Are Things Really As Bad As The Great Depression?

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Neelima Mahajan-Bansal, Forbes-Network18

Adaline R Sorace is a 93-year-old New Yorker. She was born in 1915, just before the Great Depression set in. She saw the good times before the Depression, when her father, who used to work in a mine and also had a farm, could afford to buy a Ford Model T and a tractor. As the world plunged into the Great Depression, she went through some pretty hard times. She worked as a nurse and survived the Great Depression. This is her story.

 

People think times are tough: But I was born in 1915 and, in the past 93 years, I have seen tough times.

 

In our times good times were different: We didn't think a lot about it because we had money coming in. At that time wheat was going for something like $2 a bushel.

 

Then came the Great Depression: You couldn't sell the wheat. It cost too much to even get it on a box cart to get it to the market.

 

As the Depression came, commodity prices fell: One of the wealthiest families was having an auction sale in Kansas early in the 1930s at the beginning of the Depression. They had a premier herd of registered white-faced cattle. They were getting $30 a head for their cattle that they had paid hundreds of dollars per head at the beginning of the Depression.

 

My mother was afraid that someone would come and steal our food: So she kept a gun on the kitchen table. They had put a railroad in Kansas and lots of people would just jump on them and you never knew who would come and steal from you. If someone was hungry, they would steal.

 

Food was scarce: I would hunger for greens so I would hunt for edible weeds and eat them.

 

We at home always had enough to eat because of our water supply: But we had tremendous heat so tomatoes would get sun burnt.

 

There were people in parts of Colorado and Kansas whose homes were turning to dust: They had lived on land they thought was fertile but was now turning into a desert. There were dunes of dirt and no rain. The temperatures were sometimes days on end 110 degrees (Fahrenheit). So even with the water, we could not raise many plants but we were able to raise enough plants that we didn't starve--there were weeds.

 

We made our clothes go the extra week: We were so poor, or at least I was, that I wore shapeless stockings. If I poked a hole in my toe or my heel, I would roll the stockings a little and lower them down the ball of the foot. I would keep lowering the place where I would wear the garter. So I would keep lowering my garter till it reached my mid-calf-the dresses we wore were 10 inches off the ground. I would still keep wearing them instead of buying new ones. It's hard to imagine doing that today. The stockings used to cost $1 a pair. That was expensive. I was getting an allowance of $1 a month from my parents.

 

I would pray to god "Oh God let me never be like this": During these terrible dust storms in those days people were dying of dust pneumonia. We didn't have antibiotics.

 

When I open my eyes, I say, "Oh my God, I died and went to Heaven.": Today is so lovely compared to then. I live in New York. I have everything today.  

 

Neelima Mahajan-Bansal is Special Correspondent at the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in alliance with Forbes, USA.