A Secret Gift

I just finished reading this very interesting book - A Secret Gift by Ted Gup.  Ted's Grandfather, Sam Stone, was a businessman in Canton, Ohio during the great depression.  Even though his business went into debt, he did not lose it.  Right before Christmas 1933 Sam Stone took out an ad in the local newspaper using a false name offering an annonymous gift of $10 to 75 families who were struggling that Christmas.  The response was so overwhelming that he changed it to $5 for 150 families.  A few years after his Grandfather passed away Ted's Grandmother gave him a suitcase of old family documents.  When Ted went through the suitcase he found an envelope with the original newspaper ad and all the letters his Grandfather answered with the $5 gift.  Ted goes on to research each family who received money to see what their circumstances were during the Great Depression, and how that gift helped them.  He finds descendents and askes about their families and how the Great Depression affected even future generations.  While researching the gift recipents Ted also researches his Grandfather's family and finds that his Grandfather had many secrets he hid from most of his family.  The book is fascinating as it takes you back to the Great Depression and you hear first hand accounts of how much people struggled to survive.

What struck me the most about this book was the VERY different attitudes of the people then versus people today.  In the past few years we've been in "the worst economic depression since the Great Depression", but the biggest difference to me is how much more the government is doing to help people - even though it doesn't really seem to be helping.  The author notes how all the people who responded only did so because it was annonymous - they would not have asked for help otherwise.  "It is difficult for Americans today to grasp the stigma that attached to government 'handouts' in 1933.  [in contrast] By February 2010, thirty-eight million Americans - one in eight - were on food stamps...For many today it is difficult to understand the stigma attached to going on the dole or accepting charity.  For men like my grandfather, who took such pride in escaping poverty and in providing for himself and his family, charity represented the final act of capitulation. It was not seen as a stop-gap measure to tide one over, but the repudiation of a lifetime rooted in self-reliance. The shame of poverty was tolerable - so many were in distress that Christmas of 1933 - but the loss of face that came of publicly applying for relief, of claiming that one's needs were equal to or superior to another's, of enduring the gauntlet of probing questions, of surrendering one's dignity and privacy, for many was too much to ask. They had already been stripped of so much. Self-respect was all they had left." (p.142-44).

It was very eye-opening to me to see the very different attitudes of people during the Great Depression versus today.  Today it seems like no one wants to take responsibility for anything - especially a mistake they may have made.  There were multiple stories of people in this book being allowed to pay only a fraction of their debts, but then however long it took, those people (including Sam Stone) paid back their debts in full.  Not so much today when everyone is clammoring for their mortgage to be reduced or a way for high interest credit card debt to be forgiven.  It honestly makes me sick to think about how much our society has changed in less than 100 years.  I think the incredibly hard working people who scraped by and survived the Great Depression would be ashamed of how our society is today - always with our hands out for more.

I rarely take this much time to write about a book, or really anything, on this blog, but this book was just so eye-opening to me I just felt compelled to.  Whatever you may think about government "help", this book is still a great book that looks back at a very hard time in our history.