Oregon Public Broadcasting

In these days of financial turmoil, it’s not unusual to hear pundits announce:  "It’s the worst economy since the Great Depression."

The phrase conjures up images of the ‘Grapes of Wrath,’ with whole families packing up and heading ‘cross country in search of work.

It makes for good copy. But how true is it?

Kristian Foden-Vencil talked to people who lived through the 1930s and remember much harder times.

Stanley Loney

Stanley Loney and his wife Margaret live in a two-story ranch house in Milwaukie.

In the front room there are a pair of lazyboys, a massive TV and a box of Sees Candy for visitors – like me.  But ask Stanley whether today’s economy is anything like that of the 1930’s and he rolls his eyes.

Stanley Loney: “I can remember my Dad going to Hubbard to get the money out of the bank, and he came back and he lost everything. The bank had closed. His life-savings at that time of $500 was lost.”

The family ran an old auto park in Hubbard, complete with a small zoo and some cabins for people to sleep in.

Stanley Loney: “The railroad went right by about a block over and we could see it and we would sit on the benches outside the store. And I would count the bums. Sometimes there would be 300 to 400, just going by. I’ll give you an example of how hard it was. Two guys came in, their clothes were in tatters, the soles were off their shoes. And my Dad went out and talked to him and they asked if there was any work that they could do.”

Stanley Loney with bear cub

They were loggers, so he asked them to cut five acres of trees.

He gave them clothes, shoes, food and shelter for five days.

Stanley Loney: “So then when they were through, my Dad gave them two dollars a piece and two packages of cigarettes a piece and packed lunches for both of them.”

Krisitan: “And they were happy with that?”

Stanley Loney: “Yes, and that today would have cost $10,000. And that’s just one instance. They would come by, guys out of work. They would ask for a cup of coffee. My step-mother would give them a cup of coffee and the sugar bowl was that high.”

Kristian: “Like a big can.”

Stanley Loney: “And they would take it and hold it. And would pour almost  all of that sugar into a cup of coffee and then drink it.”

Krisitan: “Because that was all the food they were going to get that day?”

Stanley Loney: “Well the sweetness. That was the only time they had had any sweetness probably for a month.”

Officials say the unemployment rate hit 25 percent during the Great Depression.

Oregon’s current rate is about 10 percent.

The stock market lost 90 percent of it’s value between 1929 and 1932.

Lunchroom at the Loney's auto park.

So far, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down about 50 percent.

Stanley says for a while, no banks would make loans -- people just had to be self-reliant.

They grew their own food and bartered possessions and skills.

Stanley Loney: “In those days there was no Social Security, there was very little retirement. And people worked until they fell over.”

His wife, Margaret, says there just wasn’t any kind of safety net.

Margaret Loney: “It was slow and people did the best they could with what they had to work with. And we didn’t wait around with our hand out and expect Uncle Sam to do it for us. And somebody else to pay for it.”

You can tell, the Loney’s aren’t big on the government’s stimulus package. They think people need to tighten their belts, spend more responsibly and ride-out the storm.

Across town in Northeast Portland, retired professor Irene Tinker sees things a little differently.

Her uncle, a jazz musician, got a job with the Civilian Conservation Corps making model trains for a traveling exhibition.

Irene Tinker: “I think they left a tremendous legacy of art and trails in the forests. The first time I went skiing in Stowe, Vermont, I stayed in a CCC camp barracks and it was the beginning of the development of their ski resort.” 

She says other government programs too, like the Works Progress Administration helped the country both economically and socially.

Irene Tinker: “Surely, it’s better to have people employed doing something rather than having them sitting around and getting checks and beating up their wives and drinking.”

50 miles south, Nina Rae Cleveland lives in the Capital Manor retirement community.

Her father was a tenant farmer in Eastern Oregon and had a terrible time trying to make ends meet.

Nina Rae Cleveland

Nina Rae Cleveland: “I remember climbing into a poplar tree to watch some men drive our dairy herd off. And I could not understand why anyone was taking our cows. And my mother told me, well the bank took them back.”

He tried raising potatoes and then turkeys, many of which died when they piled together in a corner one hot summer day.

Nina Rae Cleveland: “Turkeys have to be the dumbest birds that ever where born. So it was just one terrible thing after another.  By then the Depression was on and I don’t know who sent the social worker out there. But my mother was so humiliated because this lady wanted to know how often we bathed and how many pairs of socks and underwear she had for her children. And I truly don’t know how we got through the depression.”

She says the social worker was there to help them get assistance.

Nina Rae remembers her mother carding her own wool to make clothes and blankets for the family. She even attended a mattress making class.

Like the Loney’s, Nina Rae also remembers men wandering the countryside looking for work.

Nina Rae Cleveland: “The man asked very politely if he could do something and have something to eat and my mother said she was sorry, but she didn’t have anything. And I spoke up and said: 'Oh mother, there are six biscuits on the table.' Well she had to share with him and she was embarrassed to have me say that. But they were actually what was going to have to be the family’s lunch.”

They went hungry that day.

Cleveland and other seniors say the fact that there was no safety net, no insurance on your bank deposits, and no unemployment benefits, made things much much worse.

Economists agree.

They also stress that today’s problems are nowhere near as deep as the Great Depression.

What they do say is that -- as measured by unemployment and other economic factors -- we’re experiencing something similar to the deep recession that hit in the early 1980’s.