Article

2026-08-29 Economy

50 Survival Lessons From The Great Depression: The Horrifying Things Americans Did When Money, Jobs, & Hope Disappeared

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Besoeker 2026-08-29 03:18|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [382 views ] Top

1 Use it up!
Wear it out!
Make it do!
Or do without!

Posted by Knuckles Grundy 2026-08-29 04:37|| 2026-08-29 04:37|| Front Page Top

2 My grandparents and their 5 children (mother, 3 aunts, 1 uncle) kept a cow for milk, a horse for transport and tilling the garden, and chickens for eggs and meat. The kids would fish, weed the garden and collect firewood.

Grandpa raised bees so they had an agricultural subsidy and would occasionally get a stipend of sugar to feed the bees, which the children sampled. Some also went to the still.

Clothes were passed down from eldest to youngest daughter. Grandpa's worn out pants were cut down and sewed up for my uncle.

With no refrigeration all the food was fresh. Meat, egg, raw moonshine and honey surplus was traded in town for flour, tools or used shoes of children who had outgrown theirs, or died. Vegetables went into the root cellar.

I don't think today's family units will survive.

Posted by Skidmark 2026-08-29 06:04|| 2026-08-29 06:04|| Front Page Top

3 a famous song comes to mind. Country boy will survive!

Posted by chris 2026-08-29 07:03|| 2026-08-29 07:03|| Front Page Top

4 re: #1,

I learned that saying from infancy from my parents who both had some tough times back then.

Posted by alanc 2026-08-29 10:25|| 2026-08-29 10:25|| Front Page Top

5 Unemployment in the Great Depression peaked at 25% in the United States, translating to about 15 million unemployed Americans in 1933.

Which also means 75% were employed. Since the 60s, the government has kept changing the definition of unemployed used during the 1930s, so we will never be able to actually have comparative analysis.

Posted by Procopius2k 2026-08-29 10:57|| 2026-08-29 10:57|| Front Page Top

6 I recall my grandmother still saved aluminum foil to be re-used...

Posted by Mercutio 2026-08-29 11:23|| 2026-08-29 11:23|| Front Page Top

7 Lots of the old-fashioned skills are demonstrated on the internet — YouTube, Facebook Reels, and all the rest. Millennial women suddenly took up knitting about a decade ago, canning has its own section, and so forth. I even recently discovered a series on Medieval European/English homesteading practices that change how I understand most effective ways to plant a kitchen garden and make more nutritious bread with fewer ingredients.

Posted by trailing wife 2026-08-29 11:41|| 2026-08-29 11:41|| Front Page Top

8 If you had a job in the oil patch you did pretty good. 2-3 Dollars per day as a roughneck. Crews used chain tongs to lay 2-4 inch pipe. Field welding units had no come about yet. If you could get a job as a lease pumpers you might get a house on or near the lease (pumpers house) owned by the company. WWII took a lot men out of the oil patch. Old timers came back to work until the war was over, or so I was told.

Posted by Besoeker 2026-08-29 11:45|| 2026-08-29 11:45|| Front Page Top

9 Electric pumping stations pretty much did away with the oil lease pumper. Stripper wells that only need servicing once or twice per month still needed a pumper. 8-10 barrels a week did not justify electric systems. Pumpers would go from lease to lease. "Tramp pumpers" they were called. I knew a fellow, WWII vet who pumped several strippers in the late 1950's. He was able to buy a string of stripper wells. The oil embargo took $3.75 cent oil the $30. And higher. Old Bill did pretty good.

Posted by Besoeker 2026-08-29 11:54|| 2026-08-29 11:54|| Front Page Top

10 Bill became a philanthropist for a local cancer center. He was carried to his grave by a team of cancer surgeons with full military honors in 1996.

Posted by Besoeker 2026-08-29 11:57|| 2026-08-29 11:57|| Front Page Top

11 Did somebody say debt?

My parents lived through the Gread Depression and World War II. When I was in junior high and high school I could not fathom why they were so damn tight with their money. They tried to tell me but I couldn't understand until I started trying to make a living for myself.

Now I tell people, I say, you look at all this around you and you assume without even thinking about it that your world will always be this way. But there is no guarantee that it will.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2026-08-29 14:29|| 2026-08-29 14:29|| Front Page Top

12 #6 - Mercutio - My kids don't believe me that they did that

Posted by Frank G 2026-08-29 18:04|| 2026-08-29 18:04|| Front Page Top

21:14 Difar Dave
21:04 Skidmark
20:57 Lord Garth
20:33 trailing wife
20:32 trailing wife
20:25 trailing wife
20:14 SteveS
20:10 SteveS
19:38 Gloluter Phavick7614
18:54 Nero
18:04 Frank G
18:03 Frank G
17:58 Frank G
17:42 DarthVader
16:11 chris
15:48 DooDahMan
15:26 trailing wife
14:29 Abu Uluque
14:22 NoMoreBS
14:11 DooDahMan
13:57 DooDahMan
13:38 Bobby
13:25 Skidmark
13:15 Skidmark
Merry-Go-Blog