Stories of Survival: Arkansas Farmers during the Great Depression, by William Downs Jr.

Stories of Survival: Arkansas Farmers during the Great Depression, by William Downs Jr.

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Stories of Survival: Arkansas Farmers during the Great Depression, by William Downs Jr.

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Through dozens of in-depth interviews representing all sections of the state, farm families recall their best times, their worst times, and day-to-day experiences such as chores, washing, bathing, clothes making, medical care, home remedies, spiritual life, courtship and marriage, and school experiences. Their stories reveal how ordinary men and women, frequently living in abject poverty, endured cataclysmic natural disasters and economic collapse with extraordinary courage, faith, resourcefulness, and a good sense of humor.

Stories of Survival: Arkansas Farmers during the Great Depression, by William Downs Jr.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2312040 in Books
• Published on: 2015-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.00" h x .90" w x 6.00" l, 1.05 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Stories of Survival: Arkansas Farmers during the Great Depression, by William Downs Jr.

About the Author William D. Downs Jr. is professor emeritus of mass communications at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, where he served as chair of the department for more than forty years. A graduate of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, he also received MA and PhD degrees from the University of Missouri–Columbia.

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Most helpful customer reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Not Just for Arkansas Readers By Kat Yares I purchased this book to get an idea of what Arkansans went through during the Great Depression for a novel, I myself, am writing. Little did I know that this book would hold a place on my bookshelf right next to the Foxfire books (along with their many sister publications) on the shelf.William Downs, Jr. makes the depression come alive in first person accounts on everything from money to chores to hunger and relief for those who lived through those terrible years. Starting with an overview of cause and effect of the Great Depression in Arkansas, he quickly jumps into oral histories of the times. What makes this real is the pictures of those giving their stories, along with where they were born and raised.While labeled Arkansas Studies on the back of the book - this book is for anyone who a:) loves the Foxfire series of books or b:) is interested in that time period of American History. It is a book full of 1st person accounts of the times and will pull at your heartstrings (unless you are much like Pres. Hoover at the time). Although technically a textbook, this book is for anyone with an interest of the era.This book will be read and referenced many times in the coming years. Many similarities can be made between the times then and the downturn of the economy today that we find ourselves living in. As I read each little tidbit in the many sections, I can only say "there but for fortune, go I".I can highly recommend this book to history buffs but I'll even go a step beyond that and say that this book should be required reading for High Schools all over the country. Just maybe if kids today knew first hand how bad their grandparents (and great grandparents) had it in life, they might not feel so entitled today. (Wishful thinking? probably so)

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Very interesting. By Fwanny I enjoyed reading this book both because I am from Arkansas, and because I once knew Bill Downs when he was at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. I was in college at the time and sang in his church choir some.I can identify with a lot of the situations because I've heard my grandmother and my dad tell their stories about those times. They were hard times, and actually my dad didn't like to watch "The Waltons" because it reminded him of those days. They were hard times, but people survived and I'm glad.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Good present, Christmas or otherwise By Robert L. Hudson Farming has always been a difficult way to make a living at the level where hoe meets dirt. Hunting and gathering was easier, one might even say more natural, but Homo sapiens began to wander less and congregate more perhaps as much as 10,000 years ago. Agriculture became a way of life. Crops were planted, tended and harvested. It was a more predictable way to insure the necessities of food, fluid and shelter.In many ways things did not change a lot until less than one hundred years ago when agriculture became mechanized like was happening in life in general. The things that varied over the years were things like who owned the land and who did the work. In feudal times in Europe the land was owned by the few and worked by the many. When the vast lands of the New World were discovered it was an opportunity for the many to leave bondage to the few and seek their own plot of ground to carve out a life where a land owning master was not needed.Thus many boat loads of Europeans were emptied onto the shores of the New World over a few centuries. Some flourished and some died and for many years more kept coming from Europe. Eventually all parts of the country where food could be grown were well populated with families subsistence farming on a 40 or an 80 or sometimes more. Some were trying to get ahead but most were just trying to get by, to raise a family that was fed, that was dry, that had a comfortable place to sleep, a school to teach the basics, a church at which to gather and worship and eventually a place to be buried while the cycle repeated.By 1920, say, this subsistence farming was all over Arkansas. This was not yet 100 years ago but still there had not been that much change in several thousand years. Much of the time, stated simply, farming was done by a hoe hitting dirt. The hoe was held by a hand, perhaps that of a man but also perhaps that of a child or the child's mother. Much of the world by that time had such things as automobiles, tractors, telephone, even electricity. Often 12 years of school was easily available, with college a possibility for the bright or the wealthy.But in rural America, including rural Arkansas, there were mules and plows. On the farm here was no electricity, no telephone, no running water. The structures where people lived were very plain. There was no such thing as insulation. The heating was by wood stove or fireplace. There was very limited schooling. The only thing that kept this life from being unbearably hard was the fact that for the most part the people didn't know anything else existed.To this almost unbearably hard life we now add the Great Depression. And what was the Great Depression? The model for these subsistence farmers was that they would borrow money to put in a crop. You might not be surprised to know the loan was secured by their land but it was also secured by the other things of value they had, namely mules and harness for the mules. In Arkansas the family would work all summer on these little hardscrabble farms to make a few bales of cotton. How much money they would make was determined by the weather in general and the amount of rain in particular. Some years they would just make enough to pay off the loan. Some years they would make a little more and would be able to buy a little more land, build a bigger barn, etc.All the time they were raising the cotton they also were raising food to be eaten in season and canned for the winter. They had milk cows, egg laying hens, chickens for frying, etc. They did most of their own everything including sewing clothing, making soap, brooms, and on and on. It was a very, very hard life but it was doable.The depression disrupted the model in that they couldn't get a loan for the cotton seed and fertilizer. If they did somehow manage to make a crop in spite of the lack of a loan, then the price of the cotton was low because in general nobody had any money. The big reason why was that the banks had failed and nobody had any trust. The whole thing really ran on trust. The current economy does as well, but that's another story. Adding to these problems was that the weather in the 1930's was either too dry or too wet. Drought or flood. In Arkansas there was no feast, there was often famine. The American economy collapsed and the resulting cascade took years to play out.What William Downs Jr. has done is collect comments from the people who lived through these times. For the most part he did it while they were still alive. Many of them still are alive and if you want to talk to someone who was there, as this book will inspire you to want, you need to act with haste. Most the these people reporting were young during the times mentioned but they have a good memory for how hard life was.Things have not changed much for thousands of years but they have changed greatly during the last 100 years. The end of an multigenerational era is what Downs has collected. Downs is a scholar and has collected these comments in what we might call a scholarly manner. The presentation, as is fitting, is however only semi-structured. In other words, Downs has taken his scholarship and presented it in a very readable form.He starts with an introduction. One section is aptly entitled "Why the Great Depression Was Late Coming to Arkansas." As one born here I know that most things have come late to Arkansas. Sometimes that is a curse, but sometimes a blessing. Downs names the Survivors, as he calls them. He even has pictures of some of them. Reading the book you find yourself referring back and back to the names and pictures to check what county they were from, what year they were born. The meat of the book is 31 chapters with quotes from the survivors around one or another topic such as "Earliest Memories of the Great Depression," "Typical Chores Around the Home" or "Family Bathing Routines." Downs was good at deciding when a topic had been sufficiently covered and it was time to move on to another one. The end of the book just leaves you wishing for more. And that's how it should be.I will issue a disclaimer. I first read about this book a few months ago in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. I contacted Downs because from what the article said he at one time had relatives living on a farm in the same tiny part of Fulton Co. where my grandfather was born. It turns out that Downs and I are approximately third cousins. I gladly paid for my copy of the book right here at Amazon and my distant family connection may have increased my enjoyment of the book but I believe did not unduly affect my review. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Arkansas, an interest in genealogy or just an interest in "old times." I think that this book or something like it should be required reading for all students.I would like to throw in one last thing which is a recommendation for another book. This is a novel, supposedly rather autobiographical, that is largely set in depression era North Dakota. This gives the reader a continuing family perspective of life on a small farm and how the Great Depression made an almost unbearable life totally unbearable. The book is The Bones of Plenty by Lois Phillips Hudson, and in spite of the name not a third cousin as far as I know. It was published in 1962 by Little, Brown and Company. It has been favorably compared to Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. In my opinion nothing compares to Grapes of Wrath but in the same vein The Bones of Plenty requires no comparison with anything to have earned it's place in American Literature for it is clearly literature of the most worthy variety. Lois Hudson died December 24, 2010 and is just one more example of why you need to be talking to these children of the Great Depression if you still have the opportunity.Review by Robert L. Hudson

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