This Christmas Eve, it's worth remembering the hardships our forebears endured in past Christmases to better appreciate our blessings today. Wishing you all a joy-filled Christmas Eve.
In the fall of 1936, during the Great Depression, the photographer, Russell Lee was hired for the federally sponsored Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographic documentation project of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. He joined a team of the nation’s premier photographers, including Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein and Walker Evans. During the winter of 1936, Lee traveled across the Midwest to document the impact of the Great Depression on farm families.
During one of his stops in rural Iowa, he met a tenant farmer named Earl Pauley who rented a 185-acre farm near Smithfield, Iowa, in Woodbury County in the western part of the state. Earl Pauley invited Lee to visit their home on Christmas Day. Here, Lee captured some of his most famous pictures of the face of poverty during the Depression.
The Pauley family Christmas dinner consisted of boiled potatoes and cabbage.
A special treat just for Christmas: apple pie. Father helps the kids peel apples for Momma’s apple pie. Christmas 1936.
Earl Pauley built this dugout shanty into the side of a hill after the first family home burned down.
Two of the little Pauley girls look out the window. The Pauley home was
constructed with leftover wood and cardboard for insulation.
Mrs. Pauley with her two little girls. She made their dresses out of patterned flour sacks.
The Pauley baby was the fourth child in a farm family that could barely feed their existing children.
Frank Moody, his wife and seven children lived in this dugout they built on their 80-acre tenant farm, also in Woodbury County, near Miller township, Christmas 1936.
Mrs. Frank Moody with three of her seven children on their eighty acre farm Woodbury County, Iowa, Christmas 1936.
Skeleton of horse on the William Butler farm near Anthon, Iowa, in Woodbury County, that died of starvation and poor feed. December 1936.
Makeshift livestock shelter on the Charles Banta farm in Woodbury County, Iowa. Note the terrible soil erosion. December 1936.
Man reading to fellow inmates at the homeless men’s bureau in Sioux City, Iowa, Woodbury County, Christmas 1936.
Outhouse on the William McDermott farm in Woodbury County. December 1936.
Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Ostermeyer were original homesteaders in Woodbury County. Andrew, age 81 and his wife, 76, lost their farm to a loan company during the Depression. December 1936.
© 2022 NOTES FROM THE FRONTIER
"An Iowa Christmas During the Depression" was first posted on Facebook December 24, 2019 / 115,485 views / 2,743 likes / 1,823 shares
Thank you, Joy. Merry Christmas to you and yours!
I just shared this excellent post on the Depression Era Iowa (1920s and 1930s) Facebook page. Thank you for this!
Enviro Geologist—I agree with you completely. Poverty in our country is a crime. Especially during this pandemic, poverty and food deprivation is even more invisible. And the poverty on reservations is unimaginable. I’ve done a number of posts about Native American poverty. They are suffering far greater mortality from Covid than any other group in our country, for example. Thank you for your post.
In my work, I travel the USA by car and spend time in countless impoverished and distressed communities. Poverty is far more common and intense than most Americans realize. The poor are in fact, invisible to most of us, yet they are near most of us lucky enough to live in comfortable situations.
However, there is no poverty, like that on the reservations. Parts of Pine Ridge are as bad as the Great Depression. Its inexcusable in a country like ours. Such disparity in wealth is unAmerican -and morally wrong.
Kayaaa, Thank you for your comment. I’m sure there are many invisible poor today, just like the Woodbury County farm families shown in the post. I grew up in Iowa and come from long lines of farm families on both sides of my family. I was shocked at the pictures. Wishing you and your family a blessed Christmas free of want.