Starving Children In America

[mikey4444]

Just seen this on the BBC News website. I could hardly hold back the tears. This, in the worlds richest country, in a city where countless millions of dollars is wasted each year on slot machines :::

http://www.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9695000/9695217.stm

[starone]

I was brought up in the 1930's depression. My father was out of work and we were very poor. So were all the people who lived around us. I did not starve but I was certainly very often hungry. My mother was what might be called 'a good manager'. She would make a stew from bones she had begged from the local butcher and a few vegetables. I remember my father coming home from the local tip where he had found some potatoes growing in a corner. Great! Our clothes were patched and darned and in the winter we shivered at night under a couple of very thin blankets. Somehow or other we survived, and here I am nearly 86 and still here! And, believe it or not, I had a happy childhood, because one thing was not lacking in our house - love.

[emmie]

the handouts didn't come then, people were a lot prouder, maybe not a good thing, but the parents did go without, particularly the women, my mum was a cleaner the old man was a waster, my family struggled as did most of the street, friends, family, no one was wealthy, please don't say there was no hunger in the 1950's, my o/h suffered terribly in his later years from privation during the war and after when rationing was going on.
He never ever got over it.

[albaqwerty]

Didn't churches in the 50's help folk?
I'm sure that before the 'welfare state' there was help from other sources?

[emmie]

some, but it was certainly a different ethos, no one liked to accept charity then.

[Brenden]

And families were more united - very rarely moving away from each other - and helping each other even though mums rarely worked when the children were small.

[albaqwerty]

There are still people who don't like to accept charity too.
Although they may see it as such, it's not. It's their entitlement (I'm thinking about senior citizens, not those who milk the system)

[emmie]

brenden, all the family worked, well not so much my dad as he was a lazy t&&t, but all the women did, if you wanted to eat, you had to work.

[emmie]

alba, i was referring to charity back then, people were a lot prouder in the way they didn't see the state as being something that should take care of them from cradle to grave. Not to say that it's a good thing it came about as it has given people ultimately better, longer lives.

[albaqwerty]

I think I know what you meant Em, I wasn't having a pop. xx

One of many things which irk me is when politicians say 'folk are living longer' as if to imply if you're 50 and over you've exceeded your contribution to society.

I think you're right, that people were prouder in those days.
My parents were born in the 20's, so when growing up I got 'clean your plate'

[emmie]

sorry albs, me neither, our lovely sqadlet seems to believe we were all living high off the hog, some were, but most weren't.

[emmie]

i hated having free school meals, i didn't like them anyway, but the whole idea of it made me ashamed.

[Sqad]

ummmm

\\\\\Were kids still suffering from rickets in the 50's? \\\

No.........but they are today.

"Tosh" is just a touch disrespectful ummmm.

[Brenden]

Think I am going back a decade or so to you em, Mums normally went out to work when the children started school. No nurseries, no welfare state and you paid for a doctors visit.

[Brenden]

Starone, we used to pile all the coats on top of us as well - no radiators, no electric fires and more than likely no money for coal.

[emmie]

my great gran worked, as did my nan, as did my mother, it was a matter of fitting things around the children, one thing that has changed is generally there was always someone around to babysit, an aunt, or friend, anyone to collect children from school and get the dinner on if the woman worked late. My ma did various jobs, one of them was cleaning, so that could be fitted into a time around us.

[emmie]

i used to hate that as well, bundle us up for bed with moth eaten fur coats, i can't stand the things even now.

[woofgang]

There were children at my primary school who were hungry, who came to school in summer clothes in the dead of winter (mid 50's to early 60's). I have told before on here how we were taught from an early age not to comment if we saw one of those children wearing something that had been ours which we had outgrown.

[FredPuli43]

We had a welfare state in the 1930s for the relief from the consequences of unemployment. Before that we had unemployment benefit, from 1911, but it was restricted to 15 weeks' unemployment, and the Poor Law. What we did not have was the NHS.

So the good old days were pre NHS or pre 1931; take your pick !

[ummmm]

Sqad - you don't really have enough respect for other people to make that comment.

My mum was a child in the 50's...she has a memory of what it was like. Kids DID go hungry.

Also what is your experience? Very little I would say unless you've travelled the length and breadth of the country.