Children of The Depression

Young children waiting for soup in Dubuque, Iowa

Kromer’s Waiting for Nothing is filled with vignettes of hardship and truly depressing moments. I was especially drawn to chapter six because he begins the chapter describing hungry children. We have read other pieces with children as part of the storyline, but I always grouped them with their families. This particular vignette got me thinking about how hard it would have been for a child growing up during this time. For children whose families were scraping for food to survive, the obvious luxuries and toys weren’t available for the kids. It seemed as though the children of this time had to grow up quickly because they were immediately thrown into roles they wouldn’t have otherwise.

I did a bit of research and found that “250,000 young people were homeless in the early years of the Depression” and “In some coal mining regions, the percentage of malnourished children reached as high as 90%”. Many schools were shut down, and children were therefore not getting educations. While reading Kromer describe the children waiting to go into the mission, the thought of a child’s other hardships beyond hunger didn’t cross my mind. When reading more about the children of the Depression, it made me recognize not only were they hungry, but many of them had little to do, no education, no toys or luxuries, and were often sent away by their parents.

As I continued to read up on the plight of a child during the Depression, I came across letters that children wrote to Mrs. Roosevelt. F.M. writes from Kansas, “I am 13 years old and will be 14 the 27 of this month. I am a victim of a shut in. I have been sick ever since the 12 of July. And have a very lonely place to stay. My parence's are very poor people. I cant even go to school yet with the other kids. And doubt if I can this year. I have nothing I can do but set around and I get so lonely I don't know what to do. And if you want to cheer me up and make me one of the happies boys in the world just send me some money to get a cheap raido. […] I am in the dust bowl. We didn't raise any crop this year. And we have to live off of the releif and theres no injoyment out of that. But were thankful for it. My mother is sick and under the doctor's care most of the time and my Grandma that lives with me is very poorly. And that keeps my heart broken all the time. And nothing to amuse myself with”.

Maybe because of their youth, but something about the plight of a poor child during the depression really drew me in to research. Kromer obviously had many intense stories, but an emotional part for me was when he described the child having to trick the stiffs in the mission into giving him two buckets of soup. When you’re at such a young age, the world seems so hard and even small things are imagined to be the end of the world. I can only imagine how strong the children of the Depression had to have been to be able to endure these hardships at such a young stage in their lives. Kromer’s vignette in chapter six was almost like a small tribute to the clever street smarts of young children, in this particular case one who was forced to trick the stiffs in order to survive.