Hard Times Archive
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How did ordinary Americans get by before there was a safety net? Before Social Security, unemployment checks, child labor laws, or electricity on the farm? Hard Times Archive answers one question per film, 1890 to 1955: what a family ate on a few dollars a week, how they got through a winter without power, where the old went when they could no longer work. Each film follows real people, found in the photographs and records of their time. Every picture is a genuine period photograph or film from public archives: the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information collections at the Library of Congress, Lewis Hine's child labor photographs, the National Archives. Photographers are credited on screen: Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Arthur Rothstein, Russell Lee, Jack Delano, Marion Post Wolcott. Prices and wages come from the documents of the day. No lists. No tips. No invented pictures. Just the true story of the American kitchen table.
