9/29/2009:
We talk about tightening our belts in the face of economic depression, but even the struggles we face today are nothing like the struggles of the thirties. Many people across the nation lost everything in the Great Depression, and North Dakotans were not excluded.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt established his New Deal to provide for the recovery and relief of the many families fighting to get by. Congress began passing relief acts to aid the states, and in 1933, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration was created. Through this program, state assistance helped unemployed citizens by funding local work projects.
In southwestern North Dakota, one of the programs established was a cannery. In fact, it was housed in the basement of the Relief Administration headquarters in Dickinson. The cannery had multiple benefits, as it not only provided jobs for seventeen workers, as well as their supervisor, it also provided food for the impoverished and needy families around that area. They even used local food, grown on farms near town.
Every day, the workers at the Dickinson cannery labored hard at their tasks. They turned out 350 cans per day, consisting of a variety of items, including beans, corn, carrots, onions, rutabagas, tomatoes, beets, some soup mixtures, and pickles. On this date in 1935, they had already supplied ten thousand cans of vegetables to those who needed it. And, with all of this done, there was another important food to be canned to stock the shelves of the needy: sauerkraut.
The Belfield Review reported on this, stating, "Sauerkraut by the barrel seems to be quite a bit of sauerkraut to most people, but when you start to talk about sauerkraut by the ton, that's a lot of sauerkraut." And with several tons of cabbage already delivered, a lot of sauerkraut is what they were sure to get.
But then, in a community full of Germans, German-Russians, Polish and others of similar background, fermented cabbage by the ton was just another necessity-a comfort food to put the Stark County needy back on their feet.
Dakota Datebook written by Sarah Walker
Sources:
http://www.metrokc.gov/exec/bred/hpp/info/HP06_wpaleg.doc, "The WPA Legacy in King County," rev. 6/00, viewed 9-21-09.
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=886, "Federal Emergency Relief Administration," viewed 9-21-09.
The Belfield Review, October 4, 1935, p.1
http://content.lib.washington.edu/feraweb/index.html, FERA photographs