A song about a time when dust storms damaged crops and forced many farmers to leave their homes. Entire families travelled to California and Oregon to look for work. They had to travel through deserts and over high mountains to get there.
The Depression Era was before my entrance into the world however, as a child was always reminded that “I had been born with a silver spoon in my mouth.” We have not witnessed another Depression Era but that is not to say that during certain periods in our history and culture racism, greed, and inequality have been the cause of social,economic, and extinction/extermination depression has been evident. I continue to have images of Life Magazine photos of the people found in the German Concentration Camps and also a book on the Tennessee Valley Authority, an FDR New Deal Program which displaced a very poor population composed of both black and white families that had recovered from Civil War poverty status. The photos in the book depicted very undernourished adults and children. I can’t remember the correspondent who wrote, photographed, and published the book but would like to read it again with an older mind. I remember it was said that President Eisenhower had called the TVA a socialist program.
Getting back to the role immigrants have played in my life-we all are immigrants in this country not counting the American Indian(although a
theory has attributed their migration from China). There is a difference between Yesterday’s immigrant from today’s immigrant. Yesterday they came to settle a new country for several personal reasons-today’s immigrant is coming for a lot of the same reasons but the status quo is not welcoming them and they are mostly used for labor until they are able to rise above that station. Today’s immigrant is providing food and services that are at the bottom of the scale however, without their work most of this country’s population would have to do without.
I live in a relatively poor area of France, we weren't aware of this when we bought the house, put that down to excitement of having found the house of our dreams and not bothering to research further the practicalities! I only spoke schoolgirl French when we arrived and couldn't understand why so many of the locals had an accent that made their French even harder to understand.
Eventually, once the excitement had fled and the harsh reality of having bought a derelict house in the middle of nowhere had sunk in, I realised that our local town, indeed the whole 'Bassin' as its known as, (four small towns sit in a flat extended valley bottom) had been one of Frances most important mining communities.The mines (coal) created thousands of jobs and immigrants flocked from Southern Europe (mainly Portugal) with their families in search of work. This happened primarily at the turn of the last century through the the 1960's when the mines were closed but many of the descendants are still living there. When the mines closed, due to no longer being cost efficient (cheaper coal was being imported for Eastern Europe) they lost there jobs, many left in search of work elsewhere, the population of the small commune and town we are attached to dwindled from 40K at its height to a mere 3.5K, the commune had no fall back, if you walk the streets today, they are slowly recovering but the poverty is still very evident. The entire Bassin never really recovered...
For almost 100 years though, the immigrant population helped keep what would have been a poor and dwindling farming community alive and for a short while wealthy because with the influx of population more food was needed too, and more wine! That's another story though..
Thank you for this little bit of history, Susie. It's the people who work the earth (and labor in the factories) that build nations. It's the same regardless of your language or culture. We need to recognize that we are pretty much the same as most other humans on our tiny planet and more interdependent than we think.❤️☮️
The Depression Era was before my entrance into the world however, as a child was always reminded that “I had been born with a silver spoon in my mouth.” We have not witnessed another Depression Era but that is not to say that during certain periods in our history and culture racism, greed, and inequality have been the cause of social,economic, and extinction/extermination depression has been evident. I continue to have images of Life Magazine photos of the people found in the German Concentration Camps and also a book on the Tennessee Valley Authority, an FDR New Deal Program which displaced a very poor population composed of both black and white families that had recovered from Civil War poverty status. The photos in the book depicted very undernourished adults and children. I can’t remember the correspondent who wrote, photographed, and published the book but would like to read it again with an older mind. I remember it was said that President Eisenhower had called the TVA a socialist program.
Getting back to the role immigrants have played in my life-we all are immigrants in this country not counting the American Indian(although a
theory has attributed their migration from China). There is a difference between Yesterday’s immigrant from today’s immigrant. Yesterday they came to settle a new country for several personal reasons-today’s immigrant is coming for a lot of the same reasons but the status quo is not welcoming them and they are mostly used for labor until they are able to rise above that station. Today’s immigrant is providing food and services that are at the bottom of the scale however, without their work most of this country’s population would have to do without.
I live in a relatively poor area of France, we weren't aware of this when we bought the house, put that down to excitement of having found the house of our dreams and not bothering to research further the practicalities! I only spoke schoolgirl French when we arrived and couldn't understand why so many of the locals had an accent that made their French even harder to understand.
Eventually, once the excitement had fled and the harsh reality of having bought a derelict house in the middle of nowhere had sunk in, I realised that our local town, indeed the whole 'Bassin' as its known as, (four small towns sit in a flat extended valley bottom) had been one of Frances most important mining communities.The mines (coal) created thousands of jobs and immigrants flocked from Southern Europe (mainly Portugal) with their families in search of work. This happened primarily at the turn of the last century through the the 1960's when the mines were closed but many of the descendants are still living there. When the mines closed, due to no longer being cost efficient (cheaper coal was being imported for Eastern Europe) they lost there jobs, many left in search of work elsewhere, the population of the small commune and town we are attached to dwindled from 40K at its height to a mere 3.5K, the commune had no fall back, if you walk the streets today, they are slowly recovering but the poverty is still very evident. The entire Bassin never really recovered...
For almost 100 years though, the immigrant population helped keep what would have been a poor and dwindling farming community alive and for a short while wealthy because with the influx of population more food was needed too, and more wine! That's another story though..
and bread, and cheese, I imagine.
Thank you for this little bit of history, Susie. It's the people who work the earth (and labor in the factories) that build nations. It's the same regardless of your language or culture. We need to recognize that we are pretty much the same as most other humans on our tiny planet and more interdependent than we think.❤️☮️