[Closed] PIC: A trip back in the time machine with children of the time,

quite a story, Dick...

A sad time in American history. Some of what you showed I had never heard of.

Thanks, Dick. I think it's time to read again THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Remember?

The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.

Or maybe just find the 1940 movie version, which had an impact also.

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"The American Dream".....Not! Thanks Dick.

I tend to look at these photos a bit differently.

I see a people that are hardy, tough and willing to work their hands to callouses in order to build a strong, independent country. Yes, times were tough but they were tougher. We have what we have today because of their commitment to the American Dream. They deserve not our pity but our respect, honor and gratitude.

Well said, John. Thank you.

Their "Dream" was to survive. They had little else to choose from.

+1

First I've heard of the "Orphan Train". Sad.

some photos show kids who seem to have taken everything.....

....in stride,completely un-phased by what were,even then,tough times........and there are those where the subjects seem to bear the weight of the world....close to 100 years later,those expressions are as powerful as ever....Thanks Dick,for a thought provoking post

IMO children are more resilient and adaptable than adults.

That may have been true for some people at the time, but those folks living in rural poverty did not have the luxury of dreaming of anything else than to live until the next day and that their children would survive the appalling child mortality number of the time and not to be taken by malnutrition, illness and disease. The land owners and the big city robber Barons were the people who realised the American dream and those ordinary people who could break free of their impoverished circumstances were to realise some kind of dream, but more an ambition to extricate themselves from grinding poverty often not so different from the counties of Europe from which most of them came. But the big difference was, the opportunity to improve their lives, the promise and hope they had and often struggled to realise - but did.
The American Dream as such was fired by Post WW2 mass consumerisim. All this, whether my take is up for interpretation did not in any event touch the lives of people in these pix. Now, the lucky ones, the Baby boomers like all of us here shared in the Dream and mostly prospered and passed on the dream to our children. But how many now can look around you and say that the dream is still alive?

A treasure of a book.....one of three for a (well lighted) desert island

Grapes of Wrath___Of Mice and Men___The Jungle

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Made into a Broadway play and is coming to Cleveland this year