The Great Depression Quotes

“I have worked. I don’t think I ever had a job that was only eight hours a day. I worked for fifty-six years. I never lost a day’s work in all those years. I was determined that I would never lose my family. I would work twenty hours a day if necessary to overcome it; which I did. The Depression helped me because it gave me that determination that I had to go ahead and work.”
― Pierre Berton, The Great Depression: 1929-1939

“Born in 1916 and named for the bloodiest battle of the Great War, Clark was one of a family of five children deserted by their father, as so many were during those hard times. As a result, he was determined that what had happened to his family would never happen to his own children. Clark could never forget the times when food was so scarce that he would go down to the St. Lawrence Market to shoot pigeons off the rafters so that his mother could make a pigeon pie for dinner. He could never forget the little store at the corner of Queen and Augusta where Cooper the butcher would cock an eye at him and ask: “How’s your dog, Vern?” Both knew there was no dog, but Clark would reply with a straight face, “Not too bad.” And Cooper would respond with an equally straight face, “I’d better give you a few bones. I’ll give you some with a little meat on.” There were thousands of Verdun Clarks in the thirties, living on soup made from scraps dispensed by sympathetic tradesmen. That’s how people were in the Depression, generous in the midst of want. As Verdun Clark would often remark, years later, “They aren’t like the people today. There’s no comparison. No comparison.”
― Pierre Berton, The Great Depression: 1929-1939

“One man came racing across the park directly toward Gray. A motorcycle officer saw him and roared after him. He tried desperately to escape, dodging between the trees, but the motorcycle followed every move until the victim tripped and fell. In an instant the policeman in the sidecar was out, kicking his victim brutally as he tried to get up. At last he simply lay on the grass, “trying to cover his head, and crying out as his body recoiled under the heavy boot.” We ask, sometimes, why the German bystanders did not interfere when the Brownshirts beat up the Jews, but deep down we know the answer. As Gray wrote, “I suppose we all had some impulse to intervene, to try to stop this cruel nonsense, but we didn’t. We weren’t after all on the wretched man’s side, except that each of us could feel the boot in his guts. Instead, we turned away sickened as the broken man was stood up and led away for questioning”
― Pierre Berton, The Great Depression: 1929-1939

“The germs were already there in the hot, dry summer of 1929, when the crops began to fail on the southern prairies and the boom ran wild and out of hand and the country continued to overbuild on borrowed funds. The Great Depression was beginning and nobody knew it. The Great Repression was already under way but nobody cared. One did not need to visit Munich to see dissidents beaten to the ground. It was happening here.”
― Pierre Berton, The Great Depression: 1929-1939

“Ten dollars was a great deal of money in 1935 – a year in which department store seamstresses found they had to work evenings to earn the minimum weekly wage of $12.50. But for others it was a pittance. “I’m glad I grew up then. It was a good time for everybody. People learned what it means to work,” said John David Eaton.”
― Pierre Berton, The Great Depression: 1929-1939