us all”
http://www.lookmusiclyrics.com/322892/TAXES_ON_THE_FARMER_FEEDS_US_ALL.html
Traditional, adapted by Ry Cooder)
(D) – (A) – (E)
(A) We worked through Spring and Winter, through (D) Summer and through (A) Fall
But the mortgage worked the hardest and the (E) steadiest of us all
It (A) worked on nights and Sundays, it (D) worked each holiday
(E) Settled down among us and it never went (A) away
The farmer comes to town with his wagon broken down
The farmer is the man who feeds us all
If you only look and see I know you will agree
That the farmer is the man who feeds us all
(A) The farmer is the man, the farmer is the man
He buys on his credit until (E) Fall
Then they (A) take him by the hand
And they (D) lead him from his land
And the (E) merchant is the man who gets it (A) all
The farmer is the man, the farmer is the man
He lives on his credit until Fall
With the interest rates so high
It’s a wonder he don’t die
But the taxes on the farmer feeds us all
Well, the banker says he’s broke and the merchant stops and smoke
But they forget that it’s the farmer that feeds them all
It would put them to the test if the farmer took a rest
And they’d know that it’s the farmer that feeds them all
The farmer is the man, the farmer is the man
Lives on his credit until Fall
Well, his pants are wearing thin
His condition, it’s a sin
‘Cause the taxes on the farmer feeds us all
I appreciate the insight and “lessons learned” from the author’s personal experience…I appreciate MORE that Hanson can put down 2000 words without trying to demogogue the “left”, “Obama” or the “liberal media”…Yes, there’s a real recession that has an eerie feel to it. Those 100 “for sale” signs that he rode by are backed by 100 other “personal stories”…Let’s hope that the author does not lose sight of that fact.
Interesting article — many parts of the country will fare much better than others if we hit a decession —
The thing that really concerns me is our Government’s attitude and direction. The huge “porkulus” bill will make things worse. We haven’t seen a meltdown of Commercial Real Estate which could make the Home Mortgage market fiasco look like peanuts — if Obama and cronies continue to ignore economic facts by placing social issues before fiscal responsibility then I feel we will hit a depression and a major one — people forget we are $14 Trillion in debt — we cannot sell our Treasury Bonds forever if the dollar starts to erode.
I admire all this talk about “let’s be positive and not worry” — that is what the crew of the Titanic thought until it was too late. We need to get off our “collective” butts and stop letting the Government spend OUR money for social programs and get back to balancing our budget and being fiscally responsible. You if can balance your budget at home and make ends meet, why is it that Government needs to borrow Trillions of dollars to operate?
I am upset and sad at the same time!
This is what America needs to be hearing, not the word “crisis” used 24 times in a 10 minute speech by the President (as was the case yesterday). What are the odds of VDH getting an audience with His Holiness BHO anytime soon?
Don’t rely on corporations and their investors to tell you the truth, they have a lot tied up in international business.
55. Jan van Goyen
I met Ry Cooder once. He talked about Robt. Johnson and the slide guitar.
That song is sympathetic to the farmer’s plight and as timely now as it was then. But we might overlook that they love that business. They love being the boss. They love watching their produce grow. The pace.
Just like the small company. The ma and pa shop. The ‘Going Out Of Business’ signs in the city.
It’s fun while it lasts. Enjoy it while you can. Make the best of what you’ve got.
This is the greatest blog.
Jesus has industrial disease.
You may as well sing “The La La Song’ by Zebra.
I won’t be the fool in my life
I won’t change the rules in my life
In all your silence
I knew it all along
You haven’t got the sense to know
what’s right from what is wrong
And I really haven’t got the time to
tell you about the things that are absurd
Don’t fear tomorrow
Don’t fear tomorrow
I won’t play the fool to your knife, to your knife
You can’t change the tune in my sight, in my life
With all you science, I knew it all along
You haven’t got the nerve to write the words
within this song
And you really haven’t got the time to tell
me why you really are
You really haven’t got the time to tell me
why you really are
You really haven’t got the time to tell me
why you really are afraid
Don’t fear tomorrow
Don’t fear tomorrow
Born in 1937 and blessed with a remarkable memory, I recall how my mother and father coped with the end of the depression. My father had a regular job, fixed cars in a garage behind our house, and he and my mother tended a huge garden beside our house and raised chickens and turkeys. In 1940 I was expected to work alongside mother in the garden. Not only did we manage, we managed well enough so that my father paid off a bankruptcy (although it took him twelve years to do it) and rescued his daddy’s farm from a bank three times.
My mother knitted and sewed, selling her products on consignment in stores, and sold magazine subscriptions.
When World War II began my father moved us to Cimarron County, Oklahoma and started a salvage yard. He had borrowed start-up cash from two Syrian businessmen and repaid them in the first year. We bartered and exchanged labor with ranchers for pork and beef, helping them with the butchering. A couple of hundred miles away my seventy year-old grandfather farmed, using horses. He got his first tractor in 1948, and continued farming until he was ninety years old.
Too many Americans today are wimps.
I appreciate VDH’s essay.
I find it interesting that the conservative voices here all have the same background stories to share. The common link is that somewhere in their lifetimes, or that of their parents, was a farm or the like.
When I was a teen, we got welfare. My Dad just wouldn’t work, but he would work the system. However, he did have farm experience, so we ended up raising hogs and chickens, and such. Well, I did. He drank. There were other farms in the area, and I made a little money, here and there, doing the tough jobs of ditch-digging, field-clearing, fence-building, and manure-shovelling.
When I went into the service, the vets loved me. I was a good ‘cruit. My peers didn’t love me so much. They just wanted a paycheck.
I reviled Carter, and was very happy with Reagan, although I was, (I thought) apolitical. Only later did I learn that my peers had liberal bents. These were folks who had prosperous youths. I had suffered much, gone hungry a lot, and worked hard when possible. I never had a liberal thought in my life as a result. Liberalism is for idle hands.
Dear Professor Hanson:
Beautiful essay!
I wonder whether the character formed by the Great Depression’s deprivations helped us win WWII? I was born in 1939 and so I was a depression baby. My mother told me often how she supported herself, two sisters, their husbands, her sister’s two children and brother-in-law, and her mother and father, in one house on her salary alone in the South Jersey suburbs. Mother never felts herself a victim. She loved life and had her basic fundamentalist Christian faith. She attended Holy Communion regularly until the leftist lean of the Episcopal Church – tolerance of homosexuality – drove her out. My father died when I was 17. My mother never slacked in her efforts at self-reliance and supporting me until I left home. She died in 1995. I will miss her always.
At any rate, from the few veterans of Iraq whom I have met, to a man they are an intelligent, hard working, patriotic, and loyal group. My point is that the backbone showed by the Depression era generation is still there but covered with a thick layer of blubber.
Bless you VDH!
Obama has been in office one month. Since Jan 20 the stock market is down 2000 points, unemployment has skyrocketed, banks are failing, the national debt has doubled and zero continues to talk down the economy.
Plans are being formed behind the scene to nationalize the banks, health care, energy, the auto industry, tax the air, the water, your toilet flushing, food (fast and slow), I could go on and on.
Business is scared to do anything. Nobody knows what to do with what little money they have left.
Americans are being bombarded with leftist dribble daily. I`m almost afraid to turn on the news for fear of an anxiety attack setting in.
What was it FDR said in the 30`s? The only thing we have to fear is Obama itself….
Where is our Supreme Court?? Have they looked at any of the junk inserted in the pork bill? Is this thing unconstitutional??
I`m ready to start impeachment proceedings. What about you?
This man is determined to crush the American spirit.
Only 47 months to go………..
I love reading VDH!! Great entry. I agree with VDH for the most part, but I am not as optimistic about the future as he. I am a real pessimist because I believe things will get worse than the Great Depression.
Certainly, though, VDH makes some great points….
Whenever I spot one of your articles, I ignore all the others and read yours first. I always wondered what kind of lifestyle you lead. One should never assume anything about others because I never imagined you had this kind of background and history, and lived so close to the land. Wondrous reflections. Thank you sir.
6: psota
I could almost hear the voice of my own feisty grandmother in your comment. “all you had to do was sit there and wait for it to end”. She and grandpa made it through the Depression in Arizona (in the midst of it moving to Southern California, back before it went of the deep end). She used to tell me that “we were so poor we didn’t know there even WAS a depression until the newspapers told us so!”
Water purification systems.
Ammunition.
Soap.
Toilet paper.
Pharmaceuticals.
vitamin and mineral supplements.
Seeds.
Extreme weather protection.
Gold.
In that order.
Go.
Dr. Hanson,
Currently in Afghansitan, born and raised in Fresno and know Selma, Fowler, and Kingsburg well. Had a similar experience with my grandfather. He used to take us in his beat up Chevy pickup and show us around Fresno’s “West Side” in the late 60′s, early 70′s, until we grew into teens and were to cool to be seen in his truck, although we grandkids never tired of driving it, or him around, once we got our license. Looking back, those were good days, seeing Fresno from his perspective. I miss that raw, youthful innocence.
Are you coming back to Afghanistan anytime soon. Many changes in the next few months, an interesting time to be here. Some notable authors/journalists are scheduled to be here soon, might you join them?
Very Good post on reminding how we still all have despite this downturn. Hopefully recession will bottom and economy will recover soon in late 2009/early 2010:
http://www.wealthalchemist.com/Blog/2009/03/economy-bottom-mid2010/