1930: The Sugarbag Years
April 28, 2022
By AHNZ
The Great Depression in NZ is called The Slump or The Sugarbag Years¹. The latter refers to the common practice of re-using sugar bags as clothing material. Flour bags too.
“When everyone needs a bailout, and government is broke, who does the bailing?”
We start eating our seed crop. We lower our standard of living. We defer maintenance. We rediscover interesting old recipes for tripe and liver. We find ways to eat pig’s heads and feet.
We water down our raw ingredients. We excavate our rubbish piles. We scavenge. We dress in sugar sacks and curtain fabric. We clad our houses in cardboard. We turn our furniture into firewood, we sell our capital. We yell and hit our kids for ripping the wrapping paper on their presents so it cannot be re-used next Christmas.
Food inflation: Do you really think our meat and bread and baking and dairy and beer and confectionery is half as good as your grandparents had?
Monetary inflation: The Government increases the money supply by printing more.
Durability vs Throw-Away society: Our stuff is junk now, cheap and breakable.
Shrinkflation: Quality of ingredients and side of products shrink down. Same bag size but more air, less product, within.
Technology: We find ways to stretch our materials further, weaving plastic into shapes just strong enough to do the job but no more. Propaganda technology and opiates allow us to tolerate what was once intolerable. The elasticity coefficient of our incredulity is raised. Artificial flavor tech allows us to swallow foods and drinks otherwise disgusting. Computers allow productivity to keep up with our lesser work ethic.
Health: Unable to afford or develop the medicines we need, we get sick. Unable to produce the specialists we need, we hire foreigners to heal us and teach us but they wont be sending their best. We will try to heal everything with make-believe oils and ointments because they are mysterious and affordable. We mistake being on a ‘health waiting list’ for health.
If we are K-selected we have fewer children because we can’t support them. If we are r-selected we have more children because we plan for some of them to die. Our social structure is thus stunted and set back in order to bail out the now.
We tax future generations to cover debts we took on and refused to cover.
Duct tape and Number 8 wire and faith become the scar tissue holding together the remaining healthy tissue of our bodies, things, and our community.
Libertarians get lynched for saying things like “Gold standard, I told you so…”
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1 The Sugarbag Years by Tony Simpson (1974) is a popular book about this history. In fact New Zealanders had been using sugarbags for all sorts, including clothing, as a matter of course in the 1800s already during non-depression times. It’s quite possible Simpson knew that but his title still resonates with people from a prosperous, even an elite, mindset that considers this sort of resourcefulness as a mark of poverty. Same people who wear a shirt or a gown only once.
Image ref. Boy’s shorts lining made from a flour bag, 1930s. Te Ara
2 thoughts on "1930: The Sugarbag Years"
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Loved the article in manawa newspaper newspaper written from Jock Phillips about this! Good wayto promote depression times as we anticipate a depression now also.
Recession seems to be a healthy part of the economic cycle but governments tend to make them worse in an effort to prevent them. None worse than Vogel of course.