Would you rather live then or now?

[Brad Bowers]

Think Globally

We could, however it is important to remember that in the US it seems we could have a very different life in the 30's than in Europe because of the depression that hit in 1929 and didn't really let up until the beginnings of WWII. Overall the depression was a very difficult era for people living in the United States but we learned to make the best of it.

Actually, it wasn't just America. We tend to think the Great Depression happened only to the United States, but it really was a worldwide depression which started earlier in most countries and hit them harder than it did us. Our economy prevented it from occurring until 1929 and cushioned us better throughout the '30s, but most of Europe had being feeling it years earlier. Their unemployment was a lot higher than our 25%, which led, of course, to the rise of nationalism and fascism.

Most Americans would be surprised to learn we actually had it pretty good compared to most of the world!

Brad

 

[Lauren]

Thank you, Mr Bowers, I was not aware of this point. I know it affected the rest of the world, but I didn't know to what degree. I suppose in comparison of what missjoeri was saying to experiences I have heard from past generations recounted to me of people in the US, it seems to have been different.

Guess I should stick to clothes

 

[missjo]

We could, however it is important to remember that in the US it seems we could have a very different life in the 30's than in Europe because of the depression that hit in 1929 and didn't really let up until the beginnings of WWII.

Yes we had that depression too but in a different way, were a small country so we didnt have the many people traveling from city to city for a job, in the US you had those terrible situations where entire families would travel from one side of the country to the other to get a awful job.
In Holland people just stayed were they were, even if they did travel they could go very far, 1 day travel and your in a different country!
30% of our working population was jobless but they were receiving financial aid, not enough and there was poverty and politcal unrest.
But I do think the depression was perhaps not as bad here as it was in the USA or Germany.
But although bad things happened still the majority of people did have a job, and for those with work many things became cheaper because of the depression.
If you were a poor workingclass person life was pretty bad, but not everyone had it bad.

The availability of ready made apparel did happen in the late 20's (where you could buy anything readymade. I'm sure you know about the shirtwaist factories of previous decades). The 1930's posed a great threat to the quality texile industry in the form of cottons, linens, etc, because the cheaper textiles such as rayon and acetate could be bought in fashion prints for little cost, thus resulting in a blur of the class distinction of clothes, but little surviving that is considered wearable (and by this I mean that what is left is generally silk, cotton, wool, etc because clothing of other materials were not stored properly and are not as strong as the other fibers).

Yes very true, also many people of course made and remade their own clothes.
More then today we would have the time to make clothes and also buy cheap patterns and fabrics.

So while we could have looked remotely fashionable for little cost, we would not have the variety of clothing we have today within our price range. Seperates to mix and match, of course, were very popular as they could supply a variety of looks.
And production on looms was done by machines, but I'm sure you are aware that the job was mostly done by small women and young children, as they could crawl under the machines if any problems arose. It was very hazardous work!

Well here in Holland we had laws against that long before the depression began, in 1874 it became illegal for children up to 12 to work in factories and child labour really ended in 1901 when it became law for children to go to school.

And the sewing machine was around for a long while, but still all those women had to cut and sew by hand. This shows an availabilty of low wage labour as a mean for supplying a larger household income, which can show how hard things really were for those of lower classes.

Yes but sewing machines became much cheaper and more available by the early 20th century, also it was something you could often borrow from a neighbour in the street.
I have made clothes by hand, its not a terrible difficult or tiresome job, nice to do while listening to the radio.

I do agree with you on this one. I like to know what's going on, but seeing images often makes me afraid in a situation in which I have little or no ability to change.

Yes if I had lived back then at the lower lowest lowering side of society in absolute poverty I would have been very unhappy.
But being poor has always been hell untill recently, only today being poor is unpleasant and not nice but its no longer hell and doom compared to a few decades ago.

You are very well educated, missjoeri. It's nice to know what it was like for our sisters overseas during the 30's.

Likewise!

 

[missjo]

Actually, it wasn't just America. We tend to think the Great Depression happened only to the United States, but it really was a worldwide depression which started earlier in most countries and hit them harder than it did us. Our economy prevented it from occurring until 1929 and cushioned us better throughout the '30s, but most of Europe had being feeling it years earlier. Their unemployment was a lot higher than our 25%, which led, of course, to the rise of nationalism and fascism.

Most Americans would be surprised to learn we actually had it pretty good compared to most of the world!

Brad

Germany was the worst hit, I think worse then any other country.
They had 40% unemployement but besides that they had something else other countries didnt have.
Their country was poor, the government was helpless, their money was worthless.
We in Holland had "only" 30% unemployement for a short time, our money was worth its weight in gold for quite some time and our country was very wealthy so we could look after our unemployed.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

It is interesting that in all the time-travel movies, novels and short stories that I have read, and I have read a number of them, there are always the moral difficulties we have been discussing on this thread:

... would we interfere with the past, therefore affecting the future?

... would we use it for good or for evil? (In several stories, the military got involved and wanted to go back in time and change things that would benefit their country; also there were the Terminator movies).

... would we want to stay there? What if we met someone and fell in love, do we stay there or do they come back with us to the future (one did follow and could not stand it so she returned to the 1880's and he went with her; in Timelines, a young man stayed behind because he fit better in the middle ages than he did in his own time -- and he had fallen in love).

I could probably have lived in another era, but it would have been hard to do so if I had come from this time, because I would have a comparative. They didn't -- though, of course, they wrote futuristic stories (usually horrific).

Parents in this day and age are used to raising and keeping their children. The death of a child is always a terrible event, but in earlier times they expected it -- in mid-19th-century there were people raising large families in the hopes that at least a couple of the kids would survive childhood and provide for them when they were old. Women died earlier, then, too and it was not uncommon for a man to have two or even three wives in his lifetime. People then accepted that, mourned and went on with their lives. I think we whose lives are wired for the 21st century would find this almost unbearably tragic. Could you imagine having ten kids and burying 8 of them?!

Anyone who wants to go back to any era and live there, more power to them. I would enjoy a visit (I think) but cannot imagine I would want to stay. Miss joeri, who is young, strong and "fiercely independent," and who travels without a lot of modern baggage, could probably pull it off. Many of us could not or would not want to do so.

I sure like the hats, though....

I want to write a book someday on time travel and have been acquiring ideas for some time now. This thread inspires me, obviously it is a fascination for lots off folks.

karol

 

[Lauren]

Parents in this day and age are used to raising and keeping their children. The death of a child is always a terrible event, but in earlier times they expected it -- in mid-19th-century there were people raising large families in the hopes that at least a couple of the kids would survive childhood and provide for them when they were old. Women died earlier, then, too and it was not uncommon for a man to have two or even three wives in his lifetime. People then accepted that, mourned and went on with their lives. I think we whose lives are wired for the 21st century would find this almost unbearably tragic. Could you imagine having ten kids and burying 8 of them?!

It is sad to be sure. I have done some geneology, and it is very sad when you realize that a child could be a couple years old, a couple months old, or a couple days old before they died. Or when the mother's death date is the same as the child's. Although this was in the 1800's, it is likely that if we lived in the 30's we would have been born in the late 1800's/early 1900's and witnessed this firsthand, as well as seeing the devastation of the Great War and the deaths due to the Influenza.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Yes, I was reminded that in the book Timeline (read the book, did not see the movie, which I was told was awful), when they decide to punish the villain at the end of the book, they send him back to medieval France during the time of the bubonic plague. One of the heroes, who elects to stay behind because he cherishes the medieval culture more than the modern one and who falls in love with a Lady of that time, only lives to be 53 years old (his tomb is found by his archeologist friends who had journeyed with him, but returned to the present).

karol

 

[Angelicious]

Actually, it wasn't just America. We tend to think the Great Depression happened only to the United States, but it really was a worldwide depression which started earlier in most countries and hit them harder than it did us.
Brad

New Zealand was no Germany, but things were pretty harsh by all accounts.

For the Pakeha (white) population, most of them worked in agriculture or in an industry affected by it. When the Depression hit, exports were affected, which was bad news for the individual, and for the domestic economy at large, and spread in a ripple effect through most of the country. Maori (the indigenous population) were worse off to begin with, and went downhill from there.

The government instituted "relief camps" and work gangs to do manual labour, to create cheap civil improvements and give an excuse to pay people (they claimed they "boosted morale". Old men I know either laugh or want to spit. They make comments about digging holes and then filling them in again for a token few pence, just so the right-wing govt wouldn't be seen making social welfare payments.). Men made roads, dragging manual (i.e. no motor) machinery, teamed up like draught animals. The cricket ground where I grew up had earthen terraces for viewers to watch the game, maybe 100 feet high - those terraces were excavated from a huge hill by hand. Men with spades dug out a space bigger than a cricket pitch, and 100 feet high. Most local kids don't believe it the first time someone tells them that. They can't comprehend it.

It got to the point in 1932 that there were riots in our 3 of our 4 biggest cities. Unemployed men, women, and teens smashed shops, cars and homes, and fought with (or were clubbed like baby seals by) police and militia. The 4th city, Christchurch, was the only one which had a Labour (centre-left) city council "who provided a generous and sympathetic relief programme", and remained untouched.

As a note; women, under 20s, and Maori, who lost their jobs in the Depression got no relief payments; they weren't even counted for statistical purposes.

And after the Depression came the war, and with the war came Rationing, and Rationing lasted into the 1950s... NZ's "golden age" is generally seen as the late 50s, when things started to stabilise, but before those damned social reformers started demanding rights for such inconsequencials as women, Maori, animals, and the environment.

 

[FALLOUT]

UMMM

Hmmm ........would I be able to give it a trial run for say 30 days?

 

[missjo]

Yes, I was reminded that in the book Timeline (read the book, did not see the movie, which I was told was awful), when they decide to punish the villain at the end of the book, they send him back to medieval France during the time of the bubonic plague. One of the heroes, who elects to stay behind because he cherishes the medieval culture more than the modern one and who falls in love with a Lady of that time, only lives to be 53 years old (his tomb is found by his archeologist friends who had journeyed with him, but returned to the present).

karol

Thats a pretty good age though, the average age in 14th century holland was only 10 years below what it is today, about 75 for men.
And I'd rather live 5 years in a time I love then 50 years in a time I hate.

 

[Sharon]

Great question!

Being a Dealer and having an on-line Antiques and Collectibles Shop, I actually revisit the 1930's, 40's, 50's and earlier to the 1800's everyday! Researching items and finding as much as possible about the history of an item and the owner is my own way of time travel and I absolutely love it! Would I want to actually live in those eras? Though there were happy times then which probably were more personally socialable because of less advanced technology plus they don't make items like they used to do then they also had many times of hardships, diseases, war, poverty, etc. without all the knowledge we have today. I appreciate good change and technology where polio isn't around in our time and yes, I am spoiled by air conditioning, refrigeration, remote controls, fast jets and computers where I can meet people from all around the globe which I could never do then. Besides...a woman wouldn't have the same rights...hey, we have come so far I surely wouldn't want to turn back now. I would have to have amnesia in order to go back and enjoy it throughly. So revisiting through items and dressing from those periods gives me the best of all worlds where I can understand and appreciate the past and those who worked hard to make it better for us today. However, visiting would be welcomed, so if any of you do find a working time machine please let me know!

 

[Lauren]

And the sewing machine was around for a long while, but still all those women had to cut and sew by hand

I just want to retract this statement, because I've just learned that power driven cutting blades, cutting up to 25 layers of fabric at once, were available in 1939 for certain, though they were pobably around even earlier. However, these still are very dangerous to operate, and I learned in fashion school that it is still common to have accidents (like loosing fingers) as with all large machinery. So... other than the morbid part, I think the new find is rather exciting! And a friend recently found that sergers were around as early as 1902! Also exciting to me!

 

[airfrogusmc]

When I first met my wifes family (several years ago) we were having a conversation about how awful things were today. They had all lived thru the depression and WWII so I brought that up to them. I think we sometimes don't remember the hard times being as hard as they really were. Thousands died in single battles like Tarawa, D-Day, Battle of the Bulge, Okinawa and so many others. I think everyone from that generation had family or very good friends that were killed in the war.
One of my favorite books is Hemingways The Sun Also Rises and it takes place in Europe between the Wars. I think its great to fantasize about living in those times but the reality of it we'll I donno.

 

[swinggal]

Great question Matt, and how many of feel we were born in the wrong era - I do - but it's a dilema.

I would love to go back when it suited me on and off, but not to stay forever. My dream would be to attened the famous 'Battle of the Bands' at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem in 1938 when Chick Webb beat Benny Goodman hands down in front of 4,000 people just to hang out at the birthplace of Lindy Hop. I'd also like to buy up as much stuff as I could and bring it back with me - all new! A bit like 'Goodnight Sweetheart'. If you guys haven't seen this series, find it and watch it. It's great! Made by the BBC in the late 90's. I loved the fact that in one episode when he went back he bought an art deco apartment for practically nothing and furnished it. Then he would come back to the future and it was still his - all locked up.

I think spending 'periods' of time in the 30s and 40's would be fine, but many of the attitudes of the era don't appeal to me. I for one am a very independent woman with my own money, ideas and ways of doing things. Women were pretty much second class citizens at that time, unless of course they were very rich and members of high society. Their opinions were not valued and it was pretty much expected that, even if you went to university, you'd should just get married and have kids.

I love that things were simpler though in the 30s and 40s and I can honesty say that I think the kids who grew up in the 70's were the very last kids to experience a simpler more carefree time. I was one of them and consider myself lucky that my childhood was full of fun and almost total freedom, without computer games, parental worry about where you were and as much corporate crap and pressure as there is now. I mean gee, we got our clothes from K-Mart and wouldn't have cared less. Didn't even know what a brand name was!

So - yes - I'd love to go back, but not for good.

Also, ig you can, watch "The 1940's House" sometime as well. Were a modern family baiscally live in the 40's for 3 months. It was bloody hard slog for the women I can tell you.

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

To some extent the 1940s house is a bit decieving about the era however. The life of a working class mother in England would be quite different than of a middle-class or upper-class mother in America. The 1940s house lacked many convieniences which were available at the time but not common for working class families to have.

 

[swinggal]

Yes, but thats how it was in both the UK and Australia at the time. You have to remember that we joined WW2 years before the US and things were rationed and life was harder for a lot longer. 1940s US was much more affluent that many other nations - even after you joined the war effort. A lot of families here had electric washing machines, vacuums etc, but many didn't.

Australia also had the most men serving in WW2 in proportion to its population of any country during WW2 which left us with almost no worksforce (1.5 million fighting out of only 14 million people). Even with most of the young women at work in the factories etc, we had to bring back 32,000 men from the fighting front in 1944 to be able to keep up wartime production and produce enough food for Australia AND the US troops in the Pacific.

My Pop, who fought in WW2, told me that he was sending large food parcels back to his family in the UK from Australia right up til 1950 because they still had rationing there long after the war was over and couldn't get many of things we took for granted at home.

The 1940's House was a very accurate portrayal of life in Wartime Britain and possibly Australia. I suppose the question need to be asked in 1930's/40s where?" Some countries were definatley better to be than others.

 

[Dismuke]

To some extent the 1940s house is a bit decieving about the era however. The life of a working class mother in England would be quite different than of a middle-class or upper-class mother in America. The 1940s house lacked many convieniences which were available at the time but not common for working class families to have.

Very true, Vladimir. My mother grew up in a working class neighborhood in Northern England in the 1940s and 1950s. People in the neighborhood lived in row houses - and the majority of them still did not have indoor bathrooms. I seem to recall her telling me that people had flush toilets - but for many they were behind the house and one had to go outside in order to use the toilet. Most people took their baths in large portable basins which were brought into the living room - and there was one night of the week (I forget which) when it was considered impolite to call on one's neighbors as it was generally assumed that families would be busy taking their baths. My mother's family was lucky in that they did have a regular bathtub.

Rationing in England continued well into the 1950s.

My mother once told me a story about the first time she ever had a banana. It was a birthday present (7th birthday, if I recall correctly). The war was still going on so bananas were almost impossible to obtain because they had to be imported. My mother had heard about and seen pictures of bananas and wanted so badly to try one and know what it tasted like. Someone my grandfather knew was well-connected and managed to somehow acquire a banana for my mother's birthday. When she tried it, she broke into tears and was very disappointed. She had expected it to be sweet and juicy, not bland and mushy.

As for America, there were still rural areas that did not have electricity until the 1950s. The very small town in rural Kansas where my father grew up was not electrified until 1952 or 1953. For lighting, my grandparents' house used acetylene gas. The way it worked is there was an underground tank in the yard where the carbide was placed. Somehow, water was placed in contact with the carbide to generate the gas which was piped into the house. I have some of the old mission style gas lighting fixtures that my grandfather took down when he converted the house to electricity and gave to me decades later. My father says that the light they produced was very bright and pleasant. Because they did not have refrigeration, surplus produce from the garden was canned. In the county seat 12 miles away which was electrified was a business establishment called a locker plant. Basically, it was a giant freezer where individual compartments or "lockers" were rented out for food storage. That was where rural families who did not have refrigerators stored their meat. In some rural areas, gas refrigerators were popular, but my grandparents did not have one. Believe it or not, they still sell gas refrigerators.

 

[Angelicious]

My mother grew up in a working class neighborhood in Northern England in the 1940s and 1950s. People in the neighborhood lived in row houses - and the majority of them still did not have indoor bathrooms. I seem to recall her telling me that people had flush toilets - but for many they were behind the house and one had to go outside in order to use the toilet.

My step-father was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1952. As a child, he lived for a while in Victorian terraced (row) housing, and the toilet wasn't even in the building. It was a communal toilet (possibly not a flushing one?), down at the end of the street. If I recall correctly, they may not have even had internal running water.... Although, as he likes to say, "Yeh, we had runnin' water... It was runnin' down th' bl@@dy walls!".

My father was born in Wales, in 1955. IIRC, they had electricity and running water, but while the bathroom/toilet was indoors, it was communal to the tenement flats they lived in.

My mother was born in NZ in '58 - by the time she was born the family lived in State Housing (very much like I live in now, but by now most of it's been privatised), but earlier they had lived in a place with an outdoor toilet, and electric lighting/water heating, but no appliance plugs or electric heating.

Still, lots of NZ houses today still have outhouses or external toilets, especially on farms - no big deal.

 

[Dismuke]

Still, lots of NZ houses today still have outhouses or external toilets, especially on farms - no big deal.

I have seen vintage outhouses known as "two holers" which were exactly what the name implies - an outhouse equipped for simultaneous use by two people in case two members of the very large families of the day both had to go at the same time. Yikes! I like my family, don't get me wrong - but I don't think I would like to... well, you know. What is worse, I understand that hotels and other business establishments sometimes had outhouses with many more holes than two - with no stalls or privacy. Double and triple yikes!

Anyhow - here is an outhouse related story from the Great Depression that my late grandfather once told me.

During the early 1930s, my grandfather, then in his early 20s, tagged along when one of his favorite brothers got a job as a Lutheran minister in a very small rural community in Kansas. Jobs have always been hard to come buy in that part of the world and this was the Great Depression. Nevertheless, my grandfather found a job working for a tractor dealership/garage located in the little town's downtown area. The man who owned the tractor dealership also owned the town's small hotel (more of a boarding house than a hotel). Basically, my grandfather's pay for his work at the tractor dealership was room and board at the hotel - and he considered himself fortunate to have such a job.

My grandfather eventually became very close friends with the man he worked for as well as the man's son who was several years younger than my grandfather (and who would eventually marry my grandmother's sister). The son was a notorious prankster and practical joker - and he seemed to have a fascination with things electrical. For example, he used to sneak open the hoods on people's cars and rig up "noise bombs" which would go off and frighten the car's owner when the car was started up. He also used to hook up benches to electrical wires and a battery and turn up the juice when the town's old geezers used to sit on them.

The tractor dealership was located in one of a row of store fronts along the town's main street. The store buildings were (and are, they still stand, but are in sad shape) made out of very nice hand quarried and hand shaped local limestone. None of the buildings had running water and, at the time, the town had not been electrified. Behind the row of shops was an outhouse for the owners and patrons of the businesses. None of the shops, by the way, had a back exit (highly illegal today) so if someone wanted to relieve themselves, they had to go out the front door, walk to the end of the block of shops, then go around the buildings to the alley and walk to the middle of the block where the outhouse was located.

In a storage area in the back of the tractor dealership the owner had stored a bunch of window screens which were stacked up against the wall. As with many small town businesses, the tractor dealership had its fair share of regulars who dropped by basically to shoot the breeze and, of course, it had customers. One of the problems the owner had, however, was his visitors and patrons were too lazy to walk around to the back of the block to go to the outhouse. Instead, what they did was sneak off into the back storage area and urinate on the window screens - which, of course, was disgusting and did not smell so nice. The owner's prankster son decided to take matters in his hands and do something about it. So he took the battery and wires that he previously used to shock old geezers in benches and hooked them up to the window screens. Not long afterwards, one of the regular visitors to the shop quietly slipped into the back room. Moments later, everyone heard a blood curdling scream and the man eventually emerged red-faced and visibly shaken. A few other visitors also ended up having a similar experience. As you can imagine, that quickly solved the problem of visitors pissing on the window screens.

 

[flat-top]

I remembered a story today that I guess sorta ties in with this thread. This a true sad, story told to me by my 75yr old uncle last year.
Before my family put their roots down in The Bronx, they lived in a tenament in Harlem. One winter's day when my uncle was around 10yrs old (so I guess 1940), he was left home to babysit one of his infant siblings. There was no heat in the apartment, so a large pot of water was left boiling on the stove.
Somehow or another, he banged into the pot, and the scalding hot water spilled all over his back. He said the skin burned right off of him, and he felt pain he could not describe. He remedied himself the best he could, and never told his parents what had happened. They were poor. He knew that they could not afford to bring him to a doctor, and he didn't want to make them feel any worse about their situation. He suffered in silence for months.
In fact, as he was telling me this story, he realized that I was the first person he EVER told this to.
Cheers Uncle Pappy,
flat-top