THE
GREAT DEPRESSION SERIESUsing
the Past to Prepare for the Future
By
Steve Van Nattan
This
was your history if you are an American. If you don't study this lesson, you may
come into horrible suffering when the next economic crash comes. Many of the pre-1929
aspects of American culture and commercial life are now present and being exacerbated
by US Government policies. The Stock Market is again flying high. Analysts are
predicting a crash. The dollar is under attack as the world's reserve currency,
and when the dollar loses its power in the world, the virtual value of the dollar
will be around four cents. Please
watch these seven videos, and learn the lessons on survival. In
the next video set please notice that parallels of the 1920s are with us today.
There is the same sense that nothing can go wrong. There is the same wasting of
one's substance by spending and debt. Can you see the same absolute trust in financial
"experts" and talking heads in the 1920s and 2018? Take note of the
20s spending in the Stock Market, compared with the present rush to unload one's
wealth on technology toys. Notice how credit, then and now, drives people to go
deep into debt to a point of desperation. The ongoing rage for Bitcoin sounds
eerily like the rage in the 1920s for the Stock Market. Compare the omnipresent
ticker tape machine in the 20s to the Smart Phone today. The ticker tape machine
was the latest technology back then. People could watch their stocks gain value
with only a few minutes of lag time. Finally, compare the assurances of President
Hoover that life was good and getting better with the assurances of President
Trump that we will make America great again.
Notice
that Hollywood and the entertainment industry drove the morals into the basement
in the 20s, just as they are doing today. Notice the heroic image of the Mafia
and gangsters, while today the blood flies heroically in computer games. If you
think a bit creatively, you will see many parallels which are telling us that
the USA is at the brink of disaster, and soon. You
need to understand the similarity between the price of stock in the 20s with the
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) today. As long as the GDP goes up a few percent every
year, America's boom days will continue. But, like the crash of 1929 when the
price of stocks began to drop, when the GDP starts dropping in the near future,
the US economy will crash. This could be triggered by the dollar losing its power
as the world reserve currency, it could be caused by a crash of the Stock Market,
it could be caused by a Liberal Congress and President over expanding the money
supply, or it could be caused by something as simple as a drought in the Middle
West or a massive earthquake in California. America
is living on the brink of doom all the time, and the only thing staving off another
massive Great Depression is continued growth. It is simple science to predict
that unending growth is not possible. The same insanity of the 20s has come back
in the eagerness of Americans, and our Government, to go into more and more debt.
The total of all debt owed in America is nearly 600 trillion dollars. That is
not a typo. When these debts start being called in, the Government, business,
and most Americans, will be unable to pay off their debts. Life will crash. Every
cabbage, tree, and fish can only get so big, and then it dies or goes to seed.
There is no such thing as eternal economic expansion, but all politicians believe
it is so. All Americans believe it is so. The faith of Americans is in the power
to keep growing, and it is this religious faith that will soon destroy the USA. And,
you Conservatives who are Bible believers, understand this.... President Trump
is NOT saving America. He has boosted the GDP based on deregulation. Many regulations
are indeed ridiculous, but some were put in place to protect you from various
evils in business and industry. Any President can boost the GDP by more deregulation,
but when a Progressive Liberal government comes into power, they will do what
all Liberals do. They will put all the regulations back in place. At that point,
the GDP will be zero or go negative, and the end will come to the good life. Furthermore,
as Trump deregulates, many restraints that make life good in America will be gone,
and we will start experiencing the chaos of the Third World. Trump is cheating
on the system by this trick. Again,
the 20s population was not 50% dependent on the US Government of social benefits,
as they are today. If the Stock Market crashes today, and the banks and commerce
grind to a halt, the Government will see tax revenues crash also. This will result
in social benefits stopping, and people will receive an IOU in the mail instead
of a Social Security check. All socialism in America will cease. The 50% of Americans
who are sustained by the tax base will riot. America, like Rome, will crash and
burn. This time, there will be no recovery because the nation will come apart
literally. There will be no WPA, CCC, or NRA to hire unemployed Americans. The
rest of the world, that world America has been bullying for fifty years, will
stand back and wring their hands, but they will not come running to bail us out.
They will have lost much value themselves as the dollar crashes, and the world
will find ways to go on living without the USA. Why
can we not come back from another Great Depression? Answer:
Our national debt, and our external debt held by China and the world, will be
called in, and we will not be able to pay them back. We will be forced to print
trillions of dollars of worthless money to pay our debtors, and that is the historic
end of all empires.... every time it happens. How
then shall we survive? 1.
Put your faith in Jesus Christ instead of American growth and the dollar. Be sure
you are a part of an old fashioned local church, preferably a small one where
people take care of one another. 2.
Put any savings into land and property investment which will not lose all of its
value. Saving gold is a very bad idea. The US Government ordered all Americans
to turn in their gold for cash long ago, and prison was the threat for those who
kept their gold. They will do it again when the dollar crashes. If you want something
on hand for survival buying and barter, stock up on table salt, toilet paper and
ammo. These things will be essentials hard to find after a collapse. Have a supply
of water and food on hand. Identify a way and place to hide the food. The Patriot
Act provides for the Government to confiscate all food supplies in a national
emergency. 3.
Change jobs so that you are in a service or business that will be essential no
matter how bad it gets, like medical services, food services, utilities services,
and law enforcement. 4.
Make sure you have more than one skill to market. If you do not, get on with learning
a new skill NOW. Be eager to turn some hobby you have into income production. 5.
Do not put your faith in technology. When people go broke, they will abandon technology
luxuries. 6.
Produce as much of your own food as possible. Plant a garden, and get some chickens. 7.
Move from the big city to the outer edge of a city where the agriculture belt
begins, and commute to work. 8.
Have cash on hand instead of a savings account in a bank. The banks have been
given permission to take all deposits to survive in case of a national crisis.
Your account will be gone once this happens. 9.
Determine where you could flee to where some friend or family member would take
you in. This might even be in another country. 10.
Stop believing both the prophets of doom and the prophets of glory for America.
They are all liars. Spend more time asking yourself how you would survive if the
bottom dropped out of everything.
Colossians
3:2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. SURVIVAL
STORIES WHEN
YOUR TURN COMES, WILL YOU SURVIVE LIKE THESE FOLKS DID? DEPRESSION
SURVIVORS FROM PENNSYLVANIA
- PART TWO - PART
THREE
Did you learn anything about survival by watching these videos? You
could very easily be one of these people living out the same stories. You need
to talk about this with your family and with your Bible believing friends. BROTHER
CAN YOU SPARE A DIME- This song caught the nation's imagination by its reality. GOLD
WILL NEVER FEED YOUR SOUL DUSTY
SHOES
Can you imagine trying to sell this song today?
My
Dad was a kid during the Great Depression. The tramps (that is what everyone called
them) would stop and knock at random doors and ask for food. One day, a tramp
knocked on the door of my Dad's home, and my grandmother came out to see him.
The tramp asked for a cup of tea. My grandmother told him to sit on the steps,
and she went inside and made him a cup of tea and a bologna sandwich. When she
brought it outside, my Dad was sitting talking to the tramp. When the tramp got
his cup of tea and sandwich, he turned to my Dad and said, "Ask for a little,
and you might get more." That line stuck in our family until this day. It
is profound, and I owe that bit of wisdom to some old fellow who was seen as a
loser and destitute and riding the rails of America. Toward
the middle of the Great Depression, my grandfather died. He was not really old,
and it hit my Dad hard for two reasons. First, my grandfather spent a lot of time
with my Dad because he was his youngest son. But, second, my grandmother then
had no income to pay the rent. My Dad dropped out of school in the ninth grade
to go to work and earn the rent money. They also went on relief from the Los Angeles
public assistance program. My Dad hated being on charity, but there was no other
way to survive. When Dad reached age 18 he went to work for the WPA, even though
he did not like President Franklin Roosevelt who invented the program. Dad rode
the street car to the foothills of the Los Angeles area where the WPA was building
the Little Tejunga Dam. They hired Dad, but they told him he would have to take
the only job left working on the "Mexican dragline." The
"Mexican dragline" consisted in a team of Mexican Americans who used
nothing but picks to hack away at the granite rock that was to be the foundation
of the new dam. What machines do today they did by hand, working in the hot sun
all day. Dad went to work the first day, and the Mexicans looked at him skeptically.
Every time the WPA sent them an Anglo, the man would only last one day. The work
was virtually treacherous. Dad chipped granite all day, and he said when he went
home his fingers were so swollen, and they were spread apart so bad, that he could
not close them. But, Dad got up the next morning and went back to the job. The
Mexicans at once took a liking to Dad because he came back after the first day.
They even coached him in tricks to make the work less hard on him. When he was
exhausted the Mexicans would hide him in the shade from the foreman so he could
take a rest. Dad started taking an extra sandwich to work and traded if for a
big green chili pepper from another worker. One
day, a Mexican had a huge bright orange pepper, and Dad offered him a sandwich
for the pepper. The Mexican said, "This a-littlea hot." Dad persuaded
him to trade it anyway, and it nearly blew the top of Dad's head off. The Mexicans
laughed, but Dad ate the whole pepper. That raised his ranking even higher with
the men. Dad was finally transferred to haul heavy poles for the scaffoldings
by hand. The man he was assigned to work with limped badly and was old and cranky.
He hated the other men because when he limped they did not, and both men were
terribly sore by the end of the day from jerking one another back and forth while
they carried poles. Dad figured out that if he learned to limp the same way as
the old man limped, they would not jerk the pole as they walked. That old man
soon decided my Dad was his best friend on the job, and he made sure Dad kept
his job. After
working on the WPA, Dad decided he wanted to work for himself instead of the government.
There was a shortage of men who could climb palm trees in Southern California
and trim the dead leaves off that looked ugly. It was very dangerous because sudden
wind would rock the trees around significantly, and the work was very dirty with
cockroaches nesting in the dead leaves. Dad rustled up a used set of climbing
gear, and he learned to trim palm trees, and he learned how to cut them down.
One day a customer asked him to cut down a palm tree, and Dad calculated how to
do it so that it would do no harm. Many of those trees reached as high as ninety
feet. Dad cut the tree down, and it fell perfectly between a line of parked cars
and the power lines. Once it lay on the ground, Dad realized how easy it would
be to make a mistake and end up in serious financial trouble from litigation.
So, he stuck to just pruning the palm branches off. I
am sure my Dad had a lot more stories he could have told.
But, those who survived
the Great Depression almost all avoided telling their stories. They all believed
that their kids and grandkids would have a good life, and they did not need to
hear all about the sorrows of the Great Depression. For that reason, we people
today have far too few stories to help us design our own survival plan from real
life examples. If you have a grandfather who is old enough to remember the Great
Depression, tell him you want to know how he and his friends made it through that
era. There is no better source on survival principles than real survivors from
long ago. In
case you imagine we will never again have a Great Depression, that is exactly
what the people of 1929 were told by the best experts, and people believed it.
I have a book on hand in which the author talks about the Stock Market. He assures
the reader that safe guards were in place in the 1920s to make sure there would
never again be a Stock Market crash. The book was published in September of 1929,
one month before the crash. History tells us that economic disasters come at regular
intervals because leaders do stupid things. We are now living in an age of fiscal
madness as our leaders keep printing funny money backed by nothing, and the national
debt is now at a level where it cannot humanly ever be paid down. This time we
now live in is exactly the sort of time when all the economic factors call for
a crash, and a big one. As I write this, the US Congress is debating a bill to
lift restrictions on banking. The longer the leash kept on the banks, the closer
to the cliff they run. There
is virtually no one, and no way, America can be delivered from total disaster.
Will you start getting your mind and life prepared to survive, or will your family
starve? The next time around, the government will take families apart and send
kids to FEMA camps, and parents will be sent to work camps. Modern Liberal and
Conservative politicians are obsessed with herding the sheep around, and that
is what they will do to you if you have no means of survival. During the Great
Depression people were on their own, but at least they were still free. President
Roosevelt designed his programs to rescue families and businesses. I fully expect
to see America torn to shreds by big government the next time around.
What
kind of friends do you have?Luke
16:9 And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness;
that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. No
Bible verse quoting Jesus Christ troubles the Bible scholars more than this one.
All sorts of interpretations are dreamed up because Bible teachers and preachers
cannot stand to tell people exactly what Jesus said. Jesus is clearly telling
you to make friends with those who have the wealth of the non-Christian world.
Their money is based in unrighteous endeavors, and their money is sometimes dirty.
You are NOT being told to join in the tricks and schemes of the wicked to get
money. You are told to befriend those who do. This way, they will one day help
you when you fail. It
is story time. My neighbor in Michigan told this tale. His mother had invested
a nest egg of savings in the local bank. It was 1933. She was a widow, and the
bank manager came to my neighbor when he was a kid and asked him if he wanted
to wash the bank manager's Packard stretch limo. The boy went to the bank every
Saturday and washed the Packard, and the bank manager paid him well. One day he
went to the bank, and the manager took him aside and handed him a note. He said,
"Forget about washing the car today, son. Get right home to you mother and
give her that note." The boy did as he was told, and he said his mother at
once rushed to the bank. When she came home she had taken every cent of her savings
out of the bank in cash. The next day the bank was closed by Federal Government
order. Everyone with savings or deposits in 90% of the banks in America lost everything.
Some later got back one dollar out of ten. Make
yourself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. If you don't like that command,
go tell Jesus Christ that you have found him to be ungodly and wicked. Don't send
me email and whine. For your information, the US Congress has passed legislation
that the banks of America can take your deposits if the banks are failing during
a national crisis. The law makes it clear that your money in the bank belongs
to the bank unless you withdraw it. The Patriot Act, invented by George W Bush
based on the false flag demolition of the Twin Towers in NYC, provides for everything
you own, including your investments, and including you body and soul, can be taken
possession of by the Government if so ordered by the President. Someone
up yonder in high places is getting ready to form a dictatorship in America. All
that is needed is another massive false flag, like a nuclear bomb on an American
city, for the President to make himself absolute ruler of the USA. What would
you do if this happened? Any plans? If the dollar crashed as the world's reserve
currency, and the Stock Market crashed, the mad hatters who vote for Liberal Socialism
and Democrats would hit the streets and loot and burn. They did after President
Trump was elected. Imagine a total economic collapse. I am not making this up.
It has happened hundreds of times throughout world history. As I write the people
of Venezuela are rioting in the streets because they are starving.
Why
do Grandpa and Grandma hoard junk in their basement of garage?Have
you seen older people who seemed to be unable to throw away tin cans and old bowls
and cutlery. There is a reason for that. During the Great Depression when these
old folks were kids, nothing got thrown away. All clothes were handed down to
younger family members, and if they lasted through that process, they were given
to the neighbors for their kids. Tin cans had value for storage. Old spoons and
household items could be traded for a couple of eggs of a pound of sugar. Sugar
was controlled and rationed by the government. There was a black market for sugar,
flour, butter, and tires. Tires were retreaded, which meant new tread was burned
into old tires to make them go a little farther. Yes, they were dangerous. Honest
tire companies re-capped the tires, which meant they had a new layer of rubber
tread baked onto the old tire. Were they safe? Not very, but that is what my Dad
rode on, and so did I when I was a kid. In those days, people drove slower to
save their tires. So, think about the things you toss in the trash can. Could
they be made to serve you one day? Americans
throw away millions of tons of perfectly serviceable appliances and home products
every day. I took my trash to the dump in California one day, and I came home
with five usable lantern flash lights the Union Pacific Railroad had thrown away.
I also came home with about 200 feet of electrical wire, and I went and bought
myself a cheap electric weed whacker that did not use gasoline and leak all over
the place. I got the extension cord free at the dump. We have friends who found
a piano pushed out to the curb one day. They took it home and asked me to come
and tune it. I thought it would be a wreck. Otherwise, why would someone send
it to the dump? It was a top of the line console and in perfect condition. It
just needed a tuning. Whatever
you do, as you come to retirement age, do not throw away the tools of your trade.
If you had to return to your old trade to survive, those tools would be impossible
to buy after an economic crash. If you are in a trade that is certified, keep
up your certification, and it will put you at the head of the line.
Let
me tell you about a man named Frank Klaber. Frank
and his wife loved to move to new places. They lived in what was called a "house
trailer" back in the 1930s. Frank and his family would live in a "trailer
park" for a few months or a year, and then they would move on down the highway
to another place. These places were often revisited, and they were strung out
between Tampa, Florida and Los Angeles, California. When Frank pulled into a new
town, or an old one, he was already well known. His reputation always went on
before him. What
was that reputation? Frank
could take over and manage a gas station or corner market that was in financial
trouble and have it making a good profit in very short order. He was also known
for being scrupulously honest. Honest injun, Frank was mostly Cherokee Indian.
When he was in the Air Force during WW I, Frank managed the PX at Kelly Field
outside of San Antonio, Texas. He put together a plan in which the soldiers could
take out a membership in the PX, and at the end of the year he issued them a dividend
to wipe out any extra profits the PX made. This is the only time this was ever
done in the US Military. So, Frank had the savvy to make a small business produce
well. When
he pulled into a town for several months stay during the Depression, Frank would
go downtown and have a job when he went home that evening. This he did all the
way through the Great Depression. Frank knew how to make himself a friend of people
who had the unrighteous mammon. Frank Klaber was my grandfather, and I suppose
you can tell I am very proud of the man. My Mom said she had no idea how much
people suffered during the Depression because her Dad made sure they always had
enough. Frank was also known for another thing..... I never heard him whine about
how life treated him. He was honest and worked hard, and he did not complain if
things did not go perfectly. This attitude toward life was in spite of the fact
that Frank had been with his father, a Sheriff in Oklahoma, when a man he went
to arrest killed Frank's Dad while Frank stood and watched. HEAR
HOW FRANK MADE ALL OF CORPUS CRISTI LOVE HIM- Story told by Mike, Frank's
great grandson.
Twenty
Five Ways People made Money During the Great Depression: 1.
Caught and sold fish, clams, and crabs 2.
Made homemade fudge and sold it 3.
Sold newspapers on the corner. Kids earned a little extra if they were promoted
to “Corner Captain”, a sort of Great Depression multilevel marketing program where
a kid brought in other kids to sell papers and earned a bit extra himself. 4.
Started a lunch truck/wagon 5.
Grew, picked, and sold berries. One man supplied his whole town with lettuce. 6.
Road work 7.
Shoveled snow for people 8.
Multiple part-time jobs, including housecleaning and taking in laundry and ironing 9.
Chopped wood or harvested driftwood 10.
Made and sold hand-woven baskets 11.
Mowed lawns and other kinds of yard work 12.
Door to door sales of things like shoes or sewing notions. I had a friend during
college days who sold toilet paper door to door and paid his way through seminary.
People felt sorry for him. 13.
Made deliveries for stores 14.
Made and sold quilts 15.
Sold homemade baked goods, like bread or pies 16.
Sold eggs from their own chickens 17.
Childcare 18.
Rented out rooms 19.
Mended or altered clothes 20.
Washed windows and automobiles 21.
Would purchase produce and resell door-to-door 22.
Sold apples 23.
Loaded coal 24.
Piecework sewing 25.
Sold homegrown produce
I
hope this article gave you something to think about. Times will not always be
good in America. This roaring era of abundance will soon end, and there will be
a massive reset. Now is the time to do some thinking about what you would do to
survive. I am not talking about fear and panic. I am talking about counting the
cost of the life you now live and what you would do if it could not last.
Proverbs
6:5 Deliver thyself as a roe from the hand of the hunter, and as a bird from the
hand of the fowler.
6 Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and
be wise:
7 Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, 8 Provideth her meat
in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. BACK
TO THE CULTURE BACK
TO ENTRY PAGE OF JOURNAL
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