Life During the Great Depression

Source #2: Louis Adamic, "My America"

...While we were at breakfast, the doorbell rang. Thinking it was the postman...Instead of the postman, however, I was confronted by two children: a girl, as we learned afterward, of ten and a boy of eight. Not very adequate for the season and weather, their clothing was patched but clean. They carried school books.

"Excuse me, Mister," said the girl in a voice that sounded older than she looked, "but we have no eats in our house and my mother she said I should take my brother before we go to school and ring a doorbell in some house" she swallowed heavily and took a deep breath "and ask you to give us something to eat."…

The children were given food. The girl ate slowly; the boy quickly, greedily. He looked at no one and made no reply when Stella [Adamic's wife] or her mother asked him if he wanted more. When he got more food, he bolted it down rapidly.  The girl, however, answered every question directly, thoroughly, thoughtfully. Some of the information she volunteered ....

When her brother did not answer, she explained his silence. "He ate a banana yesterday afternoon, but it wasn't ripe enough or somethin', and it made him sick and he didn't eat anything since. He's always like this when he's hungry and we gotta ring doorbells." ... I studied the girl. She was tiny for her age, no doubt underweight, but appeared more an adult who had shrunk than a growing child. She was keen and knew more of the immediate world in which she found herself than people four times her age had known of the world they were living in before 1930.

Source #3: Marion Elderton, "What Unemployment Has Meant to My Family" 

The happy days I had spent in my home, Clinton, Mass., were real good days until one sad day the factory or mill in which my father had worked gave a notice that their factory would only operate three days a week. My father came home that day planning of what to do, because of the notice given him and the employees of the factory. As the days passed one after another my father was still at his plan thinking of where he could get a better position to support our family...

My little sister and I tried to help my father in a way which we thought best. My little sister thought of helping the lady next door by taking care of the lady's baby while the lady went shopping. Thus she earned fifty cents. I tried to help my father by having a paper route after school hours. Thus I received my salary of one dollar and fifty cents per week. My little sister and I gave our salary to my father in order to help him and keep our home that we loved since we were very young. But now the factory only operated two days a week and our salary of two dollars a week wouldn't help my father any in buying our clothing and food.

Source #4: Beverly Cleary, "Her Father Losing his Job"

My mother came into the living room. "Daddy has lost his job," she said softly. "The bank is dismissing the employees it took over from the West Coast National and has given them two weeks' notice."

The Depression had come to us. Mother cleared the table and washed the dishes alone. I sensed she preferred solitude to help. I sat filled with anguish, unable to read, unable to do anything. When Dad finally emerged from the bedroom, I felt so awkward I did not know what to say or even how to look at him. To pretend nothing had happened seemed wrong, but seeing him so defeated and ashamed of defeat, even though he was not to blame, was so painful that I could not speak. How could anyone do such a thing to my father, who was so good, kind, reliable, and honest?

A neighbor gave Mother an old pink woolen dress, which she successfully made over into a jumper for me. She contrived a cream colored blouse from something found in a trunk in the attic. One of her friends, now married to an eastern Oregon wheat rancher, had a daughter older than I who passed on two nice dresses. In our neighborhood, no girl would dream of entering high school in half socks. I used hoarded nickels and dimes to buy silk stockings. Five dollars from my Arizona uncle bought a raincoat ....

We began admiring one another's clothes by saying, "Is it new, or new to you?"