President Bush and Congress are concerned with the economy and the possibility of a recession. Recessions are usually defined as a “temporary falling off of business activity.” Thus they are devising a stimulus package – doling out $150 billion to consumers and businesses to stimulate buying and propping up the economy.

A depression is a severe economic downturn (such as the U.S. experienced from the so-called Black Tuesday of Oct. 29, 1929, when the stock market crumbled) where we experienced a slacking of business activity, widespread unemployment, prices rising and falling wages. By the end of 1930, millions were jobless and hungry and despairing men pounded the pavements in search of nonexistent jobs. Employees who were not discharged had their wages and salaries slashed. Wall Street became a wailing wall as gloom, doom and suicides increased alarmingly.

More than 5,000 banks collapsed in the first three years of the depression – as did the life savings of tens of thousands of widows and retired citizens. Savings were gone. Countless thousands of honest, hard-working people lost their homes and farms to foreclosures. Bread lines formed, soup kitchens dispensed food, and people were forced to peddle their belongings to raise money to feed their children.

I remember riding on the narrow gauge trains, past the shantytowns in East Boston, and seeing people standing in bread lines. Their lodgings were made of cardboard and scrap metal that had been assembled in an area where coke cinders and coal ash were leveled to make their shantytown villages. Just thinking about this brings tears to my eyes and sadness to my heart. It was awful.

Too much money was going into the hands of a few wealthy people. Through no fault of their own, thousands of industrious citizens had lost everything. They wanted to work, but there was no work. People lost their self-respect and ended up as panhandlers begging for food or charity. I read where in extreme cases ragged individualists slept under “Hoover blankets” (old newspapers), fought over the contents of garbage cans, or cooked their findings in old oil drums in tin and paper shantytowns.

Today, the United States is wrestling with a potential recession that could be a prelude to another depression. Today in the U.S. we have a serious problem where the top 1 percent of our population owns half of the country’s wealth. In regard to income, the bottom 20 percent take home a decreasing share, and the top 20 percent take home an ever-increasing portion of the total. Real wages are decreasing today and many people have to work two or more jobs – if they can find them – to make ends meet.

I read recently that in America today the distribution of wealth is more unequal than in any industrial country in the world. Corporate control is largely to blame for the growing concentration of wealth. Since 2000 we have had an increasing number of millionaires and billionaires and an increasing number of people living in poverty. Imagine: Some 47 million American citizens do not have health coverage. This is stark contrast to other industrial nations like Japan, Canada, England, France and Germany that have universal health coverage. All their citizens are considered worthy of health care, whereas in the U.S. we call this socialism. In the other countries health care is considered a right. In the United States we evidently believe it is a privilege.

We must remember that our democracy was founded on the premise of equality. There is great danger for our country if this disproportion creeps back to the inequality of the 1930 era. This could be the undoing of our great country.

As for the $150 billion stimulus project put forth by President Bush, where will the money come from? Because our government has been operating on a credit card policy, we will borrow it. We have a national debt of more than $9 trillion. In 44 of the past 48 years the U.S. has borrowed money to keep our government afloat – the exceptions being 1960 and 1998 through 2000. In the past seven years we have borrowed more than $3 trillion, mostly from China, Japan and anyplace else we could siphon money to keep us afloat financially.

One of the driving forces of this inequity of the distribution of wealth is the fact that, like the presidents back in the 1920-1932 era, the people in control of our government believe the business of government is business. It is amazing that many still believe in the Hoover and Reagan “trickle-down theory.” We must take a hard look at the economic theories of government and the corporate controllers.

When I watch the stock market today and at the mortgage foreclosures, the unemployment figures and the increasing cost of everything, I get nervous. I hope and pray we are not heading for another depression.

Nat Crowley Sr., a former state legislator, lives in Stockton Springs.