Depression-Era Diary Think times are tough? How one man survived the last Great Depression.

Part One

Part Two

As a commentary on the current financial trends, Newsweek has begun running short segments of a diary kept by a man in Yougstown Ohio, during the Great Depression:

Aug. 5, 1931. I went to the fruit market house this evening. It was almost deserted. The farmers cannot sell their produce because men are not working and it has become fashionable for each family to have its own vegetable garden.

Aug. 6, 1931. At a public sale by the sheriff today on foreclosure by the bank the C—— home at 1— Elm Street was offered for the third time but no buyer found. It could be bought for $4400, and is really worth conservatively $7500. In 1929 the owner thought it was worth $11,000.

Aug. 7, 1931. Business is at an absolute standstill and the big stores are deserted even tho’ they are all running sales and almost giving the merchandise away. Since the local savings and loan companies stopped paying out, nobody has any money and everybody seems scared and blue. We seem to have touched bottom in Youngstown and it hardly seems possible that things could get worse.

Aug. 8, 1931. My brother Morris has been out of work now for almost two years and can’t find a thing to do. He is an engineer and a craftsman. [One of his close friends] was laid off by the Truscan Steel Co. two months ago and is not very optimistic. [My brother] Joe is [an accountant and is] still at Truscan but is afraid for his job. He says the air is tense and men are being discharged every day.

Aug. 9, 1931. Professional men have been hard hit by the depression. This is particularly true of doctors and dentists. Their overhead is high and collections are impossible. One doctor smoothed a dollar bill out on his desk the other day and said that this was all the money he had taken in for a week. Lawyers are almost as badly off and most of them are not taking in enough to pay. We have been helped a little by foreclosure work which followed in the wake of the depression but most of it does not pay because the assets are worthless. Most professional men for past two years have been living on money borrowed on insurance policies etc. The only work that comes in now are impossible collections on a contingent fee basis. Everybody is digging up old claims and trying to realize on them. Tempers are short and people are distrustful and suspicious. There is nothing to do but work hard for less money and to cut expenses to the bone.

The Diary of Samuel Pepys Daily entries from the 17th century London diary

I used to read this intricately thorough diary every day, but fell out of the habit:

It is, I warn you, addictive, as it includes a full complement of tools for annotation, commenting and discussion, and a large complement of interested parties.

Sunday 29 October 1665

(Lord’s day). Up, and being ready set out with Captain Cocke in his coach toward Erith, Mr. Deane riding along with us, where we dined and were very merry. After dinner we fell to discourse about the Dutch, Cocke undertaking to prove that they were able to wage warr with us three years together, which, though it may be true, yet, not being satisfied with his arguments, my Lord and I did oppose the strength of his arguments, which brought us to a great heate, he being a conceited man, but of no Logique in his head at all, which made my Lord and I mirth. Anon we parted, and back again, we hardly having a word all the way, he being so vexed at our not yielding to his persuasion. I was set down at Woolwich towne end, and walked through the towne in the darke, it being now night. But in the streete did overtake and almost run upon two women crying and carrying a man’s coffin between them. I suppose the husband of one of them, which, methinks, is a sad thing. Being come to Shelden’s, I find my people in the darke in the dining room, merry and laughing, and, I thought, sporting one with another, which, God helpe me! raised my jealousy presently. Come in the darke, and one of them touching me (which afterward I found was Susan) made them shreeke, and so went out up stairs, leaving them to light a candle and to run out. I went out and was very vexed till I found my wife was gone with Mr. Hill and Mercer this day to see me at Greenwich, and these people were at supper, and the candle on a sudden falling out of the candlesticke (which I saw as I come through the yarde) and Mrs. Barbary being there I was well at ease again, and so bethought myself what to do, whether to go to Greenwich or stay there; at last go I would, and so with a lanthorne, and 3 or 4 people with me, among others Mr. Browne, who was there, would go, I walked with a lanthorne and discoursed with him about paynting and the several sorts of it. I came in good time to Greenwich, where I found Mr. Hill with my wife, and very glad I was to see him. To supper and discourse of musique and so to bed, I lying with him talking till midnight about Berckenshaw’s musique rules, which I did to his great satisfaction inform him in, and so to sleep.