Ten years ago, I curated an exhibition exploring the impact of the Great Depression on Delaware farmers. Despite an overall downturn in crop prices that had impacted growers since the 1920s--long before the stock market crash--many rural people did not experience the bread lines of the cities, the despair of the Dust Bowl. As one woman who lived through the Depression as a child put it, "We didn't know there was a Depression." I thought this was surprising and thought-provoking, a great title for an exhibition. We announced in our newsletter that we'd received grant funding for the exhibit and the proposed title.
Soon after, I received an angry phone call from a woman I admired very much, a Quaker, a farmer, and the woman who had written THE book on Delaware Agricultural history. "How could you possibly say there was no Depression?" she chastised me. "Some poultry farmers may not have felt the Depression, but we certainly did." I brooded over her words for days, even though I had given considerable thought to the title and my director had approved it. I had no intention of trying to minimize the everyday struggles of farmers; on the contrary, I was trying to highlight their resourcefulness and self-sufficiency.
But I also understood her point. Even as prices for crops fell by almost half, in 1923 a new business opportunity began to boom in lower Delaware: broilers. In 1923, a farm wife named Cecile Steele accidentally received 500 chicks instead of the usual 50 for her home flock. She raised the chicks until they were "broiler" size and then sold them as meat to a local buyer for 62 cents a pound. By the early 1930s, the Steeles were raising over 200,000 birds a year and Delaware growers sold chickens year-round to Philadelphia, New York, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Hatcheries, feed mills and by 1938 a processing plant sprung up to support the new industry. For those growing broilers, the Depression hit very softly. On the other hand, average farmers marketing field crops, fruits and vegetables were often cash-strapped, land poor and unable to invest in the technology or new crops that might have brought them more success.
The lady who said "We didn't know there was a Depression," however, was NOT the daughter of a poultry farmer. Her father was a truck farmer who sold fruits and vegetables at market and to the local cannery, and kept a herd of dairy cows for some "milk money." What she meant is that her family was insulated from the privations of economic strife such as not having enough to eat or having a place to live, because they owned their own modest farm and they had the ability to grow and preserve their own food. It is a story I've heard time and time again as I've continued to interview children of the Depression. Mildred Strong of Trumpington recalled that her mother gardened and canned, and bartered eggs for staple items at the store in Rock Hall. The milk money provided cash for taxes and some hired labor. They pinched pennies: "If I had a nickel, I thought I was rich," Mrs. Strong remembers.
I never heard much pain or regret in the voices of those I interviewed who struggled through the Depression. On the contrary, I heard pride. My parents were both born late in the Depression, my father to a poor family of 10 in coal-mining country and my mother to a family who lived on tenant farms until she was a small child. Nonetheless, they felt the legacy of the Depression and growing up poor and that was passed on to my brother and me. We scrimped and saved, gardened and canned, but generally had a much more comfortable existence than my grandparents'and parents' generation. My father rose from teller to bank vice president to elected County Treasurer. Dad schooled me in balancing my checkbook every month to the penny, how to make good money decisions and eventually how to land a good mortgage. Both my parents gave me lessons on thrift.
The spending excesses I've seen since I was a teenager have remained a mystery to me. The first time I asked for a pair of Jordache jeans, my mother sat me down and explained the family budget and why there was no money left for $60 designer jeans after the bills and food were paid for. I didn't like the answer, but I understood. (I also recall receiving designer jeans as my ONLY birthday present a year or so later.) But I must admit, when I say no to my own children's requests for video game systems and cell phones, I feel a pang of guilt. Every other child their age really does seem to have all those things. I've continued to resist, and now with the current economic crisis, I'm feeling pretty wise.
Commentators on TV say that good citizens like me who don't have credit card debt and pay their modest mortgages every month should be annoyed with those who have gotten in over their heads and lived beyond their means. I supposed I started to wonder myself, so I asked my Dad if he was annoyed. After years of dealing with bank customers who had plenty of money and wealthy homeowners who didn't think they should have to pay their property taxes, I must admit I thought he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder about "rich people." I was wrong. "No, it doesn't annoy me," he responded so quickly I was a bit taken aback. "I wouldn't have lived any other way."
There it was. The same pride in self-sufficiency and living simply that I had seen in Depression-era farm kids. The difference is not so much in what people like my parents expect out of their lives as what they value in their lives. Our family was close, we loved each other and we worked together. We had food on the table, clothes on our backs and a place to live. There was even enough left over for a few family trips and to help my brother and I go to college. Today, my parents delight in giving things to us. Sometimes it makes me a little uncomfortable, even as I am grateful.
That's because I don't want my children to miss out on the lessons of the Depression, and to learn what they truly should value. Part of me hopes that our whole country is at a point where it will finally learn this lesson.
Image: "Harvest: Spring and Summer," mural by William D. White at the former Dover, DE post office, painted as part of the Treasury Relief Art Project in 1938.
© 2008 Jenifer Dolde
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