Put hard times into perspective [View All]

I'm reading a book containing letters written to Hoover, FDR, and Eleanor Roosevelt during the Great Depression. As bad as things are now, they were great leaps worse then. And as much as we think we know about the Depression, I urge you to get this book and read what the voices out of the past have to tell us.

Women used to write to Eleanor Roosevelt and beg her to mail her old underwear or old coat because the clothes of the poor were literally shredding off the backs of these poor American women. Women wrote to beg her to help get some baby clothes, or help the husband find any kind of work because a new baby was coming, or the house was being lost, etc.

Families were starving. The men and older children would leave the house during meals because the younger children needed the food and there was a risk that the men and older kids would take it because they were so very hungry. In some families, half of the people ate one day, half the next.

Many people had no household things left. No bedding, no water, no heat. And no warm clothing. No medicine, not even for a diabetic woman.

They did have thoughts of family suicide. One man wrote to FDR to ask what the best way would be to dispose of his family, as there was no hope; nothing left to do.

Some railed against the bankers and the industrialists. Most adored FDR and believed that if he only knew how bad things were, help would be on the way.

All were humiliated by their circumstances.

So I guess most of us have a long way yet to go. But we must start resisting the powers that drive people to such desperation more vigorously. We must demand that our candidates address poverty and the basics of life -- affordable universal shelter and health care, and work that will support a family.

The name of the book is "Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man."