“Growing Up” Paper Essay

The book Growing Up is about the reason Russell Baker and about his life growing up in the advance(prenominal) 1900s. He lived through legion(predicate) spartanships while he was growing up including his father, Benny, dying, his m otherwise having to give up one of her children for scoop oution, and living through the majuscule mental picture. Although his grow with the keen falling off was very noisome I count that Russell had a little bit above average life compared to other people living in that snip period.Russell was affected by the depression in many ways while growing up. Because his fuck off couldnt play a job she had a very difficult time supporting her family. Because of this, His puzzle let Bennys brother adopt their daughter Audrey to ease the financial burden on their family. (Baker p.85) Russell grew up without a sister that he would had had if it werent for the gr immerse depression. Not only did the coarse depression break up Russells family, it also forced them to shine away from his childhood home and live with his uncle Allen. (Baker p.88) Russell writes that his mother was originally divergence to stay in that respect until she found a quieten job and could split an apartment for herself. (Baker p.88) However this didnt work out and she ended up staying there a round longer.Allen is confident that he has a steady enough job to make it through the depression just delicately but he eventually takes in his brothers Charlie and Hal as well. It proves too more than and Russell and his mother move yet again, this time to Baltimore, where Russell is forced to see to it a job as a paper boy to help his mother out all that he can. The Bakers still fall on hard times and at one tailor they have trouble get money even for victuals. As a result of this they reverse to the establishment to receive handouts just to eat. (Russell p.200)In the book, Russell explains how his mother had to move out of their digest and live wit h her brother and his uncle Allen because the great depression had started and his mother couldnt find a job. (Baker p.88) Although thisis a bad situation to be in I feel that during the great depression it wasnt so bad considering there were people who had no home at all and actually had to stillness outside on newspapers.. (As shown by photo 3 in the powerpoint.) at that place were lots of people during the depression that has it a lot worse than Russell Baker. Russell and his family neer actually had to deal with being homeless. It was very common in turgid cities to have ramshackle shantytowns called Hoovervilles spring up on abandoned pop that was basically a town of homeless people seeking trade protection in homemade huts. (Foner p.637) (Photo6)Baker and his mother also managed to both find jobs in the city Baltimore. They werent well paying jobs and they still had to turn to the government for food handouts but they still managed to get jobs. Unemployment was such a b ig issue during the depression that whole companies were going under and ratiocination down, like U.S. Steel, who had 225,000 employed workers before 1929 and by the end of 1932 had zero. (Foner p.636) The fact that Russell and his mother both managed to find and keep jobs in Baltimore meant that they had it better that a lot of other people living in that city and they were very fortunate,The depression hit so hard in the major cities that people indomitable to start moving out to the country to try to grow food for their family on farms. In fact during the great depression more than 33 million people lived on farms. That was more than any previous point in American history. (Foner p.637) Russell Baker and his family never had to recourse to such uttermost(a) measures. They never had to grow their own food to be sure that they could eat that night. Not that conditions were any better in the rural farm areas. By 1930 some unusually dry weather had devastated the rural America, c ausing the reproach to dry up and a very severe drop in crop production. (Foner p.650) Things got so dry that the wind started blowing the topsoil away, creating the dust stadium which was basically giant sand storms that would decimate entire towns and homes. (Photo 5) Its full to say that it was a good thing Russell and his family didnt have to resort to living out in the dust bowl like so many other Americans.Russell was also able to attend college after he graduated high school. This is another point that illustrates how good Russell had it during the depression. Not many people had the privilege to go to college during this time period. Lots of people were any unemployed or working very hard at a job they were desperate to keep. The job situation had become so bad that the government started organizations specifically for creating jobs in America such as the NRA the abdominal aortic aneurysm and the CCC. (Foner p.67) Knowing that there were so few jobs that the government h ad programs specifically to bring to pass jobs makes you think just how lucky Russell was to be able to go to college during the great depression.I do not believe that Russell Bakers experience was the average experience during the great depression. Knowing what Ive read from the Foner textual matter and looking at the pictures on the powerpoint, I think it paints a untold different picture for the average experience of the great depression. One of discouragement and sadness that just doesnt show up in Russells story. Compared to todays life for most people He short had it rough but in a nation filled with homeless starving desperate people Russell didnt have it so bad. I think that he was very fortunate to live the way he did during the depression.