Anyone remember "poor farms" or "old folks homes" ??

[kentuck]

These were where the poor and the old would go when they had nowhere else to go. They would work on the farm, hoeing corn, or whatever, to pay their room and board. They also had basic foods: beans, bread, butter, potatoes, etc.

As a kid, I remember the "poor farm" being pointed out when we would pass it on our way to town. It was not that long ago. It is not ancient history. But, Social Security was primarily the cause of the decline of the "poor farms". It's too bad that we have young folks with no idea or grasp of our history in the 30's and 40's. Are we doomed to return to those days?

[Protagoras]

1. Are we doomed to return to those days?

I honestly believe that this is the intent of the Neocon movement. Straussian theory dictates that those with the money and power don't waste it on anyone but themselves...the rest of us are just here to facilitate their rulership.

Hence the massive and active crippling of our medical programs, social support programs, education programs, and job programs for anyone not in the elite class. Those people should breed fast, work hard, then die quickly to keep the machine moving. We are tools to them...in their vision of the future we're no different than cows or horses.

No, wait...a cow or horse would probably get treated better than we can look forward to being.

[Vanje]

19. Treatment of the poor

"No, wait...a cow or horse would probably get treated better than we can look forward to being."

In Bush world, private ownership is seen as the panacea.

Horses and cattle are privately held assetts. Its good business to see to the well-being of one's assets. The wise privateer takes care of his stock.

If the human poor could be privately owned by beneficient corperations, they would no longer be a drain on public coffers. Think how well Privately owned persons would be treated.

[Lars39]

2. Don't forget the orphanages.

:(

[zbdent]

3. And, don't forget, the orphanages

where a "loving parent" could drop off a kid and claim that it was an orphan.

Of course, any donations to the "orphans" went straight to the wardens . . .

[cdb]

4. More orphans on the way

If Roe is overturned, there will be plenty of little tykes dropped off somewhere by parents...

[tjwash]

8. Roe v Wade will never get overturned.

For the very reason that anti-bankruptcy bills get passed, and social security gets attacked. If the people that these measures impact the hardest were not blinded by issues like Roe v Wade, god, guns, and gays, then they may actually look around and see how much they are getting screwed by the very people that keep promising them year after year to protect them from these very things.

They need these hot button issues permanently unresolved, and in place as boogie-men, so they can continue to rape pillage and plunder the treasury.

[Lars39]

20. What difference will it make, if there aren't any more

clinics open for women's reproductive health,
it gets harder to find someone to dispense bc pills or rape victims can't get emergency contraception?

Overturning Roe v Wade is the ultimate goal, but putting up as many road blocks as
possible is another one of the goals of the anti-choice crowd, and could ultimately do more damage.

[jdj]

26. It feels so good to be brand loyal though.

Otherwise why would people buy jordache when they can wear k-mart jeans for half the price.

Strategists need to look into the fact that a huge difference between us and them is that we aren't conformists, we are individualists, whereas for repukes and conserves conformism is their central ideology programmed into them as children with shame and abuse. It's their trigger button, and repukes use it like a joystick.

Right now the brand is red, white, blue, and reactionary, and everybody's gotta have it.

Which is what you get with an MBA in the white house.

[Coastie for Truth]

5. As the Biggies Export More Jobs

There is less need for "Upper Middle Class" educated types -- the ones who are not sheeple and who ask questions. So why worrty about the when they get old. This is the NeoCon "Return to the Age of McKinley"

[Mnemosyne]

21. Excuse me Coast, you are painting with a rather large brush

when you state "Upper Middle Class" educated types -- the ones who are not sheeple and who ask questions".

I am educated through university (did not finish due to lack of $$ and illness) and by educating myself at the library. I am quite poor ( my only extravagance is high-speed) and I have questioned since I was in Sunday school in the 1960's.

There are many upper middle class that voted for and continue to stand behind their "fearless leader" the Lunatic. They are mindless sheeple though they are "educated". What questions are they asking?

Being educated does not automatically qualify someone as thinking! I knew plenty of people at school that had no clue as to real life.

That brush can be applied across the board, it is not fair to label those that are poor and did not attend college as "sheeple that don't ask questions".

Some of the most "educated" people I know are assholes and idiots with money that never have a thought in their head other than how to obtain more. Their "news" and political "beliefs" are fed to them through FOX-faux tv. While some of the "uneducated" and "unthinking" sheeple you refer to that I know are the most brilliant people you would ever want to meet and made rather large fortunes, including my father.

Please don't perpetuate the myth that poor = stupid, it is totally untrue.

Thank you!

:hi:

[Coastie for Truth]

22. My point was that the Bushies are

trying to return the age of McKinley - and make this a sharply bimodal country -- like it was in the gilded age of the 19th Century -- where us people (and I am a working people) were "kept in our place" - like my grand parents were -- the time before unions and public education and Social Security and unemployment insurance.

This is the Nixon strategy - extended nation wide by Rove and DeLay.

The bi-modal society of the "have nots" and the "have mores"

That was my point. Maybe we have been brainwashed by Nixon and Reagan and Bush and Bush II and Rove and DeLay etc -- for the benefit of the "Have Mores."

[Mnemosyne]

23. Sorry if I misunderstood your point.

I tend to feel defensive about the poor = stupid issue. It is so rampant in the US anymore. I've even witnessed too much of it among the progressives here on the DU, thus my response to your post. :hi:

Here's to the working stiffs like you on the DU and all over the world, I was one also, until illness struck!!
:toast:

[Toucano]

6. My grandmother worked at one.

I remember her oldest children (my uncles) talking about being there when they were little.

It isn't a pleasant memory for them.

[Historic NY]

7. I remember well here is a site that you might find interesting......

http://www.poorhousestory.com/

I've done a little on a NY one.

[tjwash]

11. There are still poorhouses out there.

We just call them "rescue missions" or "homeless shelters."

And they are filling up at an ever quickening rate. And guess what is right next to the Salvation Army downtown? A shady temp agency that sends people out on backbreaking day labor for minimum wage.

[kentuck]

12. I heard Rep Dingell say that NY had 1200 poorhouses ...

at the time of the passage of the Social Security Act, this morning on C-SPAN

[Tracer]

9. Yes, I do remember.

As a child, I lived across the street from a large, hilly field.

Right in the middle of the field was a Poor Farm. It was a large, grey, wooden building that looked shabby and down-at-the-heels, even then.

To be truthful, I was very young and don't know if it was operational at the time (late 1940s).

[Mabus]

10. Go back a little bit further

and you get to "indentured servitude" and "debtor's prisons." I suppose we have to regress back through "company towns" and "local scrip" first. I agree. Now if "liberal Hollywood" would do some blockbuster to remind people of the way it was before social security it might help snap some of the idiots out of their collective propaganda-laden daydream. There needs to be a way to get to the masses that feed on Hollywood-hype and formulaic television.

On edit:

Oh yeah, the terms "poor house" and "old folks home" were used in my household (a lot) while I was growing up. My mom was always afraid we were going to end up in the poor house when we were financially squeezed. My dad has combat fatigue (now known as PTSD) and had trouble keeping jobs for a while. Grandma talked about ending her days at the old folks home after grandpa died.

[H2O Man]

13. Sure do!

I live in Chenango County, in rural upstate NY. Our county "poor house" is still running, some 150 years after it was built. It houses the elderly, mentally ill, and poor.

Your post is very important, indeed. I thank you for writing it.

[tom_paine]

14. Doomed to return to those days and worse

Imperial Amerika will most likely never be free again.

And Imperial Amerika, by 2050 perhaps an awful lot sooner, is taking a one-way trip to the deepest darkest Totalitarianism possible for a nation that was free for 225 years before it ended.

What does that mean to us? No swastika armbands, no boxcars full of piteous victims this time around. Hooray!

[LeftHander]

15. From Social Security to Personal Responsibility

Our nation governed by the rich is turning it's back on the people in favor of more wealth and power.

They are taking the knees out of the American Dream.

We will see a level of poverty and dispair in this country the like that we haven't seen since the great depression.

The rich grow richer and the middle class is mired in debt.

Society is shifting from a middle class majority to a poor and impoverished majority ruled by a tiny ruthless minority of idealouges.

Educational freedom is being destroyed and truth and knowlege are replaced by suspicion and mystisicim.


The selfishness that the people of this country exhibits is astounding.

It is not going to get any better as long as the facist Bush and his neocons are in charge.

War, poverty, secrecy and fear is all we are giving our children to look forward to.

[Vanje]

16. There wont be any Poor Farms in GW Bush's America

Poor Farms are government institutions, and as such,are manifestations of the Nanny State.
GW Bush's America looks toward private business to solve its social problems.

In Bush's America, private business will run labor camps where inmate debtors will learn the joys and virtues of hard work while repaying their debts.

[LeftHander]

18. Already have poor farms...

They are called "the fast food industry" and "discount retail".

It won't be long before WalMart build's apartments to house the people that work at WalMart.

People will live, work, play entirly in a WalMart compound.

(I bet it is already a reality.)

[Skidmore]

17. When I was a kid in the 50s, I remember older

people talking about the land in the county that used to be the poor farm and how good it was that this would never happen again in America.

[Old Deuteronomy]

24. Yes...

as history repeats itself... and under the Nazi rule of the Shrub, it is coming.

[donheld]

25. Sounds like one would do better in prison

even the maximum security places seem better.

[kskiska]

27. When my family bought our house after WWII

there was a poorhouse, the Old Naramake Home, just down the street. It was up on a hill, with its own farm. Old folks could be seen rocking on the front porch. We kids used to go up to the farm and ask for old horseshoes to play with. We were also allowed to go up into the hayloft to feed the horses below.

It was torn down a few years later. I wish I knew the history of that place. This was in Connecticut.