Each of my parents was born in 1928, my mother in a small coal town in western Pennsylvania, my father on a farm in Kansas. In October of the following year, the New York Stock Exchange crashed. This was the beginning of the Great Depression. My parents were born into, and grew up within, an economic crisis that lasted many years. Girls my mother knew would dip their feet and ankles in whitewash so as to appear to be wearing socks. Boys would rub their ankles with coal dust for the same reason. My father’s family lost their farm when their entire harvest of potatoes rotted on a railway siding. Even in a starving nation, potatoes had no value.
The NYSE didn’t return to pre-1929 value until 1954, when I was three years old. I can relate to the Great Depression only through family stories and American literature. I don’t have first-hand experience of growing up under such conditions. But I do remember how frugal my parents were. I remember the daily budget they kept in the kitchen drawer, with expenditures written down to the penny. The only lights on in the house were those necessary for the moment. It was wasteful not to turn off a light when leaving a room. Bent nails were straightened and saved in tin cans. Recycle, reduce, reuse was more than a catchy slogan to help “save the planet.” It was how people survived. And there were the envelopes my mother kept, one for each of her children. Inside was money – cash – she would set aside for clothing. No cash, no new shoes. I did not know about this system until I left home and my mother handed me my envelope with a little more than $100 in it.
What got the country out of the Great Depression was war. We were united in purpose and driven to be the best and most productive country in the world. At war’s end we used our technological and manufacturing prowess to build and create and thrive. Along with war’s end came that huge population known as the Baby Boom. Children of my generation – and their parents who grew up in an age of deprivation – were exploited by those who would sell us everything from Jell-O gelatin to General Electric washers. Eventually, the marketing effort breached our borders and engulfed the world. Not only were we selling hamburgers abroad by the billions, but weapons of war by the ship load. We have created a need for war – or the constant readiness for it – as a means to sell products and make a profit. War may be harmful to children and other living things, but it’s great for business.
Growing prosperity, however, driven by relentless marketing and easy credit, has had an effect on the way average Americans live and think. Overall, the last 50 years or so have been spent largely on maintaining the illusion of prosperity called the American Dream. We’ve been taught by the marketeers and politicians that we deserve prosperity and abundance as a birthright.
But something happened, something serious. It wasn’t immediate like a surprise attack, but the gradual outcome or our collective actions that began many years ago. It’s as though someone has slowly been adding sugar to the fuel that runs the money machine. The machine coughs and sputters along, getting worse by the day.
The politicians are busy with a so-called stimulus plan. The idea is to get the money machine humming smoothly again. The nation is hopeful that any day now we’ll awaken from a disturbing dream so we can get back to the business of pursuing the American Dream. It may not work. But the law of cause and effect insidiously rolls along, and we can’t fully comprehend the dangers of the inevitable.
