An Ordinary Tragedy

By Cynthia A. Smith

GREW UP ON HER PATERNAL GRANDFATHER'S HOMESTEAD IN NORTH DAKOTA. BORN DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION, SHE EXPERIENCED THE HARDSHIPS OF THAT TIME AND THEIR EFFECTS ON HER FAMILY. MARRIED YOUNG, SHE AND HER HUSBAND HAD THREE CHILDREN.

SHE FREELA

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cynthia A Smith
• Release date: Oct 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781088007587

Book preview

Prologue

A prelude to the Great Depression began on black Tuesday on October 29th with the Wall Street Crash. It had a profound effect on the country. High unemployment and low economic growth resulted in a loss of confidence by the entire nation.

The government responded by protectionist policies on trade with other countries, which in turn, made those countries retaliate. Agriculture, logging, and mining, as well as manufactured goods like automobiles, were the most affected. Construction was at a standstill.

But the real tragedy was the effect on the people. Helpless in an economic situation that brought poverty and hopelessness, how it affected families can never be imagined. The Great Depression was a decade long and only World War II would bring the United States back to prosperity.

Black Tuesday in October 1929, the Wall Street crash brought pervasive consequences to the United States as well as around the world. What caused it to happen? Should governments have recognized the signs? Perhaps.  Future analysts would study the world economies at that period in history. There were red flags! Consequences of the ‘Great War’, and then, the war’s end. There would be a complete change in the marketplace, as well as unforeseen climate changes to further affect an already reeling job market.

Production of weapons to maintain the ongoing war needs, food exported to war-torn countries that could no longer supply themselves, the manufacturing plants in the United States would expand to cover the demands. Farmers increased field sizes to produce more food. The job market was good, and big business was booming. Investors were enticed into investing heavily, anxious to enjoy the windfall profits of an expanding economy.

Government abetted speculative investing by adopting the policy of laissez-faire (the belief that government should not interfere with the affairs of big business). Banks loaned money to investors based on an economy that wasn’t sustainable after the war.

And then, the war ended!  Goods produced to supply the war needs in Europe had created an export market that manufacturers could meet by expanding production. Plants were enlarged, jobs were created.

Manufacturers soon found a market glutted by surplus goods. Layoffs followed. Banks failed as loans were not repaid. Depositors lost their savings; expendable income was in decline. A domino effect followed. 

European countries were on the gold standard when the war started. As war costs mounted, they were forced to print money not guaranteed by their gold reserves. While the United States remained on the gold standard and the dollar remained stable, the inflation in Europe was a factor in the market crash and the coming depression.

At the time of the market crash, rural workers were earning only one-fourth of the income of urban workers. Adding to their already low earnings, grain prices fell as surpluses caused by increased production of grain in enlarged fields to supply European markets glutted the marketplace. 

Government put in place a new policy to buy the surpluses. It was unsustainable. The monies designated were soon depleted. During the following years, the government paid farmers to reduce field sizes and hired local persons to oversee compliance. 

General Motor’s executives anticipated that when the war ended, the economy would take a drastic hit; as exports decreased and manufacturers were forced to cut back production, and layoffs followed. They came up with a new marketing strategy and spent millions on advertising the concept. Consumer credit. Down payments, with monthly installments. It was brilliant, and other manufacturers soon followed.

History books focus on the depression. They do not discuss the factors that led up to the Great Depression, what rural areas in America were experiencing. (Low grain prices and government control of field sizes.)

Poor farming methods during preceding years made the ‘dirty 30’s’ even worse. Rather than plowing under the stubble after harvest, farmers burned their fields in an effort to control weeds, resulting in depleted moisture and waste of the stubble that would have nourished the soil and help loosen it. Even the network of roots remaining in the soil from the prairie grass that had once covered the land was destroyed. Climate changes, low rainfall, and the strong winds that picked up the dry topsoil created huge dust storms that traveled as far as New York City. 

Mother Nature seemed to conspire to make conditions worse. It was as if the rain was locked up in the atmosphere, refusing to fall, punishing the people who had desecrated the land. Winds lifted the exposed soil and created drifts of topsoil like sand dunes in the desert or drifts of snow after a blizzard. Daylight became twilight as the blowing topsoil filtered out the sun. The constant wind drove some people mad.

This was the world picture that started after World War I and continued to deteriorate with the market crash, which created a generation of depression victims. Even the children born during those times would carry scars. They would always be called ‘depression children’ and would never enjoy the feeling of security that most young people today take for granted.

Dorothea Lange was an American photojournalist, best known for her depression documentation and its’ tragic consequences. The whole country was affected, but rural America particularly. This was the era that would bring a whole nation of people unimaginable suffering.

Anna Berg was born during the Depression. Although she was born five years after the ‘Market Crash’, she became a living part of the tragedy.

Anna’s memories of that time would have been better left in the graveyard of an ancient cemetery, forgotten and never visited. Anna Berg would see ghosts that haunted her dreams and even her waking hours on occasion. This is her story.

Anna had an extraordinary gift of recording moments in time. It was as if her mind took pictures and stored them in an album in her memory that would never be faded over time.

As Anna’s family and their neighbors, rural, hard-working, independent people, struggled to make the land provide a living and a future for themselves and their families. They must have found only poor returns for their efforts.

Chapter 1: The Homestead Act

The 34th Congress had proposed a bill based on the need to construct a railroad and a telegraph line from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean to serve the government in supplying military supplies and postal delivery in the already Western expansion.

Proposed on August 16, 1856, it was signed into law by President Lincoln on July 1, 1862. The 1862 Act authorized extensive land grants in the Western United States, and the issuance of thirty-year government bonds at a 6% rate of interest to the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad (later the Southern Pacific Railroad) to construct a continuous transcontinental railroad between the eastern side of Missouri at Council Bluffs, Iowa all the way to the Sacramento River in Sacramento California.

It granted each company contiguous right of way for their rail lines as well as all public lands within two hundred feet on either side of the tracks. It also granted an additional ten square miles of public land for every mile and grade except where the railroad ran through cities or crossed rivers.

From 1850 to 1871, railroads received more than 175 million acres of public land, an area one-tenth of the whole United States, an area larger than the state of Texas. Railroads sold portions of this land