DATE=3/20/02

TYPE=English Programs Feature

NUMBER=7-36075

TITLE=Dateline-Depression Children

BYLINE=Ted Landphair

TELEPHONE=619-3515

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Neal Lavon

CONTENT=

_

// ATTN: AMERICAN HISTORY, BOOKS, ART, AMERICANA//

[PRONUNCIATION NOTE: The editor's name, Hillary Mac Austin, is three separate words. It's not "MacAustin." "Mac" is a separate, family name.]

INTRO The Great Depression of the 1930s and '40s was a time of joblessness, bread lines, unrelenting dust storms, and labor strife for many adult Americans. Their stories were told in books and films like The Grapes of Wrath. And their haggard faces were unforgettably captured by Depression-era photographers like Dorothea Lange. Now, a photographic book has been published that focuses on CHILDREN of those hard times. In this Dateline report, VOA's Ted Landphair has the story of that book and the words of children who lived through the Depression and are very old.

MUS CUT ONE Woody Guthrie, "Dust Bowl Refugee," from "Woody Guthrie: Dust Bowl Ballads," cut 11, CDP-940

"My children need three square meals a day.

"Now my children need three square meals a day.

"My children need three square meals a day, Lord.

"And I ain't-a gonna be treated this-a way . . ." (:15 to here; take under and out)

ANCR The economic depression that swept the world after the collapse of the stock market in 1929 threw millions out of work, spreading hunger, homelessness, and some hopelessness until the economy rebounded in the early 1940s as the United States joined World War Two.

The book about youngsters who lived through these times has the simplest of titles. It's called Children of the Depression. In it are one hundred or so full-page, black-and-white photographs of city kids, country kids; white, black, brown and red kids; babies and teenagers, and impish boys and girls.

According to Hilary Mac Austin, who, along with Kathleen Thompson, edited Children of the Depression, the images by Farm Security Administration photographers were a blatant propaganda effort by President Franklin Roosevelt's administation:

CUT ONE AUSTIN :25

"They needed to convince a public that they should care about people that they don't know, people in different regions from where they lived. And so they sent these photographers out to basically record the lives and the changes that the government was making in those lives, in order to convince the American people to continue to support the [social programs of the] New Deal."

MUS CUT TWO Barbecue Bob, "We Sure Got Hard Times Now," from "The Great Depression," cut 6, CDP-8431

"Hard times, hard times,

"We got hard times now . . ." (:07 to here; take under and out)

ANCR The photographers' lenses captured the fear, hardship, and desperation in the faces of some of the children and their parents.

MUS CUT THREE Johnny Hauser, "Gloomy Sunday," from "Brother Can You Spare a Dime, cut 18, CDP-1953

"Gloomy Sunday, with shadows I spend it all.

"My heart and I have decided to end it all. . ." (:13 to here; take under and out)

ANCR Kathleen Thompson points to one photograph that shows a filthy, barefoot little girl, five or six years old, huddling in the corner of a day laborer's tent home in rural Oklahoma. Two bony chickens peck at her feet.

CUT TWO THOMPSON :21

"People were really poor in Oklahoma. And that child was a child of a family that wasn't making it. We don't know whether they ended up leaving Oklahoma and going to California or not. Certainly thousands and thousands of children like her did go. And a lot of them died as their parents went to try to find work."

MUS CUT FOUR Rudy Vallee, "Brother Can You Spare a Dime," from "The Great Depression," cut one, CDP-8431

"They used to tell me I was building a dream

"With peace and glory ahead.

"Why should I be standing in line

"Just waiting for bread?" . . ." :15 to here; take under but NOT OUT

ANCR Listen, now, to more of the thoughts of Kathleen Thompson and Hilary Mac Austin and to some children of the Depression, now old, looking back on those times and on the impact that the Depression had on them and on their own children.

MUS CUT FIVE Rudy Vallee, "Brother Can You Spare a Dime," from "The Great Depression," cut one, CDP-8431

(in FULL after segueing from MUS CUT FOUR)

"Say, don't you remember? I'm your pal.

"Buddy, can you spare a dime?" . . . (:08 to here; music turns to instrumental; take under and SLOWLY OUT)

CUT THREE OKLAHOMA MAN AND REPORTER :25

[MAN] "Hard times was why we left. My dad and grandpa had twelve acres [five hectares] of cotton. And there was no cotton. There was leaves and stuff on the stalks.

"Dad would hunt during the night. Well, then, he would bring home maybe three or four skunks. And he'd get ten cents a hide for preparing those hides for the market. The shed where he hung 'em, it stunk."

[REPORTER] "I wouldn't want to skin a skunk, myself."

[MAN] "Well, you would if you had nothin' to eat."

MUS CUT SIX Harry Richman, "On the Sunny Side of the Street," from "Brother Can You Spare a Dime, cut 2, CDP-1953

"Grab your coat and get your hat.

"Leave your worries on the doorstep.

"Just direct your feet

"On the sunny side of the street. . ." (:17 to here; take under and out)

CUT FOUR THOMPSON :21

"When we look at children in this book, working in fields and sawmills, these kids did not go out to work just because their families were broke. That's what children did. The tragedy of the Depression is that *** often these children were taking their parents' jobs."

MUS CUT SEVEN Woody Guthrie, "The Great Dust Storm," from "Woody Guthrie: Dust Bowl Ballads," cut 1, CDP-940

[***sneak in instrumental above, then up here]

"You could see the dust storm comin'

"The cloud looked just like black.

"And through our mighty nation,

"It left a dreadful track." (:14 to here; take under and out)

CUT FIVE OKLAHOMA WOMAN :27

"I remember one Sunday. This dark cloud appeared in the north. We hadn't seen anything quite like that. My aunt said, 'Well we'd better go get the boys, because it was getting dark about three in the afternoon. A lot of dirt was blowing. The next morning, we shoveled dirt out of the house. *** And I remember neighbors leaving. They could no longer make a living on the land."

MUS CUT EIGHT Connie Boswell, "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams," from "Brother Can You Spare a Dime," cut 9, CDP-1953

[sneak in instrumental music above at ***, then up here]

"I walk along the street of sorrow.

"The boulevard of broken dreams . . ." (:13 to here; take under and out)

CUT SIX AUSTIN :38

"You can't forget that the people who fought in World War Two, and the people who worked in the factories in World War Two had just come out of this incredibly intense experience. And what that taught them certainly affected what they taught their own children. Their feeling of safety was, I think, very different from ours. Their feeling that they should always have food in the larder, that they should always have a job, that they should always own -- not rent -- their home -- that the bank was a safe place to put your money. They didn't have that feeling."

CUT SEVEN MICHIGAN WOMAN AND REPORTER :29

"My parents lost their home, and we had no bed to sleep on. My sister slept on a couch. I slept on a chair. We had no electricity. And my dad worked for the W-P-A [the Works Progress Administration, which gave people jobs], we would wait for the afternoon check to come in because we were hungry. We needed food."

[REPORTER] "How has this changed your life?"

[SABINA] "Well I know that everything I get, I have to work for. Up to this day, I think I'm very conservative with my money."

[REPORTER] "Do you think kids today are a little spoiled?"

[SABINA] [firmly] "YES, definitely. Definitely."

MUS CUT NINE Scrappy Lambert, "No Depression in Love," from "Brother Can You Spare a Dime, cut 2, CDP-1953

"Stocks are low, may get lower.

"Things are slow, may get slower.

"Hey, me, I'm glad to say

"There's no Depression in love. . ." (:11 to here, take under and out)

CUT EIGHT MICHIGAN MAN :32

"I teach my boys, I keep on telling them: 'You never buy on a credit card unless you have the money to pay for it.' They can't understand it. We buy a lot of things with cash.

"At work, one of the fellas says, 'I've got so much stock in this company, I'm worth three hundred thousand dollars.' And I says, 'Well I just paid off my house.' He says, 'Oh, you're foolish. You had an investment.' *** A couple months later, he came in, and he says, 'I lost all of it. The stock went broke.'"

MUS CUT TEN Woody Guthrie, "I Ain't Got No Home" from "Woody Guthrie: Dust Bowl Ballads," cut 12 CDP-940

[sneak in instrumental at *** above, then up here]

"I ain't got no home; I'm just a-roamin 'round.

"Just a wanderin' worker; I go from town to town.

"And the po-lice make it hard wherever I may go.

"And I ain't got no home in this world any more . . ." (:14 to here; take under and out)

CUT NINE THOMPSON :25

"I've begun to feel as though I know these children. And I'm drawn to the strength in them, and the determination, to the laughter in some of them in spite of the difficulties they're in. And I love them. When you look at these children, you don't see victims. You see kids that are tough, and kids that are shy, but certainly not a batch of victims."

MUS CUT ELEVEN Ted Lewis and His Band: "Headin' for Better Times," from "The Great Depression," cut 15, CDP-8431

[two rings of a streetcar bell, then]

"All aboard for the Sunshine Special.

"This train is headed for better times. All aboard! . . ."(:11 to here; take under and out)

ANCR Kathleen Thompson and Hilary Mac Austin liken their book to a shifting kaleidoscope, taking the reader from today's era of plenty in America to a time when children's faces told the story of hardship and survival in the Great Depression.

CUT TEN OKLAHOMA WOMAN :22

"My mother had died in 1934. And I remember not long before she died, she had bought two nice, cotton dresses and charged them, and evidently couldn't pay for them when it was expected. She had to return the dresses. I remember that hurt my feelings a lot."

ANCR Children of the Depression is published by Indiana University Press.

[signed]

MUS CUT TWELVE INSTRUMENTAL TRAILER: Blues Birdhead: "Mean Low Blues," from "The Great Depression," cut 9, CDP-8431

(lasts approx. 3:10; fade at will)