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The historian who insists the Great Depression wasn't that big, or that depressing

He has been compared with a Holocaust denier, but David Potts does not say there was no 1930s Depression, just that its dimensions were exaggerated. The historian's The Myth Of The Great Depression has gone into reprint, updated for the current economic crisis, which so often is measured against perceptions of the 1930s.

Potts acknowledges job losses, factory closures and household evictions, but says people were more resilient, more caring and happier than might be assumed. People in the 1930s had options. Sacked building tradesmen, for instance, went bush, where production rose by 40 per cent, even though many got only keep and a third of the basic wage. Many sent money to their families in the cities, where food coupons were also available. Others simply went to the beach, turning their backs on the workforce.

Many homes became miniature factories: backyards were turned to vegetable plots; housewives pickled and bottled; people made shoes and clothing; men caught fish and trapped rabbits. Extended families moved in together and pooled earnings; neighbours pitched in and churches made great efforts to supply clothing.

"One family I heard of fed another family for two years," says Potts. "Those people who retreated to humpies were less than 1 per cent. A lot regarded it as quite a healthy lifestyle, having a hand-built hut and developing a community. I interviewed a husband and wife who had gone bankrupt, moved from Melbourne, lived in a hut, grew vegetables. Their kids walked through the bush each day to get to school. They picked up the dole and he made toys to get extra money. They tell me it was the happiest period of their lives."

Food coupons, the only dole in 1930, meant people did not drink away their troubles and vegetables outweighed meat consumption, benefiting health on both fronts.

Potts, an honorary research associate in history at La Trobe University, interviewed 1200 people who lived through the Great Depression and drew on 800 other interviews from sources including the National Library's bicentennial collection....
Read entire article at Sydney Morning Herald