Its true that most Amish communities were relatively stable during the Great Depression. Obviously, it would vary among groups and locations, but this short piece gives some nice details and there's more in the book "The Great Depression in America" by Young and Young.

There's a few points to keep in mind:

• Amish people were much less likely to be in debt than a typical American. They preferred to own property outright and tried to avoid dealing with banks and lawyers when possible.

• Amish still had to deal with a reduction in sales of their farm/craft goods. A lot of their income depended on sales to people outside the community, and many of those people were broke.

• The Amish primarily lived in rural northeastern US, so they didn't have to deal with things like the dust bowl. Also, most of the non-Amish around them lived similarly simple lifestyles, as electricity and industry were not really common outside of larger cities. So while the Amish weren't hit as hard as the city dwellers, neither were many of their neighbors. The worst effects of the Depression were in large urban centers and the Plains states.

I remember asking my grandmother about the depression several years ago before I became "heathen". Most of the food and income in the community was and still is based off of agriculture which was very hard to do during the blowing winds of the dust bowls. Milking the cows with a lantern during the day, having crops blown away, etc made for even harder work than normal, but the Amish have always planned ahead (canning fruits, meats, vegetables, etc; rarely have house payments, and no car payments)and stuck together so while times were tough they were easily survivable.