The recent collapses of banks and investment firms on Wall Street have raised the grim specter that the U.S. is headed toward another depression like that of the 1930s.

A few local people still remember those dark days of financial disaster when Americans lost their jobs, homes and businesses.

They were really hard times, according to Louise Davis Lyons, who grew up in Orangeburg during the Thirties.

“I was married in 1939, and we moved in with my momma,” she said. “We had to do that to survive. At the time, things were really cheap. You could buy a 2-pound round steak for 50 cents or a 10-pound pork roast for a dollar, but getting that dollar! That was another story. You couldn’t buy a job in those days.”

Times were beginning to get better by the time she married, but it took World War II to get the country back to a booming economy, Lyons said.

“It was terrible that it took a war and people dying to do it,” she said. “Since then, we’ve been spending and spending and spending. I knew that a reckoning was coming. The way things are looking, it may be closer than we think.”

Josephine Freeland Shuler, a native of Orangeburg County and a teacher for many years, is a student of the Depression era. As a child during the Thirties, she has a limited memory of the period, but she learned much from her mother.

“We’d sit in front of the fire in the winter and on the porch in the summer, and she’d talk about the Great Depression,” Shuler said. “A typical meal for a family of four was a hot pot of grits, a small can of salmon from the A&P and a dash or two of catsup – if you were lucky enough to have catsup. A family of seven could be fed on a soup bone and vegetables for 50 cents.”

Like Lyons, Shuler remembers how inexpensive food was. Three dozen eggs cost 25 cents and a tall can of salmon was 10 cents.

Often people couldn’t pay those prices because they were earning so little, she said.

“Women worked in the shops on main street for 50 cents a day,” she said. “A seamstress would make a dress for 50 cents, and men worked in gardens or yards for 50 cents a day. Teachers were paid $60 a month, but only single women could be employed. School Superintendent A.J. Thackston said that married women could be supported by their husbands.”

The Great Depression was a time that brought out both the best and the worst in people, according to Shuler.

“People helped their neighbors and relatives by sharing what little they had,” she said. “They were all in the same boat together – the rich and the poor alike. No one had money beyond a limited subsistence.”

On the other hand, a lot of stealing went on, she said. People who are hungry will steal, according to Shuler.

“We had chickens behind a fence, and people would jump over the fence and steal them,” she said. “If you left clothes out on the line overnight, someone would come along and take them.”

Both Lyons and Shuler attribute President Franklin D. Roosevelt with bringing the common man through the Great Depression.

“The government gave out commodities like side meat and cheese,” Lyons said. “It’s what saved a lot of us from starving to death.”

According to Shuler, Roosevelt was the “savior” of the common people. The government sent in 50-pound bags of staples like flour and sugar. They were distributed at the old Sheridan School on Ellis Avenue, she said.

FDR was also responsible for the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, which provided jobs for men to build roads and other programs, Shuler said.

“The government paid people wages, which the private sector was unable to do. The worst years for Orangeburg were 1930, 1931 and 1932,” she said. “By 1936, FDR’s team efforts began to bring this county into a period of recovery. We began to see a glimmer of hope for the return to prosperity.

“However, it was not until the U.S. became involved in producing materials to support its military forces and those of its allies that the local economy began to move rapidly toward an economic boom that continued after the war.”

The Great Depression and today’s problems are much the same, in that both saw failures of banks and investment institutions. People are also losing their homes today as they did during the Thirties, Shuler said.

However, there is a different kind of financial catastrophe today, she said.

“This time, it’s a situation of much money, excessive debt and profligate spending in contrast to the almost ‘no money’ of the Great Depression,” she said.

The Great Depression was hard, but Lyons says she has some good memories, too. Families did things together and had fun.

“We went to cane grindings and had candy pulls,” she said. “You’d wait ’til the cane syrup cooled. Then you’d put butter on your hand and pull strips of the hard syrup until it got stiff and turned from a dark brown to a cream color. You cut it into pieces about the size of your thumbs and wrapped it in wax paper – if you were lucky enough to have wax paper, that is.”

There was a lot more visiting back and forth between families than there is today, Lyons said. They also had church socials and dinners, she said.

“We couldn’t jump into the car and go to the movies like people do today,” she said. “We were happy; we didn’t know we were missing anything.”

There is a great benefit to having lived through the Great Depression, according to Lyons.

“It made us really strong,” she said. “We knew that if we had lived through all that, we could survive just about anything.”

She advises people who might be facing a recession or even a depression today to “get out of debt if you can.”

“And remember,” Lyons adds, “this too, shall pass.”

T&D Correspondent Dale Linder-Altman can be reached by e-mail at jerryanddale@lowcountry.com. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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