Unemployment During the Great Depression

The Great Depression and Unemployment

How did people survive unemployment during the great depression? Those relatives and older friends, who survived the great depression, and that are still alive to tell us about it, are the best resources for us today. They have, within themselves, great stores of invaluable information, from which we can glean great insights for our own survival during this, likely, greater depression. Imagine being faced, seemingly overnight, with extreme debt and the loss of your job. Perhaps you were the sole income earner in your family.

Now what? Suddenly, you are forced into your very own, personal depression. You could let it get the best of you, or you could spring into action and make some quick, hard decisions, which will ultimately be for you and your family’s good; you may even find yourself wishing you had done this sooner. Those people and their families who did survive the great depression, had some amount of steady income, or, at least, had a trade, or were skilled for some type of part-time employment or odd jobs.

My dad, for example, who is 84, was a young boy during the depression. As the fourth of five children, who, by the way, are all still living, he remembers his family was fairly well off, because his dad worked two-days-a-week for the telephone company. He remembers, that when he was in Grade Two, he, and his elder siblings as well, were noted for wearing socks and good shoes, and clean clothes. The teachers would have the students vote on the best-dressed in the class. Either the teachers were just plain cruel, or they lacked imagination for class-interaction ideas. Dad says there was never a lack of things for kids to do back then…for them, particularly.

Their town was nestled in the mountains and alongside a lake, so kids had a lot of hiking and exploring to do. They spent most of their summers on the beach and in the lake, where he learned how to swim and dive, and even compete as he got older. "We learned to think for ourselves," he says. "We had to provide our own entertainment…and we had to find ways to earn our own spending money." This may be unlike many of the youth, today. Being dumbed-down in schools, and with pants falling off and hats on sideways; with heads down text-massaging, it’s pretty clear they’d be at a loss over something that required quick, critical thinking, as opposed to just asking their parents for something new. Imagine replacing their play stations, cell phones, and Ipods with 30-foot cedar poles; these to cut up for firewood, and sell for a nickel or a dime.

Or, sending them out to collect brass-colored jam cans, in good shape and with lids, of course, and return them to the jam factory for pennies and nickels. These are just a couple examples of what kids would do during the great depression times, in order to earn enough spending money for penny-candy, or a matinee movie (unheard of today). Following the end of the great depression, into the 40s, Dad and his elder brother were fighter pilots during the Second World War; after that, and into better times, they, and the rest of their siblings, were all employed with the telephone company. The men dug anchor holes for the Trans Canada pole lines; they could also keep busy as laborers on the dams, and, as loggers, during any down times.

"We went from joysticks to swedesaws," Dad says, as he explains that chainsaws weren’t around then, yet. He adds, creating a mental image of what we don’t see too frequently today, that they used horse-drawn rigs to haul the jack pines out of the bush. He says they were exciting times for employment, in those days following the great depression and the Second World War. "They were a busy few years," he says, "if you wanted to work."

Author: Erin Smith

Now, that sounds like job security…after the great depression! To learn more, visit Unemployment during the great depression [http://www.thisgreatdepression.com/unemployment-during-the-great-depression]

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