With all the talk about food storage and growing our own food, I did a little digging around to find out what some people ate during America’s Great Depression of the 1930’s. Surprisingly, a few of these were made by my mother and grandmother, traditions, I’m sure, from a more frugal era. I still have a soft spot for Chipped Beef on Toast! How many of these are familiar to you, and do you have any others to add to the list?
Milk toast
Chipped beef on toast
Cucumber and mustard sandwiches
Mayonnaise sandwiches
Ketchup sandwiches
Hot milk and rice
Turtle/tortoise
Gopher
Potato soup – water base, not milk
Dandelion salad
Lard sandwiches
Bacon grease sandwiches
Sugar sandwiches
Hot dogs and baked beans
Road kill
One eyed Sam – piece of bread with an easy over egg in the center
American cheese sandwich: ‘American’ cheese was invented because it was cheap to make, and didn’t require refrigeration that may or may not exist back then.
Tomato gravy on rice
Toast with milk gravy
Water fried pancakes
Chicken feet in broth
Fried bologna
Warm canned tomatoes with bread
Butter and sugar sandwiches
Fried potato and bread cubes
Bean soup
Runny eggs with grits
Butter and grits with sugar and milk
Baked apples
Sliced boiled pork liver on buttered toast (slice liver with potato peeler)
Corn meal mush
Spaghetti with tomato juice and navy beans
Whatever fish or game you could catch/hunt
Tomato sandwiches
Hard boiled eggs in white sauce over rice
Spam and noodles with cream of mushroom soup
Rag soup: spinach, broth and lots of macaroni
Garbanzo beans fried in chicken fat or lard, salted, and eaten cold
Popcorn with milk and sugar – ate it like cereal
Lessons learned from this list? Stock up on ingredients for bread, including buckets of wheat. Bread, in some form, is one of the main ingredients for many of these meals. Second, know how to make different types of bread. Next, have chickens around as a source for meat and eggs, and if possible, have a cow or goat for milk. Another lesson is to have a garden that will provide at least some fresh produce, and plant fruit trees and bushes. Finally, don’t waste anything, even chicken feet!
First we will begin with a brief discussion and a preview of what The Great Depression really was:
Begin on page 364
Next we'll have a few worksheets to get us started:
You will work with a partner on a worksheet about causes of the Great Depression.
Write down any causes that you think might have caused Worldwide Depression in the 1930's. (5 minutes)
Next I will pass out a three "data sets" for you and your partner to read, discuss, and answer on the worksheet. Do not write on or damage the data sets. (20 minutes)
Next we will have a Map worksheet.
A couple key vocabulary words on this one:
statistics: collecting and analyzing numerical data to see patterns. For example, finding out how many fans like UK and how many like UT would give you statistics about which team is more popular.
imply: suggest something of a logical consequence For example, if I say to someone, "I doubt you'll do the assignment anyway" I am implying that they don't work.
Finally, you have your textbook assignment:
Thinking Critically (p.369): #1 & 2
Section 1 Assessment (p.372): #1, 4, 5, 6
SUPPLEMENTAL VIDEOS Causes of the Great Depression
The Great Depression
What were tariffs? How did adding tariffs hurt OUR economy?
The Great Depression: Crash Course US History #33
(We will watch from 0:47-3:30 in the beginning and then 3:30-4:14)
Correlation: a mutual relationship or connection between two or more things.
"research showed a clearcorrelation betweenrecession and levels of property crime"
Causation: the action of causing something.
"investigating the role of nitrate in the causation of cancer"
If you're wondering about the Mary Poppins reference:
Charlie Chaplin Made Hitler Cry Silent film star braved disapproving execs to parody the Nazi leader
Charlie Chaplin already had more than 100 silent movies under his belt when, in 1938, he decided to take on the role of Adolf Hitler. When The Great Dictator came out two years later, it was the first time Chaplin spoke on film.
In the The Great Dictator, Chaplin played his trademark Tramp character, re-imagined as a Jewish barber in the fictional country Tomania. Chaplin also played Tomania’s autocrat Adenoid Hynkel, a parody of Hitler.
In 1939 and 1940, Nazi Germany captured much of Europe and began bombing Great Britain. But America was not formally at war. And many Hollywood executives were reluctant to criticize Hitler.
Some Jewish film producers in the U.S. feared a parody film might anger the Nazis and expose Jews in Europe to even harsher treatment.
Others were sympathetic to the Nazis. In the 1930s, MGM’s Louis B. Meyer had consulted with German authorities and had given them veto power over some films’ contents in order to ensure easy access to the German film market.
“Hitler can’t get any worse than he is now,” Chaplin told executives. The 51-year-old Chaplin, then one of the world’s greatest celebrities, decided to produce The Great Dictator with his own money. He wrote, directed and starred in the film.
But Chaplin himself almost nixed The Great Dictator as the extent of German atrocities in Europe became clearer. The film star feared there was simply nothing funny about Nazis. He also worried that many countries might simply ban the flick.
President Franklin Roosevelt heard of Chaplin’s intention to scrap the film. The president sent an aide to deliver a message to Chaplin. “Make this film,” the president advised. Roosevelt promised he would use his influence to ensure none of America’s allies banned the movie.
Filming began in 1939 and lasted more than a year. Chaplin released the movie in October 1940. Hitler demanded a copy—and screened it in his private theater twice.
Hitler once had extolled Chaplin as one of the greatest performers of all time. There were rumors that Hitler was heartbroken to see Chaplin’s impersonation of him. In one key scene, Chaplin’s Hynkel character bursts into tears after his balloon globe pops.
But according to a member of Hitler’s circle named Reinhard Spitzy, the real-life Nazi leader found the film amusing. Spitzy even suggested that Chaplin had inspired Hitler’s toothbrush mustache. The other explanation for the Führer’s ’stache is that Hitler shaved it that way when he was a soldier in World War I in order to get a good seal on his gas mask.
Hitler screened Chaplin’s films even though Germany had banned the actor’s works owing to his alleged Jewishness. The propaganda book The Jews Are Watching You had labelled Chaplin a “disgusting Jew acrobat.”
The Great Dictator was a commercial success. Later, Chaplin regretted it being so funny. He insisted that had he known about the Nazi’s industrialized murder of the Jews, he “wouldn’t have made the film.”
As written, the original ending of The Great Dictator included an elaborate dance sequence. At the last minute before filming, Chaplin wrote a monologue instead—the first words he would ever speak on film. The Tramp delivers the monologue after secretly assuming Hynkel’s identity and reversing the dictator’s racist policies.
“I should like to help everyone if possible—Jew, Gentile, black man, white,” Chaplain said as the Tramp. “We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another.”
“Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate and has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed,” he continued. “We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind.”
“We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.”
After the war, someone asked Chaplin if he was in fact Jewish. “I’m afraid I don’t have that honor,” Chaplin said.
Today we will finish All Quiet on the Western Front:
Paul Baumer's mother is played by Patricia Neal -- an actress from Packard, Kentucky. Packard was a coal mining town that is now a ghost town about 30 minutes from here.
