on the cover / By Heidi Walters

Humboldt Depression

The 1930s were worse. Things are pretty bad now. But there’s always chickens, berries and the family jewels.

(March 19, 2009)  Clomp clomp clomp clomp. I look around guiltily. It’s one of those warm, half-sunny weekend days about to turn gray and wet, and lots of people are outside in my Eureka neighborhood, walking dogs and playing tennis or just sitting on the porch drinking in air soaked with the scent of plum tree blossoms. My new boots are too loud; they leave a trail of sidewalk echoes yammering about frivolous spending.

Hundreds of people out of work in this county, and here I’ve got me some new boots. Lumber mills shut down. Pulp mill on indefinite hold. Eureka Reporter — my fellow newspeople! — kaput. Stores and restaurants and auto shops — oh, that’s bad, too: I ordered these boots online, from somewhere far away. True, it is the first time I’ve done that; usually I “buy local.” And, you know, they were on sale. And I didn’t use a credit card. And a gift certificate paid for half of them. And nobody sells this particular boot here.

GALLERY >

But did I need them?

Part of my guilt, admittedly, is from the pleasure that the online ordering rendered. Aside from agonizing over the ridiculous abundance of choices, it was so easy: a few mouse clicks, a debit card number, and next afternoon the beautiful boots are on my doorstep. Hey, I’m keeping the delivery folks busy. And my boots came in two cardboard boxes — pulp, anyone?

Ah, hell. Guilt, counter-guilt. Thing is, more than just to indulge in a parade of vain paranoia and useless self-flagellation, I’m actually walking around out here on a mission. I’m searching for sidewalks and buildings with the mark of the WPA. In the mid-1930s, in response to the Great Depression, President Roosevelt’s New Deal began putting the masses of unemployed people back to work through such entities as the federal Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. They built roads and bridges, public buildings, park facilities and trails, sidewalks.

And since everyone’s talking about the Great Depression these days and wondering how our hard times compare to those hard times, I’ve been wondering about it too. How did Humboldt County people weather the Great Depression? And, for that matter, how are Humboldtians reacting to the present economic crisis?

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A recession, the experts are calling it, and a far cry yet from the Great Depression when unemployment soared over 25 percent nationwide. In an address at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. two Mondays ago, Great Depression scholar Christina Romer, nominated by President Obama to lead his council of economic advisors, called the current nationwide unemployment rate of 8.1 percent “a terrible number that signifies a devastating tragedy for millions of American families.” But she noted that there are far more social safety nets for people today than in the past. She noted some similarities in the causes of the Great Depression and the present economic situation: decline in the value of assets, shattered consumer confidence, bank failures (nearly half failed in America during the Great Depression, said Romer, vastly more than have conked today), a large drop in wealth, credit freeze, bankruptcy, more people refusing to spend. And it was worldwide. But Romer declared big differences between how FDR’s administration dealt with the Depression — small (though welcome) measures for a gargantuan problem — and how Obama’s is dealing with our recession. Today’s $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Romer said, “is simply the biggest and boldest countercyclical fiscal action in history.”

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