Poverty In Early America 

My father grew up on the prairies and told me that it wasn't anything unusual for a childless couple to go to a family that had too many children and ask for one - they wouldn't be refused! Let's appreciate how blessed we are that those kind of choices no longer need to be made.

​@@humblesparrowAccording to our modern sensibilities. I like the idea of communities caring for everyone, even though not related. Children don't need parents, they need consistent adults in their life who care about them.

@@jaegrant6441 It is rather poignant when you think about it, but boy oh boy what a different world.

My parents unofficially adopted 3 sisters from an impoverished family down the street. Room, board, clothing, all of it. They called them my "foster sisters," though there was never any legal proceedings involved. It was just a deal between my folks and their mum.

@@kahl4077 Sounds like a much more caring situation than the old style - in my grandmother's case, the adopting family was primarily seeing it as acquiring a young but mostly-fully-capable employee who didn't have to be paid more than room and board. No accounts of this suggest there was any abuse involved, but it was not something the adopting family was doing out of charity and care for the girl they adopted; despite eating at their dinner table and so on, she was never really seen as part of that family in any way. Which sounds awful, but when the alternative is starvation for the whole family, the eldest child being sent off to work for and live with one of the richer folks in town is a pretty decent deal. And it's not like she was entirely cut off from her actual family.

Agreed! Thank you for telling the stories of the poor

It's only being honest. If he omitted it, it would be a lie of omission. It's less about serving a particular group, and being honest to the public. Still a good thing, and I'd argue a better thing, since his principles are impartial, instead of biased. I respect that kind of genuineness.

@@sinisterthoughts2896why are you the way you are

I agree, we have so much material about the movers and shakers of the past. The aristocrats and royalty and politicians and industrialists, but the common people and the poor shaped their times too.

​@@sulkthehulkbecause he likes being nuanced and precise.

Sounds like leased slavery to me!

@@chrissewell1608 Equal parts community service and employment. The children would eat while they worked, have a warm bed and a fire, and the parents could fend for themselves better when they didn't have children to care for. The farmer got some extra labour, but had to feed, clothe, and warm these children for a whole year. Not much different than in the USA where whole families would abandon their homestead, and move in with a farmer and trade labour for rent in the barn, that ended with the great dustbowl wiping out many farms though.

​@@chrissewell1608 it was, switzerland had Verdingsbuben into the 20th century. Some still are alive.

same thing happend in norway, its caled "barnevandrerene" or child walkers, as they walked to the rich southern farms of kristiansand to work a season

there is even a movie about it under the same name

Some people have this utopian view of the past. The rose colored glasses are stuck on them.

since labor is no longer back-breaking, we can safely let kids start doing it again

@@KairuHakubi at least teens should do it. 12 years old may be too young to handle the risks of beying under a strager's supervision... Specially now when employers request 5 years experience for theyr first job. It does not means experience in the area (unless specified), just means they need to have knowledge about the realities of working. Pretty sure if they had some years as a part-time clerk in a shop it whould be taken into consideration. I started at 14 as a mechanics aprentice, btw. After school, part-time, salary paid. It even counts towards my retirement...

@@carloshenriquezimmer7543 yeah i wouldn't trust anyone below teens to work a REAL job-job, but kids should be able to be.. let me think.. assistants reaching things on low shelves.. order-write-downers.. bagging assistants.. welcomers at a restaurant.. Y'know not too many hours, but honestly nobody should be working many hours. if you work even half as much as you sleep, where is your life?

@@KairuHakubi sure, I did many of those jobs, when I was 7 or so, but it was in my parents's store, not in a stranger's one. The problem with too-young kids is having them under the "supervision" of adults that may have certain "inclinations" towards them... many stories of abuse to turn a blind eye to this side of the question.

​@@carloshenriquezimmer7543 Exactly. Child abuse, sexual abuse, unwanted pregnancies at a tender age, hunger, sleeping on the floor, no blanket, no shoes, many sad stories. 😭💔

i love how the early american heroes were largely made of poor-ish immogrants and hard workers. not so much anymore, but the spirit of yesterday is still something to remember i think.

The jobs in the city are only part of the story and definitely a part of it the industrial revolution is definitely truly when things turned heavy, alot of it also has to do with corporate farming and industrial agriculture, corporate control of food resources especially corporations that produce and started producing shelf stable foods canned, boxed etc, leveraged farming trends often making it hard for small producers to compete, and subsidized farming, and many policies and regulations government agencies implement, have been lobbied for and are actually designed to push small producers out and Centralize agriculture, and were of great benefit to mass scale corporate farming since they were created the amount of farmers and the cheap prices on commodities are pretty good evidence of this statistically, despite the messages they sell of promoting agriculture and farming and all the "great loans they give to farmers." Lol

Poverty shaming is still a thing to this day. The problem is some in society see poverty as a moral failing rather than a societal one.

If you're in genuine need, it shouldn't be stigmatized.

😢

Horrific. ❤️‍🩹

that was nice of him !!!

Leave an unmarried pregnant woman to fend for herself.

My family history has indentured servitude as well.

My great grandfather was sold by his family from the time he was around six years old. His father was an alcoholic and it was easier to sell your child rather than sober up and get a job. That was around the late 1860s.

Got to expand on that a little. Being an indentured servant means you are being put to work by someone else, so I don't see what you mean by them having to find work or compete for it.

Truly a time when America was Great, as the Founding Fathers intended.

@@TootTootUSA One particular party wants to be back to those days.

I wonder if he builded up an immune system by stepping into the cow manure. Cows have two stomachs their manure is really healthy for plants. Because living to104 is really rare.

​@@annarowden9457 cows actually have 4 stomachs I have learned as a child. Stuff really gets chewed well and again, and well digested.

Poor kid without shoes working outside in ice and snow. Today we would scream 😱 child abuse and child labor, and make a very big stink about it. No doubt. Just 8 years old.

This is not uncommon - my grandmother was born in 1894 in Canada and while her immediate family did not suffer like that, her grown brother in the 30s did have to break up his children after the death of his wife - it was just the way it was, there was no child care if the mother was dead or gone, and the fathers had to work long hours, and often away from home for days at a time.

The best we'll ever have are trade off's.

Yeah... I thought the same. The numbers he posited were rather high and the damages and value of the crime and goods would have been steep.

Stealing livestock is quite literally taking food from someone's mouth.

Basically an equivalent of stealing your vehicle, and yes usually the outcasts and persecuted were sent to the colonies not just the British. Look at Australia initially.

@@ianfinrir8724 or even worse, stealing the propriety of someone's LANDLORD, that would have the teanent held accountable for it. Basically the teanent would be sent to jail, if the theft could not be prooven to be reason for the lost livestock. Just like Ned Kelly's father, sent to Australia for killing his landlord pigs (2, if I remember), but he sworne that they were stolen. IDK if the story is the truth or an anecdote, told to ilustrate the injustices that Kelly was figthing against;but, given that it was told as if was true, it certanly was not an uncommon happening.

My Grandpa was in 1930. He signed/agreed to it himself so he could gain passage to Canada from Scotland. He worked the land until his debt/room & board was paid off. [I don't know how long it lasted]

And to think, some conservatives want to return to that!

@@Tinil0 Nothing wrong with families staying together and working toward a common goal. Today's welfare is what is messed up about this country and creates no responsibility for one's own actions.

Australia only became that dumping ground once North America was no longer available after the Revolution.

You aren't wrong, but it was the next one.

I'd like it to be noted, that the white convicts and the indigenous Australians lived well together and often had mixed community encampments that were often raided and dispersed by military. The reason I want it noted is to demonstrate that it is the ones in power who want us divided, it's not part of human nature.

I was born in the late 1950's and there was a poor farm in our area even then.

I doubt you live "right now" as the impoverished lived then. Unless you live in the wilderness, which I doubt since you are on the internet.

Going to cry shenanigans because you're here and making that claim.

​@@Alte.Kameradenyou can be poor and still be on the internet, the internet is one of the most basic needs after all

The definition of poor is completely different than it used to be hell the definition of being homeless it's completely different people suffer today but they do not understand true suffrage

Me too!

Same and im in nyc 😢😢😢😢

Absolutely. Child molestation is not a new phenomenon.

As someone who is an optimist but knows that the world is unjust, I think you're spot on. Of course, I'd never judge nor try to justify why someone is poor, I know that sometimes life throws someone a hardball.

We have a problem with “poor”in our nation that we have created. We have a fourth generation of welfare recipients which is a huge burden on our economy. I’ve been in the lower brackets most of my life and have never asked for assistance and I believe that’s what the old timers wanted. My grandad that came from Arkansas said they never knew they were poor until the government told them they were. Our society puts far too much emphasis on being wealthy which leads to lazy and entitled children.

@@toddmichael4271 yeah... no. You're the problem. The vast majority of people recieving government aid are NOT lazy or entitled. There's a LOT of other reasons why people don't find work.

​​@@toddmichael4271So you're a poor person who hates poor people who have the balls to acknowledge the fact. You are the problem. Edit: you may want to explore why the top .1% of Americans own 50% of the wealth in the nation. *That's* why there are so many poor people.

Projecting pretty hard there. Shame is often used as a reinforcement, to make an undesired behavior less tolerable. It can obviously be abused or missaplied but to automatically conflate it with hate? You aren't wrong about people trying to explain it away, it's literally how human psychology works, we categorize and explain. Of course it's not always fair or or correct. And I believe you are right, people fear the spectrum of hardship, which makes sense from a survival and instinct level, again not necessarily fair or correct. The issue is every case is different, and for the many who are at a great disadvantage by fate and chance, there are is always some who fall into poverty from pior decision making or sloth. Gamblers addicts and free-loaders. It is those people who tend to stick out to the observer and cause the rationalizing, I posite, because those who are incapable of helping themselves are dismissed as such at a subconscious level. Therefore, the arguments are made in light of those who can help themselves yet spoken in general, due to subconsciously dismissing the others. Basically people are upset at some people's poor behavior, and they focus on what upsets them, and in their focus omit all the other people, who become collateral damage in the argument. Also the ones who refuse to help themselves will subconsciously make people suspicious of everyone else in dire straights, again due to the human minds predisposition towards categorizing.

REKT DELETE THIS

Incorrect

We do that in Islam too :)

Folks have been giving alms to the poor among them for thousands of years. The Romans had the grain dole, to which they added meat and other foodstuff

@DieNibelungenliad And God commanded the Israelits to not reap the corners of their fields in order to be considerate of the poor. Thank God for His commandments to teach us to be charitable.

We need much more of that.😬

My Mom ate lard n onion sandwiches to when she was a kid during Depression!