Faces of Hard Times

Posted at 12:00 AM on Sunday, Mar. 29, 2009

Deep furrows cut into his face, his hollow eyes stare blankly from under his hat, the look of despair from someone looking for work, any work. Children at her side, the migrant mother worries, hungry family, no money, tough times.

These are black and white photos from the Great Depression taken during the 1930s. They could be from the economic crisis of 2009.

Ailing and unstable. We hear these terms describing today's economy as if it were alive with emotions. Yet like the 1930s, behind the statistics and data, beyond the unemployment rates and job layoffs, real people are hurting and suffering.

The current recession is framed by bailout dollars and stimulus packages, yet we ignore the human wounds and emotional truths shared by those out of work, out of a home, out of luck. We are in a cycle of depression.

Shame. That's what millions felt during the Great Depression. Ashamed to be forced to accept charity, welfare and handouts. Some claim that's why men wore coats and ties as they waited in soup lines, trying to maintain self-respect.

Many lost their sense of worth. Displaced men wandered in search of employment, women were left to hold families together. Oral histories describe the shame when able-bodied folk had to accept the reality: They couldn't even feed their own families.

Downtrodden men and women dropped their heads, stopped looking at others in the eye, wore the pain on their furrowed faces. Economic victims were identified as losers; they felt worthless and guilty. The same emotional truths in the 1930s now haunt us in 2009.

The term foreclosure doesn't adequately describe the pain and loss -- in the 1930s it was farms, today it's homes. Words like "confiscate, seize, impound" better capture the drama of crisis; "shut out" and "deprive" tell a story of the emotional impact of forfeited dreams and displaced lives.

Economists claim in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, low agricultural prices forced thousands of sharecroppers off the land: There were too many small farms, the system could not support itself, so farmers were thrown off the land. Today there are too many houses people can't afford, so they sit empty and families are tossed out. Foreclosure translates into discarded and devalued lives.

Photos from the Great Depression capture the fear people carried with them. Many had given up finding something better. Instead they were driven by survival. A great migration unfolded, the rural poor left the countryside. They drove to places like California with the promise of work, only to be disappointed.

Today's crisis has no "golden state" that symbolizes hope -- no Route 66 to a land of "milk and honey," as depicted in "The Grapes of Wrath." Our depression is too recent, the great story of this collapse has yet to be written: We are still paralyzed by fear.

Stories from that era also describe the long ago hurts and small triumphs that softened the humiliation of being poor. Thousands drifted, hoping for a handout or just a meal; often families with little themselves found a way to scrape up a plate for someone hungry. I hope giving stories will also arise from today's hard times, stories we may never hear of, unsung heroes in a time of darkness, acts of kindness that remain random and powerful precisely because they are anonymous.

In the 1930s, blame was all around, a nation was confused and desperate, anger turned inward and outward. Frustration sometimes leads to the cry, "everyone for themselves." Those with property fought to protect it; those without struggled to "get by." Some sought escapism, drinking and abandoning family. Others grew hateful.