Buddy, can you spare a dime?

 One of the things I remember as a kid was my mother talking about the Depression. She was a child of the '20s, and her preteen and teen years were spent in Chicago throughout the Depression.

Much of what she said centered on how horrible it was and how her family lived on welfare, and she tended to refer to the Depression in a Scarlett O'Hara style, swearing she wouldn't be that poor again. Beyond that I had no information except what I learned about that era in school. 

My sister unearthed some documents that helped me understand a little of what my grandparents and their brood had to deal with in financial terms. I'm going to refer to my grandparents by their first names, William and Lulu.

William and Lulu married in 1918, and by 1925 Lulu was a widow. William had served in the Marines, then a part of the U.S. Navy, and spent part of his service in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he contracted tuberculosis, a disease he never really recovered from and one that was responsible for his death. 

The disease prevented him from performing manual labor, and because it was service related, he was granted a pension of $30 a month. I don't know if he made a living any other way, but he did have a chauffer's license, which most likely enabled him to drive a taxi.

I'm sure you can do the math on how much that pension worked out to a year. How much would that be in today's dollars? Depends on which calculator you use. I found one based on purchasing power, which said it would take $19 to purchase the goods $1 would buy in 1935, so we'll use this as a reference. His pension, then, was equivalent to about $6,840 a year today -- not much to raise a family of five on. 

When he died, Lulu made a flurry of applications for a widow's pension. She was granted a pension of $20 a month plus $4 a month for each of her three children. The extra amount expired as each child reached age 16. I've no evidence she ever worked, but at some point early in the '30s, she suffered a stroke and was dependent on her pension, plus whatever other aid was available. 

Until the Social Security Act passed in 1935, public assistance was available to needy families, mostly for widows with children, although provision was often extended to other single mothers. The average such assistance in 1934 in the U.S. amounted to $11 a month. When the Social Security Act passed, provision was made for the children but no longer to the mothers. I've no evidence as to whether Lulu received any of those funds. Still, not much to raise three children on. 

In  1933, Congress passed an act that disrupted the entire military pension system. To obtain funds, the veteran had to have served in the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection or the Boxer Rebellion, which William had not. 

This began a new round of pleas to military officials, congressmen, and the commissioner of pensions, begging for help. In 1934 and 1935, Congress restored some of the provisions of earlier legislation, and in 1935, Lulu was awarded a pension of $32 a month plus $6 a month for each child under 16. Her eldest had already turned, 16, and my mother would age out the next year. 

I know Mother never finished high school, and I suspect she dropped out to go to work and help support the family, but she never talked about her reasons for not graduating. 

Putting the figures in to an approximation of today's funds has helped me understand much about the era -- and about my mother.