Volume 31, Number 2 - Winter 1992
The Depression
11/16/1932
by J. S. Mercer
Ava, MO., 11/16/1932
Dear Little Minnie,
We rec’d your kind and interesting letter, and are glad to know that you are brave enough to breast the coming storm. Just rec’d a letter from your Brother Gem. He is now on a 5 day week of employment. There are now admitedly 12 million of the unemployed, and their ranks are growing from day to day, in spite of the vast numbers which they claim to be giving employment. We doubt not that there will be 15 million jobless persons by the 1st day of next March.
But why should such things be? There is an abundance, and to spare, for everyone living in the United States. There is, therefor, no excuse for want and starvation in a country so blessed with plenty as is our own. The storehouses of our land are bursting with abundance. We possess an unlimited supply of raw material, and machinery, better than which, is to be found nowhere on this broad and bounteous earth. We have teeming millions of ready, willing souls anxious for an opportunity to convert the raw material into finished products of useful articles to bless the human family and beautify God’s glorious earth.
Everywhere we hear the following cries: starvation in the midst of plenty; shivering children, with rich warm raiments all around; empty houses for rent, while men, women, and helpless children are weeping shelterless.
It seems evident to all thinking persons that it is the imperative duty of our chosen leaders, under the constitutional "Law of Eminant Domain" to speak the magic words of reason and understanding which will call into requisition the
spontaneous activity of every idle mill and mine, every unoperated factory and legal industry throughout the realm to a renewed and every accelerated productivity of those useful and necessary things which gladden the heart and quicken the human affections. This is that one hundred per cent "American Efficiency" of which our fellow countrymen are prone to boast; but of which they are too timid, fearful and vacillating to boldly are reliantly put into operation. It is this want of stamina on the part of our own chosen rulers that has stagnated, polluted, and contaminated the business of our once glorious country and reduced us to a nation of lunatics, imbeciles and abject paupers.
We are in utter despair because the great Solons of our country know not what disposition to make of the boundless and unlimited blessing, both visible and invisible, which our tenderloving heavenly Father is thrusting upon us. All which is prima facia evidence that we are no descendents of the Monkeys. They refute the insult.
We are, therefore, the degenerate sons of noble sires, and it behoves them to humble ourselves, make restitution and implore forgiveness for our multitude of transgressions.
Fraternally, J. S. Mercer
11/19/1932
We have planted 38 acres of black walnuts 15 feet apart. If put in one line 30 ft. apart, they would extend 20 miles beyond Springfield. Some of them will begin to bear a few nuts in 6 years from next Spring. Where will we be then?
[18]
This volume: Next Article | Table of Contents | Other Issues
Other Volumes | Keyword Search | White River Valley Quarterly Home | Local History Home
Copyright © White River Valley Historical Quarterly
