In our book
The Scavengers' Manifesto, my coauthor and I wrote about how the Great Depression -- which our
parents and others of their generation experienced -- had transformed ordinary consumers into resourceful hunters and gatherers who learned how to salvage, recycle, and re-use clothes, food, building materials and other things that in a more prosperous era would have been shunned or discarded as trash.
Shame and embarrassment fell away as this new mindset spread. During those hungry years, scavengers -- long reviled as misers and/or lowly trash-pickers -- suddenly rose in status as smart survivors.
Now I'm wondering whether we will see a similar societywide psychological transformation during the New Depression, or whatever we're going to call a crisis that finds over 17 percent of Americans unemployed (and over 30 percent of young African Americans, according to today's Washington Post). As money grows surrealistically scarce, will our values change? And will scavengers -- thrift-shoppers, Dumpster divers, Freecyclers, penny-savers and barterers -- become role models admired by millions?
As we wrote in The Scavengers' Manifesto, say you've never scavenged before in your life. Say you've always enjoyed the comforts of consumer retail culture as far back as you can remember. But then -- uh oh! -- circumstances change. Suddenly you're starving. Suddenly you're poor. When desperation takes over, do those scavenger skills that our species acquired over millions of years of evolution -- and which you might never have accessed even once yet in your life, because you've never needed them before -- automatically kick in?
By 1928, primitive hunting and gathering such as our earliest ancestors did was practically erased from the collective human memory. Then suddenly....
History has shown again and again how wars and disasters turn even the laziest, most shopping-addicted consumers overnight into foragers. At such times, anyone who was already a scavenger or who possesses scavenging skills such as vigilance and tolerance is way ahead of the game.
During the Great Depression, tens of thousands of displaced and newly homeless people gathered together for protection and created scavenger-settlements. Nicknamed "Hoovervilles" after then-president Herbert Hoover, these shantytowns sprang up from coast to coast, from Central Park and Brooklyn to Seattle's tidal flats, comprising shacks made of rocks, scrap metal, scrap lumber, cardboard, and wooden crates. Scavenged newspaper used as bedding was dubbed "Hoover blankets," and "Hoover leather" was scrap cardboard placed inside shoes whose soles were worn through. Hooverville dwellers ate food scavenged from wherever it could be found, which was usually urban trash cans. At its height, Seattle's Hooverville comprised over 200 shacks, housing unemployed World War I veterans and laborers from the failed fishing, logging, and construction industries.
A then-resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania described his local Hooverville as "one of the most unusual sights we've ever seen in any city. Here you will find men living in homemade 'houses' constructed of box wood and lumber, begging description. Many curious folks come out to 'Shantytown' and a guide eagerly shows one around
with explanations as to who is who and what is what in 'Shantytown.' Any donation you may give is part of the community chest and shared by all the dwellers."
As un-PC as it sounds, living through the Depression ended up raising many of our forebears' self-esteem, because all that scrimping and saving made them realize that they could take responsibility for their survival and could look after their families under difficult circumstances.
Scavengers-by-circumstance continue to surface during crises of all kinds. During the 1992-1996 siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serbs, many Sarajevans were seen collecting firewood and foraging in dumps and Dumpsters. Will a day come when that crisis befalls your town, your family, you? How would you build your Hooverville?
