For those who have time, winter is a great season to read some new books.
“Rot” by Padraic X. Scanlon is a book examining why Ireland was plagued by poverty and dependent on the potato as a staple food. Basically, Britain treated Ireland like a colony, draining its agricultural resources and limiting its citizens’ economic opportunities. Meat products, dairy foods, and grain were abundantly produced and sold to middlemen who in turned sold the food to British merchants. Heating and cooking were made possible by harvesting and burning peat.
If I understand correctly, Irish Catholics were prevented from holding office or owning land. Most were tenant farmers, and the cash they got for their farming went to pay for land rent. Hence their dependence on the cheap but abundant and nutritious potatoes as their main food source. When the potato blight was introduced accidentally, potato crops basically rotted in the fields with no means of preventing the calamity. Ag science was in its infancy, and no one knew what to do.
As often is the case, those in power blame the victim for their problems. Many Irish worked seasonally in Britain, harvesting crops there, as many English rural residents went to cities to work in factories. The colonizer held the Irish in contempt for being “lazy,” which of course they weren’t. Thousands died of famine and disease due to lack of basic nutrition, and those who were fortunate enough migrated to other parts of Europe and the USA.
“Shadows of Appalachia” by Mary O. Bremier details the harshness of life in the mountains in the eastern United States. Coal eventually drove the economic engine in that region, but during the depression, many were out of work of all kinds, and the few factories were shut down. Although her parents were educated as teachers, one only had to gain an eighth or ninth grade education to teach others. Living in used, dilapidated, houses, growing gardens, wildcrafting from the forest, and having just enough livestock for milk, meat, and transport, it was hardscrabble at best. Eventually, Ms. Bremier and several of her siblings got a college education (thanks to “New Deal” programs and philanthropic donors) and were able to break the bonds of poverty. However, her father was too proud to accept any jobs in the Works Progress Administration or any of the Roosevelt Administration’s programs because of pride, considering them “make work” jobs. He and his wife instead took remote teaching jobs, which provided a living, but required their absence from the homestead, putting pressure on the older siblings to manage the younger ones and care for the livestock. They owned land, but often the land ended up owning them.
Poverty can be a means of becoming resourceful, but it also creates opportunity for the powerful and privileged to take advantage of the poor and powerless.
Mark Roalson
Hoyt Lakes