History Rhymes

We are blessed with a wonderful establishment here in Baltimore called The Book Thing. I really hope this thing exists in other cities, because it is truly a book-nerd’s paradise. The way The Book Thing works is simple: Bring all of the books, magazines, manuals, etc… you’re tired of tripping over in your basement to an old stinky warehouse, and donate them. In exchange for your donation, you get a tax write-off in the same fashion as Goodwill or the Salvation Army.

Now I’ll admit that this sounds pretty standard-fare at this point, but here is where it gets good. Volunteers at The Book Thing take all of your readable donations, stamp the inside cover with the words, “Not For Resale – THIS IS A FREE BOOK”, sort them by content, and then stock them on what must be a hundred shelves made from donated 2 x 4’s. At this point anyone—it doesn’t matter if you made a donation or not—can walk through the place and take whatever they want, free of charge! And when I say anything, I mean anything. You can take two books or two-hundred; it’s all the same to them.

The place is awesome. The thing I like most is that I often find very old, out of print books written by long forgotten authors. I am reading one such book now, called Only Yesterday. It was written, in 1931, by a man named Frederick Lewis Allen, and is basically a political and social history of the roaring twenties, written at a time when the country was just beginning to understand that the Great Depression was going to be great indeed.

This book is chock-full of choice observations of the things that led the country into depression, but one paragraph in particular is so choice it deserves a special mention, because with the exception of the laughably small dollar amounts mentioned in the writing, it very well could have been penned yesterday:

“Prosperity was assisted, too, by two new stimulants to purchasing, each of which mortgaged the future but kept the factories roaring while it was being injected. The first was the increase in installment buying. People were getting to consider it old-fashioned to limit their purchases to the amount of their cash balance; the thing to do was to “exercise their credit.” By the latter part of the decade economists figured that 15 per cent of all retail sales were on an installment basis, and that there were some six-billions of “easy payment” paper outstanding. The other stimulant was stock-market speculation. When stocks were skyrocketing in 1928 and 1929 it is probable that hundreds of thousands of people were buying goods with money which represented, essentially, a gamble on the business profits of the nineteen-thirties. It was fun while it lasted.”

- Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday, c.1931

So you see folks, we’ve been here before. And here we are again… a country full of people spending tons of money we don’t have on tons of things we don’t need. You would think we would have learned something from all of this, eh?

Do yourself a favor and buy some physical gold and silver (that is if you can find some silver, there’s a 4-6 week wait for Eagles and Maple Leafs at most of the big bullion houses), and stick it in a safe place until a rainy day. If history is any indicator, this could very well be a rough ride. You have a choice… you can profit from it, or suffer because of it.

P.S. After posting this article, I did a little more research on Frederick Lewis Allen, and found Only Yesterday, it it’s entirety, online! I’ve always found reading entire books from a monitor screen to be a bit tiresome but if it’s your bag, then have at it, it’s a wonderful read. -Tom