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Edited on Mon May-07-07 09:26 PM by rockymountaindem
This is uncanny. If I may summarize and quote a few lines to draw your attention to some things (hopefully I won't violate any copyright rules). This must be what people mean when they say "the more things change the more they say the same". I'm reading from the book "The European Economy Between the Wars" by Charles Feinstein, Peter Temin, and Gianni Toniolo.
The book cites three sociological/economic studies of the unemployed during the depression. The first examined a factory village in Austria where the factory had closed early in the depression. People lived on assistance, but it could be terminated if the recipient made any money at all from any other source, even begging. Firstly, the sociologists who conducted the study noted that subscriptions to the Social Democratic party newspaper declined by sixty percent when money became tight. By contrast, subscriptions to an entertainment newspaper fell by only thirty percent, as people sought to maintain some kind of diversion. In time use surveys, the researchers found that the unemployed men went to bed on average two hours earlier than when they were employed, with extra time during the day being taken up by sleep. As people stopped reading newspapers, they stopped discussing current events with their neighbors. In addition, the once carefully manicured and busy village park became abandoned and overgrown. As a result, there was less social contact between families, creating more suspicion in the village,
"Villagers became suspicious of each other as they reduced their activities. There always had been denunciations of people seen or suspected of doing illegal activities, such as working while receiving relief. The number of denunciations rose dramatically in 1930 and 1931, but the number which stood up under investigation did not."
The sociologists also noted that towards the end of their study, after the factory had been closed for some time and unemployment had become a fact of life, that the National Socialists (fascists) had begun to organize meetings in the village.
In Britain, a sociologist named Bakke released a paper covering the travails of one unemployed truck driver in 1931. After three days of being unemployed, the 28 year old man felt optimistic about finding another job. Three weeks later, still unemployed, he remarked, "You feel like you're no good, if you get what I mean". Eventually the man had to stop taking the bus to look for work, even though he had moved back in with his parents to save on rent. At interviews, he lied about how long he had been unemployed. Hopeless and frustrated, he began wondering aimlessly instead of responding to ads he believed would not lead to anything. After eleven weeks he stated, "There's one of two things, either I'm no good, or there is something wrong with business around here". After seventeen weeks, Bakke found his subject completely despondent and depressed. The man stated, "It isn't the hard work of tramping about so much, although that is bad enough. It's the hopelessness of every step you take when you go in search of a job you know isn't there".
Bakke noted that unemployment benefits did not seem to have any effect, positive or negative, on the search for jobs by unemployed workers. He observed, "it has removed the cutting edge of the desperation which otherwise might attend that search", but no more.
The last observations come from George Orwell himself, who was asked by the Left Book Club to undertake a study of workers in an industrial village in northern England. He noted that unemployed single men fared the worst, and sought any excuse to stay inside a warm building, including attending boring, inane lectures which were organized solely for the purpose of getting people indoors during the winter. To quote from the book and Orwell on a matter that reflects our current obesity epidemic:
"The diet of unemployed families was based on white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea, and potatoes. Orwell commented: 'the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food... There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you... Unemployment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly palliated, and especially with tea, the Englishman's opium."
Scary reading when you think about it. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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