Times Were Really Tough Back Then With the latest downturn in the economy here in the United States, with successive failures of banks and businesses, there is a subtle panic and anxiety about our personal jobs. So many observers have likened what we are going through to the aftermath of the “Great Depression.” I would like to take you further back in time to give a history of some of the other “Depressions and Recessions” felt and endured by our ancestors. The first major financial crisis in the United States was the “Panic of 1819”, which occurred during the so-called "Era of Good Feelings." The new nation faced a depression in the late 1780s led directly to the establishment of the dollar currency and to the calls for a Constitutional Convention. The resulting crisis caused widespread foreclosures, bank failures, unemployment, and a slump in agriculture and manufacturing. It marked the end of the economic expansion that had followed the War of 1812. However, things would change for the US economy after the Second Bank of the United States was founded in 1816, in response to the spread of bank notes across United States from private banks, due to inflation brought on by the debt following the war. The next one was the “Panic of 1837” built on a speculative fever. The bubble burst on May 10, 1837 in New York City, when every bank stopped making payment in gold and silver coins. The Panic was followed by a five-year depression, with the failure of banks and record high unemployment levels. The “Panic of 1857” was a sudden downturn in the economy after a major bank failed due to embezzlement and the collapse of large land speculation deals. Also public confidence in the government's ability to back its paper currency when a shipment of 30,000 pounds gold from the San Francisco Mint to eastern banks was lost in September 1857 when the SS Central America sank during a hurricane off the North Carolina coast. The “Panic of 1873” was the start of the “Long Depression,” a severe nationwide economic depression in the United States that lasted until 1879. It was precipitated by the bankruptcy of a Philadelphia Bank, the collapse of gold premiums, and overexpansion that arose from the Northern railroad boom. The Coinage Act of 1873 changed the United States policy with respect to silver. Before the Act, the United States had backed its currency with both gold and silver, and it minted both types of coins. The Act moved the United States to the gold standard which meant it would no longer buy silver at a fixed price or convert silver into coins and stopped minting silver dollars altogether. According to the local newspapers, bank and merchantile failures occurred by the score; factories and workshops were closed; enterprise ceased; tens of thousands of laborers could not find employment, and labor-strikes, want, beggary and crime came in the wake of these things. Those workers, who three or four years before received $2.00 and $3.00 a day, eagerly accepted fifty cents. All labor was forced to submit to reduced wages. The next serious economic depression was the “Panic of 1893.” This panic, like the others, was caused by railroad bubble of overbuilding and shaky railroad financing; which set off a series of bank failures. There was also a run on the gold supply and a policy of using both gold and silver metals as a backing for the US Dollar value. The “Panic of 1907,” also known as the “1907 Bankers' Panic,” was when the New York Stock Exchange fell close to 50% from its peak the previous year. Panic occurred and there were numerous runs on banks and trust companies. In 1908, a commission was formed to investigate the crisis and propose future solutions, leading to the creation of the Federal Reserve System. There was a post-World War I recession caused by inflation, the end of wartime production, and high unemployment caused by the influx of labor from returning troops. It was a bad time for the farmer in Pitt County. Money was hard to come by and hundreds lost their farms. But by 1925, the economic situation began to improve and Pitt County farmers began buying new cars and tractors. Then “Black Tuesday” hit on October 29, 1929 and life as everyone knew it changed forever. The Great Depression hit everyone hard and the low point came in Pitt County in 1931. Commodity prices plunged in 1931 and many Pitt County farmers had to sell their farms to pay their debts. “In 1930 or 1931 tobacco was averaging 8.8 cents a pound, and Gov. Ehringaus closed the tobacco market” recalled B. B. Sugg, Sr., Greenville tobacconist. “It was a bad time, children were going to school without books. There was no money for books. Money could not be borrowed.” Dr. J. Y. Joyner fought hard for the desperate tobacco growers and warehousemen in front of the tobacco companies. He got the growers to agree to reduce their tobacco acreage in 1934 so that the remainder of the 1933 crop would be purchased by the tobacco companies at a guaranteed price of 17 cents a pound,” Sugg remembered. Sugg related the action of farmers signing the 1933 contracts to later fuller legislative action controlling crop acreage. “This was the era in which farmers began thinking of agriculture in terms of future planning. Then in 1938 the farmers decided to vote the farm program out. In 1939 the farmer saw his tobacco crop averaging 14 cents a pound,” Sugg remarked. In Greenville, needy families went to the Court House every week for a box of old food, kitchens were set up to feed the poor and doctors were paid with vegetables, poultry, pork and moonshine. At the East Carolina Teachers College [ECU] vegetables were raised in large gardens and hogs were kept and butchered when the frost came. The pork and produce went to supply the tables of the dining hall to feed the students, staff and faculty. Talking in 1956, D. H. House, Pitt County Clerk of Court, recalled “Those were tough times.” He was the principal of Chicod School in the 1930’s, a job which paid about $1,800 a year for eight months of school. “In those days teachers started at about $80 per month, but they only had to pay about $18 per month for board,” House reminisced. “There were days when good strong men worked for 10 cents an hour. Mr. Futrell from the Welfare Department called me one day and asked if I needed some work done. I told him I needed some dirt moved. I could pay them 10 cents an hour and they had to furnish their own cart. If they had a two horse wagon I could pay them 20 cents an hour. The first day of work about a dozen men showed up. On Christmas Eve that year about 50 vehicles were working on the job. I thought they would want to quit at dinner, but they said they wanted to work right on. They stayed all day and I had to stay to pay them off that night. Can you imagine getting anybody to work like that now on Christmas Eve.” All sorts of enterprises grew up during the bad times as individuals found any way they could make a living. One way was bootlegging and making moonshine. Numerous stories are told of how large families survived when their father made and sold moonshine and are unapologetic that everyone knew what their father did. It was all about survival. Moonshine stories abound and it was said that during the Depression and the WWII years that sugar was hard to come by and moonshiners used honey in the mash. Revenuers who busted up the stills reported that bottom of the cans contained the busted up glass of honey jars; the makers busting the honey jars like eggs and throwing the whole mess in the mash. An unusual mode of transportation arose in Pitt County in the Depression. The cars that the farmers bought back in the 1920’s became old and being unable to purchase a new one, the farmers jacked their cars up and put them on blocks. Some enterprising farmers took the back wheels off their old car, built a boxy looking cart and mounted the axle and wheels to it. This strange contraption became a symbol of the Depression in Pitt County and was dubbed a “Hoover Cart.” Named for President Hoover, who did nothing to help the farmer in the Depression, the Hoover Cart drivers would hook their cart to a mule and drive into a struggling service station and request free air for the tires and a free bucket of water for the mule before driving on. There were certain events in Pitt County where there at least one hundred Hoover Carts in a parade. The Hoover Cart became a symbol of the economic crisis the farmers hoped they would never have to face again. _________________________________________________________________ Microsoft brings you a new way to search the web. Try Bing™ now http://www.bing.com?form=MFEHPG&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT_MFEHPG_Core_tagline_try bing_1x1