FROM DEPRESSION TO DIGITAL IN JUST ONE LIFETIME

KENNETT, Mo. -- Although members of today's e-commerce generation may have difficulty understanding this, there was a time in America when both the federal and state governments were hard pressed to supply enough food for citizens who were on the verge of bankruptcy. Unbelievable, you respond, but believe me when I say it is not only a true statement but one that occurred in my lifetime and during the lives of countless others, some of whom might even be your neighbors.

Penniless? Surely not in affluent America, not in a land that enjoys the most spectacular economy in the history of mankind, at a time when national unemployment in July was only 4 percent and down to 2.8 percent in Missouri. How could Americans go hungry in an economy like this?

The answer, of course, is that they can't. There is more than enough affluence to affect every life in our nation, every hungry child, every less-than-affluent family.

Yes, the times have changed. To understand how much they have changed, let's go back to the 1930s, when affluence was only a word in the dictionary and one that was not to be savored by the 125 million of us who were around then.

It was a time of high and chronic joblessness, when a good job was one that paid $25 a week, when a new car fresh from Detroit sold for as high as $500, and steak was 8 cents a pound. It was a time when jobless veterans of World War I were gathering in Washington to protest their treatment and the failure to pay bonuses that had been promised in the euphoria of victory over Germany after World War I. It was a time of urban bread lines that stretched for blocks and it was a time the farmer could expect all of 10 cents for a bushel of corn.

It was a time of business failures that were far more numerous than new enterprises. It was a time when J. C. Penney meant upward shopping. It was a time when men wore hats and young boys wore knickers. It as a time of hometown adult baseball teams organized to provide free entertainment, and it was a time when a radio was the center of the household, even if at times it seemed stations only broadcast static.

It was also a time when Americans wondered about their future, the stability of their governments and were concerned about organizations as varied as the Communist Party and the Ku Klux Klan. It was also a time of bank failures. My father was a small town newspaper owner, just starting in business, and on the day after the federal government ordered a brief "holiday," closing all of the nation's banks, all three banks in his town closed -- forever. Every penny he had was lost, as were the last pennies of millions of other Americans.

The presidential campaign of 1932 was as foreign from today's as could be imagined. The incumbent, Herbert Hoover, virtually admitted he didn't know what to do and tried everything he and his advisors could think of in order to end the aimless drift of the country. He promised that prosperity was just around the corner, although he couldn't say which corner and when the nation would see it. His opponent, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also promised prosperity but seemed to be a little short on details. As historians were to learn later, FDR hadn't the vaguest idea how to overcome the worst depression America had ever experienced and numerous ones had occurred before.

After FDR's inauguration, one of the first programs launched was something called the Works Progress Administration, which would create public service jobs needed in communities around the country and which would be funded by the simple expedient of printing more money. Within a short time, my father, who lived and inhaled Chesterfield cigarettes and politics, was named one of two non-salaried persons in Missouri to approve and oversee WPA projects, with his region being all the state's counties north of the Missouri River.

It wasn't long until our small community was virtually overrun with county judges, mayors and civic leaders who were seeking approval of some project in their towns and counties that would put men to work and begin to heal the economic void that filled their constituents' hearts and lives. Crowds would begin gathering at our home as early as 5 o'clock in the morning, with many of the petitioners having traveled hours, by horse or buggy and even by foot, to arrive in our front yard, waiting to get approval for make-shift projects. The crowds were so large that my mother sought the help of her Sunday School class to provide the petitioners with breakfast. If you have never looked into the eyes of men who were desperate beyond imagination and discouraged beyond hope, you can count yourself fortunate. I have never been able to get that memory to go away.

I would like to say the WPA was a resounding success, but it wasn't. The economy was too far gone to rescue it with inadequate programs. America's depression would not end until we began arming for our entry into World War II, a virtual certainty long before Dunkirk or Pearl Harbor.

This year's campaigns, whether national or state or county, will be about programs that were undreamed of in the 1930s, and we will endlessly debate such questions as how to make our children smarter and how to protect our environment and how to spend our budget surpluses. It's questionable that we will achieve anything close to unanimity; indeed, we may even elect our next leaders on their appearance or manner of speech or quality of their TV advertising -- anything but their promises, which in our prosperity we disregard because they seem irrelevant or bogus or only designed simply to win votes.

Thank God, we won't elect the next generation of leaders because they promise to feed millions of Americans who are hungry, desperate and have abandoned all hope for tomorrow. Yes, times are better. Are we?

~Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.