What’s for Dinner?

 A report on food during The Great Depression

by Bobbie Jo Sewell

Imagine a world with no work.  In this world you are perfectly able to work, but there are few jobs for workers.  Imagine one out of every four people unable to find work.  Unable to find work, you are unable to provide your family with necessities, necessities like food. 

I have led you to believe that this world that I have described is fictitious.  It is not.  Though it only exists in much smaller doses these days, hunger plagued the United States only a few short years ago.  During this age, which is known as The Great Depression, hunger was an everyday battle.  Millions of Americans were concerned about what was going to be on their tables and in the bellies of their children.

This era, known as The Great Depression, lasted from 1929 until the early 1940s.  It is believed to be the product of the stock market crash on Black Tuesday (October 29, 1929).  The stock market “crash” was prompted by the era known as the “Roaring Twenties”, in which the consumer was spending a lot of money that was not yet their own.  Even though corporate America was earning huge gains of up to 65%, the average worker wages were just up by 8%.  This only meant disaster.  The Great Depression was the worst economic collapse in the modern industrial world.  Though it began in the U.S., it soon spread like a plague across the entire globe (“The Great Depression”).

So, what did the people do for food in this era of deprivation?  To find the answer to this question I first asked a source I knew had lived during this era, my dad.  Edward Prince was born January 13, 1936, and can still recall the food he ate during his early childhood:

     Well, I know we always had a garden, and my mother would can

     vegetables, you know, corn and green beans, tomatoes and things.

     We ate a lot of rabbit, squirrels, and things.  We had a big

     family, 14 kids of different ages, whatever we was havin’ we

shared, and most of the time it wasn’t a lot, but it was always

something.  Some of the time we ate gravy, cornmeal gravy. (Prince)

This depiction of the time was a start.  Then I started to wonder what others were doing for food.  During my research I found a magazine article.  This magazine article was brief, but filled with creative dinner ideas for the 1930s.  It states that “You might have eaten dandelion greens, pork belly meat, canned tomatoes, or nothing at all” (Linnel).  The article also mentions scavenging for food.  It talks of children finding berries, picking fruits and the like.  Growing your own garden and eating your own farm animals to provide food was common practice, and it states that “wild rabbits were a main ingredient in stews” (Linnel).  (Within these statements from the article I was starting to notice a trend that started with my dad.) 

It is obvious from these accounts people were hungry.  They were underweight as well.  How many were underweight?  This magazine article, “Dandelions for Dinner”, states:  “Twenty percent of New York City’s children were underweight; that number jumped to 90 percent in poorer sections of the country, such as Appalachia” (Linnel). 

Although times were tough, people during these challenging times, proved tougher, from what I discovered.  Many of those who lived during the Great Depression are very proud, proud to have survived, and proud to live to tell the tale.  Such as the online interview with Millie Opitz will show:

We didn't have no money for nothing, money to do things. But we're still here to talk about it. I mean, we didn't die from starvation or anything. But I had the biggest darn garden you ever did lay your eyes on during those times, cause we could water through our water tank there. We had a, what we call a milk house, and there was a small cement tank in there that we would run the water through there. We'd put our milk and stuff in there, you know. Out onto the garden. And I tell you, I had a garden like you wouldn't believe. We had everything. I remember, we even had a strawberry patch. And I remember one time we had, oh, we had potatoes, always raised potatoes.

With this knowledge I still wanted to learn more.  What if you lived in the big city?  What if you had a job?  What did you eat?  I ran across an article poking fun at Americans eating Spam lunch meat.  It recalls tough times for America during the Great Depression in comparison to now.  Aside from describing to those who don’t know, the contents and look of Spam, it provided some interesting information.  The article states that “Spam was invented during the Great Depression by Jay Hormel, son of the founder of the company” and it tells the year, 1936 (Harvey).  I then thought to myself, “That’s the same year my dad was born!”  Other than that, the important part is that Spam one of the cheapest meats around, perhaps even the cheapest, was also born during the depression.

This was very interesting.  What else could you buy to eat during The Great Depression that was economical?  At livinghistoryfarm.org I found my answer.  There was a list of items that were invented or introduced during the depression:

·         Spam

·         Kraft macaroni and cheese

·         Toll House chocolate chip cookies

·         Good Humor ice cream bars

·         Bisquick

·         Krispy Kreme doughnuts

·         Ritz crackers

·         Nestle’s chocolate chips

·         And Kool-Aid was invented in Hasting, Nebraska in the late 20s and became a national brand in the 30s. (Reinhardt and Ganzel)

As you can see from this list all of the “good stuff” started coming at this point in time.  I can see America’s future as an overweight unhealthy socially in the mist.  Anyway, I also found that food disguises were fairly popular.  Things like pigs in blankets, “bunny salad,” and casseroles were on a lot of tables.  Sugar prices were low so desserts and the famous Rice Krispie treats became popular (Reinhardt and Ganzel). 

People were starting to make-do with what they had.  They were being satisfied.  If you had a job wages were not much.  The average bus driver made $1,373 annually, coal miners made $723 annually, steelworkers were at $422.87 per year, and a farm hand could expect an average of only $216.  Though their salaries were petty, people were, like I said, very fortunate to have their jobs.  With these earnings they could afford to go to the store and make purchases, just not a lot (Time Life 26).

I also found a shopping list for the era in the reference I gave for  the previous paragraph.  I thought an excerpt from the food portion of the list would be useful and interesting:

     Food

     Sirloin steak (per lb.)         $0.29

     Round steak (per  lb.)            .26

     Rib roast (per lb.)               .22

     Bacon (per lb.)                   .22

     Ham (per lb.)                     .31

     Leg of Lamb (per lb.)             .22

     Chicken (per lb.)                 .22

Pork Chops (per lb.)              .20

Salmon (16-oz. can)               .19

Milk (per qt.)                    .10

Butter (per lb.)                  .28

Margarine (per lb.)               .13

Eggs (per doz.)                   .29

Cheese (per lb.)                  .24

Bread (20-oz. loaf)               .05

Coffee (per lb.)                  .26

Sugar (per lb.)                   .05

Rice (per lb.)                    .06

Potatoes (per lb.)                .02

Tomatoes (16-oz. can)             .09

Oranges (per doz.)                .27

Bananas (per lb.)                 .07

Onions (per lb.)                  .03

Cornflakes (8-oz. package)        .08.

(Time Life 29

What if you didn’t have a job in the city?  What did people do?  I read that, “Everywhere there was hunger.  ‘We saw a crowd of some 50 men fighting over a barrel of garbage which had been set outside the back door of a restaurant,’ said an observer in Chicago.  ‘American citizens fighting for scraps of food like animals!’(Time Life 25).

At livinghistoryfarm.org I received more insight.  The site says, “Across the nation, hungry people waited in ‘soup lines’ for a free meal, especially in larger cities” (Reinhardt and Ganzel).

Isn’t it amazing how America overcame times like that?  Some of our seniors, alive today struggled against the odds through one of the toughest times imaginable.  They and their parents and other family members once had “Dandilions for Dinner.”  People lived off the land.  They improvised.  They went without.  They were strong, they survived.  They raised a new generation and helped form America, and the world, into what it is today.  Thank you to the generation who survived the Great Depression.

Works Cited

The Editors of Time Life Books.  Hard Times:  The 30s.  Alexandria,  

     Virginia:  Time Life Inc., 1998. pages 25-29.

“The Great Depression.”  pbs.org.  6 February 2009

     <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/peopleevents/pandeAMEX05.

     html>.

Harvey, Mike.  “Times must be hard Americans are buying Spam again.”

     The Times (United Kingdom)  6 December 2008:  Section Overseas

     News, Factbox, pg 55.

Linnell, Kim and Gabrielle.  “Dandelions for Dinner.”  Cobblestone 

     March 2008, Volume 29, Issue 3:  pages 22-23.

Opitz, Millie.  Online interview. 

     < http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/movies/

     opitz_life_04.html#>

Prince, Edward.  Personal interview.  1 February 2009.

Reinhardt, Claudia, and Bill Ganzel.  “Foodways.” 

     livinghistoryfarm.org.  8 February 2009

     <http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/life_07.html>.

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