1930's Article

In an edition of Literary Digest, published on January 19, 1935, an article was written entitled “Turning Spotlight on the Forgotten Child.” During the 1930’s, America was in the time known as The Great Depression after the stock market crash of 1929. Just thinking back on The Great Depression, it was a time when “coming of age” must have been extremely prominent. Coming of age, I feel, does not have to happen only when you are an adolescent becoming an adult. I think it can come at any age in any form. When the wealthy lost their money, they had to learn to live a life of poverty, they had a coming of age experience; when the men had to go out and scrape for any small amount of money they could make, they had a coming of age experience; and when the wives were pushed into a position to act as a single parent while their husbands were out working like animals, they had a coming of age experience as well. Oftentimes, however, when we reflect on the time of The Great Depression, we forget about the children. This article is a plea for the world to remember those forgotten children because they are the future of the country. The article states that 1/6 of the nation’s child population, 7,400,000 children, are in families that are dependent on emergency relief, but since the emergency relief was so low, the children were not getting everything they needed. It says that the health and welfare of these children was in jeopardy.

One statistic form the article states that more than 700,000 of these children’s fathers were dead. This is definitely a means for coming of age. The children had to step up and assume responsibilities that were far beyond their years. These children were forced to skip their adolescence and grow up prematurely. They were suddenly thrust form school life into 8-hour shifts of working in factories and harsh conditions. Not only was this taking away the childhoods of these poor children, it was hazardous for people their age. During The Great Depression, we always remember those who worked to make a living for their families, and even those who helped out domestically to keep everything under control, but we often forget the poor children who had to suffer through their childhood and, oftentimes, lose their childhood entirely.

Although coming of age often has a positive connotation, in this case, I believe it has a negative one for the children. They had to grow up so fast and so harshly. While my coming of age story is about me going from a small private high school in Kansas to TCU and “growing up,” doing my own laundry, and cleaning my own sink, their coming of age story was so traumatic. Reading this article really put into perspective how blessed I am to live the life I live in the place I am and during the time that I do.