How my grandparents thrived during the 1930′s.
by: Brooke Allen
The Great Depression was very good to my Grandparents, and it wasn’t a matter of luck so much as the approach they took to their circumstances. What they did, you can do.
In the mid 1920′s they met on a date in New York City and decided to marry within a week. Granddad Tom was assigned to Havana to start a bureau for the United Press International; he and Anne married in Key West on the way to Cuba.
When he returned near the end of the decade he was handed a 40% pay cut, even though the cost of living was higher in New York City than in Cuba.
If that wasn’t bad enough, in October of 1929, the Stock Market crashed and the economy began a long slide into what became the Great Depression. Granddad survived multiple rounds of layoffs by accepting further pay cuts.
Grandmother Anne realized that they couldn’t afford their current rent, so she found a bank that would rent to them the mansion of a bankrupt stockbroker for less money. To help care for the children, she found a lovely couple at the unemployment office. The wife was a nurse and her husband was a handyman. They exchanged room and board for childcare and yard work.
Then Anne took a job as a receptionist with a developer who was building houses on the farm next to their rented home in White Plains. Soon she was managing four salesmen. She received 25 percent of the salesmen’s commission on every home sold.
Grandmother convinced the developer to build at cost a home for them in exchange for using it as a show model. She became a stellar saleswoman in her own right. Before long, her commissions had completely covered the construction costs, and the home was theirs outright.
Granddad wrote to a friend that the Great Depression had been unbelievably good to them. Before the Crash they had had high hopes, but owning a house ‘free and clear’ in just a few years was inconceivable. Where could they have found a trained nurse and groundskeeper simply by letting them live in a spare bedroom and join them for meals? Freed of the burden of paying bills, the young couple soon saved enough money working odd-jobs to buy a gas station and start their own business. Because most of his coworkers had either been laid off (or quit rather than take a pay cut), Granddad had no competition as senior positions became available. His career took off.
Here are some of the lessons I have learned from my Grandparents:
Grab the bull by the horns. They never tried to deny the facts of a bad situation.
Get lucky by planning for the worst. Because they never expected things to get better, they worked very hard in the present to survive the worst-case future scenario. Invariably things worked out better than expected so their less industrious friends considered them very lucky.
Find the opportunity, not the excuse. I never once heard my grandparents explain why they were unable to do something. Instead, it seemed they were always asking, “What just got better?” In this story, the things that got better included: rents declined, it became easier to advance simply by being loyal, a soft housing market meant the builder would make a deal, and the cost of childcare dropped.
Keep working. In 1993 I returned from a high paying job in Japan to face an economy in terrible recession. I accepted a consulting position that paid about 80% less than what I’d made the prior year, and I am glad that I did because I maintained discipline and I improved my technical skills. It took a few years, but eventually I eclipsed my prior successes, and I owe it to the skills I honed as a consultant.
Adjust your price. During the first year of the Great Depression prices declined by 27%, which meant that you could take a 25% pay cut and have a real raise in purchasing-power terms. But the real question is, What is the price for what you can do? In 1993 there was no market in New York for what I had done in Tokyo in 1992, so I accepted what the market was willing to pay for what I could do.
Learn to be a good salesman. My grandmother learned a lot from Dale Carnegie, and then she sold him a property in White Plains. She knew that done properly, selling is an unselfish act that involves motivating others to do what is in their best interests, not just your own.
Share; don’t do it alone. By sharing her home and food with a struggling young couple, my grandmother was free to take a job and everyone came out ahead.
Survival is a better strategy than winning. In natural selection, the species that survive are winners, not the ones who hog all the resources to themselves. I will talk more about this in a subsequent piece.
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Did you learn something from someone who went through the Great Depression?
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21 Responses to Lessons From the Great Depression
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WATCH THIS VIDEO to hear Daniel Pink describe what motivates people to work. This is what No Shortage of Work is all about.
If you are unemployed, you are autonomous. We help with purpose and mastery. If you are employed, find purpose in helping those who are not. NSoW is not a commercial venture; it is created by people who believe that creating something of intrinsic value is compensation enough. (Note: We are not affiliated with the producers of this video or Daniel Pink.)
I agree with Lilia. They definitely complemented each other well. This is a powerful story indeed.
adapt or die
What really touches me about this story is the powerful union between your grandparents. I love how these two exceptional individuals were able to meet, recognize each other and decide to work together through life.
I think this partnership was the crucial factor that made them succeed during the Great Depression. Their enterprising nature was only secondary to the way they complemented each other.
Good advice from your grandparents and good of you to still learn from it, which is not always so natural. Thanks for the thoughts !
Brooke, love it and some great lessons on there. We’ve gone the ‘sharing’ route for years now, subletting our living room in order to help make ends meet. It’s been great more than half the time, and with the two ‘dud’ renters we’ve learned a lot about how to deal with people, be more forceful (especially my husband) and while painful, I don’t regret it. Love the idea too of just doing something, even without pay. We’ve done some of that, but tend to limit it to helping out family with big crazy projects, and I like the thought that even working w/out pay has benefits, because I know in my heart that’s true. The joy of a job well done counts for a lot, especially when your morale and ego are particularly fragile. Wish I could have met your grandparents!
It is funny how hardship can make you stronger.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall my qualifications where out of date. In the west we had in 1990 with our diplomas from the east no chance on the Labor market. The fall of the Berlin Wall was like an earthquake in our lives, everything went to pieces…. Women as a whole where in a crisis….
I decided to go to London, to start a new life, my friend went to Frankfurt. She made a second degree, studied management. Today she is with 41 years manager at Microsoft.
Women from the east have seen that very quickly life can turn upside down. Maybe it is this, what makes East German women braver and stronger. Maybe that is why we are the better crisis managers
20 years ago; East German women have been classed as the losers of the reunion. They have been the first to become unemployed, because their training was not qualified enough….
Today many young East German women are there, where West German women want to go.
Recent studies show: women from the east are more confident and independent; more of them go to university. (40 percent in the east compared with almost 30 percent in the west).
East German women are the most mobile and flexible group. They are everywhere and often at the top: Angela Merkel is chancellor and governing the country…
While women in the west earning still 23 percent less than the men, the difference in wages in the east is about 6 percent.
East German women have more children, and often earlier than West German women. In the west everything must be perfect before a child is born- women from the east improvise sometimes….
For women in Dresden, Erfurt and Leipzig is normal, what the women in Munich, Cologne and Hamburg are still fighting for. It is easier for them to manage job, household and children and not feel guilty because they are working….
Hi Brooke,
This is inspiring. Nowadays we tend to take everything for granted, maybe that’s our mistake. It is all about making big money fast, it seems. My mother in law told me how they started their life in 1949 in Canada as newcomers. These people worked hard to make it happen – an they did make it ! Let’s not complain about how bad things are, let’s work on it ! That’s my opinion. Susanne
My problem with salesmen is that the majority of them are not really “salesmen” but an unnecessary tax on time and money. If a someone goes door to door selling some product that fills a need in your life, then they are a salesman. But someone who is merely a middleman between you and a producer of goods/services that adds on a commission is not a salesman. They are a leech.
For example, I recently rented a new apartment. I found it online, researched the neighborhood and contacted the landlord. I was told that the apt was available but that I would have to go thru a realtor to rent the apartment. For doing zero work, I had to pay the realtor a 1 months rent commission in order to get the apt.
“Find the opportunity, not the excuse.”
This is so true- love this story.
Jana
“…some of the lessons I have learned from my Grandparents:”
out of the eight I’ve chosen this one: “Share; don’t do it alone.”
… Thank you for sharing this article.
Carla
Hi Brooke
Thank you for writing that essay it was great to read and inspiring. Also it plays out very well in current times
and speaks to what is going in the present.
Words of wisdom to live by and inspiring.Stories such as these would be a for a book.
Thanks again
Ron
Re: Adjusting Your Price - My grandfather stuck it out with the United Press because he believed in and was committed to what they were doing and he wanted to see it through. I find that admirable. Much later the UPI fell on hard times (and has been restructured twice in Chapter 11) and his retirement was cut back severely. However I think he was proud of what he did, and I don’t think that making more money would have been a source of greater pride – he did not find meaning in money.
I think his advice applies today, and it is not just about the cost of living but also about the market for what you can do. When I returned from Japan in 1993 I took a job paying approximately 20% of what I’d made previously because my market value as a head of a trading desk in Tokyo was irrelevant to my market value in the USA during a recession. My son has been working for the last 7 months without pay in exchange for learning marketable programming skills, and just this month they paid him. While he might be able to demand more elsewhere, he wants to see his project through. I admire him for that.
I personally have found more satisfaction (and even more money in the long term) by finding things I believe in, committing to them, and then seeing things through. While I do not begrudge others who want to maximize their own income by always looking for other opportunities, I hope they don’t begrudge me and my philosophy.
Regards,
Brooke
Please, let’s not fight or attack each other personally.
Thanks,
Brooke
Dear Danish:
If I am smoking then why do we have 20% unemployment (including underemployed and those who have given up looking) and why is Minnesota shut down and why are most other states on the brink of Bankruptcy. The US government is saying that the only way it can survive is by going deeper into debt – That sounds like a Ponzi scheme to me : If we can’t take on more debt the game’s over.
Maybe you need a reality pill.
Peace
Re: Selling as Unselfish – Ted is right; it seems only salespeople believe this, and precious few at that. I used to think that the only difference between a salesman and pond scum was the pond. Now I believe selling can be noble, but isn’t necessarily so.
I once took a sales class where the instructor began by asking everyone what they wanted to learn.
One student said, “I want to learn how to get others to do what I want.”
The instructor asked, “But what about what others want?”
The student said, “I don’t care about them; I want to get what I want.”
The instructor wrote him a refund check and threw him out of the class. The way I define it, good teachers are good salespeople because they motivate their students to do what is in the student’s best interest, subject to the student being ethical.
Just because you are compensated for caring about others does not mean you are selfish.
What do others think?
Brooke
Another story I would like to mention here is of Sunil Bharti Mittal, who used every adversity he faced to his advantage and no doubt now he is one of the most successful and richest person in the world. He tells how he used every setback to his advantage.
You can read the whole article by Wharton here:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4306
This is great; I’d love to get a discussion going here – if for no other reason so that I might improve on my own ethics.
Re: Trading Room & Board for Labor - Ted equates trading room and board for childcare and manual labor as the equivalent to indentured servitude. I recall feeling this way when my parents forced me to do chores without compensation. Would you allow people to enter into an agreement to trade some amount of service for amenities instead of money? Colleges do this with dorm counselors and apartment owners do this with superintendents. Is this did a matter of degree or is it always wrong?
Adjust your price – While this may have been true in the great depression, I dont think your point applies today. The price of goods are currently increasing. Im not sure how taking a pay cut makes much sense. If someone working as an executive for Circuit City took your advice, they would have survived rounds of layoffs and paycuts only to be summarily let go when the company declared bankruptcy. What you call loyalty, I would call staying on a sinking ship. Instead of adjusting your price, you should always be looking for new opportunities.
“selling is an unselfish act that involves motivating others to do what is in their best interests, not just your own.” – There is not a single person on earth who would describe sales like this… other than a salesman.
Share; don’t do it alone – Im not exactly sure how allowing a couple that provides child care and manual labor for room and board equates to “Sharing”. It is much closer to indentured servitude. And Im sure those salesmen were thrilled with “sharing” 25% of their commissions.
What are you smoking Neeraj? You need a pill or something.
Some of the things that Brooke is saying makes sense some don’t. I would not share my house with somebody – there are enough loonies out there to sue me over some perceived injustice while they were living in my home. Besides the state makes it incredibly easy to get a house of your own – Section 8 anyone… Also, why work when there are food stamps. And get the money from the folks who are trying to work hard to achieve the Achieve the American Dream.
I just love this story. Thanks for sharing!