The Invisible Scar

The Arithmetic of Aspiration: Josephine Lawrence's If I Have Four Apples

“… 2. Caroline Bird notes in The Invisible Scar that since “[t] burning issue was whether to marry on $15 a week,” the Depression “postponed 800,000 marriages that would have come sooner if marriages had continued at the 1929 rate” (283). In Middletown in Transition , the Lynds report that the Depression brought an abrupt decline in marriages, unsurprising because “[t]he tendency for marriages to rise and fall with the business cycle is a well‐known phenomenon” (149). …”

Stories of the children of the Great Depression: What I learned from my parents

“…During their peak years, railroad companies throughout the United States purchased an average of 1,300 locomotives a year. As an indication of the reversals in the railroad industry during the early 1930s, not a single locomotive was purchased by any American railroad company in 1932 (Bird, 1967). They were one of the corporations with the highest net loss in the nation in 1932 (Chandler, 1970).…”

“…Between the years of 1929 and 1932, the United States national income in manufacturing plummeted by 67 percent (Chandler, 1970). Industrial production began leveling off in June of 1929 and showed a decrease as early as September (Bird, 1967).…”

“…According to Caroline Bird (1967), investment bankers forced an expansion of manufacturing in 1928 and 1929, which backfired when it became apparent that they had overbuilt and could not sustain this higher level of output. Some of the manufacturers who suffered the largest net losses during 1932 were those who worked in iron and steel, other metals and metal products, and machinery (Chandler, 1970).…”

“…Their "budgets were slashed, membership dwindled, and missionary enterprises were curtailed" (p. 173). In addition, families who had lost income or met with financial decreases often felt embarrassed if their clothes were shabby or if they did not have money to put in the offering plate and they stopped attending (Bird, 1967).…”