Bernard Axelrad Scholarship Fund

Since the Great Depression of the 1930s I have been in training for the next one. All for naught, I thought, until talk of another Depression resurfaced in the wake of the recent stock market collapse.

Black Monday (October 19) left in its wake quite a general change in mood. The polls indicate that the buying public plans to postpone major purchases (a car, a home) and reduce discretionary expenditures (appliances, vacations and dining out).

All who owned stocks experienced a substantial decline in their paper wealth. Yet even those who didn't own any securities have been infected by the air of pessimism as a euphoric era grinds to a halt.

For the past five years the stock market has surged ever higher in extraordinary fashion, and it has fueled the rise of unprecedented consumerism and spawned the age of the Yuppie. An epidemic of "affluenza" has raged through the land. And, now, concern is in the air as to whether this period of mass self-gratification is coming to an end.

The stock market dive of 1987 made the kind of impact on our collective psyche that scholarly mention of yearly budget deficits of $200 billion, alongside annual trade deficits of $160 billion, couldn't. Suddenly we are all aware that something is awry and the usual Presidential rosy pronouncements are not all that reassuring: The bill for our credit card binge is now coming due.

For humanitarian reasons I would hate to see a Depression, but if perchance it should come I am well prepared for it. Throughout my Great Depression rearing I was programmed to do without so as to be ready for the next one.

Admittedly we were poor but, even more importantly, my father felt and thought poor. We ate bread and potatoes because those staples were both cheap and filling. To this very day I prefer bread and potatoes to haute cuisine.

Few people then had cars on the Lower East Side, and walking was the standard form of transportation. Even though the bus, streetcar and subway only cost five cents, they were not used wantonly. I walked 2-1/2 miles daily to college to save the nickel bus fare.

As a teenager in the '30s, I felt quite fortunate that I had a place to live (when you are young walking up five flights of stairs is no big deal) and plenty of food to eat. My Mom saw to that.

I felt sorry for the hungry and homeless foraging through garbage bins for scraps. Those who went "home" to their makeshift tents and cardboard shelters on the docks of 10th Street and the East River and, in tatters, huddled around a warming lire set protectively in one of those huge aluminum milk containers of that era.

It was not an easily forgettable sight.

There were men selling apples on street corners and others asking for handouts. Jobs were scarce and the unemployed, everywhere throughout the land.

We were a compassionate people then. Adversity engendered a sense of community, of sharing our food and lending a helping hand to the less fortunate. Many was the time that a stranger knocked at our door and, pleading hunger, was invited in to share our home cooked meal. The needy were never turned away by my mother.

Our apartment always was graced with a "pushke" where pennies were dropped for ultimate distribution to the indigent. We were not too poor for that.

Frequently on the sidewalk of my block I would see the meager belongings of a family evicted for being unable to pay the rent. On occasion my mother would initiate a collection (25 cents each) to forestall the ouster of an unemployed family until a job came along.

My impressionable teen years coincided with the Franklin Delano Roosevelt New Deal era with its Depression-palliative alphabet agencies.

While carrying a full program at City College (free tuition). I held down two jobs requiring 25 hours a week of my time. At one of the jobs I earned SI5 a month (30 hours) working for the NYA (National Youth Association).

Many a man brought home a paycheck only through the beneficence of the WPA (Works Project Administration); and, jobless and disheartened young men had available to them the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) where they could renew themselves by doing forestry work while being assured of three meals and a place to sleep.

Later there were low interest FHA (Federal Housing Administration) loans to help in purchasing that first little home, and the GI Bill to send one through college or trade school. I had all my tuition and books (as well as a monthly $75 stipend) paid through my entire Harvard Law School matriculation under the GI Bill. There was no other way I could have done it, and it was fair recompense for World War II service.

The 'alphabet agencies' of the New Deal era made government a benefactor rather than a burden.

Government was deemed our benefactor then. Without it many would not have survived, gotten an education, or maintained a shred of dignity and self-esteem. "Get government off our backs," Ronald Reagan's sanctimonious catch-words, may be popular today but not when I was growing up.

My first job as a college graduate in accounting paid me $5 per week. On that salary, as you might imagine, I brought my lunch and ate dinner at home. There was no room in that budget for epicurean indulgence.

Yet, with all the grimness of daily life in the post-Hoover Depression years, 1 was fairly happy and in good spirits. All around me were people in the same boat. Or worse.

Being poor was not a novelty.

We didn't have television to show us how the other half lived and arouse our anger at feeling deprived.

Lack of money also provided me with the most powerful incentive to obtain an education as a means of vaulting the ghetto walls and leaving poverty behind. I had a goal and few options along the way except to work and study hard.

Scarcity also taught me the value of money and the importance of properly investing and managing it — something that has stood me in good stead throughout my life.

While I now am and feel quite financially secure, those Depression years did leave their mark on me.

I am not a consumer of things and there are few material possessions I covet. I weigh purchases carefully, and wherever possible compare prices before buying. I detest waste and invariably finish the food on my plate, wear my clothes until well used and avoid conspicuous consumption. Like many of my peers I hate pay ing those exorbitant hourly parking rates and would rather circle the streets seeking free or metered parking.

Admittedly, I had no choice as a youngster. Now I do. What's so wonderful about the excesses, the status symbols. the gluttony and pursuit of material things that obsesses so many in our society? Is hedonism to be prized over asceticism'? Are physical possessions more to be valued than the spiritual and the aesthetic? Can happiness be bought?

For someone like me, whose perspectives were forged in the crucible of the Great Depression, the answers are easy.

If another Depression comes, I am ready.