Analysis of 1929 Depression Survivors' Advice

As the 2007 Depression continues, we expect that still-living survivors of the 1929 Depression will be getting more air-time. In our mind, it is sad that an economic calamity had to occur before these people's well-tested advice is given its due. The frugality and thrift which is so deeply ingrained in the individuals would have prevented much of what is occurring today - if only the greater public would have listened.

But that is neither here nor there; we want to discuss both the advice that these survivors offer (taken from two articles), and some inherent problems. First, the advice: in this article from The Ledger, one individual recommends a 20% personal savings rate; another says not to buy things one cannot afford. The most interesting insight, at least to us, is the thought that the young of the United States, having lived with nothing but a knee-jerk consumeristic lifestyle are in for a serious shock, at the very least. All in all, we recommend this article; it's interesting to hear the perspectives of these survivors, and their advice is never out of style.

On the other side of the coin is the bad advice, as seen in this otherwise excellent article from Utica Observer-Dispatch. One of the survivors says that the 1929 Depression was completely different from this 'recession,' but fails to suggest how or why (as an aside, she gave corollaries and outcomes of the 1929 Depression, not causes). The general thrust of the article seems to us to be that "the government is prepared;" “I don’t think [a Depression] could happen again” said one interviewee.

These two articles highlight some inherent difficulties in turning to 1929 Depression survivors: these people are old. There are sharp-as-a-tack survivors (we know one), but that term does not describe every survivor. A not-insignificant number of these survivors are not in as full of command of their faculties as they once were. This has a number of implications.

First, even when the advice survivors give is sound and useful, they cannot defend why it is as such; to them, it is only the way things must be done. Because of that, these survivors come across as a bit senile at best, or outright loonie-tunes at worst, from the perspective of later generations. It is easy enough for one to dismiss well-defended advice; it is infinitely easier to dismiss advice without supporting argument.

Second, because of the loss of facility which comes with increasing age, many of these survivors probably have to rely - at least in part - on what they hear and read, rather than anything they actually remember. The post-1929 Depression mantra carries with it a healthy dose of Franklin Roosevelt worship, and Herbert Hoover bashing. Both of those Presidents have similarly damaging policies; Roosevelt's was remarkable for being aggressively un-Constitutional. This loss of first-hand memory allows for retroactive continuity: the 'memories' of the survivor are clouded by the rhetoric of later generations defending the expansion of the Federal Government.

And finally third: these survivors can only reflect the point-of-view of persons who didn't die during the 1929 Depression. Almost all survivors came from fairly well-off families; they owned their own home, they could hold some jobs, they could buy and grow some food. There were many more families which had none of the above, and many simply died of stress and starvation. The survivors who speak today do so through a bias: they were comfortably-off before the 1929 Depression, and so had a cushion between death and survival. They did not see the absolute horror that the 1929 Depression brought to the United States.

We expect the 2007 Depression will bring similar horror. The only question, in our minds, is when.