The state of the economy is
no secret-it’s discouraging at
best. According to the Bureau
of Labor Statistics, the unemployment
rate is 8 percent
and rising. People are losing
their homes or struggling to
put food on the table, and
experts predict this will continue
through 2009.
It has been said that the
recession, which actually
began before anyone really
knew it in December 2007, is
comparable to the Great
Depression.
Is it possible that one of the
worst time periods in
American history is repeating
itself? Can the Great
Depression and this current
recession even be compared?
“Oh no. No. No. No,” says
Molly McGuire shaking her
head, her eyes wide. McGuire
was born in 1918, which
makes her 91 years old. She
was 11 when the depression
began.
“This is nothing like the
depression. People were
much more accepting back
then. I don’t remember any of
this ‘blaming it on the president,'”
she said.
McGuire, a nun at the Grey
Nun Academy in Yardley,
grew up in Mahanoy City, a
small town 50 miles northwest
of Reading, in the heart
of the coal region. She refers
to it as “the best place on
earth.”
McGuire’s life was good
before the depression. Her
father did what most men in
the area did – work in the coal
mine. She had seven brothers,
two of whom joined the
Civilian Conservation Corps
(CCC), a program started by
Franklin D. Roosevelt when
he came into office. The program
was a part of
Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” It
put young men to work
cleaning up the nation’s natural
resources. And more
importantly, they were able
to earn a paycheck. Another
brother traveled to Atlantic
City to find work.
McGuire remembers that
time in her life like it was yesterday.
“I was walking home
from school and I saw a man
someone my family knew. He
was hunched over the ticker,
and he was very upset. It was
over the stocks. That was the
first time I realized there was
really a problem.”
Although times were hard,
McGuire explained that
everyone worked together to
get through it. “You didn’t
seem poor because everyone
else was in the same boat. If a
neighbor had a loaf of bread,
they would give us half.”
One of the clear differences
between then and now,
McGuire said, is the amount
of things people have. “We
weren’t used to having as
much. We had to put cardboard
in our shoes when the
soles wore down. We were
lucky if we had a radio.
Maybe now children will
learn they can’t have everything
they want.”
McGuire’s father did lose
his job early in the depression
and she thinks it was his
small pension from the
Spanish-American War that
pulled them through. “There
was no such thing as dessert,
but my mom always had food
on the table.”
In the 1930s, there were no
trillion dollar bailouts like the
one Congress recently passed
in an attempt to resuscitate
the economy. Americans are
concerned with the amount of
debt left to future generations,
and McGuire is no different.
“What I really worry
about is the debt we’ll be
leaving for our grandchildren.
That makes me heartsick.”
She said that despite the
concern, the Depression and
the recession can have a positive
effect on people. “I saw it
then and I see it now. People
become very willing to help
others. It’s nice to see.”