123
Toasting the Champion.
THE AGE GF TO
GREAT DEPRESSION
1929-1941
BY
DIXON WECTER
CHAIRMAN OF THE RESEARCH^GROUP, HUNTINGTON LIBRARY
|f Otft
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1948
COPYRIGHT, 1948,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,
All rights reserved no part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission in writing from the pub-
lisher,, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief
passages in connection with a review written
for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.
First Printing.
Printed in the United States of America.
Everything nailed doivn is comin* loose*
The Angel Gabriel in MARC CONNELLY, The Green
Pastures (1930).
It does not follow* because our difficulties are stu-
pendous* because there are some souls timorous
enough to doubt the validity and effectiveness of our
ideals and our system, that we must turn to a State-
controlled or State-directed social or economic system
in order to cure our troubles. That is not liberalism;
it is tyranny.
HERBERT HOOVER, in acceptance of renomination,
August 11, 1932, Campaign Speeches of 1932 (N. Y.,
1933), 8-9.
History proves that dictatorships do not grow out
of strong and successful governments, but out of
weak, and helpless ones* If by democratic methods
people get a government strong enough to protect
them from fear and starvation* their democracy suc-
ceeds; but if they do not f they grow- impatient*
Therefore* the only sure bulwark, of continuing lib-
erty is a government strong enough to protect th& in-
terests of the people f and a people strong enough and
well enough informed to maintain its sovereign con-
trol over its government. We are a rich Natfon; we
can afford to pay for security and prosperity without
having to sacrifice our liberties in the bargain.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FROM RICHES TO RAGS 1
II. NEW DESIGN FOR LIVING 25
III. CHANGE OP COMMAND 41
IV. THE HUNDRED DAYS 61
V. THE CITIZEN AND His GOVERNMENT * . 81
VI. UNIONS ON THE MARCH 107
VII. TOWN AND COUNTRY IN A CHANGING WORLD . 123
VIII* OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS . . . * 154
IX* YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE . * . .178
X. AGE IN QUEST OF SECURITY 200
XI. THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 219
XII. READING, WRITING AND REVOLUTION * . * 244
XIII. THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE 272
XIV. RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY 294
XV. CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES . . .317
INDEX . 343
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE PAGE
I. TOASTING THE CHAMPION Frontispiece
This cartoon by Burns Jenkins, jr., in the New York Journal,
January 30, 1934, symbolizes the confidence of the "forgotten
man" in the president who on taking the oath of office declared,
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself/'
IL FIRST BLOWS OF THE DEPRESSION facing is
(a) The apple seller was a common sight on city streets in the
early months of the Depression, The scene here pictured shows
Congressman Fred A Hartley, jr., of New Jersey, buying an apple.
Acme Photo, New York City.
(b) "Hoovervilles," sardonically named after the Republican
president, sprang up at city edges and in vacant lots throughout
the country. This view is an example of depression pioneering on
the bank of the Harlem River, New York City. Courtesy of Inter-
national News Photos, New York City.
HI. THE BONUS MARCHERS, 1932 facing 19
A contingent of the so-called Bonus Expeditionary Force, which
numbered over 10,000 veterans of the First World War, is here
shown parading in front of the Capitol. Courtesy of Harris &
Ewing, Washington, D. C.
IV* PRESIDENT AND MRS. ROOSEVELT LEAVE THE SECOND IN-
AUGURATION facing 50
Quite apart from Roosevelt's overwhelming victory in 1936,
the second Inauguration has importance as marking the shift of the
presidential term from March 4 to January 20 under the recently
adopted Twentieth Amendment. Courtesy of International News
Photos, New York City.
V. CONSERVATIVE FEARS OF THE NEW DEAL . . . facing 51
Roosevelt's pampering of the underdog, according to anti-New
Dealers, could only result in opening the gate to a far more fero-
cious pack of dogs. This drawing by "Ding" (J. N. Darling)
appeared in the New York Herald Tribune syndicate. From a col-
lection in the Huntington Library. The cartoonist, who began his
professional career in 1901 on the Sioux City Journal, served
briefly as chief of the biological survey in the department of agri-
culture under the New Deal, 1934-1935,
VI. ATLANTA SLUMS GIVE WAY facing 82
Eleven blocks of Atlanta, Georgia, the city's worst slum district,
were converted into the model Techwood Homes by the PWA.
Courtesy of the National Housing Agency and Public Works Ad-
ministration, Washington, D. C*
ix
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE PAGE
VIL A SHARECROPPER'S FAMILY .*.... f act ' ng 33
Hopelessness and poverty were typical of these underprivileged
folk. Courtesy of Press Association, Inc.
vm. AMERICANS IN FLIGHT f acing 114
An uprooted family from southern Texas on their way in
August, 1936, to the Arkansas Delta to work in the cotton fields.
They have no food and only three gallons of gas in the tank*
Photograph by Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of Library of Congress."
DC "ARKIES" AT "HOME" fadng \\5
An Arkansas family in February, 1936, after seven despairing
months in California. Photograph by Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of
Library or Congress.
X. TRANSFORMING THE TENNESSEE VALLEY . . . facing 210
(a) Fontana Dam rises 480 feet from its base in the Little
Tennessee River in North Carolina and creates a reservoir con-
taining more than a million acre-feet of water with an installed
generating capacity of 135,000 kilowatts.
(b) These adjoining farms in Madison County, North Caro-
lina, comprise one (on the left) managed according to TVA prin-
ciples and another (on the right) neglected and eroded according
to native custom. Thousands of demonstration farms presently
showed the Valley folk the benefits of cover crops and phosphate
and lime in restoring and preserving soil fertility. Both pictures
by courtesy of Information Service, TVA, Knoxville, Tennessee.
XL THE HARVARD TERCENTENARY . . . . . f^ n g 211
America's oldest institution of higher learning celebrated its
Aree-hundredth anniversary on September 16-18, 1936. President
James Bryant Conant in his address observed, "Harvard was
founded by dissenters. Before two generations had passed there was
a general dissent from the first dissent. ... We are proud of the
freedom which has made this possible. , . ." Pointing to the
miasma of mtolerance arising in the world, he called for a reas-
sertion of ancient principles: "The origin of the Constitution, for
example, me functioning of the three branches of the Federal Gov-
ernment, the forces of modern capitalism, must be dissected as
fearlessly as the geologist examines the origin of rocks. On this
point there can be no compromise . . . ." Anon., Notes on the
Harvard Tercentenary (Cambridge, 1936), 68-69/For a vew of
Harvard m 1767, see E. B, Greene, The Revolutionary Generation
(A History of American Life, IV), opp. 124. The present Scurl
is reproduced by permission of the Harvard University News Office?
XIL SOCIAL PANACEAS fac{ 2 42
ftom a couection fa
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE PAGE
(b) The three would-be messiahs are responding to the plaudits
of a national convention assembled in Cleveland's Public Audi-
torium in July, 1936, to merge the forces supporting the late
Huey Long's Share-Our- Wealth scheme, Father Coughlin's Union
for Social Justice and the Townsend plan. The bad showing of
their Union party in the presidential election brought it to a speedy
end. Courtesy of International News Photos*
xnL POPULAR DIVERSIONS ........ facing 243
(a) This youthful swallower achieved a score of twenty-nine
goldfish. According to press accounts, an Anti-Fish Swallowing
Society of college mates demanded that he swallow two gallons of
water daily to give the fish a place in which to swim. Wide World
Photos.
(b) A zoot-suiter jitterbugging. International News Photos.
(c) Opening of the American Soft Ball Association at Loyola
Stadium, New York City, April 7, 1936. Lois McLeary of the
Von Elm team is hitting a three-bagger. Betty Chilson of the Edgar
Kennedy team is the catcher. Press Association, Inc.
(d) Skiers in New York's Central Park, February 15, 1940.
Press Association, Inc.
XIV. SCENE FROM "THE PETRIFIED FOREST" '(1934y . . facing 274
This play by Robert E. Sherwood dealt with the theme of
rugged individualism as symbolized by "Duke," a gangster, and
"Squier," an aesthete, who have fled to the petrified forest, where
their now archaic types, it is implied, are destined to turn into
inanimate stone. Humphrey Bogart ("Duke*') is seated at the
extreme left, while Leslie Howard ("Squier") stands in the center
front. Courtesy of the Harvard Theatre Collection. Early in 1936,
in "Idiot's Delight," Sherwood began arguing the issues of the
approaching world conflict, and in "Abe Lincoln in Illinois"
(1938) he portrayed democracy as a living force. A close asso-
ciate of Roosevelt's, he became one of the principal drafters of the
president's speeches.
XV. AS THE ARTISTS SAW IT ....... facing 275
(a) William Gropper, born in New York's lower East Side in
1897, achieved his art through revolt against the conditions of
injustice and oppression under which he ^ grew ^ up. He was for
many years a cartoonist before turning painter. "For the Record"
shows his power as a political satirist. Courtesy of the Associated
American Artists Galleries, New York City. .
(b) Charles E. Burchfield, the artist of "End of the Day,
was born in 1893 at Ashtabula, Ohio, and worked as a wallpaper
designer before becoming a landscape painter. According to Homer
Saint-Gaudens, The American Artist and His Time (N. Y., 1941)
282, he "has the perfect instinct for drawing out the spiritual
essence of even the drab subjects he chooses*** Courtesy of the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts*
XVI. Two WORLD EXPOSITIONS ....... facing 306
(a) The Federal Building at the Chicago fair of 1933 as seen
from the Sixteenth Street Bridge. Reproduced from a photograph
xii ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE PAGE
by Kaufmann ?? Fabry Company in anon., The Official Pictures
of a Century of Progress Exposition, 1933-1934 (N. Y., 1933),
unpaged. For architectural contrast, see the view of the Chicago
World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in A. M. Schlesinger,
The Rise of the City (A History of American Life, X) , opp. 285.
(b) The trylon and perisphere, symbols of New York's fair,
denoted an architectural modernism considerably in advance of
Chicago's display of six years before. Courtesy of International
News Photos. With the theme "The World of Tomorrow*' the
opening ceremonies were held on April 30, 1939, in a great en-
closure called the "Court of Peace." These two phrases proved to
be an ironical comment on future events.
XVIL ARRIVAL OF BRITISH REFUGEE CHILDREN . . facing 307
^After the fall of France in June, 1940, thousands of British
children were sent by their parents to the United States as a haven
from Nazi bombing raids. They were placed with American fam-
ilies who thus learned by direct report of the terrors of total war-
fare. Many of the youngsters remained throughout the war, facing
problems of readjustment when they returned to the homeland.
This picture, representing a scene in July, 1940, was supplied by
International News Photos*
THE AGE OF THE
GREAT DEPRESSION
CHAPTER I
FROM RICHES TO RAGS
IN mid-October, 1929, the average middle-class American
saw ahead of him an illimitable vista of prosperity. A newly
inaugurated president, Herbert Hoover, had announced sob-
erly in the previous year that the conquest of poverty was no
longer a mirage: "We have not yet reached the goal, but
given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last
eight years, and we shall soon with the help of God be
within sight of the day when poverty will be banished from
the nation/* * This was the economic promise interwoven
with what a popular historian soon would call the American
Dream. More complacently, Irving Fisher and other econ-
omists in the confidence of Wall Street assured the citizen
that he was dwelling upon "a permanently high plateau" of
prosperity.
This upland of plenty more tangible than the Beulah-
land dear to the old Protestant hymnal appeared to be the
final triumph of a great industrial development dating from
the Civil War* The aftermath of America's latest war had
seen the arrival in strength of mass production, to compound
the wonders of the new technology. Even now, in this third
week of October, 1929, with the president and other notables
in attendance, Henry Ford was sponsoring the "Golden Jub-
ilee of Light/* honoring Edison and the fiftieth birthday of
the incandescent lamp. Motor cars, bathtubs, electric refrig-
erators, radios, were the touchstones of progress. Keeping up
* Speech accepting the nomination of the Republican party, N. Y. Times,
Aug. 12, 1928. With omission of "yet" and "soon" and "with the policies
of the last eight years/' Hoover stontly repeated these words in the depths of
the Depression, in his Madison Sqnare Garden speech of October 31, 1932.
Herbert Hoover, State Papers (W. S. Myers, ed., N. Y., 1934), JL 426-427.
1
2 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
with the Joneses, under the spur of fashion and advertise-
ment, demanded nothing less than the latest modeL Pressures
of salesmanship urged even the duplication of luxuries two
cars in every garage in a consumer's market already display-
ing symptoms of surfeit, not because all Americans were
gorged with worldly goods, but because buying power was
unevenly distributed.
The nation's policies and institutions were closely en-
meshed with the prosperous middle class. "The suburban
community is the dominant American group/' one observer
wrote in the summer of 1929* The increasing stress upon the
solidarity and good fellowship of certain organizations fra-
ternal orders, business men's luncheon clubs, Legion conven-
tions and the moral meddlesomeness of others like the
Anti-Saloon League bred a regimentation which he feared as
foreshadowing "the group from which the Fascist! of the
future will be drawn, if there are Fascisti." That Babbitt
might ever doff his natty silk shirt for one of brown or black
was problematical; but the cult of conformity, in so far as it
boosted material success, was in the saddle. Cotton Mather,
Ben Franklin, Peter Parley and Horace Greeley would have
understood the spirit of the times, even though old maxims
of drudgery and penny pinching seemed to have been by-
passed for quicker ways to wealth.
Time, liveliest weekly of the decade, in January, 1929,
hailed Walter P. Chrysler as "Man of the Year," because
during the past twelvemonth he had introduced the public to
Plymouth and DeSoto cars, bought out Dodge Brothers for
one hundred and sixty million dollars and begun to build "the
world's tallest skyscraper, a 68-story colossus." * Now, on
the cover of Time for October 14, 1929, appeared the face of
William Wrigley, jr., to be followed in successive weeks by
*As announced in January, 1930, "Man of the Year" was Owen D.
Young, author of the Young Plan for the payment of German reparations
and also endowed with the glamour of great wealth; but Time's choice for
the following year, by significant contrast, was Mahatma Gandhi.
FROM RICHES TO RAGS
Harry R Guggenheim, Ivar Kreuger, Samuel Insull and
Thomas W. Lament heroes alL The last issue before the
Wall Street crash carried a triple-page announcement of the
new magazine Fortune, at the "unique price of $10 a year/'
which proclaimed the "generally accepted commonplace that
America's great achievement has been Business/* Other large
advertisements featured Babson's Reports ("Your Dollars
Are They Continuously and Efficiently at Work?"), the
Hamilton watch ("Can you tell a successful man by the
time he carries?**) , Robert L Warshow's new book The Story
of Wall Street ("These giants march through its pages * . .
like the adventurers of the middle ages . . . Daniel Drew, Jim
Fisk, Jay Gould, Vanderbilt, Hill, Harriman . . . and the
many others whose exploits have astounded the nation"),
and the investment services of a firm to collapse in 1932 leav-
ing millions in defaulted bonds, S. W. Straus & Co, ("He in-
vests his modest earnings in good sound securities") . They
represented the stimuli which beat incessantly upon the mind
of the average magazine reader.
Masses of Americans who bought their first bonds in the
liberty loans of 1918 had lately turned to more speculative
issues* Advertisements flaunting high prices instead of bar-
gains from $45,000 apartments on Park Avenue and bath-
rooms equipped with "Crane Louis XVI Trianon Fittings
Gold-Plated, " down to $2.50 lipsticks and razor blades at
three for fifty cents set the sumptuary scale for a generation
of easy money. To keep abreast of the traffic in this climb to
the highlands of permanent prosperity, the stock market was
the obvious vehicle. In 1920 there had been 29,609 stock-
brokefs in the United States; within ten years they had
jumped to 70,950. It was commonly observed that a great
many citizens no longer read the front page of their news-
paper, but turned hurriedly to the financial columns. Tabloid
papers and tip sheets offered investment advice to amateurs.
Over the radio flowed the voice of the "Old Counselor/*"
4 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
steady as a deacon, intoning the wisdom of Samuel Insull's
own brokers.*
Popular interest was growing about the mystery of busi-
ness cycles. Whether they were ruled by overproduction or
underproduction, banking operations, innovations in
method, hysterias of hope or panic, or perhaps sun spots,
was not clear. Guessing was garbed in the robes of prophecy.
Wishfulness took priority over planning. Optimists believed
that the old laws of economics had been arrested; others con-
ceded that rainy days might come, but after every storm the
skies must clear if everybody, as the season's most popular
song exhorted, would keep his sunny side up. Above all,
recession was the abnormal thing. Prosperity needed no ex-
planation. Nor was it the monopoly of so-called leisured
classes, or the Republican party, despite their effort to claim
all the credit.
If a man saves $15 a week, and invests in good common
stocks, and allows the dividends and rights to accumulate,
at the end of twenty years he will have at least $80,000
and an income from investments of around $400 a month.
He will be rich. And because income can do that, I am firm
in my belief that anyone not only can be rich, but ought to
be rich.
So declared John JL Raskob, chairman of the Democratic
national committee, in the summer of 1929. Employees were
encouraged to invest in the stocks and bonds of their em-
ployers a system regarded somewhat vaguely as the Amer-
ican equivalent of profit sharing, or perhaps social security.
Much of this buying of stocks was on margin, which
meant that investors, including the small fry with little cash
but big hopes, put up about a fourth of the price. The broker
* The identity ^ of this famous character was a minor mystery. While the
k*^,, * ^k* 7 * Stuart % Co., his sponsors, told a Senate committee that
tfce "Old Counselor" was a University of Chicago professor paid $50 a week
to read their script, the president of NBC, M. H. Aylesworth, testified that
tie was an actor. Ruth Brindze, Not ro Be Broadcast (R Y., 1937), 40-41.
FROM RICHES TO RAGS
advanced the rest by borrowing from banks. This precarious
credit structure of brokers' loans had trembled in February,
1929, when the Federal Reserve Board ordered member
banks not to lend money for such speculative purposes. But
private bankers, led by Charles E. Mitchell, had promptly
unlocked their millions for speculation and given a further
fillip to the great bull market and the age of confidence upon
which it was built. This caused another spasm of activity,
unwarranted by any such tangibles as consumer demand,
gains in productive efficiency or real earning of the stocks in
question. While the rich were growing richer, several million
citizens with small incomes were raiding their savings, reduc-
ing their immediate purchasing power and mortgaging their
future in order to speculate. Ninety per cent of these market
transactions in the twenties, it has been estimated, were gam-
bling ventures rather than permanent investments.
Almost imperceptibly a shift had occurred in economic
control, from the industrial capitalism of an earlier day to
finance capitalism. Exploitation of investors and frequent
duplicity in bookkeeping were among the less lovely traits of
the new order. The holding company an avatar which
sprang from the slain dragon of the "trusts" late in the pre-
vious century now flourished mightily. It permitted control
by a small group of stockholders over a widely scattered em-
pire of interlocking or even loosely related interests, like
Samuel Insull's three-billion-dollar domain in utilities. The
power exercised by the holding company, particularly in the
utility field, was often so disproportionate to its size that
Franklin D. Roosevelt as president well described it as "a
ninety-six-inch dog being wagged by a four-inch tail/*
These concerns were sometimes pyramided one upon an-
other, towers of Babel reaching to the skies and equally trem-
ulous at the base. Not infrequently they were used to mask
the true state of corporate finances from the eyes of regula-
tory authorities or the public. A New York state bank called
Bank of United States, in January, 1930 almost a year
6 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
before its spectacular failure brought down the roof upon
nearly half a million depositors concealed its growing
weakness by creating a dummy company, the Bolivar De-
velopment Corporation, capitalized at one hundred dollars,
to buy and sell the stock of still another dummy conjured
by the Bank into making the motions of prosperity. Deceived
by this solemn farce, the outsider was slow to suspect that
many a fagade of granite and marble had become a hollow
shell of indebtedness and precarious bookkeeping.
Another development in the pathology of Wall Street was
the mushrooming in the latter twenties of so-called invest-
ment trusts, whose function was to invest moneys loaned to
them and to distribute the net return to their stockholders or
beneficiaries. Some were "rigid/* i.e. confined to a restricted
list of securities, but many were "flexible," which meant that
the selection of securities for investment was left wide open.
In practice they were little better than gambling establish-
ments in which the innocent patron intrusted his stakes not
even to a fellow player picked at random but to the croupier
whose main interest, of course, was to represent "the
house/' Four and a half million Americans, it was reported,
handed over part or all their savings to investment trusts,
eventually losing about a third of their capital, or a total of
three billion dollars.
The overexpansion of credit was a prime cause of the disas-
ters that followed 1929. The First World War began a proc-
ess which reckless financing continued to accelerate. In the
background loomed the huge structure of long-term debt in
the United States a public debt, federal, state and munici-
pal, of thirty-three billion dollars, and corporate and indi-
vidual debts of one hundred billion which demanded ex-
panding markets and world prosperity for successful carry-
ing. A relatively small reduction in buying power, or back-
sliding of prices, could send tremors along the whole length
of this mountain chain. The grand operations of credit, a
new force of such power that one economist likened it to the
FROM RICHES TO RAGS
prime movers of physics, were still imperfectly understood
and recklessly abused* The average American in 1929 had
little notion of credit on the imperial scale, such as the growth
of international financing dependent upon a constant trans-
fusion of credit from have to have-not nations, nor even the
magnitude of eight billion dollars* credit in the form of brok-
ers* loans which Wall Street recorded at its all-time crest of
September 3, 1929.
The common man knew more about overexpansion of
credit in such homely shapes as installment buying* Intensive
campaigns to break down "sales resistance*' often insuffi-
cient purchasing power among small citizens led to new
extensions of the time-payment plan for cars, clothes, elec-
tric washers, refrigerators, furniture, jewelry* In effect it was
a loan from producer to consumer, because the latter lacked
cash, and the former, with his urgent need for sales, preferred
this method to that of increasing mass purchasing power by
cutting prices and boosting wages* By 1929 felicity on the
installment plan had lured its tens of millions* In the harsh
light of the Great Depression* such aspects of the system as
inflated prices and exorbitant carrying charges, along with
misrepresentation of the product, would become all too plain*
Certain state laws, like those of New York and Kentucky,
held a still more pernicious trap, sprung during the early
thirties, by which a debtor's entire wages could be attached
until the account was cleared*
Meanwhile important business enterprises were being con-
centrated in fewer hands. The forging of chain stores all over
the nation was no less significant than recent big mergers
in the automotive industry* Centralized industry made every
metropolis the center of a regional web, and each of these net-
works fitted into a national pattern for making, selling and
distributing commodities. The economy of a continent had
never been so highly integrated, nor its equilibrium so sensi-
tive* The frontier, the farm, the village and Middletown had
at last been engulfed by the rise of the city* As never before,
8 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
urban industrialism called the tune. In 1870 wage and salary
workers had made up about half the working population;
now they composed four fifths. An interdependence un-
known to old-fashioned America had become the basic eco-
nomic fact* The fabric of industrial and corporate life, joined
to the structure imposed by labor unions and labor legisla-
tion, had imperceptibly altered the flexibility of laissez faire
into something more rigid, less accommodating*
These sweeping changes had hardly entered the conscious-
ness of the average citizen. In his own mind he was never
more loyal than in 1929 to the doctrine of individualism and
unhampered private enterprise. Clashes between theory and
practice, like the potential friction of capital and labor, re-
mained almost inaudible so long as the nation's economic
mechanism ran with the oil of prosperity.
Not, indeed, that the prosperity of the twenties was con-
sistently sound. To the later view it resembled a hectic flush
rather than the bloom of health. Agriculture still groaned
from its dropsical overexpansion in 1917-1918. Along with
bituminous coal mining and textiles, it belonged to a clinical
ward known as the "sick industries/' Great was the indus-
trial turnover; a sense of insecurity about jobs had been rising
for several years. Even in 1926 the unemployed were esti-
mated at 1,500,000; -by 1929 their number had swelled to
upwards of 1,800,000.** Unperceived by the optimists, job-
lessness and poverty had come to be chronic social problems
in the United States neither a passing crisis nor one readily
met by efforts of private charity. The ratio of private to pub-
lic funds for such purposes was diminishing, as public relief
expenditures gradually mounted. Sixteen major cities which
* R. R. Nathan, Estimates of Unemployment in the United States, 1929-
1935 (Geneva, 1936), gives the higher computation of 2,860,000 by March,
1929 a figure accepted by Harry L. Hopkins, Spending to Save (N. Y.,
1936), 13. Generally speaking, liberals tended to estimate unemployment
in the twenties and early thirties at higher figures than did the Hoover admin-
istration and the majority of conservatives.
FROM RICHES TO RAGS 9
in 1911 had spent $1,500,000 on public charity were by
1928 spending $20,000,000 annually.
Flaws in banking practice might also have been suspected.
During the six years prior to the October crash of 1929 bank
failures occurred at an average rate of nearly two a day, but
since the delinquents were minor institutions, chiefly in small
towns, scant publicity resulted. Nor was the output of goods
commensurate with the capacity to produce. At least twenty
per cent of the country's resources were not being utilized, to
the loss of about fifteen billion dollars in national income, or
one fourth of the goods and services it was actually produc-
ing.
Yet beyond question the major shortcomings of the Amer-
ican economy lay not with production but consumption.
Already in the early autumn of 1929 financial pages gloomed
over "heaviness" in automobiles and radios, slackening of the
building trades, disappointment along the new frontiers of
aviation. Much of America's productive effort and income
had lately gone into luxuries and durable goods, whose pur-
chase could be postponed without affecting daily needs. At
the first storm warnings these goods would pile up in ware-
houses, causing wheels to stop turning and huge areas of job-
lessness to appear. This was one reason why the Depression
following 1929 was unparalleled for severity and duration*
Even in 1929 the purchasing power of the American peo-
ple looked ill-balanced, an anomaly soon to be pointed up by
quotation of Carlyle's phrase, "poverty in the midst of
plenty/* Between 1923 and 1928, while the index of specu-
lative gains rose from 100 to 410, the index of wages ad-
vanced from 100 to a mere 112. Naturally enough, too little
income went for consumer goods in proportion to the tor-
rents that flowed into investment channels and the call-
money market, into the making of new capital equipment for
future production and into the savings of the well-to-do.
Never before had so large a share of the national income been
saved and invested as in this decade, nor had current pro-
10 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
duction ever outstripped current consumption so spectacu-
larly* The National Survey of Potential Product Capacity
later described the period from 1923 to 1929 as an "orgy of
saving" among the rich.
Two thirds of the country's savings were made by families
with incomes over $10,000 a year. Those with less than
$1500, comprising forty per cent of the population, actually
paid out more than they earned. Six million families, one
fifth of the nation, fell below even $1000, Making provision
for a rainy day seemed less than feasible when one was al-
ready drowning. Up to the income bracket of $5000, Amer-
ican families had to spend a disproportionate amount merely
to get sufficient food; hence among those nine out of ten
families "not in a position to enjoy a liberal diet/' substantial
savings could hardly be expected.* In presenting the extremes
of the economic spectrum a study by the Brookings Institu-
tion observed that the twenty-four thousand families which
received over $100,000 apiece in 1929 enjoyed a total in-
come three times as great as that of the six million poorest
families. In other words, the average income among the top
group was six hundred and thirty times that in the bottom
one.
Orthodox economists argued that savings led to more cap-
ital equipment and superior efficiency and, in turn, to lower
production costs, lower prices and greater purchasing power
for the masses. It was plain by 1929, however, that this
chain of causation had developed weak links. Mass buying
power was unable to absorb the nation's output, not alone
because wages had advanced comparatively little but because
retail prices took virtually no cut between 1922 and 1929.
Savings achieved by improved technologies were not being
* Maurice Lcven and others, America's Capacity to Consume (Wash,, 1934),
93, 123. At 1929 prices an adequate diet for the average family was esti-
mated to cost $800; $2000 was reckoned the minimum for basic necessities
of living. A summary of statistics on this subject for 1929 and later will be
found in S. C. Menefee, "Standard of Living/' Survey, LXXHI (1937),
281-282.
FROM RICHES TO RAGS 11
handed on to the consumer in the form of lower prices. They
were diverted into dividends, reserves, bigger salaries and
bonuses* Various shapes of monopoly, like trusts in disguise,
mergers, combinations in mining and manufacturing, helped
keep prices up, even while new machinery, better production
methods and services of "efficiency experts" increased the
over-all output of American labor by more than a third in
the decade after the First World Wan In some trades, like
automobiles, productive efficiency was reported to have
tripled.
But from this plenitude the average consumer gathered
only the crumbs, and even the producer reaped merely a
shortsighted advantage. To reckon profit not for a day or
season, but upon a broad and long-term base of buying
power, might have proved wiser* Posterity would probably
agree with the retrospective view of Hoover who, after praise
for the technologists, remarked:
When we fully understand the economic history of the
'twenties, we shall find that the debacle which terminated
another apparently highly prosperous period was largely
contributed by a failure of industry to pass its improvement
(through labor-saving devices) on to the consumer.
Some others were less inclined to praise the engineers than
to damn them. Their ingenuity, it was charged, had sup-
planted men with machines. The effect of invention in up-
setting group equilibrium was, of course, no novelty. In the
past, management had sometimes shown reluctance to scrap
old equipment for new; more often, labor feared the "immi-
gration of iron men/* Naturally at the first threat of spread-
ing unemployment the machine was indicted, for this
generation was less apt than its forefathers to accept all ca-
lamities as mysterious visitations of Providence. Soon, in the
wake of apprehensions that technology had done its job too
well, came a flock of ideas about social engineering. Could
not the same magic which had rid the factory of waste and
12 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
inefficiency do the same for society? This hope newer to
American life than the invincible faith in applied science
led from Hoover the "Great Engineer'* to Technocracy, the
National Recovery Administration, the Tennessee Valley
Authority, the National Resources Committee and other con-
cepts of a managed economy* Few could have foreseen in
1929 all the paths of this projection. Nevertheless in that
year the fundamental balances of a vast industrial civilization
were slipping: the precarious relations between wages and
prices, production and consumption, machines and man
power.
Upon this world of uneasy prosperity the first blow fell
in late October* Like the sound of gunshot which starts an
Alpine avalanche, a minor panic on the New York Stock Ex-
change began on the twenty-third among stocks that specula-
tors had pushed to fantastic heights. The next day, "Black
Thursday," saw hysteria rampant. Brokers wept and tore off
their collars trying to keep abreast selling orders; sight-seers
jammed the Wall Street district, ogled the arrival of great
bankers in their limousines before the House of Morgan, and
under the rumor of mass suicide gathered to watch an ordi-
nary workman on a scaffolding in morbid expectation of his
plunge.
At first it appeared that the magicians of finance had ar-
rested disaster, but just as the public cheered them and
breathed more easily, another sickening lurch sent the market
to new depths, spreading conviction that these wizards had
merely propped the falling timbers long enough to get out
from under. October 29 set a lurid record for sales, a total
of 16,410,000 shares. At the month's close fifteen billion
dollars in market value had been wiped out, and before the
end of the year losses reached an estimated forty billion.
After the first shock official optimism took over. A genera-
tion taught to be "a bull on the United States'* was condi-
tioned to respond. Upon feeling the initial jolt, many seemed
as incredulous about the real gravity of the situation as the
FROM RICHES TO RAGS 13
passengers of a luxury liner ripped below decks by an ice-
berg: the boat listed only a trifle at first while the band
played on. Manhattan's dapper mayor, "Jimmy" Walker,
asked the movies to show nothing but cheerful pictures. The
patient was recommended to try the hair of the dog that bit
him: True Story Magazine ran big advertisements in the
newspapers urging wage-earners to buy more luxury items
on credit. "Wall Street may sell stocks, but Main Street is
buying goods/* came a cheery assurance from the Saturday
Evening Post. A Manhattan jeweler in early November put
on display a "$750,000 pearl necklace/ 1 while the Shuberts
revealed plans for a $15,000,000 theater-hotel on Broad-
way. "Forward America, Nothing Can Stop U. S.," shouted
the nation's billboards. And over the radio Julius Klein, as-
sistant secretary of commerce, announced that only four per
cent of the people had been adversely affected. A tuneful hit
called "Happy Days Are Here Again'* was copyrighted on
November 7 for one of the new talking pictures appropri-
ately named "Chasing Rainbows" ; three years later it would
become the campaign song of the New Deal. And early in
1930, with skies growing blacker, makers' of a cheap radio
brought out a "prosperity model/*
The solvent of American humor began early to attack the
crisis. Grim jokes arose about the complimentary revolver
given with every share of Goldman Sachs, or the room clerk's
query of every registrant, "For sleeping or jumping?" A
little later, when mass unemployment began to steal the head-
lines from Wall Street, bravado succeeded flippancy. Bill-
boards began to ask, "Wasn't the Depression Terrible?" The
departing owner of a ruined shop scrawled upon the door
"Opened by mistake" if he were a humorist, or "Busted and
disgusted" if possessed by the blues. Trained in the cult of
the stiff upper lip, of singing in the raijx, Americans hated
to admit that things were not as they had always been. The
International Association of Lions Club$ observed the week
of October 19, 1930, as Business Confidence Week. Pros-
14 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
perity was just around the corner; perhaps the corner was
one already turned.
For a while the momentum of the great bull market car-
ried certain enterprises. The year 1931, for example, saw the
opening of the world's finest luxury hotel, the new Waldorf-
Astoria in Manhattan, and completion of the tallest of all
skyscrapers, the Empire State Building of one hundred and
two stories topped by a "mooring mast" for airships but
functionally as useless as the metallic needle surmounting its
nearest rival, the new Chrysler Building* Many floors in each
of these grandiose business palaces remained spectrally vacant
in the times ahead. The same year saw publication of archi-
tects* plans for New York's most impressive cluster of build-
ings, Rockefeller Center, which the next two years consum-
mated. Housing broadcasting studios, ornate movie and music
halls, foreign-trade syndicates and other business enterprises
upon a scale never before attempted, this group culminated in
the austere gray seventy-story shaft of the R. C. A. building.
Some critics of architecture prophesied that these would be
the last dinosaurs of America's metropolitan era, convinced
that such vainglory had overreached itself, promoting little
save congested traffic, overcrowding and colossal debts* Like
many other vanities of the century, perhaps the skyscraper
too was bankrupt. At any rate, the nation's outlay for new
construction fell sixty per cent between 1931 and 1932 as
the momentum of prosperity ground to a dead stop. By 1933
architects were doing less than a seventh of the business they
had enjoyed in 1928.
Gala openings and soothing statements no longer fitted the
temper of the times; the smile of official optimism slowly
froze into something that resembled a risus sardonicus. In
1931 Edward Angly garnered the more fulsome assurances
of Wall Street and Washington into a little book with the
derisive title Oh Yeah! Early in the following year appeared
a new magazine called Ballyhoo, its first issue packaged in
cellophane as a touch of commercial parody. Within six
FROM RICHES TO RAGS 15
months it rocketed to a two-million circulation largely by de-
bunking the specious salesmanship of the twenties**
The public, seeking a scapegoat for its bitterness, found
one with the help of a shrewd publicist hired by the Demo-
cratic party, Charles Michelson. Old newspapers were called
"Hoover blankets/' jack rabbits "Hoover hogs** and the
shanties of starvation rising on outskirts of cities "Hoover-
villes/* A large share of popular odium also fell upon the
shoulders of rich and weary Andrew Mellon, lately toasted
by business as the "greatest secretary of the treasury since
Alexander Hamilton/' In February, 1932, Mellon was glad
enough to relinquish his portfolio and be kicked upstairs as
ambassador to Britain,
As President Coolidge had said in the palmy days, the
business of America had indeed been business* But now the
luxuries and amusements, the bustling sense of power which
cloaked life's essential materialism for the prosperous urban
or suburban citizen, were suddenly stripped away* This
greatest of economic reverses gave millions of citizens the jolt
of taking a downward step in the dark when expecting an
upward one, A nation used to regarding prosperity as a habit
found itself startled, then incredulous, more than a little
helpless and finally resentful. It made the situation no easier
that the adversary was invisible, and unlike a domestic or
foreign foe, invulnerable to ridicule, ballots or bullets.
But the reality of this enemy admitted no doubt. His un-
seen stature could be measured by the two yardsticks of in-
come and employment. The loss of earnings, chiefly paper
profits, had first taken the spotlight. A few moths had singed
their wings; so what? But as early as the spring of 1930,
when the Federal Council of Churches set aside April 27 as
"Unemployment Sunday/* the crisis had assumed breadth as
* Its creator was a disillusioned Manhattan editor and artist, Norman
Anthony, hut the name which Ballyhoo made famous was that of a fictional
high-powered advertising man, one Elmer Zilch. In a chapter called *' Jackpot !"
Anthony gave the history of this magazine in How to Grow Old Disgracefully
(N. Y., 1946),
16 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
well as depth. Soon, lowered income and unemployment
were seen in constant interaction, forcing the national econ-
omy into a descending spiral. White-collar workers began
to take salary cuts, laborers to find discharge slips in pay en-
velopes. The city felt the shock first. Initial symptoms were
not ostentatious: postponement in buying that new car, or
breaking ground for a new home; surrender of small apart-
ments by young couples moving in with parents; a drop in
pleasure travel and theater attendance; more business for the
cleaner, invisible mender, shoe-repair man, less for tailor and
haberdasher.
A few grimmer signs appeared early, upon a small scale.
In late February, 1930, Seattle, Los Angeles and Chicago
witnessed minor demonstrations of the unemployed, in
which Communists usually had a hand. In the same month
bread lines in the Bowery were drawing two thousand daily.
In March Milwaukee opened a municipal soup kitchen. The
summer of 1930, as happened seasonally through the De-
pression, brought a measure of relief. Food was fresher, more
plentiful and cheaper; clothing, fuel and shelter offered prob-
lems less acute. But the descent of winter in 1930-1931 in-
augurated harder times, with New York City appropriating a
million dollars for direct relief and Lloyd's of London an-
nouncing that for the first time on record they were selling
riot and civil-commotion insurance in quantity to American
clients.
Outside the city, harbingers of the crisis were less news-
worthy. Farmers had known nothing but depression since the
Armistice boom burst, and even though their plight con-
tinued to worsen, they had the gloomy satisfaction of long
conditioning. Smaller industrial cities and towns, however,
were reluctant to admit the fact of hard times, which in many
citizens' eyes was either a Manhattan gamblers' fiasco or else
just a state of mind. They congratulated themselves upon a
firmer foundation* Notwithstanding that every fourth fac-
tory worker in Muncie, Indiana ; the Middletown of sociol-
FROM RICHES TO RAGS 17
ogists had lost his job before the end of 1930, men of sub-
stance in that community kept insisting to the end of 1931
that the Depression was "mainly something we read about
in the newspapers/* Still feeding upon the gospel of keeping
up appearances, a delegation of local business men in 1932
persuaded General Motors not to board up the windows of
its abandoned Muncie plant, which stood in clear view of the
passing trains. The philosophy of the peptomists died hard*
As the average citizen could see for himself, working cap-
ital and jobs were closely interlocked, and upon their joint
scarcity the years of depression hinged. What happened to
income may be shown briefly! National income dwindled
from eighty-one billion dollars in 1929 to less than sixty-
eight in 1930, then cascaded to fifty-three in 1931 and hit
bottom in 1932 with forty-one. Correspondingly, the coun-
try's estimated wealth over this span shrank from three hun-
dred and sixty-five billion to two hundred and thirty-nine, a
loss representing diminished values in real property, capital
and commodities* Much of the nation's physical plant, of
course, rusted in idleness and disrepair. These three years took
a toll of eighty-five thousand business failures with liabilities
of four and a half billion dollars and the suspension of five
thousand banks. Nine million savings accounts were wiped
out, and wage losses upwards of twenty-six billion dollars
sustained*
While the debt structure of the American economy re-
mained little changed only 3.5 per cent less money being
paid out in interest in 1932 % than in 1929 in other fields
deflation proceeded furiously, making long-term debts more
crushing than borrowers had anticipated when incurring
them. The volume of money paid as salaries dwindled 40 per
cent, dividends 56,6 per cent, and wages 60 per cent. Early
in the crisis, at the Hoover administration's earnest request,
major industries made few cuts in pay rates, but by drastic
reduction of working hours and days they contrived to slash
pay rolls about 40 per cent between 1929 and September,
18 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
193 L Since a workingman's family had to live on the money
he brought home, this procedure looked better in the head-
lines than in private*
For the country at large, per-capita realized income (ad-
justed to the cost of living) tumbled from $681 in 1929 to
$495 in 1933* At the apex of the economic pyramid the
number of persons reporting an annual income over a million
dollars fell from seventy-five in 1931 to only twenty the
next year. Despite repeated assurances from government cir-
cles and high finance that the recession had reached bedrock
the "terminal trough/' forecasters liked to call it the
general course of business after the Wall Street crash plunged
fitfully downward for more than three years*
Many industries and small businesses denied even lip serv-
ice to the administration's plea for maintenance of wage
rates. A growing backwater of unemployment led department
stores to pay clerks as little as five or ten dollars weekly* In-
vestigation of a group of working girls in Chicago showed
the great majority toiling for less than twenty-five cents an
hour, a fourth for less than ten cents* Makers of ready-to-
wear dresses, confectionery employees and cannery workers
were among the classes exploited most callously* First-class
New York stenographers* salaries fell from $35 ancT^5 t "a
week to $16; domestic servants were obliged to labor for
room and board plus ten dollars a month* As usual, unskilled
workers had been the shock troops* followed by white-collar
workers and technicians* Professional classes felt the jar a lit-
tle later, as teachers* and ministers* salaries were cut or fell
into arrears, and the practice of other groups declined, with
fees increasingly hard to collect. Even in 1936 physicians'
incomes were still from eighteen to thirty per cent below
their 1929 level, lawyers' between eighteen and thirty-eight
per cent.
Turning from lowered income and diminished working
capital to the other side of the coin, one comes upon the face
of total unemployment* In April, 1930, President Hoover
Apple-setting on city streets was one response of the unemployed.
" 'Hoovervitles" symbolized the plight from which many of them sought escape.
First Blows of the Depression.
Jobkss veterans in their hour of need demanded that Congress
immediately pay the bonus, which was not due until IV V.
FROM RICHES TO RAGS 19
ordered a house-to-house survey of this situation, the first
federal census of unemployment in the nation's history. In
all, slightly more than three million employables were re-
ported out of work, against forty -five million persons gain-
fully employed. But the tide was rising fast, and a special
census by the department of commerce in January, 1931,
based upon sampling, disclosed more than six million unem-
ployed. Before the end of that year almost all appraisers
agreed that the ten -million mark had been passed, and 1932
saw the addition of four or five million more* Thanks to sea-
sonal factors and local flurries of advance or retreat, the na-
tional picture shifted constantly; unemployment tended also
to propagate itself, with wives and older children of idle men
now joining in the scramble for any crumbs of odd jobs.
Exhaustion of savings and losses in modest investments drove
aged folk to participate in the frantic search and be counted.
This cycle brought forth its changing tokens and symbols.
If the still cheerful desperation of 1931 was crystallized in
the song "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries/* the grimmer
abasement of 1932 was epitomized by "Brother, Can You
Spare a Dime?" appealing on behalf of casualties like the job-
less war veteran or the discarded builder of an industrial em-
pire. The most memorable symbol of the great unemploy-
ment, and of pride in facing it, came to be the apple. In the
autumn of 1930 the International Apple Shippers' Associa-
tion devised a scheme to dispose of surpluses. It offered to sell
the fruit on credit to the jobless, to retail at five cents apiece.
By early November six thousand apple sellers had taken their
stand on the sidewalks of New York, and the idea soon
spread elsewhere. In this early phase of the Depression, the
stubborn self-reliance of America the poor as well as the
rich bridled at the notion of direct relief or a dole, as had
been practised since the First World War in Britain. But this
meager toll upon the passing throng soon lost its novelty. In
1931 Manhattan began to forbid apple selling upon certain
streets. By 1932 people were reported to be "sick of apples/*
20 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Those who could lift their eyes from this hleak domestic
picture to scan the international horizon could draw at least
some solace from the proverbial fellowship of misery. Presi-
dent Hoover himself at first was inclined to lay the ultimate
hlame upon causes outside the United States. In the war of
1914-1918 and its aftermath he saw the wellspring of this
bitter draught. Waste and destruction, loss of man power,
war debts and taxes, inflation and subsequent devaluation,
the greed and imperialism of others, together with the fears
and new spending bred by rearmament, were the malign
heritage of a struggle "for which our people had no blame."
And so far as America was concerned, these complications
sprang from the days of Woodrow Wilson, "this war having
come on during a Democratic administration/* *
If this analysis seemed overcomforting presenting the
American people in the classic role of innocents at home and
abroad at least none could deny that the Depression was
fast spreading over an economically interdependent world.
Nations were seen to be roped together like mountain climb-
ers in the bonds of loans and debts, cartels and tariffs, and
quick communication whether of hope or panic. The footing
of countries mainly agricultural tended to give way first, with
the industrial powers slipping later but more spectacularly.
By the spring of 1929 or slightly earlier, Australia, Brazil,
the Orient, the Near East, Argentina, Canada and Poland
were showing symptoms of decline, while Germany's chronic
postwar depression deepened. Later than the United States to
feel the shock were Great Britain, France, Czechoslovakia,
Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries. A second wave,
beginning about 1931 and more severe than the first, likewise
affected all these lands, and did not begin to recede until
around the spring of 1933.
In most places similar factors had been at work, although
* Hoover, State Papers, II, 137, 437. "Without the war, we would have
had no such depression/* Hoover said flatly at Indianapolis in June, 193L
Myers and Newton, Hoover Administration, 90.
FROM RICHES TO RAGS 21
the shape and gravity of the crisis varied a good deal. A look
at the global picture, however, showed that Americans had
not heen the only dupes of hit-or-miss prosperity, the Re-
publicans not the sole villains of 1929, nor the Democrats
the exclusive heroes of 1933*
Refusal to admit this fact of economic interdependence was
never shown more clearly than by the Hawley-Smoot tariff
of June, 1930, in itself an aggravation of the crisis. The
armistice of 1918 found the United States for the first time
in history a great creditor country. At the same time its cit-
izens' private investments abroad were growing so rapidly
that from a prewar total of three billion dollars they had
swollen to fourteen by 1932, A mighty producing nation,
America naively construed foreign commerce as the right to
sell, with little or no obligation to buy in exchange. Indeed*
the nightmare of foreign dumping led both farmers and in-
dustrialists to clamor for the highest protective rates yet
known and to obtain them in 1930 at an average of forty per
cent. President Hoover wished to limit the bill chiefly to a
few agricultural commodities, but he was overborne.
Abroad the Hawley-Smoot act was interpreted as a decla-
ration of economic war. It met such prompt retaliatory tar-
iffs, quotas and anti- American embargoes that by 1932
twenty-five governments had joined in the reprisal, thus
halving the volume of United States exports. The vicious
spiral held another twist. To escape this threat of boycott,
American manufacturers during the first two years of the
Hawley-Smoot act set up two hundred and fifty-eight sep-
arate factories in foreign countries, including seventy-one
across the Canadian line*
What the average American thought about these matters
depended largely upon his region, politics and business.
Southerners had always been taught to regard high tariffs as
iniquitous, but in the industrial North and agricultural Mid-
west "protectiofT still exercised its charm. No doubt many
solid citizens would have echoed an editorial in Middle-
22 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
town's press: "The difference between good times and bad
times in the United States, so far as history indicates, is the
difference between an adequate protective tariff for the prod-
ucts of our farms and our factories and an inadequate tariff/'
When regression rather than improvement followed, Middle-
town's editor stuck doggedly to his line, ridiculing the "mis-
taken'* view that "conditions in Europe have something to
do with America's coming out of the depression/*
Within the United States the twenties had seen a remark-
able increase in the number and influence of trade associa-
tions, by which rival producers pooled statistical informa-
tion, credit standards, cost formulae, and the like, and sought
to curb unfair marketing practices* To this extent they were
beneficent, and so impressed Hoover as secretary of commerce
and as president But not infrequently they sought by their
definition of "fair" and "unfair" price policies to achieve
price control while sailing to the leeward of the Sherman
antitrust act, and sometimes the effect was to eliminate the
small independent operator* Their growth was further in-
dulged by a series of Supreme Court decisions which an earlier
progressivism would have eyed with suspicion as entering
wedges for native cartels and capitalist syndicalism**
Although domestic cartels remained illegal under federal
law, in the international sphere certain American concerns
benefiting by the concentration of economic power Du
Pont, United States Steel, General Electric, Westinghouse,
Bendix Aviation, Diamond Match, Anaconda Copper,
Standard Oil of New Jersey entered into agreements in the
twenties and the thirties with foreign producers often to re-
strict production in order to raise prices and increase profits,
and still more commonly to divide world markets and ex-
change patents* In hampering free enterprise cartels tended to
constrict the flow of supplies, retard foreign and domestic
* For example, the cracking patents pool in the oil industry (282 U. S,, 163,
1931) and the organization of a joint sales agency among major producers
in the Appalachian Coals case (288 U. S., 344, 1933).
FROM RICHES TO RAGS 23
trade and prevent the introduction of new products and im-
provements (such, for example, as the "everlasting" match
usable many times) .
Their effect upon prices may be illustrated by the fact that
in 1914 the cost of quinine sulfate was twenty-five cents an
ounce, but after Merck joined the international cartel the
price rose to seventy-five cents by 194L The imposition of
production quotas is suggested by the fact that, while in
1930 domestic aluminum production exceeded a hundred
thousand metric tons and that of Germany was only thirty
thousand, in 1934, three years after Alcoa entered the cartel,
the American output had fallen to thirty-three thousand tons
and the German had risen to thirty-seven.* In the Depression
their effect apparently was to aggravate unemployment and
underconsumption* Later in the thirties cartels began to at-
tract unfavorable notice from Senate investigating commit-
tees and the antitrust division of the justice department be-
cause of their alleged threat to the national security, t On the
whole, the shapes assumed by the internationalism of Big
Business seemed as futile as those of economic nationalism in
promoting the greatest good for the greatest number*
Lurking in the background of the ordinary American's in-
sularity remained the old issue of unpaid debts from the
*U. S. v. Aluminum Co. of America, 148 Fed. Rep., ser. 2, 416, an
action which resulted on March 12, 1945, in a decision adverse to the
aluminum interests, holding that they had violated the Sherman act.
f Most notahly the cartel under which Standard Oil of New Jersey had
promised the German firm, I. G. Farben, "the benefit of all its know-how in
the oil and chemical fields." Special Committee Investigating the National
Defense Program, Hearings on Senate Resolution 71, pt. xi, 4698 (77 Cong.,
1 sess., March 1942). Wendell Berge, assistant attorney-general, declared in
retrospect: "The good-neighbor policy, which is supposed to govern our re-
lations with Latin America, the reciprocal trade treaties, our alien-property
"policy, and other basic principles of America's conduct of foreign affairs^ have
in many instances been seriously weakened by the interference of cartel activities.
Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, U. S. Senate Hearings on S.
/I, 47 (79 Cong., 1 sess., May 1945) . Cartels in the Great Depression axe dis-
cussed by Louis Domeratzky, "Cartels and the Business Crisis," Foreign Affairs.
X (1931), 34-53.
24 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
First World War, Here, he believed, was proof that in deal-
ing with foreigners he and his compatriots always got
trimmed. Isolation was best. Other persons saw the urgency
of war debts and reparations as strangling the economy of
Europe and ultimately harming the creditor as well. Presi-
dent Hoover's decision in June, 1931, to sponsor a mora-
torium on intergovernmental war debts was hailed in some
circles as a great contribution to good will and recovery, by
others as a ruse to help the bankers and holders of foreign
bonds. By the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration,
practically all the war debts were in hopeless default. Pop-
ular grievance over these unpaid bills did much to feed the
pacifism of the mid-thirties and impede the international
education of Americans.
The period 1929-1941 began with a domestic debacle
which stemmed from many causes, but perhaps the most basic
was selfish blindness to the bond between group welfare and
the satisfactions of the individual. Disaster helped Americans
to recollect that they were one nation and that only through
cooperation could the cart be pulled from the mire. This pe-
riod closed upon the eve of American participation in a
global war which had been bred largely by the equally stub-
born refusal of many nations to admit the tie between their
security and the good estate of all the concept of one world.
About the commonalty of man and the commonweal of na-
tions revolved the great debates, the most significant activity,
of these dozen years. Even in his daily life the average Amer-
ican could not help being profoundly affected by the out-
come.
CHAPTER II
NEW DESIGN FOR LIVING
THE impact of this severest and longest depression upon
daily life could be observed everywhere* The average
woman's world of cooking, mending, sewing and keeping
house continued less impaired than that of the average man,
that is, so long as there was food to cook, clothing to repair
and a roof overhead* One out of five women, however a
total of nearly eleven million worked outside the home in
1930* Since 1890 their number had increased sixfold* Such
women were directly vulnerable to the employment crisis*
though at first they tended to fare comparatively well since
their lower wages and usually greater docility found favor in
employers* eyes*
As the Depression wore on and labor surpluses brought
short hours and scant wages for all, this feminine advantage
shrank steadily. Women who lost their footing in the under-
tow of unemployment found jobs hard to regain* and to
combat the handicap of gray hair a feminist campaign with
the cheery slogan, "Always twenty-eight," was begun early
in the decade urging women employers to hire older members
of their own sex as counterweight to the masculine partiality
for youth and beauty*
Even in the teaching profession they met growing dis-
crimination* In 1931 the National Education Association re-
ported that more than three quarters of all cities had banned
employment of wives* This policy meant more rapid turn-
over, delayed marriages and removal from the schoolroom of
many mothers whose interest in children had often aided
their professional success* Women workers, in whatever field,
were assumed to be filching some male breadwinner's job for
25
26 THE AGE OP THE GREAT DEPRESSION
the sake of pin money or to augment the family's sumptuary
margin**
In the home, hard times caused many urban families
quickly to give up domestic help.f In small towns and rural
districts the onset of adversity sometimes added another bur-
den to already busy wives by reviving half -forgotten crafts
of an earlier day* Taught perhaps by the grandmother, many
a household embarked upon soapmaking, fruit drying, pick-
ling, preserving, bread baking, curing in smokehouses and
storage in root cellars, brewing medicine from herbs, clean-
ing, dyeing and clothmaking* In 1931 sales of glass jars ex-
ceeded any in the previous eleven years, while the demand for
canned goods dwindled.
But this revival was short-lived, hardly lasting through
the times of greatest stringency, for even the rural family had
little abiding interest in those skills still cherished by Old
World peasants* Drastic cuts in income deprived poorer
households of amenities like newspapers, magazines, movies,
and often such commodities as toilet paper, coffee, tea and
sugar* Observers tended to speak brightly of "the live-at-
home movement"; farm families with few illusions sourly
called it "wooden shoes*" Frequently the wife improved
finances at the cost of her own energy by such means as tak-
ing in laundry or sewing, baking cakes and pies for sale, or
accommodating boarders or tourists. Individuals with a little
capital might open motor camps, wayside stands, beauty par-
lors, novelty stores.
* In the wake of the Depression, a survey early in 1937 by the National
Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs yielded, however, a
somewhat different picture. Of more than twelve thousand female employees, 48
per cent had dependents, while 17.4 per cent carried the sole responsibility for
households ranging from two to eight persons. Furthermore, while average
earnings fell appreciably between 1930 and 1936, the number of dependents
per woman increased. Why Women Work (Public Affairs Pamphlet, no. 17,
1938), 3, 30.
t By the end of the decade, despite partial recovery, probably 95 per cent of
American homes were being run by the housewife with no outside aid. J, C.
Furnas and others, How America Lives (N. Y., 1941), 330.
NEW DESIGN FOR LIVING 27
The spate of gadgets which industry had poured into the
American home since the First World War electric toasters,
egg beaters, grills, waffle irons, percolators, washing ma-
chines, electric stoves abruptly slackened in the early thir-
ties, along with sales of furniture and sewing machines. On
the other hand, electric refrigerators, meeting a still unsatis-
fied market with their new efficiency and convenience, con-
tinued to sell briskly* Condensed milk, rayon and radios were
other commodities which the public refused to yield* Gasoline
and automobile-accessory sales also persisted, but the purchase
of new cars dropped like a plummet, now that driving yes-
teryear's model was no longer a social stigma* Manhattan cab
drivers saw their revenues decline from seven dollars a day
to two or three*
A more revealing index of retrenchment in New York City
was the loss of some forty thousand telephones between 1930
and 1931 and the quadrupling of the cheap dinners served
by Childs restaurants* The cigarette, boomed by the war
nerves of 1917-1918, proved an equal solace to the depres-
sion jitters of the thirties, production rising from a hun-
dred and twenty-three billion in 1930 to a hundred and
fifty-eight by 1936* The single standard in smoking con-
tinued to win its way, restaurant service for women in a
typical middle-sized town now including an ash tray*
Conditions in Middletown afford a close-up picture* Be-
tween 1929 and 1933, while the number of filling stations
almost doubled, sales fell only four per cent, for most families
regarded their automobile as indispensable* At the other ex-
treme* jewelry stores showed the heaviest decline of custom,
eighty-five per cent of their dollar volume* Trade in lumber
and building materials fell almost as much, while furniture
stores and candy shops lost seventy per cent of their patron-
age* Commercial eating places saw thek business reduced
sixty-three per cent, with surrender of the family luxury of
"eating out for a change*" It should be added, however, that
this was no permanent reversal, for with the first symptom
28 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
of better times cooking resumed its interrupted flight from the
home, and before the end of the decade the number of res-
taurants was multiplying faster than the number of fam-
ilies*
Everywhere clothing offered a natural province for econ-
omy. Men's attire was more sensitive to depression than
women's, for even the most elemental sense of chivalry recog-
nized the superior importance of fashion for the wife and
daughter. As early as 1930, when the output of women's
and children's dresses fell only thirteen per cent below the
previous year, men's suits dropped twenty-five and in the
next year sank thirty-two per cent under the 1929 level. For
the sake of both economy and convenience, more males began
to abandon stiff collars, hats, garters, undershirts, vests and
the tops of bathing suits.
In women's clothes the early thirties saw the large-scale
copying of smart frocks with cheaper materials and work-
manship. Also, under pinch of need, the average girl tended
as never before to make her own dresses and hats. "An ac-
companying return to statelier morals and manners" was
forecast by a fashion report in September, 1930, concerning
the longer skirts and more feminine modes which had begun
to repudiate the boyish angularity of the jazz-age flapper*
Ruffles, bows and curvaceous lines heralded the rediscovery
late in 1931 of Empress Eugenie hats and other styles. Bra-
vado at small cost found expression in brightly painted fin-
gernails, introduced in Paris in 1929, which within the next
two years spread from Park Avenue to the sales girl and
typist.
Meanwhile the debutante slouch yielded to better fashions
in posture, with a tendency to "tuck in and walk tall/*
Bobbed hair scored an apparently lasting triumph, although
the close-cropped extremes of the jazz age grew rarer, and
after the middle years of the period the page-boy or curled
bob reaching to the shoulder dallied with the old-fashioned
idea of crowning glory and comported with a passing vogue
NEW DESIGN FOR LIVING 29
for bows in the hair and "little girl" costumes seen wherever
dancers followed the rhythms of "swing." Loose, athletic
clothing was so clearly the modern preference that by the
mid-thirties skirts began to rise again almost an index of
national confidence while the informality of Florida and
California introduced beach pajamas, slacks and shorts to the
rest of the country, under protest in many staid communities.
Sandals for street and evening wear prepared the way in the
latter thirties for the open-toed shoe.
So long as the Depression was paramount, people had to
face retrenchment not only in food and clothing, but often
in lodgings as well. While economy among the rich might
involve closing or selling at a loss a "cottage" at Newport,
Bar Harbor, Palm Beach or Santa Barbara, or relinquishing
a villa in the South of France, middle-class folk might have
to give up a rented house at the shore or vacation spot in the
mountains and, quite commonly, move to a less expensive
house or apartment in town. "Doubling up" with parents,
in-laws and employed children occurred countless times. A
survey of sixty-four cities in January, 1934, revealed that
among all sorts and conditions, the number of "extra fam-
ilies" varied from two to fifteen per cent of the total, with the
highest proportion in the South. South Carolina's popula-
tion increased a sixth during the Depression, Georgia's nearly
as much.
Youths who had left dour and slovenly surroundings to
win independence or better their chances, contribute support
to the old folks, or enroll in training school on borrowed
funds, now returned stone-broke and crestfallen, acquiescing
in Robert Frost's well-known definition of home as "the
place where, when you have to go there, they have to take
you in." Everywhere tension between father and son seemed
to increase if the latter came back jobless after a period of
self-support. A wage-earning parent was prone to reassert his
authority, as if the youth had never been his own boss. In
the city the crowding of families into small apartments and
30 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
tenements unquestionably aggravated tempers and the general
mood of defeat Relief recipients in their constant search for
cheaper quarters tended to move oftener than did others,
though in so far as possible they clung to the old familiar
neighborhood.
Yet jobless men and their families often kept to themselves
shabbily dressed children hiding from visitors, adults sul-
lenly refusing hospitality from still employed friends because
of the hardship of repaying an evening at cards over sand-
wiches and coffee. The more sensitive just wanted to be let
alone. In this way contact between the haves and have-nots,
along with the old comradeship of American life in fat times
and lean, tended through pride to be broken** Some families,
determined to keep up appearances at all costs, went their
accustomed pace until disaster broke their spirit; others ar-
rived at the same pass from a carefree outlook upon life or
from unwillingness to lower certain standards of living* Still
others battled the Depression with resourcefulness and pluck,
sometimes making a game of penny pinching and savoring to
the full their rare extravagances in recreation*
Within the family circle were likely to dwell such specters
as unpaid bills, sickness, need of eye and dental care, loss of
a nest egg for youth's education or age's security* Such cum-
ulative worries often warped normal relations in the home,
causing hitherto loyal wives to scold job-seeking husbands re-
turning late for meals, or hurl the taunt picked up all too
easily from lips of the affluent that "anybody can find
work if he wants it*** The discredited breadwinner was apt
to lose his spunk, the household its initiative* With old work
habits gone and laziness no longer grounds for reproach the
family often stayed up late listening aimlessly to the radio
* Among two hundred workless families questioned in New Haven* two
thirds in former days had practised neighborly visiting, but now only a little
more than a quarter continued the habit, while participation in parties fell from
twenty per cent to three. E. W. Bakke, Citizens without Work (New Haven*
1940), 7-8. For a similar report, see Lilian Brandt, An Impressionistic View of
the Winter of 1930-1931 in New York City (N. Y., 1932), 16-17.
NEW DESIGN FOR LIVING 31
or just sitting, and slept far into the morning. Restiveness
sometimes led to a craving for drink or the excitement of
gambling, if any funds lay at hand, and an aftermath of self-
reproach or the blues.
In homes where the stern dictatorship of husband and
father was traditional, such as immigrant families from Con-
tinental Europe or rural households, the breadwinner s loss
of prestige or even abdication of authority proved striking.
Elder children contributing to family support gained new
prestige as members of the inner council If the wife became
chief money-maker, she usually assumed greater family com-
mand, with the jobless husband turning to domestic chores.
Frequently, however, in the urban home no stern male do-
minion had ever been asserted. Here in gloomy times the wife
often tried to cheer up and pamper the workless husband,
even as he had been prone to spoil her in the days of their
prosperity. Also the constant presence of an unemployed
father at home was likely to heighten his companionship
with the younger children, promoting play and intimacy.
Many observers tried to find a silver lining in this stronger
esprit de corps of the clan. Secretary Ray Lyman Wilbur told
the National Conference of Social Workers in May, 1932,
that delegated responsibility for children had ended: "In ad-
versity the home takes its normal place. There is no substitute
for intelligent parental care exercised through the day, at
meal times, and in controlling proper sleeping conditions at
night/* Applying accurately enough to abodes where the
nursemaid had been discharged, these words were hardly real-
istic in respect to homes where wage-earners* wives were
driven forth to earn an extra dollar, food was meager, chil-
dren too shabby to attend school. In similar vein Middletown
boosters liked editorials cheerily avowing that "many a fam-
ily that has lost its car has found its soul/' thanks to sounder
nerves, rested bodies, better digestion and more sober Sabbath
observance. Nor were such utterances merely the revised Prot-
estant version of old Puritan gospel, for the Reverend John
32 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
R O'Hara, president of Notre Dame University, added his
assurance that "as a result of the Depression a great portion
of the American public rediscovered the Home, rediscovered
fireside joys, rediscovered the things of the spirit/'
Such optimism held a grain of truth but also much 'chaff.
Husband and wife, for example, almost certainly spent more
time together, sharing inexpensive pastimes like listening to
the radio, playing cards or reading aloud. Declining attend-
ance at amusement places chiefly for men, such as pool halls,
bowling alleys, baseball games, prize fights, bore negative
proof of the change. But if some couples were drawn together
anew in the bonds of misfortune and enforced propinquity,
others grew embittered by want, insecurity and 'each partner's
futile reproaches* A collector of many case histories in a big
industrial city found that among the married unemployed
"sex life decreased, if it was affected at all/' from fear of
pregnancy, feminine loss of respect for an economic failure
and a general atmosphere of repressive anxiety.
Bewilderment, hesitation, apathy, loss of self-confidence,
were the commonest marks of protracted unemployment. A
man no longer cared how he looked* Unkempt hair and
swarthy stubble, shoulders a-droop, a slow dragging walk,
were external signs of inner defeat, often aggravated by mal-
nutrition* Joblessness proved a wasting disease. What social
workers called "unemployment shock" affected some men as
if they were in the grip of panic, driving them to frenzied
search for work by day, sleepless worry at night* To. a few
persons joblessness apparently brought a sense of personal
importance of being part of a national crisis, a front-page
problem but more universal was a mood of lost self-esteem,
perplexity, or bitterness toward old employers and life in
general.
The sum of these effects upon the former breadwinner
added up to weaker morale, by a vicious cycle making him
still more unemployable, A survey of idle engineers reported
in 1933 that three out of every four showed morale inferior
NEW DESIGN FOR LIVING 33
to that of the average job holder. A physical counterpart of
these losses revealed itself in flabby muscles, faulty coordina-
tion and lack of stamina when work was resumed. As with
an inactive plant, rust had taken its toll In 1933 when a
group of forty long-unemployed stenographers were set to
work in a New York office, all quickly showed signs of nerv-
ous fatigue under the old routine and several grew hysterical*
More than two thirds needed from two to three weeks* read-
justment before they could take dictation without breaking,
down*
Those who still clung to jobs or oscillated between spells
of work and idleness were haunted by the same bogey of
insecurity. Dogged resolve to hold on to what one had, along
with fear of exchanging poor but steady wages for better-
paying jobs with greater risks, blunted the American sense of
enterprise* Enthusiasm for work and loyalty to the concern
also tended to dim. Many agreed that it "didn't pay to work
too hard, because employers will only take advantage of
you/' The success legend, whose brightness for generations
had hypnotized youth, now began visibly to tarnish, along
with those kindred Puritan virtues of diligence and frugality.
The trusty old formulas seemed to have failed* "We realize
that honesty, integrity, and industry don't get you to the top
any more/' said a collegian at Thomas Jefferson's university
in the mid-thirties.
Such misgivings were not confined to youth. "It ain't any
good starting saving again/' said old folks who had seen
banks close one after another and hoarded funds eaten by the
years of the locust. "We've got in so deep I guess we'll never
try to get out/* Among a group of nearly four hundred job-
less men, half agreed that "luck" or "pull" determined success
more than did ability; a little less than half accepted the tra-
ditions of "rugged individualism" in business, although three
fourths *of a similar group of employed men still indorsed
that time-hallowed philosophy* For many this disaster im-
peached the gospel of thrift* Some decided that the apostles
34 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
of saving the bankers and self-made industrialists were
largely responsible for what had happened* Still others re-
flected philosophically that "you can't take it with you"
an old saying caught up by the refrain of a song hit in 1931
and echoed five years later in one of the decade's favorite
plays, a comedy by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart about
a happy-go-lucky family who picnic through life. Why
worry? Those still able to buy books made Edmund Jacob-
son's You Mast Relax a best seller in 1934, and a little later
took up the self-help manuals of Marjorie Hillis, Live Atone
and Like It (1936) and Orchids on Your Budget (1937),
mingling gay insouciance with doctrines which her father, a
once famous Congregational preacher, in his day had set
forth in all their pristine strenuousness*
Too deep for the average citizen to fathom, the floods of
disaster had rolled in to erase ancient tide marks and tug at
the moorings of inherited wisdom* This era brought a ques-
tioning into American life deeper than any other since the
Civil War* Stereotypes of thought, traditional saws, the
tribal wisdom of the elders, all were challenged in books,
magazines and private talk* Perhaps, after all, the promise
of American life would turn out merely to be propaganda,
the tyranny of words or the folklore of capitalism* But while
youth was prone to rebel, middle age and senescence often
clung all the more stoutly to old loyalties, particularly if they
had a personal stake in the status quo leaping to the de-
fense of verities like hard work, thrift and individual enter-
prise, and opposing change in those concepts of law and gov-
ernment which they associated with happier days* Yet even
among this group the threat of poverty wrought its effect,
as the Townsend crusade demonstrated.
For, after the passage of two or three years, unemploy-
ment had entered into the grain of American life* Its severity
and apparent hopelessness were without parallel* Panics and
bank failures, rainy days and lean years, flood and drought,
had come and gone many times since the first settlers carved
NEW DESIGN FOR LIVING 35
out a civilization in the howling wilderness. This crisis, it
seemed, had no precedent* Poverty was everywhere; cornered
by it, the jobless man now felt something resembling claus-
trophobia*
A case history from the files of the California State Unem-
ployment Commission in 1932 will illustrate the difference*
This octogenarian had struck many ups and downs since that
day in 1873 when, as he recalled, he was working in New
York City and
the bank of Jay Cooke and Company broke and my boss
closed up and I was thrown out of work and I became a
tramp* * * * At that time the whole West was open to home-
steaders* At that time the mountains were honeycombed
with new homes, and new mines that were being opened.
At that time railroads had been building all over the country*
From a tramp he became a section hand, and after that em-
ployment was steady, first as a coal miner and later a grocer,
until by 1890 he found himself "a fairly well-to-do busi-
ness man*" But the Panic of 1893 cleaned him out, and once
more he took to the road as a wanderer until in 1895 he
succumbed to the lure of California and managed to raise
enough cash to grubstake him in ranching. Life again became
easier as he accumulated another competence* Now in old age
he had lost everything, and in his bones he knew this was
worse and different. "There isn't an acre of decent land to be
had for homesteading* There isn't a railroad to be built any-
where," he reflected* "Years ago Horace Greeley made a state-
ment, "Young man, go West and grow up with the country.'
Were he living today, he would make the statement, 'Go
West, young man, and drown yourself in the Pacific Ocean/
like the lemmings do in Norway/* There was no farther
range*
An idle man seeking to rationalize his plight was apt to
follow one of several roads. If he saw it as the result of ma-
chines supplanting men* he might take it all pretty calmly
*
36 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
since no one could get very angry with a machine. If he
blamed himself or his hard luck, he slid down the path of
defeat. If he laid the responsibility upon society or the eco-
nomic system, he chose the fork of radicalism* The steps of
an undetermined number veered toward the left* One careful
study found that unemployment made men a good deal more
radical than it made women. Nearly a quarter of the idle, or
about four times as many as among job holders, agreed that
"a revolution might be a very good thing for this country/'
though practically all reacted strongly against concepts like
"communism" and "alien radicals" and affirmed that "a man
should be willing to fight for his country/*
Such radicalism as existed was mainly homespun, doc-
trinally naive and, at bottom, the plain man's instinctive re-
sentment of poverty surrounded by shops bursting with food
and farms smothered under their own productive surplus.
"Thinking is dangerous these days/' said one down-and
outer to a social worker in 1932. "Please leave me alone/'
A newspaperman going through the towns and backwoods
of North Carolina in this same year amid the ruin wrought
by five-cent cotton, stagnant mills, bank failures, foreclosures
and other evils conveniently saddled upon the Yankees of
Wall Street heard murmurs of the word "revolution/' A
Michigan villager early in the New Deal told a Federal
Emergency Relief official:
i don't believe you realize how bad things were getting
before this set-up started. . . They all said that if things
got any worse and something didn't happen pretty soon,
they'd go down Main Street and crash the windows and take
what they needed. They wouldn't pick on the little stores.
They'd go after the big stores first ... no man is going to
let bis wife and children starve to death.
Did not Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad, to the scandal of some people, say in a speech at
the Wharton School of Finance in 1931 that capitalism was
NEW DESIGN FOR LIVING 37
out of joint, adding doughtily, "I would steal before I would
starve' 7
Spring of the next year saw hunger marches far and wide
over the country and a serious unemployment riot at Dear-
horn, Michigan, with the shedding of blood. The nearest ap-
proach to widespread mass action was the "Bonus Army/*
"Adjusted compensation* * certificates for veterans of the First
World War, authorized by Congress in 1924, had been made
payable in 1945. Early in 1931 the administrator of vet-
erans* affairs reported to Hoover that about two hundred
and seventy-two thousand men stood in need of relief. A
cash loan upon these certificates was soon provided, over the
president's veto, but shortly thereafter the Patman bill pro-
posed immediate payment of the balance.
To lobby for this measure some twelve to fifteen thousand
homeless veterans, following the lead of an Oregon band
shepherded by a jobkss cannery manager, Walter Waters,
converged from all quarters upon Washington in the late
spring of 1932. They took shelter in empty federal buildings
or pitched tents on mud flats across the Potomac. The admin-
istration stressed infiltration of their group by a sprinkling of
Communists and persons with criminal records. In fact, how-
ever, known "Bolshies" were given the bum's rush; and
when on June 16 the Senate overwhelmingly rejected the
Patman bill, veterans keeping vigil on the Capitol steps swal-
lowed their disappointment and rousingly sang "America."
When Congress early in July voted to pay the passage
home of impoverished marchers, about five thousand left
town; later in the month, with Congress adjourned, the pres-
ident ordered General Douglas MacArthur, chief of staff, to
evacuate the rest. A riot between the men and Washington
police brought death to two veterans. With tear gas and fixed
bayonets the troops quickly scattered the laggards, who re-
treated whence they came or joined the migratory flux of
the dispossessed along roads and railways. At all events, the
talk heard in some excitable circles that ex-servicemen would
38 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
follow the precedent set abroad and become the spearhead
of revolution whether to the right or the left proved
silly.*
Against the spread of doctrinaire Marxism, even in the
darkest days of 1932, stood the strong American faith in
democratic processes, the people's habit of hopefulness and
their distrust of "foreign** agitators* To the ballot box rather
than the soapbox most citizens looked when they wanted a
change. Here and there, in a few industrial centers, discontent
simmered beneath the lid: Seattle, for example, with its syn-
dicalist background and the activities in 1932 of its Unem-
ployed Citizens League, or Detroit after the city's credit
reached exhaustion and Father Charles E. Coughlin began to
fish in the troubled waters. But equally bad conditions else-
where were accepted with fortitude.
In New York City homeless men were sleeping in subway
stations; and in the hollow of an abandoned reservoir in
Central Park flourished a locally famous settlement of 1932
called "Hoover Valley/* whose inhabitants, feeding on stale
bread and the refuse of markets, gazed listlessly at Manhat-
tan's skyline ringed with half-empty skyscrapers. In Youngs-
town, Ohio, where open-hearth furnaces lately glowed with
the enterprise of a major American industry, derelicts by the
hundreds huddled for warmth in the structure housing the
municipal incinerator. Through the nation men were dwell-
ing in abandoned factories, freight cars on sidings or shacks
made of waste lumber and flattened tin cans. With their
women and children the uprooted tended to congregate on
the outskirts of town, living from hand to mouth. These
* One side of the story is given by Walter Waters, B.EJ 7 .: the Whole Story
of the Bonos Army (N. Y. t 1933) ; another by Herbert Hoover, State Papers
(W. S. Myers, ed., R Y., 1934), II, 242, 274-275, and T. G. Joslin, Hoover
Off the Record (N. Y., 1934), 269-275. Spurred by the powerful Legion
lobby Congress in January, 1936, overrode President Roosevelt's veto and
ordered immediate payment of the bonus. Needy veterans also received special
assistance from several New Deal agencies, including the Civilian Conservation
Corps and the Works Progress Administration.
NEW DESIGN FOR LIVING 39
were the consumers without buying power. By the summer
of 1932 many communities were turning over tracts of pub-
lic land to the unemployed for cultivation as small farms or
vegetable gardens. In Gary, Indiana, for example, twenty
thousand families raised their own provender on land lent by
the city.
Despite repeated official assurance that nobody would be
allowed to starve, in New York City at least twenty-nine
persons are known to have died from starvation in 1933,
while one hundred and ten such fatalities, chiefly children,
were reported for the nation at large prior to 1934. Far more
numerous were those victims of disease, accident and general
collapse to whose death hunger was largely contributory.
Philadelphia's community health center experienced a rise of
about sixty per cent in its malnutrition diagnoses between
1928 and 1932, markedly in the age group between six and
sixteen. A sharp decline in the consumption of milk, eggs
and fresh fruit showed all too clear a correlation with an in-
crease of rickets, scurvy, pellagra. In one New York City
health center the National Organization for Public Health
Nursing reported a growth of malnutrition patients from
eighteen per cent of total admissions in 1928 to the startling
figure of sixty per cent by 1931.
"Hog *n' hominy/* so long the bane of Southern poor
whites, was now matched in inadequacy by the diet of the
new poor in other regions, living on bread, potatoes and
beans, with cabbage once a week as a treat. To be sure, res-
taurant managers often contributed leftovers, bakers their
stale bread, and wholesale fruit and vegetable dealers their
overripe produce. Truck drivers were known to spill an occa-
sional crate of oranges from their vehicles on the Lower East
Side and pretend to ignore the scattered fruit. The acme of
degradation was garbage eating, practised in many cities. In-
vestigators of the Chicago slums in 1932 pictured a scene:
"Around the truck which was unloading garbage and other
refuse were about thirty-five men, women and children. As
40 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
soon as the truck pulled away from the pile, all of them
started digging with sticks, some with their hands, grabbing
bits of food and vegetables/'
Upon a minority the worries and struggles of the De-
pression bore with intolerable effect. The annual rate of in-
crease in admissions to state hospitals for the insane between
1930 and 1932 rose to almost triple that from 1922 to
1930. Inability to take care of mental cases in private homes
or private hospitals must, of course, have contributed largely
to this growth. But the number of insane per hundred thou-
sand population in New York state registered an abrupt
jump in 1932-1933.*
An expected sensational increase in the suicide rate follow-
ing the stock-market crash was not, however, borne out by
the facts. In October and November, 1929, New York City
reported only 219 suicides, as against 223 for the correspond-
ing period in 1928; but the annual national rate, of 14 per
hundred thousand in 1929, rose steadily to a record high of
17.4 in 1932, then gradually ebbed to 14.2 in 1936.
It was apparent that men felt the brunt of economic fail-
ure much more than did their wives, that suicide predomi-
nated at both extremes of the financial scale but especially the
upper, and that change from high to low estate provoked
self-destruction more often than did poverty in itself. As a
final index of desperation, it might be remarked that the
number of deaths necessitating burial at public expense dou-
bled in 1931 over 1929, to reach a ratio of about one in ten,
while in rural districts the number of homemade coffins in-
creased.
* C. 3. Enzler, Some Soda. Aspects of the Depression (Wash., 1939), 171.
In harmony with previous years, a slow steady increase took place from 439.2
insane per hundred thousand in 1929 to 447.6 in 1931, thence a sudden rise
to 458.3 in 1932, and 472.3 in 1933. The next year showed a slight loss in
rate of acceleration, but a general increase continued through the decade. World
Almanac for 1943, 883,
CHAPTER III
CHANGE OF COMMAND
IN his battle against the Depression, Herbert Hoover as-
sumed greater responsibilities than any predecessor had done
in a similar plight. Van Buren in the crisis of 1837, Grant in
1873 and Cleveland in 1893 had approved monetary meas-
ures intended to cushion the shock* Theodore Roosevelt in
1907 had sent Congress a peppery message which evoked a
temporary law to give greater flexibility to the currency in
periods of emergency. In 1921 Harding called a President's
Conference on Unemployment, whose purpose was firmly to
hand the problem back to local charity. But after 1929 un-
precedented disaster demanded unprecedented action. In
attempting federal interposition in the workings of the eco-
nomic cycle Hoover willingly took several steps, and was
forced by circumstance and a Democratic House into taking
still others, which broke with tradition.
In the past, economic recovery had come about from seem-
ingly natural causes. Slackened output led to the absorption
of surplus goods, while reduced capital charges and cheaper
raw materials lowered the unit cost of new production. Both
consumption and employment were thus stimulated, and
industry began to expand again. Not only the continental
frontier but the foreign export market had in former times
invited such renewal, as did the steady multiplication of con-
sumers due to the high birth rate and immigration. Now the
whole world lay under the same blight, and American indus-
trial expansion appeared to be near its limit. The nation was
ill not from a single malady but from a mixed infection, and
years of easy living had helped sap its innate powers of re-
sistance. Could the patient recover by himself, without using
41
42 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
up all his reserves in a long debilitating fight? Would old-
fashioned remedies, like patience, hard work, a little monetary
tinkering and much hope suffice to cure him?
Herbert Hoover, who believed in social planning and ab-
horred waste and inefficiency, answered these questions in the
negative. Yet this doctor was largely the product of what his
successor would blithely call horse-and-buggy days, for
Hoover held firmly to a belief in modified laissez faire, the
gold standard, individual enterprise and the profit motive as
mainsprings of progress, and in savings and self-denial as the
essence of economic security* In a campaign speech in 1928
he had distilled his doctrine into the phrase "rugged indi-
vidualism/* which the years of crisis would see under con-
stant attack, derision, or parody as "ragged individualism/*
Replying to his critics in 1934 Hoover wrote,
While I can make no claim for having introduced the
term "nigged individualism," I should be proud to have in-
vented it. It has been used by American leaders for over a
half -century in eulogy of those God-fearing men and women
of honesty whose stamina and character and fearless assertion
of rights led them to make their own way in life. It is they
who have borne the burdens and given leadership in their
communities*
Such an attitude went hand in hand with deep distrust of
state paternalism, use of the tax power to reduce inequalities
between haves and have-nots, and free federal spending
which reckoned not with repayment* It was therefore plain
that this physician, while faced with new and alarming
symptoms, would dole out his medicines cautiously and look
askance at major surgery, even though the patient himself
was increasingly in the mood for experiment*
Indeed the nation, before falling upon evil days, had been
partially conditioned to those ideas of greater governmental
responsibility which seemed everywhere to be in the drift
CHANGE OF COMMAND
of modern times. The First World War had inducted even
Americans into the necessity for federal control in crises. Still
more deeply, the development of an urban industrial order
almost imperceptibly had interwoven government with busi-
ness, the state with the individual's daily life. Some citizens
thought of government as an economic balance wheel among
the forces of private enterprise, others as the supreme source
of action in times of war, mass misery or panic, and still
others apparently the majority as a shield for the average
man against corporate greed and exploitation. Those who re-
membered the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt, Taft
and Wilson had seen a demonstration of the third attitude,
And invocation of any of these roles was sufficient to inject
federal power into the desperate impasse which followed
1929. Furthermore, the citizen who in the early 1930's
turned his gaze abroad perceived that governments in Britain,
France, Germany, Japan and other lands were undertaking
huge responsibilities, often applying measures more drastic
than anything witnessed in the United States in this decade.
Like most of his countrymen, Hoover in the autumn of
1929 failed to gauge either the gravity or duration of the
crisis. Seeing the market crash as a paper debacle that could be
checked by intelligenFcooperation at the top, he called indus-
trial, financial and labor leaders to the White House repeat-
edly in November and December, 1929. He gained prom-
ises of increased spending from railroads, the telephone and
steel companies, and pledges of sustained wage rates from
major industries. Most of these commitments were honored
half-heartedly or evasively, if at all. Hoover s basic faith in
the self-recuperative power and socially cooperative spirit of
business was doomed to disappointment again and again
through the next three years. Meanwhile he sought to banish
"unjustified fear** and restore confidence by utterances re-
sembling a coach's pep talk. "Ninety per cent of our difficulty
in depressions is caused by fear," he told his secretary, in
44 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
words prophetic of his successor's ringing inaugural declara-
tion: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself .//'*
After his hectic activity in the closing weeks of 1929
Hoover desisted, believing that the brakes would hold, the
spell of optimism work and the self-help of business come
into play* He was slow to give up his expectations, and as the
months passed, a mood of impatience arose not only among
the needy unemployed but also among men of property,
well-nigh as eager to invoke the government's intercession in
the "flat-wallet era" as they had been to protest its interfer-
ence in flush times. The year 1930 saw minor skirmishes
fought against the Depression, such as federal assistance to
drought victims, aid to the farmer to feed his cattle though
not his children, and a program of public works including a
half -billion dollars for federal buildings and sixty-five mil-
lion for the construction of Boulder (later rechristened
Hoover) Dam* These latter enterprises continued for several
years to play a part in relieving local unemployment, but
under the rising mood of desperation they seemed timid and
half-hearted. The cry everywhere was for action*
From the time of the moratorium in June, 1931, Hoover
tacitly admitted the full magnitude of the crisis and concen-
trated his energies fiercely upon it. A hard worker, dogged
and sincere, he was nevertheless unable to dramatize his battle
with the Depression in a way to kindle popular imagination
or rally the nation's morale. He was blamed for a disaster
whose seeds had been sown long before his accession to office
and which undoubtedly would have come had his opponent
triumphed in 1928.
But Hoover lent himself unhappily to the role of scape-
goat* For all his abilities, he lacked the gifts which his suc-
cessor possessed in such abundance political camaraderie,
communicable personal warmth, a comprehensive program,
thrilling leadership. With the aid of a "smear campaign"
* As early as January, 1932, an editorial on the Depression in the Ladies'
Home Journal had declared: "There is nothing to fear except fear."
CHANGE OF COMMAND 45
Hoover was made to appear dour and taciturn and, quite un-
fairly, callous to the people's plight An oft-repeated wise-
crack observed that the Great Engineer had quickly drained,
ditched and dammed the country* His career illustrates the
ironies of a public man's reputation. In the First World War
his entry into the American home and kitchen as the counselor
of conservation had made him a symbol of friendly efficiency,
thrift and the homely precepts of "hooverizing." Meanwhile
in 1916 and again in 1919 his labors in feeding the starving
millions of Europe had invested him with the magic of the
hero as provider. When the Great Depression came, he was
expected somehow to duplicate this miracle of social engi-
neering, although there was no longer an outside source from
which largess could be tapped for a distressed people. These
earlier experiences, however, had confirmed Hoover in his
faith that voluntary cooperation and community effort were
the answer to all emergencies. With such schooling and his
temperament of a Manchester liberal, Hoover worked long
and late over the puzzle of the economic collapse*
The most acute problem was relief. Traditional American
ideas about relief sprang not from modern Britain, with its
"soul-destroying dole/' but from English poor laws dating
back at least to Queen Elizabeth. It was commonly believed
that charity pauperizes those who receive it, that public re-
lief and politics are inseparable and, above all, that such dis-
bursements are "something for nothing/' Aid to the indigent
thus tended to become a local responsibility, given as grudg-
ingly and humiliatingly as possible in order to discourage
spongers and point up the disgrace of poverty. The bleak
horror of the poorhouse was thought to be salutary.
In a virgin and agrarian nation local relief had not worked
too badly; it was cushioned by the neighborliness which
Americans liked to think was a national trait. Later, private
philanthropy through the channels of charity-organization
societies and the Red Cross had tempered the harshness of
municipal relief. It was natural for the president to turn to
46 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
them in a crisis which at first looked hardly different from a
San Francisco earthquake or Mississippi River flood* "The
sense of voluntary organization and community service in
the American people has not vanished * * * has been strong
enough to cope with the problem for the past year/* Hoover
told the press in October, 1930, upon appointing an Emer-
gency Committee for Employment headed by an ex-police
commissioner of New York, Colonel Arthur Woods. Indeed,
donations to community chests for charitable purposes had
been rising since 1925, reaching a peak in the autumn of
1931 and the spring of 1932; in the following year, whether
from exhaustion of funds or the fact that public agencies had
entered the field in strength, they dropped to a low un-
matched since 1924.
Hoover believed that the obligation for relief and reem-
ployment began with the individual* Failing there, the effort
might then call upon private organizations like the Red
Cross, thence turn to municipal and state governments and,
finally, as a last resort to the federal government whose
succor, in this ultimate extremity, should take the form of
loans rather than gifts* Slowly and reluctantly Hoover was
driven back trench after trench in what he conceived to be
his defense of the public treasury.
Though citizens* committees did sporadic good work in
1930-1931, in the larger view it fell short of the need* The
Woods Committee failed to create enough new jobs to build
even a footbridge across the growing chasm of unemploy-
ment, and in August, 1931, Hoover supplanted it with the
Organization on Unemployment Relief, headed by the indus-
trialist Walter S* Gifford and later by Wilson's secretary of
war, Newton D* Baker* The purpose of this committee in
itself an admission of the deepening gravity of the situation
was to coordinate the activities of local organizations,
while exhorting each community and state to care for its
own. "Spread the Work" was its slogan for industry*
In January, 1932, the American Legion opened a drive to
CHANGE OP COMMAND 47
obtain a million jobs under a six-hour day and five-day week
program* Employers who agreed were entitled to display a
sign, "We have enlisted/' Early that spring New York City
launched its block-aid campaign, pledging weekly contribu-
tions up to a dollar from employed dwellers in each block to
help the workless. <L P. Morgan, breaking an almost im-
penetrable reserve, took to the radio to praise the movement.
Meanwhile the Red Cross aided approximately a million per-
sons during the grim winter of 1931-193 2*
For all the valor of private charity it was not enough.
And when the swelling throng of the needy turned to mu-
nicipal governments, they found the cupboard bare by reason
of dwindling tax collections and the drain of two depression
years. For a few weeks or months in that winter, states made
grants to local authorities to meet relief costs until these
sources, too, ran dry, and the eyes of hunger were lifted ever
more importunately toward Washington* In March Congress
voted to distribute forty million bushels of Farm Board
wheat through the Red Cross to feed the unemployed, and
four months later it released forty-five million bushels more
and half a million bales of cotton from the same stores, the
latter under Red Cross direction being made into clothing.
These measures, utilizing for relief federally owned com-
modities even though channeled through private philan-
thropy marked an innovation. Hoover opposed appropria-
tion of federal funds for distribution by the Red Cross, and
upon this point Congress sustained him.
The ultimate stage, against which the president held out
so long, was reached in July, 1932, when the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation was empowered to lend needy states
sums from the national Treasury. The RFC, most important
of the new agencies which the Roosevelt regime would in-
herit from Hoover, had been set up in January, 1932, after
the ill success of a scheme called the National Credit Corpora-
tion, which Hoover had promoted in the hope that strong
banks would voluntarily form a credit pool to help the weak.
48 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Like many of his assumptions it counted too heavily upon
the enlightened self-interest of business. The strong showed
scant zeal for aiding the weak, and so the whole burden fell
upon the government in Washington.
Thus the RFC came into being, created by Congress to
lend two billion dollars to banks, insurance companies, build-
ing and loan associations, agricultural credit organizations,
railroads and similar enterprises. Hostile critics led by Con-
gressman Fiorello La Guardia promptly called it the mil-
lionaires* dole. Hoover believed, however, that buttressing the
nation's credit structure would indirectly benefit everybody*
Resignation of the first head of the RFC, General Charles G*
Dawes, on June 6, 1932, three weeks before his Chicago
bank received a ninety-million-dollar loan from the Corpora-
tion, led to clamor for full publicity of its lending activities
and for the use of federal bounty for starving individuals as
well as embarrassed banks.
In the summer of 1932 not merely the bonus marchers
but masses of distressed citizens, together with local and state
governments, were stretching empty hands toward Capitol
Hill and the Treasury of the world's richest nation. Demo-
crat John N. Garner, speaker of the House and political wise-
acre, demanded federal loans to needy men and women. The
American Federation of Labor favored appropriations to pay
teachers in bankrupt cities. Many voices urged revival of the
federal employment service, defunct since the last war, and
the creation of a national system of unemployment insur-
ance. Though looking coldly upon all these proposals, Presi-
dent Hoover in July, 1932, felt obliged to accept a relief bill
levying $2,122,000,000 upon the Treasury, of which $1,-
800,000,000 could be lent by the RFC to states and munic-
ipalities for relief and public works, with the remainder ear-
marked for federal construction. This measure, like the earlier
distribution of federal wheat and cotton, set a precedent for
the New Deal. Under the Roosevelt administration, demand
CHANGE OF COMMAND 49
for repayment of these sums was abandoned, thus converting
the loans into gifts.*
True to his conservative lights, President Hoover was
wary of increased taxes and of all federal grants save loans
for self-liquidating enterprises. He disliked "non-productive
public works/' such as city halls and state capitols, highways,
streets, river and harbor improvements, military and naval
construction beyond the usual volume, but approved "in-
come-producing works" like toll bridges, toll tunnels, water-
works, docks and other projects whose steady earning ca-
pacity promised repayment. Largely through his efforts, the
relief act of July, 1932, favored the latter to the extent of a
billion and a half as against some three hundred million dol-
lars for the former.
The president's attack upon still another problem, that of
the distressed homeowner, showed in different guise his finan-
cial caution and determination to deal with destitute institu-
tions rather than directly with individuals. The catastrophic
effect of the Depression upon the building trades has already
been remarked. Most spectacularly of all, between 1928 and
1933 construction of residential property fell ninety-five per
cent, while expenditures for repairs dropped from half a bil-
lion to fifty million dollars. Still more grave was the fact
that in 1932 some two hundred and seventy-three thousand
homeowners lost their property by foreclosure, until by early
1933 about a thousand homes a day were falling into the
hands of mortgage holders. After some months of urging,
President Hoover in July, 1932, induced Congress to estab-
lish Federal Home Loan Banks, twelve in number, in order to
allow funds to be borrowed by building and loan associa-
tions, banks and insurance companies whose credit had been
* While federal loans for relief were a novelty, the use of local funds for such
purposes was not. In the Panic of 1893, for example, many cities appropriated
public funds both for direct relief and for municipal works like streets and
sewers. See Leah H. Feder, Unemployment Relief in Periods of Depression
(N. Y., 1936), chaps, iv-vii, and bibliography in A. M. Schlesinger, The Rise
of the City (A History of American Life, X), 429 n.
50 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
sorely strained by loans to residential and farm owners. This
procedure helped to keep certain mortgage-lending institu-
tions afloat, but- its effect in removing the incubus of worry
and loss from the "backs of individual homeowners proved
disappointingly smalL
Meanwhile, the anxious summer of 1932 witnessed
Hoover's renominaticm for president by the Republican party
and the nomination by the Democrats of New York's pop-
ular governor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt* His promising
youthful career, first as state senator and later assistant secre-
tary of the navy under Wilson, had seemingly been blighted
when in 1920 he went down to defeat as vice-presidential
candidate of the Democrats and shortly afterwards was
stricken with infantile paralysis. But with great courage he
mastered the strategy of living in a crippled body, and in
1928 was persuaded to reenter politics by his friend "AT*
Smith to whom Roosevelt had attached a famous sobriquet
that seemed still better 'to fit his own temperament, the
"Happy Warrior/'
A landslide reelection to the governorship in 1930, a vig-
orous state program of social welfare and the political fence-
building of Roosevelt's devoted lieutenants, James A* Farley
and Louis McHenry Howe, made him the preconvention
favorite. His flight by plane to Chicago to receive the nomi-
nation not only shattered precedent but gave the country a
foretaste of his innate gift of drama, his summary sense of
action. Yet as Ernest K. Lindley, Roosevelt's favorite news-
paperman, has said, he was "no great popular idol during the
Presidential campaign of 1932.'* He seemed too urbane to be
a voice crying in the wilderness. Often quoted was Walter
Lippmann's famous description of him on January 8, 1932,
as "no tribune of the people ... no enemy of entrenched
privilege ... a pleasant man who, without any important
qualification for the office, would very much like to be Presi-
dent." The country nevertheless wanned to this tireless cam-
paigner, sometimes making as many as sixteen speeches a
Conservative Fears of the New Deal
CHANGE OF COMMAND 51
day, hearty, self-confident and smiling. Of his real quality,
however, it had little conception.
The platforms and campaigns of the two parties were
naturally at variance about the Depression* The Republicans,
following Hoovers lead, stressed its international roots,
while the liberal Democrats and Roosevelt pointed up its do-
mestic causes* Regarding its cure, their thoughts were also di-
vided. To the former, recovery was the sammam bonam and
reform secondary; the latter accepted recovery as important,
but demanded reform as an indispensable element for recov-
ery and insurance against another collapse, invoking old-age
and unemployment insurance, control of crop surpluses, more
federal credit to states for unemployment relief and reciprocal
trade agreements with other nations. "The removal of gov-
ernment from all fields of private enterprise" was promised
"except where necessary to develop public works and natural
resources in the common interest/'
Hoover still clung to his faith in the spirit of local self-
help, whether for recovery or relief relief being generally
regarded as the most urgent of the three R's and he believed
that all would eventually be well if the credit structure of
business continued to be underpropped by federal loans. He
also stood by the gold standard, so that "the dollar should
ring true on every counter in the world/* and upheld the
high tariff, solemnly warning that "the grass will grow in
streets of a hundred cities, a thousand towns; the weeds over-
run the fields of millions of farms if that protection is taken
away/* Republicans hailed a mild upsurge of improvement
in the late summer and early autumn of 1932, as the RFC
retarded the rate of bank failures, gold began to return to the
United States after its recent flight, the stock market rallied
and the business index climbed a little. But the average cit-
izen, looking at his meager pay envelope, the soup kitchens
and bread lines, felt hardly better and yearned for a change.
'Til tell you what our trouble is/' acknowledged Hoover to
his secretary on election eve. "We are opposed by six million
52 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
unemployed, ten thousand bonus marchers, and ten-cent
corn."
Among the masses of dissatisfied voters, Roosevelt* s prom-
ise of action was fortifying, along with his assurance that
"failure is not an American habit/' "It is common sense to
take a method and try it/' he said at Oglethorpe University,
Georgia. "If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But
above all, try something. The millions who are in want will
not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their
needs are within easy reach/' His early utterances made little
mention of explicit means, but as the campaign developed,
they grew more definite, including reform of holding com-
panies and protection of the investor against fraudulent
claims, reciprocal tariff agreements, federal power projects
on the Tennessee and Columbia rivers, the easing of farm
mortgage burdens, and social security.
He told San Francisco's Commonwealth Club that "pri-
vate economic power is . . . a public trust/* and often in-
voked the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt and Wilson
whose momentum had been so unhappily lost in the twenties.
At other times the Democratic candidate seemed eager to re-
assure and please almost everybody. He paid tribute to
"sound money" without pausing to define it, scolded
Hoover's "reckless and extravagant past" which had raised
the cost of government from two billion in 1927 to three in
1931, yet he stood ready to assume vastly augmented re-
sponsibilities for the federal authority*
The campaign brought significant new labels into polit-
ical life. In an early radio speech on April 7, 1932, Roose-
velt crystallized his solicitude for the underprivileged in a
phrase: "the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic
pyramid/* Ironically, its source was that bluff individualist
William Graham Sumner, the Yale economist whose Dar-
winian social philosophy had denied "the absurd attempt to
make the world over/' arguing that "the survival of the
unfittest" as advocated by sentimental reformers was an af-
CHANGE OF COMMAND 55
front to industry and frugality,* Plucked out of Its context,
"the forgotten man" had been offered to the candidate by
Professor Raymond Moley of Columbia, best-known mem-
ber of that intimate advisory circle which a journalist later
dubbed "the brains trust/' soon popularized as "brain
trust/* t Shortly after the election Roosevelt defined his great
objective for the American people as "a more abundant life/*
his own political position as "slightly to the left of the cen-
ter/*
All these phrases would be recalled repeatedly, but the
most indispensable was the "New Deal/' "I pledge you, I
pledge myself/' said Roosevelt in accepting his nomination,
"to a new deal for the American people/* With the implica-
tion of social justice a "new deal" had been Invoked by Mark
Twain's Connecticut Yankee; at the end of August follow-
ing Roosevelt's declaration, a book by Stuart Chase appeared
with that title4 Within a short time, the candidate and his
public were speaking definitively of the New Deal, a label re-
calling both the "Square Deal" advocated by Roosevelt's fifth
* F. D. Roosevelt, Public Papers and Addresses (S. I. Rosenman, ed., N. Y.
1938-1941), I, 625* Sumner's lecture title "The Forgotten Man," first used m
1883, had in view not the underprivileged but the mass of average middle-class
citizens who "just work and save and pay" the cost of political inefficiency and
social quackery. See H. E. Starr, William Graham Sumner (N. Y., 1925), 287.
t The author was James M. Kieran of the New York Times, not to he con-
fused with John F., later a performer on the radio program "Information Please, '
See E. K. Lindley, The Roosevelt Revolution (N. Y., 1933) , 26 n. The assump-
tion in some quarters that Roosevelt was the first to invoke "professors** as gov-
ernmental advisers was of course absurd: Wilson had used many during the first
World War, for example, and Hoover had his fiscal counselor in Professor E. W*
Kemmerer of Princeton. But such became the fame of Messrs. Moley, TugweU and
Berle of Columbia that the hostile cartoonist's figure of "the New Dealer was
inevitably garbed in cap and gown.
For Roosevelt's account of its adoption, see Public Papers, ll, "*-:?. ^ay-
mond Moley, After Seven Years (N. Y., 1939), 23 n., claims its initial use m
this campaign and opposite page 146 offers a facsimile of his first memorandum
employing it. In an interview early in his first term Roosevelt acknowledged
indebtedness to the Connecticut Yankee's remark that, when six men out of a
thousand crack the whip over their fellows' backs, "it seemed to me that what
the nine hundred and ninety-four other dupes needed was a new deal- *****
Twain's New Deal/' Sat. Rev. of Lit., X, 352 (Dec. 16, 1933).
54 THE AGE OP THE GREAT DEPRESSION
cousin Theodore and the "New Freedom** espoused by the
last Democratic president, Wilson* Whether for praise or
hlame t it quickly became the most universal political tag of
the era.
Hoover closed the campaign by radio from Elko, Nevada,
with the declaration: "We are a nation of progressives* We
wish to see our Nation march forward. We differ strongly
as to the method to progress. * * . I feel deeply that the Re-
publican Party has been the party of progress in our history
from the day of Abraham Lincoln/' and he warned the
voters not to be "led astray by false gods arrayed in the
rainbow colors of promises/' Roosevelt made his last address
in Madison Square Garden, saying,
The next Administration must represent not a fraction of the
United States, but all of the United States. No resource of
mind or heart or organization can be excluded in the fight
against what is, after all, our real enemy. Our real enemies
are hunger, want, insecurity, poverty and fear.
The verdict lay with the people. By almost twenty-three
million votes to less than sixteen Roosevelt was elected,
carrying all the states but six, of which four were in New
England. The Democratic party also swept both houses of
Congress. William Allen White, veteran progressive of an
earlier Roosevelt's crusade, who had shrewdly watched the
world spin for forty years from his Kansas newspaper office,
viewed the landslide as registering "a new attitude in Amer-
ican life * * * a firm desire on the part of the American people
to use government as an agency for human welfare/'
The summer and autumn of 1932 had indeed seen the na-
tion at one of the vital crossroads of its history: two very
different temperaments and political philosophies had ap-
pealed to the electorate* In the retrospective light of 1935
Lippmann would declare that "most of President Roosevelt's
recovery program is an evolution from President Hoover's"
an assertion calculated to please neither Republicans in
CHANGE OF COMMAND 55
their resolve to see the New Deal as a wicked apostasy, nor
Democrats zealous to claim its beneficent originality.
Yet the statement held a grain of truth* Both leaders took
unprecedented responsibility for lifting the nation's economic
mechanism back onto the track of prosperity by attempting
to raise farm prices and underpin wages, create jobs and
"prime the pump** by public works, spread employment by
fostering shorter hours, and regulate the value of the dollar
(though, while Hoover undertook to bolster its internal
value by expanding the credit base through open-market op-
erations in the Federal Reserve system, Roosevelt addressed
himself to its external value as well and took the country off
gold) * Both Hoover's RFC and his Home Loan Banks con-
tinued through the New Deal; and although the Republican
president nipped the idea of a Tennessee Valley Authority
with a frosty veto in March, 1931 "I am firmly opposed to
the Government entering into any business the major pur-
pose of which is competition with our citizens* * yet it could
be argued that he promoted the St Lawrence seaway as a
competitor of the railroads. And while Hoover's trade asso-
ciations foreshadowed one facet of the national recovery act,
the Norris-La Guardia anti-injunction act approved by him
adumbrated another.
Such, briefly, is the case for Hoover as the unacknowledged
sire of the New DeaL Like most piquant paradoxes it ig-
nores a number of things, beginning with the necessary re-
semblance between certain acts of two social planners engaged
in fighting the same disaster* It also overlooks the distinction
between Hoover's reluctant caution in adopting some of these
measures and Roosevelt's zest for experiment and innovation*
While Hoover shivered on the brink, Roosevelt gleefully
took the plunge and invited the nation to follow. Still more
vitally the comparison dismisses the difference between
Hoover's temporary expedients and Roosevelt's permanent
blueprints for reform as well as recovery, between the form-'
56 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
er's basic reliance upon industrial self-government and the
latter' s growing resort to legal compulsion*
Hoover termed the campaign of 1932 "a contest between
two philosophies of government/* individualism against
regimentation. Roosevelt saw it as a dilemma between two
theories of prosperity: one which sought to make the rich
richer in the hope that some benefit would trickle down to
the common man, the other "that if we make the average of
mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise
upward, just as yeast rises up, through the ranks/* In prac-
tice, as the future would demonstrate, this largely meant that
government should regulate wealth more firmly, taxing
profits and income while spending more freely for the com-
mon man's benefit. Was it the business of government to do
these things? Herein lay the essence of their disagreement,
A liberal aristocrat whose roots belonged to agrarian
rather than industrial America, Roosevelt in the approved
tradition of Thomas Jefferson, Charles Pinckney and Ed-
ward Livingston joined the obligations of public service to a
deepening concern for the less fortunate as if his own phys-
ical handicap had given him the key of intuitive sympathy
for all disadvantaged. A lover of fair play and a humanitar-
ian, he believed passionately in decent treatment for all human
beings* The pinch of poverty and the grind of exploitation
he had never known save from the lips of others, such as the
little band of enthusiastic organizers in the Women's Trade
Union League whose visits to him in his convalescent days
may largely have molded his attitude toward labor and its
problems of health and wages. His qualities of heart and
imagination transcended those of cool intellectual analysis.
On the other hand, his opponents never tired of pointing
out that Roosevelt, born with a silver spoon in his mouth,
was prone to assume an aristocrat's attitude toward money
very unlike that of Hoover, the self-made Iowa farm boy.
As private citizen and as governor of New York Roosevelt
was manifestly an easy spender, to whom the disbursement
CHANGE OF COMMAND 57
of funds to promote human happiness appealed more
strongly than did budget balancing and meticulous economy;
and he held the lords of Wall Street in no such veneration as
did Coolidge and Hoover. Most of his information on eco-
nomics Roosevelt gained by his characteristically quick,
though necessarily superficial, absorption from those he met*
As a "country squire" he had an interest as keen as Jeffer-
son's in the problems of farming, particularly that of conser-
vation, for to him the waste of the nation's human and
natural resources seemed far more real and grave than the
fiscal extravagance which scandalized most of his critics. In
simplifying and dramatizing the aspirations of liberalism for
ready popular assimilation* he proved a consummate master.
His sense of direction was usually superior to his logical pre-
vision. Often tacking and veering, always able to utilize pre-
vailing winds and currents to the full, Roosevelt was a born
navigator.
What was the promise of the New Deal? It was of a piece
with the oldest aspirations of the Republic, beginning with
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness/* an experiment
in promoting the greatest good of the greatest number. To
some extent, this quest for perfectibility had shifted during
the last century from the individual to the social order, from
isolated clusters of Utopian communities to regulation of the
national economy. Ever since the 1880's federal legislation
had addressed itself to interstate commerce and the railroads
in particular, while still other forms of supervision, for ex-
ample over money and foreign trade, dated back to the cradle
of the Republic. Conservation of natural resources along with
curbs upon "malefactors of great wealth" had been keynotes
of the first Roosevelt, and agricultural relief dated from a
rural-credits law under Wilson and the grain-and-commod-
ities-exchange acts under Harding and Coolidge. Progressive
states like Wisconsin, New York, Massachusetts and Kansas
had made independent strides in such matters as farm relief,
58 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
water-power regulation, unemployment insurance and old-
age pensions*
Nevertheless, the easier conditions of life in the United
States and the traditions glorified as "rugged individualism''
had retarded developments in government regulation and so-
cial security such as European countries like Sweden and
Britain adopted long before the Depression, not to mention
the extremes of collectivism which for the majority of Amer-
icans meant Soviet Russia, the one nation their country re-
fused to recognize until late in 1933. Even so, this world-
wide drift toward socialization had not failed to register its
effect upon American life. In January, 1929, for example,
the Commission on the Social Studies of the American His-
torical Association, representing various points of view, set
to work upon a sweeping inquiry under the conviction that
trends of deep import were stirring in the nation's social and
educational system, the majority holding that the American
people were moving toward greater democracy and collec-
tivism.
As Herbert Croly had said two decades earlier in The
Promise of American Life, the pledges of democracy could no
longer be taken as inevitable, but must now be regarded as
goals to be won only through planning and controls. Roose-
velt and his advisers mostly young men trained by Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes and Professor Felix Frankfurter, or
reared in the school of practical social work developed in
New York City and New York state under the governorship
of Roosevelt envisaged the New Deal as attempting pre-
cisely that. They conceived of it as a system of checks and
balances between management and labor, Big Business and
small independent concerns, producer and consumer, agri-
culture and industry, domestic and foreign markets, fat times
and lean. They held, however, that certain interests, hitherto
neglected, stood in particular need of government support
and encouragement, also that even the good estate of Big
Business depended vitally upon the economic health of the
CHANGE OF COMMAND 59
whole nation, including laborer and farmer, white-collar
worker and middle-class consumer*
Above all, in the immediate crisis the federal government
must assume a more drastic and vigorous generalship in di-
recting relief and recovery* To a laissez-faire economist argu-
ing that natural causes be allowed to work their will, Roose-
velt "with a gray look of horror on his face" is said to have
replied, "People aren't cattle, you know!'* As for ways and
means of encompassing these ends, the New Deal was not an
explicit program drafted under Roosevelt's direction in 1932
or even fully conceived at his inauguration, but rather a gen-
eral attitude toward government for the people, later em-
bodied in action and shaped by the urgency of circumstance*
Certain broad theories, however, could be detected inter-
woven with the New Deal from its early stages* The British
economist John M. Keynes, whose ideas were gaining wide
acceptance among social planners in the thirties, argued the
desirability of compensatory spending in times of depression,
"deficit financing'* and a managed currency* Taxation and
relief, indeed the regulation of the whole social system,
should be so contrived that less money flowed into the coffers
of the rich, who saved it, and more into the hands of the
poor, who spent it, thus quickening monetary circulation and
mass consumption* Large fortunes, it was said, came not
merely from individual but from community effort as well,
and therefore could justly be taxed heavily for the sake of the
whole people* It was argued that returns from production
should go more and more to consumer and wage-earner, less
and less to investor and speculator.
The New Deal, under the sway of this logic, early set its
sights upon a living wage, reasonable leisure, economic se-
curity for the masses and curtailment of great wealth and
power for a few, although its pace was too slow to suit the
more extreme Keynsians like Senator Robert M. La Follette,
jr. If opponents objected that this theory discouraged initia-
tive and penalized success, while keeping investment funds
60 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
frozen from a sense of insecurity, many liberals pronounced
it the only way by which a nation could live up to its old
boast as the land of opportunity. A new vision thus swam
into the ken of the American people. Whether it would turn
out to be Utopia or myopia, only the future could telL
According to its friends, the New Deal proposed to apply
legislation to those fields where private enterprise had failed
to accept proper responsibility for the social consequences of
its acts. Roosevelt later cited a precedent in Lincoln's words,
that "the legitimate object of government is to do for the
community of people whatever they need to have done, but
cannot do at all, or cannot do so well, for themselves, in
their separate and individual capacities/' The mechanism of
Keynsian economics might remain a debatable issue, but the
grand strategy of Roosevelt the humanitarian never lacked
clarity. And if this was the rising tide of revolution, a nation
which had witnessed the "revolutions" of Jefferson and
Jackson could still recognize most of the old landmarks.
CHAPTER IV
THE HUNDRED DAYS
ALTHOUGH the people had signified their desire for change,
an interval of four months filled with uncertainty and party
bickering passed before the mandate became effective. Such
was the slow majestic tempo decreed by the Constitution, an
interregnum when it seemed as if the strength of the Amer-
ican eagle had yielded momentarily to the tragi-comic im-
potence of the lame duck. This was destined to be the last
such interlude in American history, for the Twentieth
Amendment, proposed on March 2, 1932, and declared rati-
fied on February 6, 1933, was preparing henceforth merci-
fully to end the life of an expiring Congress on the third
day of January, the term of a retiring president on the
twentieth.
Autumn and winter had long since withered the few
sprouts of revival which summer had brought forth. In Oc-
tober, with markets for commodities and securities slumping
again, the Democrats blamed Hoover's "fear campaign";
when this ebb tide persisted after election and through the
winter, the Republicans retorted by ascribing it to the dread
of Roosevelt's accession. An obsolete Congress refused to un-
dertake major responsibilities with their successors crowding
impatiently on the threshold. Roosevelt declined to collab-
orate with Hoover on joint statements about war debts and
"sound" money, playing his cards close to his chest and re-
fusing to sacrifice future freedom of action to please his
predecessor. Political recrimination flew thick and fast, while
bread lines lengthened, the bottom of the relief barrel was
scraped again and again, and the nation's banking system
began its final nose dive toward disaster.
6i
62 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
From the beginning of 1930 to the end of 1932 a total of
773 national banks involving deposits of more than seven
hundred million dollars had failed, along with 3604 state
banks those still weaker links in the fiscal chain with de-
posits exceeding two billion* It was not unusual during these
years to see armored cars rushing to threatened banks and
their moneybags unloaded by guards with guns.
Depositors throughout the nation were in an uneasy mood.
Aggravating bad banking practices of old and the absence of
adequate federal supervision, the depression jitters and ru-
mors of impending failure caused wave after wave of with-
drawals. Hosts of panicky citizens, taking their cash in hand,
resorted to hoarding and hiding in safety-deposit vaults,
trunks, tin boxes and even holes in the backyard or perhaps
sent sums abroad* As a result, Hoover early in 1932 had
launched a nation-wide campaign against hoarding. Yet cir-
culating money continued so scarce that before the year's end
several cities in the South like Richmond, Knoxville and At-
lanta where secessionist ways of thought tended in crisis to
come uppermost began to print their own currency. It
served to pay municipal employees and to keep the unem-
ployed alive by providing some kind of money to buy
farmers' surpluses. During Hoover's last fortnight in office
the Treasury estimated that some $1,212,000,000 was with-,
drawn from circulation, orthodox Republicans taking a dis-
mal view of "the flight of the dollar" and of Senator Carter
Glass's refusal to serve as Roosevelt's secretary of the treas-
ury.
The first clear symptom of universal collapse occurred as
early as October 31, 1932, when the lieutenant governor of
Nevada proclaimed a twelve-day banking holiday to save a
chain of local banks. In the late winter matters swiftly
reached a head. On February 4, 1933, the state of Louisiana
embarked upon what was in effect a bank suspension. Ten
days later Michigan's governor proclaimed a similar breath-
ing spell and by the first of March, Alabama, California,
THE HUNDRED DAYS 63
Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee had followed
suit. Savings banks, after enjoying phenomenal popularity
during early stages of the Depression, now suffered devastat-
ing runs. One institution after another called its balance on
the New York money market* Early in the morning of in-
auguration day, Saturday, the fourth of March, Governor
Herbert H. Lehman closed the New York banks, and the rest
of the country quickly knuckled under. In the fell clutch of
circumstance the president, who had battled the crisis val-
iantly if sometimes clumsily for three long years, saw the
nation's banking system during his last hours crash com-
pletely about his ears.
That week-end and the week which followed witnessed
strange sights. Visitors to the inauguration were stranded
without cash. In Salt Lake City the Mormons prepared to
issue paper negotiable locally for goods and services. In Pasa-
dena a luxury hotel printed scrip for its penniless guests. In
Detroit a prosperous citizen, unable to change a ten-dollar
bill anywhere, at last obtained a nickel from an apple seller
to telephone his wife. Stamps, telephone slugs, Mexican and
Canadian dollars and personal lOU's became media of cir-
culation. With everybody in the same boat, empty pockets
had ceased to be invidious; neighborliness and an air of
jaunty desperation prevailed.
All eyes were fastened upon the nation's president-elect
who, a story of the time rumored, might well be its last presi-
dent. At Miami little more than a fortnight before his inaug-
uration he had barely missed an assassin's bullet which in-
stead killed Mayor Anton J. Cermak of Chicago. The coun-
try, sensing that its destiny rested upon the shoulders of
Franklin Roosevelt, was reassured by his cool courage in the
face of death. On March 4 a hundred thousand spectators,
in an atmosphere of almost tremulous tension, filled forty
acres of lawn and pavement before the east front of the Cap-
itol, while millions more gathered about their radios.
Hoover's grave and downcast face seemed in striking contrast
64 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
to the vibrant self-confidence of his successor, who stood
without hat or overcoat in the chill wind, speaking for
twenty minutes with firm voice and almost defiant chin.
"This is a day of national consecration," he began, adding
that "these dark days will be worth all they cost us if they
teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered untoj
but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men/' On the
domestic front he spoke of treating unemployment "as we
would treat the emergency of war/' of helping to save homes
from foreclosure and farmers from bankruptcy. "This Na-
tion asks for action, and action now/* His words about
foreign affairs and "the policy of the good neighbor" would
often be recalled in years ahead, but at the moment the ma-
jority of Americans probably listened most attentively to
Roosevelt's utterances about the banking system, his demand
for "an end to speculation with other people's money, and
<, , provision for an adequate but sound currency/' "The
money changers," he declared, "have fled from their high
seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore
that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of that res-
toration lies in the extent to which we apply social values
more noble than mere monetary profit."
As he entered his open car to return to the White House,
Roosevelt responded to cheering by vigorously shaking his
hands over his head in the manner of the prize ring. To
many Americans it seemed as if the Champion had at last ar-
rived* The war upon the Depression had shifted from de-
fense to attack* Whenever Hoover had uttered words of
optimism, he was invariably charged with wishfulness or
complacency; when at last he admitted the full gravity of the
situation, he became "the distinguished pessimist who never
would be missed/* satirized several years later in "The Swing
Mikado/* But a leader inheriting national disaster from his
predecessor America's Roosevelt in 1933, like Britain's
Churchill in 1940 could boldly face the situation in all its
blackness, needing no personal apologia, as he summoned
THE HUNDRED DAYS 65
mass effort and the tonic sense of sacrifice to master a crisis
which had given him the mandate of power.
Action came thick and fast. On Sunday the fifth Roosevelt
called Congress into special session. The next day he forbade
the export of gold and all dealings in foreign exchange, and
proclaimed a national bank holiday to permit examination
of the soundness of individual banks before their gradual re-
opening. After Glass's refusal the Treasury portfolio had
gone to William H. Woodin, whose former traditions of
Union League Republicanism seemed to harmonize as little
with his new role as did his career of successful railway-
equipment manufacturer comport with his appearance. But
there he sat under a gray toupee, with china-blue eyes and
a puckish little smile, dispensing puns and whimsy while he
steered the nation's eighteen thousand banks past the rocks,
with nonpartisan help from Hoover appointees lingering at
Roosevelt's behest.
On March 9 the Congress of the Hundred Days met to in-
dorse overwhelmingly all the president had done, calling
upon the RFC for new capital to reorganize the banks and
authorizing the issue of more currency. Unfreezing of the
banks had already begun for such essentials as cash for med-
icines, relief funds and pay rolls. In the face of new penalties
hoarders began to bring back their gold to deposit windows
and turn in their gold certificates. Louisiana's bumptious
Senator Huey Long offered an amendment to bring every
bank in the land under the mantle of the Federal Reserve
system, while leftists grieved that Roosevelt was letting slip
an unparalleled opportunity to nationalize credit.
A moderate at heart, the president serenely went his way.
In a broadcast on Sunday, March 12, the first of what the
press called his "fireside chats/' he explained in simple words
just what had been done and invited cooperation: "Let us
unite in banishing fear." The average citizen warmed to this
appeal, and the most successful medium of publicity for the
New Deal had been discovered, with the voice of a stellar
66 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
radio personality behind it. Meanwhile the worst of the
crisis had been weathered* Solvent banks began to reopen the
next day all over the nation.*
More permanent banking reforms commenced with the
Glass-Steagall act of June 16, 1933* It divorced commercial
from investment banking, provided for deposit insurance and
gave the Federal Reserve Board power to prevent loans for
speculation. The Senate banking committee's investigation
of Wall Street in the winter and spring of 1933, and the
grilling administered by inquisitor Ferdinand Pecora, did
much to topple the idols of the market place. <L P. Morgan
suffered the minor indignity of holding a midget on his knee
placed there by a circus publicity agent but the wizard
of the National City Bank, Charles E. Mitchell, was so dis-
credited ethically that he joined Samuel Insull, lately de-
throned utilities tycoon, on the shysters* bench. The finan-
cier's gambit of selling stock at a loss to some member of his
own family in order to reduce his income tax, only to buy it
back next year, was one disclosure of the Pecora committee
that lingered long in the small taxpayer's aggrieved mind.
The tall silk hat, once the ne plus ultra of success, had itself
become a symbol of comic derision, t
To the satiric political gossip of books in the vein of
* The bank crisis of early March, 1933, may be regarded as the long-expected
''terminal trough" of the Depression. Among forty important measurements
of economic activity, twelve reached bottom in the second half of 1932, and
twenty-four around March, 1933; unlike the pattern set by recovery from
earlier and milder crises, revival first affected consumer goods rather than durable
ones. W. C. Mitchell and A. R Burns, Production during the American Business
Cycle of 1927-1933 (Natl. Bur. of Econ. Research, Bull, no* 61, 1936), 2.
H. G. Moulton and others, The Recovery Problem (Wash., 1936), 74, favor
July, 1932, as the nadir, because at that time the production index, measured
from a level of 100 in 1929, sank to a record low of 48.7.
f Thanks largely to the public notice given in the winter of 1932-1933 to.
Postmaster-General Walter Brown's requisition of a new limousine to accom-
modate his top hat. J. A. Farley, Behind the Ballots (N. Y., 1938), 201. For
its serving as a butt of rustic parody, see These Are Our Lives (Chapel Hill,
1939) , 286. The best account of the banking investigation is Ferdinand Pecora,
Wall Street under Oath (N. Y., 1939).
THE HUNDRED DAYS 67
Washington Merry -Go-Round (1931) and the gay irrev-
erence of musical shows like "Of Thee I Sing" (1931) , now
were joined debunking biographies of the titans of business,
like Jonathan N. Leonard's The Tragedy of Henry Ford
(1932) , John T. Flynn's God's Gold: the Story of Rocke-
feller and His Times (1932), Harvey O'Connor's Mellon s
Millions (1933), Matthew Josephson's The Robber Barons
(1934) and, a little later, Ferdinand Lundberg's Americans
Sixty Families (1937)* Many Americans were disenchanted
with the supermen of wealth and power who had once ruled
the skies of New York and Washington, and for months
after the March crisis the nation's great bankers seemed too
chastened to lift the voice of self-assertion*
They also knew that Roosevelt, at least temporarily, was
irresistible* "The house is burning down, and the President
of the United States says this is the way to put out the fire/'
Bertrand Snell, Republican whip in Congress, had declared
when the emergency banking bill came up for debate* Play-
ing with the same image, Will Rogers wrote of the chief
executive, "The whole country is with him* Even if what he
does is wrong they are with him. Just so he does something.
If he burned down the Capitol, we would cheer and say,
'Well, we at least got a fire started anyhow/ "
The new temper of the country was shown by Congress's
passage of the securities act in late March, 1933, the secur-
ities-exchange act in 1934 and the public-utility-holding-
company act in 1935, This network of legislation placed a
limit on bank credit for speculative purposes, set up safe-
guards against manipulation of stocks, decreed full informa-
tion for the buyer of securities, created the Securities and Ex-
change Commission as overseer and passed a "death sentence"
against all utility holding companies after the end of 1937
save those composing a "geographically and economically in-
tegrated system/' All these measures, though hotly opposed
in business circles, promised greater security to the depositor
and small investor and won widespread popular approval.
68 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
In 1940, as supplementary safeguards, came the investment-
company act and the investment advisers' law.
Less widely indorsed were certain monetary ventures of
the New Deal, which showed the president in his not un-
usual role of experimentalist, seeking to raise prices. It was
his special concern to increase agricultural prices relative to
nonagricultural ones, and since prices like those of wheat and
cotton were highly sensitive to international demand, it was
believed with considerable justification that devaluation of
the dollar would prove efficacious. In April, 1933, the gov-
ernment announced that it had gone off the gold standard*
From Congress Roosevelt obtained permissive authority to
inflate the currency in any of five stipulated ways. In June,
1933, the world monetary and economic conference met in
London with hopes of achieving currency stabilization; but
it came to naught, thanks on the one hand to the self-seeking
of France and her gold-bloc satellites and, on the other, to
President Roosevelt's sudden fear lest such stabilization check
a groundswell of rising prices just beginning at home. His
wireless message of July 3 was widely blamed for having
"torpedoed" the conference. The net result was to foster hos-
tility to the United States abroad, and on this side of the
water to confirm the average citizen's isolationism. Not until
September, 1936, did Britain, France and the United States
finally reach agreement to prevent sharp fluctuations and
competitive devaluation*
The most dubious monetary essay of the New Deal came
in the autumn of 1933 after the honeymoon of early recov-
ery had waned. The president ventured to try the commod-
ity-dollar theory of Professor George F. Warren of Cornell
called by Republicans the "rubber-dollar program" and by
Al Smith the "baloney dollar/' Forced devaluation of the
dollar to slightly less than sixty per cent of its former gold
content was expected to advance prices generally and specifi-
cally to improve the position of American exports. A slight
improvement in foreign trade followed, but the chief visible
THE HUNDRED DAYS 69
effect , came when the higher prices paid for gold set arbi-
trarily each morning over the president's breakfast tray in
consultation with Warren, Farm Credit Administrator Henry
Morgenthau, jr., and Jesse Jones of the RFC promptly be-
gan to siphon gold, ultimately to the amount of over four-
teen billion dollars, from many lands into the vaults of Fort
Knox, Kentucky. This gold-purchase plan, operative from
October 25, 1933, through January, 1934, failed appre-
ciably to lift the domestic commodity price level, while the
variations it decreed from day to day proved unsettling to
confidence and stability.
The silver-purchase act of June 19, 1934, forced through
Congress by the silver bloc after agreement with the presi-
dent, was also inflationary in intent. Its most tangible result
was not only to boost domestic silver but to acquire a billion
dollars of foreign silver at prices well above market value,
and to deposit the bullion largely in the vaults at West Point.
But while the nation bade fair to become a cemetery for the
world's precious metals, the effect of these manipulations
upon prices was hardly the moderate reflation for which the
planners prayed, nor certainly the uncontrolled inflation
which Wall Street foretold. Reflected in such monetary pol-
icies, however, was that not uncommon blend of unrealism,
gay extemporizing and shrewd politics enmeshed with so
much of the honest, sincere and often eminently practical
humanitarianism of the New DeaL A president who tried
everything was bound to make mistakes.
Underlying most federal activities of these early months
was the assumption that money and credit, the price and
profit system, had broken down under the bufferings of de-
pression, and that to let nature take its course would be both
slow and ruinous. The flow of money must be invigorated
by government spending, the track toward prosperity
smoothed for worker and consumer. Since virtually ^every
consumer is a producer and every producer a consumer, it was
argued that four interlocking processes would benefit the
70 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
whole nation: the creation of government-financed work;
an increase of employment and wage rates under a system of
codes for industry; the bolstering of farm income by raising
market prices through crop restriction plus direct benefit pay-
ments; and the lifting of the general price level through cur-
rency manipulation, aided by federal support and regulation
of credit institutions. To win these objectives an enormous
program was launched, in part by legislative act, in part
through the newly increased powers of the executive* Con-
gress stood ready to acquiesce in the vast authority which the
president sought, and soon found itself signing checks for
huge sums whose allocation and spending it tendered into his
hands*
The New Deal had begun on a note of retrenchment, with
Roosevelt's stern warning in his inaugural week that "for
three long years the Federal Government has been on the
road to bankruptcy," followed by Congress's passage of the
economy bill authorizing reductions in federal pay rolls and-
veterans* compensation by more than four hundred million
dollars in that year. The powerful Legion lobby and all the
traditions of American politics were set at defiance* But
Roosevelt began almost immediately by executive order to
restore the cuts bit by bit and, with the president himself
soon leading the procession of spending requesting billions
for relief, pump-priming and running costs for a host of new
federal agencies Congress on March 28, 1934, under the*
goad of an election year kicked over the traces of economy
and, defeating Roosevelt's veto, completed the restoration*
Henceforth all pretense of keeping the budget in balance was
dropped.
The month of March, 1933, which beheld so much drama,
innovation and reviving hope, saw the return of 3*2 per-cent
beer as almost an anticlimax, but it was at least the welcome
portent of another break with recent tradition* At the open-
ing of the decade prohibition had been the hottest issue un-
der national debate; in a poll on "paramount problems of
THE HUNDRED DAYS 71
the United States** taken in January, 1930, and again in Jan-
uary, 1931, the supposedly intelligent and civic-minded
members of the National Economic League ranked prohibi-
tion first, with unemployment trailing far behind. President
Hoover's support of national prohibition "a great social
and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching
in purpose*' failed to stem the rising tide of its violation
and the growing impotence of federal enforcement. In 1931
the report of the Wickersham commission appointed by
Hoover merely confirmed the breakdown of popular senti-
ment in its favor. Farmers' needs to sell their grain and sugar,
plus the fabulous revenues expected from a federal liquor tax
funds currently going into the pockets of an underworld
which prohibition had helped to spawn were other factors
making for repeal.
The Republican platform of 1932 hedged on this issue,
but the Democrats and Roosevelt called emphatically for re-
peal. Speedily the lame-duck Congress in February, 1933,
proposed a constitutional amendment for repeal, and the final
decision went to the states. Return of beer in the next month
was a foretaste of things to come. Ratifications from state
conventions soon began pouring in* Old strongholds of the
drys like Indiana, Iowa and Alabama joined the parade; the
Dallas News, from the heart of Baptist suzerainty, spoke of
"the utter rout of preacherdom/' On December 5, 1933,
Utah became the thirty-sixth state to support the Twenty-
first Amendment, and the "experiment** was written off as a
failure*
In that momentous spring of 1933, however, the most
urgent problem, once the banking crisis eased, was the stark
one of relief. Upwards of fifteen million unemployed and
nearly six million persons on state and municipal charity rolls
clamored for attention. In a message to Congress on March
21 the president proposed three types of remedial legislation:
grants to states largely for direct relief to feed and clothe the
destitute; enrollment of workers by the federal government
72 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
in enterprises which could be swiftly launched and would not
interfere with private industry; and a program of durable
public works.
The second and third of these desiderata, containing the
germ of the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Public
Works Administration respectively, came to fruition more
slowly than the first, the seed from which the Federal Emer-
gency Relief Administration sprang* This agency was the spe-
cial care of Harry L. Hopkins, frail and earnest social worker
from Iowa who had served as chairman of state relief in
New York during Roosevelt's governorship* Under his direc-
tion the FERA, admittedly a makeshift because of the urg-
ency of the crisis, was set up by Congress on May 12, 1933,
to help the needy chiefly with money for direct relief ad-
ministered through established channels of state and munic-
ipal welfare. Beginning with funds of half a billion dollars,
it spent eventually about three billion.
Local agencies were expected to share the load according
to their ability, but no rigorous matching was required. For
the nation as a whole, in the final accounting, Washington
supplied over seventy cents of each relief dollar, the states
thirteen and the municipalities sixteen. Relatively rich com-
monwealths like Massachusetts contributed vastly more than
did impoverished ones like South Carolina, with New Eng-
landers grumbling audibly about the decay of self-reliance.
In the South objectors deprecated filling the pockets of Ne-
groes and poor whites with cash. Many states, looking upon
the FERA as a "gravy train," aspired to give as little and get
as much as possible. Federal and state administrators not in-
frequently had to crack down upon the stingier counties,
threatening to cut off contributions unless local purse strings
were loosened.
Hopkins' s thinking drifted steadily away from direct help
the quickest, cheapest and most inclusive type toward
"made work" paid for according to need and, finally, toward
a Systematic work program at minimum wage rates, which
THE HUNDRED DAYS 73
would utilize idle skills. Once he had the immediate crisis
under control, he looked about for employment that might
foster morale, for the usefulness of the task raised the doer's
self-respect and kept his hand in. Hopkins* s ideas, however,
did not meet with universal agreement. While organized
labor feared the effect of low pay for relief work on wages
in private industry, many conservatives objected to such re-
lief on quite other grounds. They favored the dole as cheaper,
and argued that a public-works program would divert funds
from the money market, sometimes undermining existing
values (as in the low-cost housing field) , and would saddle
the nation with huge debts, which in themselves would
further retard recovery.
That the mass of people, however, indorsed Hopkins's
choice admitted little doubt. After four years of the New
Deal, a Gallup poll in May, 1937, reported that four persons
out of five approved relief through public works; and later
in that year, with the start of a new recession, a Roper poll
found that work relief easily outstripped all other proposed
solutions, though by a wider margin among the poor than
among the rich and among city dwellers more than farm folk.
A story popular in the early days of the program concerned
an elderly man who, after his relief checks began to arrive,
went out unasked and began to sweep the streets of his little
town, saying, "I want to do something in return for what I
get."
In the summer of 1933 the FERA was already fostering
the idea of work relief, however improvised and trivial like
picking up papers in the park, raking leaves, counting auto-
mobiles at intersections for local traffic records. By a ruling of
August 1 unskilled labor was paid a minimum wage of thirty
cents an hour. Except in the South and a few isolated indus-
tries such pay offered no serious competition with wages in
private occupations, which the National Recovery Adminis-
tration was trying to stabilize, nor with the man-power
needs of management, which the newly revived United
74 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
States Employment Service was broadcasting among the job-
less*
This shift from the dole to work relief proceeded so far
in later phases of the FERA that in 1935, during the last
months of its existence, the agency counted nearly half of its
beneficiaries as workers, a total of two and a half million
during the peak month of January in that year. The previ-
ous winter, however, that of 1933-1934, had witnessed the
widest expansion of the FERA and of relief rolls in the Great
Depression, with nearly eight million households, represent-
ing almost twenty-eight million persons, on the lists in Feb-
ruary, 1934.
That enormous dilation was due to the fleeting develop-
ment of a special work-relief branch called the Civil Works
Administration, which operated straight from Washington
through regional subdivisions, thus avoiding local red tape.
It went into action in November, 1933, to meet the onset
of cold weather and a flagging in mass optimism which began
to tell against the initial spurt of the New Deal. The CWA
speedily put four million to work, about half drawn from
the regular rolls of the FERA and the remainder from the
nonrelief unemployed. It set up a thirty-hour week for man-
ual labor and thirty-nine hours for clerical and professional
skills, with a fairly high wage and favorable working condi-
tions which sometimes made the CWA a serious competitor
with the lower-paid ranks of private employment* In all, it
spent about nine hundred million dollars, mostly on road
mending, repair of schoolhouses, parks and playgrounds,
swimming pools, pest and erosion control and work on mu-
nicipally owned utilities* Under spur of the emergency, made
work of a flimsy or picayune kind was almost inevitable, and
probably no New Deal agency was more vulnerable than the
CWA to charges of "boondoggling" an old pioneer term
for handicrafts, introduced to the nation and the delight of
hostile critics early in 1935 by a "training specialist/' Robert
THE HUNDRED DAYS 75
Marshall, when testifying before a New York aldermanic in-
quiry.
If the usefulness of certain CWA projects was dubious,
their general effect was to demonstrate the psychological
value of job relief. A Michigan county administrator, observ-
ing that "the joy of the men at having even this brief oppor-
tunity to earn a decent living wage knew no bounds/' saw
some leave her office "weeping for sheer happiness/' With
their initial pay checks many went straight to the barber for
their first professional haircut in months, and during the
weeks that followed their appearance mirrored further stages
in the recovery of self-respect. Naturally the barber himself,
along with the grocer, druggist and clothier, also benefited.
True, not every relief worker took so blithe an attitude. For
the man who had come down in the scale from a professional
or technical career to the ranks of crude labor, a certain bit-
terness was apt to rankle against the whole system. A
mechanical engineer, the forty-one-year-old father of seven
children, after toiling a few weeks for the CWA wrote iron-
ically about "the idea that ditch-digging is a noble occupa-
tion/* * This agency reached the end of its allotted span in
the spring of 1934, its uncompleted projects being taken over
by the general FERA program.
On the whole, the FERA raised the tone of state and mu-
. nicipal relief and supported only a small minority of spong-
ers, probably never exceeding ten per cent. Against the stub-
born pride of many of the newly poor it sought to lend a
certain dignity to the acceptance of aid. As more persons went
on relief and treatment grew more liberal, the stigma became
less and additional border-line cases capitulated, their savings
drained to the last dollar. Furthermore, millions of young
people coming of age could find no jobs, while parents and
grandparents reached years of retirement with no means of
* "The biggest thing to learn about ditch-digging is to bring your mind down
to the ditch. You must forget about chickens in pots and polished cars in
garages/' "In the Ditch," New Outlook, CLXHI (Feb. 1934), 35-36.
76 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
support* Individuals, of course, began to accept poverty with
complacence, deducing that Uncle Sam owed them a living,
and under prolonged idleness some of the unemployed came
at length to be the unemployable. Local authorities often in-
dulgently retained on federal rolls doubtful cases and ne'er-
do-wells who would have been quickly cashiered from
county or municipal relief*
When, within the limits of seasonal fluctuation, it grew
clear that New Deal policies were not reducing but appar-
ently augmenting the number on relief, the administration
decided to scrap the FERA, returning direct relief wholly to
local governments and devoting the federal outlay to able-
bodied clients and projects of more durable value. December,
1935, saw the demise of the FERA. The story of its succes-
sor, the Works Progress Administration, belongs, however,
to the New Deal's later phases rather than to legislation set
up by the Congress of the Hundred Days and its immediate
chain of consequences.
The defects of the FERA and its short-lived offshoot, the
CWA, appeared striking beside the record of another venture,
the Public Works Administration, organized on June 16,
1933, with an appropriation of $3,300,000,000. The PWA
was designed to stimulate heavy industry by fostering public
works that required huge quantities of material. President
Roosevelt placed it in the hands of cautious, hard-headed
Harold L. Ickes, secretary of the interior and self-styled
"curmudgeon," \tfhose aversion to using federal funds "to
hire grown men to chase tumbleweeds on windy days" col-
ored the whole doctrine of the PWA.. Where, however, cir-
cumstances compelled Hopkins to build his program largely
upon relief labor, with all its nondescript ineptitudes, Ickes
faced no such requirement; PWA work was done under con-
tract with private concerns. The PWA insisted upon careful
inspection of projects before lending or giving funds (rang-
ing from a third to nearly half the total construction cost)
to states and municipalities. Others it undertook independ-
THE HUNDRED DAYS 77
ently in the national interest and ultimately, in 1938, these
became its sole concern.
The PWA was conceived by New Dealers as the pump-
priming agency best calculated to stimulate private employ-
ment, upon the Keynsian theory of compensatory spending.
This figure of speech was suggested by the old-fashioned
pump, into which water sometimes had to be poured to swell
the leather valve before it drew properly.* Whether Uncle
Sam by priming could coax the pump of industry into effi-
cient operation, or whether he got out of the pump merely
the water he had poured into it, occasioned much dispute*
Although the PWA was mistrusted by those fearful of a
planned economy, it seems early to have had a stimulating
effect upon private business. Not adapted primarily to succor
the unemployed, the PWA nevertheless kept an average of
half a million men steadily at work through the year 1934
under a thirty-hour week. By the time it began liquidation in
the early forties, it had spent over four billion dollars upon
more than thirty-four thousand projects.
Their social usefulness admitted no question, PWA allot-
ments brought Boulder (later called Hoover) Dam to com-
pletion by day-and-night shifts two and a half years ahead of
schedule. Under the same sponsorship a variety of other ir-
rigation and reclamation projects began, of which the Ten-
nessee Valley Authority was the most famous. New York
City's Triborpugh Bridge, left unfinished in 1932 through
dearth of municipal funds, resumed construction under the
PWA, drawing upon the steel mills of Pennsylvania, the
cement of the Mississippi Valley and the giant forests of the
Pacific slope. In 1936 the bridge stood an accomplished fact
with the federal government making a million and a half
profit on. the sale of bonds which bankers in 1933 had re-
* "Sensible people will give a bucket of water to a dry pump, that they may
afterward get from it all they have occasion for/' wrote Benjamin Franklin
to his sister, Sept. 20, 1787. Autobiographical Writings (Carl Van Doren, ed.,
N. Y., 1945), 684.
78 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
fused at any price. Sewage systems, turning basins, water-
supply works, civic auditoriums, school and university build-
ings, slum clearance and model housing, farm-to-market roads
and school-bus roads were other favored enterprises; This
agency provided 121,760 beds in hospitals whose completion
cost more than a third of a billion dollars the equivalent of
five years' normal growth.
Of special significance for the future, the PWA between
1933 and 1935 financed the building of more than fifty mili-
tary airports, helped the army lay out seventy-four thousand
miles of strategic highways, built a wind tunnel for plane
designers, employed ten million dollars in renovating ord-
nance and improving arsenals, and under navy supervision
used two hundred thirty-seven million dollars in construct-
ing warships. In 1935, however, persuaded by the spirit of
pacifism and clamor from the Nye committee, Congress for-
bade spending public- works and relief funds "for munitions,
warships, or military or naval material/' and most phases of
this activity ceased. The PWA had gone slowly into action
in the face of considerable local impatience on the one side,
suspicion on the other but in retrospect its diverse achieve-
ments would look impressive.
The Congress which on the first of its hundred days had
broached bank-reform legislation, on its last passed the na-
tional industrial recovery act, inaugurating not only the
PWA but also placing a large segment of the nation's private
industry under centralized direction. In the interval it had
taken steps of vital importance to the farmer, the distressed
homeowner, impoverished youth and the hillbilly of the
Tennessee Valley. The articulation of these policies, their
shapes and adaptatio'ns through the middle years of the
New Deal, will be traced in later chapters, but from their
conception in these crucial times they sprang with a heritage
which experience and the shifting pattern of the national
economy would modify merely in detail.
THE HUNDRED DAYS 79
Great changes swept over American life during the latter
months of 1932 and still more during the first half of 1933
after the steady pressure of three depression years and subtle
alterations in public opinion finally buckled the barriers of
resistance. A reshuffling of group values unmistakably oc-
curred. The primacy of Big Business, the glamour of ma-
terial success, the sanctity of the gold standard, the nobility
of prohibition and the sufficiency of self-help had all been
challenged sharply and in large measure scrapped,
A new spirit was in the air, a promise of leadership which
millions found thrilling, a minority viewed with alarm. It
was no coincidence that 1933 saw the reprinting of Edward
Bellamy's Utopian classic, Looking Backward, while in that
year the first book by Franklin D. Roosevelt as president bore
the title Looking Forward. "We are on our way/* he told
the nation* and after long incertitude no words could have
been more welcome. In this honeymoon of the New Deal
it was a true love match between die president and the peo-
ple, possibly a little irrational on both sides with its trust
in mutual infallibility but love, after all, transcends logic.
Further decisions of moment were pending. Some were
frank experiments,- within which certain contradictions
seemed to be at war the short-term economics of scarcity
against long-range economics of abundance, higher wages
and farm prices without much rise in the cost of living, sus-
pension of the antitrust laws cheek by jowl with new solici-
tude for the little business man. The philosophy behind these
actions was more consistent than the policies themselves, and
upon his intuition of that trend the average citizen was con-
tent to pillow his head. Points of strength and weakness in
the New Deal, successes and failures, would grow clearer as
time passed, along with the fact that Roosevelt's talent for
brilliant improvisation tended to exceed his grasp of steady
objectives. Probably the fairest judgment which could be
reached, while the dust of controversy still hung thick in the
80 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
air, was that of a British economist near the close of the fi
term: "Mr* Roosevelt may have given the wrong answers
many of his problems. But he is at least the first President
modern America who has asked the right questions/'
CHAPTER V
THE CITIZEN AND His GOVERNMENT
JEFFERSON'S conviction molded by a simple agrarian na-
tion, that the best government is that which governs least,
had long been cherished by his countrymen. The federal
sphere, in particular, seemed traditionally vague and remote
from the citizen's daily life and needs, though, of course, he
looked to Washington for services like national defense, the
postal system and patent laws and, increasingly with the
growth of scientific knowledge, for protection along the fron-
tiers of sanitation and public health.
True, some Americans upon occasion had invoked federal
aid when the job was too big, unprofitable or impossible for
individuals, whether in developing turnpikes and canals, set-
ting up protective tariffs, abolishing slavery, curbing trusts
or prohibiting the sale of liquor. But to regard the national
government in the role of a beneficent friend, a mighty arm
against insecurity and an employer to serve this attitude,
prior to the New Deal, was as unfamiliar to certain classes of
citizens as to others was the contrary one of seeing in the
government an enemy whose power of regulation and taxa-
tion grew steadily more inimical. By the close of this era the
word "government," alluding almost always to the adminis-
tration in Washington, held for men of all classes meanings
and emotional overtones rare in 1929*
Under the New Deal, Capitol Hill and the White House
replaced Manhattan and Wall Street as the nation's cerebral
cortex. The government began to impinge upon the life of
the citizen as never before taxing, lending, spending, build-
ing, setting quotas in agriculture and conditions of employ-
ment in industry, erecting new controls over the highways of
81
82 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
interstate commerce* Washington offered itself to private in-
dustry sometimes as partner, sometimes as competitor. Even-
tually the budding of administrative agencies to fit new con-
cepts of government created a complexity that sometimes
hampered efficiency. To house these bodies, a vast new archi-
tecture, largely limestone and marble, arose along the Mall,
Pennsylvania Avenue and Constitution Avenue* Some of the
older agencies, like the department of labor and the Federal
Trade Commission, moved into handsome new quarters,
while others, like the interior and agriculture, overflowed
into adjacent structures of immense size. Correspondingly
occurred an increase, unprecedented in peace time, in the
number of federal employees, from 588,000 civilians in
1931 to 1,370,000 in 1941.*
Awareness of this new relationship of government to the
daily life of the citizen dawned for many with the advent
early in the summer of 1933 of the National Recovery Ad-
ministration* It was President Roosevelt's chief prescription
for recovery a tonic, with an incidental purgative of re-
form, designed to stimulate buying and selling, get idle men
back on private pay rolls, quicken consumption, shorten
hours, raise wages, abolish child labor, strengthen collective
bargaining, reduce competitive waste and put a floor under
prices* In signing the act Roosevelt foretold that history
would record it as "the most important and far-reaching
legislation ever enacted by the American Congress*" If these
words were too sanguine, they sprang doubtless from the
enthusiasm of the hour, the hope that the same morale could
be maintained after recovery began and that a single agency
*H. C. Mansfield, "Government/* Am. Journ. of Sociology, XL VII, 959.
The number of jobs outside the merit system doubled during Roosevelt's first
term until it embraced two fifths of the whole system. Foes assailed the "new
spoils system" and "Farleyism," while friends saw it as an emergency develop-
ment, also remarking the many experts and high-minded citizens lately drawn
into public service. Countermeasures began in 1938, when Congress placed
15,000 first, second and third-class postmasters under the merit plan, and
Roosevelt himself sought unsuccessfully to extend its spread to all federal em-
ployees save those expressly exempt by statute.
Atlanta Slums give way to Techwood Homes, a PWA project.
THE CITIZEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT 83
for economic planning could meet the manifold needs and
desires of all citizens*
Conceived as an experiment in industrial self-government
under mild federal supervision, it was not without precedent.
Trade associations, which Hoover had encouraged to adopt
codes of fair practice and price-fixing agreements, were now
invited to do these things directly under the eye of the gov-
ernment. Representatives of the United States Chamber of
Commerce, who had been advocating stabilization of prices
to prevent drastic cutting, helped frame the act of June,
1933. In effect, industry agreed to increase wages and shorten
hours in exchange for federal aid in regulating prices. Each
code proposed by the leaders of an industry was submitted
for criticism to advisory committees representing labor, em-
ployers and consumers; then the administrator held public
hearings, and after weighing the indorsements and objections
took the amended code to the chief executive for final sanc-
tion.
Behind these NRA codes lay still another quid pro quo be-
tween management and government, the latter again repre-
senting the interests of labor. The step which business was
permitted to take away from the antitrust laws through price
fixing and regulation of competition almost as if the trusts
"busted** by the first Roosevelt were being invited back by
the second was paid for by industry's conceding to labor
a similar right to consolidate, namely, the guarantee of collec-
tive bargaining pledged by Section 7 A of the act.
The NRA went into action with all the fanfare, parades
and oratory of a liberty-bond drive fifteen years before. All
employers of more than two persons (save professional folk
and farmers) were urged to sign up under the Blue Eagle,
symbol of the NRA bearing the slogan: "We Do Our Part/'
More than two and a quarter million firms promptly en-
rolled, involving over sixteen million employees; ultimately
the scope embraced twenty-two million persons. A blanket
agreement serving as an interim policy assured white-collar
84 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
workers minimum wages of from twelve to fifteen dollars for
a forty-hour week and factory workers a minimum of forty
cents an hour for a thirty-five-hour week, which for a sea-
sonal interval might rise to forty hours.
Meanwhile, representatives of nearly eight hundred groups
of fabricators and distributors of goods and services from
iron and steel magnates to beeswax bleachers, from rock-
crusher manufacturers to private home-study schoolmasters
thronged into Washington to get codes of their own. In
the great stampede it seemed as if no industry wanted to be
left out, whether its practices needed codification or not.
Many of these nearly eight hundred codes were drawn up in
haste after consultation between harried federal officials and
industrialists who knew better what they wanted than what
was best for the nation, and were approved with scant tarry-
ing for review.
The NRA diminished child labor and the sweatshop,
brought a measure of improvement into business practices
and working conditions, tended to set a single standard for
black and white wage-earners in the South, and by shorten-
ing the work week caused the rehiring of nearly two million
workers out of thirteen million unemployed. Perhaps most
important of all its immediate effects was the restoration of
confidence. For the first time, millions felt that something big
and universally cooperative was being done to battle the De-
pression. The leadership of General Hugh Johnson, pic-
turesque soldier and author of juvenile fiction, who as first
NRA administrator blustered to conceal his misgivings and
ruled the agency with a velvet hand in an iron glove, at first
proved as potent as adrenalin then, like most stimulants,
began to lose its effect. Administrative intricacy, poor team-
work with other federal authorities and the outcries of cer-
tain business men over * 'unfair competition" signifying
that others were making more money than they increased
the din of confusion. Prices tended to rise faster than wages
despite the General's expostulation with a group of mer-
THE CITIZEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT 85
chants in January, 1934: "Keep prices down for God's
sake, keep prices down. That and that alone is the royal road
to recovery/'
In regions and occupations of traditionally low wages, as
among Southern mill towns, the employers' answer to the
NRA was often to utilize the stretch-out and speed-up in
order to achieve the same output without additions to the
pay roll.* Furthermore, its fixing of wages solely on a man-
hour basis rather than by production units discriminated
against the smaller and less mechanized industries. In conse-
quence the NRA often lifted manufacturing costs by half
or more, or else encouraged the scrapping of hand processes
and obsolescent equipment to speed the cycle of technological
unemployment*
Violation of codes by those displaying the Blue Eagle be-
came so manifold that after a few months the public began
to wax cynicaL In vain did General Johnson storm against
"chiselers" and threaten a "crackdown." Policing, half-
hearted and ill-financed, soon grew as lax as under national
prohibition in its dying days; violent spasms of enforcement
bore results equally demoralizing* "Little NRA" laws passed
by certain emulous states multiplied the chaos. When a small
tailor in Jersey City was jailed for pressing suits at less than
the state code price, foes of the NRA seized upon the incident
to damn the federal system, though it was in no direct way
involved. The most conspicuous rebel to defy the Blue Eagle,
rugged old Henry Ford, suffered no apparent loss in sales;
indeed, under the swelling outcry against the NRA, he came
to be hailed in conservative circles as a hero.
So many curses* merited and unmerited, rained upon the
*For a North Carolina mill worker's complaint on this point, see These
Are Our Lives (Chapel Hill, 1939), 209-210. Yet, like so many of the rank
and file, he discriminated between the errors of the NRA and the leader of the
New Deal, adding: "I do think that Roosevelt is the biggest-hearted man we
ever had in the White House. . . . It's the first time in my ricollection ^that a
president ever got up and said, Tm interested in and aim to do somethin' for
the workin' man/ "
86 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
agency, so unwieldy did its code revision and enforcement
grow, that New Dealers might well have heaved a sigh of
relief when on May 27, 1935 even as Congress was debat-
ing an extension of its original two-year lease of life the
Supreme Court invalidated it and, in the caustic words of the
president, relegated the nation "to the horse-and-buggy defi-
nition of interstate commerce/' The government, contending
that local poultry markets ramified into interstate commerce,
had prosecuted a Brooklyn wholesale poultry firm for selling
an ''unfit chicken" in defiance of the live-poultry code. Rul-
ing that Congress had exceeded its authority in empowering
the president to set up codes over enterprises only "indi-
rectly" involved in interstate commerce, the Court stingingly
rebuked a "completely centralized government" for its
alleged meddling in local affairs.
Big Business, having found the yoke of regulation it once
helped to fit about its neck increasingly galling, hailed the
decision with glee. Wags observed that the nine justices had
converted the Blue Eagle into an unfit chicken. Its demise
was almost instantaneous, with the dismissal of more than
four hundred similar cases by which the government had
hoped to stem violation of the codes* As an agency for
voluntary agreements the NRA lingered almost a year longer,
a ghost of its former self.
That the EL^ had helped along the summer boomlet of
1933, improved working conditions and the position of
labor nobody could well deny. But, as concluded by a Brook-
ings Institute report, in the longer uphill pull toward pros-
perity, increased manufacturing costs and prices attributable
to the |NjRA^slo wed rather than speeded the effort. In other
wordsrtSe^RAMespite its name largely failed as a recov-
ery measure, but succeeded as one of reform. This lesson was
not lost upon the president and his advisers, who from 1935
onward bent their energies in the latter direction*
In retrospect it appeared also that the NRA tried to do too
much too quickly and that the practice frequently violated
THE CITIZEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT 87
the theory. New Dealers had favored the plan from convic-
tion that the operations of Big Business were a public service
and should therefore be controlled in the common interest; in
practice, however, there was little doubt that tte L NRA,j
through regulation of both prices and output, furthered "mo-
nopoly in many instances. When theJNRA^authorities during
the second year attempted modifications at the instance of
consumers and small business, the great industrialists were
rapidly alienated*
Was it possible that Roosevelt had repeated Hoover's mis-
take in pinning too much faith upon the enlightened and un-
selfish cooperation of business? New Dealers at any rate
drifted toward that conclusion. The liberal lawyer Donald
R. Richberg, who had inherited the limelight of the NRA
when, behind the curtain of a reorganization late in 1934,
General Johnson departed under a rain of "dead cats/* wrote
some years later in reviewing the debacle:
The most tragic result was an unhappy demonstration that
businessmen as a whole had not learned either the need or
the essential principles of a positive regulation of business for
the very purpose of preserving free enterprise.
Less partisan opinion inclined to see the Blue Eagle as
neither flesh nor fowl, lacking on the one hand the dispersion
of authority implicit in free competition and on the other the
ruthless efficiency supposed to reside in the corporative state.
Its taste of bureaucracy was just enough to offend many
American palates. TbeiNRAjp best features were probably
salvaged by the Robinson-Patman act of 1937 curbing dis-
criminatory trade practices and by a series of beneficent labor
laws passed between 1935 and 1938. Roosevelt himself was
nettled by the Court's disapproval, taking it as a personal
affront, but among citizens at large regrets seemed few.
Two years of bickering over the NRA, in terms of
"planned economy*' versus "rugged individualism/* set the
national stage for a debate which continued with almost
88 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
monotonous iteration through the lifetime of the New Deal.
The chief mouthpiece for criticism of the president's policies
was the press, and the genesis of its hostility to Roosevelt is
worth remark. An acrimonious dispute over the newspaper
publishing code with NRA officials seeking, among other
things, to prohibit child labor among news vendors early
antagonized the owners of the press. Certain publishers never
tired of pointing to the barefoot newsboy as the sacred sym-
bol of self-help despite Warden Lewis E. Lawes's testimony
that seven out of ten inmates of Sing Sing had sold papers in
their youth. In respect to staff employees as well, the NRA's
proposals concerning working hours, wages and fair prac-
tices proved unacceptable to the American Newspaper Pub-
lishers Association. Late in 1933 this group submitted a code
providing neither minimum wages nor shorter hours, claim-
ing that imposition of a more rigid policy would hamper
freedom of the press and the discharge of those civic services
which (they argued) set journalism apart from ordinary
businesses* Eventually, in February, 1934, a compromise
code was signed that appeared to satisfy nobody.
As another by-product of the collective-bargaining guar-
antees under the Blue Eagle, a group of newsmen with vivid
memories of the steep salary cuts and dismissals of 1929-
1933 organized the American Newspaper Guild in December,
1933, The first national union of its kind, it owed much to
the leadership of that bluff, crusading columnist Heywood
Broun and gained some twenty thousand members within
the decade. With fair success it helped to raise the meager sal-
aries of reporters, but even at the close of this era had failed
to win for them any real contractual security. Meanwhile,
publishers loudly lamented the decline of self-reliance in the
ranks and of the old romantic ideas of individualism, blam-
ing it all on the officiousness of the New Deal.
Besides these contested points, the identification of great
newspaper corporations with other forms of Big Business
tended to swing editorial opinion considerably to the right of
THE CITIZEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT 89
center. Even before the NRA was well started, William Ran-
dolph Hearst, whose chain had backed Roosevelt and Garner
in 1932, turned against the administration, thereby joining
Colonel Robert R. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune and
Frank E. Gannett, owner of a chain mainly in upstate New
York, who had been foes from the start. Paradoxically, while
Roosevelt himself was winning unparalleled popularity
among Washington correspondents, the press back home was
solidifying against him. By the time of his second election
approximately two newspapers out of every three fought his
candidacy* The opposition journals, however, generally
printed the president's speeches and, save for the bitterest
diehards, reported Washington news with fairer objectivity
than that of the an ti- Jefferson press of 1800 or the anti-
Lincoln press in I860* Hence, as one friend of the New Deal
observed, it was evident that "the people voted with the
news columns and against the editorials/'
Among persons in the higher-income brackets hostility to
the New Deal arose as the bank crisis passed, the honeymoon
period waned and the NRA disappointed its business spon-
sors* The anxieties and industrial jitters of 1933 gave way by
the next spring to "open undisguised indignation and anger
at Washington/* as a Kiplinger newsletter of March 31,
1934, reported after polling its patrons. Among the prime
causes were "the confusions and inconsistencies of NRA and
AAA," the stock-exchange bill, labor policies and fears of
Communist infiltration of government.
In August the American Liberty League was^ formed under
an executive board of millionaires to oppose "the caprice of
bureaucracy" and "the tyranny of autocratic power/* Such
persons regarded the New Deal as a plot to use hard times as
a springboard to socialism. The more vindictive concentrated
their hate upon the president, "that Man/' "a traitor to his
class/' who symbolized the threat of change. One of Peter
Arno's best-known cartoons, appearing in September, 1936,
in The New Yorker, portrayed a little band of Park Avenue
90 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
citizens movie-bound in dinner jackets and sables, inviting
their neighbors through the open window, "Come along.
We're going to the trans-lux to hiss Roosevelt/'
Some were alarmed by the expanding scope of federal
regulation besides and beyond the NRA, In 1933, for exam-
ple, Congress in the emergency transportation act extended
the range of jurisdiction over the financially embarrassed rail-
roads by setting up a temporary coordinator of transporta-
tion and strengthening the Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion's authority in reorganization proceedings* Two years
later another law gave the ICC control over motor trans-
portation by common carrier and contract carrier in the inter-
ests of safety, quantity of service and just fares, and in 1938
the Civil Aeronautics Authority was created to regulate air
traffic* The transportation act of 1940 established a national
policy for all carriers by land and water, empowering the
ICC to help farmers by reducing railway rates on agricul-
tural exports and discountenancing "unfair or destructive
competitive practices" and promising "fair and impartial
regulation/' The great differences in the economic operation
of trains and trucks, busses and boats made this a dire need*
Because of the impotence or timorousness of private credit
agencies savings banks, insurance companies, trust compa-
nies the New Deal assumed additional responsibility over
the flow of credit by enlarging the scope and lending powers
of the RFC far beyond its Hoover infancy, thus enabling it
to serve a great variety of industries and individuals. Though
this was welcomed by the business community, at the same
time it fed the fear that the government was acquiring a
mortgage upon the assets of private enterprise. Also under the
New Deal the Federal Reserve system was converted into a
more effective mechanism for the expansion or contraction -of
credit, and by fixing the margin requirements for security
purchases it could affect the volume of credit flowing into
brokers' loans. In still other fields the New Deal offered help
to the debt-ridden farmer by creating the Federal Farm
THE CITIZEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT 91
Mortgage Corporation and aided the distressed householder
by setting up the Home Owners' Loan Corporation. By
creating the Export-Import Bank it also assisted the shipper,
as well as the foreign government needing credit to buy his
wares*
Other strands of federal control over interstate industry
were spun year by yean The public-utility act of 1935,
already mentioned, sought not only to protect the small
investor from the evils of holding companies, but also to
safeguard consumers and the public interest by demanding
reasonable rates and the opening of financial accounts to
inspection by the Federal Power Commission, Such power-
producing enterprises as Boulder (Hoover) Dam in the
Southwest, Fort Peck Dam in Montana, Bonneville and
Grand Coulee in the Pacific Northwest and the Central Val-
ley project in California converted the government into an
actual operator* Under the Tennessee Valley Authority it
took still further strides and attempted something beyond the
reach of private enterprise: to improve vocational opportuni-
ties, security and health, in other words the standard of living
and social values of an entire region*
Here, and in the relief and housing programs, one saw the
essential difference between government and private enter-
prise in the economic sphere* Public welfare was the main-
spring of the former, profit motive of the latter* What the
citizen needed, rather than what he could afford to buy, be-
came the determinant in the new social-service concept of
government a government which, having envisaged these
needs, set out to meet them not on the basis of cash in hand
or calculations of ultimate profit, but with assurance that the
bill would be paid by apportioning it among the taxpayers.
The role of the state as provider presupposed its function as
financier and tax collector* Under the New Deal, government
itself came to be incomparably the largest enterprise in the
nation*
The first exclusively New Deal budget, for the fiscal year
92 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
1934, increased federal expenditures two billion dollars over
1933, approximately sixty per cent of all appropriations go-
ing for "recovery and relief/' Before the close of 1936 the
national debt, despite higher taxes, had reached thirty billion
and by 1940 forty-three. Like most American phenomena, it
too had become big. A roving reporter, sampling opinion
through the country, found that persons on relief naturally
approved, as did also most of the younger generation*
Considerable authority, even among professional economists,
maintained that the debt need not be feared since the people
owed it to themselves. On the other hand, critics charged that
money was being spent on "crazy experiments/* that steep
taxes sapped business confidence, that they really hid a social-
ist scheme to nationalize the means of production. They
argued further that such taxation merely passed on the brunt
to the consumer in higher prices, which caused lower con-
sumption and in turn more unemployment in a vicious circle*
In this spirit the National Association of Manufacturers
condemned legislation in 1935 boosting inheritance and gift
taxes, increasing the surtax on incomes of over fifty thousand
dollars and imposing a graduated corporation income tax,
as an abuse of federal power "to penalize thrift and suc-
cess/' * Another turn of the screw of sadism as these critics
interpreted it came with the revenue act of 1936, which set
up an undistributed-profits tax. Without these reserves,
groaned executives, plans for expansion were impossible, and
their outcry caused a later, more sympathetic Congress to let
this tax lapse in 1939* New Dealers justified these levies as
based upon ability to pay, while the bolder ones frankly de-
clared that taxation should be used not merely to obtain
revenue but to redistribute wealth.
Many states and some cities quickly caught on to the ex-
* At the dose of their bitter arraignment the N. A. M. added, "In opposing
unsound economic and social measures it is unnecessary to propose alternatives/'
N. Y. Times, Dec. 6, 1935.
THE CITIZEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT 93
ample set by Washington and joined the parade of taxing
and spending until the annual cost of government federal,
state and local rose from eleven billion dollars in 1929 to
seventeen by 1938. The incentive to match federal funds was
well-nigh irresistible, for thereby such assets as new school-
houses, hospitals, parks, playgrounds, sewer systems and
roads were acquired and the millstone of local unemployment
was lightened. In the case of the states * 'protective tariffs" on
commodities from beyond their borders multiplied, while the
income tax continued to gain ground until about two thirds
of them had adopted this tax in some form by the end of the
thirties. Though graduated much less steeply than the federal
levy, it was sufficient to yield over a third of a billion dollars
in 1939.
The most important innovation was the sales tax. Intro-
duced by West Virginia in 1921, it found no imitators until
the onset of hard times led to its adoption by twenty-one
states between 1930 and 1935. A few municipalities also fol-
lowed suit. New York City's sales tax, for example, at the
close of the decade was producing nearly sixty million dollars
annually. Such taxes bore more heavily upon the poor than
the rich. A laborer with a thousand-dollar yearly income was
estimated to spend nearly sixty-one per cent of it upon sales-
taxed commodities, while a millionaire might spend as little
as one per cent. Hence, while favored by chambers of com-
merce and bankers* associations as a federal policy, the scheme
gained no support from the Roosevelt administration and
little from Congress.
With the repeal of national prohibition the states inci-
dentally recovered a lucrative source of revenue. Kansas,
Oklahoma, North Dakota and five Southern states chose for
the present to remain dry; fifteen commonwealths made the
selling of liquor a state monopoly, though seven of them al-
lowed private sale under stipulated conditions. Later years of
the era saw a spreading web of local-option laws. High taxes
imposed on alcoholic beverages by federal and state author-
94 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
ities avid for funds so raised the price of the legal article
that a considerable traffic in bootleg still persisted. Popular
opinion and state laws outlawed old rituals of bar and saloon
in favor of bottle sales by special shops, drug stores, or gro-
cery stores, while the public serving of liquor became the
role of cocktail lounges, beer gardens, night clubs and restau-
rants, where sitting rather than standing, eating as well as
imbibing, and the presence of both sexes wrought at least
overt changes in American drinking habits*
Thanks to this shift from federal prohibition to state
regulation, the consumption of alcohol became less frenetic
and hazardous to health, but certainly increased among the
working classes and among those who disliked stealth and
inconvenience. At any rate, the American people continued
to register satisfaction over the change. A Fortune poll late
in 1937 found only one man out of seven and one woman
in three favoring the return of national prohibition*
The states also made new advances in welfare legislation.
For example, workmen's accident compensation laws, which
had come into considerable favor among the states earlier in
the century, were vastly strengthened during the fourth dec-
ade under the stimulus of the New Deal and its philosophy*
In the year 1937 alone, thirty-eight legislatures revised and
broadened their laws by increasing accident and death bene-
fits, reducing the waiting period, extending coverage, widen-
ing the definition of occupational diseases, liberalizing
hospital, nursing, dental, prosthetic and rehabilitation pro-
visions. Pay-roll taxes were also invoked to finance state
social-security systems, as will be seen later.
Meanwhile the orbit of federal authority grew constantly
greater* Government now was expected to do things for its
citizens which government had never done before in the
United States. Obnoxious as this assumption of new powers
was to conservative extremists, it proved equally displeasing
to radical extremists. Until Stalin in 1935 decreed a "united
front" of communists with liberals throughout the world,
THE CITIZEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT 95
his followers in America conducted a virulent attack against
the New Deal. Earl Browder, Warren Jay Vinton, Benjamin
Stolberg and other Marxists assailed the Roosevelt regime
no less rancorously for betraying the masses than did John
W. Davis, Ogden Mills and Hamilton Fish for betraying the
Hudson Valley gentry and the "American way of life/* *
The president, steering "a little to the left of the center"
and seeking to temper the winds of world socialism and
domestic economic discontent, saw the necessity for adhering
mainly to a middle course. In a fireside chat after substantial
completion of the New Deal's legislative program he ob-
served,
Different from a great part of the world, we in America
persist in our belief in individual enterprise and in the profit
motive; but we realize we must continually seek improved
practices to insure the continuance of reasonable profits, to-
gether with scientific progress, individual initiative, oppor-
tunities for the little fellow, fair prices, decent wages and
continuing employment*
His task was a singularly delicate one, calling not only for
the harmonizing of tradition with social progress, but the
drafting of highly complicated plans under emergency pres-
sure and the maintenance of a precarious balance between
recovery and reform. Merely to prime the pump to make the
economic waters flow once more through the channels of
commerce and high finance if this could be done seemed
as dubious as a total neglect of recovery in a frenzy of re-
formist zeal In practice the New Deal, beyond the instant
tasks of relief, mobilized its first great efforts toward recov-
ery, with the Blue Eagle for industry and the original Triple
A for the farmer. "Our first task is to get the economic system
to function so that there will be a greater general security/*
* "There is nothing the New Deal has so far done that conld not have heen
done hetter hy an earthquake," wrote Stolberg and Vinton in the concluding
paragraph of their Economic Consequences of the New Deal (N. Y., 1935).
96 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Roosevelt told a committee of social planners in 1934*
"Everything that we can do with intent to increase the secur-
ity of the individual will, I am confident, be a stimulus to
recovery/* The two aims were therefore implicated in his
own mind from the start, but at this stage recovery held
priority*
The year 1935 proved to be the pivot upon which the
New Deal swung sharply toward reform, as if Roosevelt be-
lieved recovery assured or thought it hopeless further to
appease Big Business* The collapse of the NRA added to the
president's vexation, and personal abuse from the Liberty
League probably played some part, too* His enemies inter-
preted the change as a vote-getting policy angled toward
1936, in which the Democratic Congress also had a stake, or
else as a ruse to distract attention from his poor showing in re-
suscitating the nation's economy* Whatever the reasons, 1935
saw the passage of more social legislation than any other year
in the nation's history, including the national labor-relations
act, the social-security law, the wealth-tax act, the public-
utility act and the most liberal relief program ever under-
taken by any government, the Works Progress Administra-
tion.
The Works Progress Administration (later, the Work
Projects Administration) soon became for millions the per-
sonalized symbol of Uncle Sam as friend, provider and
employer* "I'm proud of our United States/' declared a
North Carolina tenant fanner living with his family in a
one-room filling station, "and every time I hear the 'Star-
Spangled Banner' I feel a lump in my throat* There ain't no
other nation in the world that would have sense enough to
think of WPA and all the other A's*" Working for the WPA
carried its own modest dignity, 'for it meant neither hand-
outs nor just raking leaves. Many a wife whose husband had
been jobless soon came to say in effect, with a touch of pride,
"We aren't on relief any more my man is working for the
government*"
THE CITIZEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT 97
This agency, above all others, effected a noteworthy
change in the low-income worker's relation to government
and politics. Unlike the state-administered FERA, it estab-
lished a rapport between him and his Washington employer,
ancThe quickly learned to distinguish between local govern-
ments and the federal authority, which seemed relatively
superior in fairness and efficiency. And, despite the program's
shortcomings, its psychological results went far to justify the
avowed aim of WPA officials "to help men keep their chins
up and their hands in," Over the New York World's Fair
building erected in 1939 by the WPA ran the inscription:
'Work is America's answer to the need of idle millions."
Increasingly one heard that the right to work had become
one of the basic guarantees of American government*
The advent of the WPA in the summer of 1935 marked
the divorce of work relief from direct relief, for the latter,
as has been seen, was now handed back to the states and
localities. By 1939-1940 about three fifths of direct-relief
expenditures came from state funds alone. Many of the two
million beneficiaries families and single persons were at
that time faring less well than under the old FERA, the
monthly allowances per family averaging twenty-five dollars
and, in certain states like Arkansas and Mississippi, no more
than three or five dollars.
The employables, for whom the WPA was designed, had
in general bettered their lot, however. Monthly wages aver-
aged between fifty and sixty dollars, with the work week
rarely exceeding forty hours. Under Harry Hopkins as chief
the WPA allotted the largest possible slice of its funds to
wages, and looked to the local tax-supported public body
collaborating upon a given project to furnish most of the
materials and tools.* Eventually this latter contribution was
*In March, 1939, the president told Congress that out of every hundred
dollars spent hy the WPA $86 went for wages, $10.50 for materials, and
$350 into administration. F. D. Roosevelt, Public Papers and Addresses (S. L
Rosenman, ed., N. Y., 1938-1941), VIII, 162. D. S. Howard, The WPA and
98 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
gauged at a quarter of the total cost* To the state, municipal-
ity or county the finished product belonged. A poor state like
Mississippi, unable to match funds, did less well than better-
circumstanced commonwealths, losing schools, swimming
pools and playgrounds as well as jobs for the needy. Spend-
ing about ten billion from the Treasury up to January,
1941, the WPA during these years gave employment to
nearly eight million individuals, one out of five of all the
nation's workers, and in all supported between twenty-five
and thirty million persons.
Prom the start the WPA endeavored to seek out those tasks
which both free enterprise and civic initiative were passing
over or postponing* Impressive was its list of accomplish-
ments. : They included New York City's forty-million-dollar
North Beach airport and nearly six hundred other landing
fields through the country, more than half a million miles of
roads and streets and over a hundred thousand bridges and
viaducts. The building or rebuilding of a hundred and ten
thousand public libraries, schools, auditoriums, hospitals,
courthouses and similar structures stood also to its credit.
Half a million sewerage connections and over a million new
privies aided public health no less vitally than did WPA
mosquito control, drainage ditches and water purification. In
the South a sharp reduction in typhoid deaths promptly fol-
lowed WPA innovations. Disaster work in the wake of floods
and hurricanes loomed large in 1937 and 1938.
Equally notable were the serving of nearly six hundred
million school lunches up to January, 1941 at which time
the WPA maintained fourteen hundred and sixty nursery
schools and the making of over three hundred million gar-
ments for needy children and adults. Sewing groups, which
comprised the bulk of the WPA's female employees, mustered
three or four hundred thousand at peak strength. Educa-
Federal Relief Policy (N. Y*, 1943), 145-150, 608, 797, discusses the interac-
tion of federal and state participation, finding the former much superior to the
latter.
THE CITIZEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT 99
tional and cultural aspects of the agency will be discussed
later, though one may note in passing the renovation of
nearly eighty million hooks, chiefly in school and public
libraries. Even the harshest critics admitted that the WPA
greatly enhanced convenience, sanitation and neatness among
American communities. In a less tangible way tie WPA's
ideal of equal employment opportunity regardless of race,
color or creed though occasionally violaTed in the South
respecting tfie Negro had also a salutary effect upon the
spread of practical democracy* .
The record of a single"~fortnight*s activity, selected at
random, offers a hasty map of the various zones in which
government through the WPA touched the daily life, par-
ticularly of disadvantaged groups. During such a period in
January, 1940, a million and a quarter attended naturaliza-
tion, vocational-training, art, nursery and other classes;
seventeen thousand completed immunization for smallpox,
diphtheria or other diseases; a quarter of a million received
medical and dental examinations and treatments; and more
than a million attended twenty-five hundred free musical
performances.
At first the average community hailed the WPA as a rich
bargain in whose sunshine civic improvements might flower
after a long winter of municipal deficits and the restraints of
a group-poverty complex. To get new bridges, parks, assem-
bly halls and public golf courses "at a little more than half
of their cost to the local taxpayers/* as a Middletown edi-
torial phrased it, was blandishment indeed. Uncle Sam was
regarded somewhat naively as a fount of beneficence quite
unrelated to the citizen's pocketbook. As time wore on, how-
ever, the expectation of steady funds and eagerness for still
greater sums battled in the citizen's mind with worries about
bureaucracy, the coddling of loafers and the decline of states*
rights.
LEpr obvious reasons, chronic WPA workers were apt to
be less efficient than the cream of man power skimmed re-
100 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
peatedly by private industry* Besides, the inevitable spongers
exposed the whole program to criticism^ During the recession
of 1937-1938, for example, when the^WPA bought fifteen
million dollars' worth of clothing from the factories in order
to prime industry and still more to outfit the jobless, some
with no right to relief were reported to have received free
overalls, shirts, bedding and other supplies. Uokes about
"shovel-leaners," centering around the man who was injured
when his shovel gave way, grew current in the latter thirties?
The WPA, like any government agency dispensing bounty
to the masses possessing little save a vote, was often accused
of buying good will, but beyond reasonable alertness to the
logic whereby ballots tend to follow benefits, its high com-
mand seems to have kept a steady hand upon the purse
strings and maintained a clean record. Local employees, how-
ever, were not always so scrupulous. Campaigning by the
WPA staff in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Tennessee in the
1938 elections led to much unfavorable notice and to the
passage of the Hatch act of July, 1939, curbing "pernicious
political activities" by federal appointees.
Private industry continued to lag under the pump-priming
of both WPA and PWA.* While the federal outlay for con-
struction rocketed from an annual average of $188,000,000
between 1925 and 1929 to that of $1,630,000,000 between
1933 and 1938, private construction during this latter period
never attained half the predepression figure, A careful study
under auspices of the National Resources Planning Board
concluded that the tonic effect of federal public works upon
national income and the sum of business activity was disap-
pointingly small. Thus the economic results of pump-prim-
ing tended to bear out the critics of the New Deal at the
* The fluctuating and seasonal imbalance or private employment greatly
complicated the problem. A survey of more than a thousand families in thirteen
cities who left relief rolls for private industry in the summer of 1935 found
that three fifths were driven back to seek relief within the next twelve months
despite the nation's general advance toward recovery. J. C. Bevis and S, L f Payne,
Former Relief Coses in Private Employment (WPA, Vash., 1939), 9*
THE CITIZEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT 101
same time that the gains in employees' morale gratified its
friends.
The public- works program was of course not perfect, nor
planned very logically* Like the people themselves, the ad-
ministration was loath to admit that relief had become ap-
parently a chronic problem* From this optimism stemmed
much of the program's makeshift character, its vacillating
theories concerning the federal obligation. Also, in retrospect
it seemed as if the WPA, with its free spending and quick
maneuverability to meet relief emergencies, should have come
prior to the cautious expenditure, the enmeshing of federal
with private enterprise, of the PWA. Yet in practice the cart
emerged before the horse.
The campaign of 1936 brought to the fore the whole New
Deal conception of government. Certainly the administra-
tion's activities seemed to offer targets vulnerable because of
their size and multiplicity. Here was Uncle Sam financing the
buying and vending of goods and the operation of ships and
railroads, managing currency and seeking to control prices,
generating and selling electric power, destroying and storing
agricultural commodities, teaching the farmer how to plow
and plant, supervising the diet of school children, draining
swamps, trafficking in real estate, sponsoring literature and
drama and art and folk dancing, and all the while describ-
ing ever widening circles of deficit financing. Opponents
turned their guns upon the New Deal's paternalism, its shapes
of concentrated power and monopoly, the alignment of class
against class, and a drift toward the "providential state*' such
as one saw in advanced stages in Russia, Germany and Italy.
Under the regime of the state as regulator always lurked the
danger that what paraded as the "public interest" would
really become the interests of a group if not of industrial-
ists, bankers or war veterans, then of farmers, union labor
or the masses of the ne'er-do- well.
The editors of Middletown burnished up the old axiom
that "any man who is willing to work hard and to be thrifty
102 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
and improve his spare time can get to the top. That's the
American way, and it's as true today as it ever was/* Sniff-
ing the springtime of recovery, many an elder American
turned instinctively to the sarsaparilla of self-reliance. Such
folk remarked that nobody ever got to the top "by working
forty hours a week/' Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends
and Influence People, published in 1936 and destined to be
the nonfiction best seller to the tune of eventually three mil-
lion copies, came like a breath of inspirational salesmanship
wafted down the years from Timothy Shay Arthur and
Orison Swett Marden. And in this year the National Associa-
tion of Manufacturers sponsored a series of movie shorts,
scoring "isms" and the rising cost of boondoggling, denying
that machines destroy more jobs than they create and, above
all, upholding the prestige of the Constitution*
The Republican leaders, assembling in Cleveland, discov-
ered their bond of unity in the words of Senator Arthur H.
Vandenberg: "I belong to but one bloc and it has but one
slogan stop Roosevelt/* Their platform, however, betrayed
significant concessions to the New Deal's concept of the serv-
ice state. While looking to "the energy, self-reliance and char-
acter of our people" as the bulwark of economic security, the
G* O* P. granted society's duty "to promote the security of
the people by affording some measure of protection against
involuntary unemployment and dependency in old age" and
called upon the federal government to set standards for state
systems and match funds for old-age pensions. Furthermore,
"the necessities of life must be provided for the needy,"
though with sharper separation of public works from relief
and of politics from relief, with the main responsibility for
the latter falling upon nonpolitical local agencies. The farmer
should be aided with benefit payments for soil conservation,
abundant credit, the retirement of nonproductive land and
federal encouragement of cooperative marketing. Labor was
promised collective bargaining "without interference from
any source," including bureaucrats. The platform also
THE CITIZEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT 103
favored state measures to outlaw child labor and sweatshops
and to protect women and children against economic ex-
ploitation notwithstanding that the Supreme Court, which
most Republicans hailed as the palladium of liberty, had just
invalidated a New York minimum-wage law for women as
infringing ''freedom of contract** between workers and em-
ployers and thus had seemingly shut the door upon all state
regulation of working conditions. The candidate, Alfred M.
Landon, mild, diffident and colorless in personality, took up
the battle as best he could against overwhelming odds*
The Democrats, who offered the New Deal as their essen-
tial platform for 1936, renominated Roosevelt at Philadel-
phia with thunderous acclaim and sat back to hear an accep-
tance speech from which flew sparks and one fighting phrase,
"economic royalists/* His tutelary genius in the campaign
seemed to be the ghost not of Jefferson but of Old Hickory,
a more rugged champion of the people against the moneyed
interests, and on election day, for luck, he wore Jackson's
heavy gold watch chain. The most militant of his speeches
was reserved for Madison Square Garden. Recalling "Nine
crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the bread-
lines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of
despair!" he continued, "Powerful influences strive today to
restore that kind of government with its doctrine that the
Government is best which is most indifferent/* He exulted
in their opposition:
Never before in all our history have these forces been so
united against one candidate as tiey stand today. They are
unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration
that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met
their match. I should like to have it said of my second Ad-
ministration that in it these forces met their master*
A postelection analysis of the campaign funds nearly
nine million dollars for the Republicans, five and a quarter
104 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
for the Democrats served as commentary on these words*
Whereas in 1928 and again in 1932, bankers had been
among the heaviest contributors to the Democratic purse,
their revolt in 1936 was conspicuous. Heads of investment
houses, magnates of steel and chemicals, chain-store and mail-
order executives, individuals like Hearst the publisher and
JL Howard Pew the oilman, poured funds prodigally into
Republican coffers. On the other hand, motion-picture pro-
ducers, theater owners, a fair representation from the liquor
and tobacco interests and many members of the professions
and organized labor swelled the Democratic fund* In the
background stood millions of farmers, paid for not raising
crops, and millions more on relief who could not give the
president anything but love and a vote.
Roosevelt achieved a reelection victory such as no other
president of modern times had won, capturing almost sixty-
one per cent of the popular ballots in a contest which drew
nearly six million more voters to the polls than the 1932
election, which had given him a mere fifty-seven per cent.
Jubilant at their sweep of forty-six states, Democrats para-
phrased an old saw, "As Maine goes, so goes Vermont/'
Hearst, among the most implacable of Roosevelt's enemies,
grudgingly admitted a few days after the election that no
man in American history save Jackson had enjoyed "an
equally overwhelming popular appeal and popular victory/*
True to the Jacksonian touch, Roosevelt provided that the
reviewing stand for the inaugural parade of January, 1937,
should be a replica of the Hermitage*
In bullish mood the president was already planning to get
the upper hand of his old adversary, the Supreme Court, Un-
mistakably from early in 1935 the tribunal had begun to do
deadly execution "among the tender brood of New Deal legis-
lation: not only the NRA, the agricultural adjustment act,
the Frazier-Lcmke farm moratorium act, the Guffey-Snyder
law seeking to stabilize labor conditions in the soft-coal
fields, but even so innocent-seeming a measure as the railroad
THE CITIZEN AND HIS GOVERNMENT 105
retirement act for pensioning employees, which was crush-
ingly damned as irrelevant to interstate commerce and as
denying due process of law "by taking the property of one
and bestowing it upon another/' Justices Harlan F. Stone,
Louis D* Brandeis and Benjamin N. Cardozo usually con-
stituted themselves a minority of liberal dissent, who upon
occasion (such as the invalidation of New York's minimum^
wage law for women) were joined by Chief Justice Charles
E* Hughes. Five members of the bench, however, seemed in-
vincibly conservative. A widely read book of the time, Pro-
fessor R S. Corwin's The Twilight of the Supreme Court
(1934), argued that the. judiciary had become the great
stumblingblock of social progress.
So felt President Roosevelt when in February, 1937, he
proposed to reorganize the entire federal bench, asserting that
senility tended to hamper the pace of business. His scheme
provided that for every justice who failed to retire at seventy
an additional one be appointed up to a total membership of
fifteen on the Supreme Court Of the six septuagenarians then
sitting, Brandeis alone was a convinced liberal.
This proposal to "pack" the Court caused a furor, swamp-
ing Congress with letters and telegrams and provoking pro-
tests from several legislatures, while a host of "Committees
to Preserve Our Liberties'* or "Associates for America" mush-
roomed over the nation. Opposition came naturally to the
Roosevelt haters, who, however, were joined by many mid-
dle-of-the-road citizens sincerely fearing that the ideal of
constitutional government was in danger from the inroads of
personal domination. To many eyes Roosevelt's strategy
looked both flippant and evasive, and to the collective symbol
of the Nine Old Men group protectiveness rallied. In April,
1937, a Gallup poll asking, "Would you favor a constitu-
tional amendment requiring Supreme Court Justices to retire
at some age between 70 and 75?" reported an affirmative ma-
jority of sixty-four per cent, but in June, in response to the
query, "Should Congress pass the President's Supreme Court
106 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
plan?" the negative won by fifty-eight per cent, and a Sep-
tember poll registered sixty-eight per cent against his "fight
to enlarge the Supreme Court/*
In the spring of 1937 the tribunal itself cut the ground
from beneath the advocates of change, at the same time ap-
pearing to vindicate the doubters of its Olympian detachment.
Justice Owen J. Roberts now shifted his weight toward the
liberal wing. The allegiance of Chief Justice Hughes seemed
also to grow steadier. Accordingly, the Court upheld the rail-
way labor act and the revised Frazier-Lemke farm-mortgage
moratorium* Moreover, it sustained the minimum-wage law
of the state of Washington, the Wagner labor-relations act
and the unemployment-insurance tax provisions of the social-
security act all by a vote of five to four. The resignation of
archconservative Justice Willis Van Devanter shortly per-
mitted Roosevelt to name his first appointee to the bench,
Senator Hugo L. Black, and assure a wider margin of victory
for the New Deal.
Meanwhile in August, 1937, the Senate rejected the presi-
dent's Supreme Court proposal. Though Roosevelt had failed
to achieve his means, he attained his ends, and in the next
year looked back upon the contest as "a lost battle which
won a war.** The new temper of the judiciary respecting the
sphere of federal action may be sufficiently indicated by cit-
ing a decision in 1938 upholding the right of the PWA to
finance municipal construction of distribution lines in com-
petition with private facilities. Thus was cleared the most
formidable road block in the path of the Roosevelt revolu-
tion, and the highest court in the land began to bestow its
accolade upon many New Deal innovations*
CHAPTER VI
UNIONS ON THE MARCH
IF the unfolding New Deal served to set one faction of the
nation inflexibly against Roosevelt, it recruited correspond-
ing support for him among the ranks of labor. Under his
administration organized labor, which numbered a bare three
million in 1931, strengthened its position as never before and
discovered the leverage it could exert in politics. No develop-
ment of the times loomed larger than this in the thinking
and daily life of many Americans.
This new prestige had burst forth shortly after the clouds
seemed darkest for organized labor. In 1929, following a
postwar decade which saw management firmly in the saddle
and union membership shrinking, labor leaders had small
grounds for either complacency or hope. The once strong
United Mine Workers, for example, suffered from internal
strife and nonunion competition from the lower-cost bitu-
minous fields; an attempt to organize Southern textile mills
provoked the savage Gastonia riot but ended in failure; such
major industries as steel and automobiles bore no trace of
unionism. At this juncture came the onrush of mass unem-
ployment, spelling further reduction in the ranks of dues-
payers and in the power of collective bargaining.
Legally, however, labor won two important victories in
the Hoover administration. After years of mounting wrath
in labor circles against employer-sponsored company unions,
the Supreme Court in the Texas 8J New Orleans Railway
case in 1930 unanimously decided that an employer's attempt
to force a company union upon his workers constituted in-
terference with their rights. And in March,. 1932, Hoover
signed the Norris-La Guardia act outlawing "yellow-dog"
107
108 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
contracts, which had bound employees not to join unions,
and forbidding federal courts to issue injunctions as weapons
against organized labor. This law rested upon the premise
that an individual worker was helpless save as he gained
power through * 'association, self -organization, and designa-
tion of representatives of his own choosing, to negotiate the
terms and conditions of his employment/' Like other aspects
of progressivism latent in Hoover days, it bore seed from
which the New Deal sprouted in the fertile season of 1933.
Section 7A of the national industrial recovery act repeated
phrases from the Norris-La Guardia act with more trenchant
emphasis, promising employees "the right to organize and
bargain collectively through representatives of their own
choosing" under no restraint. Promptly capital and labor set
to work to turn the guarantee to contrary purposes, the
former striving to multiply company unions and use Section
7A as a prop for the open shop, while labor sought to de-
stroy company unions and make its own unions the exclusive
bargaining units, John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine
Workers and most aggressive of organizers, sent forth evan-
gels with the garbled gospel, "The President wants you to
join the union" ; as a result, membership in the UMW rose
from one hundred and fifty thousand in 1932 to four hun-
dred thousand by 1935. Less spectacularly, between midsum-
mer, 1933, and midsummer, 1936, the rolls of the American
Federation of Labor as a whole increased almost seventy-five
per cent.
A floor under wages and a ceiling over hours were, as has
been seen, mandatory for employers signing up under the
NRA. Although some quibbling, evasion and violation oc-
curred and though labor grumbled constantly at the lag be-
tween wages and rising prices, the requirement as to hours,
later reiterated by the Wagner act, operated with depressed
conditions to effect a much greater change in the work week
than ever known in short order before. By 1936 the average
laboring week was estimated at about nine hours less than in
UNIONS ON THE MARCH 109
1929, a five-day stint had become the rule rather than the
exception, and the Saturday closings common in large cities
provided longer week-ends. In smaller towns and in the
South the resistance was greater, but no stratum of business
or industry remained wholly unaffected.
To umpire the tug of war between management and re-
surgent labor the president in August, 1933, created the Na-
tional Labor Board of employer and union representatives
with Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York as chairman-
Its powers of enforcement were scant, however, and in June,
1934, Congress, taking back some of the authority which it
had let slip into executive hands, substituted the National
Labor Relations Board with quasijudicial functions. Com-
posed of three labor-relations experts, the NLRB was sup-
posed to be strictly impartial, but management began to com-
plain when it almost invariably sided with the worker. If
the New Deal in general and this Board in particular tended
to favor labor oftener than management, their partisans
pointed to the long ascendancy of the latter which now called
for redress. Perhaps its most important decision, and the one
most bitterly opposed by the National Association of Manu-
facturers in appeal to the courts, was that against the Houde
Engineering Corporation, in which the Board held that under
Section 7A an employer could not bargain with a minority,
but must deal with a majority as the sole collective agent for
all, although employees were under no compulsion to join
this organization.
Upon labor the days of the Blue Eagle had effects impor-
tant psychologically, as well as legally or judicially, by re-
affirming the importance of collective bargaining and making
unions more respectable in the popular eye. Following the
collapse of the NRA a~ ? with it of the NLRB, labor was
strong enough to press rcr congressional legislation to salvage
its gains. After many years* submission to Samuel Gompers's
policy of "voluntarism" for bettering industrial relations and
of relying upon the unions* internal strength rather than the
110 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
intercession of government, a large rebellious regiment of
labor now demanded bolder tactics. In response, the Wagner
labor-relations act of July 5, 1935, forbade interference with
unionizing and collective bargaining and brooked no refusal
to deal with employees' representatives, no promotion of
company unions, no discrimination in the matter of em-
ployment** To administer the law and hold employee elec-
tions, a new three-member National Labor Relations Board
was established* Several states now passed "little Wagner
acts" imposing similar restrictions upon intrastate enter-
prises.
A series of federal court decisions, following the lead of
the Supreme Court, gave the NLRB virtually a free hand.
Under the guise of preventing even "subtle coercion" the
right of employers to talk was sharply limited, though critics
urged that freedom of speech and debate was as desirable in
labor disputes as immunity from unfair pressure and that the
two were not mutually exclusive. Up to the end of January,
1941, the Board dealt with almost thirty-three thousand
cases involving nearly seven million wage-earners; 3166
strike cases concerned 400,000 workers, and of these 2383
were settled, while almost a thousand involving 200,000
workers were averted. This did not mean the absence or quick
settlement of all strikes, since no provision for compulsory
arbitration, as practised for example in Australia, was even
seriously debated save at the very close of the era in respect
to defense industries.
Indeed, the middle years of the decade witnessed great in-
dustrial turmoil, the result both of labor's depression-dated
bill of grievances and of its new self-assertion under en-
couragement of the administration. The summer of 1934
brought such a groundswell of strikes as had not been seen
* U+ S. Statutes at Large, XLIX, 452-457. The LaFolIette civil-liberties com-
mittee was formed largely to assure better enforcement of the Wagner act by
investigating "the violations of the rights of free speech and assembly and undue
interference with the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively." Quoted
in Mary H. Vorse, Ivor's New Millions (N. Y., 1938) , 251.
UNIONS ON THE MARCH 111
for years. In late May the Communist Dunne brothers in
Minneapolis organized a general truck drivers' strike, which
led to bloodshed. In San Francisco a longshoremen's walk-
out begun in May, involved sympathetic unions in a four-
day general strike in July, the biggest of its kind since 1919.
A poll by the men ended this effort, to the disappointment
of its chief organizer, Australian-born Harry Bridges, whose
alleged Communist ties and resistance to deportation resulted
in a legal battle that raged through the late thirties. In Sep-
tember, 1934, a cut in production and hence in take-home
pay, sanctioned by the textile code authority, caused three
hundred and fifty thousand Southern cotton mill workers to
drop their tools. A mediation board, appointed by the presi-
dent and headed by New Hampshire's former Governor John
G. Winant, found considerable justice on the strikers' side and
recommended creation of the Textile Labor Relations Board.
To meet labor's growing power and in alarm at occasional
signs of radical infiltration, management began to patronize
more heavily the secret agents of Pinkerton and Burns and
to engage company detectives, "stool pigeons" and incipient
strike breakers under such euphemisms as Ford's "service di-
vision/' Facing unionization in the automobile industry,
General Motors from January, 1934, through July, 1936,
spent close to a million dollars for private detectives.
This threat to management in motors arose from a new
and militant force in American labor, the Committee for
Industrial Organization* The more aggressive elements in the
American Federation, notably the leaders of the United Mine
Workers, chafed under stodgy methods and relatively slow
expansion. The head of this bloc, burly, rhetorical John L.
Lewis, argued that the traditional "horizontal" or craft
structure of the A. F. of L. hampered its growth and bred
disdain by the "aristocrats of labor" for low-wage mass-
production workers. He wished to supplant it with industrial
unionism, a type represented by his own organization, the
International Ladies Garment Workers, the Amalgamated
112 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Clothing Workers and the International Union of Oil Field*
Gas Well and Refinery Workers.
Lewis and other leaders of * Vertical" unions in November,
1935, formed the CIO inside the A. R of L. to extend this
principle of organization to other fields, a start having been
made with the chartering of the United Automobile Workers
in August, 1935, and the United Rubber Workers a month
later. In January, 1936, the executive council of the parent
body ordered the rebels to disband, and in August, when the
dissident unions were "suspended," the total secession of
Lewis's cohorts shortly followed. In 1938, with their four
million members overtopping the Federation by nearly half
a million, these unions rechristened themselves the Congress
of Industrial Organizations. The American labor movement
was thus rent from top to bottom. Industrial unionism
aligned itself with bold fighting tactics and a legislative pro-
gram to the left of the New Deal, leaving to craft unionism
the conciliatory traditions which William Green as presi-
dent had inherited from Samuel Gompers. Yet, even after the
great schism, influence surviving within the A. R of L. still
urged it with partial success to "go industrial** and also to
take livelier interest in the political scene.*
Spearheaded by the CIO, organized labor in the latter thir-
ties developed into a force for political action never before
seen in the United States, lining campaign chests, ringing
doorbells, campaigning by stump and poster and radio, get-
ting out the vote on an impressive scale. While the A. R of
L., in its tradition of standing by labor's friends and oppos-
ing its foes, gave only indirect support to the New Deal and
* Such a development within the A. R of L. during the latter years of this
era as the jurisdiction accorded the Machinists* Union over workers of all kinds
in the aviation industry, virtually erased the vaunted division line between
Federation and CIO. Far from weakening the A* F. of L., this fission seenied
Beneficial, shocking it into more vigorous leadership, yet leaving it with a con-
servatism in some employers' eyes which led them to bargain here rather than
at tbe door of the CIO so that by early 1941 the A. F. of L* boasted an
afl-tbne record of 4,500,000 dues-paying members to its rival's static 4*000,000.
UNIONS ON THE MARCH 113
made no effort to raise funds through its central organiza-
tion, the CIO disavowed such timidity. Out of labor's dona-
tion of seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars to the
Democratic cause in 1936 nearly half a million came from
the CIO in gratitude and hope. Labor's Non-Partisan League,
created by Lewis, Sidney Hillman and Major George Berry,
rallied support for the president, its New York branch, called
the American Labor party, polling nearly a third of a million
votes. In the next presidential campaign, even though Lewis
in personal pique deserted Roosevelt to return to his lifelong
Republicanism, the rank and file remained loyal, the CIO
members in particular giving the president so thumping a
vote of confidence that Lewis had no choice but to fulfill his
preelection pledge and resign as its head, while retaining his
leadership of the miners.
Whatever the vicissitudes of politics, it was a noteworthy
trend of the era that labor had at last become an active par-
ticipant in elections, eager to use the fulcrum of government
for attainment of its ends. The New Deal in turn, aware of
its heavy commitment to a prolabor policy and grateful for
working-class support, manifested great reluctance to lay a
restraining hand upon the unions, however irresponsible they
might become. Earlier administrations had often behaved in
just this way toward Big Business.
Closely linked with the emergence of the CIO was the
technique of the sit-down strike, by which the worker
downed tools and "sat on his job" inside the factory. For the
workers this policy of passive resistance possessed many ad-
vantages. Not only did physical possession of the plant bar
the entry of "scabs," but it was more comfortable for the
men than picketing. It also heightened their sense of soli-
darity as they got to know each other under siege and ran
the managerial blockade to bring food and hot coffee to the
garrison. Not infrequently, however, they failed to observe
the rules of their own game by infiltrating the plant with
substitutes.
114 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Successfully tried in 1933 by employees of the Hormel
Packing Company in Minnesota and in 1935 by Goodyear
workers in Akron, the sit-down first attracted national notice
late in 1936 as the CIO's chief implement of assault upon the
automotive industry. In 1934 forty-five per cent of the auto
workers had been receiving less than a thousand dollars a
year* In the big sit-downs of 1936-1937, however, the im-
mediate issue at stake was not pay but union organization
and recognition of the United Automobile Workers as sole
bargaining agent* Beginning in November, 1936, at Flint,
Michigan, with a strike against General Motors, the vortex of
disturbance spread until it engulfed fourteen states and a
hundred and thirty-five thousand men. Michigan's Governor
Frank Murphy, declining to call out the militia, offered in-
stead his services as negotiator, which in February, 1937,
ended the affair with substantial success for the union* Other
big motor companies succumbed to the same tactics.
The mere threat of a sit-down won a still greater victory
against the United States Steel Corporation when in March
the thunderstruck public learned that this giant and its com-
peers of "Big Steel" had without a blow hauled down their
flag to unionization and a ten-per-cent boost* This triumph
marked the zenith of Lewis's prestige* Meanwhile the tech-
nique of the sit-down spread to such diverse groups as
bakers, shipbuilders, the chocolate makers of Hershey, Penn-
sylvania, wet nurses in Chicago and gravediggers in Kansas
City * contagion reminiscent of the dancing mania of the
Middle Ages* Between September 1, 1936, and June 1, 1937,
sit-downs involved a total of 484,71 1 workers*
This unprecedented spectacle of the wage-earner wielding
the big stick alarmed public opinion, which by instinct fav-
ored a balance of power between capital and labor* In Feb-
ruary, 1937, a Gallup poll reported fifty-six per cent of the
people as siding with General Motors against the CIO. An-
other poll a month later found sixty-seven per cent hoping
that sit-downs would be ruled illegal, as A* F* of L/s Presi-
'",,/' 'vw ,- r . * ,'F^*3Lrr '*" - -
^4*?:.:^"^-^
^',-,t^.. v !; % :>.;^,i
'V
V'X 1 ;^
^
S
8
S
I
UNIONS ON THE MARCH 115
dent Green asserted they were despite sporadic instances
within his own ranks. By midsummer of 1937 fifty-seven per
cent agreed that "the militia should be called out whenever
strike trouble threatens" and half admitted that their attitude
toward labor unions had changed in the past six months.
The Senate in 1937 and the Supreme Court in 1939 sharply
rebuked the sit-down as infringing upon property rights, a
violation of the law of trespass.
The tide of CIO success turned in the spring of 1937 when
it challenged "Little Steel/' On Memorial Day in South Chi-
cago, pickets at Republic Steel clashed with police, bringing
death to ten strikers* Under Tom M. Girdler, a leader as
tough and tenacious as Lewis himself, "Little Steel" fought
the unions to a bitter finish in July and bested them even
though the NLRB later condemned the methods as illegal
and terroristic and ordered the companies to reinstate dis-
charged strikers and enter upon collective bargaining.
Over this deadlock between "Little Steel" and the CIO,
the president exclaimed, "A plague on both your houses/'
but in retrospect he considered the year 1937 with its rec-
ord toll for the decade of 4720 strikes, of which 2728 had
been waged over the right of organization a season of
"growing pains" for labor, essentially a healthy symptom*
The more aggressive unionists, however, had grudgingly to
recognize that the sit-down, for all its triumphs, quickly out-
lived its usefulness and strained the oatience of both the pub-
lic and the government.
Although the Wagner act specified that the term employer
"shall not include the United States, or any State or political
subdivision thereof," thus lending no aid to collective bar-
gaining or strikes against the government, efforts, largely
from the left wing, were nevertheless made to organize relief
workers. A union of FERA employees flourished briefly, to
be succeeded by the Project Workers' Union, which exerted
fairly strong pressure against WPA wage cuts and layoffs
despite the president's denial of their right to strike. Appar-
116 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
cntly the most vigorous organization enrolling relief clients
and the unemployed was the Workers* Alliance, formed early
in 1935 under Marxist auspices and boasting at its peak
nearly a quarter of a million members. "Boring from within'*
in approved Communist fashion, it sought to honeycomb
disadvantaged groups with its spirit of discontent, promoting
hunger marches, protesting WPA discharges, picketing state
legislatures in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, demonstrating
on Capitol Hill in 1937 and claiming credit for preventing
deeper relief cuts. The total impact of these organizations,
however, was smalL
The decade brought certain changes in labor attitudes in
the United States. An impetus, begun by the Depression
and continued by the New Deal, made the workingman, par-
ticularly in the big industrial centers, class conscious as never
before to the gratification of leftists and a gloomy appre-
hension among conservatives that American traditions, indi-
vidual ambition and fluid opportunity were being "Euro-
peanized/' The laborer as "proletarian" became also an ob-
ject of absorbing interest to numerous writers and artists, as
will be seen later. Even though their efforts were addressed
chiefly to the highbrow, a residue did help to bolster the
worker's importance and self-esteem. A new sense of soli-
darity appeared. Labor leaders sought increasingly to make
the union the focus of community and recreational life, with
clean, attractive quarters that contained rest rooms, game
rooms, dance halls, restaurant, library and movies. In the
larger cities social activity included dances, card parties*
bingo, banquets, beer fests and, in more isolated regions,
square dances, baseball games, picnics and hay rides. This
development recalled the salad days of the Grange two gen-
erations earlier among the farmers.
But labor's new ascendancy also had its dark side. Symp-
toms of the same greed, arrogance and irresponsibility which
"the interests" had shown when in the saddle now appeared
among certain of its leaders and unions. Some seemed to want
UNIONS ON THE MARCH 117
all the fruits of labor-saving methods and technology to be
passed on to them in the form of higher wages and shorter
hours rather than to share them with other segments of the
population in the form of lower prices and greater consump-
tion* Others sought to restrict the supply of labor in par-
ticular crafts and industries, acting on the theory that re-
straint of trade was a game at which two could play, while
the consumer sat by unhappily. In 1939 and 1940 the de-
partment of justice strove to break the obstructiveness of sev-
eral artisans* unions. Labor had waited long for its innings,
and such behavior was natural, if ill-advised*
Rivals in the labor movement strove to top each other's
gains in higher wages and shorter hours, with little heed for
the common weal or the ultimate best interests of the unions
themselves* Following the widespread disapproval of sit-
downs, these aggressive elements came popularly to be
epitomized by John L* Lewis, who with his fierce eyebrows,
black cigar, limousine and cool assurance that government
should knuckle to his will, might have doubled for a "robber
baron** of the nineteenth century. In 1921 he had obeyed an
unfair injunction with the words, "We cannot fight the gov-
ernment"; twenty years later he persisted in paralyzing the
nation by a coal strike in a grave season of national defense.
More reprehensible than the labor boss, however, was the
labor racketeer* A graduate frequently of the rum-running
and dope-peddling underworld, he was schooled in extortion,
violence and murder. In the early thirties "union czars" witih
a stranglehold upon workers in the building trades, motion-
picture operators, bakers, furriers, poulterers and produce-
market vendors and often feuding among themselves for
mastery aggravated the industrial turmoil of cities like New
York, Chicago and Detroit. In 1932 the president of the Chi-
cago Crime Commission, Frank X Loesch, reported that
"fully two thirds of the unions in Chicago are controlled by
or pay tribute directly to Al Capone's terroristic organiza-
tions." At this date Capone already lay under an eleven-year
118 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
penitentiary sentence for income-tax evasion, and other gang-
sters soon began to tumble into the federal net*
But with the bigger membership and importance of or-
ganized labor under the New Deal, a host of new racketeers
sprang up until in the latter thirties, as remarked by Mary
Heaton Vorse, stanch friend of the labor cause, the A. R
of L. in Chicago was constantly working hand in glove with
hoodlums and the most rotten elements in local politics* In
the New York area young Thomas E. Dewey, as special
prosecutor in 1935 and two years later as district attorney,
built a national reputation by helping to break up some of
the country's worst rings of labor racketeers. Nevertheless at
the end of the era certain important unions continued to be
veined with graft and extortion, including those in the movie
industry*
The recession late in 1937 was widely blamed by the con-
servative press upon industrial turmoil and work stoppages.
At all hazards the new tide of unemployment which it
brought weakened, as always, the bargaining power of labor,
so that 1938 saw only 2770 strikes, involving a third the
number of the previous year, or less than 690,000 workers.
In this latter year, however, despite a setback in the new
puissance of the unions, unorganized workers won a legis-
lative victory of the first importance. Paradoxically enough,
the president and his aides in Congress carried the fair- labor-
standards act through in face of apathy or downright skep-
ticism from both CIO and A* R of L. leaders, the latter tend-
ing to quote Gompers that the minimum wage often becomes
the maximum. At heart perhaps they had little interest in the
welfare of the workers outside the pale of their own mem-
berships, or else begrudged gains won in any other fashion
than by collective bargaining.
As embodied in the original Black-Connery bill, the pro-
posal had been pressed upon Congress by the president in
May, 1937, and urged again by him six months later with
the recession in full swing. Opposed by some Southern con-
UNIONS ON THE MARCH 119
gressmen as undermining their peculiar institution of regional
differentials, and regarded by others as too prolix and compli-
cated in phraseology, the measure was worsted in December
"the first time/* as Secretary of Labor Perkins reflected,
"that a major administration bill had been defeated on the
floor of the House/' In June, 1938, however, after the chast-
ening of a winter's recession and further political strategy on
behalf of a modified and simplified bill, Congress passed it.
"Except perhaps for the Social Security Act/' the president
told the nation, "it is the most far-sighted program for the
benefit of workers ever adopted in this or in any other coun-
try."
Its forebear was the Walsh-Healey public-contracts act,
passed late in 1935, which had established the forty-hour
week for all government contractors supplying more than
ten thousand dollars' worth of goods and required them to
pay minimum wages fixed by the secretary of labor upon the
basis of "prevailing wages" for such work in the particular
neighborhood. The doctrine of prevailing wages had also
entered into the setting of WPA relief workers' pay. The
fair-labor-standards act of 1938 extended to all work "affect-
ing interstate commerce/' exempting only agriculture, fishing
and certain types of selling and service. It instituted a normal
maximum work week of forty-four hours (to be reduced
gradually to forty) , with time-and-a-half pay for overtime
except in certain seasonal occupations. The minimum wage
was fixed for the first year at twenty-five cents an hour, with
automatic raises looking toward an eventual floor of forty
cents. Such gradualism was designed to ease the employers*
period of readjustment. The act also abolished child labor in
the making of goods for interstate commerce.
This federal regulation of wages and hours more potent
than state controls, which often resulted merely in trans-
planting industry into less progressive regions had a far-
reaching effect upon the American wage-earner. The chief
beneficiaries were the nonunion, unprotected workers:
120 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
women, minors and the rank and file of the unskilled. The
immediate effect was to raise the hourly pay of an estimated
300,000 employees to twenty-five cents and to shorten the
work week for 1,300,000; the next year's wage increase to
thirty cents benefited some 690,000, and the reduction to a
forty-two-hour week about 2,382,000; while the innovation
of the forty-hour week in 1940 affected roughly 2,000,000*
Unanimous validation by the Supreme Court on February 3,
1941, signified that the act had become part of the durable
fabric of industrial relations.
After 1939 defense and war needs tended to increase em-
ployment, absorbing at length that reserve pool of man j$ower
which so long had been left stagnant by the receding tides of
private labor demand. In the brimming flood of prosperity
every employable American, whether in factories or the
armed forces, was in demand** Thus came the ultimate
pump-priming which the dictators of Europe had discov-
ered early as a palliative for depression and social unrest, but
which Roosevelt had eschewed as perilous and unproductive
until necessity forced his hand. By 1941 the real weekly earn-
ings of factory workers stood at an all-time high.
Even in the deepening shadows of world crisis, labor dis-
putes were not wholly at an end, but the time for strikes was
swiftly running out. A measure of this new urgency was use
of the army by presidential order to break the CIO-North
American Aviation strike at Inglewood, California, in June,
1941. After the entry of Soviet Russia into the European
war later that month, the more radical elements in American
labor ceased to boycott the so-called "imperialist struggle/*
and a period of almost halcyon industrial peace and coopera-
tion followed.
To both labor and management these years brought a
quickened awareness of federal power, whether as indulgent
* In December, 1942, a year after the attack upon Pearl Harbor, tbe presi-
dent ordered the administrator of federal works to close down all relief projects
by February 1, 1943.
UNIONS ON THE MARCH 121
father or stern parent. And simultaneously the average cit-
izen, whatever his economic and political interests or alleg-
iances, felt the same regulatory hand upon his shoulder,
whether he liked it or not. An inescapable sign of the new
functions of government and the vastly expanded scope of
the executive arm was the reorganization act of 1939, bring-
ing under a single Federal Works Agency diverse welfare
activities like the PWA, the WPA and the United States
Housing Authority, and seeking in other ways to set in order
the manifold improvisations of the New Deal*
In his annual message to Congress early in that year the
president boldly said,
We see things now that we could not see along the way.
The tools of government which we had in 1933 are out-
moded. We have had to forge new tools for a new role of
government operating in a democracy a role of new respon-
sibility for new needs and increased responsibility for old
needs, long neglected.
A few days later, at the Jackson Day dinner in the spirit
of his exemplar "who fought to the last for a united demo-
cratic nation" the president surveyed the work of his hands
and his administration which had wrought an even more
arresting reorganization in American life, observing that the
people
have greatly changed their attitude toward government in
this our generation. We of this modern day take our
politics less seriously. And we take our government more
seriously. * * * Today there is emerging a real and forceful
belief on the part of the great mass of the people that honest,
intelligent and courageous government can solve many prob-
lems which the average individual cannot face alone in a
world where there are no longer one hundred and twenty
acres of good free land for everybody.
122 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
And, with vision sweeping the ranges of social advancement
as President Roosevelt and his friends conceived it to be
he stoutly vowed that "by the Eternal, we shall never have
to strike our colors/'
CHAPTER VII
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN A CHANGING
WORLD
JUST as they had gazed upon separate facets of the Depres-
sion, so the urban dweller and the farmer looked upon the
New Deal from different points of vantage. The city, first to
feel the clutch of economic disaster, remained longer and
more doggedly at grips with unemployment and the ogre of
starvation than did either the small town or the rural com-
munity. In 1935, for example, the ten biggest cities alone
accounted for one out of every five of the nation's employ-
ables on relief. The organization of municipal relief tended
to be more efficient than in small towns, and the initial shame
of accepting a hand-out considerably less in the vast metro-
politan anonymity.
Furthermore, urban dwellers had fewer scruples about
self-reliance and rugged individualism. In the twentieth cen-
tury the city had become the seed plot of innovation and re-
form. Besides the quickened ferment of ideas, the strength of
organized labor and the visible stratification into economic
classes, another reason lay in the uprooted status of the typ-
ical urbanite. If he came from a small town, village or farm,
that fact itself generally stamped htm as a progressive, non-
conformist or malcontent, and still more frequently its effect
was to strip from his roots adhesions of the cake of custom.
On the other hand, if he were foreign-born or the child of
immigrants as were nearly two of three of the inhabitants
of cities with a million population and over he was apt to
feel no invincible prejudice against ideas which ruralites sus-
pected as counter to the "American way/' It was not surpris-
ing, therefore, that the New Deal's work-relief, social-se-
123
124 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
entity and housing programs found no warmer friends than
in the great metropolitan centers, nor that Roosevelt so spec-
tacularly swept the urban vote in successive reflections even
in the forties when, as we shall see, many farmers began to
fall out with the New Deal.
Relieving the burdens of impoverished householders and
clearing slums for low-cost model dwellings were two activ-
ities which brought the federal power intimately into the
lives of city folk. Government chiefly municipal, had previ-
ously entered the sphere of housing with restrictive legisla-
tion, such as building codes and zoning ordinances, but in
this decade, under federal leadership, it assumed a positive
role, first offering home loans cheaply and then stimulating
new construction in the low-rental field*
To achieve more direct succor of distressed homeowners
than Hoover's Home Loan Banks had undertaken, the New
Deal in June, 1933, set up the Home Owners Loan Corpora-
tion.* All loans were refinanced at five-per-cent interest, with
fifteen years in which to repay; needed repairs were made
under supervision, and those costs added to the loan* During
its period of lending, which ended in June, 1936, the HOLC
granted over a million loans, amounting to three billion dol-
lars, and assumed about a sixth of the urban home-mortgage
indebtedness in the United States. The number of foreclosures
which had quadrupled between 1926 and 1933 had by
1937 fallen to half the number in 1933, with hundreds of
thousands of families saved from eviction.
This program, however, did not meet a large and more
importunate area of need. The "one-third of a nation ill-
housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished/' to whom the president
alluded in his second inaugural address, rarely had the prop-
erty or prospects envisaged by the HOLC, nor were they
catered to by the building and loan associations aided by
* The Federal Home Loan Bank Board henceforth supervised the lending
activities of the HOLC as well as continued its program of assistance to building
and loan associations begun under the previous administration.
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 125
Home Loan Banks.* This situation prompted further meas-
ures. Housing activities, like much of the New Deal, kept in
view the twin objects of recovery the hoped-for stimulus to
private construction and of reform, with increasing em-
phasis upon the latter. In June, 1933, the PWA set up an
Emergency Housing Division to finance through private con-
tracts the clearance of slum areas and erection of decent homes
with light, air and space. The nation's first public slum-con-
version project began in Atlanta, where eleven blocks, rated
the city's worst district, became the site of Techwood Homes.
Cleveland's notorious Whisky Island tenement-house area
was expunged in favor of a PWA enterprise called Lakeview
Terrace. In Chicago the Jane Addams Houses enhanced the
neighborhood long served by the founder of Hull House*
Largest of all was Brooklyn's project, Williamsburg Houses,
supplanting twelve slum blocks with cheerful modern apart-
ments accommodating nearly six thousand persons. On the
other hand, two promising ventures in New Orleans were
dropped by the PWA after the Huey Long-controlled legis-
lature in 1935 smothered them under a blanket of local
bossism.
Rentals averaged twenty-six dollars per month, and if the
income of a resident family rose to five or six times this
charge, it was required to leave. These rentals met the need
of manual and white-collar workers rather than of the very
poor; but even such rates were really a subsidy in disguise,
for the prospect for self-liquidation was remote on construc-
tion costs running to seventeen hundred dollars per room
a result of the PWA's "mania for durability/* Before its
termination in November, 1937, this program sponsored
about fifty developments, comprising nearly twenty-two
thousand dwelling units.
* Roosevelt's famous allusion will be found in Public Papers and Addresses
(S. L Rosenman, ed., N. Y., 1938-1 941) , VI, 5. Prior to the New Deal it was
stated that "at least half of America's 30,000,000 families ate not even decently
housed." Housing America, by the Editors of Fortune (N* Y., 1932), 115.
126 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Meanwhile in June, 1934, the national housing act created
the Federal Housing Authority, largely to help owners
finance the repair, renovation and enlargement of already
existing homes and to spur private building by federal mort-
gage insurance. The guarantee of loans at moderate interest
rates, insistence upon certain standards of construction and
the benefit of expert engineering and architectural advice were
among the FHA's most salutary features. By the end of 1940
it had underwritten loans of a billion and a quarter dollars
to modernize three million dwelling units, and nearly three
billion dollars for the erection of six hundred thousand small
homes and over three hundred rental projects*
In 1937 a renewed attack was made upon the problem of
low-cost housing with the passage in August of the Wagner-
Steagall act, which set up the United States Housing Author-
ity, An enormous amount of unfinished business confronted
this program. Under jurisdiction of the department of the
interior the USHA was empowered to lend or, less com-
monly, to give $500,000,000 (later increased to $800,000,-
000) to local housing agencies for slum clearance, repairs and
new construction under federal planning and supervision*
Localities were expected to assume certain responsibilities for
operating costs, ordinarily in the form of exempting the
property from their tax rolls. This agency absorbed earlier
housing projects and directed its major effort toward provid-
ing decent shelter costing not more than a thousand dollars
per room (increased to $1250 in cities with over half a
million population) . Rentals were pegged to annual incomes
not exceeding $1150, and sometimes as low as $600 in the
North and $300 in the South*
In this manner war was declared against the tenements
ringing Chicago's Loop, New York's "Hell's Kitchen/* the
"corrals*' for the Mexican poor of San Antonio, the Tin-Can
Alleys and Poverty Courts all over the nation. Maximum
window space, sun decks, terraces or strips of greenery and
playgrounds were the new order of the day* One of the most
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 127
conspicuous beneficiaries was the urban Negro, whether a
denizen of the "arks'* of Memphis and New Orleans or of
Harlem's slums where more than two hundred and thirty
people lived per acre and one stretch was known as "the lung
block" because of the ravages of tuberculosis. Almost a third
of the low-cost dwelling units federally financed in this era
some 47,500 in North and South were for Negro use*
Even though the number fell far short of the need, it was a
brave beginning, leading Gunnar Myrdal, Swedish expert on
American race problems, to declare that the USHA gave the
Negroes "a better deal than has any other major federal pub-
lic welfare agency/*
"In 1939, for the first time in a hundred years, the slums
of America ceased growing and began to shrink/* exultantly
wrote USHA administrator Nathan Straus, noting that the
net cost to the federal government averaged about a hundred
and twenty dollars yearly for each family housed. By Jan-
uary, 1941, nearly two hundred thousand family units had
been provided, while penetration into lower economic strata
proceeded year by year. Yet outside the orbit of USHA
activities a measure of truth remained in earlier criticism that
federal housing tended to benefit the lower middle class more
than the truly underprivileged. In terms of the FHA's con-
tinuing loan activities, for example, less than thirty per cent
of the new borrowers on one- family homes in 1940 had
incomes below two thousand dollars, and only five per cent
less than fifteen hundred. Private initiative unsupported by
federal aid made only occasional forays into the medium low-
cost field. In 1938 the Metropolitan Life Insurance Com-
pany embarked upon an attractive fifty-million-dollar project
for New Yorkers with middling to small incomes, and later
expanded this investment idea to other communities. Certain
other corporations also launched model-housing projects for
employees.
In 1939, for the first time since the start of the Depression,
residential construction passed the billion-dollar mark, but
128 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
deficiencies remained so acute that in the next year the natic
was said to be still four million units short. In 1941, becau
of defense needs, purely private residential construction w
virtually prohibited, while all the country's building r
sources were poured into the fabrication of emergenc
dwellings near aircraft, shipbuilding and munitions plant
and still more urgently into industrial construction until t]
latter attained a level nearly double the high-water mark <
1920* Upon the eve of American entry into the Secor
World War it was clear that defense scarcities, soldier ma
riages, population shifts leading to concentration in factoi
areas and, above all, deteriorations and arrears inherited fro:
several decades, all conjoined to render America underhous*
and badly housed*
The readiest answer was prefabricated houses. At Chicago
World's Fair in 1933 they had been hailed with enthusiasm
yet by 1936-1937 only about fifty companies were makir
them, their total annual output less than a thousand unit
Among the chief brakes were restrictive building codes, oj
position from trades threatened with displacement, real-esta
and mortgage interests seeking to shield existing structur
from obsolescence, failure of the budding industry to achie^
satisfactory mass production at low cost and, perhaps as d
cisive as any, stereotypes of sentiment regarding what a hon
should look like* To many, however, prefabrication a]
peared the inevitable solution of the problem of sanitary ar
attractive living among poorer families.
Another important development involved the city-plai
ning movement. A lively interest in city planning, flowerii
in the second and third decades of the century, withered c
the vine under the blight of depression. By 1933 at lea
forty-five city, county and regional boards had been scrapp<
outright, and about a hundred and thirty were report*
"inactive" or officially dismissed as "frills*" But with tl
New Deal's public-works and housing programs and hear
encouragement from the National Planning Board and i
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 129
successors, the movement sprang to life again. By 1940 the
number of planning boards stood at eleven hundred, virtu-
ally double the peak figure of the twenties. Practically all the
legislatures had provided for city-planning commissions, and
well over half had approved county-planning agencies as
well* Parks, playgrounds, zoning, pollution of air by
"smog,** transportation and utility networks were among
their basic concerns.
Greatest of municipal headaches was the traffic problem,
unrelieved even in the abyss of the Depression since, as has
been remarked, Americans tend to cling almost wistfully to
their automobiles through all vicissitudes. In the middle of
the decade it was estimated that the handling of urban traffic
cost the taxpayers more than two billion dollars annually.
Multiplication of traffic lights, control towers, stop streets
and boulevards and the staggering of office hours to reduce
commuter congestion served as palliatives. Parking meters
had their vogue, particularly in middle-sized towns, but
could do no more than penalize overparking. Underground
and roof-top parking lots, a costly solution, grew apace in
the bigger cities. But in the face of opposition from mer-
chants fearful of losing what once had been called the car-
riage trade, municipal authorities were loath to decree the
spread of nonparking areas downtown.
Yet in certain ways the social force of the internal-com-
bustion engine was quite contrary to that wrought by the age
of steam, whose effect upon population had been powerfully
centripetal. The era of the motor car, allied with that of
electricity, wrought a diffusive influence, separating the spot
where one worked from the place where he slept and played*
The mounting volume of traffic, pouring into the canyons of
the metropolis each morning and debouching upon the hills
and dales of suburbia at dusk, bore witness to this change and
also posed its own problems in speed and regulation. This
commuter's web raying away from the city, when joined to
the rising tide of cross-country haulage by truck and van,
130 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
forecast an ultimate dilemma in planning between the
Highwayless Town, its residential districts barred to major
travel, and the Townless Highway, with under and over-
passes for arterial crossings. The latter thirties, with their
works programs, saw a vast proliferation of freeways or
parkways for motor traffic at high speeds. With scenic plant-
ing and occasional areas for picnicking or sight-seeing they
enhanced the suburban landscape while making traffic at once
faster and safer by systems of access and departure ramps and
intersections of clover-leaf or other ingenious design*
Statistics likewise showed that decentralization was build-
ing supercommunities whose economic and cultural influence
transcended the bounds of municipal government and taxa-
tion and whose power was "more realistic in many ways
than the existing political states" of the Union* Already in
the decade prior to 1930 the population within the core cities
of ninety-six metropolitan districts had grown only a fifth,
while their fringes increased almost two fifths* This trend
continued through the thirties, the number of metropolitan
districts advancing from a hundred and thirty-three in 1930
to a hundred and forty ten years later, at which time they
comprised forty-two million people in the central areas and
twenty million on the periphery. Thus, while Americans
showed their incorrigible attraction to metropolitan civiliza-
tion, they revealed an increasing desire to escape from its
nuclear tyranny*
In the zone between city and country citizens hoped to
have the best of both worlds. During the 1930's, while the
nation's population was augmenting a little more than seven
per cent, urban areas eight per cent and that of the farm
remaining almost stationary, the ranks of rural nonfarm or
small-village folk leaped fourteen per cent. The commuter's
train and bus as well as the private automobile* the lure of
outdoor life for health and pleasure and the greater leisure
decreed by the Depression and technological efficiency were
important factors* Wives and children rather than bread-
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 131
winners were the main beneficiaries; suburbia's social struc-
ture was largely a matriarchy.
Chiefly to aid needy city dwellers longing for a foothold
in the soil, the Resettlement Administration soon after its
creation in 1935 planned as demonstration units three
"greenbelt towns." Under direction of Rexford G* Tugwell,
undersecretary of agriculture, communities at modest rentals
were laid out near Washington, Cincinnati and Milwaukee to
accommodate some five to eight hundred families each. Ex-
amples of minuscule regional planning, they avoided main
highways and utilized sunlight, playgrounds and parks, mak-
ing these settlements almost ideal habitations for children*
Each village with post office, stores, school, community cen-
ter, water supply and other facilities built largely by WPA
labor was girdled by farm and woodland, offering the pro-
ductive resources of a garden home to city workers. For the
first time in American history, the suburban middle ground
had been discovered as a sphere for federal planning. To the
anti-New Dealer these projects smacked of "collectivism/*
and an adverse court decision in 1936 caused a fourth project,
near Bound Brook, New Jersey, to be abandoned, throwing
the whole program momentarily into jeopardy.
The Resettlement Administration, which in 1937 was ab-
sorbed into the new Farm Security Administration, also
trained its sights upon other types of need* An FERA study
of rural problem areas found, for example, that from half to
three fourths of all relief families in thirty Southern counties
were existing in houses unfit for human habitation. Even
many not on relief sharecroppers, owners of gullied and
eroded land from Illinois to Florida, tillers of parched or
worn-out acres on the Great Plains were faring hardly bet-
ter* Homeless, farmless and jobless families, seeking cheap
rent, low taxes and accessibility to relief rolls, migrated in
increasing numbers to the agricultural village, whose settlers
augmented during depression years at more than twice the
rate from 1924 to 1930* In the Middle Atlantic states such
132 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
places drew largely from tie city's idle factories; in the
South, from the farm tenant class; in the Middle West, from
victims of the drought.
The prime object of resettlement was to give people the
chance to move from bad land to good, exchanging dis-
couragement and dependency for self-support. The "infiltra-
tion" type of project helped stranded and destitute rural
families to purchase, with long-term federal loans, individual
farms scattered here and there in the heart of good agricul-
tural regions; the "community" type involved federal acqui-
sition of relatively large tracts for subdivision among indi-
viduals, for lease or purchase, often with development of a
whole network of new facilities like roads, schools and water
supply. The land from which many such farmers were lib-
erated, being poor and exhausted, was bought by the govern-
ment and turned into forest, wild-life sanctuaries, pasturage,
parks or Indian reserves. These projects provided new homes
for about ten thousand families and a livelihood for some
forty thousand persons*
Since the difficulties of the submerged farm population
were multifarious not only bankrupt soil but poor man-
agement, scant credit and crushing debts, ignorance, drought
and flood and pests no single prescription could minister
to alL Among the unhappiest victims were the jobless farm
laborers, unwanted by the city because of its own unem-
ployed millions. Such workers were denied the benefits of
federal and state laws regarding wages and hours and unem-
ployment insurance as well as the New Deal's collective-bar-
gaining guarantees. By the end of this era only four states
had any kind of workmen's accident compensation applicable
to agricultural laborers, although not infrequently their tasks
were hazardous*
Under the bufferings of the Depression, the steady mech-
anization of the farm and Nature's oscillation from un-
wanted surpluses to equally desperate scarcities, it was not
surprising that three and a half million rural households
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 133
one out of four in the United States succumbed to public
or private relief in the 1930's. This was a new departure in
American life, the capitulation of a group whose tight-lipped
independence had long been proverbial*
Ironically enough, until this rural poverty was fully appre-
ciated, the early depression years saw a reversal of the tradi-
tional flow of population from farm to city, which in the
previous decade alone had netted an urban increase of six
million persons. Between 1930 and 1933, for the first time
in the annals of the United States, this current slackened
abruptly and actually began to run the other way. Idle youth
left the sidewalks of the metropolis to take refuge with rural
relatives and friends; ill-fed families decided to try their hand
at raising food; jobless miners of West Virginia, Tennessee
and Kentucky returned to their old submarginal acres. Dur-
ing the year 1932 the farm showed a net addition of nearly
three hundred thousand individuals, and by 1935 some two
million were living on farms who had not been there five
years before.
From the middle thirties onward, however, the old trend
was resumed, though at such a retarded tempo that for the
decade as a whole the city registered considerably less than
half its gains of the twenties. This coincided with the slow
climb toward recovery. Also it followed the revelation, upon
the return of the native, that country folk had grown thread-
bare, too, and that recollections of bright lights, movies and
plumbing could be even more nostalgic than memories of hay
and apple blossoms. Furthermore, as relief and public works
passed into federal hands, life on the farm revealed other dis-
advantages. Aid was usually harder to get, the family allot-
ment smaller, and rural exile involved forfeiture of residence
requirements. Hence many compromised by camping upon
the outskirts of population centers. And, as always, the call
of the city continued irresistibly to sound in the ears of am-
bitious youth*
Between the traditional high fertility of farm families and
134 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
the huge proportion of persons in their twenties found in
urban areas, it was plain that a steady transfusion of vigorous
blood still recruited the veins of the city. During the 1930's a
net migration of about one and a half million young people
occurred from farms and villages to larger communities. Re-
garding the selective factors no truly scientific study has been
made, but the Wisconsin sociologist Edward A. Ross uttered
a widespread opinion when he compared the depleted areas
to "fished-out ponds populated chiefly by bullheads and
suckers/*
The greatest fertility and the most indurated defeat ex-
isted among the sharecroppers. They belonged to the bottom
rung in a ladder of landlord-tenant relationships. Cash-rent-
ing, by which the tenant supplied the working capital, paid
a fixed rent and kept all the profits, was the most self-respect-
ing* Fairly common north of the Mason and Dixon Line
comprising in 1930 more than a quarter of all tenants
southward it remained virtually unknown. Crop-share rent-
ing, with the landlord meeting certain production expenses
and the tenant furnishing labor, work animals, tools and
seed, as well as paying rent in the form of a proportion of
the marketable crops, was commonest of all in the North and
Middle West. A similar sharing of assets and profits, called
livestock-share leasing, flourished in the dairy and cattle-
raising zones of the Midwestern states.
But in the cotton kingdom sharecropping prevailed, a
system under which the tenant customarily contributed noth-
ing but his own and his family's labor in return for half the
cotton and a third of the grain he raised. The needy cropper
borrowed from the landlord to purchase food and clothing,
or else turned to a credit merchant whose charges might run
tip to fifty per cent. Too often these loans amounted to a
perennial dole, chaining the hapless debtor to virtual peonage
on soil as ruinously exploited as himself. Finding whites more
recalcitrant, many landlords came to prefer blacks, whose
sense of arithmetic was more naive and docility greater*
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 135
White croppers were thus forced into the ranks of farm
laborers or to drift from one season's stand to another. A
third stayed no longer than a year in one place. Methods
of cultivation and upkeep thus fostered slovenly waste, with
little thought given to conserving soil, mending roof or
fences, sending children to school or striking root in the com-
munity's social or church life. "What's the use? I don't get
nothing but a living nohow," served as a stock reply to all
criticism*
Farm tenancy in the South dated from Reconstruction
days. Early in the twentieth century the system spread to the
corn belt until by 1940 Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and
South Dakota had more tenant farmers than Virginia, Ken-
tucky and Florida. But in the Middle West the arrangement
bred no pandemic misery. Indeed, some agriculturalists chose
to invest their capital in equipment rather than acres, while
others were steadily rising from hired labor to tenancy and
thence to ownership. The impact of depression, however,
drove hordes of small owners throughout the nation into the
precarious status of enforced tenancy, with a loss between
1930 and 1935 of three quarters of a million farms by fore-
closure and bankruptcy sales. From the Dakotas to Okla-
homa desperate farmers rallied in 1932 and early 1933 to
save their properties by vigilante methods, cowing agents of
banks and insurance companies while making their own
nominal bids for a cow or harvester. At Le Mars, Iowa, they
dragged an intransigent district judge from his bench and
hanged him by a rope until he fainted. Governors of Minne-
sota, North Dakota and Idaho issued proclamations against
forced sales, and several legislatures hastily passed mortgage
moratorium laws, anticipating the federal Frazier-Lemke act
of June, 1934 (later annulled by the Supreme Court, but
replaced by a more modest law of the same purport) , which
postponed the foreclosure of mortgages for six years if the
farmers concerned meanwhile paid a rent fixed by a federal
district judge*
136 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Despite all these measures agrarian dispossession continued
as a prime factor in the growth of tenancy. Early in 1937 the
President's Committee on Farm Tenancy reported an accre-
tion over the past decade at the rate of forty thousand re-
cruits annually, until two out of every five farmers belonged
to this class as against one out of four half a century earlier,
In the wake of this comprehensive survey Roosevelt sent a
message to Congress in February, 1937, invoking a program
to improve the lot of tenants, croppers and farm laborers*
Behind this urgency also lay the popular interest quick-
ened by Erskine Caldwell's novel Tobacco Road (1932),
dramatized into the decade's greatest box-office attraction,
and the same author's Kneel to the Rising Sun (1935), as
well as the photographic documents which this Georgian and
his wife, Margaret Bourke- White, were gathering through-
out the nation. Still others learned about the sharecropper
from the mordant novels of William Faulkner, movies like
"Cabin in the Cotton" (1932) , or the solid studies in rural
sociology by Howard W. Odum, Arthur Raper, Rupert B*
Vance and others of the Chapel Hill coterie.
In the background, too, lay the protest and agitation of the
Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, organized in Arkansas in
July, 1934, by a small band of white and black tenants.
The implication of racial equality no less than its savor of
radicalism alarmed the average cotton farmer. But in spite
of floggings and night-rider opposition reminiscent of the
Klan, the Union grew to about thirty-five thousand members
in 1937, chiefly in Arkansas and Oklahoma, and at that
juncture affiliated with the CIO. It maintained a lively lobby
in Washington and helped to bring about the first legislation
to redress the plight of the humblest farm workers.
The Bankhead- Jones act of July 22, 1937, set up the
Farm Security Administration, with an initial appropriation
of ten million dollars (raised to twenty-five in the next year,
forty in the following) for making forty-year loans at three*
per-cent interest to agricultural laborers, croppers and other
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 137
needy tenants to buy their own places. From the start the
number of applicants far exceeded the available funds. Re-
payment began with gratifying promptness, averaging over
ninety-seven per cent. The FSA likewise granted small loans
for debt adjustments with creditors; for tiding over periods
of flood, drought and crop failure; and for the setting up of
rural cooperatives to provide needed equipment and services,
including group medical care for impoverished communities.
As incidental but highly important services the FSA county
supervisor taught the borrower lessons in thrifty manage-
ment and encouraged the production of milk and vegetables
for better dietary standards, while the home economist in-
structed the farmer's wife in the use of pressure cookers and
scientific methods of canning. Still other FSA activities in-
cluded the management of one hundred and sixty-one home-
stead projects for demonstration and experiment, some of
which were run along cooperative lines by the residents.
In all, between efforts of the Resettlement Administration
and its heir the FSA, about a million and a quarter were
given some form of financial aid looking toward self-support
between 1935 and 1939. And by the close of the decade, for
the first time in history, a modest reversal from tenancy to
ownership was apparent, particularly among whites in the
South. The FSA naturally could not claim sole credit, but
certainly its pull had been stoutly in that direction.*
These efforts of the New Deal on behalf of the landless
* Roosevelt, Public Papers, VI, 80-85; Administrator of the Farm Security
Administration, Report (Wash., 1939), 1-18. The census of 1940 disclosed
that the number of white owners and managers in the cotton states rose in ten
years from 1,250,000 to 1,384,000, while white tenants declined by 150,000;
Negro tenants decreased by 192,000, but the number of Negro owners also
shrank from 183,000 to 174,000. U. S. Sixteenth Census (1940), Agricul-
ture, III (General Report), 151. Problems of cotton production and marketing,
discussed later, undoubtedly played a powerful role in these changes. Growth
in size of the average Southern farm and disappearance of more tban^a million
mules since 1930 pointed alike to greater mechanization and slow liquidation
of the sharecrop system. For comment, see Jonathan Daniels, "A Native at
Large," Nation, CLII, 474 (April 19, 1941).
138 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
and disadvantage*! by no means tell the complete story of the
federal government and agriculture. Among the thirty-two
million people living on farms in 1940, the typical family
had neither heen on relief nor dwelt so close to the borderline
of want as did the vast majority of tenants and seasonal
laborers. The lot of the independent farmer, nevertheless,
was not a happy one. Thanks to his chronic depression in
the years after the First World War, his share of the national
income dropped from fifteen per cent in 1920 to nine in
1929 and thence to seven in 1933* The causes were many:
the teeming surplus of a world momentarily beating its
swords into plowshares; the Hawley-Smoot tariff of 1930;
the domestic encirclement of Big Business, forcing the farmer
in the marts of trade always to receive a low price and pay
a high one; lack of capital to mechanize his acres abreast of
large producers; droughts and soil depletion. In addition, he
had to face the bewildering problem of changing consumer
tastes. The cotton farmer sadly pondered not only the
cheaper production of new regions like Arizona and Cali-
fornia, the Orient and South America, but also the rise of
synthetic fabrics.* As for dietary habits, it was clear that
cereals, potatoes and meat were slipping in popularity with
a generation which eschewed the epic meals of its ancestors.
To be sure, certain agriculturalists fared better. Helped by
the vitamin campaign, the per-capita consumption of citrus
fruits nearly doubled from 1920 to 1940. Also by the later
year, thanks to health education and the lighter diet of an
increasingly urban civilization, the milk business attained the
vast total of $1,355,000,000, outranking any branch of the
meat industry and far exceeding any single farm crop.
Similarly the truck gardener profited from the fact that the
average family was using twice as many succulent vegetables
as fifty years before. But, through vicissitudes of good seasons
* Tbc output of rayon jumped from a mere 33 million pounds in 1920 to
458 in 1930, thence to 1948 in 1938. I. W. Duggan, "Cotton Land and
People/' Joarn. of Farm Econs., XXII (1940), 197.
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 139
and bad, the majority of fanners invariably grumbled that
they, least of all producers in the national economy, could
control the price of their product. This complaint both the
Hoover and Roosevelt administrations sought to meet.
The first important bill was Hoover's agricultural market-
ing act of June 15, 1929, creating the Federal Farm Board.
By setting up farmers' cooperatives and financing stabiliza-
tion corporations to buy and control surpluses, the Board
hoped to steady farm prices and cut out the fat profits of
commission men, but it ran into two bad miscalculations.
First was the imminence of world depression. Secondly, its
slogan of reduced output ("grow less, get more") failed to
convert the average horny-handed individualist, who in hope
of profit speeded up production, ignored voluntary controls
and forced prices still lower. The Board's operations, chiefly
in wheat and cotton, cost three hundred and forty million
dollars, enriching speculators but failing appreciably to block
the avalanche*
When the year 1931 brought the South its third biggest
cotton crop on record, the Board desperately proposed that
every third row of growing cotton be "plowed under." But
the fecund land continued to be overwhelmed by surpluses,
and among later anti-New Deal critics of plowing-under few
recalled that the idea had been broached in a Republican ad-
ministration. By midsummer of 1932 cotton was selling
below five cents, wheat under fifty cents and corn at thirty-
one. At last sensing the magnitude of the problem, the Board
called vainly for legislation to permit federal control of farm
output. In the end, after two harried years, the Board gave
up the effort and offered its surpluses as gifts to the Red
Cross. The lessons of its experience, however, were recol-
lected by the New Deal.
The typical husbandman, believing that hard work was
the best antidote to poverty, seemingly was spurred by the
Depression to work longer hours, with his wife and children
toiling beside him. Yet the economic results were ever more
140 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
disheartening. The year 1932, probably the blackest in his-
tory for American farmers, saw shapes of revolt arising on
every hand. Late in the summer the National Farmers* Holi-
day Association, formed in 1927 in Iowa, declared a "holi-
day" until prices should recover. Led by fiery Milo Reno,
the Association held Council Bluffs and Sioux City under
virtual siege, with roads blocked to incoming wagons and
milk cans emptied into ditches. Similar demonstrations took
place in Nebraska, Minnesota, the Dakotas and scattered re-
gions of the South and East. Prices showed no rise, however,
and the revolt shortly subsided* In early May, 1933, with
their plight unrelieved, these embattled farmers voted a na-
tion-wide strike, but called it off at the last moment to give
the New Deal's program a chance.
On March 27, 1933, the president consolidated all agricul-
tural credit agencies including the Federal Farm Board,
Farm Loan Board and certain functions of the RFC into a
single Farm Credit Administration. Its chief purpose was to
aid fanners bogged in debt by scaling down their mortgages
and interest payments, with the result (buttressed by general
recovery) that for the year ending March 15, 1936, mort-
gage foreclosures were only twenty per thousand as compared
with thirty-nine in the spring of 1933.
On May 12, 1933, the agricultural adjustment act, popu-
larly called the "Triple A," began a new era in farm econ-
omy* To raise prices it provided for * 'adjusted production"
of seven basic commodities wheat, corn, cotton, hogs, rice,
tobacco and dairy products to which nine others were later
added under some political pressure. The producer who en-
tered voluntarily into partnership with the government to
reduce surpluses, and hence boost the market value of the
remainder, would get "benefit payments'* on his restricted
allotments. Large growers with greater alacrity than small
ones, the knowledgeable more promptly than the illiterate,
fell into line behind this program. Agents of the department
of agriculture went among millions of farmers in the early
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 141
summer of 1933, preaching the gospel of crop control until
the nonconformist began to feel ill at ease in the surge of
converts. At last collective action had reached the farm com-
munity, under a widespread recognition that problems of
marketing were currently more vital than production
methods.
As if to test their new faith to a heroic degree, the AAA
asked several million producers to do a thing that violated
their deepest instincts: destroy the fruits of their labor*
Southern cotton growers were preparing in the summer of
1933 to harvest a bumper crop from forty million acres,
which meant that at least sixteen million bales would thus
be added to the huge carry-over of recent seasons* Though it
was too late to check planting, the AAA sent forth twenty-
two thousand agents, chiefly volunteers, to persuade fanners
to plow up about a fourth of their acreage in return for cash
payments ranging from six to twenty dollars an acre. They
returned with agreements to take more than ten million acres
but of tillage.
The press reported that the Southern mule, trained to
walk between rows, stubbornly refused to trample growing
cotton as he pulled the plow of destruction. His master, who
seemed at first more tractable, proved so reluctant early next
season to sign up for crop limitation hoping to reap the
benefit of rising prices that Congress passed the Bankhead
cotton-control act in 1934. By laying a heavy tax on all fiber
brought to the gin in excess of a grower's assigned quota,
it introduced a measure of compulsion into the AAA; and
its running mate, the Kerr-Smith tobacco-control act, im-
posed similar taxes upon overproduction in another Southern
staple, where plowing-under had also been practised in 1933,
Prospects for a short wheat crop in 1933 exempted that
commodity from destruction; but in the corn-hog belt the
ruinous prospect of two-dollar hogs, plus the corn-crop re-
duction planned for the following spring, doomed to death
six million pigs and breeding sows. "It was a foregone con-
142 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
elusion that the public would not like the idea of slaughtering
baby pigs," wrote Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace,
the Iowa farm-journal editor converted from Republicanism
to the New DeaL While regarding the destruction of farm
products as "a shocking commentary on our civilization/'
and vowing that it should never happen again, he felt that
desperate conditions warranted desperate remedies. New Deal-
ers argued that it was more defensible than industry's policy
of plowing out millions of surplus workers in 1930-1932.
A hundred million pounds of dry salt pork from this
slaughter were processed at government expense and given
to jobless families by the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation.
The same autumn it purchased sixteen million bushels of
wheat, to be parceled out as flour, and in 1934 over seven
million head of cattle in twenty-four drought-ridden states.
Although plowed-under cotton was, of course, unreclaim-
able, federal stocks of cotton were distributed among the job-
less in the form of mattresses and garments. By the end of
1935 this agency had spent nearly three hundred million
dollars for such purposes.
Starting in Rochester, New York, in May, 1939, and
spreading to over a hundred cities by the close of 1940, a new
scheme called the Food Stamp Plan was devised for dispens-
ing surpluses of fruit, vegetables, pork, butter and eggs to
needy consumers. For every dollar's worth of orange stamps
bought by a relief recipient he got fifty cents' worth of blue
stamps free, and the latter, eventually redeemed by the gov-
ernment, were accepted by grocers in exchange for foods cur-
rently designated as "surplus commodities." A similar Cotton
Stamp Plan, begun in Memphis in May, 1940, remained
only regional. These varied uses of farm surpluses tended to
be forgotten by foes of the AAA in their criticism of its sub-
sidies and regimentation and its swath of destructiveness in
1933.
Time and the Supreme Court's adverse judgment early in
1936 wrought changes upon the AAA. Some farm folk,
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 143
among them a sprinkling of backwoods preachers, had felt in
their hones that crop control was as immoral as birth control
and had seen in the drought of 1934 God's punishment for
plowing under cotton; but most scoffed at the Court's "states'
rights" argument, asking whether markets, winds and flood
erosion respected state lines. The judicial nullification was
taken "calmly" in only one out of ninety-six rural communi-
ties sampled by two sociologists. In response to agrarian senti-
ment Congress in February enacted the soil-conservation-and-
domestic-allotment act, dropping the processing tax, to which
the Court had objected, and shifting the basis of operation
from crop reduction to conservation. Farmers were now to
be paid for curtailing their acreage planted to soil-depleting
crops like cotton, corn, wheat, rice and tobacco, and devoting
it instead to legumes, grasses and green-manure crops. They
were also expected to follow scientific methods of terracing,
plowing and fertilizing.
The new plan was only a legislative makeshift, and its
oblique approach to the problem of surpluses proved inade-
quate when 1937 brought further bumper crops and price
recessions. The majority of agriculturalists were looking to
the president to outmaneuver the judiciary. In the early
autumn of 1937, on the heels of his defeat over "packing the
Court," Roosevelt took a swing around the circle, chatting
to audiences in the corn belt and Far West about crop-reduc-
tion benefits, irrigation, conservation, hydroelectric rates*
Among the throngs in Stetsons and sunbonnets, go-to-meet-
ing clothes and levis, an observer heard him called "our
President" and "the greatest since Lincoln/' A conservative
newspaper editor growled: "That 'our President* stuff is
something new in politics. Some of the fanners and other
people I know must think Mr. Roosevelt belongs exclusively
to them and maybe they're right."
As to the affinity between benefits and ballots, the situa-
tion here was not unlike that among the unemployed. Was it
possible to distinguish between concern for the farmer and
144 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
concern for his vote? The agricultural economist Joseph S.
Davis voiced the doubts of the skeptical when he wrote,
Regardless of the purity of motives of the Administration,
a subtle form of political corruption is involved; for farmers'
votes are effectually influenced when their income seems to
depend increasingly on political measures, and less and less
on the economic value that society sets on their products and
services.
In February, 1938, the president and his advisers pulled
forth the long-awaited rabbit from the legislative hat. The
new agricultural adjustment act returned to the old problem
of regulating production at the same time that it continued
conservation payments to the faithful* National acreage allot-
ments for wheat, corn, cotton, tobacco and rice were set at
levels sufficient for domestic use, export and reserves. Con-
formity was voluntary but shrewdly encouraged, since those
planting beyond their individual allotments were ineligible
to receive "parity payments" or to get commodity loans (on
the basis of surpluses stored under government seal) at such
favored rates as cooperators enjoyed. In order to withhold
surpluses of these five commodities from the market until
prices rose to or above "parity" that is, the purchasing
power which any such commodity had had during the sup-
posedly normal period of 1909-1914 marketing quotas
could be imposed upon all farmers, under penalty, after such
quotas were approved by a two thirds* vote of the producers
involved* Equally significant, the surpluses from good years
were not to be dumped recklessly on the market, destroyed
or given lavishly for relief, but stored against a day of short-
age* Thus was realized Secretary Wallace's dream of the
"ever-normal granary/* a reservoir to stabilize supply and
demand, equate good seasons with poor ones. By 1940 some
six million farmers were cooperating in the program. Hence-
forth, in meeting the needs of a war-ravaged world, these
reserves grew increasingly important.
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 145
The ultimate effects of the AAA upon the economy and
habits of the average farmer are not easy to gauge. As an
emergency measure the original plan did raise prices and
reduce cutthroat competition. The cotton grower's income
showed spectacular improvement, a total gain of seven hun-
dred and eighty million dollars (including four hundred and
fifty-two million dollars in benefit payments) during the first
three years of this program, while the tobacco planter's more
than doubled in two seasons. Cash earnings of the American
farmer in 1933 increased nearly a quarter over the previous
year; the two following years saw successive rises of fifteen
and sixteen per cent respectively. Of course, AAA payments
always made up a substantial part of this income, drawn
from taxes passed on to the consumer as higher prices prices
which to some degree canceled the urban worker's benefit
from improving wages. Including government payments, the
national farm income in 1939 was reported to be eight and
a half billion dollars, nearly double that of 1932, though
only a little more than half that in 1919.
This prosperity was not always evenly spread. Producers
outside the magic circle, notably poultry raisers and truck
gardeners, complained that Uncle Sam had forgotten them.
Still more gravely, particularly in the cotton kingdom, AAA
largess tended to find its way into the pockets of landlords
and independent farmers, while the tenant, too ignorant or
timorous to complain, found himself poorer than before.
The New Deal assumed almost all the risks of production
for the landowner, but it set up no effective safeguards to
prevent his passing on to the tenant the brunt of reduced
acreage and seasonal fluctuation. In 1937, for instance, the
average operator of a plantation grossed a cash income of
$8328, of which $833 came from AAA payments, while a
tenant family made $385, of which only $27 came from
the government. Proportionately at least, the principle or
application of the AAA seemed to be: to him that hath it
shall be given* Indeed, the only form of risk insurance for
146 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
the tenant was relief. "The government wouldn't let us
plant, so we had to go on relief/' was a typical hard-luck
tale. Another angle was presented by an Oklahoma landlord,
whose not uncommon experience he recounted in 1938: "In
*34 I had I reckon four renters and I didn't make anything.
I bought tractors on the money the government give me and
got shet o* my renters."
The plight of families "tractored off the land" was only
indirectly related to the AAA and certainly unforeseen by
its original advocates. Yet the logic was simple. Upon begin-
ning to recover from a long slump in agriculture, the land-
owner found himself with cash in hand, and inside his head
a new psychology of businesslike methods, notions of crop
restriction to augment profits and of economic planning and
foresight fostered from Washington. The era of hit-or-mis3
had ended; innovation was in the air. The cold shock of the
Depression followed by the warm interest of the New Deal
quickened the farmer's sense of calculation as nothing else
could have done.
One of his first thoughts was to overcome the lag of
mechanization* Between 1930 and 1940, while the number
of automobiles owned by fanners showed practically no gain,
trucks increased sixteen per cent and tractors seventy per cent
until almost two million of the latter were bearing the heavy
work of the nation's agriculture and altering production
methods, ways of life and of thinking. More of a potential
threat than a reality, the vibrations of the mechanical picker,
humming swiftly along a few cotton rows, were already be-
ginning to shake the whole base of Southern rural economy
in a section already apprehensive over the threat of cheaper
Brazilian cotton, which had rushed into the world market
to fill the vacuum created by restrictions under the Triple A.*
* The Rust brothers, John and Mack, who built the first mechanical picker
in 1930, displayed rare social conscience in seeking to temper the winds of
technological change, setting up the Rust Foundation in 1938 to rehabilitate
displaced croppers and laborers and to subsidize research on Southern poverty.
See S. M. and Laura Rosen, Technology and Society (N. Y., 1941), 456, and
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 147
Meanwhile, regions of f armed-out cotton land like the "black
prairie belt" of central and northern Alabama were being
turned into grassland to make way for beef and a dairying
industry utilizing all the resources of the electrical age for
production and processing. This also meant dispossession of
many tenant families, in effect like the old English enclosure
movement, with added prosperity for those who survived.
In the Middle West mechanical corn pickers, especially the
two-row type that came into use between 1928 and 1933,
were estimated before the end of the decade to have dis-
placed from a third to a half of the itinerant labor which
Iowa's crop formerly employed. In one of Ohio's best corn-
growing counties sixty per cent of all maize harvested off the
stalk was so picked* In the wheat belt the harvester-combine
enjoyed a similar popularity, with the "baby" model of
1935 and the "midget" of 1939 catering to the small fanner.
By reason of nearly universal adoption of these machines,
seasonal labor in the wheat fields had by 1939 become almost
a thing of the past. For every one hundred farm-labor jobs
offered, two hundred and thirty-six unemployed agricultural
laborers were available.
Many tillers of the soil were beginning to grasp the fact,
set forth in 1937 by the National Resources Committee, that
income tended to vary with the degree of mechanization.
Thus Alabama, with the lowest gross income per agricul-
turalist in the whole country $492 per annum showed
only L5 horse power available and $142 invested in machin-
ery; while Montana, with 22*5 horse power and $953 worth
of machinery, enjoyed a gross income of $1798. This dem-
onstration, naturally enough, proved more potent to the
P. S. Taylor, Power Farminff and Labor Displacement in the Cotton Belt
(U. S. Bur. of Labor Statistics, serial no. R 737, 1937). A report of the
National Resources Committee, Technological Trends and National Policy
(Wash., 1937), 143, remarked that, whether for good or evil, this machine
hit at the greatest single source of employment in America for women and chil-
dren. For the international outlook in cotton, see P. F. Drncker, "Exit King
Cotton," Harper's Mag., CXCH (1946), 473-480.
148 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
average husbandman than did the wraith of technological
unemployment in the background.
The modernizing of the farm was greatly speeded by the
Rural Electrification Administration, set up in May, 1935.
Refusal of commercial distributors to build lines to the farm
had denied central-station light and power to about nine out
of ten agriculturalists. The REA offered low-interest loans to
states, municipalities and cooperatives, along with WPA
labor, for the purpose of extending power cables to rural
homes for lighting, refrigeration, milking and separation,
heating incubators, mixing feed, pumping water and mani-
fold uses. By the autumn of 1938 more than three hundred
projects so financed had been launched, five sixths of them by
cooperatives. Such activities, though resented by most pri-
vately owned utilities, wrung from them better and more
extensive service at lower rates. Thanks greatly to accelera-
tion by the REA, the 225,000 farm homes which in 1925
were connected with central power plants less than four
per cent of the total had risen by 1940 to 1,700,000, a
quarter of the total.
These developments pointed up the great paradox of farm
life in the thirties that, while efficiency was steadily encour-
aged, it was accompanied by unemployment and overpro-
duction, the latter reflecting the insufficiency of efforts to
stimulate foreign trade and raise domestic standards of con-
sumption. As a secondary paradox, the AAA in communities
of scant, poor and backward acres tended to subsidize in-
efficient farming, but in regions of larger holdings and
progressive instincts it fostered market utilization of the best
land only. Many small and depressed cotton growers in the
Deep South kept straggling on solely by grace of the AAA,
while producers in the corn states often found themselves in
quite another situation. Thus the AAA acreage reduction de-
creed in 1937-1938 trimmed the maize-growing area by
eight per cent; yet production rose by about seventeen per
cent*
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD H9
Besides the selection of choice land and the superior meth-
ods of tillage promoted by this agency, the widespread adop-
tion of hybrid corn the decade's most important agricultural
innovation helped to compound the increase.* Husbandry
in these regions had become less a way of life and more a
high-pressure business, alert to profits and often run by ab-
sentee management. A typical phenomenon was the "suitcase
farmer/* generally a small business man from the city who
bought one or two farms, mechanically planted and har-
vested his acreage each year, but had no thought of living on
the soiL Another product of scientific agriculture and the
machine single-crop farming on the mammoth scale, as
practised from the Texas Panhandle to the Dakotas with
fleets of tractors and gang plows also promoted impersonal
efficiency.
Hence another paradox could be deduced. One set of forces,
represented by the Resettlement Administration, Farm Secur-
ity Administration, Rural Electrification Commission and
home economists of the department of agriculture, worked
toward an ideal of subsistence fanning and diversified meth-
ods, invoking rural cooperatives and a live-at-home program.
Another, embodied in certain operations of the Triple A and
the extensive lending activities of the Farm Credit Adminis-
tration, conspired with technology and the new science of
farm management to make agriculture into Big Business.
Whatever the contradictions and crosscurrents of the
times, in the wake of recovery community life began to feel
its morale reviving. Cooperation, rehabilitation, moderniza-
tion, were new words of magic. This development was en-
* Hybrid corn had first become available in 1929. In 1933 about 40,000
acres were planted to it; but 1939 saw its increase to 24,000,000 or about a
fourth of the national acreage, resulting in an augmented yield (from 15 to
20 per cent) of some hundred million bushels* Its resistance to certain blights
and great "standability" promoting use of the mechanical picker became
universally recognized. Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Technology on the
Farm (Wash., 1940), 20-21. Also spectacular was the rise of soybean produc-
tion, under pressure of new industrial uses, from less than thirty million bushels
in 1936 to eighty three years later (24).
150 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
hanced by the growing cultural uniformity of rural America,
Older immigrant groups, including the Scandinavian and
German, had largely been assimilated or gathered to their
fathers; a steadily dwindling number of foreign-born now
tilled the soiL Motor cars, movies, consolidated schools and
the radio all helped to erase lines of provincial nonconform-
ity between town and country. The stimuli which bom-
barded rural life emanated more and more from the city.
Whether in fashions, reading matter, entertainment or ways
of thinking, urban taste tended to call the tune,*
As in the nation at large, the lodges and secret orders popu-
lar a generation before now appeared to be in retreat before
organizations less interested in ritual than in community wel-
fare: cooperatives, parent- teacher associations, county plan-
ning boards, athletic and other recreational groups, along
with those fomenting some political or economic crusade like
the Townsend and Social Justice clubs, which struck firm
root in certain rural sections* The 4-H clubs, sponsored by
the department of agriculture, whose young adherents were
ardent missionaries for rural innovation and progress, had
grown in twenty years to one and a third million members
by 1940. The Future Farmers of America, sired in 1928 by
the Office of Education to foster vocational education and
the intelligent choice of careers in agriculture among high-
school students, had by the end of this era recruited almost
a quarter of a million, while for Negro youth the New Fann-
ers of America promised welL
In many rural regions, especially the South, the New Deal
took on the aspect of a popular movement, rejuvenating old
* "Hands should be soft enough to flatter the most delicate of the new
fabrics. They must be carefully manicured,, with none of the hot, brilliant
shades of nail polish. The lighter and more delicate tones are in keeping with
the spirit of freshness. Keep the tint of your fingertips friendly to the red of
yoor Hps, and check both your powder and your rouge to see that they best
suit the tone of your skin in the bold light of summer." So read the beauty
column pf the Idaho Farmer, April, 1935, cited in Dept. of Agr. Yearbook
foe 1940, 162. See also A. M. Schlesinger, Learning How to Behave (N. Y.
1946). 65-66, 70.
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 151
efforts for community betterment and starting fresh ones.
Outside "interference" was often resented at first, but, given
time, local pride commonly conquered local apathy. Attempts
to think through neighborhood, national and world prob-
lems, to draw blueprints for a better future, to enhance adult
education and culture such matters came to engross many
earnest, frequently baffled minds in rural America. "In a
period where bread itself became a primary necessity for mil-
lions/* wrote two rural sociologists, "the conviction deepened
that man lives not by bread alone/'
foore was done for the farmer under the New Deal than
ever attempted before by federal action. In reply to queries
'*$ to how long these heavy expenditures should continue,
Secretary Wallace in December, 1939, gave answer: "As long
as agriculture is at a serious disadvantage in bargaining power
with other groups, and as long as low farm income makes
it impossible for farm families to conserve our basic land and
human resources for the future/* Talk of human resources
normally envisaged such social values as the healthfulness and
physical vigor of rural life, its satisfying creativeness, its sim-
plicity and its high birth rate ("the most important agricul-
tural surplus consists of young persons/' wrote the economic
historian of the Social Security Board) * These virtues were
judged vital enough to warrant subsidy of a larger number
of farm families than were really required to raise the na-
tion's food and a time-honored American instinct, smack-
ing of Jeffersonian logic, seemed to indorse this point of
view*
Nevertheless, before the end of the era, large areas of
American agriculture showed growing signs of disenchant-
ment with the New Deal. Many fanners of substance who
heartily approved the AAA began to share the urban business
man's misgivings toward other types of federal spending,
particularly when the recession of 1937-1938 brought a re-
newal of large relief expenditures, mounting debts and tacit
assumptions that mass unemployment was here to stay. Being
152 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
taxed to support the alleged wastrels of the city where job-
lessness was regarded as laziness in disguise vexed many an
independent husbandman, who years since had begun to
identify himself with the employer interests* The so-called
coddling of union labor, its automatic greed and penchant
for striking also stuck in his craw. In the Middle West the
reciprocal trade agreements promoted by Secretary of State
Cordell Hull unconditional most- favored-nation pacts
which enabled Canada, the South American republics and
other nations to ship beef and certain agricultural products
to the United States in return for advantages reciprocally
granted proved on the whole unpopular. And finally, hav-
ing recovered much of his prosperity under the New Deal,
the midland farmer who had voted for Roosevelt in 1932
when frightened, and again in 1936 when gratefully con-
valescent, now, feeling the ground secure beneath his feet,
turned comfortably back to his traditional conservatism.
Hopefully watching these developments, the Republican
party in 1940 nominated Senator Charles L. McNary, co-
author of the McNary -Haugen bill of nostalgic memory, for
the vice-presidency, with Wendell Willkie as head of the
ticket, and in its platform pledged continuation of soil-con-
servation payments while calling for the elimination of crop
control. Whatever the grievances and the blandishments, the
results of that election, though favorable to the administra-
tion, showed that the farmer-labor coalition which had long
sustained the New Deal was beginning to crack. True, the
South continued "solid" politically, being also the region of
impoverished agriculturalists, and the conservation-minded
and progressive West Coast still loved Roosevelt; but else-
where the flag of rebellion flew high. Roosevelt swept every
city in the nation of four hundred thousand population and
upwards save Cincinnati, while New York City carried the
day against revolt upstate, and Chicago counterbalanced that
downstate. On the other hand, nine of the ten states he lost
Indiana* Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, North and
TOWN AND COUNTRY IN CHANGING WORLD 1 53
South Dakota, along with invincible Maine and Vermont
had a larger-than-average proportion of rural folk. The
home state of the father of the agricultural New Deal, Henry
Wallace, now candidate for vice-president, sharply turned
against him, though not by so wide a margin as in its re-
jection of another native son for president in 1932. Was
this the ingratitude of agrarian commonwealths? An ardent
New Dealer might well have thought so.
CHAPTER VIII
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS
THE budding of city, county and state planning boards in
the heyday of the New Deal and the growing stress upon
foresight in agriculture occurred within a wider frame of ref-
erence that might be called the rise of the region. A region
could be defined in diverse ways, as the * 'constellation of
communities" envisaged by Carl Dawson and Warner Getty s,
Stuart Chase's "area where nature acts in a roughly uniform
manner" or Isaiah Bowman's "ensemble de rapports between
man and the natural milieu/* Its borders were not conceived
like those of states and other political subdivisions, which;
for example, favored the river as a boundary line though its
effect was really to unite the communities on both sides.
In essence, as planners of the 1930's liked to say, regional-
ism recognized no boundaries, only centers* A citizen might
think of himself as belonging to one region for a given pur-
pose and to an adjacent one for another* Within the region
a harmony should be kept among the various interests
agriculture and manufactures, production and distribution,
town and country, private enterprise and public welfare
yet this ideal of a partly self-sustaining life ought to foster
neither "autarchy" nor isolation. Indeed the interrelation of
regions and the fabric of the nation as a whole, argued the
planners, would be strengthened by such developments. By
the same token, haphazard, sporadic, politically inspired
measures, such as the traditional river-and-harbors legisla-
tion, would give way to long-term programs weighing all
the needs of a locality as well as the needs of other localities,
with a federal umpire in the background-
Regional ways of thinking were, of course, no novelty*
154
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS 155
Concepts like New England or the Mississippi Valley over-
stepped state lines, whereas others like Virginia of the tide-
water or the piedmont were contained within them. Cities
had taken occasional strides toward local regional adaptation.
Greater Boston's program of park, water and sewer planning
inaugurated at the close of the nineteenth century was ampli-
fied a generation later in a vast blueprint for the metropolitan
New York area, addressing problems of harbor and water-
way improvement, transit and transportation, parkways and
the reclamation of marshland in twenty-two counties in three
states. For all its achievements in these and other places, how-
ever, metropolitanism was not identical with true regional-
ism, since the city, insatiable as an octopus, tended to draw
all nutriment to itself and dominate the scene.
The states had also essayed minor approaches to regional-
ism. Interstate compacts as provided for by the Constitution
had long been invoked regarding such matters as crime con-
trol and regulation of interstate utilities, but their use in the
sharing and conserving of natural resources came compara-
tively late. The Port of New York Authority, set up by New
York and New Jersey in 1920 as a virtually autonomous
public corporation, had soon proved its worth* Two years
later the Colorado River Compact, ratified by six statfes;
sought to apportion the waters of that vital stream, but,
hamstrung by jealousies and friction, the results fell short of
expectation. Yet the nation's resources seemed to possess a
definite regional pattern, whether one surveyed great water-
power areas like Niagara Falls and the Columbia River, the
iron and lumber of the Great Lakes or the petroleum fields
of the Southwest. And in one project much bruited about in
the thirties, the St. Lawrence seaway, regionalism promised
to overleap international lines.
If the great city with its magnetic pull and the state with
its rigid bounds and obstructive pride seemed ill-adapted to
regional planning, the federal government enjoyed superiori-
ties over both, its avowed concern being for the good of the
156 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
whole. Having found it cumbersome to treat simultaneously
with forty-eight states of assorted sizes, Washington had
long since redivided the country into bigger units for various
administrative purposes for example, the Federal Reserve
Board's twelve districts, the war department's nine corps
areas, the Interstate Commerce Commission's seven zones and
similar schemes adopted by more than seventy federal agen-
cies* Some of these divisions ignored state lines altogether,
particularly those addressing economic interests like banking,
railroads, cotton, wheat, timber and water* The New Deal,
assuming bigger interstate responsibilities and authority,
created certain bodies such as the AAA's production-plan-
ning section, the FERA's rural-research unit, the WPA's
division of sectional economic research and the petroleum ad-
ministrative board which powerfully advanced the notion
of regional administration** In July, 1933, the National
Planning Board was set up to coordinate planning, urban and
rural, physiographic and sociological, while gleaning data
about the nation's human and economic geography upon a
scale never before attempted.! In fostering regional thinking
its influence was great*
While an occasional theorist in the thirties plumped for a
"United Regions of America/' critics hostile to regionalism
foretold the "Balkanization" of the Republic* Both, how-
ever, missed the point* The regional approach, in the minds
* William B. Munro, expert on government, suggested at the threshold of
this era the possibilities of regional government: "As entities of government
we accept the nation and the states, both artificial creations, and obtrusively
decline to make full use of the natural divisions which the primal architect of
the universe thrust in between." The Invisible Government (N. Y., 1928),
151. In 1935 he renewed his argument for regional governments in a day
of multiplying bureaucracy and resurgence of the spoils system as buffers
against that federal centralization which tends to "apoplexy at the center and
paralysis at the extremities." "The New Deal and a New Constitution," At-
lantic Mo., CLVI (1935), 617-624.
fin 1934 it became the National Resources Board, in 1935 the National
Resources Committee and in 1939, with functions steadily broadening, the
National Resources Planning Board. Under criticism from New Deal foes Con-
gress in 1943 finally ended its life by withholding further appropriations.
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS 157
of most of its exponents, involved not the erection of super-
states, but rather the acceptance of a new concept of adminis-
tration and the coordination of existing local machinery of
government for that purpose. Nor was the new regionalism
to be confused with the old sectionalism despite the efforts
of a handful of agrarian traditionalists to color it with the
faded hues of the Bonny Blue Flag.
In this spirit a symposium by twelve sentimental South-
erners called I'll Take My Stand (1930) proposed "to sup-
port a Southern way of life against what may be called the
American or prevailing way" and, after renouncing urban
industrialism with all its evils, espoused the theory that "the
culture of the soil is the best and most sensitive of vocations."
During this decade Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom and
(somewhat less brashly) Donald Davidson wrote persua-
sively about regionalism so conceived in terms faintly nos-
talgic of Calhoun and Robert Toombs. A more creative inter-
pretation of regionalism stemmed from the North Carolina
school of sociology and Howard W* Odum in particular, in-
spired in part by the later writings of the historian Frederick
Jackson Turner, who saw sectionalism as aggressive and ego-
centric, regionalism as rational and reciprocating. In a series
of books and articles through the decade Odum and his col-
leagues expounded this view and documented it with the
most painstaking analysis.
It was no coincidence that so much of the debate over re-
gionalism was pivoted upon the South. That part of the
Union, by reason of economic geography, climate, people,
history and traditions, had inherited the most unyielding,
least assimilated, of all types of sectionalism and was quickest
to resent outside interference or criticism* Some of her sons
regarded this fact with complacence or melancholy pride
Davidson, for example, remarking that "the differences go
so deep as to seem practically ineradicable, and they beget
loyalties that cannot be overridden without damage to the
human spirit'* while others like Odum saw in this attitude
158 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
"a sort of arrested frontier pattern of life/' dooming the
South to "ingrowing patriotism, cultural inbreeding, civic
immaturity, and social inadequacy/* As if to add the final
irony to this set of circumstances, one of the South's most
backward regions, the Valley of the Tennessee River, became
the only example of carry-through in regional planning ever
attempted in the United States. Here in precipitation, side by
side, were the two elements almost in their pure state.
Popular interest in the South or Souths was stimulated
by a flood of books both fictional and scholarly. Literature
ran the whole gamut from honeysuckle to hookworm. The
former was the essence of Caroline Miller's novel Lamb in
His Bosom (1933) , Stark Young's So Red the Rose (1934)
and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936),
which was also turned into a highly successful technicolor
movie.* The Florida backwoods received idyllic treatment in
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's The Yearling (1938) , while the
charm of Negro lore inspired such stage productions as Marc
Connelly's "The Green Pastures," adapted in 1930 from the
book by Roark Bradford, and DuBose Heyward and George
Gershwin's **Porgy and Bess" (1935), first musical produc-
tion of the Theatre Guild.
Of sharper realism was Thomas S. Stribling's trilogy, The
Forge (1931), The Store (1932) and Unfinished Cathedral
(1934) , portraying both the tarnished gentry and the miser-
ably exploited Negro croppers and white tenants in Alabama.
Ellen Glasgow's novels The Sheltered Life (1932) and Van
of Iron (1935) showed the scions of Virginia pioneers and
planters seeking to adjust themselves to modern civilization
to parvenus and noisome factories. William Faulkner's
Sanctuary (1931) presented the South of pure melodrama,
but his less popular books like As / Lay Dying (1930),
about the trek of a poor- white family, and Light in August
*Miss Mitchell's book, the century's best seller with nearly 4,000,000
copies, was reported by a Gallup poll in 1938 to be running neck and neck
with tibe Bible in popularity.
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS 159
(1932), concerning miscegenation held deeper sociological
values. In like spirit Paul Green's novel This Body the Earth
(1935) depicted the chain gangs of North Carolina's penal
system and the cropper families whose hapless and sodden
lives Erskine Caldwell also took as his theme. Josephine
Johnson's Now in November (1934) t winner of a Pulitzer
prize, recorded a ten-year struggle with the land, culminating
in ordeal by drought, fire, mortgage foreclosure and the evic-
tion of sharecroppers.
Books of solid social fact, like Rupert B. Vance's Human
Geography of the South (1932) , Arthur R Raper's Preface
to Peasantry (1936), Odum's Southern Regions of the
United States (1936) and John Bollard's Caste and Class in
a Southern Town (1937), seemed likely to remain defini-
tive. These sociologists, together with the novelists of real-
ism, educators like Frank P. Graham and Homer P. Rainey
and a handful of such newspaper editors as Jonathan
Daniels, Virginius Dabney and Mark Ethridge, strove man-
fully for the self-understanding of the South and its emanci-
pation from the fetters of sectionalism.
Their labors were not without effect. For example, a Citi-
zens' Fact-Finding Movement arose in Georgia in 1937 after
an affliction of four years under Governor Eugene Talmadge,
hillbilly champion of "white supremacy." Its reports called
attention to the fact that, while the state ranked among the
highest in church attendance, in education it stood near the
bottom, annually spending less per pupil ($30.96) than any
save Arkansas, failing to enroll a seventh of its school-age
youth and condemning nearly three quarters of its Negro
children to one-room schools and wretched equipment. Fur-
thermore, three out of five tenant fanners moved every year,
and within a decade some four hundred thousand young
Georgians had left the state for opportunities elsewhere.
The major impulse to improvement, however, came from
President Roosevelt. As a humanitarian, leader of the Demo-
cratic party and frequent sojourner at Warm Springs, Georgia,
160 THE AGE OP THE GREAT DEPRESSION
he showed a lively concern for the South's welfare* Address-
ing a conference of Southerners in 1938, he described their
homeland as "the Nation's No, 1 economic problem/' adding
(in words that disclosed the regional drift of his own think-
ing) that this was "the nation's problem, not merely the
South's. For we have an economic unbalance in the nation as
a whole, due to this very condition of the South/' A few
weeks later at the University of Georgia he drew from these
words the sting to sectional pride by observing that "in these
past six years, the South has made greater economic and so-
cial progress than at any other period in her long history/'
Once the forgotten section, it had become under his admin-
istration the proving ground for some of the most thorough-
going New Deal innovations in crop control, rural resettle-
ment, soil conservation, electrification, public health and
other measures, including the one striking epitome of phys-
ical and social engineering in the Tennessee Valley* Only the
more cynical Democratic politicians asked privately whether
such federal outlays were not wasted upon the "Solid
South/-
The need for swift and effective action was imperative.
While the South shared only nine per cent of the national in-
come, it possessed twenty-one per cent of the population and
the highest birth rate** Wasteful methods of agriculture and
deforestation had for generations been corroding her natural
assets, which included the most diversified soil in the Republic
and two fifths of its woodland* With the largest number of
farms of any section she averaged the smallest acreage per
farm. At the same time much of her mineral wealth
and great hydroelectric potential remained untouched*
Though her most abysmal poverty was rural, even in indus-
try the common laborer in 1937 got sixteen cents an hour
* The South'* Place in the Nation (Public Affairs Pamphlet, no. 6, 1936),
8, 14. The thriving Southwest, customarily excluded from the Southern pic-
ture Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona with only six per cent of
the nation's population, received six per cent of the collective income.
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS 161
less than elsewhere, while an annual average wage of $865
contrasted with $1291 for the rest of the United States*
Under the circumstances half the people, rural and urban,
were ill-housed; sickness and death rates ran unusually high,
with from sixty to eighty-eight per cent of the poorer urban
families ill-fed and more persons dying without medical at-
tendance than anywhere else in the country. To meet her
problem of educating a third of the nation's children the
South commanded only a sixth of the total school revenues*
These states reaped proportionately in taxes about half as
much as the country as a whole, with the brunt of their levies
such as the sales tax, which in the later thirties every
Southern commonwealth save one used to raise sixty per cent
of the revenues falling upon those least able to pay. Ab-
sentee ownership of the bulk of Southern industry failed to
contribute its fair share of taxes in support of local schools
and other institutions.
The smaller outlay for education meant overcrowded and
dismal schoolhouses and the nation's highest illiteracy rate
(about nine per cent in 1930). Among the bleak schools of
the Georgia highlands the teachers* salaries in 1930 averaged
$436 as compared with $816 for the state as a whole and
$1420 for the nation. Poverty affected other aspects of cul-
tural life as well. Virginia alone approached the national
average in books per capita in public libraries, and the whole
South trailed the rest of the Union in the circulation of forty-
seven national magazines. As a consequence of such condi-
tions the brightest and best youths tended to leave home, en-
riching other areas with their productivity and leadership.
From the turn of the century to 1936 the South showed a
net loss by migration of over three million four hundred
thousand people, including a large proportion of educators,
scientists and technicians. Homekeeping youth was frequently
second pick.*
* H. W. Odum, Southern Regions of the United States (Ope! Hilt 1936),
51, who adds, "The measure of the region's leadership in national management
162 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
At the heart of the South's unyielding sectionalism her
pride and defensiveness as well as her distinctive socioeco-
nomic pattern lay her biracialism. Nearly a third of the
people were of Negro stock; in Mississippi and parts of other
states around a half. To label this phenomenon any longer
the "Negro problem" seemed both smug and old-fashioned;
with the passing years it was seen just as truly to be the
white-man problem. As the Institute of Southern Regional
Development observed, "One of the most obvious reasons for
the social and economic retardation of the South is the un-
willingness of the white man to face the fact that his own
fate and that of the region as a whole are inseparable from
the fate of the Negro/'
To add to his chronic poverty, the Negro shouldered more
than his rightful burden of unemployment, both in North
and South* In 1933 no less than two million were on relief
twice as many as should have been in terms of the national
population* A saying recurrent in hard times described the
Negro as "the first man fired and the last man hired/* In the
South the Depression virtually erased the category known as
"Negro jobs/' such as heavy toil in the building trades, un-
skilled industrial labor, street cleaning, garbage collecting
and, for women, employment as domestic servants. As whites
began to compete, blacks were dismissed*
In the early stages of the relief program in the South the
race faced discrimination on this front as welL In Mississippi
in 1933, where they formed a slight majority and admittedly
stood in more grievous need, only nine per cent received re-
lief as against nearly fourteen per cent of whites; but such
administration later grew more equitable* The proposal of
the NRA to pay equal wages to the two races also choked in
is generally considered less than five per cent as compared with its approximately
21 per cent of population, 17 per cent of area, and 12 per cent of wealth. In the
great majority of the dominant national groups the southern representation on
the executive or controlling boards is negligible. The same is true in most of the
New Deal units of administration- in contrast to the large representation ia
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS 163
the gorge of white supremacy, although its sponsorship by a
Democratic administration somewhat sweetened the pill. The
acreage reduction of the original AAA left the typical Negro
husbandman worse off than before, but the later AAA almost
imperceptibly crossed an old sectional taboo in setting up an-
nual elections to permit cotton farmers, including tenants and
sharecroppers, to ballot on marketing quotas. No indignant
voice arose, and if the fact was void of political meaning, it
did accustom both races to the spectacle of going jointly to
vote.
The Southern Negro had not yet graduated beyond a "sec-
ond-class citizenship," but his dissatisfaction with it was
growing. By the end of the decade only three Southern states
North Carolina, Louisiana and Florida had repealed the
poll tax, a measure still effectually disfranchising not only
the black but the poor white* County boards of education
tended to allot to white institutions a disproportionate share
of public-school funds, leaving Negro schools with meager
support from taxes and hence poorly trained teachers, short
terms and primitive equipment. Significantly enough, the
margin of inferiority was least where white schools were best
and white community standards high. In December, 1938,
the United States Supreme Court ruled in the Gaines case
that Missouri should provide equal accommodations "within
the state" for law students irrespective of race. This was ap-
parently an entering wedge for better professional education
of the Southern Negro.
Diffusion of the race outside the South continued to con-
vert a sectional into a national issue, with not infrequent
complaints by migrants that the North was "going south-
ern/' Though the net migration between 1930 and 1940,
estimated at three hundred and seventeen thousand, fell far
short of the seven hundred and sixteen thousand in the pre-
vious decade's industrial boom, it swelled the colored popula-
tion of several large Northern cities by as much as a quarter.
The pindh of poverty and grosser forms of discrimination
164 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
sent many from the Southern seaboard to New York's
Harlem, from the central South to Chicago and Detroit and
from Texas to St Louis and Chicago, Rarely indeed did they
seek farm work, and as they gained a measure of prosperity
in the cities, they often collided with Jim Crow in the guise
of zoning ordinances and restrictions. Moreover, many A* F.
of L. unions barred them, and individual workers resented
their incursion.
Whether in the North or South, even after economic re-
covery began, the black man's chances for employment re-
mained slim. In May, 1935, for example, about three million
Negroes in the nation approximately one in four were
being supported by public funds. To discourage migrants,
many Northern states established residence requirements up
to five years, but still they came, hoping for odd jobs or
charity from friends until relief eligibility was established.
In Detroit from 1936 onward a vigilante band of whites
called the Black Legion sought to revive the terrorism of the
Klan, a threat which in the South along with the kindred
iniquity of lynching appeared, at least temporarily, to be
on the wane.*
In general, the New Deal won the Negro's friendship and
strikingly modified his age-old allegiance to the party of Lin-
coln. The disservice done the race was inadvertent by re-
ducing crop acreage and the number of sweatshop jobs or
unforeseen, like the indirect effect of social-security legisla-
* The annual lynching toll for the decade averaged about ten. Gunnar Myrdal,
An American Dilemma (N. Y., 1944), I, 561. Some incidents, however failed
to be tabulated because unattended by publicity: the victim "disappeared" at the
hands of a clandestine group (II, 1350) . Salutary work was done by the Com-
mission on Interracial Cooperation and by the Association of Southern Women
for the Prevention of Lynching, the latter denying that mob law offered their
sex any protection. The longest sustained friction of the decade was generated by
the Scottsboro case, following arrest in 1931 of nine Negro youths charged with
the rape of two white women of promiscuous habits. Their trial was a field day
both for Southern bigots and Communist agitators, but at least mob action was
kept at bay. The case inspired a 1934 Theatre Guild production, "They Shall
Not Die."
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS 165
tion in leading some employers under compulsion of new re-
sponsibilities to oust black workers for white. On the credit
side the New Deal did more for the Negro than any other
administration since the Civil War. Relief funds, housing
projects in the wake of slum clearance, rural resettlement,
land-utilization schemes providing parks and picnic grounds
and beaches for colored folk, greater federal attention to their
education and health these things were scarcely more im-
portant to group morale, after the poverty and pessimism of
the early thirties, than the personal friendliness of the Presi-
dent and Mrs. Roosevelt. Hopefulness was again astir*
As spokesmen for the Negro's rights were certain Southern
political figures generally identified with the New Deal, such
as Maury Maverick of Texas, Claude Pepper of Florida,
Hugo L* Black and Lister Hill, both from Alabama. To-
gether with progressive journalists and educators they spoke
out more boldly than their fathers without meeting quite
the reflex of resentment that always followed a stranger's
criticisms, particularly if he came from the North, bore a
Jewish name and was suspected of radicalism. For the first
time in history, moreover, the scattered liberals, over twelve
hundred of them, met as the Southern Conference on Human
Welfare in 1938 at Birmingham and two years later at Chat-
tanooga, with leaders of the Negro race playing an important
part*
Voices of bigotry were still articulate in Southern politics,
like Theodore G. Bilbo and John E. Rankin of Mississippi,
"Qrtton Ed" Smith of South Carolina and "Gene" Tal-
madgJhof Georgia, and as the decade progressed, they came to
speak more and more for economic reaction as well. But,
outside the calculated hysteria of politics, gross prejudices
were rarely vented in books and articles* however much they
still figured in private talk. As a whole, the South had been
coaxed.'into taking a few more steps away from antique pre-
judice^ by enlightened leadership at home, party ties, wide-
spreacjt admiration for the president and the need of federal
166 THE AGE OP THE GREAT DEPRESSION
funds* Mob violence and peonage had declined, the quality of
the police and law courts slowly improved, and appeals to
the sense of fair play seemed to be growing.* "In the
South, in particular/* wrote the distinguished colored educa-
tor Charles S* Johnson at the end of this era, "there has been
manifest over the past decade a disposition, stemming from
economic and regional necessity, to conceive the Negro pop-
ulation, in the total planning of the region, as something
more than a temporary and burdensome adjunct to the
white population . . . /*
For white and black alike, the key to the South's eco-
nomic welfare lay in using her natural resources with keener
social intelligence. True, conservation was no novelty even
in this prodigal* easy-going land* After the Civil War some
South Carolinians had built up a modest but thriving industry
in preparing phosphates for soil enrichment, and in 1918 the
South's only president since that conflict, Woodrow Wilson,
had caused the construction of a dam and two nitrate plants
at Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River in northern Alabama
to make explosives and fertilizers for war and peace. Henry
Ford and other industrialists long cast covetous eyes upon
this development, and for years it remained a bone of polit-
ical contention* Meanwhile the Tennessee basin, draining
portions of seven Southern states with a population of four
and a half million, continued like the rest of the South to
denude its topsoil, deny it replenishment and squander other
resources like timber, minerals and water power*
For this region of income and living standards net only
well below the national average, but even under the Southern
median, a new destiny began in May, 1933* Thanks to a
* "The Southerners attitude toward the Negro is incredibly more hnmane
than it was in the South I knew as a child/* wrote the South Carolina edu-
cator John A. Rice, / Came Out of the Eighteenth Century (N. Y., 1942),
195. The Swedish sociologist Myrdal, after an exhaustive four-year study spon-
sored by the Carnegie Corporation, reached a similar conclusion. American
Dilemma, IL 998-999* Yet antilynching bills in Congress continued to meet
with fanatic opposition from the traditional Southern bloc.
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS 167
twelve-year battle waged by Senator George W. Norris and
other conservationists and to Roosevelt's conviction that
power resources belong to the people, the Tennessee Valley
Authority was created to promote flood control, navigation,
electric-power production, proper use of land and forest and
"the economic and social well-being of the people/* The
new agency was to deal with all natural resources as a single
big problem and make decisions without constant reference
to Washington. Interstate in character, it worked coopera-
tively with seven state governments and scores of local ones.
At last regional planning on a large scale had been given the
signal to go ahead.
Though the TVA could invoke the power of eminent do-
main in matters like flood control, the essence of its program
affecting the people's daily life was voluntary. Under a plan-
ning council six divisions representing agriculture, forestry,
industry, engineering and geology, land use, social and eco-
nomic aspects maintained "demonstration units/* which
became the chief means of individual persuasion. While still
engaged in building locks and dams and power plants, it be-
gan the retirement of submarginal lands, soil conservation,
afforestation, the introduction of better farm machinery and
the fostering of local manufactures, public health and edu-
cation*
The hill dweller of Tennessee, Alabama and North Car-
olina inclined to stubbornness, conservatism, suspicion the
traits of ingrained sectionalism. In the lowlands a few old-
sters at first avowed that, rather than move, they would just
sit in their rocking chairs till the water came up to drown
them. New-fangled methods of plowing and household gad-
gets also left them dour. But as the program progressed
with vast works of concrete and steel rising skyward and
transmission wires spanning the valleys, brown water turn-
ing deep blue, ragged hillsides changing into rich green
inertia yielded to curiosity and then appreciation, with youtib
and the better educated taking the lead. Sharecroppers, white
168 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
and black, found jobs with the TVA which gradually con-
verted them into skilled craftsmen or mechanics; many were
glad to exchange ramshackle cabins for the prefabricated
workers' dwellings whose example began to raise housing
standards in the Valley, Malaria control and the curbing of
stream pollution enhanced regional health at the same time
that the TVA health and safety department was supervising
the medical needs of workers and setting a remarkable record
of freedom from industrial accidents.
Library service for these thousands of workers in an area
of few books and periodicals, operating through state and
local library boards, equipped * 'bookmobiles" which came to
be the nucleus of permanent regional library systems in Ten-
nessee, Alabama and North Carolina, tax-supported and
open to nonemployees. A lively adult-education movement
likewise spread from workers to the larger community, while
under stimulus of a few TVA demonstration parks, state and
county authorities awoke to new interest in public recreation
and Tennessee created its first conservation department*
In spreading the gospel of the TVA among hill fanners
the chief missionaries were the twenty thousand husbandmen
who agreed to show what could be done with scientific meth-
ods like terracing and contour plowing and, specifically, the
use of concentrated mineral phosphate produced in electric
furnaces from the fossilized bones of animals that lived
around that prehistoric sea once covering middle Tennessee.
These farmers quickly demonstrated their superiority, hold-
ing down corn acreage to avoid overproduction but so aug-
menting the yield of hay that they doubled or tripled their
number of beef and dairy cattle and their consumption and
sale of meat and dairy products. Community life grew not
only more prosperous but exciting. Even conservative elders
began to praise the TVA "because it keeps the young folks
at home/* while among its partisans the sense of achievement
waxed almost lyrical. Homes were repaired, schools painted
or rebuilt. A communal pride burgeoned.
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS 169
Instead of the capricious, destructive river and its tribu-
taries of the old days, a chain of lakes presently stretched
across the Valley, stocked with fish and offering nine thou-
sand miles of shore line for recreation* A private organiza-
tion called the Tennessee Valley Waterway Conference de-
vised, with aid from TVA technical experts, a series of pub-
lic-use terminals linking the railroads and truck highways
with a navigable channel six hundred and fifty miles long.
In January, 1937, when an Ohio River flood drowned some
nine hundred victims and left half a million temporarily
homeless, the TVA received its most dramatic vindication,
demonstrating that even under torrential rains the Tennessee
River was a giant safely chained in the service of man. Three
years later, as the war crisis deepened, the energies of the TVA
were mobilized to the end foreseen by President Wilson: the
Muscle Shoals ammonium nitrate plant went into big-scale
munitions production and the white clay of the Valley was
poured into aluminum*
Meanwhile the once backward region had become the sec-
ond largest producer of power in the United States, with
municipalities and cooperatives in partnership with the TVA
supplying electricity to consumers at three cents a kilowatt
hour instead of ten. Responsibility for the distribution of this
current fell largely to local boards made up of public-minded
citizens. While home consumption of electricity for the
nation increased sixty-three per cent between 1934 and 1942,
that in the Tennessee Valley (beginning at seventeen per
cent below the national average) almost doubled. Freezing
lockers, electric pumps, hay driers, motors to grind feed and
cut wood these were the sinews of new might, instruments
for promoting agricultural efficiency and enhancing standards
of living.
Although some branches of private industry, eager to sell
more electric ranges and other appliances, rejoiced at these
developments, the private purveyors of electric power abom-
inated the new agency. Roosevelt's contention that TVA
170 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
rates constituted "yardsticks so that the people of this coun-
try will know whether they are paying the proper price for
electricity of all kinds*' provoked hot debate* Cost factors of
the TVA could be figured variously in terms, for example,
of allocation between electric power, navigation and flood
control, or of estimates for depreciation and amortization
and the interest to be charged theoretically to the investment
(since the TVA, financed largely by congressional appropria-
tions, paid virtually no interest)* Its bookkeeping was
further complicated because it paid nothing for benefits pro-
vided by other federal services, such as materials and labor
furnished by the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps,
workmen's compensation under the United States Employees*
Compensation Commission, the franking privilege and low
freight rates on land-grant railroads, .
While its foes argued therefore that its rates did not cover
true costs but flourished a yardstick as pliable as the "rubber
dollar/' its friends replied that TVA wholesale charges were
actually high enough to cover all these disputed items, plus its
payments to states and counties in lieu of property taxes of
12.5 per cent of gross revenues, roughly equivalent to taxes
borne by private utilities. This issue, a matter of exhaustive
congressional inquiry, was extremely complex* If, however,
TVA rates failed to furnish an exact yardstick, they did serve
to deflate excessive profits in the private-utility field, not only
in the Tennessee Valley but through the nation. Thanks to
this and other causes, the average residential rate for the
whole country declined from 5*52 cents in 1933 to 3.67 in
1942.*
For several years the TVA and local subsidiaries of Com-
monwealth and Southern, the chief utility corporation in this
* In the seven years prior to the TVA's creation this national rate fell only
2 per cent; in the next seven years, 23 per cent. 76 Cong., 1 sess., Senate Doc.,
no. 56, pt. 3; David Lilienthal, TVA: Democracy on the March (N. Y.,
1944), chap. iii. The TVA's percentage payment to local bodies in lien of
taxes (since states may not tax federal property) was fixed by the amended
TVA act of June, 1940.
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS 171
region, worked together in a precarious harness of enforced
cooperation. But upon expiration in 1936 of the TVA's
contracts to use private transmission lines, open war broke
out, with the corporation's president Wendell Willkie lead-
ing the squadrons of private enterprise. A limited victory for
the TVA, gained from a Supreme Court decision in 1936
holding that construction of the Wilson Dam was constitu-
tional, was enormously reenforced three years later when the
tribunal ruled that private companies had no legal right to
protection from TVA competition. Seeing that the game was
up, Willkie sold the facilities of the Tennessee Electric Power
Company to the TVA, and other utilities in Tennessee, Ala-
bama and Mississippi followed suit.
Through its power of appropriation Congress alone held
a whip hand over this half-a-billion-dollar property, which
would require several more years of construction beyond the
end of this decade to complete its twenty-one dams and at
least thirty years of operation before it became a "paid-ouf *
investment* With a few notable exceptions, such as Tennes-
see's pork-barrel devotee Senator Kenneth D. McKellar, the
majority of the lawmakers acquiesced in the view of TVA
Chairman David Lilienthal that "a river has no politics/*/its
personnel were chosen and promoted on the merit system
under the TVA's exclusive responsibility, the sole instance
of this method in the whole system of permanent federal
agencies* Not only did the staff appear to be well insulated
from political tampering but, in accord with the philosophy
of regionalism, they represented a wide geographical selec-
tion, and were frequently loaned to junior projects, like the
Northwest's Bonneville Dam or South Carolina's Santee-
Cooper development^
Though the TVA offered the only completely integrated
project in regional planning a "demonstration unit** not
merely for the nation but the world, as its steady stream of
visitors bore witness kindred developments were in the bud.
The president and his National Resources Committee tended
172 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
to stress the river valley as the unit of regional planning. On
June 3, 1937, he recommended that Congress create six more
projects, conceived at this stage, perhaps out of deference to
congressional caution, less as "little TVA's" possessing ex-
ecutive authority than as planning boards. They were desig-
nated for the Atlantic Seaboard, the Great Lakes and Ohio
Valley, the Missouri and Red rivers, the Southwest drainage
systems (from the Arkansas Valley to the Rio Grande) , the
Colorado River and adjacent Pacific Coast, and the Columbia
River basin. This last was alone given a jurisdiction ap-
proaching that of the TVA.
With the storm of world war gathering and an undertow
of conservatism beginning to flow, the years after 1937
marked a legislative and political retreat from regional plan-
ning. The very turn of the tide was symbolized by the presi-
dent's exuberant speeches in September and early October,
1 937 at Bonneville, Oregon, where a great dam and hydro-
electric plant had just begun operation; at Grand Coulee,
Washington, with its dam, still four years short of comple-
tion, "the largest structure . . * that has ever been undertaken
by man in one place/' designed to add a million and a quarter
acres to the nation's arable land; and at Fort Peck, Montana,
where a dam "four times bigger than any other earth-filled
dam in the whole world* ' would supply irrigation and power
this last address being followed in Chicago two days later
by Roosevelt's famous "quarantine*' declaration against ag-
gressor nations.
In other respects as well, the conservation of the nation's
natural resources under the second Roosevelt had gone for-
ward even more swiftly than under the first. The Soil Ero-
sion Service (later the Soil Conservation Service) t set up in
October, 1933, began to dot the map with model projects
undertaken in partnership between the farmer and his gov-
ernment. By 1940 five hundred and thirty- four of these ven-
tures were in operation, each averaging twenty-five thousand
actes and serviced in large part by CCC camps in the vicinity*
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS 173
With a similar purpose in view the Taylor grazing act of
1934 authorized withdrawal of eighty million acres of the
public domain from the overgrazing abuse which had so ag-
gravated drought and wind damage, thus halting further
homesteading on the range. In the same year an executive order
allocated fifteen million dollars for planting a "shelter belt 1 '
of trees, a hundred miles in width, from Canada to the Texas
Panhandle to act as a windbreak and conserver of moisture.
Despite the political ridicule which ultimately curbed this
program, many agriculturalists were converted to its wisdom*
The urgent reason for these steps was best seen in the in-
stance of the "Dust Bowl/' containing over a hundred coun-
ties in Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas,
an area broken by the plow during and after the First World
War at a time when submarginal agriculture promised profits
and rainfall averaged better than usual. The settlers literally
reaped the whirlwind in a series of droughts and storms be-
ginning late in 1933. That winter and the next year wind
stripped the farm lands from the Dakotas to Oklahoma,
blackening the sky at noon, burying fences and machinery
and desolating thousands of families; and the erosion of hu-
man resources followed the flight of the topsoiL* Though
less spectacular than some other holocausts, these gales
spelled grief for a much greater number, f A common sight
along the highways of the Southwest came to be that of
hungry and bewildered men and women trundling handcarts
and baby carriages piled high with shabby household goods,
their children trudging behind Others set forth in ramshackle
*For the Resettlement Administration the young producer Pare Lorente
made a powerful documentary film, "Tbe Plow That Broke tbe Plaint"
(1936), dramatizing conditions like those which cost the nation three hun-
dred million tons of soil blown away in the "black blizzard" of May 1 1, 1934.
His sequel, "The River" (1938), dealt with the erosion by water, entailing
an estimated three billion tons of solid material annually washed out of the
country's fields and pastures.
f The principal other natural disasters of the era were southern Cafif ornia s
earthquake in 1933, the Ohio floods of 1937 and th* New England bttrricaiift
of 1938, the last destroying seven hundred Kves and two billion trees.
174 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
flivvers, with bedding, water jugs and skillets strapped on for
easy access* Certainly such attitudes of defeat and drift were
a sad departure from America's rural tradition. Speaking for
these wayfarers, the poet Archibald MacLeish wrote:
We wonder whether the dream of American liberty
Wasn't the standing by the fence to tell them:
And we're not standing by the homestead fence
And telling any man where he can head for:
Not in these parts: not with this wind blowing:
Not with this wind blowing and no rain. * * *
Men don't talk much with the road to stand on*
An estimated million persons took to the road during the
worst depression years, whether as refugees from the Dust
Bowl, uprooted tenant fanners or laborers rejected by agri-
culture and industry. The FERA's transient relief program
aided about two hundred thousand families, the highest
monthly registration (341,428 individuals) coming in
April, 1935* It offered food, clothing, shelter or camping
ground, ambulatory medical care and wages for doing local
odd jobs* The vast majority of the recipients were native-
born whites* stable and self-supporting prior to 1929; only
about a fifth were chronic wanderers. The Farm Security Ad-
ministration, which began by making small subsistence grants
to several hundred thousand stricken families in the Dust
Bowl and the South to dissuade them from joining the exo-
dus, took over from the FERA most of its activities in the
later thirties, providing in addition some educational oppor-
tunity. Various critics of these programs charged them with
promoting vagrancy and shiftlessness at federal expense, but
proposed no positive substitutes.
While foot-loose individuals came generally from cities
New York* Chicago, Pittsburgh transient families tended to
stem from ifae farming regions* with Oklahoma, Texas and
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS 175
Missouri leading a tally made in 1935. This human erosion
was one of the prime reasons why between 1930 and 1940
the number of white farmers in Oklahoma and Texas fell six
or seven per cent and why, still more strikingly, the rural
Negro population of those states shrank twenty-seven and
thirteen per cent respectively. The Sooners of 1890 and their
children, the nation's last big bloc of honiesteading pioneers,
now gave up the struggle in disheartening numbers. From
about 1935 onward these "Okies" and their neighbors, the
sharecropping "Arkies," became the most famous migrants
of modern America. Westward they took their way, the ja-
lopy doubling for the pioneer's Conestoga wagon and a wist-
ful sense of hope for the boldness of the argonaut. Their
straggling march over U. S. Highway 66 into the orchards,
truck gardens and vineyards of southern California found its
Anafbasis in John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath
(1939).
During the four years beginning in midsummer of 1935
about three hundred and fifty thousand Dust Bowl farmers
crossed the Arizona border into the Golden State. Their
frightful poverty stirred such alarm that southern Cali-
fornia's All- Year Club began to advertise: "Warning! Come
to California for a glorious vacation* Advise anyone not to
come seeking employment." Many of the newcomers, how-
ever, found precarious seasonal work under the prevalent
system of corporate farming. Out of California's one hun-
dred and fifty thousand farm proprietors in 1939, fewer than
three thousand large-scale operators, belonging chiefly to an
organization called the Associated Farmers, employed at
starvation pay most of the two hundred thousand migrants
then in the state* This body strongly resented the unioniza-
tion of agricultural labor which the CIO undertook in
1937, and tension mounted until the exigencies of war indus-
try raised wages and enforced a truce.
Meanwhile the Dust Bowl began to contract, thanks to
the shelter belt of trees, the department of agriculture's les-
176 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
sons in dry-land fanning, the development of small irriga-
tion works and building of reservoirs, the enlargement of
farms and restoration of ranching in some areas, resettlement
and rehabilitation under the FSA, and other measures worked
out jointly by federal and state agencies. From more than six
million acres under severe erosion in 1935-1936 the area de-
clined to less than a million, mainly on the fringes, by 1939.
Increased rainfall also helped, but its maximum benefit would
have been lost without such foresight.
What were the lessons afforded by the New Deal's sally
into regionalism? In the first place, it was clear that coopera-
tive effort essentially the self-education of the people under
the guidance of experts federal and local could accomplish
wonders impossible either to the people or the government
alone* In the second place, workable segments of the Union,
each with its peculiar conditions and cohesion of interests,
seemed able to plan in a way which weakened neither the
national economy nor loyalty (as considerations of sectional-
ism were apt to do) , but rather strengthened them. "Unity
through diversity" was the ideal, the ultimate application of
the principle of interstate commerce to embrace not only
mercantile traffic but social and cultural intercourse as well.
As for the administrative side of regionalism, admittedly
there were potential risks. "Federalists" of some newer deal,
fanatic do-gooders, conceivably might weaken local initia-
tive, diversity and administrative democracy, laying upon
citizens* shoulders the heavy hand of bureaucratic paternalism
and technological determinism* In the ardor of conserving
land, water* timber and minerals and the exhilaration of
huge engineering schemes the individual might be forgotten
as the real beneficiary* Fortunately, in policy makers like
David Lilienthal and Harcourt Morgan, the TVA early
found leaders who understood the danger. "In the last analy-
sis,* * as Lilientfaal himself observed, "in democratic planning
it is human beings we are concerned with."
Furthermore, the TVA's insistence upon independence
OLD SECTIONS AND NEW REGIONS 177
from Washington in the making of practically all decisions
meant not only that grass-roots responsibility was substituted
for bureaucratic "buck-passing/* but that technicians and
officers had to live and work among the people whom they
served. Absentee management was abolished. Collaboration
with local groups whether governments, farmers* associa-
tions or citizens* power boards, which occasionally vetoed
TVA schemes remained an astringent against federal con-
solidation, even the kind (as the phrase ran) which applied
Hamiltonian means to gain Jeffersonian ends. The TVA, as
its chairman fully appreciated, had a contribution to make
to the philosophy of government at a time when, in order to
curb the growing centralization of industrial and financial
power, government itself had taken rapid strides toward cen-
tralization and might in turn develop the pathology of
power*
CHAPTER IX
YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE
THE talisman of "planning/* which the economic shocks
and innovations of the thirties invested with new magic,
might cast its spell over the breadth of a region or else contract
to the microcosm of a family, foreseeing the future of child
and oldster. The urge for personal planning lay behind the so-
cial-security act, the consumer and cooperative movements,
group medicine and a variety of other developments. Youth
had the longest road to chart, hence the greatest number of
hazards to encounter and the largest claim upon society to see
that he did not begin this journey as a handicap race.
For many years the growth of cities, higher living stand-
ards, the emancipation of women, reduced immigration of
the more fecund peoples, late marriages and contraception
among the upper and middle classes had been whittling down
the size of the American family* Population continued to in-
crease, but at a much slower pace than formerly. The Depres-
sion's impact by pointing up the expense of rearing many
children accelerated the trend. Between 1930 and 1940 the
size of the average family shrank more rapidly than in any
previous decade.
This reduction was largely deliberate the result of
"planned parenthood,'* as the "race suicide** of the first
Roosevelt, the "birth control" of the twenties, had become,
by a signal triumph of semantics. At the start of the era there
were only twenty-eight contraceptive clinics in the nation;
Qbarles G Morris's novel Seed (1930) , an honest, if labored,
attempt to present both sides of the issue, was hailed by re-
viewers for accosting "a subject that is much discussed but
lately gets into print.*' The so-called Comstock law, enacted
178
YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE 179
by Congress in 1873 and imitated by all the states save North
Carolina and New Mexico, still hedged the matter with
archaic legalisms.
Chief -defenders of the old order were the rural South and,
more actively, the Catholic hierarchy. In the South, where
child labor remained a substitute for mechanization, many
fathers still regarded big families as an economic blessing. In
June, 1931, the Southern Presbyterian General Assembly
withdrew from the Federal Council of Churches after the lat-
ter indorsed birth control* Official Catholic opposition per-
sisted despite a marked decline in Catholic birth rate since
1920. But in 1931 Pope Pius XI in his encyclical "Christian
Marriage*' approved the so-called natural method or "safe-
period" theory* The American market was promptly flooded
with books about the Ogino-Knaus ("CX K/') cycle. This
technique, though deemed none too reliable by the Birth
Control Clinical Research Bureau, helped at least to bring
Catholic theory into closer harmony with what seemed to be
Catholic practice.
Other elements of public opinion moved more decisively in
the same direction. A poll among Farm & Fireside readers
early in the Depression showed two to one for giving med-
ical advice on planned parenthood, and during the thirties the
Sears, Roebuck catalogue began to list contraceptive wares. A
straw vote of subscribers by the Protestant Churchman in
January, 1935, revealed almost unanimous approval for
birth control, while in the next year, among all sorts and
conditions, a Gallup poll agreed with a Fortune survey in
finding two out of three favorable. This majority, moreover,
rose steadily in later years, with women outranking men in
the warmth of their indorsement.
Results speedily appeared. In 1936 an important decision
by the United States Court of Appeals liberalized interpre-
tations of the federal law which had hampered physicians in
advising patients on contraception; and in June, 1937, the
American Medical Association tardily recognized the subject
182 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
under sixteen. Considering the new minimum-wage levels
this was a relatively cheap concession, but the action roused
cheers in the committee chamber, applause through the na-
tion. It resulted in the discharge of one and a half million
youngsters. Yet when President Roosevelt told Congress on
January 3, 1934, that "child labor is abolished/* he appar-
ently overlooked a large area of neglect. Agriculture, out-
side NRA supervision, remained a heavy employer, keeping
in the fields about half a million between the ages of ten and
fifteen. The children of Southern croppers, toiling for the
landlord from the age of six or seven, were among the worst
sufferers*
After the NRA's invalidation in 1935 child labor increased
somewhat; hence the Walsh-Healey act of 1936 required em-
ployers holding substantial government contracts to bar such
toilers, and in the next year a law restrained child employ-
ment by sugar-beet farmers enjoying federal benefits. In 1938
the fair-labor-standards act went further, banning industrial
work by youths under sixteen and forbidding employment
under eighteen in hazardous and injurious occupations. It of-
fered no protection, however, for the nonfactory worker and
the laborer in purely intrastate concerns.
Meanwhile, under the fulcrum of an adult labor surplus
and firmer intrenchment of minimum wages, twenty-three
more legislatures between 1931 and 1941 approved the
child-labor amendment to the Constitution, first submitted
in 1924* Only eight states short of the necessary thirty-six
remained to ratify. A Gallup poll in 1937 reported a favor-
able majority in every state and an over-all indorsement by
more than three fourths. As might be supposed, managerial
interests in commonwealths employing heavy child labor lob-
bied against the reform, while sentiment in other states was
wedded to local regulation. Thus in 1938 two industrial
commonwealths favoring their own systems, New York and
Massachusetts* and one major agricultural employer, Missis-
sippi rejected the proposal* Claims that after so long a time
YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE 181
The Great Depression bore with special harshness on
growing youth. As the crisis deepened, hunger and want
overtook several million children, some from homes once
prosperous and others in substandard families ranging from
the slums of Brooklyn to the pine barrens of Georgia, The
relief census of October, 1933, listed forty- two per cent of
all recipients as under sixteen years old, yet they comprised
only thirty-one per cent of the population, A year later the
Committee on Economic Security reported eight million chil-
dren on relief.
Beyond the huge sums spent on immediate help and work
relief for the family's breadwinners, the New Deal addressed
certain special programs directly to needy youngsters. The
FERA hired unemployed nurses to look after small children
and embarked upon its free school-lunch program. More
durably, the social-security act of 1935 authorized $24,75d-
000 annually to aid dependent children, $3,800,000 for ma-
ternal and child health, $1,500,000 for homeless and
neglected children and $2,850,000 for crippled children.
This program, resting upon state collaboration, elicited in
most regions hearty indorsement, and in 1939 Congress in-
creased its appropriation. What Henry Wallace termed the
"genetic basis of democracy" found impressive recognition.
Largely as a result of the better care provided for mothers,
maternal mortality rates for the nation fell a fourth between
1934 and 1938.
As for wage-earning children, forty per cent of the boys
between the ages of fourteen and nineteen were so engaged and
twenty- three per cent of the girls in 1930, a marked reduc-
tion from earlier times. In the next decade child labor con-
tinued to retreat, thanks partly to legal restraints and partly
to the requirement of more schooling, until by 1940 these
percentages had lowered to thirty-five and nineteen.
In the summer of 1933, when hearings on the NRA cot-
ton code began, the textile manufacturers at a dramatic mo-
ment offered an amendment abolishing mill labor for persons
182 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
under sixteen. Considering the new minimum-wage levels
this was a relatively cheap concession, but the action roused
cheers in the committee chamber, applause through the na-
tion. It resulted in the discharge of one and a half million
youngsters. Yet when President Roosevelt told Congress on
January 3, 1934, that "child labor is abolished/* he appar-
ently overlooked a large area of neglect. Agriculture, out-
side NRA supervision, remained a heavy employer, keeping
in the fields about half a million between the ages of ten and
fifteen. The children of Southern croppers, toiling for the
landlord from the age of six or seven, were among the worst
sufferers*
After the NRA's invalidation in 1935 child labor increased
somewhat; hence the Walsh-Healey act of 1936 required em-
ployers holding substantial government contracts to bar such
toilers, and in the next year a law restrained child employ-
ment by sugar-beet farmers enjoying federal benefits. In 1938
the fair-labor-standards act went further, banning industrial
work by youths under sixteen and forbidding employment
under eighteen in hazardous and injurious occupations. It of-
fered no protection, however, for the nonfactory worker and
the laborer in purely intrastate concerns.
Meanwhile, under the fulcrum of an adult labor surplus
and firmer intrenchment of minimum wages, twenty-three
more legislatures between 1931 and 1941 approved the
child-labor amendment to the Constitution, first submitted
in 1924* Only eight states short of the necessary thirty-six
remained to ratify. A Gallup poll in 1937 reported a favor-
able majority in every state and an over-all indorsement by
more than three fourths. As might be supposed, managerial
interests in commonwealths employing heavy child labor lob-
bied against the reform, while sentiment in other states was
wedded to local regulation. Thus in 1938 two industrial
commonwealths favoring their own systems, New York and
Massachusetts, and one major agricultural employer, Missis-
sippi rejected the proposal* Claims that after so long a time
YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE 183
the amendment had become a dead letter were ended by the
Supreme Court in June, 1939.
Youth encountered the obverse side of the employment
situation when, upon the threshold of maturity, it set forth
in quest of a job, expecting not the pittance paid children but
a living wage* The gap between leaving school and the first
job, always a no man's land of uncertainties, widened under
the Depression. In the middle 1930's more than a quarter of
the youths in their late 'teens and early twenties had never
had regular work; for the entire group the waiting period
averaged about two years after quitting school. Four out of
five were still living with parents, including nearly half of
those married. The American Youth Commission in 1935
estimated the number of job-seeking youth at 4,200,000 a
third of the nation's idle man power while many of the
4,000,000 still attending school or college were so doing
largely as an alternative to "just hanging around/' Com-
mentators upon the census of 1940 soberly concluded that
"youth have suffered more unemployment than any other
element of the labor force/*
At an early stage of the Depression youngsters often took
to the road in search of work and adventure, reasoning that
at home there would be one less mouth to feed. Upon the
Missouri Pacific, for example, the number of bums and
freight-car migrants (including repeaters) increased from
thirteen thousand in 1929 to nearly two hundred thousand
in 193L In Los Angeles alone, free flophouses and midnight
missions gave asylum in 1932 to more than two hundred
thousand. In the summer of 1932 most railroads gave up try-
ing to block this traffic, and trains began to carry one or more
box cars with open doors to forestall the temptation of break-
ing into sealed cars.
Railroad men, social workers and police agreed that the
great majority of these nomads were neither criminals nor
vagrants, and but for the Depression would have been in
school or at work. Among five thousand boy transients
184 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
studied on the West Coast, three fifths possessed at least a
ninth-grade education and most had participated in school
or church activities. Nearly two thirds stated that they had
left home for economic reasons, a fifth blamed family quar-
rels or broken homes, a seventh admitted wanderlust, and
one out of thirty some personal maladjustment, such as
escape from compulsory schooling or petty crime.
Surprisingly enough, the Depression's effect upon crime,
especially in the case of homeless and pliant youth, was not
striking. In Massachusetts, for example, a perceptible drop
occurred in the state's juvenile-delinquency rate between the
latter twenties and the early thirties, though adult crimes
against property mounted* Only sporadically did increased
delinquency appear, taking such forms as stealing, willful
trespass and running away from home. Youthful crimes
against property generally rose when relief measures slack-
ened; and offenders under twenty-one made up a third of all
arrests for major crimes in New York City in 1939. Includ-
ing both young and old, the prison population of the United
States numbered a hundred and eighty thousand in 1939, an
increase of nearly two fifths during the decade.
The most spectacular crime wave, which reached its crest
between 1932 and 1934, had nothing to do with juvenile
delinquency and bore only an oblique relation to the De-
pression. It was the work of racketeers turning from rum-
running and other activities of waning profit to the kidnap-
ping of children and adults. An aroused Congress passed
severe laws against interstate abductions in 1932 and 1934,
with penalties involving death if the victim were harmed.*
* N. y. Times, June 23, 1932, and May 16, 1934. Sec also E. D. Sullivan,
7%K Snatch Racket (N. Y*, 1932). The decade's most famous abduction, that
of Chades Augustus Lindbergh, jr., first-born of the aviator, on March 1, 1932,
was, however, perpetrated by an amateur. The frantic search, appeals to the
underworld, discovery of the child's body, arrest of the murderer in 1934
throagb tracing of the gold certificates extorted, his trial and electrocution in
1936, evoked mass emotions of an intensity scarcely seen before morbidness,
vulgar curiosity, national anxiety, neighborly grief and sympathy. S. B. Whip-
pic, Tlw Trial of JBrano Richard Hauptmann (N. Y., 1937) .
YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE 185
One effect was to glorify the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
its chief J. Edgar Hoover and his special agents, the "G-
Men" (underworld cant for government men,*, into hero-
hood for the romantic public and the young. By 1936
movies, juvenile literature, radio serials and budding organi-
zations of ''Junior G-Men" were attesting to the fact that
law enforcement had at last grown more glamorous than
lawbreaking.
Greater concern for the predelinquent child school tru-
ancy, health problems, emotional make-up, educational
needs inspired special-service adjuncts of the public schools
and more progressive police departments, as well as child-
welfare projects staffed by the WPA* The movies gave casual
publicity to the "Dead-End Kids*' as types of urban delin-
quency, and to Father Edward J. Flanagan's "Boys* Town"
in Nebraska offering healthier surroundings to the under-
privileged.
The Depression's full toll upon susceptible youth was hard
to assess because in large measure it resembled a payment
deferred* That its sum was not greater was due appreciably to
the Civilian Conservation Corps, created in April, 1933, |o
keep idle youngsters from "riding the rods/* living off soup
kitchens and sleeping in hobo "jungles." Incidental to the
task of saving youth was that of saving natural resources*
The idea, worked out by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins
and Senator Robert F. Wagner, owed something to the work
camps of pre-Hitler Germany, something also to the philos-
opher William James, who a generation earlier had called for
"a conscription of the whole youthful population to form
for a certain number of years a part of a great army enlisted
against Nature/'
The CCC was voluntary, but its discipline and spirit were
mildly military, though drilling, saluting and marching were
taboo. The war department directed the building of camps
and also supervised the boys' health, morale and welfare. The
administration of the corps, however, became wholly civilian
186 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
before the close of 1939. Each youth received a monthly wage
of thirty dollars, part of it as a family allotment. A spruce-
green uniform was worn in winter, and in summer the olive
drab which many soon would don again with a more mili-
tary cut.* When the CCCs peak enrollment of nearly half a
million was reached in the autumn of 1935, Negroes com-
prised about a tenth, and those aboriginal woodsmen, the
Indians, a smaller fraction.! At first, needy lads were accepted
from both relief and nonrelief families, but in 1935 the lat-
ter were eliminated and the age span set at from seventeen
to twenty-eight. In practice, among the 2,750,000 recruits
who served up to the end of 1941, the great majority were in
their 'teens.
The turnover was rapid, thanks to the beckoning reality
or mirage of a regular job, restlessness, hankering for old
haunts or rebellion against discipline. All in all, about half
left before finishing their term of from six months to two
years. The bulk of those who stayed, however, benefited
from the experience. It gave them better food and more reg-
ular habits than they had known at home, taught lessons of
hygiene, physical agility and manual "know-how," often en-
grafted ambition and self-confidence. Per capita the CCC
proved the most expensive form of relief, costing about
eleven hundred and seventy-five dollars annually to maintain
each lad; but to offset this cost, in addition to gains in health
and self-respect, roads and trails were built, forest fires
* Between July, 1940, and June, 1941, no less than 300,000 enrollces
completed training and left CCC camps for military service and jobs in defense
industry. Kenneth Holland and F. E. Hill, Youth in the CCC (Wash., 1942),
124.
t Fostering a New Deal for the Indian, the Wheeler-Howard act of 1934
sought to conserve the tribal domain, provide a larger measure of self-govern-
ment and safeguards for civil rights, resettle landless persons and prevent spolia-
tion of natural resources. Under Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier
livestock cooperatives, arts and crafts and other tribal enterprises took a new
lease on life. For good writing and photography on this subject, see Oliver
La Farge and Helen M. Post, As Long as the Grass Shall Grow (N. Y., 1940) .
YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE 187
checked or prevented, gullies stopped from erosion, wild life
preserved and some two billion trees planted.
The CCC enjoyed more consistent popularity than any
other New Deal agency* A Gallup poll, which in 1936 re-
ported three out of five citizens, for example, against the
AAA, recorded in the same year more than four out of five
supporting the CCC* Youth busy in the great outdoors ap-
pealed to the public's imagination. Moreover, its heavily
patronized voluntary educational program and library facil-
ities added to the value of the experience. Employers looked
favorably on "graduates" of the CCC feeling that its prac-
tical lessons learning to do a full day's work, carry out
orders, take pride in results, often acquire special skills
approached more closely those taught in private industry
than did the lax disciplines of other work-relief programs or
school-administered projects.
The National Youth Administration, begun in June,
1935, was a "sort of junior WPA/' designed for lads be-
tween sixteen and twenty-five years of age unwilling or phys-
ically unsuited to go off to a CCC camp, for those eager to
finish school, and for girls, in whose case the camp idea, tried
modestly in the mid-thirties on a cooperative plan, had not
worked welL From the standpoint of cost it was the cheapest
work relief, combining part-time employment with little
equipment and overhead at a yearly average of two hundred
and twenty-five dollars apiece.
At its peak month (April 1937) the NYA numbered six
hundred and thirty thousand in its two major programs
of whom no fewer than seven eighths were receiving student
aid and the remainder employed on out-of-sehool projects.
The latter group, mainly from relief families, lived at home
and by working about forty-four hours a month averaged
earnings of fifteen dollars. Making and lettering street signs,
repairing discarded toys for poor children, building school
furniture, constructing footbridges for rural school paths,
soil-erosion control and sewing were typical activities. Voca-
188 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
tional-guidance programs sent many boys into manual work-
shops and girls into domestic-science classes, and in under-
privileged zones of cities NYA community youth centers
sprang up.
The much larger group of beneficiaries, nearly two million
in all, were high-school and college students who needed
financial help to continue their education. Faced with a sharp
drop in undergraduate enrollments since 1932, the FERA in
February, 1934, had launched a program of student aid
averaging about fifteen dollars a month for seventy-five
thousand boys and girls. The NYA took over and greatly ex-
panded this plan* Soon the young people were engaged at
such tasks as mending and cataloguing library books, typing,
compiling statistics and bibliographies and assisting in cam-
pus maintenance and repair* In scholastic standing they stood
above average in a majority of colleges surveyed**
The NYA, however, never captured such public favor as
did the "tree army/' The wisdom or folly of its program
hinged almost entirely upon local management. Quite often
young state and city administrators were appointed who
lacked both tact and experience in dealing with senior com-
munity leaders. NYA funds, moreover, were always too
scanty for grappling with big problems. For this or other
reasons projects frequently turned into boondoggling. Yet,
by holding back the torrent of unemployment, the prolong-
ing of education through any means equipped youth better for
the economic struggle ahead. Under widespread joblessness,
the number of high-school pupils grew from about four and a
half million in 1929 to six in 1935 an increase of a third
and the trend continued. Many boys and girls, who in
piping times would have dropped out after grammar school
or brief experience with high school, thus profited from ad-
* Betty and E. K. Lindley, A New Deal for Youth: the Story of the NYA
(N. Y., 1938), 169, citing a study made in 1935-1936 of 270 colleges, which
showed superior grades by NYA students in 168, no essential difference in 71,
3gnj infeftctr standing in 3 1
YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE 189
versity* The rising enrollment, coupled with the falling birth
rate, wrought a significant shift between 1934 and 1936 in
the structure of American education. Though the number of
public higk schools rose by nine hundred, elementary schools
shrank by about four thousand. Some fifty public and two
hundred private institutions of higher learning also came into
existence*
The plight of public schools early in the Depression was
often desperate* A municipal-economy drive, backed by citi-
zens' committees and chambers of commerce, had picked edu-
cation as its initial victim. In Chicago in 1932-1933, where
tax delinquency and bad government had long afflicted the
community, the teachers, unpaid for a year and victimized still
longer by the issue of scrip and tax warrants, in April, 1933,
staged a demonstration which drew nation-wide attention*
In New York City eleven thousand teachers were idle in 1932
and 1933, while at one stage five out of six of Alabama's
schools were closed* Throughout the country twenty-six
hundred schools, largely rural, had ceased by the beginning
of 1934; shut doors and shortened terms affected nearly ten
million children* Only gradually did these conditions improve
with the nation's economic upturn.
'Progressive" education, particularly in urban schools,
continued in the saddle, but the Depression stripped away
some of its faddism* Cross-fertilization between private and
public schools served the advantage of both, helping to save
the former from eccentricity and snobbery, the latter from
mechanical routine and notions of mass production. In ele-
mentary education the "child-centered" instruction of the
twenties yielded to the "community-centered" school, fos-
tering more projects built about social and economic themes*
In the high schools, as at the college level, much talk was
heard about the unification of knowledge for the benefit of
daily living and the practical welfare of mankind* "Integra-
tion," "orientation" and "frames of reference" became the
190 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
pet jargon of educators in revolt against mere memorizing,
fact gathering or learning in vacua.
Noteworthy also was the spread of adult education. Many
communities in 1930-1932 set up rather haphazard education
programs for the jobless, but most of them bowed out before
the Federal Emergency Adult Education Program instituted in
the fall of 1933 by Harry L* Hopkins, which utilized unem-
ployed teachers to instruct other groups of the unemployed.
By April, 1935, the scheme had engaged 43,722 persons to
teach 1,190,131 enrollees, of whom the vast majority were
able-bodied literate adults. With federal encouragement "de-
pression colleges" and junior colleges were also set up in vari-
ous places to attract members of this new leisure group. With
the end of the FERA these activities were continued vigor-
ously by the WPA.
The universities also underwent change. The 1920*s had
resembled a gold rush, with huge numerical increases paced
by bigger and better endowments, and horizons of collegiate
spires broken by an occasional skyscraper. Funds provided by
the oil millionaire Edward S* Harkness on the eve of the eco-
nomic crash enabled Harvard and Yale to launch great build-
ing programs which carried them triumphantly through the
darkest depression years* Harvard unrolled her "House" plan
along the banks of the Charles in the colonial Georgian style
but of a magnificence never dreamed of by the Puritan
worthies, Dunster and Winthrop, while under New Haven's
elms Yale built her "Colleges" in the Gothic taste which Ed-
wards and Trumbull might have found popish. At both
places this reorganization meant an enhancement of personal
faculty-student relations, which in the East had begun to win
general favor before the end of the twenties, invoking tutors,
faculty advisers, vocational counselors, campus psychol-
ogists and personnel bureaus*
In most cases, however, the Depression robbed campuses of
present hope for multiplying either buildings or faculty.
Holding the line was enough. As gifts fell off, interest from
YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE 191
investments shriveled and tax support declined, capital ex-
penditures dropped about eighty-six per cent between 1929-
1930 and 1933-1934. Appropriations for libraries and lab-
oratories had to be reduced, salaries pared, and though the
number of professors remained virtually unchanged, instruc-
tors' ranks were thinned. Numerous young M.A/S and
Ph.D/s, along with the fledgling doctors, lawyers, chemists,
engineers and architects hatched by alma mater in expectancy
of limitless demand, now joined the unemployed, which
by 1933 included some two hundred thousand certified
teachers. Unwanted elsewhere, they had to pocket pride and
professional training and try their luck selling insurance
and vacuum cleaners, perhaps with stretches of labor in the
fields or orchards and not infrequently a spell on relief.
Despite this rebuff to the hardy old belief that higher edu-
cation pays off in cash, young people retained their faith in
its ultimate and perhaps nonmaterial values. Though the
first jolt of depression reduced enrollment between 1930-
1931 and 1933-1934 by some eighty thousand eight per
cent of the total the year 1934-1935 reversed the tide,
notably among institutions with modest or no tuition fees.
Thanks to readjustment to a more austere living scale, at-
tended by small economic gains and support from the FERA
and later the NYA, registration in forty-four state univers-
ities and land-grant colleges rose within the year eight and a
third per cent, and henceforth the increases continued. By
1940 one in every six or seven college-age youth was en-
rolled on some campus their total nearly one and a half
million thus setting an all-time national and world record.
For both teacher and student the shock of hard times
loosed ancient educational moorings* Recalling that Horace
Mann had achieved his great work for free schools following
the Panic of 1837 and that the high-school movement flow-
ered mightily after the Panic of 1893, some observers sur-
mised that catastrophe served a useful purpose in smashing
decayed wood and encouraging educators to experiment* Far
192 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
more than in the 1920's, stereotypes like entrance units, re-
quired courses, examinations, college credits, even grades and
degrees, were challenged. Fresh attention was drawn to un-
conventional colleges founded in the mid-twenties like Ben-
nington and Sarah Lawrence, now joined in 1934 by newly
revamped Bard College, under the wing of Columbia Uni-
versity, and cooperative Black Mountain College, opened
about the same time in North Carolina. In 1934 that pro-
gressive Quaker institution, Swarthmore College, abandoned
the credit-hour system, declaring for thoroughness in fewer
subjects rather than the traditional smattering in many. Here
and elsewhere * 'honors courses/* cast in the Oxford pattern
and designed to free individual curiosity from the shackles of
routine, enjoyed mounting favor.
The storm center of innovation, however, was the Uni-
versity of Chicago under the regime of Robert M. Hutchins,
who took over in 1929 at the age of thirty. He sought to
end the "old traditional time-serving course-credit require-
ments" by permitting the bright student to travel as fast as he
pleased toward a bachelor's or graduate degree. Students lack-
ing high-school diplomas were admitted, and those who did
not want a bachelor's degree might take an inferior award,
Associate in Arts, while the true scholar would persevere to
one of the four higher divisions: humanities, biological sci-
ences, physical sciences and social sciences.
Witt less success in his own institution, Hutchins espoused
certain ideas about the medieval "quadrivium" of grammar,
rhetoric, logic and mathematics, over which metaphysics
should preside as queen of the disciplines, unifying all knowl-
edge. Hutchias's colleague^ Mortimer J. Adler, explained in
his best seller Hou; to Read a Book (1940) some aspects of a
reading program for adults centered largely in the "world's
hundred best books/* while in another region educators
friendly to such ideas remolded the curriculum of Maryland's
old St. John's College about this core. Hutchins and his fol-
lowers did tiot go unchallenged, Harry D* Gideonse, for ex-
YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE 193
ample, who after leaving Chicago became president of Brook-
lyn College, agreed with the attack upon sloppy and diffuse
learning, but questioned Hutchins's so-called basic principles,
which upon scrutiny looked suspiciously like that unity-by-
mandate dear to totalitarians abroad.
The issue of free inquiry versus authority assumed fresh
urgency in a world over whose face the waters of political
dictatorship were rising fast. It formed a dominant theme at
Harvard University's Tercentenary in September, 1936, at-
tended by savants, scientists and men of letters from all parts
of the earth. This occasion pointed up, as did no other event
of the decade, the recent cumulative losses of Europe to
America in research enterprise, intellectual leadership and the
pursuit of disinterested learning. In place of the Old, the
New World now held primacy in the advancement of knowl-
edge.
What did young people in and out of college think about
this troubled civilization which willy-nilly would be their
inheritance? Youth began the decade with considerable
apathy toward politics, prone to repeat time-worn sayings
about pull, machine politics and graft; but the Depression
and the New Deal gradually overcame this indifference.
Questions of economics and history, sociology and social jus-
tice proved vastly engrossing to those with intellectual curi-
osity* A poll of Maryland young folk found that the great
majority believed the federal government ought to partic-
ipate more intimately in the lives of citizens, regulating
wages and hours, assuring living standards of "health and
decency/' maintaining agencies like the NRA and WPA. In
summary, the analyst concluded that these youths seemed to
subscribe to the doctrine that "the best government is that
which governs most." Others confirmed his findings. In this
era, unlike the twenties, youth (it appeared) neither flamed
nor strove. Conservative oldsters disappointedly pronounced
it a generation of hitchhikers, seeking to thumb a ride from
Uncle Sam, and put the blame on the New Deal. Liberals
194 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
argued that youth did no more than insist upon its birth-
right: free education and a job* "Today's young people want
to live not simply to accumulate/' wrote a university ob-
server in the mid-thirties.
Decent food, clothing and shelter and, still less, the chance
to begin a career and marry such things had ceased to be
automatic guarantees of American youth. A system promis-
ing their return through social planning was bound to ap-
peal. "If someone came along with a line of stuff in which I
could really believe/* said a lad in the depths of 1932, "I'd
follow him pretty nearly anywhere/' Even Republicans
might rejoice that the man who came along was not a home-
spun version of Hitler or Stalin but Franklin Roosevelt,
whom polls repeatedly showed standing higher in favor with
youth than with their elders. As for the alleged dependence
and physical softness of this generation, obviously its true
potentialities could only be plumbed by a global crisis such as
still lay over the rim of the world.
New to American life were the nation-wide gatherings and
student unions which tended to rally opinion slightly or far
to the left of center. An amalgamation of over a thousand
local and national organizations in 1934 comprised the
American Youth Congress. Its second Congress, in 1935,
drafted an "American Youth Act/* espousing public-works
jobs for youth at trade-union or prevailing wages, a federal
apprenticeship program at guaranteed pay and hours, federal
scholarships in high school and college free from barriers of
sex, race, creed or politics. By 1937 Youth Congress objec-
tives shifted heavily to the international scene, with resolu-
tions demanding economic sanctions against treaty breakers,
abolition of trade barriers and federal ownership of the mu-
nitions industry. For mutual support it joined hands with
the World Youth Congress.
Beyond doubt, a variety of self-styled youth organizations
lent themselves to manipulation by pressure groups and adult
agitators with axes to grind. In this company were the Stu-
YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE 195
dent League for Industrial Democracy and the National Stu-
dent League, soon fused into a single leftist-pacifist body
called the American Student Union in 1935. It clamored for
the united front "against war and fascism* * lately decreed
from Moscow. Though its paid-up membership probably
never exceeded nine thousand, its devotees proved highly
articulate in student mass meetings and campus newspapers.
Application of the strike technique to academic life helped
enlist support* as the Student Union first demonstrated in
April, 1936, when half a million collegians walked out of
lecture halls at a given day and hour to protest against fu-
ture wars or as a pretext for cutting classes. Faced with the
dilemma of resisting domestic fascism by disarmament or
blocking foreign fascism by preparedness, the Union soon
found itself a house divided. Upon domestic issues, however
Negro rights, collective bargaining and socialization of the
means of production it displayed greater accord* Through-
out it was swayed by a communist-socialist bloc.
Such testaments of youth, spontaneous or imitative^
alarmed conservative elders, whose fears were further fed by
alleged exposures of the congressional committee "to investi-
gate un-American activities/' headed by publicity-loving
Martin Dies. Evidence of economic heresy among the young
its spread often greatly exaggerated since the majority
tended to despise the average campus radical as a "drip"
led the older generation to inferences like those the solid cit-
izens of Athens once drew concerning the disciples of Socra-
tes: the teacher must be to blame,
A rash of accusations broke out, from New York to Cali-
fornia and from Illinois to Georgia, against "leftists" in the
public schools and universities. Discussion in social-science
classes of topics like communism and race relations, use of
textbooks by Harold Rugg and Rexford G. Tugwell, reading
of liberal weeklies like the Nation and New Republic, might
serve as immediate causes; but in the background lay the
challenge of the New Deal to the sacredness of property and
196 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
laissez faire, with answering voices from the Hearst and Ber-
narr Macfadden publications, the American Liberty League
and spokesmen for such organizations as the American Le-
gion and Daughters of the American Revolution. Teachers' -
oath laws, which Rhode Island had pioneered in 1917 under
war hysteria, spread from California, Montana, North Da-
kota and Washington in 1931 to New York in 1934, and
thence to Arizona, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, New
Jersey, Vermont and Texas in 1935.
But the year 1936 marked a slackening in this campaign,
due to the usual recoil that follows such alarums. Already in
1935 seven legislatures had rejected similar bills, while the
governors of Maryland and Delaware vetoed others. A
Gallup poll in May, 1936, asking, "Should schools teach the
facts about Socialism, Communism, and Fascism?" mustered
an affirmative vote of nearly two out of three, with almost
as many agreeing that college teachers should "be free to ex-
press their views on all subjects, including politics and re-
ligion/* Such findings indicated that the value of honest
inquiry was being more generally recognized, along with
distinctions between a teacher's private views and his utterance
in class, between objective discussion and propagandizing
outside the field of his authority.
What of the mores of youth? In its attitude toward sex,
free love and marriage this generation parted company with
the jazz age. Of course, conventional wooing and honest
wiving had formed the habit of a majority of young people
even in the heyday of Scott Fitzgerald, but the coterie which
got itself talked about had flouted "middle-class" morality,
and its most daring focus, the Greenwich Village set, had
degenerated from bathtub gin and fornication in the early
twenties to the "wild party" and experiments with drugs
and homosexuality later in the decade. The onset of the Great
Depression meant that an old age was out, and time to begin
a new: among those in whose blood the fires of rebellion
burned* economic rather than sexual heterodoxy came to be
YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE 197
flaunted as the red badge of courage. If idleness served to
whet sexual craving, the cost of courtship movies, refresh-
ments, transportation, party clothes acted as a deterrent.
"You can't have dates without money," said the lad, while
the girl was apt to explain ruefully, "I don't have the clothes
to go out in," or "You can't get married on what the boys
make/'
On the other hand, sex freedom, though no longer
vaunted, was often taken calmly as a biological need or the
individual's right to happiness.* A questionnaire answered by
nearly fourteen hundred college students from coast to coast
in 1937 indicated that half the men and a quarter of the girls
in the junior and senior years had had premarital intercourse,
while two thirds of all the young women avowed themselves
willing to do so for true love* Youth both in and out of col-
lege condemned promiscuity as "cheap, vulgar, immoral/*
This generation believed that marriage, if possible financially,
was "the best of human institutions/' A Fortune poll in
1936 reported that three out of five college girls and half the
men wanted to wed soon after graduation and about half of
each sex hoped for children* As a jobless youth in an upstate
New York industrial town wrote in his diary,
Always a lover, never a husband* God, ain't it awful? . . .
To hell with that. It may fit the twenties but it sure don't
fit the thirties. They gotta take me as I am, with everything
I ain't got, or nothing stirring, sister. I ain't looking for a
girl-friend but a wife.
During the early depression Eddie Cantor popularized
over the radio a song called "Now's the Time to Fall in
Love/* with the blandishment that since prices were falling
* "American civilization and the Catholic cbnrch arc in open conflict on prac-
tically every phase of sex," wrote the Reverend F. X. Talbot, editor of the Jesuit
weekly America, rebuking the continued laxity of the mores. "The Catholic view
holds sex and its manifestations as sacred: the American view regards it as
somewhat more serious than a sneeze." Harold Stearns, ed* f America Now (N. Y-,
1938), 538-540.
198 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
"two can live as cheap as one on what you're makinV But
converts at first were few* The marriage rate of 1929 over
ten per thousand of population dropped by 1932 to the
lowest recorded point in American history, less than eight,
or three fourths of the annual average for the previous dec-
ade. Divorce was also less frequently resorted to in these
years. Desertion, "the poor man's divorce," increased as job-
hunting husbands left unhappy homes, but legal divorce was
an expensive business. Not unexpectedly, therefore, the rate
fell from L66 per thousand of population in 1929 to a low
(unmatched since the year of the Armistice) of 1.28 in 1932
and 1.31 the next year.
A discouragement to divorce and argument for marriage,
potent during the decade's middle years, was that both em-
ployment opportunity and federal relief were granted more
readily to a married man, better still if he had children or a
pregnant wife. Reviving prosperity brought a gradual climb
of the divorce rate, however, to an all-time record of two per
thousand people in 1940. As for the resurgence of marriage,
biology was proverbially impatient, nor prone to be satisfied
with makeshifts like those suggested by the rise of both ille-
gitimacy and prostitution between 1929 and 1933. Readjust-
ments of attitude occurred: millions learned they could get
along on less money, brides waived expensive weddings and
often a home of their own, the spread of contraceptive
knowledge promised deferment of offspring and, of course,
the economic revival greatly helped. After 1933 the trend
soon outran the pace of recovery. The year 1934 brought a
return to the 1929 level, while 1937 boosted the number to
more than eleven per thousand of population, the highest
since the bumper crop of postwar weddings in 1920.
The outbreak of the second German war and the passage
of the peace-time selective-service act accelerated the marriage
rate as young men hastened to wed the girls they might have
to leave behind them. The year 1941 recorded nearly thir-
teen marriages per thousand. Soon young wives with infants.
YOUTH IN SEARCH OF A CHANCE 199
living on servicemen's pay and cheerfully following the
camps, could be seen crowding railway waiting rooms and
drab hotels all over the land. Nevertheless a lag remained. In
1938 it was estimated that, despite the attempts to make up
for time lost, about one and a half million young people who
would normally have married had been forced to postpone
the event, often still living under the parental roof. For a
minority a further deterrent arose from the fact that during
these years twenty-six states passed laws demanding pre-
marital blood tests, while the number requiring advance
notice of intention to wed increased from seventeen to twen-
ty-six.
Neither the stress of prolonged economic crisis nor the
even greater tensions of imminent war could long keep youth
from mating. The liturgy's ancient pledge for better for
worse, for richer for poorer overshadowed the Victorian in-
junction concerning maintenance of the bride in her accus-
tomed style. The thing which according to observers this
generation most wanted security remained so teasing a
mirage that youth came to doubt its reality. Hence in the
quest for personal contentment they seemed more ready than
their parents to throw material prudence to the winds. When
each had found his own, the pair believed that they were
justified in salvaging whatever happiness they could from the
world's dark uncertainties.
CHAPTER X
AGE IN QUEST OF SECURITY
AT the time of the Civil War only one American out of
forty was sixty-five or older. By 1940, when the United
States Public Health Service established its first unit on geron-
tology to study senescence and its socioeconomic problems,
one out of fifteen had reached this age, and for 1980 the
ratio was forecast as one in six. While causes already ex-
plored were slowing down the birth rate, better diet, closer
medical supervision and scientific advances in the prolonga-
tion of life were stretching out the span. "The American
nation/' wrote two statisticians in 1939, "is now well on the
way to becoming the most aged aggregation of people on the
face of the earth/'
This condition, unluckily, went along with certain factors
tending to make the elderly less solvent and self-sufficient. In
1890, when they comprised only three per cent of the popu-
lation, a mere quarter of them were not gainfully employed,
but by 1930, when they made up five and a half per cent,
more than two fifths had quit their jobs. Ironically, those
likeliest to continue working bankers, lawyers, farmers,
business executives generally had much less economic reason
for doing so than did machinists, miners and factory la-
torers, who were often fired at forty-five or fifty. The phrase
"old at forty" met its gesture of rebuttal in the title of a
best seller in 1932, Walter B. Pitkin's Life Begins at Forty,
which thereafter became a wishful byword. Aggravating the
problem was the shrinking size of families, which meant that
the burden of supporting dependent parents now fell upon
one or two children instead of perhaps half a dozen.
While the majority of European nations, members of the
200
AGE IN QUEST OF SECURITY 201
British Empire and several South American republics adopted
systems of compulsory old-age insurance during the first
quarter of this century, the United States seemed laggard in
presenting a humane alternative to "sending the old folks
over the hill to the poorhouse" or county farm. Hardly
more than one out of twenty in 1928 drew a pension from
private industry, while masses of state and municipal em-
ployees knew no such security as that furnished to federal
workers* On the eve of the crash eight commonwealths had
acts permitting counties to pay old-age pensions if they chose,
but most of this legislation was too loosely drawn to have
much practical value, with only Wisconsin and Minnesota
offering aid to such counties as assumed these responsibilities.
Moreover, the backlog of life savings among the low-income
group was the least adequate of any in affording a shield
against disaster.
The impact of depression converted a mild chronic prob-
lem into one of importunate misery. Along with other aspects
of relief, this charge first fell upon private charity, then the
municipalities and states and, finally, the federal government.
By 1934 the FERA was providing temporary aid to nearly
three quarters of a million persons over sixty-five, and by
1936 the number dependent upon public relief was at least
a million, with about half the remainder three and a quar-
ter million receiving some assistance from children, other
relatives or friends. The back-breaking load and personal bit-
terness which this need sometimes laid upon the younger
generation's shoulders were displayed in Josephine Law-
rence's novel Years Are So Long (1934), a homely Amer-
ican version of Lear and his daughters. Agitation for work-
able state pension systems reached such pressure that by the
middle of 1934 no fewer than twenty-eight states, together
with the territories of Alaska and Hawaii, had passed old-
age acts, of which twenty-three were now mandatory.
For most of the elderly, reemployment offered scant prac-
tical remedy, and their plight grew no better through the
202 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
middle 1930's* Among three classes strikingly in need of
direct relief children, the blind and the aged by far the
heaviest expenditure in 1932 went for dependent children,
but by 1936 assistance to age had come overwhelmingly to
hold first place in both city and rural areas, representing
eighty-five per cent of the total outlay for such purposes.
That politicians and charlatans as well as idealists should
hearken to the old folks' cry was inevitable* Unlike children,
these senior citizens could vote, agitate, give pennies and dol-
lars to the cause.
California, with its lure of climate for the enfeebled Iowa
fanner and Kansas storekeeper contributing to a state-wide
ratio of nearly eight oldsters out of a hundred inhabitants
proved to be the happy hunting ground for social-security
schemers. Practical-minded newcomers, caught in the grip of
reduced income from modest investments or the collapse of
banks and building and loan associations, joined self-help
organizations, cooperatives and barter groups in unprece-
dented numbers; but more articulate politically were organ-
izations such as the short-lived Utopian Society, founded in
Los Angeles in 1933, which within a year attracted half a
million followers through its promise of a wonderland where
machines should perform all the drudgery and everybody re-
tire # forty-five*
Against a background mainly of grass-roots or small-town
conservatism transplanted in later life to a land of ease, then
cruelly overtaken by penury, sprang up also in 1933 the cru-
sade of the novelist Upton Sinclair. Having run unsuccessfully
for governor as a Socialist back in 1926, he turned now to
the more reassuring Democratic label, offering his candidacy
because, as he said, "I saw old people dying of slow starva-
tion, and children by the tens of thousands growing up
stunted by the diseases of malnutrition/* These conditions he
described in a book /, Governor of California and How I
Ended Poverty (1933), which sold nearly a million copies
and helped to finance his race. Sinclair advocated stiffer in-
AGE IN QUEST OF SECURITY 203
come and inheritance taxes, a tax on idle land, a fifty-dollar
monthly pension to needy persons over sixty, and a huge
network of cooperatives to stimulate production, consump-
tion and employment. His slogan was "End Poverty in Cali-
fornia," happily shortened to EPIC When he led the field in
the primary election, his campaign could no longer be dis-
missed as a joke, and only by the most strenuous efforts of
the press, movie industry and conservative citizens was he
nosed out in November, 1934, by his Republican opponent
Frank Merriam. The movement quickly collapsed, leaving in
its wake the mute evidence of EPIC cafes, New Economy
barbershops and Plenty- for- All stores, which long survived
in backwater communities.
In January, 1934, while EPIC was still soaring, a simpler
panacea for prosperity, compounded exclusively for the aged,
issued from the same region with Dr. Francis E. Townsend's
incorporation of Old Age Revolving Pensions, Limited. The
founder, a gaunt physician who had struggled long years
homesteading in Kansas and doctoring folk in the Black Hills,
had finally migrated to Long Beach, California, as assistant
health officer. Under the watchword "Youth for work and
age for leisure/' he proposed that the proceeds from a uni-
versal two-per-cent transactions tax should pay two hundred
dollars monthly to every unemployed person of good char-
acter over sixty years of age, this stipend to be wholly spent
before the next pay day. The notion of rapidly circulating
money "the myth of velocity," skeptical economists called
it strongly appealed to the naive, despite statisticians' fig-
ures that nearly half the national income would be required
to meet Townsend's demands on behalf of eight or ten mil-
lion persons. Moreover, like all sales taxes, this levy would
fall most heavily upon wage-earners.*
* Townsend claimed that his crusade was inspired by the sight of three
elderly women rummaging in garbage cans; hut probably he was imitating a
proposal current in Seattle to give the old a pension for compulsory spending.
R. L. Neuberger and K. Loe, "The Old People's Crusade/' Harper's Mag.,
CLXXII (1936), 427; Carey McWilliams, Southern California Country (N.
204 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
The Townsend crusade gained recruits from the defeated
EPIC forces, spreading over the nation and raising almost a
million dollars in two years by donations, card parties,
dances, quilting bees, raffles and box suppers, as well as by
subscriptions to the Townsend Weekly, where homey in-
spiration was interlarded with advertisements for trusses and
artificial teeth* This agitation undoubtedly speeded passage
of the social -security act in 1935* The next year the founder
claimed five million members. Some politicians in both par-
ties hopefully plumped for it, but the 1936 presidential elec-
tion demonstrated that the Union party, formed by Town-
sendites and other irregulars with Congressman William
Lemke as their nominee, could command no better than nine
hundred thousand votes. The fact that Roosevelt and most
New Dealers opposed the scheme had disheartened followers
of little faith. A congressional investigation of Dr. Town-
send and his conviction early in 1937 of contempt of the
House helped also to discredit the movement, suggesting that
a pathetic crusade had fallen prey to demagogy and the profit
motive*
Its decay provided the humus from which sprang another
California mushroom of hope and heresy* The promoters
were more worldly than Dr* Townsend and essentially cyn-
ical: a technocrat named Roy Owens, the brothers Lawrence
and Willis Allen (who gained apparently the lion's share of
the proceeds) and one Robert Noble (who later went to
prison for fascist agitation in the Second World War) * This
was the so-called "Thirty Dollars Every Thursday" plan,
which promised "Ham and Eggs'* to all the faithful* Specifi-
cally* it would give to every unemployed Californian over
fifty a pension, to be financed from the circulation of one-
dollar warrants on which each holder must affix a two-cent
stamp every week prior to spending it. Narrowly defeated in
Y., 1946), 299. For the plan and its fallacies, sec H. S. Pritchett, "The Old
Age Pension as Related to American Life," Carnegie Foundation for the Advance-
ment erf Teaching. 13th Ann. Rep. (1935), 15-26.
AGE IN QUEST OF SECURITY 205
the state elections of 1938, "Ham and Eggs" won a million
signatures for a special referendum the next year only to fail
more decisively. Henceforth the movement rapidly ebbed. In
comparison, a scheme rejected by the Ohio voters in Novem-
ber, 1939, seemed almost pedestrian. Devised by the Rev-
erend Herbert S. Bigelow, ex-congressman of Cincinnati, it
promised all the unemployed over sixty fifty dollars a month,
the sum to be raised by heavier state income taxes and a two-
per-cent land tax on real estate valued at more than twenty
thousand dollars an acre.
Among stump speakers and radio orators dangling Utopian
bait in the waters of discontent, none attracted more notice
than Senator Huey Long and the Reverend Charles E*
Coughlin. Long, scion of a Louisiana family of poor whites,
had worked up from peddling patent medicines and lard
substitutes to become one of the shrewdest lawyers in the
South, publicizing his early battles with Standard Oil, and
as governor seeking particularly to benefit the small inde-
pendent farmers with better roads and bridges, free school-
books and reduced power and telephone rates. In the course
of doing so, however, the "Kingfish" a title he borrowed
from the radio comedians "Amos 'n* Andy" built up a
ruthless political machine which destroyed democratic proc-
esses in Louisiana.
Long confidently expected to be president, and the title of
his autobiography, Every Man a King (1933), which he
claimed to have lifted from William Jennings Bryan, was
matched in significance by its sequel, published after his as-
sassination in his new state capitol in September, 1935, My
First Days in the White House.* His bid for that office took
* According to Long, "William Jennings Bryan said: *Behold a Republic!
where every man is a King, but no man wears a crown/ " Every Man a King
(New Orleans, 1933), 297. Carletcm Beak's biography of Long in 1935 and
H. T. Kane's in 1941 ascribe this quotation to the Cross of Gold speech, but
actually the nearest resemblance seems to occur in Bryan's speech "Imperialism"
in the 1900 campaign, where he spoke of "a republic in which every citizen
206 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
the form of the "Share-Our-Wealth" campaign, a vague
scheme for redistributing enormous fortunes so that every
"deserving family" in the nation might have sufficient income
to own a car, a home and a radio over which presumably it
should hearken to the master's voice, A Fortune survey in
July t 1935, indicated the deep root which this proposal had
struck, particularly in the Middle West and still more on the
Pacific Coast; and a nation-wide poll by the Democratic na-
tional committee shortly before his death suggested he might
gain three or four million votes on a third-party ticket*
Beyond much question Huey Long's pyrotechnics helped
passage of the wealth-tax act in August, 1935* Indeed, steal-
ing the thunder of demagogues and scaling down their prom-
ises to workable size became the strategy of the New Deal in
its middle years.
A comparable messiah in the North was Father Coughlin,
Catholic priest of Royal Oak, Michigan, who gradually re-
vealed himself a Jew baiter and Nazi apologist. From radio
sermons Coughlin passed in early depression years to politics,
extolling the New Deal with cries of "Roosevelt or Ruin!"
In 1934 he organized the National Union for Social Justice,
advocating the nationalization of banks and credit, utilities
and natural resources* In January, 1935, he began flaying the
administration for turning "its precious attention to foreign
affairs while we are still surrounded with domestic turmoil"
and directed the Union's boasted nine million members to
swamp Congress with protests against joining the World
Court with results that probably played some part in the
Senate's negative action* Coughlin openly became a scoffer
at democracy ("the magic of numbers"), and in 1938
formed an anti-Semitic organization called the Christian
is a sovereign, but in which no one cares or dares to wear a crown/* W. J.
and Mary B. Bryan, Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan (Phila., 1925), 501.
* J. A. Farley, Behind the Ballots (N. Y., 1938), 249-250. A minor anti-
Semite and frank admirer of Hitler's Reich was the Reverend Gerald L. K.
Smith, sometime Shreveport pastor, chief organizer under Long of "Share-Onr-
WealtrT and ins wonld-fee heir.
AGE IN QUEST OF SECURITY 207
Front, which spread to many cities and, when war came, took
a stand of benevolent neutrality toward the Axis. With his
New York counterpart, Father Edward L. Curran of the
Brooklyn Tablet, Coughlin represented the fascist wing of
Catholicism, but as the true nature of his opinions grew
clearer, his popular influence waned.
Whatever evil they did, these salesmen of panaceas, even
the most cold-blooded and cynical of them helped in their
fashion to hasten the adoption of social security. Other in-
fluences were at work, however: European example; the so-
cial conscience sensitized by depression; the proof that many
individuals would not save systematically unless compelled;
the belief that unemployment was just another type of indus-
trial hazard, whose whole cost the victim should not have to
bear alone; and a spreading conviction that industry ought
not to exploit labor for huge profits during flush times, then
throw upon society the whole burden of unemployment and
threadbare old age. In June, 1934, the president appointed a
committee to draft a program, and fruition came with the
signing of the social-security law on August 14, 1935.
For the aged it provided two types of assistance* An an-
nuity system, the only feature of the act directly administered
from Washington, offered benefits upon retirement at the age
of sixty-five, based upon earnings under the law* Employer
and employee matched funds; and participation was com-
pulsory save for public servants* domestics, casual laborers;
merchant seamen and employees in charitable, religious and
educational institutions. By 1940 fifty-two million citizens
had each his "social-security number" under this plan.* In-
come from savings and investments did not prevent the
drawing of benefits, but any employment paying over fifteen
dollars a month did, which meant that, since all annuity pay-
* A provision to raise the rate of contribution from one per cent of wages
to an ultimate three per cent in 1949 was not carried oat, the contribution
being "frozen** at the minimum figure.
208 THE AGE OP THE GREAT DEPRESSION
merits were modest, this provision sometimes proved irk-
some.
The second kind of assistance consisted of grants for per-
sons already past their earning power or outside the pale of
the annuity system. The federal government offered to col-
laborate with the states for the relief of indigent old age, up
to a combined total originally set at thirty dollars monthly
and later raised to forty. By the close of the decade nearly
two million elderly poor were enrolled under state systems.
Payments, however, averaged only twenty dollars over the
nation, with six Southern commonwealths granting mere
pittances and California at the other extreme offering close
to the maximum. Pensioners in this category, augmented by
fifty thousand blind, and nine hundred thousand crippled,
neglected and dependent children entitled to similar benefits,
occasioned the chief expense of the social-security act to the
national government.
Still another provision of the act set in motion unemploy-
ment insurance. To create the necessary reserve a three-per-
cent federal pay-roll tax was levied upon employers (with
the exceptions named above, and those having less than eight
employees) . Against ninety per cent of this tax the employer
might credit contributions paid into an approved state un-
employment compensation system thus in effect forcing
state compliance while the federal government made the
major rules and paid the administrative costs. Benefit pay-
ments varied according to previous earnings and length of
employment, ranging between about five and fifteen dollars
weekly and limited in most cases to a fourteen or sixteen-
week period Quitting work voluntarily, discharge for mis-
conduct and, in many states, striking disqualified the em-
ployee; also, if a suitable new job were rejected, the benefit
ceased
The act bore assault from various quarters. Many critics
looked askance at the huge reserves anticipated from these
AGE IN QUEST OF SECURITY 209
levies, with billions in purchasing power withdrawn from
the volume of circulating money. Others attacked the federal
bookkeeping which used these funds for paying current gov-
ernment expenses, leaving I.O.U/s in the reserve account. A
company of liberals who had battled long for social security
assailed the act as invoking a hodgepodge of forty-eight state
systems, and some doubted whether unemployment funds ac-
cumulated in the heavily industrialized states, whose econ-
omy always stood in precarious equilibrium, would be ade-
quate to meet a real test.*
A minor crisis was weathered successfully in late 1937 and
early 1938. In August began a business recession which anti-
New Dealers promptly dubbed the "Roosevelt depression/*
It came about partly because of sharp retrenchment, at their
insistence, in the WPA and other agencies of federal spend-
ing. Additional factors were stock speculation, overproduc-
tion and big inventories that outpaced purchasing power,
contraction of credit under more stringent bank-reserve re-
quirements, labor troubles and business's continued distrust
of the New Deal. The president's census in the autumn dis-
closed nearly six million totally unemployed, two million
jobless save for relief work and three and a quarter million
partially employed. This was better than the fifteen or six-
teen million of March, 1933, though not spectacularly so.
That the hardest problem of all, unemployment, had not
been mastered by the New Deal, was plain.
The general economic structure of the country, however,
proved distinctly firmer than five years before, as Roosevelt
noted in observing that "banking and business and fanning
are not falling apart like the one-boss shay as they did in the
* Eleanor L. Dulles, "Financing Old- Age Insurance/' Am, Acad. of Polit.
and Social Sci., Annals, CCII, 176-183, reviews a considerable body of this
criticism but tbinks it unwarranted. An attack by a social-security pioneer is
Abraham Epstein's "Our Social Insecurity Act/' Harper's Mag,, CLXXII
(1935), 55-66. A more temperate critic is P. H. Douglas, Social Security in the
United States (rev. edn., N. Y., 1939), chap. ir.
210 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
terrible winter of 1932-1933/* The president and Congress
shifted the whole spending program back into high gear early
in 1938, increasing outlays by about five billion for the WPA,
PWA and lending activities of the RFC and the edge of in-
dividual misery was further blunted by the social-security act.
Thirty states in 1938 paid approximately four hundred mil-
lion dollars to their unemployed* Presently recovery began
once more to flow and, save for a milder setback early in
1939, carried the nation's economy steadily forward into the
full employment of the war years.*
Meanwhile, modifications of the social-security act oc-
curred. Amendments at the close of the decade added benefits
for survivors and dependents of annuity policyholders, and
by attaching the United States Employment Service to the
Social Security Board enmeshed job insurance with job place-
ment. The Federal Security Agency, formed in 1939 to
embrace also the Office of Education, Public Health Service,
the NYA and CCC, henceforth became the chief instrument
for federal welfare activities.
Whatever economic ups and downs the future might bring,
the thirties had firmly planted in American life the principle
of social security. A few reactionaries, like the radio com-
mentator Upton Close, might lament the passing of the
glorious spirit of risk which had inspired the frontiersmen,
but most citizens felt otherwise. A Gallup poll in 1938
found that no less than nine out of ten persons approved old-
age pensions. However critical of ways and means, even the
party of the opposition in its national platforms acknowl-
edged that social security had come to stay. It was no coin-
cidence that the number of social workers almost doubled
between 1930 and 1940, most notably in the huge industrial
* With rapid growth in the number covered by unemployment insurance,
the volume of benefit payments of all kinds rose until the end of 1940, then
xapidly ebbed in ^ the year 1941 when better wages and opportunities for
defense jobs bred increasing reluctance to retire at sixty-five. International Year
Book for 1941, 596.
Fontana Dam, one of the largest in the icorld.
A demonstration farm on the left, an old eroded one on the right.
Transforming the Tennessee Valley.
toJ
Is
81
AGE IN QUEST OF SECURITY 211
states of New York, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois and
Ohio.*
A Martian observer might have concluded that social wel-
fare was the new American religion. With eyes upon the
mounting ascendency of the social or socialistic gospel
over formal theology, Paul Hutchinson, managing editor of
the Christian Century, in 1937 cried emotionally, "It is
either on to Moscow, or back to sin!" This development was
less the cutting of a new channel than the deepening of an
established one. An exhaustive study of the church and
society, carried on from 1920 to 1934 by the Institute of
Social and Religious Research, repeatedly stressed the trend
of Protestantism toward social interpretations of the faith
and the ministry of human welfare. Similarly, American
Catholics put forth new efforts in response to the principles
of social justice expounded by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical
"Qaadrigesimo Anno" (1931), while the Central Confer-
ence of American Rabbis in the next year drafted its "Pro-
gram of Social Justice" and the Federal Council of Churches
reaffirmed its stand on collective bargaining and social
security.
Clerics seeking a message for the age were apt to take their
cue from John A. Ryan, John Haynes Holmes, Ernest R
Tittle, Ralph W* Sockman or Harry Emerson Fosdick. A
poll of nearly twenty thousand ministers in 1934 disclosed
that nearly three out of five favored a 4 'drastically reformed
capitalism" and almost a third socialism. Social and economic,
themes waxed in popularity as sermon topics, and prayer
meetings often turned into discussion groups for canvassing
"problems in human relationships."
In early depression days the churches turned actively to
feeding and clothing the poor, but as public agencies shoul-
dered tie burden, they tended to slacken their efforts. As a
* By contrast, the number of nurses gained by little more than a fifth, while
teachers lost one per cent and the ranks of clergymen shrank by ten per cent.
Social Work Year Book for 1945, 448.
212 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
result, a certain disenchantment arose among the destitute
with churches and semireligious bodies like the Y. M. C A.
The Catholics kept more successfully in touch with their
unemployed than did most Protestant denominations, but
the Mormons in Utah achieved a conspicuous record.
Proudly refusing federal aid and not a little wary of New
Deal financing, they made each "ward" of Latter Day Saints
responsible for its needy, and higher units came to the rescue
when local capacity was overtaxed. The chief aim was to
make the family self-sustaining through such means as
cooperatives, colonization schemes, home canning and handi-
crafts and the vigilance of church employment agencies.
Financially the Depression put the majority of Protestant
churches "in the most desperate plight in their history/'
Part of it was due to indebtedness contracted in the flush
1920's to build million-dollar edifices and some multimillion-
dollar apartment-hotel-churches, with swimming pools, rec-
reation halls and other resources which might better have
been communal than sectarian. Now collections sharply de-
clined, falling almost half between 1930 and 1934. Urban
ministers' salaries were pared to the bone, while in rural
areas and villages many flocks dispensed with a "regular"
preacher.
Toward the fact of the national economic disaster religious
attitudes varied. Fundamentalists of the Moody Bible In-
stitute and their affiliates millenarianists who had hailed
the First World War as the beginning of the end now saw
the catastrophe of world-wide unemployment as a similar
portent Catholic teaching ran less to the apocalyptic than the
purgatorial, stressing the theme of present suffering to be
rewarded in the life to come. Sterner preceptors of Rome saw
depression as a healthy astringent to the lush pagan ma-
terialism of American life. In general, however, acceptance of
the Depression as a punishment for sins, national and per-
sonal, arose from the Protestant pulpit. Hosts of preachers,
editors of evangelical periodicals and pious business men like
AGE IN QUEST OF SECURITY 213
Roger Babson avowed that depressions came because men
forsook Christ to follow selfish ends.
It was freely predicted that hardship would lead Ameri-
cans back to the faith of their fathers, but in fact no wave of
revivalism, wholesale conversion or even increased church
attendance occurred outside the pale of certain new and
eccentric cults. Lack of decent clothes to wear and of money
to drop into the collection plate though many churches
discontinued "free-will offerings" discouraged even nor-
mal habits of churchgoing. And upon those in whom such
habits were weak, the growing secularization of the Sabbath
exercised its pull toward the new municipal swimming pool,
golf links or tennis courts laid out by WPA labor. Women* s
interest in church work was reported in 1931-1932 to have
reached a new low, doubtless under pressure from vocational
and other worldly pursuits, while periodical literature also
mirrored the declining prestige of organized Christianity.
Even in the village and small town, where lay the core of
evangelical strength, institutional religion seemed on the
wane, with falling attendance and donations and among the
leaders a planless bewilderment in the vortex of social forces.
Between 1930 and 1940 the nation's churches lost
twenty-seven members per thousand of population, a total
deficit of almost three million. According to a Gallup poll in
1939, half the people attended worship less often than their
parents and less than a fifth exceeded their parents* Asserting
that earlier crises had evoked a contrary reaction, the editor
of a popular Protestant journal found the difference lay in
a relatively new conviction that so-called economic laws,
unlike the laws of Nature, are man-made and therefore can
be cured by human initiative rather than by prayer or peni-
tence.
Youth, little schooled in the old-time gospel, was probably
the least devout group. While a majority still clung to
nominal church membership, scarcely more than a third were
actively interested or considered religion a helpful or vital
214 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
part of their lives. A survey in 1934 reported lower classmen
in college more prone to belief than juniors and seniors, and
that of the faculty the less eminent scientists numbered more
believers than their colleagues although physicists and like
specialists, presumably knowing least about society and the
mind of man, took more stock in religion than did biologists,
social scientists and psychologists. Inconclusive though such
data were, they served as straws in the wind indicating a
continued drift away from institutional creeds.
Religion as an inner experience fruition of America's
long tutelage to the Protestant spirit was probably much
less impaired. Upon the highest intellectual level it still
flourished, for example, in the writings of the theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr, whose Gifford lectures at Edinburgh ap-
peared in 1941 as the first volume of The Nature and
Destiny of Man. Here he expressed a rather somber view of
man caught between the upper and nether millstones of his
supernaturalism and his naturalism, the latter often deluding
him into erecting "idols** like rigid systems of philosophy
or social schemes for perfecting the race, though Niebuhr
himself paradoxically supported liberal ideas. Basically he
taught in the tradition of Denmark's Kierkegaard, redis-
covered by intellectuals in this generation through the writ-
ings of Karl Barth that religious faith has no connection
with and requires no verification by reason; God exists, and
man's contact with Him is life's most certain and significant
fact, even though man cannot conceive God as He truly is*
Under long depressions and times of frustration, religious
philosophy tends to magnify man's helplessness, looking to
God for all strength and wisdom*
Upon the popular level religion found expression in the
best-selling inspirational novels of the clergyman Lloyd
Douglas, like The Magnificent Obsession (1929) and The
Green Light (1935), and in such works as Henry C Link's
The Return to Religion (1936), which sought to endow
men with a spiritual purpose against selfish immersion in
AGE IN QUEST OF SECURITY 215
the tide of circumstance. A cherished American tradition was
thus streamlined to an age of depression and incertitude.
Henry Wallace, brash oracle on many subjects, contributed
Statesmanship and Religion (1934) , while many of Franklin
D. Roosevelt's public utterances rang the changes upon themes
of human dignity, neighborliness and democracy as practical
Christianity.* The president, an Episcopalian, stirred sec-
tarian rivalry upon a single notable occasion* The announce-
ment on December 24, 1939, of the precedent-shattering
appointment of Myron C Taylor, steel magnate and Epis-
copal layman, as the president's personal envoy to the
Vatican under the crisis of war, provoked a storm in some
Protestant circles.!
In general, partisan rivalry appeared on the decline. In
1929 the Congregationalists combined with their friends of
the Christian Church. Ten years later the old ante-bellum
rift between Northern and Southern branches of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church was healed by the union of these two
with the Methodist Protestant wing. In 1940 the Reformed
Church in the United States fused with the Evangelical
Synod of North America. Late in the thirties a merger of
the Episcopal with the Presbyterian Church was proposed,
but opposition from High Churchmen in the one camp and
rock-ribbed Calvinists in the other postponed accomplish-
ment.
Short of the ultimate gesture of union, cooperation
between faiths increased. In 1931 the National Catholic Wel-
fare Conference, Federal Council of Churches and General
Conference of Rabbis formed a Conference on the Permanent
* From the opening words of his first inaugural address concerning the "day
of consecration/* to such later allusions as in the annual message to Congress
in 1939: "Religion, by teaching man his relationship to God, gives the indi-
vidual a sense of his own dignity and teaches him to respect himself by re-
specting his neighbors/* F. D. Roosevelt, Public Papers and Addresses (S* L
Rosenman, ed., N. Y., 1938-1941), VIII, 1.
f Thirty denominations or conferences vainly rebuked this alleged overtnre
to Rome or asked Taylor's recall. American Year Book foe 1940, 663.
216 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Preventives of Unemployment, and three years later
Catholics, Protestants and Jews organized a nation-wide
Committee on Religion and Welfare Activity to support
more effectually all religious agencies for social betterment.
Despite occasional signs of ancient prejudice and friction
among irreconcilable members of these doctrinal camps, brave
efforts went forward toward common understanding, largely
under the banners of religious liberty and minority rights,
which elsewhere in the world were being trampled underfoot.
An array of minor religious cults attracted notice. The
so-called Oxford Group movement, sired by Dr. Frank N.
Buchman and cradled in the jazz age, undertook on the eve
of the Second World War a great publicity campaign for
"Moral Rearmament," preaching (in the words of the
founder) that "if men will be good, there will be no more
wars/' But the pacifism of "MRA" was soon overwhelmed
by the world upheaval, and the Groups which once
boasted contact with such dissimilar figures as Neville Cham-
berlain and Heinrich Himmler entered an eclipse,
A more hardy and primitive opposition to the coming
struggle arose from Jehovah's Witnesses, who declined either
to salute the flag or serve in the armed forces. They became
a storm center in communities ranging from Maine to Texas
and often the victims of mob violence. Started earlier in the
century by "Judge" Joseph R Rutherford, a Missourian,
the Witnesses developed into a folk sect not unlike that of
the Millerites and first-generation Mormons of a hundred
years before. Appealing to the poor and frustrated, they
"made hate into a religion/* attacking Catholicism with
singular ferocity, courting martyrdom by defying civil
authority and preaching the imminent Last Judgment. From
door to door they played gramophone records of sermons,
and on street corners hawked or gave away tracts. In the
year 1939 their forty thousand field workers distributed over
fifteen million documents and six million copies of the
Watchtower and similar periodicals. The gathering storms
AGE IN QUEST OF SECURITY 217
of war failed to shake their conscientious objections, stirring
fresh outbreaks against them and presenting the Supreme
Court with a long series of civil-liberty suits.
Perhaps the gaudiest cult was that of the Negro evangelist
Father Divine (born George Baker of Georgia ) who, after
years of obscurity on Long Island, entered Harlem in tri-
umph at the depth of the Depression in 1932 to establish
his reign under the credo that "the real God is the God who
feeds us/* and the incantation, "Peace, it's wonderful!" Be-
fore long his "Heavens" spread from Manhattan to the
colored population of other cities, offering devotees the bene-
fits of a common purse and shrewd business management
and providing ample food and the shelter of country estates
and resort hotels.*
Equally delirious was the Great I Am movement, fath-
ered by a self-styled mystic named Guy W. Ballard shortly
after he settled at Los Angeles in 1932* Offering to unlock
the wonder-working secrets of the medieval necromancer
Saint Germain and other "ascended Grand Masters,** he
promised his followers healing, wealth and power. At its
peak the movement claimed a third of a million converts in
a dozen major cities, but the trial of its leaders in the early
forties upon charges of using the mails to defraud brought
exposure, ridicule and declined A kindred enthusiasm called
Mankind United, devised in 1934 by another California
seer named Arthur Bell, blended spiritual magic with pseu-
doscience. Its proposal to usher in a fabulous age of freedom
from want and luxury for all by tapping sources of primal
energy at the earth's center attracted in its heyday about four-
teen thousand believers. This group, too, ran afoul of the
law, for shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
the leaders were convicted of violating the sedition statutes*
*R. A. Parker, Incredible Messiah (Boston, 1937).
f The Supreme Court ruled in 1944 that the defendants* lack of good faith
in their own claims might be challenged, though the truth or falsity of miracu-
lous healing and alleged communication with the spirit world was irrelevant to
the case. United States v. Ballard, 322 U. S., 78.
218 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
The growing secularization of American life for millions
made security here and now seem more real than those re-
wards which the Communists derisively termed pie in the
sky. But for many the two sorts of hunger were inevitably
mingled. And so these will-o'-the-wisps of cultism in the
thirties are perhaps as revelatory of the popular mind as
were more practical and material achievements in the domain
of social security*
CHAPTER XI
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS
ON no aspect of American life did the Depression have a
more striking effect than the use of leisure. Net sales of
amusement and sporting goods dropped from half a billion
dollars in 1929 to little over a quarter of a billion in 1933.
Federal taxes paid by recreational groups city athletic clubs,
country clubs, golf and tennis clubs declined more than
half between 1930 and 1934. Golf clubs alone lost about a
million members, and under acute financial stress many pri-
vate links were sold and converted to the daily-fee system of
operation. Social clubs and fraternal organizations appeared
to share the same eclipse.
On the other hand, simple home games jigsaw puzzles,
"monopoly/' checkers, chess, dominoes, backgammon, pitch-
ing quoits and horseshoes became immensely popular
whether as time killers or diversions from anxiety. Roose-
velt's best-known diversion, stamp collecting not unrelated
to the fecundity of his administration in issuing about a
hundred new varieties during its first five years publicized
a pastime which recruited the number of philatelists from an
estimated two million to nine. Bridge, for low stakes or
none, gained under the fillip of novelty lent by the variant
called contract. Ely Culbertson, author of best sellers on this
pastime, estimated that despite the hard times the nation
spent ten million dollars on bridge lessons alone in 1931
and, including purchase of playing cards, nearly a hundred
million in all. In suburbia, staying at home promoted a rena-
scence of badminton, ping-pong and at fresco suppers and
stimulated hobbies like amateur carpentry, mechanics, pigeon
219
220 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
racing and others reported on a popular radio program called
"Hobby Lobby/'
The lunatic fringes of sport dear to the twenties, such as
marathon dancing and flagpole sitting, persisted but with
diminishing vitality* A brief vogue for being buried alive
in 1934-1935 and a passing collegiate ardor for swallowing
goldfish, begun by a Harvard freshman in 1939 and carried
to strenuous heights by a Chicago student who devoured
three phonograph records, seemed afterthoughts from a
vanished day* Equally ephemeral was the passion for minia-
ture golf which in the summer of 1930 mushroomed into a
hundred-million-dollar business, but quickly ebbed, leaving
the face of the nation pitted with greens made of dyed cot-
tonseed. The mid-thirties witnessed fashions for slightly de-
mented parlor games: a sign language called "bandies"
favored in 1935, a routine of outrageous puns in 1936
prefaced by the words "Knock, knock who's there?" and
a modified version of the charade called "The Game" eman-
ating from Hollywood two years later*
Of collegiate sports football in particular displayed a new
sobriety. In 1931, for the first time in years, the receipts of
the "Big Ten'* fell below two million dollars; soon it was
remarked that "students in general seem less excited than
formerly over the outcome of games/* With easy money no
longer lining the pockets of alumni, deliriously alcoholic
week-ends declined no less visibly than did the "buying" of
promising athletes, while the stadiums built in the twenties
by huge bond issues now hardly met the interest on their
indebtedness. Some excellent teams were turned out, though,
and one of the most famous pigskin heroes, Byron ("Whiz-
zcr") White of the University of Colorado, combined his
ail-American rank with a Phi Beta Kappa key and election
to a Rhodes Scholarship. With an audacity unthinkable to
most, the University of Chicago in 1940 capped its heresies
by abolishing intercollegiate contests. From the decade's
middle years, however, professional football with a spirit
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 221
frankly uncollegiate won favor in many cities as a spectator
sport.
Professional baseball remained a hardy perennial, followed
over the radio by millions, its stars like "Pepper* * Martin,
Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio shining on every sports page
in the land. In the year 1939, observed as the centenary of
the National Game, the New York Yankees set an all-time
record by winning their fourth straight World Series only
to lose in the next year to the Cincinnati Reds. In 1940 and
again in 1941 the Brooklyn Dodgers after twenty years'
obscurity emerged as challengers for national recognition,
and with their colorful style and cocky self-assertion excited
popular imagination as no other team had ever done.
Heavyweight boxing, moribund since Gene Tunney's re-
tirement in 1928, woke to new life with the advent of Joe
Louis, a powerful Negro youth who came up from Alabama
by way of the automobile factories of Detroit to garner an
almost unbroken string of victories. His knockout of Max
Baer in New York's Yankee Stadium in 1935 drew the first
million-dollar gate since 1927* Bested by Max Schmeling
in 1936, the "Brown Bomber" so mauled his adversary in
the first round of a return engagement two years later that
Nazi Germany's premier athlete had to be hospitalized. After
flooring "Jim** Braddock in 1937 Louis possessed the world's
championship in a grasp so firm that public interest and the
gate receipts once more began to flag. Meanwhile juvenile
talent in the ring was fostered by the Golden Gloves tourna-
ment, which spread from national to international competi-
tion, and furnished the milieu for one of Clifford Odets's
successful plays, "Golden Boy" (1937).
In two other sports the retirement from amateur compe-
tition of old masters let down the bars to a host of younger
aspirants. After setting an all-time record in 1930 by win-
ning the American and British amateur and open golf
championships, Robert T. ("Bobby") Jones left the field
to such contenders as Johnny Goodman, Olin Dutra, Lawson
222 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Little and Byron Nelson* In tennis William T. Tilden by
turning professional in 1931 relinquished the spotlight to
youths like Ellsworth Vines, Donald Budge and Frank
Parker, while in the women's ranks Alice Marble succeeded
to the croavn of Helen Wills Moody. After long holding the
Davis Cup, probably the most famous international trophy,
the United States lost it to Australia in 1939, just as the
curtain of war fell upon competitive tennis.
The Depression and New Deal not only deflated costly
sports and athletic spectacles but also fostered mass partici-
pation. In seeking to redress past neglect the conscience of the
thirties considered the needs of low-income groups, particu-
larly the growing generation. With municipal budgets badly
slashed, however, the authorities could hardly rise to the
occasion* The supervision of many playgrounds would have
broken down completely in 1932-1933 save for the volun-
teering of some citizens as recreation leaders aided by a
skeleton staff of paid workers. From 1933 onward, how-
ever, the start of huge public- works programs gave the cause
of mass recreation a propulsion never before known*
The initial emphasis fell upon parks and forest reserves,
whose growth, according to a National Park Service official
in 1935, was advanced a normal half-century by the first
two years of CCC labor* Lakes were created, cabins built
trails carved to mountain peaks. In July, 1933, federal funds
made possible the purchase of a vast area in the Great Smoky
Mountains as one of the most attractive national parks* The
next spring the Biological Survey, headed by an intransigent
Republican but ardent conservationist, the cartoonist J* N.
Darling ("Ding"), persuaded Congress to set up fish and
game sanctuaries in the national forests.
Under such pace-setting and the availability of CCC labor
to enhance state and community parks, local governments
awoke to the opportunity* Virginia, West Virginia, South
Carolina* Mississippi, New Mexico, Nevada and Montana
all acquired their first state parks during the initial two years
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 223
of the New Deal. California created seven new ones in 1933
alone, and Texas set aside nearly a quarter of a million acres
in the Big Bend of the Rio Grande River. In brief, more
than six hundred thousand acres were added to state pre-
serves between 1933 and 1936, while the annual federal
purchase of forest land, mainly for parks and wild-life
refuges, rose from a pre-Roosevelt average of about half a
million acres to two million in 1935*
The public was not slow to accord approval. In 1934, the
first year national parks kept travel statistics, six million
visitors were reported; by 1938 the total surpassed sixteen
million. Facilities like camp sites and picnic grounds and
the spread of the youth-hostel movement fostered hiking as
a pastime. By 1937 in New England alone seventy-six
hostels at fifteen-mile intervals stretched along a thousand-
mile chain of trails. The rise of the American Camping
Association was another significant development, as was the
formation of the Cub Scouts, an adjunct to the Boy Scouts
designed to promote outdoor life and manliness among lads
aged seven to ten*
For both youth and adults winter sports increased in
favor. In 1930 a New England railroad scheduled the first
snow train. Two years later the winter Olympics at Lake
Placid kindled widespread interest, and this fact, coupled
with the park facilities and ski runs and jumps built by the
CCC on the public domain and with commercial ventures
like the Union Pacific's well-advertised Sun Valley in Idaho,
resulted in such trains carrying tens of thousands out of
Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Salt Lake City,
Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Nor did urban recreation fail to benefit* Between 1930
and 1940 the number of cities reporting parks grew from
nine hundred to almost fifteen hundred, their acreage from
three hundred thousand to nearly half a million. During the
last five years of the decade attendance at playgrounds
doubled, at swimming centers almost doubled and at picnic
224 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
centers increased tenfold. Here, too, the New Deal con-
tributed funds and labor* The PWA spent over forty
million dollars building athletic facilities under local super-
vision; and the NYA with a much smaller budget in 1937
reported that sixteen thousand of its employees were improv-
ing parks, while fifteen thousand served as leaders in crafts,
dancing, drama, music and the like.
The greatest benefactor, the WPA, constructed tens of
thousands of swimming pools and tennis courts, laid out or
improved hundreds of municipal parks, golf courses and
playing fields and, in collaboration with schools and exten-
sion services, supervised innumerable sports programs, em-
ploying more than forty thousand persons as of June, 1939,
in the role of recreation leaders* About half this recreation
program dealt with physical exercise, including Softball,
archery and shuffleboard. The rest lent great encouragement
to the depression-sired revival of square dances, folk dances,
singing games and amateur drama.
New Deal expenditures, involving at least one and a half
billion dollars for permanent recreation facilities, were by
no means solely responsible for increasing the nation's play
life. Many municipalities took a vigorous stand. For ex-
ample, when Fiorello LaGuardia early in 1934 became
mayor of New York, he and his indefatigable park com-
missioner, Robert. Moses, launched a program, supported by
local and federal funds and the sinews of seventy thousand
relief workers, which started by destroying fashionable
Central Park Casino, and building on its site a children's
playground. Moses drained the swamps of Flushing Meadow
to make a World's Fair ground, and cleansed sewage-pol-
luted waters and outfitted Jones Beach on Long Island for
the accommodation of more than a hundred thousand people
for swimming and sun bathing.
The greatest good of the greatest number was the new
keynote of recreation. In most cities the formal landscape
park, prized by the later nineteenth and early twentieth
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 225
centuries, sacrificed some of its scenic perfection to make way
for pools, playgrounds, bridle paths and the like: the sign
"Keep OS the Grass" grew rarer. Similar democratization
filtered into organized games. The national lawn-tennis and
golf associations began sponsoring public-parks champion-
ships, the winners playing in the national finals. In 1939 the
tennis champion was Seymour Greenberg, a Jewish lad from
Chicago, who thus obtained a place on the Junior Davis Cup
squad, while the victor in golf was Andy Swedzko, a Pitts-
burgh steelworker.
Minor fashions came and went, such as the cycling revival
of 1933-1935, which temporarily boosted the annual output
of bicycles above the half-million mark for the first time
since 1899 and, incidentally, helped introduce women's
slacks. The firm grip of the automobile, however, was not
to be dislodged. In 1935 no fewer than thirty-five million
vacationers were still thronging the highways. The tourist
camp, catering to purses from those of "Okies" up to way-
farers desiring promenade terraces and dancing pavilions,
continued to flourish until the advent of gasoline restrictions
late in 1941. A Kentucky commercial traveler named Duncan
Hines sold hundreds of thousands of his guides to good
restaurants and lodgings along the highway. Despite the ap-
peal of new models with draft ventilators, sloping radiators,
free wheeling, "airflow" design, hydraulic brakes and hydro-
matic gears, numberless Americans clung to old cars longer
than ever before. In all, over thirty million cars and trucks
were in use by the close of the era.*
For a time the innovation of the trailer looked portentous.
In 1929 a bacteriologist named Arthur G. Sherman built a
house on wheels to be towed behind his car, made several for
his neighbors and exhibited one at the 1930 Detroit Auto-
* The production in 1929 of over five and a half million cars and tmcks
fell to below one and a half million in 1932, then commenced a slow climb
to regain predepression figures by 1937. World Almanac for 1941, 587, which
reported the world total of automobiles at only forty-five million*
226 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
mobile Show, Competitors quickly entered the field, and by
1936 fifty thousand a year were rolling off production lines,
costing six or seven hundred dollars apiece and containing
cooking as well as sleeping units* Many homemade ones also
joined the highway procession. To the restless and uprooted,
seeking adventure or a job and wary of taxes and rent, this
self-sufficient vehicle held the lure of house boat or tramp
steamer* By the summer of 1938, however, the novelty had
worn thin, and sales slumped badly.
The eclipse of the trailer, with its cumbrous sway on
curves and blocking of visibility, undoubtedly served the
interests of safety* That consideration needed every aid in an
era of increasing congestion and high speeds which exacted
an annual toll of forty thousand deaths and a million and a
quarter injuries, two thirds of them manifestly preventable*
A gory description of highway mortality, " And Sudden
Death/' written by X C Furnas for the Reader's Digest in
1935 and distributed also in four million reprints, had little
visible effect, for nearly two thousand more fatalities oc-
curred in 1936 than the year before* After the attainment
of a record high in 1937 the accident rate fell somewhat for
the rest of the era, thanks probably to stiffer penalties for
lawbreakers, safe-driving pledges and local newspaper cam-
paigns against "mixing alcohol and gasoline."
For many persons bus travel offered substantial savings
over rail fares, if at some sacrifice in comfort* A popular
movie, "It Happened One Night" (1934), presented such
overland journeys in romantic guise. The number of pas-
sengers, including children in school busses, rose from fewer
than one and three-quarter billion fares in 1933 to more
than four and three-quarter billion in 1941*
Passenger bus and freight van had made considerable in-
roads upon railway traffic even before the Depression struck*
With their overcapitalization the lines were caught short,
and between 1929 and 1933 both passenger and freight
revenues declined fifty per cent* In consequence almost a
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 227
third of the nation's total mileage tottered into receivership
or bankruptcy despite early and prolonged resuscitative ef-
forts by the RFC. To stimulate patronage the Western com-
panies shrewdly slashed passenger fares from 3.2 to 2 cents a
mile, with a fifty-per-cent gain in business. When Eastern
railroads seemed reluctant to follow suit, their hand was
forced in June, 1936, by the Interstate Commerce Commis-
sion, and the whole national picture brightened. Meanwhile,
public- works projects in many localities undertook to elimi-
nate grade crossings for faster and also safer operation.
Seeking to make rail travel more alluring, the roads began
to adopt air conditioning. "Manufactured weather* *
promptly taken up by many shops and movie houses for the
comfort of patrons and by industrialists for the efficiency of
workers developed into a seventeen-million-dollar annual
industry by 1935. Air-conditioned Pullmans and coaches
became standard equipment on all crack trains, vastly pro-
moting seasonal travel in the South and arid Southwest and
on some roads increasing summer traffic by as much as a
fourth. Another improvement was the use of Diesel engines.
In 1934 the Union Pacific pioneered a complete Diesel-
powered train constructed of duralumin, and its competitor
on the Chicago-Denver run, the Burlington, quickly fol-
lowed with the first of its flashing stainless-steel "Zephyrs."
These trains running at speeds up to ninety miles per hour
brought the Rocky Mountains within overnight range of
Chicago. Thereupon most of the big railroads went in
heavily for "streamlining," pervasively influencing automo-
bile design as well.
Aviation underwent a far greater transformation. At the
start of this era the age of barnstorming, flying circuses and
sight-seeing tours from local airports was only just past its
prime; among the three and a half million Americans who
flew in 1929 the great majority went up for the thrill. Six
thousand planes were being manufactured a year, with sales
totaling eighty-seven million dollars. Depression brought a
228 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
temporary decrease, but by 1937 the business had rallied to
reach an annual hundred and twenty-four million* The out-
break of the Second World War in Europe found the indus-
try with a capacity of fifteen thousand planes a year, giving
employment to fifty thousand workers. WPA and other ex-
penditures on the construction of airports and landing strips
then amounted to about a hundred and seventy-two million,
which jumped another hundred million in 1941 alone,
In April, 1930, the Lindberghs set a dawn-to-dusk trans-
continental record of fourteen and three quarters hours, and
in 1931 Wiley Post and Harold Gatty rounded the globe in
eight days and fifteen hours records which by the close of
the decade seemed primitive indeed, with flyers spanning the
continent in seven hours and girdling the earth in less than
four days. Not only the records but the heroes of yesteryear
were gone, with Post, accompanied by the beloved humorist
Will Rogers, a crash fatality of 1935 in Alaska, and Charles
A* Lindbergh laboring under a cloud of isolationism and
mystic racism.
These years saw other developments as well. A clash in
1934 between the Roosevelt administration and the nation's
seventeen commercial air lines over mail contracts resulted in
the army's disastrous attempt to fly the mail and then in the
passage of an improved air-mail act in 1935. The next year
the "China Clipper" made its initial flight to Manila and in
1939 passenger service was begun to Europe. Coast-to-coast
travel in giant air cruisers at two hundred miles an hour,
with overnight sleepers and navigation steadily improved by
radio beacons, helped to make aviation no longer an adven-
ture or amusement but the channel for a huge traffic, carrying
by 1940 about three million passengers over a hundred and
twenty million miles, along with fourteen million pounds of
freight Besides public carriers some sixteen thousand private
plaaes were ranging the skies on the eve of the Second World
War. Thanks in large part to the Civilian Pilot Training
Program instituted in 1939 to teach college-age youths to
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 229
fly, the number of certified civilian pilots, which stood at less
than sixteen thousand in 1937, had by the end of 1941 at-
tained a hundred thousand. The air-mindedness of young
America, among students in manual-arts and engineering
schools and amateur mechanics who a generation earlier
would have tinkered with flivvers, forecast development of
the world's largest aircraft plants and the servicing of the
mightiest aerial fleet mobilized for that struggle.
Of the sedentary diversions of these years none surpassed
that of listening to the radio. In 1929, when the cost still
averaged over a hundred dollars, twelve million families
owned receiving sets. The Depression not only brought lower
prices but also great audiences with time to kill: four million
families purchased radios during the abysmal years 1930-
1932. By the beginning of 1940 twenty-eight million
homes, or eighty-six per cent of the population, owned a
total of forty-four million sets, with saturation nowhere in
sight. By this means an increasing proportion of the people
absorbed a varied fare of news, politics, advertising, informa-
tion and entertainment. The Office of Radio Research, set up
in 1937 by Rockefeller funds to study the impact of broad-
casting upon American life, hopefully suggested that radio
aided more than it impaired the reading habits of listeners.
It was doubtful, however, that the place of reading in the
home remotely rivaled the four-and-a-half hours during
which the average household radio was in daily use.
According to the radio act of 1927 and the communica-
tions act of 1934 the air waves belonged to the public do-
main for use "in the public convenience, interest, and neces-
sity." Stations were simply lessees of part of that dominion,
whose limits were thought to be staked out irrevocably by
the eighty-nine wave lengths possible for broadcasting with-
out interference. But the number of practicable frequencies
suddenly bade fair to multiply after the disclosure in 1935 by
Professor Edwin H. Armstrong of Columbia of frequency
modulation (FM), by which static could be eliminated as
230 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
well as greater tonal fidelity achieved. In 1940 the Federal
Communications Commission, a regulatory body set up by
Congress in 1934, authorized commercial operation of FM
stations.
The public's thirst for news analysis and clarification lent
a new popularity to commentators Raymond Gram Swing,
H. V. Kaltenborn, Lowell Thomas, Gabriel Heatter and
others to whose opinions about the Munich crisis, the Sino-
Japanese conflict, the invasion of Poland and the fall of
France millions intently listened. Moreover, between 1932
and 1939 the volume of news carried by radio almost
doubled. In the summer of 1939 a Fortane poll asking,
"Which of the two radio or newspaper gives you news
freer from prejudice?** reported fifty per cent for radio,
seventeen for the press and almost a third undecided or dis-
posed to give them parity*
Yet, in face of the world crisis, radio's policy often mir-
rored the timidity of owners and advertisers. Alexander
Woollcott the "Town Crier 1 ' was taken off the air in 1935
by an uneasy sponsor after rude remarks about Hitler and
Mussolini; Du Pont's excellent dramatizations of history,
"The Cavalcade of America," officially eschewed all such
issues as war and peace, the class struggle and religion; and a
canvass by the FCC of all broadcasts during the first six
months of 1941 revealed the curiously lackadaisical role
played by local stations in educating the public against the
day of military decision.
The New Deal's best radio propagandist was President
Roosevelt himself, whose warm democratic salutation "My
friends" had been adopted as early as his vain campaign for
the vice-presidency in 1920. His direct, intimate appeal to
the people built a personal leadership unprecedented in its
influence; not infrequently fifty thousand letters a day fol-
lowed a "fireside chat/' Recordings of these speeches through
the years show changes in Roosevelt's technique, from the
old-fashioned sonorous style with oratorical pauses learned
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 231
in preradio days, to a lower pitch and softer, relaxed, more
engaging address better suited to the unseen audience.
That the radio had become an immense political force was
being demonstrated in another way by the Axis dictators as
well as by home-grown demagogues like Father Coughlin
and Huey Long. Not only did it carry nuances and subtle
emotion denied to print, but it tended to arrest in the listener
those critical impulses that often led a reader to turn back to
the dubious or imperfectly understood. Startling evidence of
its hypnotic effect on the mass imagination was afforded by a
broadcast of the young actor Orson Welles on the evening of
October 30, 1938, a month after the Munich crisis. Based
upon H. G. Wells's Wat of the Worlds and punctuated by
announcements that should have carried reassurance, the
sketch purported to describe a rocket-borne invasion of Mar-
tians, equipped with flame throwers and heat rays, who pro-
ceeded to ravage the New Jersey countryside until slain by the
disease bacteria of this planet. Not pausing for that denoue-
ment, at least a million auditors became upset or terror-
stricken, many forsaking their homes afoot or by car in panic.
The potency of the air waves was not overlooked by the
advertiser. While newspaper advertising never regained its
1929 peak of eight hundred million dollars, radio salesman-
ship mounted year by year until in 1941 it was doing a two-
hundred-million-dollar business. over a third of that vouch-
safed its competitor with magazines occupying third place*
Growing constantly more blatant, radio advertising featured
the singing commercial, the middle commercial flanked by
those incidental opening and closing plugs called by the trade
"cowcatchers" and "hitchhikers/* and the "give-away" to re-
ward a listener's correct answer to a telephone call from the
studio* The ratio of commercial to noncommercial or "sus-
taining" programs appeared steadily on the wane, advertisers'
demands relegating some of the best public-service features to
unpopular listening hours.
Helpless to throttle the radio as an advertising medium.
232 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
the newspaper press for a time tried to prevent its access to
a regular flow of the world's news. In 1934, however, the
feud was composed by the so-called press-radio agreement
and formation of the Transradio Press Service, which out-
lasted that pact At the same time newspapers rapidly in-
creased their ownership of stations, sometimes monopolizing
all the news outlets in a given community. Within the single
year 1935 the number of stations so owned doubled, and by
1940 no less than a third of the nation's eight hundred li-
censed stations were tied in one way or another to news-
papers. Concentration also characterized the national net-
works, whose slickly professional programs, originating
chiefly in New York and Hollywood, were piped to local
stations all over the land. Three big chains commanded the
field: the National Broadcasting Company, whose Red and
Blue networks in 1938 controlled a hundred and forty-eight
stations by ownership or affiliation, the Columbia Broadcast-
ing System with a hundred and fifteen, and Mutual (a new-
comer dating from 1934) eighty-three.
Though educational programs were the exception rather
than the rule, certain of them attained a nation-wide follow-
ing, notably "The University of Chicago Round Table/'
"Invitation to Learning," "Science on the March" and "Art
for Your Sake," which presented knowledge stripped of the
husks of pedantry typical of old-fashioned lecture methods.
In 1935 began the "Town Meeting of the Air," staging a
brisk debate over current issues which sought to recapture the
atmosphere of New England's historic institution. The per-
plexities of wealth and poverty, war and peace, stimulated the
public forum not only on the ether but in other surround-
ings, including the "Town Hall" idea which spread in the
thirties to cities in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Texas and
elsewhere. By 1936 the United States commissioner of edu-
cation stated that, out of three hundred and fifty public
forums regularly attracting half a million persons, more than
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 233
two thirds had been started since the onset of the Great De-
pression.
Fashions in entertainment came and went. After the success
in 1936 of "Professor Quiz/' question-and-answer programs
like "Information Please" and "The Quiz Kids" burgeoned
mightily. Such unrehearsed contests reflected a vogue similar
to that featuring sidewalk interviews, guessing games and
amateur hours, with a large element of audience participa-
tion. The radio serial proved to be a universal favorite, illus-
trated early in the era by the vast popularity of "Amos V
Andy/' blackface comedians whose voices could be heard of
a summer evening echoing block after block as one walked
the streets of any suburb, or the plenitude of "soap operas"
which later in the decade came to rule the daytime hours,
dedicated to the praise of soap flakes and washing powders
between interstices of tears and laughter in their plots of
homely romance.* For juveniles the decade's hero was the
"Lone Ranger/* who made his debut in 1933 a stalwart
without fear or vices, whose cry "Hi-Yo, Silver!'* heralded
his arrival upon that trusty steed to redress wrong and succor
the weak. By the close of the era radio's best-known per-
sonality had come to be an impudent puppet named Charlie
McCarthy, creation of the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen*
Music occupied over half of radio's daily log, and more of
it than ever before was of high quality. In 1930 Columbia
began its Sunday broadcasting of New York Philharmonic
concerts; the following year the National Broadcasting Com-
pany launched its Saturday-afternoon series of grand operas
from the Metropolitan; and in 1937 it persuaded the world-
* According to a Manhattan columnist, "Toni Jo Henry, a 2 6 -year-old mur-
dress, . . . told this interviewer about the thoughts of a condemned person.
Tm worried a little about "Abie's Irish Rose/' a radio serial/ she stated. 'Every
day I used to listen to it. But they discontinued the serial till September.
I won't be here in September/ The producers ... are forwarding to Miss
Henry a short synopsis of the story which will be broadcast in installments
from September until June." "What Do We Know about Daytime Serial
Listeners?" in P. F. Lazarsfeld and F. N. Stanton, eds., Radio Research 1942"
1943 (N. Y., 1944), 3-33.
234 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
famous conductor, Artaro Toscanini, to undertake a memor-
able series with its own symphony orchestra* Over ten mil-
lion families, according to a 1939 estimate, listened to such
music; a poll in this year indicated that, save on the farm
and at the bottom of the economic scale, those who enjoyed
"classical" music outnumbered those desiring exclusively
"popular/' When in 1940 the Metropolitan Opera Company
in severe financial straits appealed to its invisible audience,
they contributed a third of a million dollars to "save the
Met/'
Music appreciation in the home saw the performer's role
steadily supplanted, however, by the auditor's. While the
radio was outstripping even the phonograph in popularity,
father's fiddle gathered dust, and in affluent homes the piano
remained oftentimes as a piece of prestige furniture. In 1939
only sixteen million copies of sheet music were sold as com-
pared with forty-five million records of popular melodies.
The invasion of music by radio, whether "live" or "canned/*
was greater still though harder to measure, while the life ex-
pectancy of a popular song, under furious exploitation by the
"Lucky Strike Hit Parade" and similar programs, grew
vastly shorter**
Both radio and phonograph fostered the continued popu-
larity of dancing, which had swept the twenties under the
heady inspiration of jazz, that powerful if almost indefinable
rhythmic style* About 1931, when a popular song was urg-
ing the depressed to "wrap your troubles in dreams, and
dream your troubles away/' the plangent bravado of jazz
temporarily faded from fashion before the soothing hypnotic
strains of "sweet" bands like those of Guy Lombardo,
Wayne King and Eddy Duchin. An advance-guardist of new
* Music publishers computed the lifetime of a preradio favorite at nearly
two years as against four months or less under the constant titillation and
quick satiety wrought by radio. Novelties like "The Music Goes Round and
Round" (1935) and "Flat-Foot Floogie" (1938) wore out in from six to
eight weeks, but ballads like "The Last Round-Up" (1933) enjoyed better
than average durability.
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 235
modes in jazz who died in that year the trumpeter Leon
("Bix") Beiderbecke would later be recalled nostalgically
by Dorothy Baker's fine novel of the artist as jazzman,
Young Man with a Horn (1938).
Early in 1934, perhaps as a harbinger of recovery, the
spirit of jazz was reborn, largely by the superb clarinet re-
cordings and dance-band broadcasts of Benny Goodman, ex-
ponent of what European connoisseurs called le jazz hot* It
soon gained a new name, swing. A more dynamic form of
syncopation and superimposed rhythm, an intense yet easy
floating that "gets there on time'* and in expert hands cap-
able of rich improvisation swing retained the essence of its
parent, jazz. " 'Swing' is to jazz what the poetic spirit is to
poetry/' wrote one lyric journalist in the winter of 1935-
1936 when "jam sessions" and Hot Clubs were springing up
over the nation* An incidental term in high favor was "boo-
gie-woogie/* signifying piano music in which an insistent
rolling left-hand pattern mingled with the fancy-free inven-
tions of the right.
Millions of youthful feet indorsed the new style. Fervent
connoisseurs called themselves hep-cats, and the actively de-
vout jitterbugs. When they "got in the groove" and "went to
town/' the results were apt to be more kinetic than graceful.
Late in 1937 a dance called the Big Apple conquered the
country, bearing some likeness to the old square dance in
which a "caller" at the center of the floor summoned one
couple after another to "rise and shine/* Among the more
popular turns were the Suzy-Q, truckin* or shagging, while
in 1938 the Lambeth Walk, cockney importation for group
dancing, vied in favor with a local routine called the Lindy
Hop. The dancing mania of youth, with its accompanying
argot and the "drape-shape" or "zoot-suit" clothes affected
by certain zealots near the end of this era, puzzled elders
often to the point of alarm. In the main, however, the cult of
swing was more athletic than erotic, and the sartorial ex-
tremes sometimes associated with it were the compensatory
236 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
mechanisms (to borrow another sort of jargon) devised by
certain submerged juvenile groups, notably Negro and Mex-
ican, in the big cities. The jitterbug age was youth's last fling
before the bugles sounded wan
Motion pictures the nation's fourth largest industry in
the previous decade remained the topmost commercial
amusement The initial thrill of the "all-talking, all-singing"
picture, particularly the delight of hearing the voices of stars
long adored in silent films, helped to tide the industry over
depression's first shallows, although about a third of all reg-
ularly operated movie houses had closed by midsummer,
1933, shortly before the current of recovery began to flow.
By 1939 box-office receipts at the country's fifteen thousand
motion-picture theaters had risen to nearly seven hundred
million dollars, a yearly average of twenty-five dollars per
family. "Five years ago million-dollar films were so rare that
the trade papers gave editorial ravings to their announce-
ment/' observed the New York Times on October 24, 1937.
"Today they get no more than a few lines on an inside
page/'
Technicolor, essayed in several mediocre scenarios in 1929-
1930 while the processes were still crude, proved at first a dis-
appointment; but in 1932 a new three-color method was
launched successfully by Walt Disney in his animated car-
toon "Flowers and Trees/* first of his "Silly Symphonies"
in color, and triumphantly in "The Three Little Pigs"
(1933), its theme, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"
just suited to the nation's rally in morale. Disney had arrived
in Hollywood in 1926 from the Middle West and two years
later created Mickey Mouse, a failure in silent films before the
talking picture "Steamboat Willie" (1928) started the all-
resourceful rodent on his way to world herohood. As the
thirties waned Mickey was reported to be losing ground be-
fore a later Disney creation, Donald Duck. Was it possible
that Donald's strident panic was closer to the new Zeitgeist
than Mickey's brassy individualism? The author of these
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 237
"fairy tales of the machine age" also exhibited his versatility
m "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1938), his first
full-length picture, photographed from nearly half-a-million
paintings in sequence, and "Fantasia" (1940), a bold at-
tempt to blend classical music with pictorial and often ab-
stract art.
The content of most motion pictures still was designed for
escape, the majority reflecting the tastes of tired or jaded
adults seeking a never-never land of luxury and melodrama,
sex and sentiment far less wholesome fare for young movie
addicts than Disney's world and fruitful of dubious social ef-
fects. Irony also lay in the fact that this Hollywood product
increasingly went to markets all over the globe, where it
passed for something it had been designed specifically not to
represent, namely, average American life. Its milieu appeared
not merely one of passion, licit or illicit, interlarded with
gunplay, but also dedicated to glamourizing urban above
small-town or rural civilization, wealth instead of moderate
means, heroes from the leisure classes, Big Business or the
professions rather than from the ranks of agriculture or labor*
Such presentations of life, though no more gravely out of
perspective than those of the theater, were seen daily by many
millions, and to an era of social responsibility these facts
seemed more disturbing than to the mind of the 1920's.
Not surprising, therefore, was the rise in the thirties of two
movements concerned with the cinema's public obligations,
one looking to morality, the other to economic and social
education. Early depression days found Hollywood appar-
ently oblivious of the crisis but pursuing sex themes, started
in the jazz age, into the new medium of sophisticated re-
partee and innuendo made possible by the talkies and adorned
by such talents as those of curvaceous Mae West and sultry
Jean Harlow. This preoccupation with sex was generally
blamed, not upon the public who seemed to like it, but upon
the movie makers, in the main Jewish Americans. The para-
dox of the home-loving Jew with his strong family solidarity
238 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
and loyalty, transgressing the public moral codes of a Gentile
civilization with the highest divorce rate in the world, was
not without its piquancy. "The Christian wishes to protect
society at large, even if he should himself violate some of
its rules of morality/* wrote a thoughtful Jewish observer.
"The Jew wishes to exploit society, while he himself exer-
cises restraint/'
Under leadership from a group of Catholic bishops the
Legion of Decency was formed in April, 1934, to ride herd
on these film executives. Moral suasion went hand in glove
with the threat of boycott by the faithful and support from
many devout Protestants. Will Hays, Hollywood's official
conscience as chief of the Motion Picture Producers and Dis-
tributors, promptly dusted off a production code drafted in
1930 to curb screen portrayal of license and crime and ap-
pointed an Irish Catholic, Joseph I. Breen, as its policeman.
The results were almost sensational. Hollywood, wavering
between the two biggest successes of the past year Mae
West in "She Done Him Wrong" and Katharine Hepburn in
"Little Women" now plumped heartily for pigtails and
gingerbread, summoning to the studio "Mrs. Wiggs of the
Cabbage Patch/' "Anne of Green Gables" and "The Girl of
the Limberlost." Even Miss West's next vehicle, anticipa-
tively billed as "It Ain't No Sin/* demurely emerged as
"The Belle of the Nineties." Henceforth the quota of pictures
blacklisted by the Legion of Decency shrank to a small frac-
tion, largely foreign films and bootleg productions on the
"sex circuit." The most effective censorship bloc in Holly-
wood's history admittedly had scored its point.
Less localized, the second movement arose from the per-
vasive conviction in some circles within and outside the in-
dustry that movies should be something more than an escape
hatch* An instrument for rousing mass emotions and im-
planting ideas, the cinema in times of crisis held a responsi-
bility so huge that timid producers seemed averse to essay
tbemes drawn from unemployment and the Great Depres-
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 239
sion, or of class and race conflict, farm peonage, delinquency
and penology, freedom and totalitarianism,
Oftener perhaps than the big studios, independent pro-
ducers felt the urge to experiment, as illustrated in the pic-
tures made by the veteran actor Charlie Chaplin* His first
with music and sound effects, "City Lights ' (1931) , briefly
touched upon the ironies of unemployment and showed
Charlie, the starving tramp, dissuading a broker from suicide
by slapping his own puny chest and exhorting the titan to
buck up. More explicit was "Modern Times" (1936), a
view of regimentation in the machine age, with class riots,
jails, Hoovervilles, the speed-up and other forms of exploita-
tion, until finally the little man went mad and fled the hive
of mass production* Banned from Italy and Germany, this
film was succeeded by "The Great Dictator' (1940) , assail-
ing even worse kinds of regimentation* Although Chaplin's
ability to mimic Hitler no longer seemed very funny to audi-
ences at that late hour, the actor made amends by an impas-
sioned closing plea for personal liberty, racial and religious
tolerance*
Among major producers the Warner Brothers pioneered in
controversial themes* Their box-office success "I Am a Fugi-
tive from a Chain Gang" (1932) induced competitors to
follow* In 1934 "Our Daily Bread" dealt with subsistence
farming, while "Imitation of Life" shyly approached racism.
The next year "Black Fury" attempted an impartial por-
trayal of coal strikes, and 1936 brought "Fury," a stark
vision of lynch law that conceded a sentimental end, and
"Millions of Us," an anonymous Hollywood product on the
subject of joblessness and unionization* The following year
marked the apogee of Hollywood's social consciousness, with
such pictures as "They Won't Forget," treating mass hatred
and mobs; "Black Legion," about race terrorism in the
Middle West; "White Bondage," the sharecropper's struggle
for life; "Make Way for Tomorrow," the tragedy of old
age lacking social security; "Dead End," the slums as breed-
240 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
ing grounds for crime, a topic soon better handled in "Boys
of the Street"; and "The Life of Emile Zola/' penman of
social justice. Not infrequently the stock plot of the mid-
thirties in pictures like "One More Spring/* "Little Man,
What Now?" "My Man Godfrey" and "Mr. Deeds Goes to
Town'* showed poverty and unemployment miraculously
solved by luck, chiefly in the person of an eccentric philan-
thropist.
Political themes of international import were not lacking,
though Hollywood shelved Sinclair Lewis's antifascist novel
It Can't Happen Here as too hot to handle in its foreign mar-
ket. A picture of 1934 called "The President Vanishes" dis-
closed a plot by bankers and munitions makers (currently
under scrutiny by the Nye committee) to start a second world
conflict and their frustration by the chief executive. The same
year saw release of the grim newsreel shots which Laurence
Stallings pieced together under the significant title "The First
World War/' In 1939, however, Hollywood began to pre-
pare for the next war, with "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" and
"Espionage Agent" and a series of patriotic shorts like "Sons
of Liberty," "Remember the Alamo" and "Teddy Roose-
velt" Henceforth war pictures and subjects drawn from
American history swelled to a flood, while a streamlined
newsreel series called "The March of Time" (started in 1935
by editors of Time) produced in "The Ramparts We
Watch" (1940) a stirring recollection of the First World
War.
Some pictures primarily for entertainment reached higher
levels of technical finish and maturity of content than the
best of the twenties. The hallmark of quality appeared in
films as diverse as the dancing comedies of Fred Astaire and
Ginger Rogers; "The Informer" (1935), its titular role
played by Victor McLaglen, a tragedy of the Irish revolu-
tion; "Dodsworth" (1936), with Walter Huston in the
lead; 'The Good Earth" (1937), Luise Rainer's portrayal
of Chinese motherhood; "Ninotchka" (1939) , a witty satire
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 241
upon the Soviets; Philip Barry's social comedy "The Phil-
adelphia Story" (1940); and "Citizen Kane" (1941), the
tale of a newspaper tycoon destroyed by his own corrosive
ego, written, acted and directed by Orson Welles.
Distributors intent upon making movie attendance seem
both a bargain and a chance to get something for nothing re-
sorted to various devices. First came the double feature. Ex-
cept in thrifty New England this innovation was unknown
until 1931 when Hollywood applied pressure to theater
chains and local managers to accept block booking that is,
a certain quota of second-rate films along with the good, and
a bigger yearly total than actually needed. Exhibitors acqui-
esced, hoping that more entertainment, or at least more time-
killing, would attract depression customers, as apparently it
did, and within a year double billing had been adopted by
one cut of five of the "better" accounts and hordes of the less
prosperous. The general effect of block booking and double
features was to imperil quality, leading youthful habitues
to prefer two movies to a single picture however good, A
Gallup poll in 1940 found nearly three out of five persons
disliking double features, but strong affirmative majorities
from youth and poorer patrons. This poll also revealed that
weekly attendance at the films averaged fifty- four million
far below what the industry had long claimed for itself. In
this same year a federal suit in equity brought by independent
exhibitors and their allies against the eight major film com-
panies, charging that block booking was a combination in
restraint of trade, reached compromise with help from the de-
partment of justice. In a modest antitrust victory, sales were
limited to blocks of five pictures instead of the fifty common
before.
A second development designed to coddle mediocre movies
was Bank Night, sometimes styled Prosperity Night or Movie
Sweepstakes. Begun in 1933 in the small Colorado town of
Delta, it spread within five years to at least half the nation's
picture theaters. With luck one might win a car or a several-
242 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
hundred-dollar jackpot for the price of only two tickets, the
first to obtain a lottery number and the second for admission
on the night of the drawing. Among other similar schemes
movie houses would offer substantial give-aways at "banko"
or "screeno," their version of a simple gambling game which
millions played from 1935 onward under names like
"bingo," "beano" or "keno." Each player received a board
filled with squares numbered in haphazard order; as numbers
were drawn and called out, beans or other markers were laid
upon the corresponding number until the first player to fill
out a straight line shouted "Bingo!" and claimed the stakes.
When the game was employed as a fund-raising device for
churches, lodges and local charity, the "house" reaped a
profit from each player's entry fee. The Catholic hierarchy
which frowned upon gambling only if the odds were pa-
tently unfair or if it tempted the player to hazard what he
did not own gave bingo its august blessing as a parochial
money-maker. Protestant ministers, keepers of the Puritan
conscience which taught the sinfulness of invoking God's will
in matters of trivial chance, often took a sterner view and
continued to stake their faith upon the collection plate.
The spirit of the times, however, favored gambling.
Reacting perhaps against the long drought of the Depression,
many a person grabbed for the cup of fortune and hurriedly
gulped or spilled it* With the repeal of national prohibition
thousands of newly opened taverns and roadhouses installed
slot machines, pinball games and pundhboards, while amuse-
ment arcades, clubs and lodges did likewise. After a few
drinks the bored patrons would challenge the "one-armed-
bandit" slot machine and proceed to play one device or an-
other all evening, taking little account of losses because each
venture was so small. Nickels were the standard diet of these
machines. From time to time a player would hit the jackpot
and the machine disgorge a cascade of coins, although chances
always heavily favored the "bank/* The annual take of such
"The Will o' the Wisp."
Three would-be messiahs
Gerald L. K. Smith, Father Coughlin and Dr.
Toutnsend.
Social Panaceas.
Popular Diversions.
THE NEW LEISURE CLASS 243
devices was computed in the latter thirties as between half
and three quarters of a billion dollars.
Pari-mutuel betting, legal in only six states at the close of
the twenties, had spread to twenty-one by the latter thirties,
the exigencies of raising revenue having mastered moral
scruple. Harlem's besetting vice was the "numbers" game,
operated as a daily lottery based upon any regularly pub-
lished set of figures in the newspaper: clearing-house statis-
tics, produce sales and (most favored of all) pari-mutuel
totals. Honeycombed with racketeering, occasionally tinged
with thuggery and murder, this game drained off cash from
hundreds of thousands of poor families, involving nearly a
third of a billion dollars annually in wagers*
Not years of spectacular plunging and gambling, the thir-
ties produced no "Diamond Jim" Brady, Jay Gould or
"Dick" Canfield, but they were extraordinarily fertile in
small rackets, mild and often sugar-coated gaming, whose re-
sults looked impressive only in the mass, A Gallup poll in
November, 1938, reported that outside the stock market
more than half the nation's adults admitted indulgence in
some form of gambling during the past year. Nearly one out
of three had patronized church lotteries, one in four punch-
boards and a similar number the slot machines, one in five
played cards for money, while a slightly smaller fraction fell
for the "numbers/*
One imaginative journalist ventured to suggest that relief,
the social-security act and the Securities and Exchange Com-
mission had so cushioned American life against mishap that
petty plunges at bingo and pinball were about the only outlet
left to man's risk-taking nature. It might be conceded at any
rate that gambling, like other recreations indoor and out in
this decade, tended to lower the cost of individual participa-
tion and broaden the base of its following. In sport and
amusement, as in other aspects of life in America, the hall-
mark of caste and the stamp of prerogative had grown per-
ceptibly dimmer.
CHAPTER XII
READING, WRITING AND REVOLUTION
ON the verge of the Depression about nineteen in twenty
adults were newspaper readers, three out of four read mag
azines and one in two read books. The economic crisi
wrought only minor damage to the patronage of news stand
and magazine racks where a single outlay was always smal
but upon the book world it cast a severe blight whil
simultaneously booming public-library circulation at a tim
when such institutions found themselves strapped for funds
Idle millions discovered the public library as the poo
man's club, a warm quiet place to browse or drowse. Tb
American Library Association estimated in 1933 that be
tween three and four million new borrowers had been adde
since 1929, while the total circulation of books had increase
nearly forty per cent. "If it hadn't been for the library, I'
have gone crazy or killed myself/' patrons occasionally tol
librarians. Fiction was the great gainer at first, but as tin-
passed, a good many readers of Wild West novels and ligl
magazines graduated to books on technical and intellects
subjects. Unhappily, however, at this moment of greatest oj
portunity, library authorities groaned under a burden of po^
erty. In sixty large cities book-buying funds dwindled fro:
an annual two and a third million dollars in 1931 to le
than a million by 1933. The Chicago library, in the expos
tion year when that city strove to put its best foot f orwar<
faced its third consecutive season with no book funds wha
soever* Inability to replace worn-out volumes, poor servi
and shortened hours were common handicaps until the n
tion's reviving economy in the middle years began to resto
244
READING, WRITING AND REVOLUTION 245
the standards which had long made American public libraries
the world's best.
Newspapers in small cities, towns and rural communities
suffered some impairment of circulation between 1931 and
1935; but the prosperity of the great metropolitan journals
was never gravely affected and, in general peoples' reading
habits continued that trend which from 1920 to 1940
swelled the daily output of news presses from twenty-seven
to forty-one million copies* Prolonging another major drift
of the century, mergers as well as financial casualties steadily
shrank the number of journals while fortifying the surviving
fittest. By the forties only about a hundred and twenty cities
possessed more than a single newspaper management, the net
rate of mortality between 1930 and 1941 amounting to no
less than forty-eight per cent The weekly, traditional
stand-by of small towns and farming communities, also de-
clined until by 1941 the total had fallen to 10,800 from 12,-
600 in 1930.
Meanwhile the ramification of newspaper chains, remain-
ing during the decade at about sixty and controlling over
three hundred papers, remorselessly continued to consolidate
power, enjoying a substantial monopoly of wire services, fea-
ture syndicates, Sunday magazine supplements and the best
newsprint supply. The launching of the Chicago Sun in
1941 by the liberal millionaire Marshall Field III provoked
an acrimonious struggle between this independent journal
and the tyrant of press services in that region, Colonel Robert
R. McCormick's Tribune. Some argued that concentrated
management promoted a better product; others saw danger in
giants overlording the fields of publicity and communication.
The tabloid paper, adapted to the commuter's elbow-
room and the psychology of "subway minds" at a price
suited to the depression budget, rose in number from twelve
in 1930 to thirty-five dailies and one Sunday specimen
within six years. A survey of New York City youth in 1935
disclosed that two in three read the tabloids while nearly a
246 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
fifth perused no other kind of newspaper. Effortless absorp-
tion and eye appeal in terms of garish captions, big type
and comics characterized the tabloid, plus unblushing ex-
ploitation of news involving lust and violence and sexy pho-
tographs. The principal exception was Manhattan's PM,
started in June, 1940, a liberal tabloid eschewing advertise-
ments in its early years and using sensational methods to stir
interest in political and social reforms*
Explicit proof of the visual-mindedness and (according
to some) the immaturity of the mass mind lay in the doub-
ling between 1930 and 1940 of the newspaper space given to
comics and pictures* The former now seemed a misnomer,
for among the one and a half billion copies of cartoon strips
circulated weekly at the decade's end, a very large proportion
made no claim to humor but spun endless adventure yarns
like "Tarzan," "Terry and the Pirates," "Superman" and
"Little Orphan Annie/* So vast was the demand that, apart
from serialization in the press, some eighteen million comic
books were sold monthly in the early forties upon news
stands, an estimated half of them to adults.
The growing stress upon photography led to technical im-
provements, notably for transmitting pictures by wire and
radio, with color facsimile added in 1937. Upon the eve of
the Second World War these developments had spread tc
vast areas of the great globe itself. A still more vital advance,
affecting not only the press and radio but also brokerage
offices, air lines needing constant weather reports, and othei
enterprises, was the teletypewriter or writing telephone
bought by American Telephone and Telegraph interests it
1930 and henceforth widely adopted.
The syndicated public-affairs columnist, little known J
generation before, filled an average of two and a half column
in the metropolitan press by 1940, to be joined upon th
brink of the Second World War by the military expert
These autocrats of the breakfast table sought to clarify th
thickening complexity of the news and pierce the dark shad
READING WRITING AND REVOLUTION 247
ows of the future, Walter Lippmann, carried by nearly two
hundred papers with perhaps ten million readers, wielded
vastly greater power over the daily thinking of Americans
than any Horace Greeley or Henry Watterson of an earlier
day. Others, catering to all shades of opinion, competed for
the public's attention among them Dorothy Thompson,
strenuous-minded feminist waging a personal war against
Hitler; Eleanor Roosevelt, chatty observer and friend of the
underdog; politically disillusioned Frank Kent; progressive
Raymond Clapper; pinkish Hey wood Broun; sedately old-
fashioned Mark Sullivan; and the perpetually angry West-
brook Pegler. That their imponderable sway was always used
wisely few would argue, but from the standpoint of the pub-
lic at least some safety resided in numbers.
The views of Americans en masse about issues of the day
were themselves caught in the mirror of collective-opinion
polls and beamed back to the public in the form of syndicated
reports published by hosts of newspapers and several mag-
azines. Improving upon the old random technique of straw
votes and Literary Digest polls, a young lowan named
George Gallup and an experienced marketing consultant,
Elmo Roper, learned in the mid-1930's by representative
sampling to forecast election results with fair accuracy and
also to gauge popular opinion on current issues, to which pol-
iticians began to hearken with growing respect* Gratifying to
believers in democratic government was the image which
emerged from this welter of evidence, of a balanced, sensible
and even foresighted mass mind.
To supplement their daily paper and perhaps in silent
criticism of inadequate reporting, more and more people
turned to weekly news digests, notably Time, fast becoming
a giant after its infancy in the twenties, and Newsweek and
Today, each dating from 1933 and merged four years later
under the former's name* All promised to tell the news be-
hind the news, and their crisp manner and studied pertness
exercised considerable effect upon modes of expression of
248 THE AGE OP THE GREAT DEPRESSION
other periodicals. Henry Luce, emboldened by his success
with Time, turned the trick twice more by founding Fortune
in 1930 and Life in 1936, both committed in the main (like
their elder brother) to articles of nameless and generally com-
posite authorship a touch of collectivism which apparently
did not worry their conservative owner* Fortune, intended
"to give business a literature" and angled toward a wealthy
clientele with a ten-dollar subscription price, seemingly could
not have been cradled under more inauspicious stars, yet from
the early thirties it steadily prospered. Life with a name pur-
chased from the great humor magazine of an earlier day, hit
the mass jackpot as a pioneer pictorial weekly, inspiring Look
and a dozen other imitators during its first two years, with a
total combined circulation said to be sixteen million*
Such periodicals appealed not only to the growing visual-
mindedness of readers, but still more specifically to the can-
did-camera craze of the thirties* The importation, chiefly
from Germany, of Leicas and other small cameras and their
parts increased fivefold during the lean years between 1928
and 1936, while the domestic business more than doubled
from 1935 to 1937 and the yearbook 17. Camera crashed
best-seller ranks. A candid-camera shot of Princeton under-
graduates at compulsory chapel, revealing postures of bore-
dom, sleep, newspaper reading and so on, prodded the trus-
tees into abolishing that ordeal The vogue served more im-
pressive ends at the hands of Margaret Bourke- White,
Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and other artists in photog-
raphy who documented the sharecropping South, the migrat-
ing Dust Bowl, the casuals of flophouse and bread line with
indisputable fidelity and overtones of irony* Indirectly such
techniques probably exerted a strong influence upon books of
"social reportage" like Edmund Wilson's The American Jit-
ters (1932), James Rorty's Where Life Is Better (1936),
Nathan Asch's The Road (1936), James Agee's text in Let
Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) and the still more
READING, WRITING AND REVOLUTION 249
brilliant evocation of "the camera eye" in John Dos Passos's
novels.
Magazines generally remained firm under the Depression's
assault, gaining somewhat in circulation, with weeklies hold-
ing an edge over monthlies. Shrinking book sales combined
with the new leisure to the magazine's profit. True-story and
love magazines, opiates of escape, boasted in 1935 a total
circulation almost a third greater than in 1921; but another
supposed solace, the humorous weekly, failed conspicuously
to rally, standing by 1935 at little better than half its prede-
pression popularity. Aside from Ballyhoo's temporary suc-
cess, 'laughing off" this crisis fell short of the need. Religious
journals continued to wane, but popular science and me-
chanics held their own. Liberal and radical periodicals reached
a record high in 1931, lost nearly half their circulation in the
year ensuing, hit bottom in 1934, but climbed a little from
1935 onward.
Women's periodicals, their twelve million subscribers not
greatly reduced by hard times, continued to purvey romance
and sentiment with only small concessions to the rising tide
of economic and political debate. The first magazine exclu-
sively for men, Esquire, was begun in 1933. A later new-
comer called Scribner's Commentator presently assumed the
tinge of official Nazi propaganda, while a once reputable
veteran, the Living Age, fell into the clutches of Japanese
agents. On the other side of the totalitarian barricade the New
Masses (suspended awhile in 1933) continued to take its cue
from Moscow.
Among the avant-garde in arts and letters, transition, best
known of the "little magazines," survived till 1938 as the
darling of American exiles in Paris, and the Partisan Review,
set up in New York in the winter of 1933-1934, deserted its
rigid Stalinism three years later to reappear as the favorite
forum of such advanced aesthetes as William Carlos Wil-
liams, E. E. Cummings, Kenneth Patchen and Karl J. Sha-
piro. A strange fruit of Huey Long's regime in Louisiana was
250 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
the endowment of the Southern Review, a highly intellec-
tual quarterly of criticism published at the State University
from 1935 to 1942.
The Reader's Digest, a pocket-sized monthly with a quar-
ter-million subscribers at the start of this era, was approach-
ing seven or eight million copies by its close, including for-
eign-language and Braille editions. This was the largest
magazine circulation ever known. Its success arose partly
from the Depression when families unable to subscribe to
several magazines adopted this all-purpose one and partly
from its practice of skimming the cream, or at least condens-
ing the milk, of other publications. Its fare ranged from
articles in quest of the silver lining or the larger hope, to gay
life stories by the halt and blind, mingled with yarns about
intelligent dogs and chipmunks and sedately off-color jokes
such as one might hear after the breaking-up of a ministerial
association. In the latter thirties the editors began increasingly
to publish original pieces and to "plant" others elsewhere for
the purpose of culling them; it started likewise to compress
full-length novels and nonfiction works in the manner which
Omnibook also popularized.
The book trade, severest sufferer in the publishing field,
saw its total production of new titles fall from nearly a
quarter-billion copies in 1929 to slightly more than a hun-
dred million in 1933 before the flow gradually resumed.
Dollar reprints of best sellers, begun a quarter-century before,
gathered momentum in the Star and Blue Ribbon series, with
drug and cigar-store sales almost matching those through
bookshops. Tapping a still greater potential market, Robert
K de Graff, former publisher of Blue Ribbon Books,
launched in 1939 Pocket Books, furnishing full texts of
classics and quondam best sellers in convenient miniature size
at twenty-five cents. Sold at news stands, drug stores and
aboard trains and ferries, casually bought, read, swapped or
abandoned, they neatly fitted the mobility of hotel-room and
READING. WRITING AND REVOLUTION 251
army camp life in the early forties, selling about ten million
copies in 1941 and doubling that figure in the following year.
The trend toward fewer titles but wider circulation, begun
in the previous decade, persisted through the thirties with the
continuing growth of book clubs. Book-of-the-Month-Club
selections mingled potential best sellers with an occasional
succes d'estime which its judges had the experimental courage
to back* Its chief competitor, the Literary Guild, tended in-
creasingly toward the sure-fire historical romance. In the late
1930's each organization was approaching a million sub-
scribers. In their wake sprang up special book clubs for chil-
dren, science and mystery fans, Marxists and Catholics, and
early in the forties Sears, Roebuck & Company sponsored a
Peoples' Book Club which submitted likely new books to a
jury of housewives, farmers, white-collar workers and other
average citizens.
Americans wanted apparently to have their reading chosen
for them whether by digest magazines or book clubs. The
reason may have been busy lives, distrust of their own judg-
ment or merely the desire to read at a given time what every-
body else was reading. If this habit discriminated against
many unusual and worthy books, it unquestionably quick-
ened the circulation of some good ones and greatly widened
the orbit of buyers*
What of the books themselves? The thirties proved to be
thin years for poetry, drama, philosophy and religion; irreg-
ular ones for the novel, whether romantic or hard-boiled;
lively for criticism; excellent for history and autobiography,
science and medicine; and, from the base line of past records,
best of all for economics and sociology, whose titles virtually
doubled between 1929 and 1939. These shifts mirrored cer-
tain changing attitudes among both readers and writers.
The bank crashes and devaluation of the dollar in the early
thirties brought back to America, physically and spiritually,
a host of expatriates who found themselves not a little like
Rip Van Winkle. Main Street was being repaved by the
252 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
WPA, which was also laying out a municipal golf course and
building a better high school; Babbitt, his real-estate business
shot to hell, no longer orated at lunch; Elmer Gantry found
the revival racket stale and unprofitable; Dodsworth ban-
ished thoughts of castles on the Rhine, and his womenfolk
their urge to get presented at Court; the man who "knew
Coolidge" had almost forgotten that quaint fact. Ann Vick-
ers, the driving social worker, now took Sinclair Lewis's
spotlight, while in the background loomed the shape of a
demagogue rehearsing for a fascism that might "happen
here/' The Bible Belt seemed less absurd as a haven of funda-
mentalism, more challenging as a plague spot of race preju-
dice, poor schools and hospitals, sharecropping and wasted
resources* Not even Boston's Watch and Ward Society or
Manhattan's Society for the Suppression of Vice looked quite
so formidable after Judge John M. Woolsey in December,
1933, struck the shackles of censorship off James Joyce's
Ulysses and made way for greater candor in the printed word.
All in all, literary folk discovered closer affinity with the
Muckrakers of the century's early years than with the de-
bunkers of the 1920's whose behavioristic psychology had
tended to return man to his animal origins and laugh at his
consequent discomfiture*
Some young writers, who had once copied JL L. Menc-
ken's disdain for the masses, now turned in the penitential
mood of a Maundy Thursday to laving their feet and poul-
ticing the bruises of oppression.* What Robert Frost termed
"the tenderer than thou" school convened. A number of su-
perficial, rather patronizing books addressed the lives of the
* Mencken, whom P. W. Slosson, The Great Crusade and After (A History
of American Life, XII), 421, rightly called the "dominant figure in American
criticism" in the preceding period, was left stranded by the changing Zeitgeist.
From the editorial tower of the Baltimore Sun he took pot shots at "Dr." Roose-
velt and the New Deal, thus proving faithful to his essential toryism, which had
once passed almost for radicalism when he was assailing the bourgeoisie. More
benignly, he continued to overhaul his monumental The American Language
(4th revision, N. Y., 1936) and write mellow remembrances of things past in
Happy Dags (N. Y., 1940) and Newspaper Days (N, Y., 1941) .
READING. WRITING AND REVOLUTION 253
'little people" the down-and-outers, waifs and strays al-
ways present, whom the jazz age loftily had ignored.*
Others, moved by authentic knowledge and an awkward
earnestness, ignored the principles of literary craftsmanship;
their very lack of schooling became a publisher's blurb. To-
day the novels of Albert Halper, Meyer Levin, Michael Gold,
Grace Lumpkin and Albert Maltz are almost unreadable.
Doctrinaire communism, in particular, seemed curiously at
odds with good writing, as if Marx's own ineotitude were
inherited by his cult*
Better examples of proletarian fare were Robert Cantwell's
Land of Plenty (1934), Leane Zugsmith's A Time to Re-
member (1936) and Thomas Bell's tender story of love in
the Bronx, All Brides Are Beautiful (1936). Erskine Cald-
well wrote vivid and often ribald chronicles of the Southern
poor white, while Richard Wright, understandably a left-
winger like so many other able young Negroes, presented a
powerful, violent story of race tension in Native Son
(1940)* The most impressive work in this general vein was
James T* Farrell's trilogy of South Chicago, Young Lonigan
(1932), The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (1934)
and Judgment Day (1935), a cycle of youth's degeneration
under brutal surroundings and the joblessness of the Great
Depression* Somber and pedestrian in his realism, Farrell
missed the verbal brilliance and technical skill of John Dos
Passos's trilogy about the coming-of-age of Big Business, the
postwar boom and the bubble blown to bursting, in The
42nd Parallel (1930), Nineteen Nineteen (1932) and The
Big Money (1936), presently assembled under the tide
[/* S. A. (1937). A Marxist in these middle years, Dos
Passes gave indication in The Ground We Stand On (1940) ,
* A different spirit is displayed in Joseph Mitchell's preface to his Bowery
sketches written near the close of this era, McSodey's Wonderful Saloon (N. Y.
1943) : "The people in a number of the stories are of the kind that many
writers have recently got into the hahit of referring to as 'the little people/
I regard this phrase as patronizing and repulsive. There are no little people in
this hook. They are as hig as you are, whoever you are*"
254 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
under the approach of war, of his growing reliance upon the
moorings of Jeffersonian liberalism.
Organized radicalism in the early depression days clustered
around the John Reed clubs (named for the hero of Amer-
ican communists) which sprouted in many large cities, sus-
taining a half-dozen local magazines and attracting impover-
ished, discouraged young writers. Dissolved on orders from
Moscow in 1935 as too partisan, these clubs delivered their
membership almost intact to the League of American Writers,
which added a fair quota of professionals and liberal "fel-
low-travelers." This group held four Writers* Congresses in
New York City during the latter thirties, penned excited res-
olutions and manifestoes, waxed strong in working for the
Spanish Loyalists, then crumbled after the Nazi-Soviet pact
of 1939 disillusioned many a devout Marxist, like Granville
Hicks, literary editor of the New Masses, who had trusted in
the sincerity of Soviet ideology.
In the entire field of fiction the premier novelist was Ernest
Hemingway, who began this era with A Farewell to Arms
(1929), a poignant story of love in the shadow of war and
death, and closed it with For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) ,
kindred in theme but enacted against the backdrop of a
newer struggle, the Spanish Civil War and free-lance Amer-
ican participation in it* Hemingway's spare writing, staccato
dialogue and devotion to man as an extrovert strongly in-
fluenced this generation, his disciples of the hard-boiled urban
school being tougher than the master* Notable products were
John O'Hara's sardonic and sensual novel of the country-club
set, Appointment in Samatra (1934), James M. Cain's
brutal novelette of adultery, crime and punishment, The
Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), and Jerome Weid-
man's tale of a "wise guy" in the garment trades, / Can Get
It for You Wholesale (1937). By contrast John E. Stein-
beck, from the open spaces of California's Salinas Valley,
looked simple, romantic, almost sentimental, even in melo-
drama like Of Mice and Men (1937) , built about two ranct
READING, WRITING AND REVOLUTION 255
hands snared in the trap of fate, or in his handling with
neither rancor nor doctrinalism such proletarian themes as
those of his strike novel In Dubious Battle (1936) and his
tale of the Okies' hegira, The Grapes of Wrath, three years
later. While Cain and O'Hara offered a catharsis of terror
without pity, the latter was Steinbeck's best ingredient.
Still farther removed from Marxian bias were Thomas
Wolfe's unforgettable pictures of the Great Depression: the
poor of Manhattan huddled for warmth in the City Hall
latrines, the denizens of cheap boarding houses, the shabby,
lonely men. who haunted the subways and all-night coffee
stalls. Whether in the heart of the metropolis or the North
Carolina highlands or in Central Europe trembling upon the
abyss of going Nazi, Wolfe, with a gusto for experience
richly exhibited in novels like Of Time and the River
(1935) and You Can't Go Home Again (published two
years after his untimely death in 1938), symbolized the
American lost in the bewilderment, glory, frustration and
death-premonition of life itself.
Wolfe owed his early recognition to the praise of Sinclair
Lewis in the latter* s speech in 1930 accepting the first Nobel
Prize to be won by an American man of letters. This decade
brought two other Nobel awards to native writers in 1936
to the dramatist Eugene O'Neill, who save for a New Eng-
land tragedy on the Greek model, * 'Mourning Becomes Elec-
tra" (1931), and a carefree comedy of youth, "Ah! Wilder-
ness" (1933), lapsed into a sterile phase; and in 1938 to
Pearl Buck, whose novel The Good Earth (1931) related
the struggles of a Chinese family with flood, drought and
economic exploitation in a manner arresting to the age of the
Great Depression.
Of considerable passing acclaim was Hervey Allen's novel
Anthony Adverse (1933), a long swashbuckling tale of
more glitter than gold, while Margaret Mitchell's even longer
Gone with the Wind reflected the same depression-born pas-
sion for cubic bargains in books. Shaped by the adroit hands
256 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
of Walter D. Edmonds and Kenneth Roberts, the American
historical romance marched on to further popularity with the
former's Drums along the Mohawk (1936) and Chad
Hanna (1940) and the latter's Northwest Passage (1937)
and Oliver Wiswell (1940).
Poetry, more than ever before, forsook her ivory tower for
the pageant of national history, the forum and even the soap-
box. In 1929, for the first time since Longfellow, a long
narrative in verse thrust its way among the best sellers with
Stephen Vincent Benet's exciting Civil War epic, John
Brown's Body; seven years later, in "Litany for Dictator-
ships/' this poet voiced his countrymen's revulsion against
the sadists engaged in torturing the free spirit and snuffing
out the divine spark in peoples. Edna St. Vincent Millay,
once the laureate of flaming youth, turned from the pure
poetic contemplation of Fatal Interview (1931) to earnest
talk of social and political issues in Conversation at Midnight
(1937) . Archibald MacLeish, no longer musing that "it is a
strange thing to be an American/' began to write verse plays
and radio dramas like Panic (1935) , about the Wall Street
crash and a march of the jobless, and The Fall of the City
(1937) t showing how some dictator schooled in the strategy
of tenor might seize a metropolis without firing a shot. Carl
Sandburg, into whose paean for the nation's virility a note
of uncertainty had crept in Goorf Morning, America (1928),
responded to New Deal idealism with The People, Yes
(1936) , avowing that while "the tycoons, big shots and dic-
tators" loom momentarily against the sky, the people,
though often baffled and cheated, remain always the earth's
builders and the final source of wisdom. And from Iowa's
cornlands young Paul Engle added his testimony in American
Song (1934).*
* To be sure, a few dissenters continued in evidence, notably Robinson Jef-
fem self-styled recorder of social decay and mordant skeptic of all economic
ptomung; T. S. Eliot, English expatriate of long standing, who continued
to find solace in Anglo-Catholic mysticism; and Ezra Pound, another in-
READING. WRITING AND REVOLUTION 257
History, criticism and biography all mirrored the cultural
rediscovery of America. A wide audience followed James
Truslow Adams in his Epic of America (1931) , Charles A,
and Mary R. Beard in their America in Midpassage (1939)
and Frederick L. Allen and Mark Sullivan who also recalled
and savored the .nation's recent past* Helping to round out
the picture were such professional studies as Frank Luther
Mott's A History of American Magazines in three volumes
(1930-1938), Charles M, Andrews's The Colonial Period
of American History in four volumes (1934-1938), Ralph
H* Gabriel's The Course of American Democratic Thought
(1940) and Marcus Lee Hansen's The Atlantic Migration
(1940) . Margaret Leech's lively picture of the nation's cap-
ital in its greatest ordeal, Reveille in Washington (1941),
caught the popular fancy, while Paul BL Buck's The Road to
Reunion (1937) in more scholarly vein told the aftermath
of that struggle* In 1934 Congress created the National
Archives to preserve federal records deserving permanent care*
Housed in a handsome building completed by 1937, it hence-
forth became an indispensable workshop for many aspects of
American studies*
Van Wyck Brooks in deft poetic vignettes described the
literary past in The Flowering of New England (1936)
and New England: Indian Summer (1940), a region whose
charm, even with gently satiric overtones, multiplied the
readers of George Santayana's novel The Last Puritan
(1936) and J. P, Marquand's The Late George Apley
(1937)* Brooks, once the analyst of damaged souls crushed
by the philistinism of American life, now extolled its new-
found beauty and significance, and in Opinions of Oliver
Atlston (1941) lashed the coterie of despair. With subtler
criticism R O* Matthiessen in American Renaissance (1941)
examined the creative spirit of the 1850's, while such vig-
orous and salty books as Constance Rourke's American
curable exile, whose brooding over usury, Western capitalism and social credit
led him to espouse the fascism of his adopted Italy.
258 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Humor (1931) and Bernard De Veto's Mark Twain s
America (1932) testified to a new spirit that no longer con-
descended to the frontier.
Civil War biography and Lincoln in particular attracted
a people aware of a modern house divided over war and peace,
and craving a rebirth in patriotism. Besides a spate of Lin-
coln movies and radio plays, Robert E* Sherwood produced
his moving drama "Abe Lincoln in Illinois*' (1938) and
Sandburg wrote his four- volume Abraham Lincoln: the War
Years (1939), while Southerners could rejoice in Douglas
S, Freeman's four- volume R. E. Lee (1934), Lytton Stra-
chey's vogue had ended, and renouncing flippant wit biog-
raphers chose subjects whom they admired rather than de-
spised. Such instances were Henry James's Charles W. Eliot
(1931), Allan Nevins's Grover Cleveland (1932) , Marquis
James's Andrew Jackson (1933-1937), Tyler Dennett's
John Hay (1934), Claude Bowers's Jefferson in Power
(1936) and Carl Van Doren's Benjamin Franklin (1938).
Ray Stannard Baker added the last six volumes to his massive
Woodrow Wilson, and Ralph Barton Perry in The Thought
and Character of William James (1935) wrote perhaps the
decade's best intellectual biography.
Autobiography set a varied table, its fare running from
Lincoln Steffens's memoirs in 1931 2 crusader and Muck-
raker who in old age had argued himself into cynicism upon
almost every subject save Russia to The Autobiography of
Alice B. Toklas (1933), a gay and lucid self-portrait by
Gertrude Stein, high priestess of the "cult of unintelligibil-
ity/* In the latter 1930's doctors' reminiscences proved un-
commonly popular, led by Harvey Cushing's From a Sur-
geons Journal (1936), Victor Reiser's American Doctor's
Odyssey (1936) and Arthur Hertzler's Horse and Buggy
Doctor (1938).*
* By the light of future events a somewhat sinister book from a doctor's
pen reached the hest-seller lists in 1935, Man the Unknown, by Alexis Carrel,
a surgeon of French birth long domiciled in America, In view of his col-
READING, WRITING AND REVOLUTION 259
Ideas, social, political and economic, aroused keener inter-
est and debate than in the twenties. John Chamberlain's
Farewell to Reform (1932) uttered a premature funeral ora-
tion over the old progressivism, Lewis Corey preached doc-
trinaire communism in The Decline of American Capitalism
(1934) , and Max Lerner demanded a faster pace toward the
goal of democratic collectivism in It Is Later Than You
Think (1938). Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station
(1940) surveyed with equanimity the grand forces foment-
ing revolution in the modern world, while Walter Lippmann
in The Good Society (1937) urged the safer path of con-
trolled capitalism to attain more efficient production, rising
standards of living, freedom and voluntary order. A Yale
law professor and New Dealer, Thurman W. Arnold, in The
Symbols of Government (1935) and The Folklore of Cap-
italism (1937), argued (sometimes with tongue in cheek)
that "justice" and 'Injustice'* were purely relative terms like
"up" and "down/* that successful government had to sell
itself over and over to the public as if it were a dentifrice, and
that "from a humanitarian point of view the best govern-
ment is that which we find in an insane asylum" whose aim
is "to make the inmates as comfortable as possible*"
In the field of scholarship the Journal of Social Philosophy
was launched in 1935, the Journal of the History of Ideas
in 1940, while between 1930 and 1935 were published the
fifteen volumes of the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences,
edited by Edwin R. A* Seligman and Alvin Johnson. In
1938 appeared the first of a four-volume Dictionary of
American English, a University of Chicago project, and in
1939 the Linguistic Atlas of New England, edited by Hans
Kurath, broke ground for a projected monumental Linguistic
Atlas of the United States and Canada.
laboration with the Nazis a later reader might ponder his proposals for a
high council of the intellectual elite to rule the world for its own good, setting
right the heresies of democracy and denying to stupid people all legal rights
whatever.
260 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
The rapport between writers and scholars seemed closer
than in the twenties. While the University of Iowa pioneered
in accepting poems and novels in lieu of research disserta-
tions and taught painters by strictly empiric methods, a
growing number of colleges and universities sponsored sum-
mer writers' conferences, maintained experimental theaters
and provided fellowships for authors. Indeed the salaried
writer whether supported by universities, magazines,
movie studios, radio stations or the federal government was
increasingly a phenomenon of the later years. A refugee from
the Great Depression, the average author tended as never be-
fore to welcome the assurance of steady income.
Most striking of the new departures was the WPA's Fed-
eral Writers' Project lasting from 1935 to 1939. At its peak
it supported over six thousand journalists, free-lance writers,
novelists, poets, Ph.D/s and other jobless persons experi-
enced in putting words on paper. Hacks, bohemians and local
eccentrics jostled elbows with highly trained specialists and
creative- artists of such past or future distinction as Conrad
Aiken, Maxwell Bodenheim, Vardis Fisher, John Steinbeck
and Richard Wright. In all, the members of the project com-
pleted three hundred and seventy-eight books and pamphlets
published through commercial channels with the royalties
going to pay other than labor costs or else into the federal
Treasury. The major emphasis was placed upon collective
tasks, chiefly the preparation of guidebooks to states, cities,
highways and waterways.* Several volumes of folklore were
* According to a letter of January 17, 1945, to the author from Dean
Harlan Hatcher of the Ohio State University, former state director of the
FWP, "The dilemma with which I was constantly confronted was that of
preparing and publishing a guide with the help of relief personnel, and at
the same time I was duty bound to help these people whom I had trained, to
find jobs in private employment. One of my best people who worked on
the 'Essays* got a fine job in the midst of our labors and went up to a pros-
perous career. This also happened to one of the key men on the 'Tours* who
went into college teaching, and with our supervisor whom Archibald MacLeish
was kind enough to employ at the Congressional Library at a responsible
position.'*
READING. WRITING AND REVOLUTION 261
garnered, ranging from ex-slave narratives to tall tales of
South Dakota and special studies like those of Swedes and
Finns in New Jersey and Armenians in Massachusetts, with
photographs embellishing each volume. The Guides proffered
a rich documentation of the American map, mile by mile,
unearthing legends and bypaths that might otherwise have
perished, or silhouetting local economic situations with sud-
den clarity*
The WPA's Historical Records Survey, instituted in 1936,
sent forth relief workers to take inventories of local public
records stored in city-hall cellars, courthouse garrets and li-
brary lofts, to index old newspaper files, to make abstracts of
court cases wherein nuggets of local history were embedded,
to examine business archives and church records and even to
scrutinize moldering tombstones for vital statistics* The allied
survey of federal archives combed the land for national ad-
ministrative and historical documents* Luckily, the recent
perfecting of microfilm rendered possible the photographic
preservation of millions of pages crumbling into decay. A
special division (eventually absorbed into the National Park
Service) measured some twenty-three hundred historic build-
ings, making thousands of diagrams, sketches and photo-
graphs for posterity* In this way the negligence of many
communities in preserving their past was to an important
degree redressed.
Under brunt of the economic storm the theater creaked
distressfully* Two thirds of Manhattan's playhouses were
shut in 1931, the Shuberts plunged into receivership, eight
out of ten offerings in the 1932-1933 season failed, and
thousands of actors faced penury. In 1932, in desperate hope
of a job with the "talkies," no less than .twenty-two thou-
sand registered with Hollywood casting bureaus. Vaudeville
troupers, chorus performers, extras, stagehands, stage me-
chanics and musicians were also hard hit. Little wonder that
in such circles the leftist gospel exerted a strong appeal, ex-
pressing itself through "agit-prop*' troupes playing to met-
262 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
ropolitan workers and intellectuals, and in propagandist
drama presented at New York's Theater Union between
1933 and 1937. The better-known Group Theater discov-
ered the outstanding young Marxian dramatist in Clifford
Odets, who followed his "Waiting for Lefty" (1935), a
crudely powerful moment in a taxi drivers* strike, almost im-
mediately with "Awake and Sing/* describing the struggle
against poverty of a Jewish clan in the Bronx. Elmer Rice
shifted from the realistic reporting of "Street Scene" (1929)
to social and political themes in "We, the People" (1933),
"Judgment Day" (1934) and "Between Two Worlds"
(1934), while Lillian Hellman ran up her anticapitalist flag
in "The Little Foxes" (1939).*
Thanks largely to this professional slump, amateur thea-
ters enjoyed a season of rapid growth. The heretofore pop-
ular label "little theater" tended to yield to "community
theater," following the example set by pioneers like Pasa-
dena's Community Playhouse as well as the social bent of the
times. State colleges and state universities, community recrea-
tion agencies and even the Extension Service of the depart-
ment of agriculture helped to spread rural theaters and local
drama festivals until by 1940 nearly a thousand amateur
and semiamateur groups were producing plays for audiences
reckoned at fifteen million people annually.
As in the case of unemployed writers, the federal authori-
ties moved early to ameliorate the actors' plight. First under
auspices of the CWA and then the FERA, plays to benefit
jobless performers were staged in New York, Boston, San
Francisco and Los Angeles. In August, 1935, soon after the
WPA's establishment, Hallie Flanagan, head of the Vassar
experimental theater, undertook to direct the Federal Theater
Project. With an annual budget of seven million dollars it
* Qnite innocent of Marxism but full of the overtones of the Great De-
pression were the plays of William Saroyan, California-born Armenian and
self-taught writer, who treated engagingly the hopefulness born of comradeship
in adversity in improvisations like "The Time of Your Life*' (1939) .
READING, WRITING AND REVOLUTION 263
was soon supporting about twelve thousand five hundred
actors through the nation at an average "security wage" of
eighty-three dollars monthly, better and steadier pay than
most had ever received before. Enthusiastic Mrs. Flanagan
relished the aesthetically venturesome more than routine
presentations, however lucrative the latter might be. Ex- '
periments in dramatic art, not infrequently touched with
boondoggling, thus tended to get the upper hand over con-
siderations of economy, although at its peak the project
grossed about a million dollars yearly in box-office returns.
At first there was no admission price, stress being put upon
performances before CCC camps, schools, hospitals, veterans'
homes and prisons, but later small fees were charged the
general public, comprising an estimated twenty to twenty-
five million people, of whom a majority had never seen a
play before. By means of portable stages on trucks for open-
air performances, marionette shows for children, a traveling
circus and road companies penetrating the Dakota prairies
and rural South, all parts of the country and all classes were
reached.
The Theater's chief technical innovation was the "Living
Newspaper/' a blend of radio-play methods and movie news-
reel, which sought to turn current events into the stuff of
drama and had the advantage of using masses of relatively
mediocre actors. The initial offering, in New York in 1936,
"Triple-A Plowed Under/* depicted the fanner's plight
under a recent Supreme Court decision; then came *T?ower/'
showing Everyman's search for cheap utilities and his dis-
covery of the promised land of the TVA; and "One-Third
of a Nation," high-lighting the slum problem. A nation-
wide hit, "It Can't Happen Here/' dramatizing Sinclait
Lewis's antifascist novel, opened simultaneously in eighteen
cities and drew over a quarter-million spectators in its first
few weeks. Another big success was "Macbeth/' adapted to
a Haitian setting by Orson Welles, star of the Manhattan
outfit, who soon left to found his own experimental Mer-
264 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
cury Theater. "The Hot Mikado/' also employing Negro
performers, proved still more popular. Another paraphrase
of Gilbert and Sullivan, "The Swing Mikado," originating
in Chicago, became such potent "box-office" that private
interests offered to employ the cast in a Broadway produc-
tion. Brooks Atkinson, drama editor of the New York
Times, called the Federal Theater Project "the best friend
the theater as an institution has ever had in this country."
Given the attendant circumstances, the Federal Theater
inevitably exhibited spots of political pink and sometimes
undisguised Marxism.* The sensibilities of conservative con-
gressmen were frayed even by New Deal propaganda praising
the AAA and TVA and union labor. Following a Dies com-
mittee report in January, 1939, that "a rather large number
of the employees on the Federal Theater Project are either
members of the Communist Party or are sympathetic with
the Communist Party/* the sound of sharpening axes could
be heard off stage. Resolved to "put Uncle Sam out of the
show business," Congress cut off all appropriations as of
June 30, 1939, and the project closed.
On the commercial stage the lacquered, sophisticated
comedy of manners never wholly expired witness the con-
tinued successes of Philip Barry but it no longer held as-
cendancy. Robert E. Sherwood turned from the gay romance
of "Reunion in Vienna" (1931) to lament the "impotence
of the intellectuals" in a bruisers* world in "The Petrified
Forest" (1935), thence to "Idiot's Delight" (1936), por-
traying the folly of war, darling of capitalists and nationa-
lists, and finally to "There Shall Be No Night" (1940),
showing the valor of war, physical and spiritual, against to-
talitarian aggression* Maxwell Anderson moved from high
Elizabethan tragedy to an analysis in "Both Your Houses"
* Atkinson himself thus epitomized one of its plays for children in 1937
called "The Revolt of the Beavers": "Beavers of the world, unite! By uniting
and shooting down the chiefs company police with revolvers and machine guns
concealed in their lunch boxes* the hungry heavers joyfully overthrew their
industrial oppressors." N. Y. Times, May 21, 1937.
READING. WRITING AND REVOLUTION 265
(1933) of the collision between idealism and hard-boiled
politics behind the scenes of the New Deal, discovered a
historical theme in "Valley Forge" (1934), and wrote in
"Winterset" (1935) an eloquent commentary upon the
Sacco-Vanzetti case. Similarly, Thornton Wilder, forsaking
his earlier romances of escape, wrote a simple, moving play
of New England village life in "Our Town" (1938).
Satiric comment on the American scene found an ideal
vehicle in the musical play. In the Hoover regime George and
Ira Gershwin had lightened the encircling gloom with "Of
Thee I Sing" (1931), a rollicking travesty on politics and
life in the White House, while in 1937 George JM Cohan in
George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's lively farce "I*d Rather
Be Right" portrayed Roosevelt in his most jovial mood as
a harum-scarum president The same year a youthful com-
poser named Harold Rome demonstrated in "Pins and
Needles" that tuneful romance could be pressed into pro-
letarian service. Produced with some assistance from the
Federal Theater by the International Ladies Garment
Workers Union, this production on a shoestring soon found
itself in the big money and on national tour* The social
temper of the time did not, of course, preclude a crop of
melodious revues in the conventional style, such as Cole Por-
ter's "Gay Divorce** (1932) , introducing the perennial torch
song "Night and Day/* his "Red Hot and Blue" (1936)
and Jerome Kern*s "Roberta** (1933).
On the more serious side of musical art, Deems Taylor
ventured his grand opera "Peter Ibbetson" at the Metropoli-
tan in 1931, while the rediscovery of American subjects was
reflected in Howard Hanson*s "Merry Mount** (1934) and
the "folk opera" of Douglas S* Moore and Stephen V* Benet,
"The Devil and Daniel Webster** (1939) . Roy Harris, from
an Oklahoma farm, showed rare skill in the elaboration of
folk tunes in his "Song for Occupations** (1934) and "Fare-
well to Pioneers** (1935) as well as in portions of the four
"Symphonies" he wrote during this decade. Increasingly,
266 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Hollywood employed the talents of the better composers.
Moore, for example, provided the music for such documen-
tary films as " Youth Gets a Break" and * 'Power and the
Land/' and Aaron Copland, writer of symphonic odes and
chamber-music pieces, served similarly for ''The City/' "Of
Mice and Men" and "Our Town/' Younger composers in-
cluded Paul Creston, whose "First Symphony/' played by
the NYA Symphony Orchestra of New York, won the Music
Critics' Circle award for 1941, and Earl Robinson, whose
"Ballad for Americans" in the WPA production "Sing for
Your Supper" (1939) stirred audiences at a time of increas-
ing national periL Its wider popularity owed much to the
magnificent bass of Paul Robeson, who shared the primacy
among Negro artists with the great contralto Marian Ander-
son.
The hard times, combined with inroads of the talkies and
radio, had thrown perhaps fifty thousand musical performers
out of work on the threshold of this era. Rallying to their
need, the WPA in July, 1935, set up a Federal Music Project
which presently was supporting about fifteen thousand per-
sons* They gave a total of some hundred and fifty thousand
programs, heard by more than a hundred million people,
while their free music classes drew monthly over half a mil-
lion pupils, of whom a majority could never have afforded
private lessons* Although devised essentially to help per-
formers rather than composers, the project consistently
stressed American music names like Copland, Harris and
now growing familiar to unaccustomed ears
while its Composers* Forum-Laboratory brought such
artists into direct contact with their audiences. "It is safe to
say," wrote Deems Taylor in 1938, "that during the past
two years te~\VPA orchestras alone have probably per-
formed more American music than our other symphony
orchestras, combined, during the past ten." Furthermore,
thanks to the FMP, some two thousand primitive and ver-
nacular songs from folk melodies of the Kentucky hills
READING, WRITING AND REVOLUTION 267
and Creole bayou chants to Negro spirituals and cowboy
ballads were collected on phonograph records.
Painters and sculptors received comparable aid from- the
government* Beginning late in 1933, the Public Works of
Art Project, sponsored by the Treasury with CWA funds,
hired nearly four thousand needy artists who before the
project closed in the next summer turned out about seven
hundred murals and over fifteen thousand other art works,
featuring American history and the native scene* Public
schools, libraries, courthouses, hospitals, orphanages, of
which the vast majority had never possessed a picture before,
profited from the talents of rising young artists like Frank
Mechau, Peter Blume and Henry Mattson.
The Treasury then launched a somewhat different venture,
creating a Painting and Sculpture Section looking less to
relief than to the decoration of federal buildings, particularly
post offices, by the most competent artists available. Under
this Sponsorship Thntnaa Hart Rgrttnn'r'Rnardman Robinson,
Rockwell Kent, Maurice Sterne, George Biddle and others
covered huge wall spaces, fostering an unprecedented flow-
ering of mural art which, responsive to the new social con-
sciousness, sought not only to portray American life but to
criticize it. Favorite themes were strikes and strike breakers,
bread lines, mobs, sharecroppers, Dust Bowl and flood ero-
sion. Speeding this trend was the inspiration of Jose Cle-
mente Orozco and Diego Rivera, who in 1932-1933 had
brought a mural art to the United States spicing the primi-
tivism and warm colors of their native Mexico with a gusto
for Marxian satire. Notable examples were the former's
"Quetzalcoatl" series for Dartmouth College, and the latter's
designs for the Detroit Institute of Arts as well as the ones
politically unacceptable to the owners of Rockefeller Center.
With the relief need uppermost, the WPA in 1935 es-
tablished the Federal Art Project, enrolling at its peak over
five thousand persons. Before it came to a close in 1939 the
members of the project painted additional murals for public
268 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
buildings, designed stage sets for the Federal Theater, con-
ducted free art classes averaging sixty thousand students
monthly, and maintained sixty-six community art centers
which attracted a total of six million visitors. The emphasis
upon grass-roots themes and culture was most notably served
by a program called the Index of American Design which
under the direction of Constance Rourke gave employment
to about a thousand artists. They ransacked antique shops
and museums, historical societies, New England farmhouses,
Shaker barns, California missions, for specimens of early arts
and crafts, which occasionally they photographed but usually
painted with minute fidelity to color and texture.
This aspect of the Art Project, comparable to the WPA's
endeavors in preserving other rich layers of local culture,
possessed probably greater significance than most of its orig-
inal productions, which contained their full complement
of arty daubs and doctrinaire canvases. But the undertaking
also helped to sustain worthy artists in the lack of other pat-
ronage, it diminished the awe and snobbery which enshrined
Old Masters to the neglect of living moderns, narrowed the
gap between the artist and his public, and fostered appre-
ciative curiosity about art as a creative process. Yet, even in
the higher brackets of the FAP itself it was recognized that
indefinite federal patronage would likely foster a pensioners'
roll of mediocrities, and that competition among reputable
artists for government contracts at self-respecting wages in
the longer view was fruitful of better results.
The elder realists of the American scene through whose
eyes so many of the younger generation trained themselves
to look included Charles Burchfield with his sepulchral
farmhouses and crossroads stores under dark and snowy
skies; Edward Hopper, bringing an equally sharp fidelity to
lonely tenements and deserted streets as well as to lighthouses
and silos; Charles Sheeler with his absorption in the home-
spun folk art and crafts of Shaker Pennsylvania; and John
Sloan with his vivid multitudinous depiction of the side-
READING, WRITING AND REVOLUTION 269
walks of New York. Georgia O'Keeffe, preferring delicate
and often abstract perceptions of form and color inspired
by the Southwestern plateau country, found fewer imitators.
The smoothness of Grant Wood's landscapes and the angu-
larity of his farmers, the savor of romantic drama in John
Steuart Curry, the sardonic comment upon village life in
Thomas Hart Benton along with his sympathy for share-
cropper and Negro, all reached a nation-wide public through
color reproduction in the magazines. Distinctly leftward was
the caustic limning of George Grosz's New York and the
masterly restraint with which William Cropper conjured up
mob violence and the terrors of war* This camp also em-
braced such painters of the depression mood as Joseph
Hirsch, Mitchell Siporin, Philip Evergood, Jack Levine and
Ben Shahn.
The Federal Art Project, moreover, supported many
needy young sculptors, while both government and private
patronage subsidized those already known to fame and the
establishment of new art museums increased popular appre-
ciation of both sculpture and painting. It was under federal
sponsorship, for example, that Gutzon Borglum completed
after more than a decade the colossal Mount Rushmore
Memorial begun in 1927 in South Dakota's Black Hills,
glorifying Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore
Roosevelt* The most important of the new museums was the
National Gallery of Art in 1941 at Washington* Announce-
ment had been made four years earlier of Andrew W. Mel-
Ion's gift to the American people of his superb collection of
European paintings and statuary reputedly valued at thirty-
five million dollars, and supplemented by fifteen million
more for a building and endowment* In 1939 Samuel H.
Kress enriched this collection by nearly four hundred Italian
paintings.
The decoration of Rockefeller Center evoked sculpture in
the modern manner, as in Lee Lawrie's "Atlas" in the fore-
court and the carved panels by William Zorach and Gaston
270 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Lachaise for the RCA building. Several famous craftsmen,
like Carl Milles and Alexander Archipenko, were newcomers
from the Old World, The ranks of native sons included Jo
Davidson, whose "Will Rogers'* in the national capitol drew
great popular approbation; John Flannagan, less famed but
of higher critical esteem, with his expressive sculpture
wrought from field stones; and Alexander Calder, whose
specimens of movable sculpture (''mobiles**) seemed the final
application to art of Yankee gadgeteering* The decade*s most
ambitious commission, executed between 1930 and 1936 by
Malvina Hoffman, was the modeling of a hundred heads and
figures representing basic types among the races of mankind
for the "Hall of Man** in Chicago's Field Museum*
The national capital enjoyed the greatest concentration of
new buildings, including the huge but undistinguished pile
of the department of commerce, the marble majesty of the
Supreme Court, the handsome marble annex of the Library
of Congress, the miniature jewel of the Folger Shakespeare
Library next door and the Palladian grace of the Thomas
Jefferson Memorial* Dedicated by President Roosevelt in
1943, the Jefferson Memorial, with a statue of heroic size
by Rudolph Evans, rounded out the cruciform design traced
by an axis running from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memor-
ial and intersected at the Washington obelisk by another line
drawn from the White House to the bank of the tidal basin*
Its completion on this site like the beginnings of the Jeffer-
son National Expansion Memorial on eighty acres of the
St. Louis water front attested the growing herohood of
democracy's founder on the anniversary of his two-hun-
dredth birthday*
Thanks to the sumptuous restoration of Colonial Wil-
liamsburg through Rockefeller munificence between .1927
and 1936, the scene of Jefferson's college days was also re-
captured, while throughout the land the classic taste he had
done so much to domesticate continued to find favor as the
"official" style from handsome new post offices such as
READING. WRITING AND REVOLUTION 271
those in Philadelphia and Minneapolis to the Doric sim-
plicity of San Francisco's Opera House, destined a decade
later to be the first meeting place of the United Nations. The
Gothic mode waned steadily save for a few churches and
college buildings, but at the other pole the so-called ''inter-
national" style advanced in favor, thanks to the world
leadership of Frank Lloyd Wright, with practitioners like
George Howe and William Lescaze (architects of the Phila-
delphia Savings Fund Society Building) and European new-
comers like Walter Gropius at Harvard, Laszlo Moholy-
Nagy of Chicago's "New Bauhaus" and Richard Neutra in
California.
Simplicity, clean lines, space, sunshine, sanitation and com-
mon sense virtues which in a measure the modern hospital
had taught to architecture seemed to be increasingly prized
in metropolitan communities. For its homes the public tended
to accept glass bricks and molded corners with appreciation,
but still looked askance at glass walls, planes of reenforced
concrete and sun decks jutting like fungi from the parent
trunk, and it regarded with little more than amusement the
mast-suspended "dymaxion" house of Buckminster Fuller*
More decisively, modernism made headway in factory designs
for maximum lighting, the radical provision for space utili-
zation in the Bronx's Hillside Housing Project, the TVA*s
buildings with their pure functionalism, San Francisco's
Golden Gate Bridge, and a host of structures such as broad-
casting studios or airport buildings and hangars respecting
whose appearance no stereotypes had yet had time to harden.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE
IN 1935-1936, on the basis of field work done by the
WPA, the National Resources Committee endeavored to an-
swer the question: how does the consumer spend his dollar?
The population, it reported, comprised thirty-nine million
consumer units families or lone individuals whose annual
income averaged $1500* As a matter of fact, more than two
thirds got less than this amount, two fifths less than $1000
and a third of the nation less than $780* Since this lowest
third spent $1207 million more than it earned, it was hardly
surprising that one in three among this group fell back upon
some type of relief during the yean Upward toward the
economic apex, about one consumer unit in eight enjoyed
an income over $2500, one in thirty $5000 or better, and
one in a hundred $10,000 or higher* Thus surveyed at the
first thaw ending the Depression's long winter, disparities
still existed comparable to those before the fateful October
of 1929, and in the lower brackets showed even greater ag-
gravation*
More novel was the emergent pattern of a whole nation's
consumer habits, revealing that with fifty billion dollars
available annually for current expenses, Americans spent
seventeen billion on food, nine and a half on housing, five
and a quarter on clothing, five and a third on household
operation and nearly one and a half for household furnish-
ings and equipment* Besides these primary needs, personal
care absorbed a billion; the nation's automobiles, $3*8 bil-
lion (but all other kinds of transportation only $884 mil-
lion) ; recreation, $1*6 billion; and tobacco, $966 million*
Reading matter, on the other hand, took but $551 million,
272
THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE 273
and private expenditure for education, $506 million. In the
latter case, however, government and endowed institutions
swelled this outlay to a grand total of nearly $2.4 billion.
While education was thus recognized as a public concern,
medical care emphatically was not. The $2205 million spent
by private individuals far outstripped the mere $516 million
contributed by government. Moreover, the poor were the
worst neglected, households with incomes under $500 aver-
aging but $22 yearly, while those with $20,000 and upward
paid out $837 each. Similar discrepancies had been reported
by President Hoover's Committee on the Costs of Medical
Care, which stated in 1932 that, while medical care cost $30
a year per capita in the United States $23 of it coming
from private pockets and the rest from government and
philanthropy individuals with incomes between $1200 and
$2000 spent only $13, those below $1000 a bare $9. Yet
these two groups, even in the piping times of the latter
twenties, composed about half the population. Added to
absolute poverty was the burden of uneven costs, the dif-
ference between a year of good health and one entailing a
major operation or a few weeks' hospitalization frequently
meaning the margin between solvency and a long train of
debt, misery and worry which itself retarded convalescence.
Moreover, hospital accommodations fell far short of the need.
Almost half the nation's counties, generally sparsely settled
but comprising seventeen million people, contained no regis-
tered general hospital, while the majority of rural areas pos-
sessed no child-health centers or clinics.
A striking paradox lay in the contrast between the acute
health-consciousness of the American people mirrored in
advertising, syndicated medical-advice columns, radio talks
on hygiene, the huge drug-counter traffic and myriad symp-
toms of faddism and the government's traditional timidity
or parsimony in approaching public health. Thus the Hoover
committee's majority recommendation that the costs of medi-
cal care "be placed on a group payment basis" through in-
274 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
surance or taxation got no further because of the bitter
hostility of the American Medical Association, A minor ad-
vance, however, occurred in 1930 when the Hygienic Labo-
ratory, dating from 1901, was reconstituted as the National
Institute of Health, and under direction of the United States
surgeon-general inaugurated a research program into human
diseases*
The deepening of the Depression worsened conditions* In
1932-1933, for example, investigations showed that the
highest sickness rate occurred among wage-earning families
which had suffered abrupt losses in income and living stand-
ards, while in general it stood about forty per cent higher
among the jobless than among the full-time employed.
Childhood and youth naturally remained the principal vic-
tims, and in these years undoubtedly were sown many of
the causes that led to the rejection in 1940-1941 by army
medical examiners of almost half the first two million regis-
trants examined under selective service.* To add to the
difficulties, tax-supported municipal health centers in places
like Detroit, Dayton and Los Angeles had to shut their doors
for lack of funds* Even in 1929 half the nation's physicians
had earned net incomes below three thousand dollars, and
by 1932 the average doctor found himself idle between a
third and half of his working time. Their own earnings
dwindling, physicians grumbled at devoting their skill to
charity practice and sometimes refused* In 1933 local units
of the FERA undertook to pay private doctors to furnish
free medical aid to patients on relief, but so pressing proved
the need that this program was virtually swamped in the
twenty-six states attempting it.
The New Deal envisioned but did not achieve a com-
prehensive program solving the basic problem of medical
* American Youth Commission, Youth and the Future (Wash., 1942), 189.
This high rate of unfitness, like that disclosed in 1917 when a third of those
examined for the draft were rejected on medical grounds, momentarily shocked
public opinion. Under the urgencies of the Second World War these initial
high standards were later modified.
William Cropper's "'For the Record
Charles BurchMd's "End of the Day."
As the Artists Saw It.
THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE 275
costs. As part- way steps the social-security act provided funds
for crippled children and maternal care, while specific dis-
eases were attacked both from the standpoint of research
as by the establishment of the National Cancer Institute in
1937 and of prevention, inspection and treatment, as in
the venereal-disease-control act of 1938, Moreover, consider-
able success attended federal efforts to foster cooperative
self-help. Thus the Resettlement Administration early in
1937 took the lead in setting up medical, surgical, dental,
hospital and nursing services on a group basis among
drought-stricken and depressed farm families in the Dakota
backcountry; and by January, 1940, over a third of a mil-
lion persons were covered by county health associations and
similar schemes worked out in thirty states by the Farm
Security Administration in collaboration with local physi-
cians. In 1940 the various federal public-health activities
found new quarters at Bethesda, Maryland, in an imposing
National Institute of Health, while about the same time
federal reorganization shifted the Public Health Service from
the Treasury to the Federal Security Agency.
In February, 1938, Senator Robert F. Wagner introduced
a national health bill, proposing grants-in-aid to states to
foster either tax-supported systems of general medical care or
combinations of public medicine with universal health in-
surance. Meeting inflexible opposition from the American
Medical Association, it failed of passage, even though a Gal-
lup poll found a majority of doctors favorable to schemes
of voluntary health insurance and Surgeon-General Thomas
Parran in July, 1938, publicly observed that "at the present
time people in general are beginning to take it for granted
that an equal opportunity for health is a basic American
right/'
Short of compulsion the putting of medical and hospital
costs on an insurance basis was indeed the innovation which
the thirties brought to several million families, chiefly with
modest incomes. Just as medical centers and private group
276 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
clinics were a prime development of the previous period, so
that of the new decade was the group health association and
the hospitalization plan. Unlike the obligatory insurance
systems of several European nations, this plan operated with-
in the frame of private enterprise, costing the subscriber a
fixed sum (averaging about twelve dollars a year for hospital
care alone and from two to three times that sum for com-
plete health coverage) which assured him free service when-
ever the need arose and similar care for his dependents at
cost* At the threshold of this era not more than half a dozen
hospitals in the country offered group insurance schemes, but
after the American Hospital Association indorsed the prin-
ciple in February, 1933, a new day began. By 1938 the plan
had spread to about sixty cities, enrolling some three million
subscribers.
Hospitalization schemes like the popular Blue Cross usu-
ally met less professional hostility than did the activities of
group medicine. Of the latter type were the thriving and
efficient Ross-Loos clinic in metropolitan Los Angeles, started
in 1929 by request of some municipal employees, and the
Group Health Association in Washington, established in
1937 on a still more cooperative plan at the urging of Federal
Home Loan Bank employees, whose foes in the American
Medical Association were declared by Assistant Attorney-
General Thurman Arnold to be violators of the Sherman
act by their attempted restraint of a wholly lawful "trade/*
On the edge of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl a flourishing coop-
erative hospital found its stoutest defender in the Farmers'
Union* In 1936 the Cooperative League, headed by the sur-
geon James P* Warbasse, set up a Bureau of Cooperative
Medicine in Manhattan to advise health cooperatives all over
the nation* Before the end of this era it reported over a
hundred organizations at work.
Whether for medical care or daily bread, the cooperative
idea advanced rapidly in this decade after some slowing down
in the twenties* Thrift, planning and communal endeavor
THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE 277
were in the air. In the disastrous years between 1929 and
1934 the volume of farm supplies bought through coopera-
tive societies doubled, reaching a quarter of a billion dollars.
Gasoline and oil cooperatives flourished in many rural areas,
the Tennessee Valley Associated Cooperatives bloomed under
the sun of federal encouragement, while the Credit Union
National Association, organized in 1934 at Madison, Wis-
consin, applied the idea to banking, particularly for loans
and installment buying. On the other hand, the number of
farmers' associations for marketing grain and livestock de-
clined with the advent of the New Deal, apparently because
the AAA took over much that farmers had been trying to
do for themselves, but coops for purveying other agricultural
commodities and for supplying farm needs grew with un-
precedented vigor. By 1935 ten thousand fanners* buying
and selling associations embraced over three and a quarter
million members. Although the cooperative idea also made
inroads upon the city, its taproot remained the farm, es-
pecially the old zones of German, Scandinavian and Finnish
settlement
The twenties had brought extraordinary blatancy and
meretriciousness to advertising, and one of the Depression's
early effects upon many manufacturers was to promote the
substitution of smaller containers, looser packing, subnormal
weight, misbranding and inferior materials. With the con-
sumer impelled as never before to spend his dollar advan-
tageously, a profusion of books like Arthur Kallet and Fred-
erick J. Schlink's 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs (1933), James
Rorty's Oar Master's Voice: Advertising (1934), Schlink's
Eat, Drink and Be Wary (1935) and Ruth Lamb's Ameri-
can Chamber of Horrors (1936) appeared to warn him of
pitfalls* American Medical Association committees spear-
headed reform in the drug market, while its committee on
foods, created in 1929, awarded grudgingly its seal of ap-
proval, rejecting two out of every three products submitted
and insisting upon revised labels and deflated advertising
278 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
claims for most of the remainder. This was a more rigorous
procedure than that of the "Institute** run by Goocf House-
keeping, which, though purporting to represent consumers,
indulgently showered stars upon its best advertisers. More
reliable were the standards and tests devised by groups like
the American Home Economics Association and the Ameri-
can Standards Association, the latter a federation of trade
associations, technical societies and federal bureaus.
Plainly enough, the shift from a producer's to a con-
sumer's economy, from scarcity to abundance, had funda-
mentally changed the strategy of buying. The problem was
no longer how to get goods at all, as in Adam Smith's day,
but how to get the best at a fair price. By the decade's end
some twenty-five thousand secondary schools were giving
consumer education to over six million future housewives,
whose credo henceforth would be distrust and comparison.
University chemistry courses now often set students to ana-
lyze drugs, soaps and gasoline, while those in agriculture
stressed meat buying and the grading of farm commodities.
In 1938 Missouri's Stephens College set up an Institute for
Consumer Education, endowed by the Alfred P. Sloan Foun-
dation. Throughout the country women's clubs were spark
plugs of the consumer movement, with strong leads taken by
both the National League of Women Voters and the Ameri-
can Association of University Women.
Older and more sedate organizations devoted to the as-
saying of merchandise like the National Consumers'
League, its original concern being with the products of un-
sanitary and sweated industry were elbowed to a back seat
by livelier ones. Such were Consumers* Research, started in
1929 to foster the habit of buying by grade and specification
rather than advertisers* claims, and Consumers Union, dating
from 1936, which championed not only the consumer but
also the union worker, gaining by its criticism of competitive
capitalism a somewhat leftish repute. The findings of their
laboratories, sent to subscribers under "confidential" seal as
THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE 279
protection against libel suits, probably reached many more
through loan and word of mouth than the hundred and
fifty thousand families on their combined mailing lists.
The New Deal also took a hand in the matter. Besides
short-lived efforts under the NRA, it set up the AAA's Con-
sumers* Counsel, which in partnership with the Bureau of
Agricultural Economics, Bureau of Home Economics and
Bureau of Labor Statistics, inaugurated a biweekly bulletin
called the Consumers' Guide. In addition, the Federal Trade
Commission from 1934 onward obliged many advertisers to
correct errors and temper the exuberance of their claims, and
the Wheeler-Lea act in 1938 considerably strengthened such
controls. Meanwhile demands increased for a sweeping mod-
ernization of the pure- food and drug act of 1906, notably
after the death of over seventy users of an * 'Elixir Sulfanila-
mide" purveyed by a drug company* Despite apathy by the
press and open hostility from many commercial concerns, but
under urgent pressure from women's organizations, the food,
drug and cosmetic act of June 24, 1938, scrapped obsolete
legislation and widened the domain of federal authority, re-
quiring adequate testing of new drugs before their introduc-
tion to the market, sharply defining adulteration and mis-
branding and prohibiting deceptions effected by containers
and labels.
If the consumer had the cash or credit he could buy more
commodities for health, efficiency, convenience and luxury
than any earlier American had been able to command
Multiplying the marvels of synthetic chemistry, industrial
research poured forth a stream of new and attractive wares
at low cost. Between 1920 and 1940 the number of indus-
trial research laboratories grew from three hundred to more
than two thousand, the scientists and technical experts they
employed from six thousand to sixty, with General Electric,
Du Pont, Radio Corporation of America and Westinghouse
setting the pace. The miracles of applied chemistry shielded
several big concerns from the worst consequences of the De-
280 THE AGE OP THE GREAT DEPRESSION
pression, notably the Du Fonts, who embarked upon a sales
campaign for the nonporous envelope called cellophane* The
results were so successful that the public began to buy its
prunes and caramels and cigarettes thus encased. The same
concern pioneered a synthetic rubber under the name "du~
prene," utilizing a process devised by Dn JL A. Nieuwland,
announced in 1931. Its importance became evident ten years
later when Japan sought to retaliate upon American oil and
metal embargoes by choking off the flow of natural rubber
across the Pacific.
In the novel field of chemurgy, which early caught the eye
of Henry Ford as well as the Du Ponts, farm products rang-
ing from soybeans to skim milk were converted into plastics,
and in 1939 Congress subsidized regional laboratories for
further research. From such materials as camphor, carbon,
alcohol, urea, asbestos and formaldehyde still other synthetics
were achieved. Nylon, a polyamide fiber made from coal, air
and water, was introduced to an appreciative feminine public
in 1939-1940, while coarser fibers of the same product went
into toothbrushes. Plywood, fibers made from cellulose, and
new steels containing molybdenum, vanadium, nickel,
chromium and tungsten proved of immediate industrial and
future military importance. Pyralin, fabrikoid, plexiglas,
plastecele, lucite and vinylite were other innovations. Within
a short space it dawned upon the average person that won-
derful new substances now composed the fountain pen with
which he wrote, the radio cabinet at his bedside, the sponge
in his bathroom, the wheel by which he steered his car, his
wife's dresses, and the motion-picture film which they saw
projected on the screen. And, thanks to imaginative designers
like Norman Bel Geddes, many such products tended to
greater functionalism, beauty and clarity of color.
In the mid-thirties the process of cracking heavy oils, after
extraction of gas and gasoline, added millions of barrels of
fuel for consumers' use as well as raw materials for industrial
alcohol, lacquers, plastics and synthetic rubber. As still an-
THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE 281
other aspect of laboratory conservation, polymerization, a
technique causing combustible gases to combine into gasoline
molecules, promised eventually to add nine billion more gal-
lons of gasoline to the nation's annual output.
Machines serving to replace man's senses, including the
ability to gauge form and size and weight and to test pres-
sure and temperature, were joined in 1930 by the first com-
mercially practicable photoelectric cell* This ''Aladdin's lamp
of modern science" could see better and farther than the
human eye, without error, fatigue or color blindness. It
proved itself an incomparable servant for sorting articles,
matching hues, counting passing objects, regulating light,
automatically leveling elevators at floor stops, opening doors
and guarding gates and prison walls. Television, hailed with
great enthusiasm at the start of this era, hung fire disappoint-
ingly because of excessive costs and mechanical imperfections.
Upon a limited scale, however, it was displayed at the New
York World's Fair in 1939 and the next year the Columbia
Broadcasting Company demonstrated the feasibility of color
television. A less spectacular advance in the field of optics was
the sodium lamp perfected in 1932 by General Electric. If
its yellow color was generally unacceptable for use indoors,
it was the most efficient of all long-life lamps and ideal for
illuminating highways; while polaroid lamps and glasses,
invented by Edwin Land of Boston, effectually prevented
glare.
In practical acoustics the radio telephone attained its
majority, its use on planes and ships presaging the "walkie-
talkie" of approaching war days. In 1937 the coaxial cable
entered commercial use: a single wire by means of the crystal
wave filter and the vacuum tube could now carry two hun-
dred and forty simultaneous conversations. Meanwhile the
introduction in the mid-thirties of the electric organ with-
out pipes, reeds or other vibrating parts, yet capable of ap-
proximating pipe-organ standards proved a boon to music
lovers in small homes and apartments as well as to schools,
282 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
churches and broadcasting studios. It did much to revive the
popularity of organ music*
New processes also affected eating habits. The commercial
adoption in 1930 of solid carbon dioxide ("dry ice") made
possible vastly longer shipments of fresh edibles by land and
sea, for its gradual release of carbon-dioxide gas killed or
checked bacterial growth* The extremely rapid freezing of
foods, preserving them with their natural flavors, had been
devised in 1925 by Clarence Birdseye, and the method,
bought by General Foods, was introduced to the retail trade
in 1930. Four years later ten million pounds of such frozen
foods as peas, corn, berries, oysters and other perishables were
being sold. By the end of the decade the costs of refrigeration
had been reduced by over three fourths, and though prices
still remained higher than for fresh foodstuffs, the volume
had grown to two hundred million pounds.
Even more sweeping developments in the American dietary
came from physiological and medical research concerning
vitamins. These investigations had begun before the First
World War, but the modest total of forty-seven papers pub-
lished on that topic in 1911 had grown to fifteen hundred
annually by 1930. Knowledge advanced swiftly in regard
to vitamin complexes, relations of vitamins to each other
and to hormones, and their general effect upon metabolism,
health, susceptibility to disease and longevity. The nature of
vitamin A remained largely a mystery until the important
work done in 1929 by Yale's M. D. Tyson and Arthur H.
Smith; in the next year its plant source was identified with
tie pigment carotin. Vitamins A and BI were synthesized in
1936 and, largely through the researches of the Texan
Tom D. Spies, nicotinic acid within the B 2 complex was
discovered to be the cure for the Southern poor whites'
scourge, pellagra. In 1937 Edward A. Doisy of St Louis
isolated vitamin K from alfalfa, and shortly afterward
showed its potency in checking haemorrhage. On the other
hand, these years brought into use the drug heparin, having
THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE 283
precisely the opposite effect, and in the latter thirties this
anticoagulant began to be employed with marked success in
preventing thrombosis and in treating bacterial heart disease.
With vitamin potencies standardized by a League of Na-
tions committee, manufacturers for the world market and
particularly in the United States were soon selling huge quan-
tities of concentrates in the form of tablets, capsules and
elixirs. Thanks to publicity regarding malnutrition which
the Depression evoked with the American Medical Asso-
ciation's president, for example, declaring in 1935 that
twenty million persons lived near or below the level of nu-
tritive safety many citizens, including the well-fed, began
to ingest quantities of vitamin concentrates, A veritable
mania of self-dosage occurred, harmless perhaps but not in-
frequently a needless expense. In the winter of 1938-1939
a trade journal reported vitamins as second in demand only
to laxatives among all products sold over the drug counter,
while manufacturers declared they were seven million pellets
a day behind orders in a business grossing half a billion
dollars annually. Food industries advertised the vitamin con-
tent of their wares, and commodities like condensed and
fresh milk, bread, cereals, yeast, even chewing gum and lip-
stick, were sold with guarantees of extra vitamin enrichment*
Rather more sensibly, the publicity about vitamins helped
to modify certain culinary practices. Housewives learned not
to keep fresh foods too long before consumption as well as
not to boil vegetables excessively and then throw out the
water; increasing use of the pressure cooker was thought to
preserve vitamins; and more vegetables were served raw than
ever before. Brown and whole-grain bread gained in favor
over white reviving the dietary change effected during the
First World War as a conservation measure while citrus-
fruit juices were drunk as a charm against colds, milk became
still more of a national beverage for all ages, and liver won
new esteem because of its advertised efficacy against anemia.
Physiology and medicine also recorded other important
284 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
advances* Greatest was the discovery of sulf a drugs, particu-
larly sulfanilamide, sulfapyridine and sulfathiazole. Pio-
neered in Germany, they were perfected and applied to new
uses in the United States, notably by Dr. Perrin H. Long and
other Johns Hopkins clinicians, from the winter of 1936-
1937 onward. In dreaded infections like pneumonia, menin-
gitis, trachoma and erysipelas the sulfas often worked
miracles, but their ill success with diseases such as virus pneu-
monia, typhoid and tuberculosis left other worlds still un-
conquered, and the damaging effects sometimes wrought
upon the kidneys and blood-forming organs set up danger
signals as well*
In 1931 Dr. Rolla R Dyer identified the flea as the carrier
of typhus* Nine years later Dr. Hans Zinsser, author of the
1935 best seller on this subject, Rats, Lice and History, an-
nounced shortly before his death the development of large-
scale vaccine production methods invaluable in the Second
World War. Researches begun in 1939 by Dr. R* X Dubos
of the Rockefeller Institute led to the discovery of gramicidin,
an antibiotic product of a soil-inhabiting bacterium having
great potency against pneumococci, streptococci and staphy-
lococci. The widespread use by hospitals of dessicated blood
plasma, perfected about 1940, held immense significance for
the future. Rapid gains occurred in the thoracic field. In
1930, for example, the "artificial lung" was invented, en-
abling those with paralyzed chest muscles to survive, and
new surgical techniques rendered it possible to remove an
entire lung to check cancerous growth.
Along the borders of physiology and psychiatry occurred
certain fruitful developments, such as the adoption in 1937
of the insulin shock treatment for schizophrenia. Beginning
in 1934 F. A. Gibbs, Alfred L. Loomis, H. H. Jasper and
other doctors studied the electric potentials of the human
brain as recorded by electroencephalograms, thus shedding
new light upon the diagnosis of epilepsy and the location of
brain tumors. In psychology workers continued to refine and
THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE 285
elaborate inquiries previously begun under such influences as
Freudianism, behaviorism and the Gestah school. Much work
was also done in highly practical fields such as the psychology
of traffic accidents, juvenile delinquency and adult crime,
vocational psychology and testing.
Meanwhile exploration of the globe's little-known por-
tions interested men of inquiring mind, whether the ventures
of Admiral Richard E. Byrd into Antarctica in 1928-1930,
1933-1935 and again in 1939, or the continued investiga-
tions of the marine life and geology of the bathysphere by
Dr. William Beebe of the New York Zoological Society, as
recorded in his book Half Mile Down (1934). In one of
the decade's most ingenious achievements Professor A. E.
Douglass of the University of Arizona plotted an absolute
weather chronology for the Southwestern United States, dat-
ing back to 91 A*D., by means of tree rings found in the
beams of Indian pueblos and varying uniformly under cycles
of drought and wet seasons.
Old problems of heredity and environment still exercised
their fascination and slowly yielded more secrets* A host of
timely queries from the environmental issues posed by
social workers and planners to those of heredity perverted
into racial myths by Nazi apologists turned to biology for
evidence* In the United States, where freedom of research
and speech continued unimpaired, allegations respecting ab-
solute race purity or superiority were exploded anew by an-
thropologists like Franz Boas, Otto Klineberg, Margaret Mead
and Ruth Benedict.* In genetics over two decades of experi-
ments on the vinegar fly by Thomas Hunt Morgan of the
California Institute of Technology conclusively proved the
creative role played by mutation in evolution. Morgan's
work, for which he received a Nobel Prize in 1933, disclosed
* The last two belonged to a growing band of distinguished American
women in science. Others making significant contribntions included Maud Slye
in mouse-cancer research, Florence R. Sabin in diseases of the blood and bone
marrow and Florence Seibert in tuberculosis research.
286 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
the geneticist's new world of chromosomes and their compo-
nent genes, introducing subtleties unknown to the simpler
scheme of Mendelian inheritance.
Meanwhile Hermann J. Muller showed that the bombard-
ment of fruit flies with X-rays speeded mutations a hundred-
and-fifty-fold, causing their progeny after a very few genera-
tions to exhibit radically new traits. Later, in 1933, Muller
left his University of Texas laboratory to accept a position
under Soviet patronage in Moscow's Institute of Genetics,
with results ultimately unhappy when he found his research
snared in an orthodoxy as fanatical as Hitler's and as hostile
to free inquiry. On the threshold of this decade Professor
Edward A. Doisy of St. Louis University announced his
isolation of the pure hormone of the ovary (theelin) ; and
when two years later the pure male hormone was isolated in
European laboratories, these joint achievements advanced
knowledge toward the old enigma surrounding the mecha-
nism of sex determination, although its core still defied solu-
tion.
Though private industry, even in the Depression's darkest
season, continued to pour rich subsidies into industrial chem-
istry and other investigations in applied science and engi-
neering, the support given pure science by the great research
foundations dwindled as their incomes melted away. Between
1930 and 1934 foundations for the advancement of science
and learning possessing capital funds of seven hundred
million dollars were forced to cut their annual grants by
nearly three quarters. Research supported by state and federal
funds also ran upon the shoals of poverty, only to get afloat
again just before the opening gun of the Second World War
in 1939. Among the few bright gleams in the darkness was
the birth of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton,
New Jersey, in 1930, with an endowment from the Newark
merchant Louis Bamberger and his sister Mrs. Felix Fuld. A
research institution free from degree-giving routines, it
THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE 287
quickly attracted an eminent group of mathematicians, eco-
nomists, political scientists and humanists. Yet by a triumph-
ant paradox the thirties produced brilliant achievements in
branches seemingly the remotest from immediate practical
application, notably astronomy, cosmic radiation and nuclear
physics. As a result, the United States came to stand at the
forefront in fields as diverse as astronomy, atomic physics,
radiation, biochemistry and physiological chemistry, afford-
ing further proof that the world capital of knowledge had
moved westward across the Atlantic.
In 1930 the Lowell Observatory in Arizona reported the
discovery of an eighth major planet, Pluto, out beyond those
observed heretofore. Six years later Robert McMath and his
University of Michigan colleagues adapted the spectrohelio-
graph to take motion pictures of the sun, vividly showing in
action the gaseous phenomena of its atmosphere. At the
Mount Wilson Observatory Edwin P. Hubble, seeing that
the apparent velocity of recession of nebulae as shown by the
red shift of their spectral lines increased with the distance of
the nebulae from the earth, conjectured that he held a new
yardstick for cosmic measurement. In 1934 his colleague,
Milton Humason, discovered the greatest velocity ever known,
in a nebula of a cluster in Bootes that appeared to be rushing
away at the rate of some twenty-four thousand miles a
second** Further discoveries awaited the use of a telescope
with a two-hundred-inch reflector, whose cost had been pro-
vided from Rockefeller funds just before the Depression
began. Cast at the Corning glassworks in 1934 and carried
for grinding to Pasadena, this huge mirror was nearing com-
pletion in 1941 when the outbreak of war caused the suspen-
sion of many years* labor* When at last it should be installed
* The precise significance of the red shifts depended upon their origin. They
might be due either to actual outward motions of the nebulae in an expanding
universe, or to some hitherto unknown property of light reaching this globe
from vast distances in a stationary universe. As yet the observational data did
not suffice for the proper interpretation.
288 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
atop Mount Palomar, near San Diego, it would afford the
penetration into space of more than a billion light years.*
Time, space, matter, ether, electricity and other concepts
of classical physics continued to be reinterpreted in the wake
of relativity, supplanting the orderly mechanistic causality of
the old school with new ideas of space-time and a philosophy
of science far less snug and deterministic. There were con-
flicting hypotheses regarding the nature of cosmic rays, now
known to be bombarding the earth with more than a thou-
sand times the energy per shot than man had ever before
found to exist in any sort of atomic process, though the shots
were so infrequent as to bring to earth only about the amount
of energy involved in starlight* Robert A* Millikan and H.
Victor Neher in 1932-1934 conducted elaborate world sur-
veys of the variation of the cosmic-ray intensities with lati-
tude and longitude, as did also Arthur H. Compton of the
University of Chicago and his collaborators. Such inquiries
yielded unmistakable evidence that these powerful rays as-
saulting the globe from all directions consist, largely at least,
of electrically charged particles (presumably electrons) mixed
in unknown proportions with photons ether waves of the
same nature as light. Experiments in 1936-1940 made by
Millikan and Neher with instruments borne in pilot balloons
nearly to the top of the atmosphere proved that this photon
component cannot carry more than about a third of the total
incoming energy, probably much less.
Meanwhile, in 1931, Harold C Urey of Columbia found
by spectroscopic means deuterium, the heavy isotope of hy-
drogen, whose nucleus consists, not like the ordinary hydro-
* At the other end of the scale the electron microscope, developed hy two
engineers of the Radio Corporation of America, Vladimir K. Zworykin and
James Hillier, achieved a magnification of one hundred thousand times (as
compared with the two thousand of an ordinary high-powered microscope)
and revealed for the first time the structure of viruses and protein molecules.
Dr. Zworykin also invented the iconoscope or "image scanner/* which con-
verted light into electrical signals and thus laid the hasis for improved television
methods.
THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE 289
gen atom, of a single proton, but of a close combination of
a neutron and a proton. It weighs twice as much as the usual
atom of hydrogen, and when replacing it in molecules of
water, makes "heavy water." Through these and other dis-
coveries the man in the street began to sense that sources of
incredible power, undreamt of by Newton and Franklin, had
now flashed across the horizons of human observation. One
way to measure the stupendous particle energies was used in
1932 in the California Institute's laboratories by young Carl
D* Anderson, who photographed the effect of such rays in a
cloud chamber, finding that this invisible force struck from
the atom a lightweight positive particle which he called the
positron. For discovering this twin of the negative electron
he was awarded a Nobel Prize.
The race for the artificial production of bombarding par-
ticles of even greater power than that with which the alpha
particles are shot out from radium began in 1928 at the
California Institute of Technology with Charles C Laurit-
sen's million-volt X-ray tube, the pioneer of all atom
smashers* The key to its operation consisted in shooting the
charged atom through a succession of electrical fields in each
of which it received added energy. Robert J. Van de Graaff
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology then constructed
a machine which by increasing the number of such "kicks**
drove the potency of atom-smashing particles up to several
million electron volts. In 1932 another youthful candidate
for science's highest honors, the University of California's
Ernest (X Lawrence (Nobel Prize, 1939), built his first
practical cyclotron, an eleven-inch magnetic resonance ac-
celerator with metal walls. The work of Urey and Lawrence
was to some extent complementary, for deuterium particles,
when speeded by oscillating electrical fields of high frequency,
become projectiles of greater energy than do similarly treated
protons. The cyclotron ejected them in a bombarding stream
with an energy of some twenty million electron volts against
the nucleus of the atom to be smashed.
290 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
The public read curiously, if with vague comprehension,
of these atom-smashing experiments. They had little pre-
vision of their practical import. A new stage, however, began
in 1939 with the disclosure from Germany that the uranium
nucleus had been split by the assault of neutrons. Experts in
half a dozen laboratories now began to strive for a * 'chain
reaction" in the fission of uranium. In that autumn, after
advice from Albert Einstein, a refugee in America, and others
on the possible military value of atomic research, President
Roosevelt appointed an advisory committee on uranium. A
new radioactive element, plutonium (number 94), was
presently obtained from uranium 238, and it also grew clear
that one of its components is largely responsible for most of
the fission observed when neutrons assault unseparated ura-
nium. After the fall of France in the summer of 1940 a thick
curtain of censorship was drawn over further progress in
nuclear fission* It was the most secret of all the activities of
the newly organized Office of Scientific Research and Develop-
ment, the most unexpected result of that regionalism which
had developed the vast hydroelectric potentials of the Ten-
nessee and Columbia River valleys, and the eventual outcome
became known to the world only with the explosion of the
atomic bomb over Hiroshima on August 5, 1945.
Though scientists under patriotic need contributed in this
and other ways to the destructiveness of impending war,
a new departure showed in the fact that in the 1930*s they
displayed a social conscience more sensitive and articulate than
in any previous era* "Our object/' said Professor Urey,
winner of a Nobel Prize in 1934, "is not to make jobs and
dividends. We wish to abolish drudgery, discomfort and want
from the lives of men, and bring them pleasure, leisure and
beauty/* However inadvertently, the achievements of scien-
tists and engineers had contributed to the phenomenon of
technological unemployment, and in recognition of this fact
several sections of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science as early as 1932 held an earnest symposium to
THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE 291
discuss cyclical unemployment in the machine age* In 1937
the parent body resolved to take as one of its objectives "an
examination of the profound effects of science upon society/'
inviting its colleagues through the world to cooperate "in pro-
moting peace among nations and in intellectual freedom, in
order that science may continue to advance and spread more
abundantly its benefits to all mankind." The following year a
group led by Karl and Arthur Compton, Urey, Anton J.
Carlson and Franz Boas formed the American Association of
Scientific Workers, an affiliate of the AAAS dedicated to the
application of science to human welfare and the safeguarding
of professional freedom. Both the social consciousness of the
age of the Great Depression and the contrasting spectacle of
Nazi brutality and suppression speeded this development.
Popular interest in the efficacy of applied science was evi-
denced in the winter of 1932-1933 in the short-lived vogue
of Technocracy, a pseudoscientific scheme devised by a Green-
wich Village prophet, Howard Scott, for converting the
nation into an engineers' and technicians' paradise: money,
banks, private enterprise and economic maladjustments
should all bow before a planned economy where no one
worked over four hours daily, everybody enjoyed the same
income and prices reflected the energy units required to pro-
duce any given article. More significant was the surge of
books dealing with the social responsibilities of technology.
Stuart Chase's Men and Machines (1929), Ralph Flanders's
Taming Oar Machines (1931) and Arthur Dahlberg's Jobs,
Machines, and Capitalism (1932) were followed in the
Roosevelt regime by Harold Rugg's The Great Technology
(1933) , William R Ogburn's Living with Machines (1933)
and Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization (1934).
A year later a national survey, conducted by sixty techni-
cians with some federal subsidy, reported that, if the nation's
potential capacity for "the production of honest goods and
services for the consumer" were utilized, the total output
would in predepression dollars average about forty- four hun-
292 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
dred dollars per family, or two and a half times actuality*
Such innovations as air-conditioning equipment, plastics,
prefabricated houses, the photoelectric cell, cellulose, synthetic
rubber, television, gasoline from coal, the mechanical cotton
picker and tray agriculture made it plain that, during the
time when millions vainly sought work and hosts of factories
rusted in idleness, technology had marched sturdily forward.
In 1937 twenty per cent more goods and services could be
produced than in 1929 with no additions to the labor force,
and one engineer reckoned that something less than a twenty-
four-hour work week could be made to serve all American
productive needs. A Gallup poll in June, 1939, asking those
on relief, "What do you blame for the present unemployment
in this country?" reported that the largest percentage said,
"machines taking the place of men** a reason both dispas-
sionate and intelligent.
An ingenious analysis and forecast appeared in a book
widely read at the close of this era. James Burnham*s The
Managerial Revolution (1941) predicted that neither capi-
talists nor communists would inherit the earth, but the mana-
gers, for vital as was the continuing role of applied scientists
and engineers, the keys to power in an industrial order were
held by the coordinators: production managers, plant super-
intendents, finance executives. He also interpreted the New
Deal as a managerial revolution in government, since federal
superintendents had taken over huge fields of private enter-
prise, could operate at a loss and thus held a substantial
advantage over agents of the profit system.
Less controversial and more tangible were the marvels o!
technology displayed by the three great fairs of these years
Chicago's "Century of Progress" drew about ten millioi
admissions in its first season in 1933. Unlike her glorificatioi
of Old World culture in the exposition of forty years earlier
this occasion featured native achievements in invention an<
engineering, and its Hall of Science drew the largest numbe
of visitors. The summer of 1939, febrile last season befor
THE CONSUMER AND SCIENCE 293
the catastrophe of the Second World War, saw parallel ex-
hibitions on opposite shores of the continent, with railways
taking advantage of the circumstance by offering excursion
rates to "See Two World's Fairs/' San Francisco's Golden
Gate Exposition, true to its architectural motif drawn from
pre-Columbian and Spanish America, tended somewhat to
play down modernism and technology save for the most
ambitious floodlighting in color ever attempted and a lavish
aeronautical display.
Bigger and more catholic was New York's "World of
Tomorrow/* its emblem of trylon and perisphere (a spire
rising from the globe) symbolizing "the theme of social re-
construction/* Its twenty-nine million admissions in 1939,
including the king and queen of England on an unprece-
dented good-will tour, saw the debut of fluorescent lighting
on a large scale, radio broadcasting of facsimile newspapers
and a ten-million-volt lightning bolt discharged at intervals
"to show how man has chained the forces of nature/* The
"Town of Tomorrow/' bristling with innovations in hous-
ing, and the "Electrified Farm,** revealing the wonders of
hydroponics (the soilless cultivation of plants), attracted
millions* Foreign nations occupied twenty-two variegated
pavilions flanking the Court of Peace, with Nazi Germany
conspicuously missing. Czechoslovakia, her independence
lately destroyed, attempted nevertheless to carry on; Italy
featured a gigantic waterfall and Japan a Shinto shrine en-
closing a replica of the Liberty Bell made of eleven thousand
cultured pearls and four hundred diamonds; while over the
Soviet building the colossal figure of a worker towered into
the sky holding aloft the Red Stan It was indeed the World
of Tomorrow in parables and ironies. But, whatever political
allegories might have been fancied beneath the show, the
triumph of technology stood clearly forth, with some fore-
cast of its still unwritten and perhaps incalculable effect upon
the fate of modern man.
CHAPTER XIV
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY
UPON the threshold of the forties the mind of the nati
manifested a complex of ideals, motives and emotions. 7
complacency of the twenties, scattered like last year's lea
by the chill winds of depression, had been followed by 1
springtide of the New Deal, hopeful, vigorous, luxuria
reaching full flower in the overwhelming reelection of Roo
velt in 1936; then, almost imperceptibly, sere and yelL
hues began to show*
In the alleviation of want the New Deal's achieveme
had been solid and extensive* In effect, it took from the i
rich to support the idle poor and, when still more *v
needed, embarked upon deficit financing. Extreme N
Dealers argued that redistribution of wealth per se wa:
prime function of modern government; extreme conser
tives, noting that some of the relief recipients spent the li
they had foolishly, asked sternly whether the taxpa
should be penalized for such irresponsibility. As a whole,
nation overwhelmingly favored even made- work to the c
roding dole, but in certain moods took alarm at the mou
ing public debt and not infrequently felt that the gove
ment coddled the dawdler and ran unduly to boondoggl
undertakings. In June, 1939, a Gallup poll asking the pul
to name the "greatest accomplishment" and also the "we
thing" done by the New Deal found that * 'relief and
WPA" led both counts by a considerable margin sui
the epitome of a divided mind.*
* As the New Deal's finest achievement 28 per cent designated the x
program and the WPA, 21 banking reforms, 1 1 the CCC, 7 social secu
5 the farm program, 4 labor policy, 3 prohibition repeal and 2 foreign po
294
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY 295
The New Deal did not, and apparently could not, solve
the basic recovery problem. Some of its works, notably the
NRA, seem actually to have retarded revival, but others like
the pump-priming PWA and WPA helped to accelerate
domestically that improvement in economic conditions which
from early 1933 set in through the world. Yet between six
and ten million men remained a stagnant pool of unemploy-
ment throughout much of this era, while agriculture was
kept afloat by lavish federal subsidies. By contrast, the third
of the New Deal's "three RY' proved comparatively easy in
the malleable mood of the mid-thirties. Beginning in the
Hundred Days, reform, as has been remarked, took the spot-
light from recovery after about 1935. The accomplishments
were impressive and apparently of enduring import. Con-
gressmen and local politicians climbed aboard the progressive
band wagon; and art, literature, music and the movies re-
sounded with strains of social significance. It now grew as
customary to interpret history with a liberal Jeffersonian
slant as in the nineteenth century a tinge of Hamiltonian
Federalism had set the fashion, even up to the academic writ-
ings of Woodrow Wilson.
The lifelong idealist, emerging from his long hibernation
in the torpid 1920's, drew a deep breath and joined actively
once more in the quest for social justice. Others, hitherto
insensitive or smug, were shocked, often deeply concerned,
to learn from the president's speeches as well as from articles,
novels and plays that one third of the nation was ill-housed,
For the worst, 23 per cent named the relief program and the WPA, 1 6 lavish
spending, 12 the farm program, 6 lahor policy, 6 foreign policy, 5 "inter-
ference** with business, 5 the Supreme Court plan, 4 the NRA, 3 prohibition
repeal and 2 the raising of taxes. Citizens in the upper-income brackets credited
Roosevelt with stemming the banking crisis, but severely disapproved his spend-
ing policy and handling of relief; those in the lowest brackets (including relief
clients) applauded relief but deprecated plowing under cotton and the destruc-
tion of livestock as their chief grievance. Among fanners, 23 per cent lauded
banking reforms as best, while 19 chose the agricultural program; as the New
Deal's worst feature, 29 per cent specified relief and the WPA while 1 1 selected
the AAA.
296 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
ill-clad, ill-nourished. Women's clubs, for example, devoted
their programs increasingly to these matters rather than
"mere literature" or flower gardens* The acute suffering of the
Great Depression and its aftermath thus fostered a tenderer
social conscience, calling attention to a stratum of chronic
misery among slum dwellers, sweated labor, underprivileged
children, submarginal farmers, sharecroppers and other classes
that long antedated the current emergency. In response
came a variety of reforms and palliatives like slum clearance
and model housing, new legislation against child labor, wage-
and-hour laws, rural resettlement, loans to struggling farmers
and the furtherance of soil conservation.
Above all, the idea of social security took root in American
life, seeking to protect the individual against hazards beyond
his power to control, whether out-of-school youth in quest
of his birthright, or maturity facing the risks of illness, in-
dustrial accidents and technological unemployment, or old
age confronting the ultimate joblessness. Recalling James
Bryce's analysis of this generation's fathers and grandfathers,
the sociologists who in 1935 took another look at Middle-
town observed, "The most striking difference lies in the
emphasis Americans placed, according to Lord Bryce, on the
adventurous and the new in contrast to the emphasis Middle-
town now places on the tried and the safe/* Many people
in the 1930*s staked their faith upon the New Deal's promise
of security, while others pined for the old order "which had
made America great/' cherishing individual enterprise and
free competition in their apprehension of radicalism and
revolution* But from either side the basic urge remained curi-
ously the same*
Roosevelt himself and the majority of his adherents saw
nothing radical or revolutionary in the pejorative sense
about the New Deal, arguing indeed that it promoted indi-
vidual enterprise and free competition precisely because it
favored small business over big business, the average citizen
against monopoly, collective bargaining against concentrated
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY 297
managerial power* To them it was a new deal but with the
same old cards, which as played in the labor mart, for ex-
ample, tended to supplant the rules of auction with those of
contract* Beyond any question, governmental intervention
strengthened labor's hand in an age not only of rising de-
mand for workingmen's security and fuller sharing in the
profits of industry, but also one reflecting an even deeper
discontent stemming from the dull impersonal grind, the
deadly mechanical repetitions that robbed the worker of
interests and creative satisfactions gone with the handicrafts
and small factories of an earlier day. This pervasive un-
rest lay in the background of the unions' demands for greater
collective prestige in politics as well as in the purely economic
sphere.
Conservatives were prone chiefly to note the new arrogance
of labor "czars," whose business was aggrandizement, or the
lawbreaking tactics of labor racketeers. Moreover, the quasi-
judicial National Labor Relations Board appeared from time
to time to overstep its professed impartiality in assuring
unions an opportunity to redress old grievances by swinging
to the other extreme. Even in the shadow of the war emer-
gency, leaders like John L. Lewis created the general impres-
sion that labor's exclusive goal was a larger share in the
national income, not a due share in a larger national income.
Many persons friendly to the labor movement in the early
phases of the New Deal turned sour at the time of the sit-
down strikes of 1937 and thenceforth tended to criticize the
federal pampering of unions, just as they had disapproved
the contrary tendency under Coolidge and Hoover.
Public opinion displayed less sympathy toward another
stock charge of conservatives, namely, that the Washington
government was meddling too much with personal freedom.
A Fortune poll in the early autumn of 1940 found nearly
two persons out of three sure that no undue interference
existed, only one in four believing that it did and one in ten
expressing no opinion; even among the prosperous, denials
298 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
of such interference led by a very narrow margin* This and
other surveys indicated that the majority of people took
comparatively little exception to the New Deal's regulatory
aspects, which as a whole bore most heavily upon the stock
exchange, corporations, high individual incomes and inheri-
tances* In so far as the New Deal touched the average citizen,
he considered it beneficent, although, as a variety of polls
showed, he might object to some phase not infrequently ly-
ing outside his own sphere, such as the farmer's qualms
about the WPA and the urban relief recipient's regarding
slaughtered pigs. In general, whether for good or ill, the
Roosevelt administration fostered the habit of local depend-
ence not only upon the bounty but the powers of decision in
Washington, and also the growth of personal government*
The whole program of the New Deal for relief, re-
covery, reform was essentially experimental, with both the
virtues and defects of fluidity in method, however steady its
ultimate goal of well-distributed prosperity and social jus-
tice. Sometimes its improvisations seemed capricious, as in the
monetary manipulations of 1933-1934, but never unfaithful
to Roosevelt's early pledge of action, incessant action, what-
ever the sum of trial and error* A scion of William James's
Harvard, he took pragmatism for his political tool, and the
mind of America in this era of bewilderment, flux and transi-
tion gave its hearty indorsement*
That the New Deal had to attempt so much so hastily
achieving brilliant successes and a few patent failures arose
in no small measure from the need for rekindling that lamp
of progressivism which had shone bright in the day of the
first Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson, but had gone out in the
excitement of the Great Crusade and never been relit in the
stagnant air of the twenties* But with all the New Deal's
mistakes and shortcomings, its level of public trust remained
singularly high and its leadership sincere, so that posterity
might well be puzzled to read of the almost pathological
hatred which Roosevelt's name inspired in a considerable
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY 299
minority of people lacking neither intelligence nor civic
responsibility. Among its multitudinous works the New Deal
built much of its program into the structure of society and
government. Even the Republicans in 1936 and 1940 prom-
ised somewhat vaguely to do many of the same things only
better and more cheaply. Other segments of the New Deal
mosaic were tried, legally nullified, willingly scrapped or
drastically modified. At some points of stress the onset of a
new age of "normalcy" doubtless would cause further buck-
ling. But that American life would never be the same again,
both friends and foes agreed.
Toward the end of the thirties reform legislation slowed
almost to a stop, holding its gains but attempting little more.
Republican and Southern conservative advances in the 1938
election apparently marked a turning of the tide, for there-
after New Deal enthusiasms and innovations seemed to in-
terest the public less and less. With increasing distance from
the great national debacle of 1929 and a considerable measure
of recovery plus new preoccupations, reform in this genera-
tion had reached its fulfillment. As if calling for the con-
fluence of the two streams which had parted in 1935, the
president told Congress on January 4, 1939, "Our full
energies may now be released to invigorate the processes of
recovery in order to preserve our reforms/' Seeing things now
"that we could not see along the way/' he observed that the
reforms of the New Deal had been in the broadest sense a
defense measure, not only salvation from internal economic
disintegration but also the building of sounder bulwarks
against foreign enmity. Undoubtedly Roosevelt also per-
ceived the need for closer unity within his party and the
country under the threat of impending world conflict. He
required the Southern conservative vote and interventionist
Republican support for rearmament at a time when certain
congressmen who had supported his domestic program were
forsaking him to sulk in the isolationist tent. This annual
message closed with the solemn reminder that "dangers with-
300 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
in are less to be feared than dangers from without. * . Once
I prophesied that this generation of Americans had a ren-
dezvous with destiny. That prophecy comes true. To us
much is given; more is expected/*
On March 5, 1933, the front page of the New York
Times had reported, in a column adjacent to an account of
Roosevelt's inauguration, the latest news from Germany un-
der the caption "Victory for Hitler Is Expected Today/*
Bonfires blazed on every hilltop along the Reich's borders
"to signalize the Nazi ideal of an awakening nation/* and
henceforth the flame crept rapidly along the powder train
leading to the Second World War. At first the rise of totali-
tarianism seemed to Middletown chiefly something to read
about in the newspapers, hardly a matter of American con-
cern. But columnists, radio commentators, roving journalists
in their books and articles, educators and a few returned
tourists began to take the measure of the peril. Steadily it
advanced from Hitler's reintroduction of compulsory mili-
tary service in 1935 and fortification of the Rhine in 1936
and Mussolini's concurrent subjection of Ethiopia to the
collaboration of the Axis dictators in destroying the popular-
front government in Spain in 1936-1938, thence to Hitler's
subjection of Austria in the spring of 1938 and of Czecho-
slovakia in the autumn and following spring*
The refugee, whether the Gentile who hated Hitler on
principle or the Jew whom Hitler hated on psychopathic
grounds, was a harbinger of doomsday more commonly seen
in cities and university communities than in Middletown.
Between 1933 and 1939 some sixty thousand quota immi-
grants arrived from Germany alone, and even this number
fell far short of including all who applied to American con-
suls for permission to migrate. The influx coincided with an
abrupt decline in general immigration. In fact, with the
promise of American life no longer beckoning so alluringly,
many aliens already in the United States began to reverse
their flow, returning to the Old World where lower living
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY 301
costs and family shelter awaited. In 1931, for the first time
in history, the number departing exceeded the number ar-
riving, a trend which persisted until 1936, when a slight gain
at last reappeared and, augmented by the refugee traffic, grew
steadily until after the outbreak of the Second World War.
The decade as a whole offered a startling contrast to past
ones. Whereas in 1921-1930 the sum total of immigrants
reached 4,107,209, in 1931-1940 it sank to 528,431, the
smallest decennial crop since 1820-1830.
Despite the talk long fashionable in intellectual European
circles about the blemishes of American civilization race
riots, gangsters, corrupt politics, bloated capitalists and pan-
demic vulgarity the United States reenacted its proverbial
role as the haven of the liberal exile. These refugees, unlike
the earlier waves of German and Italian farmers, mechanics
and laborers, included a remarkably high percentage of phy-
sicians, scientists, scholars, musicians, artists and authors eager
to contribute their best to the land of their adoption. Among
them were the physicist Albert Einstein, the novelist Thomas
Mann, conductors Arturo Toscanini and Otto Klemperer,
composers Arnold Schoenberg, Paul Hindemith and Kurt
Weill, the architect Walter Gropius, the painter George
Grosz, the geneticist Richard Goldschmidt, the bacteriologist
Carl Lange, the cultural historian Giuseppe A. Borgese and a
former chancellor of Germany, Heinrich Bruening, domiciled
as professor of public administration at Harvard, Most of
the refugees found ready employment. The Emergency Com-
mittee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars helped to sub-
sidize savants while they worked on campuses or with re-
search foundations until their adaptability and value could
be gauged properly, while Manhattan's New School for
Social Research in 1933 set up a "University in Exile" which
gave employment to a hundred and seventy-eight European
professors.*
* Between September, 1939, and May, 1941 and in throngs just after
Hitler's break-through in the West nearly seven thpusand European children
302 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
The prominence of Jews among the new arrivals added
fuel to the flame of anti-Semitism a relatively new phenom-
enon in the United States. Among certain groups it seemed
as if the bacterial warfare of hatred, so zealously manufac-
tured in the political laboratories of the Third Reich and
imitatively in Spain and Italy, was now spreading its in-
fection across the Atlantic. Or perhaps every man, like every
section and nation, carried within himself the dormant virus
of racial and religious prejudice and mob cruelty, and only a
healthy state of mind and decency's innate power of resis-
tance could keep such germs from multiplying. Organizations
like Coughlin's Christian Front, George Deatherage's Knights
of the White Camellia and Fritz Kuhn's German-American
Bund, with support from periodicals like Gerald Winrod's
Defender in Kansas, stirred the caldron of intolerance* Ap-
parently the most fanatical, William Dudley Pelley's Silver
Shirts, which started in North Carolina in 1933, inherited
so completely the white-supremacy program and tactics of
the moribund Ku Klux Klan that an observer was led to
comment upon "the great shift from sheets to shirts/' An
estimate in 1936 placed the total membership of Jew-baiting
organizations at fifteen thousand; certainly they never
achieved much numerical strength.
Nevertheless, in 1938, an observant liberal like Alvin
Johnson could report "a marked increase in anti-Semitism
in America* Everybody knows that it is true/' A Fortune
poll in April, 1939, asking, *T)o you believe that in this
country hostility toward the Jewish people is growing or
not?" found that nearly forty-six per cent said no, thirty-
three per cent said yes, and twenty-one offered no opinion.
While folk of the town, village and farm, where the Jew
was rare, denied an increase of prejudice, city dwellers, white-
of sixteen and under, excluding those coming to join parents, found sanctuary
in the United States by efforts of the U. S. Children's Bureau in collaboration
with private groups and philanthropic individuals. Katharine F. Lenroot, "The
U. S. Program for the Care of Refugee Children/' National Conference of
.Social Work, Proceeds, for 1941, 198-207.
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY 303
collar workers and inhabitants of the Northeast seaboard
reached a different conclusion. Furthermore, about a quarter
of those interviewed revealed anti-Semitic attitudes them-
selves. More serious than the professional agitator was the
unthinking or disgruntled individual who expressed casually,
irresponsibly and often flippantly a bias compounded of
several things, chiefly the belief that Jews belonged to an
unassimilable minority group and monopolized certain busi-
nesses and professions, together with such carefully planted
absurdities as that they were all Communists (sometimes
merely New Dealers), yet "international bankers/* Few
Americans felt anything but disgust at Hitler's overt perse-
cution of the Jews, but a not inconsiderable minority
thoughtlessly parroted Nazi talk.
Despite the growth of anti-Semitism, gullibility to foreign
propaganda attracted more notice than ever before, stemming
largely from the lurid tales about mutilated Belgian children
and crucified Canadian soldiers spread during the First World
War by Britain, France and America's own Creel committee.
Writings of "revisionist" historians like Harry Elmer Barnes
and, at a higher level of scholarship, Sidney B. Fay, but-
tressed by best sellers like Walter Millis's Road to War
(1935), sought (with enthusiastic aid from Prussian Ad-
miral Arno Spindler and Count Max Montgelas) to explode
the "myth" of German war guilt in 1914 and often stressed
the role played by British propaganda in persuading the
United States to "pull Britain's chestnuts out of the fire/*
Such publications fed the rising isolationist sentiment of the
1930's.*
In the autumn of 1937 was set up in New York City a
* The economic interpretation of history played into the hands of pro-
German apologists in the latter twenties and the thirties by creating a "mer-
chants-of-death" bogey about Allied munitions makers and also by kindling
sympathy for Germany as a "have-not" nation, forgetting that she was a
"have" in 1914. Before the menace of Hitler became irrefutable, many liberals
in the United States and other countries thus tended to admire "misunder-
stood" Germany and disparage "greedy" France.
304 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
nonprofit Institute for Propaganda Analysis under an ad-
visory board including the historians Charles A. Beard and
James T. Shotwell, the economist Paul Douglas and the
sociologist Robert S. Lynd, its chief activity being the pub-
lication of Propaganda Analysis: a Monthly Letter to Help
the Intelligent Citizen Detect and Analyze Propaganda,
whether foreign or domestic. It classified the seven basic
techniques as the name-calling device, glittering generalities,
transfer in terms of approved symbols and sanctions, the
testimonial, the plain-folks device, card stacking through
falsification and build-up and, finally, the band wagon
("everybody's doing it").* While such students undoubt-
edly had much truth on their side and so helped to educate
the nation beyond the effervescent innocence of the Great
Crusade, they served to build a propaganda against propa-
ganda which, particularly among the young, turned into
skepticism, then hardened into cynicism respecting all na-
tional ideals, nourishing an isolationist apathy in the face of
the totalitarian threat* Nor did such folk distinguish between
the propaganda of dictatorships that tolerated only one kind,
whether fascist or communist, and democracies which be-
lieved in the freedom, variety and decentralization of public
opinion.
An obbligato of pacifism also ran through this era, in its
early years attuned to economy as an argument for arma-
ments reduction. "Sentimental peace impulses/* wrote Wil-
lard M. Kiplinger's breezy News Letter of July 29, 1929,
are "tied up with the domestic pocket-book, serving to em-
phasize that one of the qualities of war is expensiveness/*
Blaming rearmament for much of the Depression, Hoover
in the spring of 1930 applauded the efforts of the naval-arms
* An unconscious example of the last technique, illustrating propaganda
analysts' own inability to disengage themselves from propaganda, is found in
Harold Lavine and James Wechsler's statement, regarding Hoover's Belgian
relief activities, that "most Americans tend to agree that the enterprise was
part of a build-up for American intervention in World War L" Propaganda
Analysis, April 30, 1940, 2.
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY 305
conference in London. The congressionally appointed War
Policies Commission, meeting a year later, heard much testi-
mony about "taking the profits out of war/' with dark hints
of a bankers' conspiracy, headed by J. P Morgan, as a prime
cause of American intervention in 1917. Henceforth the
theme of war's cost to the taxpayer yielded to that of war's
profit to the capitalist. The year 1934 brought forth books
like H. C Engelbrecht and R C Hanighen's Merchants of
Death and George Seldes's Iron, Blood, and Profits as well
as a widely read Fortune article called "Arms and the Men";
and a special Senate committee, headed by North Dakota's
isolationist Gerald P* Nye, sought to pry the lid off profit-
eering in the First World War. The reaping of excessive
gains was conclusively established, but the thesis which Nye
strove hardest to prove that pressure from Big Business
had swayed Wilson in deciding upon war found no con-
firmation among the tons of evidence so diligently collected.*
Moved by revulsion against "foreign entanglements/*
Congress in 1934 passed the Johnson act forbidding nations
with defaulted debts to the United States to borrow again
and, with South America's Chaco war immediately in view,
authorized the president to ban sales of arms to foreign bel-
ligerents. In 1935 the Senate again rejected membership in
the World Court, and Congress embarked on the first of a
series of neutrality acts. In effect, this legislation retreated
from traditional American claims to freedom of the seas,
prohibited the arming of merchant vessels, barred loans or
* The Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry, pursuant to
S. Res. 206, 73 Congress, published between 1934 and 1937 its findings in
thirty-nine parts. Part 5, for example, concerned E. I. du Pont de Nemours f
Company, Part 21 the lobbying activities of shipbuilders, and Parts 25-29
J. P. Morgan & Company. A student keenly in sympathy with the Nye com-
mittee's point of view, Charles C. Tansill, America Goes to War (Boston.
1938), 657, admits it found "not the slightest evidence" of Wilson's suasion
by industrialists. War sentiment in Congress and in the press was, of course, a
more complex matter. This campaign to "take the profits out of war'* bore later
fruit in the excess-profits-tax law of October, 1940. See F. D. Roosevelt, Public
Papers and Addresses (S. L Rosenman, ed., N. Y., 1938-1941), IX, 276.
306 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
credits to belligerents and imposed an embargo upon arms
shipments with no discrimination between aggressor and
victim.
Among the people pacifism took many shapes from the
Girl Scouts' change of uniform at the close of the twenties
from "militaristic" khaki to gray-green (for them, no doubt,
innocent of association with the German feldgrau) to the
thunderous applause with which the National Education
Association in 1935 greeted Senator Nye and then by almost
unanimous vote condemned military training in tax-sup-
ported schools. Ladies' clubs campaigned against toy soldiers,
and some proposed to abolish Memorial Day with its custom
of decorating military graves* In New York a peace parade
bore the picture of a one-armed veteran on crutches under
the familiar recruiting caption, "The Army Makes Men/* *
For a time the peace movement bade fair to be snatched out
of middle-class, idealistic and largely feminine hands by left-
wing labor and radical groups, which saw in fascism capi-
talism's last stand and in war the ultimate convulsions of a
dying order. One such organization, the Congress against
War, formed in 1933 by Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair
and others, shortly blossomed into the Communist-supported
League against War and Fascism.
The clergy, ruefully recalling how they had "presented
arms" in 1917, now resolved in large numbers never to bless
another crusade. A nation-wide poll in 1931 among nine-
teen thousand Protestant ministers found that twelve thou-
sand believed the churches should register disapproval of any
future war, while over ten thousand gave their personal
pledge not to sanction or actively take part in one. A slightly
larger poll in 1934 reported that three out of four wanted
their denominations to oppose all armed conflicts, but, some-
* Cited with warm approval by H. C Engelbrecht, Revolt against Wat
(N. Y. 1937), 40, an emotional book mirroring the common pacifist assump-
tion that America would never be attacked, but would seek war only to protect
overseas investments under the guise of quixotic ideals.
View of Chicago's "Century
of Progress."
Symbols of Netv York's
"World of Tomorrow/*
Two World Expositions.
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY 307
what illogically, only a little more than half condemned de-
fensive war.
Though the brunt of battle inevitably would be borne
by youth, this group, while tending to regard all war as
futile, evidenced less inflexible pacifism than a desire to avoid
and discourage wan A Literary Digest survey of college un-
dergraduates in January, 1935, indicated that twenty-one
in twenty-five would fight if the nation were attacked, but
that hardly more than four in twenty-five would join in
invading another country. A poll of thirteen thousand young
people throughout the population two years later disclosed
that a third of the males would volunteer if war should be
declared, another third go quietly when drafted, a twelfth
would serve only if invasion threatened, while another
twelfth would refuse under any circumstances. Girls, an-
nouncing their intention to dissuade brothers, sweethearts or
husbands from serving, proved twice as numerous as male
objectors.
In October, 1937, when the president launched as a trial
balloon his Chicago speech proposing the "quarantine" of
aggressors against world peace, a Gallup poll discovered that
almost three Americans in four favored the Ludlow amend-
ment which sought to prohibit Congress, save in times of
invasion, from declaring war without a national referendum.
Thanks, however, to the president's strong opposition and
his moral support from international-minded Republicans
like Henry L. Stimson, the House shelved the proposal early
in 1938 by a narrow margin.
Meanwhile two bitter wars had broken out on opposite
sides of the globe. In 1936 a fascist rebellion, abetted by
Hitler and Mussolini, began under Francisco Franco to sub-
due the legal Spanish government, the latter gaining from
Soviet Russia too little help to turn the tide but enough to
alienate the Catholic hierarchy in America and thus assure
powerful support in Washington for the imposing of an arms
embargo, which in practice hurt the Loyalist regime. Some
308 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
young American idealists and leftists enlisted under the
Spanish liberal banner as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade;
the showing of the Loyalist movie, "Spain in Flames,**
stirred excitement and recrimination; and citizens in gen-
eral now learned of the * 'fifth column/* agents of the Franco
forces who bored from within.
The struggle destined more directly to affect the United
States flared up in the Orient. In 1931 Japan invaded Man-
churia; and though Hoover's Secretary of State Stimson pro-
tested, he evoked neither hearty response from the British
nor keen popular concern at home. Having plumbed the
abyss of indifference, Japan in July, 1937, launched a full-
scale offensive against China* This time the Roosevelt ad-
ministration protested, and many college girls forswore silk
stockings and chain stores boycotted Japanese manufactures;
but these gestures seemed impotent beside the accelerated sale
of oil and scrap iron by American and British business firms
to feed the emperor's war machine. Later in 1937, however,
demands for Japanese apology and indemnification after the
sinking of the American gunboat Panay got prompt results,
although the National Council for the Prevention of War
sought to bar the showing of films of this incident because
of dialogue "directed against the Japanese and having an
unquestioned effect of arousing the American temper/' While
requests for an embargo hung fire at the White House, a
Gallup poll in 1938 registered an affirmative mandate from
the people*
The grim logic of events rather than ardor steadily drew
the nation closer to war* Thus while a Gallup poll in Octo-
ber, 1938, found a majority approving Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain's settlement at Munich despite still
greater agreement that Hitler's claims were unjust, another
sampling in January, 1939, reported barely more than two
out of five still hopeful that the United . States could stay
out of another world conflict* In April the president sent
messages to Hitler and Mussolini asking on behalf of neigh-
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY 309
bor states a ten-year nonaggression covenant, but met with
tacit scorn. In late August the unexpected Nazi-Soviet pact
at Poland's expense a demonstration of appeasement still
more cynical than Munich executed a swerve so abrupt
that its centrifugal force sent hurtling all fellow-travelers
save those with an iron grip on the Communist line.* A week
later Hitler invaded Poland, and Britain and France, though
impotent to give more than moral aid, declared war upon
Germany.
"This nation will remain a neutral nation," Roosevelt told
the people in a fireside chat, "but I cannot ask that every
American remain neutral in thought as well Even a neutral
has a right to take account of facts. Even a neutral cannot be
asked to close his mind or his conscience/' The next year
saw the gradual mobilization of public sentiment from
benevolent neutrality implemented by "cash-and-carry**
armaments (made possible by a revision of the neutrality
act in November, 1939) to a surge of sympathy and of re-
lief funds for Finland wantonly attacked by Russia, thence
to "all aid for the Allies short of war" and "aid even at the
risk of war/' as Gallup polls reported to be the majority
desire before the end of 1940. The president marched usually
in the vanguard of mass opinion both being some steps
ahead of Congress and sharpened its expression. Even the
past seemed clearer by the light of the new conflagration,
Gallup polls showing, in an unprecedented reversal of a
popular verdict upon history, that citizens who believed
America had mistakenly entered the First World War had
fallen from sixty- four per cent in the spring of 1937 to a
minority of thirty-nine in December, 1940. In the meantime,
by October, 1940, Gallup reported nine out of ten favoring
an embargo on all supplies to Japan.
*The reaction of a young American radical who had just foreseen this
ahout-face, and spent the ensuing months trying to rebuild his philosophy of
life and politics around a new core his homeland instead of the "magnetic
mountain" of Russia is depicted in the diary of Walter Morris, American
in Search of a Way (N. Y., 1942), 141 ff.
310 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
While isolationists like Senator Burton K* Wheeler and
Congressman Hamilton Fish and their friends, banding to-
gether as "America First/* continued to vociferate, at the
other extreme the adherents of Clarence Streit, journalist and
author of Union Now (1939), advocated merging the
sovereignty of fifteen North Atlantic and Scandinavian
democracies into a league for self-defense. Others looked less
to the keystone of English-speaking peoples than to Pan-
American solidarity in a world of chaos, rejoicing that
Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor** policy had built a seemingly
durable bridge of amity over the tottering old piers of
"Yankee imperialism/' * In view of these changed relations
Secretary Hull could rightly say in July, 1940, that the es-
sence of the Monroe Doctrine was a stake in the common
safety, with no implied hegemony over the Americas.
His summary of the situation helped no less to buttress
inter-American understanding than did the establishment in
the next month of a joint Board of Defense between Canada
and the United States, f In September American responsi-
bility in the North Atlantic took still more concrete form
under an executive deal whereby the nation acquired eight
British bases on ninety-nine-year lease, stretching from New-
foundland to British Guiana, in exchange for fifty overage
destroyers. William Allen White's Committee to Defend
America by Aiding the Allies, formed in May, 1940, when
Hitler overran Holland and Belgium, put into its name the
* The retreat from imperialism was actually begun by Hoover's withdrawal
of the marines from Nicaragua in January, 1933. It was paralleled in the same
month by the Hawes-Cutting bill looking toward independence for the Philip-
pines, a plan further advanced, by the Tydings-McGuffie act of March, 1934.
For the "Good Neighbor" policy, see S. K Bemis, The Latin American Policy
of the United States (N. Y., 1943) , 221-342.
f While Roosevelt's cherished scheme of the St. Lawrence seaway failed to
pass the Senate, sweeping reciprocal trade agreements between the two countries
served to hammer new links. At Kingston, Ontario, on August 18, 1938, the
president said, "I give you assurance that the people of the United States will
not stand idly by if domination of Canadian soil is threatened by any other
Empire." Public Papers, VII, 493.
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY 311
logic to which a growing number now subscribed. After an-
other month only one major ally remained to fight the Axis,
France having succumbed to the Nazi Blitzkrieg.
Production of armaments for the defense of Britain and
the preparedness of the United States rose together in steady
crescendo. With the retooling of aircraft factories, the con-
version of tractor assembly lines into processions of tanks
and gun carriages, the ceaseless hum of shipyards and pre-
cision-instrument workshops, America's own war potential
was being modernized and expanded* This Anglo-American
collaboration attained an important milestone in the lend-
lease act of March 11, 1941, which undertook to supply
materials to foes of the Axis according to their need rather
than ability to pay. Tentative gestures to aid China by loans
and, at last, the stoppage of Japan's imports of high-test
gasoline and scrap metal in 1940, though popularly ap-
proved, attracted much less notice than did transatlantic
events.
In response to the thickening war dangers the WPA turned
increasingly to projects like housing for aircraft and muni-
tions workers, camps for the National Guard, armories and
rifle ranges until by October, 1941, one in three WPA
workers was engaged in such tasks. Inevitably defense needs
pyramided the national debt to new heights, but as an off-
setting factor federal relief grew less and less necessary. By
early autumn, 1940, the Federal Reserve Board's index of
industrial production had risen nearly seven points and al-
most two million more persons had found private employ-
ment during this first twelvemonth of war in Europe. A
different demand for man power arose from the nation's
first peace-time selective-service act, signed on September 1 6,
1940. Within a few months clothiers* advertisements began
to remark that "olive drab is what the well-dressed young
man is wearing."
Adding to these portents was the excitement of another
presidential election year. To the chagrin of organization
312 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Republicans the party's national convention, bowing to
popular demand, nominated Wendell Willkie, a vigorous,
earnest Hoosier practising law in Wall Street and managing
a big utilities concern, who had been a Democrat prior to
quarreling with the New Deal's methods rather than its
ideals. As a sincere internationalist, he had still less grounds
for differing with the administration and hence refused to
wage the sort of contest that might have split open the
country in a demoralizing way. When, however, the Demo-
crats "drafted" Roosevelt for a third term, Willkie sought to
make a campaign issue of that break with precedent. The
most challenging of all Roosevelt's opponents, Willkie im-
pressed millions with his simple, forthright idealism and his
quick capacity for growth as a leader.
His party's congressional record under the darkening skies
of crisis proved, however, much less clear-cut than Willkie's
own stand. In the fall of 1939, on repeal of the arms em-
bargo, eight Republican senators had voted yea and fifteen
nay, while in the House the tally stood twenty-one Repub-
licans to a hundred and forty-three. In 1940, after Willkie's
strong indorsement of selective service, eight Republican
senators voted for this measure and ten against, fifty-two
Representatives of his party for and a hundred and twelve
against. Still later, after the election had come and gone, ten
Republicans in the Senate approved lend-lease while seven--
teen opposed, and twenty-four in the House against a hun-
dred and thirty-five. And as that summer waned, despite a
personal appeal from Chief of Staff George C Marshall not
to wreck the new American army in an hour of peril, only
seven Republican senators voted to renew selective service
and thirteen to end it, while in the House their votes stood
at twenty-one and a hundred and thirty-three respectively,
so that this vital measure scraped through by a vote of two
hundred and three to two hundred and two*
In looking with some astonishment upon the fledgling
candidate they had hatched, the prevailingly isolationist Re-
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY 313
publican old guard felt further lack of ease because Willkie
was unpredictable and apparently intractable to bossism. He
was still too green or idealistic to manipulate machine politics
for his own ends, as Roosevelt increasingly had learned to
do, in expedient if not always fastidious alliance with "Boss"
Hague in Jersey City, "Ed" Flynn and other Tammanyites in
New York and the Kelly-Nash outfit in Chicago. Willkie' s
miscellaneous backers, however, included perforce all pro-
fessional Roosevelt haters, many German-Americans and
Anglophobic Irish-Americans, the motley following of
Coughlin and Townsend and an overwhelming host of the
nation's daily papers, with disgruntled John L. Lewis bring-
ing a minority flock of miners.* The outcome, though less
spectacular than in 1936, was decisive* Roosevelt won by
twenty-seven million ballots to his opponent's twenty-two
million, or 38 states and 449 electoral votes to 10 states and
82 votes. A postelection analysis showed that approximately
three million first voters had cast their ballots for Roosevelt,
only a million nine hundred thousand for Willkie. f
More important still, a Fortune poll disclosed that, by
comparison with surveys in the heat of the campaign, a
marked gain in national unity had occurred; few of the
calamity howlers of early November still regarded Roosevelt
as a menace.? Though the great debate over war and peace
* According to Editor & Publisher, Roosevelt received support from 40 per
cent of the press in 1932, 36 per cent in 1936 and less than 23 in 1940. See
I. F. Stone, "The Press Loses the Election/' Nation, CLI, 467-468 (Nov. 16,
1940) ; and for a geographical survey, an editorial, "The Press v. the Public/*
New Republic, CIII, 405 (Sept. 23, 1940) . After the 1944 election, heyond the
limits of this book, Secretary Ickes called attention to the fact that the percentage
reported by Editor & Publisher had shrunken to 17.7, indicating, he^ said,
"a progressively unhappy and dangerous decline in reader confidence." For
Lewis's role in the 1940 campaign, see Irving Bernstein, "John L. Lewis and
the Voting Behavior of the C.I.O.," Public Opinion Quar., V (1941), 233-
249.
t American Institute of Public Opinion, Public Opinion News Service
(Princeton), Dec. 8, 1940.
t "Quarterly Survey XXXVI/' Fortune, XXIII (Feb. 1941), 164. In his
annual message to Congress early in 1940, in appealing for unity the president
314 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
continued, vast numbers of dissidents now closed ranks in
patriotic acceptance of the president's leadership. Indeed,
many conservatives long critical of the New Deal swung
heartily into line behind his international program* Between
1939 and 1941 Roosevelt passed by almost imperceptible
degrees from being the tribune of the poor to the spokesman
of a whole people in crisis*
The president's annual message to Congress on January 6,
1941, articulated a fighting faith in terms of "four essential
human freedoms/* namely, freedom of speech and worship
and freedom from want and fear, as another signpost in the
American march against fascism* That spring the United
States seized all Axis shipping tied up in domestic ports, and
took Greenland under military control in April and Iceland
in July* In May the sinking of the freighter Robin Moor by
German action led Roosevelt to proclaim an "unlimited
national emergency" and, following a subsequent attack upon
the destroyer Greet, he ordered the navy to "shoot on sight* '
Nazi submarines* On June 24, after Hitler invaded Russia
and Prime Minister Winston Churchill promptly hailed as
Britain's friends all foes of the Axis, American lend-lease
was extended to a power whose totalitarianism was mo-
mentarily forgotten under the exigencies of war and admira-
tion for its stout resistance to the common enemy*
In August the president met the prime minister at sea and
drafted the Atlantic Charter setting forth joint principles
reminiscent of Wilson's Fourteen Points, upon which they
based their "hopes for a better future for the world." The
principles included the denial of territorial aggrandizement*
the right of all peoples to choose their forms of government,
had said, "Doctrines which set group against group, faith against faith, race
against race, class against class, fanning the fires of hatred in men too despond-
ent, too desperate to think for themselves, were used as rabble-rousing slogans
on which dictators could rise to power." Public Papers, IX, 9. The opposition
press was quick to remind Roosevelt that he himself had often called certain
groups tories, economic royalists and other divisive names. But in the public eye
his new role loomed steadily larger.
RENDEZVOUS WITH DESTINY 315
freedom of the seas, improved labor standards and social
security everywhere, the fullest possible economic collabora-
tion among nations and a "permanent system of general
security/' The global education of Americans was proceeding
apace. In 1937, when a Gallup poll asked, "Do you think
the United States should join a world organization with
police power to maintain world peace?" only one out of
four had given an affirmative answer; but by the autumn of
1941 about two in five agreed and the first few months of
the next year saw the number rise to three out of five*
Lagging behind public opinion, officialdom in the summer
of 1941 finally clamped an effectual embargo upon shipment
of all materiel to Japan, now a declared member of the Axis
and intent upon subjugating French Indo-China* The gov-
ernment also froze all Japanese assets in the United States* In
November Tokyo sent one of its smoothest and most cynical
diplomats, Saburo Kurusu, to peddle appeasement in Wash-
ington, while Japanese forces locked their stranglehold upon
Indo-China and took up invasion stations around Thailand*
Admittedly the hour was dark, with' England's back to the
wall and her shipping melting away daily under U-boat at-
tack, Hitler's Field Marshal Erwin Rommel probing the
approaches to Suez, the Nazis at the very gates of Moscow,
and Japan preparing to overrun the "Greater East Asia'* of
her ambitions.
Only all-out participation by the world's ranking indus-
trial-military power, and unity among groups in this
greatest democracy, could stem the flood of encroaching dis-
aster* Both the president and his people stood poised upon
the brink of decision, but reluctance bred of earlier disillusion,
isolationism and long debate seemed to arrest the final plunge*
On December 6 Roosevelt addressed a personal appeal to
Emperor Hirohito to preserve the threatened peace. The next
day, shortly after sunrise, an armada of Japanese carrier-based
aircraft a hundred and five bombers and torpedo planes with
attendant fighters unexpectedly swarmed out of the blue
316 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
over Hawaii. Blasting parked planes, hangars, fuel tanks and
other installations on the main island, they concentrated upon
Pearl Harbor, where the pride of the Pacific fleet lay at
anchor. Long before the three-hour assault was over, the
battleship Arizona sank a total loss; over three thousand
sailors and soldiers were killed on decks, in engine rooms,
oil-coated waters and burning barracks; and the Oklahoma,
California, Nevada and West Virginia lay capsized or help-
less, together with three destroyers, minor vessels and a large
floating drydock. Three more battleships and three cruisers,
though gravely wounded, were able to reply with brisk anti-
aircraft fire, even though the destruction of a hundred and
seventy-seven planes on the ground left the skies virtually
clear to the invader. America had suffered the greatest humi-
liation in her military history a sneak attack and disastrous
defeat which instantly welded the nation into unity by the
white heat of anger*
In Washington it was a Sabbath of unseasonable sunshine.
Secretary Hull was preparing to receive the Japanese am-
bassador and the envoy Kurusu, his Tennessee temper already
seething under their peculiarly dilatory tactics. In the oval
study of the White House the president was finishing lunch
on a tray, and as he chatted with Harry Hopkins before
starting to beguile an hour over his stamp albums, the tele-
phone rang. Secretary of Navy Frank Knox, holding in his
hand a message to the fleet intercepted at Mare Island, said in
level tones, "Mr. President, it looks like the Japanese have
attacked Pearl Harbor . . . ." "No!" exclaimed the president
incredulously. A few more words swept away all doubt.
Anticipating the thought of millions of his countrymen,
Hopkins murmured, "This is it"
Once more the quest for social justice had been engulfed
m the urgency of another great war.
CHAPTER XV
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES
PHYSICAL SURVIVALS
CONCERNING this series the Editor remarked some years ago
that, "with so much basic research yet to he done, the task was
somewhat like trying to write the story of Columbus while he
was still sailing westward.** Of the present volume this description
is most indisputably true. Encumbered with documentary riches
probably more extensive than for any other decade in American
history, the writer remains uncomfortably aware of an enormous
mass of undigested material awaiting future bibliographers, classi-
fiers and monograph writers as well as the reservoir of diaries and
reminiscences still unreleased.*
Save for the implicit threat of the atomic age, many character-
istic physical survivals of this era give promise of long endurance.
Notable examples are the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Cen-
ter, the Museum of Modern Art and the George Washington and
Triborough bridges in Manhattan; the mammoth low-cost hous-
ing projects in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx; the Washington
triangle, including such structures as the Archives, Justice, Com-
merce, Internal Revenue, Labor, Post Office and Customs; Cin-
cinnati's Union Station; Chicago's Merchandise Mart; Frank
Lloyd Wright's ultramodern building for the S. C Johnson wax
company at Racine, Wisconsin; San Francisco's Golden Gate and
* In saving the present book from still greater shortcomings the author is
indebted to Dr. Robert A. Millikan, Dr. Edwin P. Hubble, Professor H. J.
Muller, Dr. Fiske Kimball, Professor W. W. Sweet, Dr. W. R. Valentiner,
Mr. Charles W. Eliot II, Mr. Wendell Berge, Mrs. Howard Baker and Miss
Julia Bennett for critical reading of certain portions; to Mr. Frederick L. Allen
for free access to his extensive library of clippings, pamphlets and other
ephemera; to Mr. Edward T. Canby for data concerning gramophone recordings;
to Miss Gracia Manspeaker of the Huntington Library for help in the prepara-
tion of this manuscript; and to Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, surviving editor
of A History of American Life.
317
318 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Bay bridges; and engineering triumphs like Hoover Dam, the
TVA and Grand Coulee. Most of the pioneer streamlined trains
were still in daily use when this book was written; developments
in aviation are permanently represented in the Aircraft Building
of the National Museum in Washington; and the adjacent Arts
and Industries Building houses specimens of engineering innova-
tion and industrial design* Elaborate technological exhibitions are
in the New York Museum of Science and Industry, the Chicago
Museum of Science and Industry and the Franklin Institute in
Philadelphia. C C Lauritsen's million- volt X-ray tube of 1928
remains at the California Institute of Technology, and E* O. Law-
rence's original glass cyclotron of 1930 at the University of Cali-
fornia's Radiation Laboratory,
Pictorial material ranges from mural art under the New Deal
notably for the Justice Department, Treasury and Post Office in
Washington to the masses of photographs and films (frequently
with sound recordings) in the National Archives originating with
the CCC, PWA, NYA and WPA and showing their manifold
activities. See Guide to Material in the National Archives (Wash.,
1940). A panorama of the contemporary scene as viewed by
artists appears in W. S. Hall, ed., Eyes on America (N. Y.,
1939), reproducing over two hundred recent paintings. Also
accessible are files of popular illustrated weeklies like Life (N. Y.,
1936- ) and Look (N. Y., 1937- ); yearbooks like
American Annual of Photography (N* Y. 1887- ) and C7 5*
Camera (N. Y., 1935- ) ; and such pictorial books as H. G.
Alsberg, America Fights the Depression: a Photographic Record
of the CWA (N. Y., 1934), Walker Evans, American Photo-
graphs (N. Y., 1938) and, in collaboration with James Agee,
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Boston, 1941) , Erskine Cald-
well and Margaret Bourke- White, You Have Seen Their Faces
(N. Y., 1937) and Sag, Is This the U. S. A. (R Y., 1941),
Archibald MacLeish, Land of the Free (N. Y., 1938), and Dor-
othea Lange and P. S. Taylor, An American Exodus (N. Y*,
1939). The Guides prepared by the Federal Writers' Project con-
tain hundreds of excellent photographs of the American rural and
urban landscape, public buildings and industrial installations as
they looked in the thirties. Thomas Craven, ed., Cartoon Caval-
cade (N. Y v 1943), offers a cross section of that art.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 319
GENERAL WORKS
G A. and Mary R. Beard, America in Midpassage (N. Y*,
1939) , though badly organized, C A. Beard and G. H. E. Smith,
The Old Deal and the New (R Y., 1940), and Basil Rauch,
The History of the New Deal 1933-1938 (N. Y., 1944), are
helpful general accounts. The Committee on Recent Economic
Changes, Recent Economic Changes in the United States (2 vols.,
N. Y., 1929), reported too early to offer more than background
aid for this period; but the President's Research Committee on
Social Trends, Recent Social Trends in the United States (2
vols., N. Y., 1933), is important, and from it stem monographs
noted later. W. R Ogburn, ed., Social Changes in 1932 (Chicago,
1933), Social Change and the New Deal (Chicago, 1934) and
Social Changes during Depression and Recovery (Chicago, 1935),
are good annual surveys. A. C. Eurich and E. C, Wilson, In 1936
(N. Y., 1937) and In 1937 (N. Y., 1938), give a journalistic
digest of two years* happenings. Also valuable for the mid-thir-
ties are the thirteen Research Bulletins on Social Aspects of the
Depression (N. Y., 1937) sponsored by the Social Science Re-
search Council, mentioned individually later. Other highly useful
treatments are Broadus Mitchell, Depression Decade, 1929-1941
(Henry David and others, eds., The Economic History of the
United States, IX, N. Y., 1947), and Horace Taylor and others,
Contemporary Problems in the United States (N. Y., 1934-
1935), revised as Contemporary Economic Problems and Trends
(6th edn., 1938) and still later rewritten (with omission, how-
ever, of some significant material) as Main Currents in Modern
Economic Life (7th edn., 1941).
E. K. Lindley, The Roosevelt Revolution: First Phase (N.
Y., 1933) and Half Way with Roosevelt (N. Y., 1936), reflect
the sympathetic observation of the president's favorite news-
paperman; David Lawrence, Beyond the New Deal (N. Y.,
1934), is hostile; and Eleanor L. Dulles, Depression and Recon-
struction (Phila., 1936), and C J. Enzler, Some Social Aspects
of the Depression (Wash., 1939), are soberly detached. Two
cultural studies, one of a particular community, are R. S. and
Helen M. Lynd, Middletown in Transition (N. Y., 1937), and
H. E. Stearns, ed., America Now (N. Y., 1938). Among impres-
320 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
sionistic accounts of the Depression, M. A* Hallgren, Seeds of Re-
volt (R Y., 1933), and Bruce Minton and John Stuart, The
Fat Years and the Lean (R Y., 1940), are leftist; and Gilbert
Seldes, The Years of the Locust (Boston, 1933), and H. M.
Robinson, Fantastic Interim (R Y., 1943), colorful with little
plan or purpose. The most satisfactory graphic accounts are J. N.
Leonard, Three Years Down (R Y., 1939), and R L. Allen,
Since Yesterday (R Y., 1940).
Portions of C. J. Friedrich's The New Belief in the Common
Man (Boston, 1942) discuss the evolution of the New Deal's
basic philosophy, but the treatment is superficial. More scholarly
are the relevant chapters in Merle Curti, The Growth of American
Thought (R Y., 1943).
Probably the most penetrating volume of overseas comment is
The New Deal by the Editors of the London Economist (R Y.,
1937). B. P. Adams, ed., You Americans (R Y., 1939), pre-
sents views by fifteen foreign correspondents. Andre Maurois, En
Amerique (Paris, 1933) and tats~Unis 39 (Paris, 1939), re-
port early and late impressions of the decade. Diego Rivera, Por-
trait of America (R Y., 1934), presents, with reproductions of
murals, propaganda rather than realistic reporting.
GOVERNMENT RECORDS
U. S. Superintendent of Documents, Catalogue of the Public
Documents of All Departments of the Government, XX-XXV,
cover the period 1929-1940, but do not include much mimeo-
graphed and multigraphed material issued by many federal
agencies. L. R Schmeckebier, New Federal Organizations (Wash.,
1934) and Government Publications and Their Use (Wash.,
1936), are general guides to the changing pattern of federal ad-
ministration and its literature. These should be supplemented by
J. K. Wilcox's compilations: NRA, the New Deal for Business
and Industry: a Bibliography (Chicago, 1933); Unemploy-
ment Relief Documents: Guide to the Official Publications and Re-
leases of FERA and the 48 State Relief Agencies (R Y., 1936) ;
Guide to the Official Publications of the New Deal Administra-
tions (Chicago, 1934, with supplements 1936 and 1937); and
Public Documents . . . 19 3 7 (Chicago, 1937). The last supplies
a check list of publications on intermeshed federal and state ad-
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 321
ministrations, invaluable for study of agencies like the FERA,
WPA and NYA, along with such topics as state liquor control,
state employment services, housing boards, old-age assistance, un-
employment compensation, planning boards and interstate coop-
eration. The manuscript files of the multitudinous New Deal and
defense agencies are in the National Archives.
The first decennial census in this era is summarized in Abstract
of the 15th Census (Wash., 1933). Official surveys of the dec-
ade's basic economic problem include Bureau of the Census, Unem-
ployment 1930 (2 vols., Wash., 1931-1932); Federal Emer-
gency Relief Association, Unemployment Relief Census, October
1933: U. S. Summary (Wash., 1934); and, as of November,
1937, Final Report on Total and Partial Unemployment (Census
of Partial Employment, Unemployment and Occupations, 4 vols.,*
Wash., 1938). The sixteenth census of 1940 offers notably full
materials for a statistical study of American life in series like
"Reports on Population" and "Reports on Housing/* National
Resources Planning Board, Population Data from the 1940 Census
(Wash., 1943), should also be noted. For other federal publica-
tions of special concern to the social historian, see Subject Index
of Research Bulletins Issued by FERA and WPA, Division of So-
cial Research (Wash., 1937) and Publications of the National
Resources Planning Board: 1934-1943 (Wash., 1943).
PERSONAL MATERIAL
Both presidents of this epoch founded libraries containing
archives of the first importance. At Stanford University Hoover
added to his earlier collection of records on the First World War
and his services in the commerce department his personal papers
as chief executive, housing them in a steel and concrete tower,
completed in 1941, as the Hoover Library of War, Revolution
and Peace. Here also are the Ray Lyman Wilbur collection relating
to child health, housing and costs of medical care, and the data
gathered by such groups in the Hoover administration as the Pres-
ident's Research Committee on Social Trends, National Advisory
Committee on Education and National Advisory Council on
Radio in Education. Hoover's successor established in 1939 at
Hyde Park, New York, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library as a
branch of the National Archives, its Dutch colonial building of
322 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
local field stone completed in 1940. Among other things it in-
cludes Roosevelt's personal and official papers during the White
House years 1933-1945, along with such memoranda as guest
lists, about a hundred and fifty volumes of scrapbooks, "fan"
mail and letters of criticism, and masses of photographic material
personal and administrative. The private correspondence of Mrs.
R D, Roosevelt and the papers of Harry L* Hopkins as WPA
chief are also deposited here.
Essential for Hoover's administration are his State Papers and
Other Public Writings (W. S. Myers and W. H. Newton, eds.,
2 vols., R Y., 1934) and The Hoover Administration (N. Y.,
1936), a documentary summary compiled by the same hands.
Hoover's Campaign Speeches of 1932 (N. Y., 1933), his The
Challenge to Liberty (N. Y., 1934), American Ideals versus the
New Deal (N. Y., 1936) and Addresses upon the American Road
(N. Y., 1938) voice dissent from his successor's point of view*
T G. Joslin, Hooter Off the Record (N. Y., 1934) , is a friendly
narrative by an associate. Critical is R. G* Tugwell, Mr. Hoover's
Economic Policy (N. Y., 1932). A useful book for the bridge
between administrations is R. V. Peel and T. C. Donnelly, The
1932 Campaign (N. Y., 1935). Basic for the New Deal are the
nine published volumes of Roosevelt's Public Papers and Addresses
(S. L Rosenman, ed., N. Y M 1938-1941). Early speeches with
linkages of comment are published in Roosevelt's Looking For-
ward (N. Y., 1933) and On Our Way (N. Y., 1934); later
ones in volumes like Rendezvous with Destiny (N. Y., 1944)
and Nothing to Fear (Boston, 1946).
Among phonograph recordings commercially available are
Roosevelt's First Inaugural (Union no. 201); speeches of both
Hoover and Roosevelt in "Cavalcade of Presidents" (Victor PS
no* 1) ; excerpts of Roosevelt addresses between 1933 and 1945
in "Voices of Victory" (WOR Recordings) and between 1941
and 1945 in "Historical Recordings" (no. 100). Collections in
the Library of Congress, Harvard University and the New York
University Film Service Library contain numerous noncom-
mercial transcriptions, and a collection in the National Archives
(RG 201) includes addresses by Roosevelt, Henry A. Wallace,
Wendell L. Willkie and other public figures. The Hyde Park Li-
brary has some three hundred sound recordings by Roosevelt
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 323
(dating from 1924) and his colleagues, besides about five hundred
records of orchestral and vocal music made by various WPA
groups, together with a few programs broadcast under the Rural
Electrification Administration and by the Office of Coordinator of
Inter-American Affairs. Also belonging to this Library, but on
deposit in the National Archives, are nearly 300,000 feet of mo-
tion-picture film of Roosevelt and his associates, chiefly newsreel
shots from 1928 onward*
The career of P. D. Roosevelt is set forth in pictures and car-
toons in Don Wharton, ed., The Roosevelt Omnibus (N. Y.,
1934), and biographically in Sara D. Roosevelt, My Bog Frank-
lin (N. Y., 1933), Eleanor Roosevelt, This Is My Story (R
Y., 1939), E. K. Lindley, Franklin D. Roosevelt: a Career in
Progressive Democracy (N. Y., 1931), Emil Ludwig, Roosevelt:
a Study in Fortune and Power (N. Y., 1938), and Gerald John-
son, Roosevelt: Dictator or Democrat? (N. Y., 1941). Hostile
are J. P. Warburg, Hell Bent for Election (N. Y., 1935), and
J. T. Flynn, Country Squire in the White House (R Y., 1940)*
Joseph Alsop and Robert Kintner, Men around the President (N*
Y., 1939), describes the cabinet and brain trust toward the end
of the second administration.
Among memoirs Raymond Moley, After Seven Years (N. Y*,
1939), reflects disenchantment, and Frances Perkins, The Roose-
velt I Knew (N. Y., 1946), approbation. H. A. Wallace, New
Frontiers (N. Y., 1934), comments upon the first year of agri-
culture's New Deal; Frances Perkins, People at Work (N. Y.,
1934), reviews the labor program; and H. L. Hopkins, Spending
to Save (N. Y., 1936), presents a close-up of the PER A and
WPA. In telling the story of the PWA and also of conservation,
H. L. Ickes, Back to Work (N. Y., 1935) and Autobiography
of a Curmudgeon (N. Y., 1943) , are matched in pungency only
by H. S. Johnson's narrative of the NRA, The Blue Eagle from
Egg to Earth (N. Y., 1935). J. A. Farley writes spiritedly of
politics in Behind the Ballots (N. Y., 1938), while D. C Roper's
account of the department of commerce in Fifty Years of Public
Life (Durham, N. C., 1941) is colorless. The most copious docu-
ment kept by a high official of the New Deal, Henry Morgen-
thau, jr/s, diary, is as yet unpublished. I. H. Hoover, Forty-Two
Years in the White House (Boston, 1934), touches upon both
324 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
presidents of the era, as does E. W. Starling and Thomas Sugrue,
Starting of the White House (NL Y., 1946). R. T. Mclntire,
White House Physician (N. Y., 1946), draws upon the medical
memories of twelve years.
Recollections of observant journalists, often poised between
idealism and cynicism, include Walter Duranty, / Write as I
Please (N. Y., 1935), Vincent Sheean, Personal History (N. Y. t
1935), Negley Parson, Way of a Transgressor (N. Y., 1936),
and T. L. Stokes, Chip Off My Shoulder (Princeton, 1939).
Among socially minded autobiographies, the range extends from
H. H. Kroll, / Was a Sharecropper (Indianapolis, 1937), to M.
H. Ross, Death of a Yale Man (N. Y., 1939), tracing the con-
version of a young bond salesman into a prolabor advocate work-
ing for the NLRB. A fine series of thumbnail life stories, gathered
by Federal Writers* Project interviewers from citizens in North
Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia, is presented in These Are Our
Lives (Chapel Hill, 1939). Specimens of autobiography by ec-
centric political figures are Huey Long, Every Man a King (New
Orleans, 1933), and F. E. Townsend, New Horizons (Chicago,
1943).
THE PEOPLE
POPULATION: W. S. Thompson and P. 1C Whelpton, Popu-
lation Trends in the United States (Recent Social Trends Mon-
ograph, N. Y. t 1933), a standard work, should be supplemented
by the former's Research Memorandum on Internal Migration in
the Depression (Social Sci. Research Coun., Bull, no. 30, 1937)*
N. E. Himes, Medical History of Contraception (Bait., 1936),
is also authoritative. Dorothy D. Bromley, "Birth Control and
the Depression/' Harper's Mag., CLXIX (1934) , 563-574, sum-
marizes the results of a Milbank Foundation survey, and National
Resources Committee, Problems of a Changing Population
(Wash., 1938), reveals trends mirrored in vital statistics as well
as in educational, social and cultural patterns. A convenient read-
ing list on matters affecting the nation's people is American Social
Problems Study Committee, Guide for the Study of American So-
cial Problems (N. Y., 1942) ; also valuable here and for subjects
cited below is the Russell Sage Foundation's Social Work Year
Book (N. Y., 1929- ).
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 325
MINORITY GROUPS: A classified bibliography is The Negro,
compiled by the Division of School Libraries and revised and re-
printed through the courtesy of the Julius Rosenwald Fund
(State Dept. of Educ, Nashville, Tenn., 1941). C S. Johnson,
The Negro in American Civilization (N. Y., 1930), gives an
analysis at the threshold of this era. For later developments and
a masterly review of the whole problem, see Gunnar Myrdal and
others, An American Dilemma (2 vols., N. Y., 1944), a study
made between 1938 and 1942 for the Carnegie Corporation. The
best historical treatment is J. H. Franklin, From Slavery to Free-
dom (N. Y*, 1947). Roi Ottley, New World A-Coming (Bos-
ton, 1943), is a journalist's able account of Harlem in the De-
pression. Also useful are C. G. Woodson, The Negro Professional
Man and the Community (Wash., 1934) ; C. S. Johnson, Grow-
ing Up in the Black Belt (Wash., 1941); E. F. Frazier, The
Negro Family in the United States (Chicago, 1939) ; John
Dollard, Caste and Class in a Southern Town (New Haven,
1937) ; and Illinois WPA, The Cavalcade of the American Negro
(Chicago, 1940), a graphic view of this race's contribution to
American life* The somber side is presented by A. F. Raper, The
Tragedy of Lynching (Chapel Hill, 1933).
For other groups as well, see D. R. Young, Research Memo~
randum on Minority Peoples in the Depression (Social ScL Re-
search Coun., Bull, no. 31, 1937) ; Carey McWilliams, Brothers
under the Skin (Boston, 1943) and Prejudice Japanese-Amer-
icans: Symbol of Racial Intolerance (Boston, 1944); Louis
Adamic, A Nation of Nations (N. Y., 1945); and Wallace
Stegner, One Nation (Boston, 1945), which offers a photograph-
ically documented account. For the political exiles of the thirties,
see particularly M. R. Davie, Refugees in America (N. Y., 1947).
WOMEN AND THE FAMILY: A number of works illuminate the
role of women, notably Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, Women in
the Twentieth Century (N. Y., 1933), Lorine Pruette, ed.,
Women Workers through the Depression (N. Y., 1934), E. R.
Groves, The American Woman (N. Y., 1937), and 17. S. Senate
Hearings on Equal Rights for Men and Women (75 Cong., 3
sess., S. J. Resolution 65, 1938). References on the family in^ the
Depression are supplied by Mirra Komarovsky, "Selected Bibliog-
raphy on. the Family, 1935-1940," Am. Sociological Ret;., V,
326 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
558-565, and J. K. Folsom, The Family and Democratic Society
(R Y., 1943), 697-727. Specific accounts include M. F. Nim-
koff, The Family (Boston, 1934); R. C. Angell, The Family
Encounters the Depression (R Y., 1936) ; S. A. Stouffer, P. R
Lazarsfeld and A* X Jaffe, Research Memorandum on the Family
in the Depression (Social Sci. Research Coun., Bull., no. 29,
1937) ; Ruth S. Cavan and Katherine H. Ranck, The Family and
the Depression (Chicago, 1938); and Mirra Komarovsky, The
Unemployed Man and His Family (R Y., 1940). E. A. Rund-
quist and R. F- Sletto, Personality in the Depression (Minneap-
olis, 1936), though obsessed with testing techniques, supplies
useful data respecting the psychology of hard times and relief.
YOUTH: Louise A. Menefee and M. M. Chambers, comps.,
American Youth: an Annotated Bibliography (Wash*, 1938),
contains some 2500 items. For the background of youth's prob-
lems, see Thacher Winslow and F. P. Davidson, eds., American
Youth: an Enforced Reconnaissance (Cambridge, 1940) . Essential
is Youth and the Future (Wash*, 1942), the six-year general re-
port of the American Youth Commission. Also useful are Howard
Bell, Youth Tell Their Story (Wash., 1938), a digest of group
opinion; WPA Research Monographs like B. L. Melvin and,Elna
R Smith, Rural Youth (no. 15, Wash., 1938) ; and Reports of
the White House Conferences on Children in 1930 and 1940. An
indispensable summary is Bureau of the Census, The Facts about
Youth as Portrayed in the 1940 Census (Population, ser. P-3, no*
19) . For child labor, see Katharine du P. Lumpkin and Dorothy
W. Douglas, Child Workers in America (R Y., 1937) ; for fed-
eral relief, Kenneth Holland and F. E. Hill, Youth in the CCC
(Wash., 1942), P. O. Johnson and O. L. Harvey, The National
Youth Administration (Wash., 1938), and Betty and E. K*
Lindley, A New Deal for Youth (R Y., 1938) ; and for mores,
Dorothy D. Bromley and Florence H. Britten, Youth and Sex (R
Y., 1938), and Maxine Davis, The Lost Generation (R Y.,
1936). For delinquency, juvenile and otherwise, consult Thorsten
Sellin, Research Memorandum on Crime in the Depression (Social
Sci. Research Coun., Bull, no. 27, 1937), and, more specifically
Facts about Juvenile Delinquency (Wash., 1935), with bibliog-
raphy.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 327
INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE
BUSINESS AND FINANCE: W. C. Mitchell, Business Cycles (R
Y., 1927), J. ML Clark, Strategic Factors in Business Cycles (N.
Y. t 1934), and G V. Cox, An Appraisal of American Business
Forecasts (Chicago, rev. edn., 1930) , offer analyses of the patterns
of prosperity and adversity. Valuable for conditions leading up to
the New Deal are X C. Bonbright and G. C. Means, The Holding
Company (N. Y., 1932), A. A. Berle, jr., and G. C Means, The
Modern Corporation and Private Property (N. Y., 1933), and
the searching inquiry into holding companies contained in the
Federal Trade Commission's Summary Report to the Senate, Parts
72A and 73 A, Utility Corporations (Wash., 1935), For the
debacle of 1929, see J. D. Magee, Collapse and Recovery (N. Y.,
1934) , and A. B. Adams, National Economic Security (Norman,
Okla., 1936), an excellent general account. For the banking crisis
early in 1933 C C. Colt and N. S. Keith, 28 Days (R Y.,
1933), C. B. Upham and Edwin Lamke, Closed and Distressed
Banks (Wash., 1934), and J. F. T. O'Connor, The Banking
Crisis and Recovery under the Roosevelt Administration (Chi-
cago, 1938)', are useful; a pro-Hoover account is Lawrence Sul-
livan, Prelude to Panic (Wash., 1936) . A. D. Noyes, The Market
Place (Boston, 1938), is sound but dull; F. L. Allen, The Lords
of Creation (N. Y., 1935), draws a lively picture; while post-
mortems under Senate inquiry are marshaled by Ferdinand Pecora,
Wall Street under Oath (N. Y., 1936). Brookings Institution
studies like E. G. Nourse and others, America's Capacity to Pro-
duce (Wash., 1934), Maurice Leven, H. G. Moulton and C. A.
Warburton, America's Capacity to Consume (1934), H. G.
Moulton, The Formation of Capital (1935), the same author's
Income and Economic Progress (1935) and, with others, The
Recovery Problem in the United States (1936), are solid and im-
portant. For words of caution, however, note A. F. Burns, "The
Brookings Inquiry into Income Distribution and Progress/' Quar.
Journ. of Econs., L, 476-623, charging that "the diagnosis [Le.,
need for a price-reduction program to stimulate consumption and
reduce overhead costs while increasing output] bears little relation
to any of the findings/* A popular summary of Brookings ma-
328 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
terial, with oversimplifications, is Stuart Chase, Idle Money, Idle
Men (R Y., 1940). F. C. Mills, Prices in Recession and Recov-
ery (R Y., 1936) , is scholarly.
NEW DEAL INNOVATIONS AND CONDITIONS: G. C. Johnson,
The Treasury and Monetary Policy, 1933-1938 (Harvard Po-
litical Studies, Cambridge, 1939), reviews fiscal developments.
Discussions of business practices under the New Deal are A. R.
Burns, The Decline of Competition (R Y., 1936), and E. D.
Kennedy, Dividends to Pay (R Y., 1939). Broader in scope are
J. M. Clark, The Social Control of Business (rev. edn., N. Y.,
1939), L. S. Lyon, M. W. Watkins and Victor Abramson, Goi>-
ernment and Economic Life (2 vols., Wash., 1939-1940), and
Merle Fainsod and Lincoln Gordon, Government and the Amer-
ican Economy (R Y,, 1941). L. S. Lyon and others, The Na-
tional Recovery Administration (Wash., 1935), M. F. Gallagher,
Government Rules Industry (R Y., 1934), and C F. Roos, NRA
Economic Planning (Bloomington, Ind., 1937), treat the New
Deal's first experiment in the supervision of business. The retort
of private enterprise to regulation is described by S. H. Walker
and Paul Sklar, Business Finds Its Voice (R Y., 1938). For
analysis of the export problem, with primary attention to farm
commodities, see A. E. Taylor, The New Deal and Foreign Trade
(N. Y., 1935). In the wake of the 1937-1938 recession a joint
congressional committee investigated monopolies, cartels, trade
associations, investment-banking practices, patent controls and
kindred symptoms of concentrated power the first inquiry of this
kind since the Industrial Commission of 1898 and its records
(1938-1941), now in the National Archives, are a mine of ma-
terial on Big Business prior to and during the New Deal. The
most important are accessible as Verbatim Records of the Proceed-
ings of the Temporary National Economic Committee (39 vols.) .
For further material upon cartels, consult T. W. Arnold, The
Bottlenecks of Business (R Y., 1940), D. C. Edwards, Eco-
nomic and Political Aspects of International Cartels (Wash.,
1944), and Wendell Berge, Cartels: Challenge to a Free World
(Wash., 1944) . E M. Eriksson, The Supreme Court and the New
Deal (Los Angeles, 1941), succinctly summarizes decisions touch-
ing the New Deal, with bibliography.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 329
LABOR
Emanuel Stein and others, Labor and the New Deal (R Y.,
1934), and C R. Daugherty, Labor under the NRA (Boston,
1934), trace labor's upsurge in the heyday of the Blue Eagle; R.
R. R. Brooks, When Labor Organizes (New Haven, 1937) and
Unions of Their Own Choosing (New Haven, 1939), carry the
story to the sit-down strikes. Herbert Harris, American Labor
(New Haven, 1938), though partial to the CIO, is less violently
anti-A. F. of L. than Edward Levinson, Labor on the March
(R Y., 1938). Harold Seidman, Labor Czars (N. Y., 1938),
discusses racketeering; Louis Adamic, Dynamite (rev. edn., N. Y.,
1934), deals with class violence; while Clinch Calkins, Spy Over-
head (N. Y., 1937), describes industrial espionage. S. H. Slich-
ter, Union Policies and Industrial Management (Wash., 1941) , is
an impartial discussion. NRA mediation techniques are treated by
L* L. Lorwin and Arthur Wubnig, Labor Relations Boards
(Wash., 1935); later 'developments, by Joseph Rosenfarb, The
National Labor Policy and How It Works (R Y., 1940). For
statistical information, consult M. Ada Beney, Wages, Hours and
Employment in the United States, 1914-1936 (Natl. Indus.
Conf. Bd., Studies, no. 229, 1936), The growth of unionism in
an unorganized industry is traced by H. J. Lahne, The Cotton
Mill Worker (N. Y, 1944). For the rising demands of military
production, see Twentieth Century Fund, Labor and National
Defense (N. Y., 1941).
AGRICULTURE
The best introduction to the social and cultural aspects of agri-
culture is Farmers in a Changing World, the excellent Yearbook
for 1940 of the Department of Agriculture. Other general surveys
include CX E. Baker, Ralph Borsodi and M. L. Wilson, Agricul-
ture in Modern Life (N. Y, 1939), and C. T, Schmidt, Amer-
ican Farmers in the World Crisis (R Y., 1941). Conditions at
the beginning of the era are well set forth by E. de S. Brunner and
J. H. Kolb, Rural Social Trends (Recent Social Trends Mono-
graph, R Y*, 1933), and later by Brunner and Irving Lorge,
Rural Trends in Depression Years (R Y., 1937), and Dwight
Sanderson, Research Memorandum on Rural Life in the Depres-
330 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
sion (Social Sci, Research Conn., Bull, no. 34, 1937). Popula-
tion shifts are treated in such WPA Research Monographs as C E.
Lively and Conrad Taeuber, Rural Migration in the United States
(Wash., 1939), F. M. Vreeland and E. J. Fitzgerald, Farm-City
Migration and Industry's Labor Reserve (Phila., 1937), and J.
N. Webb, The Migratory-Casual Worker (Wash., 1937). For
"Okies" and other orphans of the soil, see IL S. Department of
Labor, Migration of Workers (2 vols., Wash., 1938), and Carey
McWilliams, Factories in the Field (Boston, 1939).
The heart of the rural problem is addressed by the National Re-
sources Committee's Farm Tenancy, a report of the Presidents
Committee (Wash., 1937) ; C C Taylor, Helen W. Wheeler and
E. L. Kirkpatrick, Disadvantaged Classes in American Agricul-
ture (U. S. Dept. of Agr*, Social Research Report, no. 8, 1938) ;
and C. S. Johnson, W. W. Alexander and E. R. Embree, The
Collapse of Cotton Tenancy (Chapel Hill, 1935)* A wealth of
observation appears in A. F. Raper, Preface to Peasantry (Chapel
Hill, 1936) and, with L de A. Reid, Sharecroppers All (Chapel
Hill, 1941); and T. J. Woofter, jr., and Ellen Winston, Seven
Lean Years (Chapel Hill, 1939). Detailed Brookings studies are
J. S, Davis, Wheat and the AAA (Wash., 1935) ; H. B. Rowe,
Tobacco under the AAA (1935); H. I. Richards, Cotton and
the AAA (1936) ; and E. G. Nourse, J. S. Davis and J. D. Black,
Three Years of the AAA (1937). U. S. Bureau of Agricultural
Economics, Technology on the Farm (Wash., 1940), is the best
survey of that subject.
RELIEF AND SECURITY
POVERTY AND UNEMPLOYMENT: A bibliography prepared by
the University of Chicago's Public Administration Service, Unem-
ployment and Relief Documents (Chicago, 1934) , is helpful. The
Red Cross report of the first major undertaking of this era is
Relief Work in the Drought of 1930-1931 (Wash., 193 1) * Jose-
phine C Brown, Public Relief, 1929-1939 (R Y,, 1940), spans
Old Deal and New* Summaries of New Deal policies are made by
A. E, Burns and E. A. Williams, A Survey of Relief and Security
Programs (WPA, Wash., 1938) and Federal Work, Security, and
Relief Programs (WPA, Wash., 1941) , and by Elias Huzar, Fed-
eral Unemployment Relief Policies: the First Decade (Ph.D.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 331
thesis, Princeton Univ., 1938), digested in Journal of Politics,
II, 321-335* Other important works are National Resources
Planning Board, Security, Work, and Relief Policies (Wash.,
1942); another NRPB publication, Development of Resources
and Stabilization of Employment (1942) ; A. V. Macmahon, L
D. Millett and Gladys Ogden, The Administration of Federal
Work Relief (Chicago, 1941), useful for the managerial side;
and two Social Science Research Council Memoranda: R S.
Chapin and S. A. Queen, Social Work in the Depression (BulL,
no. 39, 1937) , and R. C. and Mary K* White, Social Aspects of
Relief Policies in the Depression (Bull, no* 38, 1937). For the
human side, with case histories, see E. W* Bakke's studies, The
Unemployed Worker (New Haven, 1940) and Citizens without
Work (New Haven, 1940) ; J. M. Williams, Human Aspects of
Unemployment and Relief (Chapel Hill, 1933) ; Marie D. Lane
and Francis Steegmuller, America on Relief (N. Y., 1938) ; C. C.
Zimmerman and N. L. Whetten, Rural Families on Relief (WPA,
Wash., 1938) ; and American Association of Social Workers, This
Business of Relief (N. Y., 1936). For unemployment as a
chronic problem, consult House Committee on Labor, To Provide
for a United States Unemployment Commission (75 Cong., 1
sess., Hearings on H. R. 8180, 1937); and Corrington Gill,
Wasted Manpower (N. Y., 1939).
NEW DEAL AGENCIES: The best general account of the Federal
Emergency Relief Administration is E. A. Williams, Federal Aid
for Relief (N. Y., 1939); the FERA's Final Statistical Report,
directed by T. R Whiting, was issued in 1942* The FERA's
Monthly Reports (May, 1933-December, 1935) are basic for
this agency as well as the temporary CWA. Louise V. Armstrong,
We Too Are the People (Boston, 1938), vividly describes early
days of FERA relief in a Michigan village. An admirable survey
of its heir is D. S. Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy
(N. Y., 1943) ; useful for one facet is D. S. Campbell R H. Bair
and (X L. Harvey, Educational Activities of the WPA (Wash.,
1939) ; while X C. Bevis and S. L. Payne, Former Relief Cases
in Private Employment (WPA, Wash., 1939), rounds out the
picture. Inventory: an Appraisal of the Results of the WPA
(Wash., 1938), is typical of the agency's stocktaking. For the
Civilian Conservation Corps, see Federal Security Agency, The
332 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
CCC at Work (Wash., 1941); the Corps' national weekly,
Happy Days (started in 1933), which culled material from local
camp papers; and Bibliography: a List of References on the United
States Civilian Conservation Corps, issued by the director in 1939.
A competent dissertation with bibliography is J. F. Isakoff, The
Public Works Administration (Urbana, 111., 1938). To H. L.
Ickes's books already mentioned should be added, in this connec-
tion, his Accomplishments of the Federal Emergency Administra-
tion of Public Works, 1933-1936 (Wash,, 1936) . The Record of
PWA is a summary issued in 1939. For the moot question of
pump-priming, see A. D. Gayer, Public Works in Prosperity and
Depression (N. Y., 1935), and J. K. Galbraith and G. G. John-
son, jr., Economic Effects of the Federal Public Works Expendi-
tures, 1933-1938 (NRPB, Wash., 1940). See later, under "Plan-
ning/' for the TVA.
SOCIAL SECURITY: The basic problem is sketched by Abraham
Epstein, Insecurity, a Challenge to America (N. Y*, 1933). A
concise factual presentation is Social Security Board, Security in
America (Wash., 1937). The most authoritative treatment is P.
H. Douglas, Social Security in the United States (rev. edn., N. Y.,
1939), supplemented by Isabel G. Carter, ed., Appraising the So-
cial Security Program (Am. Acad. of Polit. and Social Sci.,
Annals, CCII, 1939). The chief pressure bloc for old-age assist-
ance is described in Twentieth Century Fund, The Townsend
Crusade (R Y. t 1936).
PLANNING
THE CITY: A pre-Roosevelt appraisal is R. D. McKenzie, The
Metropolitan Community (Recent Social Trends Monograph, N.
Y., 1933) ; specific attention is given the New York area by R. L.
Duffus, Mastering a Metropolis (N. Y., 1930). C. E. Ridley and
O. F* Molting, eds., What the Depression Has Done to Cities
(Chicago, 1935), discusses municipal finance, health, housing,
public libraries and other sufferers from hard times. National Re-
sources Committee, Status of City and County Planning in the
United States (Wash., 1937), Thomas Adams, Outline of Town
and City Planning (N. Y., 1936), and Katherine McNamara,
Bibliography of Planning, 1928-1935 (Cambridge, 1936), indi-
cate the new trends and accomplishments. Other significant works
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 333
arc W. R Ogburn, Social Characteristics of Cities (Chicago,
1937) ; G. R. Leighton, Five Cities (N. Y., 1939), tracing their
life cycle; Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (N. Y., 1938) ,
a brilliant presentation of planning; and the Urbanism Commit-
tee of the National Resources Committee, Oar Cities (Wash*,
1937), factual and stimulating*
HOUSING: No comprehensive account of Hoover's Home Loan
Banks and Roosevelt's Home Owners' Loan Corporation and Fed-
eral Housing Administration has yet been compiled, but periodic
reports are available. Monograph VIII of the Temporary National
Economic Committee, Toward More Housing (Wash., 1940),
contains valuable data, including the story of restrictions in the
building trades. Arguments about public housing are aired in Na-
tional Association of Housing Officials, Summary of Hearings on
the Wagner Housing Bill (Chicago, 1936). The Housing Offi-
cials' Yearbook (Chicago, 1935- ) of the National Associa-
tion of Housing Officials is a valuable source. M. W. Straus and
Talbot Wegg, Housing Comes of Age (N. Y., 1938), considers
mainly PWA construction. Edith E. Wood, Recent Trends in
American Housing (N. Y., 1931) and Slums and Blighted Areas
in the United States (Federal Emergency Administration of Pub-
lic Works, Housing Bull, no. 1, 1935), are illuminating. Useful
discussions are Henry Wright, Housing Urban America (N. Y.,
1935), C A. Perry, Housing for the Machine Age (N. Y.,
1939) , and Carol Aronovici, Housing the Masses (N. Y., 1939),
with critical bibliography. James Ford and others, Slums and
Housing: with Special Reference to New York City (2 vols.,
Cambridge, 1936), affords historical perspective and a wealth of
detail. James and Katherine M. Ford, The Modern House in
America (N. Y., 1940), briefly discusses new trends in house
planning, serviceability and materials, with photographs.
THE REGION: Indispensable is National Resources Committee,
Regional Factors in National Planning and Development (Wash.,
1935) ; a brief account of steps taken is the same agency's bro-
chure National Planning (Wash., 1938). Between 1936 and
1943 the National Resources Planning Board or antecedent
agencies sired thirteen Regional Planning Reports, beginning with
the Pacific Northwest and closing with Puerto Rico. Also valuable
are the twenty-two Drainage Basin Committee Reports, issued in
334 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
1937. No student of industrial planning can afford to overlook
the same agency's Patterns of Resource Use (Wash., 1938) , The
Structure of the American Economy: Basic Characteristics
(1939), and Industrial Location and National Resources ( 1 943) .
Among nonofficial publications H. W. Odum and H. E. Moore,
American Regionalism (N. Y., 1938), is comprehensive; K* B.
Lohmann, Regional Planning (Ann Arbor, 1936), synoptic; and
Isaiah Bowman, Geography in Relation to the Social Sciences
(N. Y., 1934), thoughtful
Essential for the Southern "problem region" are Odum's
Southern Regions of the United States (Chapel Hill, 1936),
with bibliography; R. B. Vance, Human Geography of the South
(Chapel Hill 1935); W. C Holley, Ellen Winston and T. J.
Woofter, jr., The Plantation South, 1934-1937 (WPA, Wash.,
1940); Allison Davis, B. B. and M. R. Gardner, Deep South
(Chicago, 1941); and National Emergency Council Report on
Economic Conditions of the South (Wash., 1938) . Among sub-
jective interpretations by Southerners, the best are W. J. Cash,
The Mind of the South (N. Y., 1941), a well-considered his-
torical approach, and Jonathan Daniels, A Southerner Discovers
the South (N. Y., 1938)* The principal experiment in regional
planning is treated authoritatively in David Lilienthal, TV A:
Democracy on the March (N. Y., 1944) ; an appendix lists im-
portant literature on the TVA, noting that a complete bibliog-
raphy would run to over 3500 items. Among the more important
are C. L. Hodge, The Tennessee Valley Authority (Wash.,
1938), scholarly; Willson Whitman, God's Valley (N. Y.,
1939), stressing human interest; C. H. Pritchett, TVA: a Study
in Public Administration (Chapel Hill, 1943) ; and R. L. Duffus
and others, The Valley and Its People (N. Y*, 1944) , presenting
facts and pictures. For the controversial "y a *clstick" aspect of the
TVA, see J. C. Bonbright, Public Utilities and the National
Power Policies (N. Y., 1940).
CONSERVATION: Carter Goodrich and others, Migration and
Economic Opportunity (Phila., 1936), surveys depressed and
overexploited areas while pointing up the need for intelligent land
use. Division of Information, Resettlement Administration, The
Resettlement Administration and Its Work (Wash., 1935), dis-
cusses both suburban and rural projects. Conrad Taeuber and C.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 335
C. Taylor, The People of the Drought States (WPA, Wash.,
1937), is supplemented by vivid narratives like Caroline A. Hen-
derson, "Letters from the Dust Bowl/' Atlantic Mo., CLVII
(1936), 540-551, and R. D. Lusk, "Life and Death of 470
Acres," Sat. Eve. Post, CCXI, 5-6 ff. (Aug. 13, 1938). Excel-
lent federal documents fraught with social implication are H. S.
Person, Little Waters (Soil Conservation Service, Wash., 1935) ;
H. H. Bennett, Soil Conservation and Flood Control (U. S.
Dept, of Agr., MisceL PubL, no. 253, 1936) ; and for overgraz-
ing, The Western Range (74 Cong., 2 sess., Senate Doc., no.
199, 1936). P. B. Sears, Deserts on the March (Norman, Okla.,
1935), and Stuart Chase, Rich Land, Poor Land (N. Y., 1936),
are popular treatments; more technical is A. E. Parkins and J. R.
Whitaker, eds., Our National Resources and Their Conservation
(N. Y., 1936).
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (N. Y., 1936),
and J. E. Thornton, ed., Science and Social Change (Wash.,
1939), take a comprehensive sweep* More detailed in coverage
from 1937 to 1942 is the three-volume Science in Progress (New
Haven, 1939-1942) edited by G. A. Baitsell. Also important are
Harold Ward, ed., New Worlds in Science (N. Y., 1941), and
Bernard Jaffe, Men of Science in America (N. Y., 1944). Re-
search a National Resource, a three-volume series by the National
Resources Committee, comprises Relation of the Federal Govern-
went to Research (Wash., 1938), Industrial Research (1940)
and Business Research (1941). Under the same imprint, Tech-
nological Trends and National Policy (1937) and Energy
Resources and National Policy (1939) are admirable surveys of
technological and engineering progress.
G. W. Gray, New World Picture (Boston, 1936), is an in-
troduction to physics and astronomy; E. P. Hubble, The Observa-
tional Approach to Cosmology (N. Y., 1937), a more advanced
treatment of the latter. H. B. Lemon, From Galileo to Cosmic
Rays (Chicago, 1934), G. R. Harrison, Atoms in Action (N. Y.,
1939), and A. K. Solomon, Why Smash Atoms? (Cambridge,
1940), attractively broach the subject, while R. A. Millikan,
Electrons (+ and ), Protons, Photons, Neutrons, Mesotrons,
336 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
and Cosmic Rays (rev. edn., Chicago, 1947), is more technical*
Basic knowledge in biology is reviewed by Richard Goldschmidt,
Ascaris (N. Y., 1937) ; genetics is summarized by T. H. Morgan,
The Scientific Basis of Evolution (N. Y., 1935) ; and physiology
by W. B. Cannon, The Wisdom of the Body (rev* edn,, N. Y,,
1939). Henry Borsook, Vitamins (N. Y., 1940), is authoritative.
Advances in medicine are recorded in Paul de Kruif , The Fight for
Life (N- Y., 1938), somewhat marred by emotionalism.
HEALTH AND THE CONSUMER
MEDICAL CARE: S. D. Collins and Clark Tibbitts, Research
Memorandum on Social Aspects of Health in the Depression (So-
cial Sci. Research Coun., Bull, no* 36, 1937), scans the problem
raised by I. S. Falk, C. R. Rorem and Martha D. Ring in The
Costs of Medical Care (Chicago, 1933) and the Wilbur Com-
mittee's Medical Care for the American People: the Final Report
(Chicago, 1932). A progressive surgeon's reflections appear in
Hugh Cabot, The Doctor's Bill (N. Y., 1935); another argues
a more explicit solution in J. P. Warbasse, Cooperative Medicine
(N. Y*, 1936); and Henry Sigerist, Medicine and Human Wel-
fare (New Haven, 1941), considers "social medicine.** James
Rorty, American Medicine Mobilizes (N. Y., 1939), describes the
clash between the American Medical Association and sponsors of
the Wagner health bill in 1938. See also the Library of Congress's
important bibliography, Health Insurance in the United States
and Foreign Countries (Wash., 1938). For public health, Bul-
letins of the U. S. Public Health Service and files of the Milbank
Memorial Fund Quarterly (N. Y., 1923- ) are rewarding.
SOCIAL ASPECTS OF CONSUMPTION: Other costs in addition to
medical care are examined in National Resources Committee sur-
veys: Consumer Incomes in the United States: Their Distribution
in 1935-1936 (Wash., 1938); Consumer Expenditures in the
United States: Estimates for 1935-1936 (1939); Family Ex-
penditures in the United States (1941); and The Consumer
Spends His Income (1939), a pamphlet digest of these findings.
R. S. Vaile, Research Memorandum on Social Aspects of Con-
sumption in the Depression (Social Sci. Research Coun., J3u//.,
no. 35, 1937), is useful, along with J. G. Brainerd, ed, The Ul-
timate Consumer (Am. Acad. of Polit. and Social Sci., Annals*
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 337
CLXXIII, 1934). For appraisal of tie NRA Consumers' Ad-
visory Board, see Persia C Campbell, Consumer Representation
in the New Deal (N. Y., 1940). Helen Sorenson, The Con-
sumer Movement (N. Y., 1941), affords the best survey of its
kind, while teaching of this subject is discussed in Stephens Col-
lege Institute for Consumer Education, Consumer Education for
Life Problems (Columbia, Mo., 1941). For cooperatives, consult
B. B. Fowler, Consumer Cooperation in America (N. Y., 1936),
and John Daniels, Cooperation: an American Way (N. Y.,
1938).
RELIGION AND EDUCATION
S. C. Kincheloe, Research Memorandum on Religion in the De-
pression (Social Sci. Research Coun., Bull., no. 33, 1937), and
Hornell Hart, "Religion," Am. Journ. of Sociology, XL VII, 888-
897, are general surveys. Extensive data are summarized by H. P.
Douglass and E. de S. Brunner, The Protestant Church as a Social
Institution (N. Y., 1935), while J. A. Ryan, Seven Troubled
Years, 1930-1936 (Ann Arbor, 1937) , speaks for liberal Catholi-
cism, and Marcus Bach, They Have Found a Faith (Indianap-
olis, 1946), describes the cultists.
In education the Joint Commission on the Emergency in Edu-
cation, The Schools and the Depression (Wash., 1933) , furnishes
an early picture. Summaries of later developments are Educational
Policies Commission of the National Education Association, Re-
search Memorandum on Education in the Depression (Social Sci,
Research Coun., Bull., no. 28, 1937), and the Commission's
Education and Economic Welt-Being in American Democracy
(Wash., 1940); also valuable is What People Think about
Youth and Education (Natl. Educ. Assoc., BulL, no. 17 r 1940).
For higher education, see the report of "Committee Y" of the
American Association of University Professors, Depression, Re-
covery and Higher Education (K Y., 1937); R. L. Duffus,
Democracy Enters College (N. Y., 1936) ; and R. F. Butts, The
College Charts Its Course (N. Y., 1939). The Journal of Adult
Education (N. Y., 1929-1941), superseded by Adult Education
Journal (N. Y.> 1942- ), offers abundant material on that
topic, which is further enriched by two Handbooks of Adult Ed-
ucation in the United States edited by Dorothy Rowden (N. Y.,
338 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
1934, 1936), M. A. Cartwright, Ten Years of Adult Education
(R Y., 1935), and R. A. Beals and Leon Brody, comps., The
Literature of Adult Education (R Y., 1941).
THE CREATIVE ARTS
GENERAL: R P. Keppel and R. L* Duff us, The Arts in Amer-
ican Life (Recent Social Trends Monograph, R Y., 1933), pre-.
sents a good background up to the early thirties. Jacob Baker,
Government Aid during the Depression to Professional, Technical
and Other Service Workers (Wash., 1936), is a survey by the
WPA director of these manifold activities, and Grace Overmyer,
Government and the Arts (R Y., 1939), contributes a friendly
review*
MUSIC: X T. Howard's detailed and authoritative Our Amer-
ican Music (3d edn., N. Y., 1946) , with a good bibliography, in-
cludes an account of the Federal Music Project, while Aaron Cop-
land, Our New Music (R Y., 1941) , reflects a leading composer's
enthusiasms.
PAINTING AND SCULPTURE: Martha C. Cheney, Modern Art
in America (R Y., 1939) , is a good general survey. For the fed-
eral program, see Public Works of Art Project (Assistant Secre-
tary of the Treasury, Report to the FERA, Wash., 1934), and
Edward Bruce and Forbes Watson, Mural Designs, 1934-1936
(Art in Federal Buildings, L Wash., 1936)* The Museum of
Modern Art catalogue, New Horizons in American Art (R Y.,
1936) , contains over a hundred plates of the best painting, sculp-
ture and prints done under the WPA. The autobiography of
George Biddle, father of the federal art program, An American
Artist's Story (R Y., 1939), relates its origin. Other autobiog-
raphies mirroring the social consciousness of the age are T* H.
Benton, An Artist in America (R Y., 1937) , and Rockwell Kent,
This Is My Own (R Y., 1940).
ARCHITECTURE: Two Museum of Modern Art publications
are useful: Guide to Modern Architecture in the Northeast States
(R Y., 1940) and Elizabeth Mock, ed., Built in USA, 1932-
1944 (R Y., 1944). Poles apart are R. A. Cram, My Life in
Architecture (Boston, 1936) , by the chief exponent of the Gothic
style, and F. L. Wright, An Autobiography (R Y., 1932), by
the champion of the moderns*
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 339
LETTERS: The third volume of V* L. Parrington's Main Cur-
rents in American Thought (N. Y., 1930), though left incom-
plete by his death in 1929, rounds out an important trilogy in
the social interpretation of American literature and exercised a
stimulating effect through the thirties. Alfred Kazin, On Native
Grounds (N. Y., 1942), is easily the best book on the prose of
this era; but good supplementary material occurs in Malcolm Cow-
ley, ed., After the Genteel Tradition (N. Y., 1937), and Max-
well Geismar, Writers in Crisis (Boston, 1942). For the accom-
plishments of the FWA, see "Work of the Federal Writers* Project
of WPA," Publishers' Weekly, CXXXV, Part I (1939), 1130-
1135; Katharine Kellock, "The WPA Writers; Portraitists of the
United States," American Scholar, IX (1940), 473-482; Mabel
S. Ulrich, "Salvaging Culture for the WPA/* Harper's Mag.,
CLXXVIII (1939), 653-664; and Lewis Mumford, "Writers'
Project," New Republic, XCII, 306-307 (Oct. 20, 1937) . Ameri-
can Stuff: an Anthology of Prose and Verse (N. Y., 1937) repre-
sents "off-time" creative activity by FWP employees. A project
undertaken at the close of this era for publication in 1948, Literary
History of the United States (R. E. Spiller and others, eds., 2 vols.
of text, 1 of bibliography) , contains instructive material, including
a chapter by Malcolm Cowley on the literary profession in the
thirties, from which the present writer has benefited.
LEISURE AND RECREATION
GENERAL: R R. Dulles, America Learns to Play (R Y,
1940), has two chapters pertinent here, while J. R. Tunis, De-
mocracy in Sport (N. Y., 1941), considers the social philosophy
of games. J. F. Steiner, Americans at Play (Recent Social Trends
Monograph, N. Y., 1933), gives mainly the pre-Depression pic-
ture; his Research Memorandum on Recreation in the Depression
(Social Sci. Research Coun., Ball, no. 32, 1937) extends the nar-
rative. Recreation (N. Y., 1907- ), the National Recreation
Association monthly, devotes one issue annually (normally June)
to a "Year Book" reviewing community recreation; the Associa-
tion's Park Recreation Areas in the United States: 1940 offers
a survey of municipal and county park systems; under the same
sponsorship appeared G. D. Butler, Introduction to Community
Recreation (N. Y, 1940) , containing a chapter on the Depression.
340 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
A spate of books on the uses of leisure flooded the early years of
this decade; Gove Hambidge, Time to Live (N. Y., 1933), is
typical. Touring, pleasure travel and related matters are con-
sidered by M. A. Willey and S. A. Rice, Communication Agen-
cies and Social Life (Recent Social Trends Monograph, N. Y.,
1933). G. A. Lundberg, Mirra Komarovsky and Mary A. Mc-
Inerny, Leisure: a Suburban Study (N. Y., 1934), traces be-
havior patterns in New York's Westchester county.
READING: The most accessible pastime is viewed by Douglas
Waples, Research Memorandum on Reading Habits in the* De-
pression (Social Sci. Research Coun., Bull., no. 37, 1937), bring-
ing up to date a survey of group interests by Waples and R. W
Tyler, What People Want to Read About (Chicago, 1931).
Annual lists in Alice P. Hackett, Fifty Years of Best Sellers, 1895-
1945 (N. Y, 1945), and files of Publishers' Weekly (N. Y,
1872- ) are valuable. O. H. Cheney, Economic Survey of the
Book Industry, 1930-1931 (N. Y, 1931), and Jacob Loft, The
Printing Trades (N. Y., 1944), cover terminal points in the era
for that industry. R. L. Duffus, Our Starving Libraries (Boston,
1933), records the impact of hard times.
RADIO: P. R Lazarsfeld, Radio and the Printed Page (N. Y,
1940), reflects the sociologist's view; Lazarsfeld and R N. Stan-
ton, eds., Radio Research (N. Y., 1941- ), contains much
social 'and cultural history, as do Hadley Cantril and G. W. All-
port, The Psychology of Radio (N. Y., 1935), and H. S. Het-
tinger, ed. New Horizons in Radio (Am. Acad. of Polit. and
Social Sci., Annals, CCXIII, 1941). See also annuals of the
National Advisory Council on Radio in Education, Radio in Edu-
cation (Chicago, 1931-1935). The pressure of commercialism
rising in the thirties is surveyed in Llewellyn White, The Ameri-
can Radio (Commission on Freedom of the Press, Publs., V*
Chicago, 1947), and in Federal Communications Commission,
Public Service Responsibility of Broadcast Licensees (Wash.,
1946).
MOVIES: An ambitious "Film Index" was compiled under
auspices of the Federal Writers' Project, canvassing some 25,000
books and articles relating to motion pictures; only one volume
of a proposed three has been published: Harold Leonard, ed., The
Film as Art: a Bibliography (N. Y., 1 941 ) . Among better studies
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES 341
of the movies are Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film
(N. Y., 1939) ; L. C Rosten, Hollywood: the Movie Colony, the
Movie Makers (N. Y,, 1941) ; and Ruth A. Inglis, Freedom of
the Movies (Commission on Freedom of the Press, Publs.* IV,
Chicago, 1947). For their social influence, see Edgar Dale, The
Content of Motion Pictures (N. Y, 1935), and Margaret F.
Thorp, America at the Movies (N, Y., 1940); for censorship,
Raymond Moley, The Hays Office (Indianapolis, 1945).
POPULAR MUSIC: Dance bands find their celebrants in Benny
Goodman and Irving Kolodin, The Kingdom of Swing (N. Y.,
1939) . The Decca Album Series, "Songs of Our Times," contains
recordings of the song hits through this period, some fifteen to
twenty-five for each year; four albums covering the years 1928-
1931 have now appeared*
THE THEATER: Laudatory accounts of the Federal Theater are
Willson Whitman, Bread and Circuses (N. Y., 1937), and Hallie
Flanagan, Arena (R Y., 1940). A more critical study, spon-
sored in 1942 by the American Council of Learned Societies, was
directed by Dr. W. F. MacDonald of the Ohio State University;
read in manuscript by the writer through the kindness of Dr.
D. H. Daugherty, it will soon be accessible in print.
PUBLIC OPINION AND WORLD CRISIS
THE PUBLIC MIND: General works are H. L. Childs, An In-
troduction to Public Opinion (N. Y., 1940), and P. F. Lazars-
feld and others, The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up
His Mind in a Presidential Campaign (Columbia Univ. Bur. of
Applied Social Research, PubL> no. B-3, 1944). For ways of
testing the collective mind, consult George Gallup, A Guide to
Public Opinion Polls (Princeton, 1944), and files of Public Opin-
ion Quarterly (Princeton, 1937- ). The chasm between old
methods and new can be seen by comparing C. E* Robinson,
Stratt; Votes (K Y., 1932), with Hadley Cantril, Gauging Pub-
lic Opinion (Princeton, 1944). For freedom of utterance, sec
Zechariah Chafee, jr., Free Speech in the United States (Cam-
bridge, 1941) , numerous pamphlets of the American Civil Liber-
ties Union, M. L. Ernst, The First Freedom (R Y., 1946), and
Commission on Freedom of the Press, A Free and Responsible
Press (Chicago, 1947). For propaganda H. D. Lasswell and
342 THE AGE OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION
others, Propaganda and Promotional Activities, an Annotated
Bibliography (Minneapolis, 1935), provides a guide. Of especial
interest are L* W, Doob, Propaganda (R Y., 1935), and H. L
Childs, ed., Pressure Groups and Propaganda (Am* Acad of Polit
and Social Sci., Annals, CLXXDC, 1935).
FOREIGN POLICY: Merle Curti, Peace or War, the American
Struggle: 1636-1936 (R Y,, 1936), surveys the whole peace
movement, while W. E. Rappard, The Quest for Peace (Cam-
bridge, 1940), analyzes neutrality and isolation over the preced-
ing twenty years* W. S* Myers, The Foreign Policy of Herbert
Hoover, 1929-1933 (R Y., 1940), is laudatory. A. W. Dulles
and H. R Armstrong, Can America Stay Neutral? (R Y ; , 1939) ,
probes weaknesses in the neutrality legislation of the thirties; the
case for hemispheric defense and overseas isolation is argued by G
A* Beard, A Foreign Policy for America (R Y,, 1940) ; and a
useful digest with bibliography is J. W. Walch, Complete Hand-
book on American Isolation (mimeographed, Portland, Me.,
1939)* Duncan Aikman, The All-American Front (R Y.,
1940), S. R Bemis, The Latin American Policy of the United
States (R Y., 1943), and John MacCormac, Canada: America's
Problem (K Y., 1940), treat inter- American relations, while the
Orient receives attention in T, A* Bisson, American Policy in the
Far East, 1931-1941 (R Y., 1941), and Eleanor Tupper and
G* E. McReynolds, Japan in American Public Opinion (R Y.,
1937). The diplomatic background and documents are supplied
by Department of State, Peace and War: United States Foreign
Policy, 1931-1941 (Wash., 1943). Joseph Alsop and Robert
Kintner, American White Paper (R Y., 1940) , offers a popular
. narrative strongly pro-Roosevelt, and Forrest Davis and E. K.
Lindley, How War Came (R Y., 1942), advances the story
through Pearl Harbor. Social and cultural effects of the Second
World War, on the eve of and after the nation's entry, arc ex-
amined by W. R Ogburn, ed., American Society in Wartime
(Chicago, 1943).
INDEX
AAA. See Agricultural Adjustment
Administration.
Academic freedom, at Harvard Tercen-
tenary, 193"; attitude toward, 196,
Adams, J. T., historian, 257.
Adler, M. J., reading list of, 192.
Adult education, under TV A, 168;
spreads, 190.
Advertising, reflects prosperity, 3; re-
acts to Depression, 1 3 ; radio versus
newspaper, 231-232; investigated,
277-279; vitamins, 283.
Agricultural adjustment act, passed,
140; hostility to, 104, 142-143;
crop control under, 140-144; new,
144; effects of, 145-146, 148; and
regionalism, 156; and Negro farm-
ers, 163; and consumers, 279.
Agricultural Adjustment Administra-
tion. See Agricultural adjustment
act.
Agricultural marketing act, passed,
139.
Agriculture, in 1920 f s, 8; scientific,
146-148, 149, 168; depressed
Southern, 160; conservation in,
172-173; drought affects, 173-
174; unionization in, 175; child
labor in, 182; federal aid for, 295;
bibliography of, 329-330. See also
Agricultural adjustment act, Farm-
ers.
Aiken, Conrad, Writers* Project aids,
. ...
Air conditioning, railroads adopt, 227.
Alabama, banks, 62-63; farm income,
147; birth control, 180; educa-
tion, 189.
Alaska, old-age act, 201.
Allen, F. L., historian, 257.
Allen, Hervey, novelist, 255.
"America First" movement, 310.
American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, shows interest in
society, 290-291.
American Association of Scientific
Workers, formed, 291.
American Association of University
Women, and consumer movement*
278.
American Camping Association, rise of,
223.
American Federation of Labor, favors
aid to teachers, 48; growth of, 108,
112 n.; and CIO, 111-112; sup-
ports New Deal, 112-113; racket-
eering in, 118; and fair-labor-
standards act, 118; bars Negroes,
164.
American Historical Association, on so-
cial studies, 58.
American Hospital Association, in-
dorses group insurance, 276.
American Labor party, supports Roose-
velt, 113.
American Legion, combats -unemploy-
ment, 46-47; against retrenchment*
70.
American Liberty League, formed, 89 ;
against New Deal, 96, 196.
American Library Association, on cir-
culation, 244.
American Medical Association, recog-
nizes birth control, 179-180;
against group health, 274, 275,
276; and advertising, 277-278;
on malnutrition, 283.
American Newspaper Guild, formed,
88.
American Newspaper Publishers As-
sociation, and NRA, 88.
American Red Cross, aids unemployed,
47.
American Student Union, activities of,
195.
American Youth Com mission, on un-
employment, 183.
American Youth Congress, aims of,
194.
343
344
INDEX
Amusements, Depression affects, 32,
219-220, 222; labor unions pro-
mote, 116; cost of, 197, 272; New
Deal promotes, 213, 223-225;
bizarre, 220; bibliography of, 339-
341. See also Motion pictures,
Radio, Sports, Theater.
Anderson, C. D-, scientist, 289.
Anderson, Marian, singer, 266.
Anderson, Maxwell, playwright, 264-
265.
Andrews, C. M., historian, 257.
Angly, Edward, author, 14.
Anthony, Norman, editor, 15 n.
Anti-Semitism, rise of, 302-303.
Archipenko, Alexander, sculptor, 270.
Architecture, depression in, 14; of na-
tional capital, 82, 270, 317; uni-
versity, 190; new trend in, 270-
271; bibliography^of^SS.
Arkansas, farmers' union in, 136; mi-
grants from, 175.
Armament, reduction urged, 304-305;
sales banned, 305, 307; "cash-and-
carry,** 309; increased production
of, 311; embargo repealed, 312.
Armstrong, E. H., discovers frequency
modulation, 229-230.
Arno, Peter, cartoonist, 89-90.
Arnold, T. W., on government, 259;
on foes of group health, 276.
Art, federal sponsorship of, 267-270,
318; bibliography of, 338.
Asch, Nathan, author, 248.
Associations, trade, 22, 55, 83; in
rural life, 150; sport, 225; health,
275; farmers', 277; women's, 278,
296. See also Clubs, Organizations
and associations by name.
Astaire, Fred, actor, 240.
Astronomy, advances, 287-288.
Atkinson, Brooks, on Federal Theater,
264.
Atlanta, slum conversion in, 125.
Atlantic. Charter, drafted, 314-315.
Atomic research, 289-290.
Autobiography, types of, 258, 323-
324.
Automobile, Chrysler, 2; sales, 27,
272; unions, 111, 112, 114;
strikes, 114; influence of, 129-130;
trailers, 225-226; accidents, 226.
Aviation development, 227-229, 318.
Axis powers, Roosevelt against, 314.
See also Germany, Japan.
BABSON, Roger, business expert, 3,
212-213.
Baer, Max, boxer, 221.
Baker, Dorothy, novelist, 235.
Baker, George. See Father Divine.
Baker, N. D., heads unemployment
committee, 46,
Baker, R. S., biographer, 258.
Ballard, G. W., mystic, 217.
Ballyhoo, popular, 14-15, 249.
Band leaders, notable, 234-235.
Bank failures, before Depression, 9;
during Depression, 5-6, 17, 62.
Bank of United States, corrupt, 5-6.
Bankhead act, passed, 141.
Bankhead-Jones act, passed by Con-
gress,' 136-137.
Banks, aid speculation, 5 ; RFC helps,
48; suspend, 62-63; close, 65; re-
formed, 66; cooperate, 227. See
also Bank failures.
Barry, Philip, playwright, 241, 264.
Baseball, professional, 221.
Beard, C. A., historian, 257; analyzes
propaganda, 304.
Beebe, William, scientist, 285.
Bell, Arthur, devises Mankind United,
217.
Bell, Thomas, author, 253.
Benedict, Ruth, anthropologist, 285.
Benet, S. V., poet, 256, 265.
Benton, T. H., artist, 267, 269.
Berge, Wendell, on cartels, 23 n.
Bergen Edgar, radio entertainer, 233.
Bicycle revival, 225.
Biddle, George, artist, 267.
Big Business, New Deal attitude to-
ward, 58-59; debunked, 67; and
NRA, 86, 87; and war profits,
305; bibliography of, 328.
Bilbo, T. G., against Negroes, 1 65*
Biography, types of, 258.
Biology, advances in, 285-286.
Birdseye, Clarence, inventor, 282.
Birth-control movement, 178-180.
Black, H. L., appointed to Supreme
Court, 106; for Negroes, 165.
Black Legion, active, 164.
Black Mountain College, founded,
192.
INDEX
345
Blue Eagle, NRA emblem, 83; defied,
85; demise of, 86.
Blume, Peter, artist, 267.
Boas, Franz, anthropologist, 285,
291.
Bodenheim, Maxwell, author, 260.
Bonus Army, career of, 37.
Book clubs, variety of, 251.
Books, self -help, 34, 102, 200; de-
pict social conditions, 136, 158-
159, 201, 248, 253-255, 259;
Depression decreases, 244, 250; re-
prints of, 250-251; poetry, 256;
on history and criticism, 257-259,
303; biographical, 258; on adver-
tising, 277; scientific, 284-285,
291 ; bibliography of, 340. See also
Federal Writers' Project, Novels.
Borgese, G. A., historian, 301.
Borglum, Gutzon, sculptor, 269.
Boston, and regional planning, 155.
Boulder Dam. See Hoover Dam.
Bourke-White, Margaret, photogra-
pher, 136, 248.
Bowers, Claude, biographer, 258.
Bowman, Isaiah, defines regionalism,
154.
Boxing, heavyweight, 221.
Braddock, James, boxer, 221.
Bradford, Roark, author, 158.
Brain Trust, origin of, 53.
Brandeis, L. D., Supreme Court jus-
tice, 105.
Breen, J. L, movie censor, 238.
Bridges, Harry, strike leader, 111.
Brookings Institution, on distribution,
of wealth, 10; on NRA, 86.
Brooklyn, slums in, 125.
Brooks, Van Wyck, author, 257.
Broun, Heywood, columnist, 88, 247.
Browder, Earl, attacks New Deal, 95.
Bryan, W. J., Huey Long incorrectly
quotes, 205.
Buchman, F. N., and Oxford Group,
216.
Buck, P. H., historian, 257.
Buck, Pearl, wins Nobel Prize, 255.
Burchfield, Charles, artist, 268.
Burnham, James, on managerial revo-
lution, 292.
Business cycles* reasons for, 4 ; bibliog-
raphy of, 327.
Byrd t R. E,, explorer, 285,
CCC. See Civilian Conservation Corps.
CWA. See Civil Works Administra-
tion.
CIO. See Committee for Industrial
Organization.
Cain, J. M., novelist, 254, 255.
Calder, Alexander, sculptor, 270.
Caldwell, Erskine, author, 136, 159,
253.
California, banks, 62-63; migration
to, 175; panaceas in, 202-205;
parks, 223.
Campaign funds, sources of, 103-104.
Canada, United States to defend, 310.
Cantor, Eddie, actor, 197-198.
Cant well, Robert, author, 253.
Capone, Al, racketeer, 117-118.
Cardozo, B. N., Supreme Court jus-
tice, 105.
Carlson, A. J., scientist, 291.
Carnegie, Dale, author, 102.
Carrel, Alexis, book by, 258 n.
Cartels, effects of, 22-23.
Cartoons, portray hostility to New
Deal, 53 n., 89-90; animated, 236;
newspaper, 246.
Catholic Church, and birth control,
179, 180; welfare activities of,
211, 212, 215-216; interprets De-
pression, 212; attacked, 216; and
movie censorship, 238; approves
bingo, 242.
Censorship, movie, 238; book, 252;
of atomic researches, 290.
Chamberlain, John, author, 259.
Chamberlain, Neville, and Oxford
Group, 216; at Munich, 308.
Chaplin, Charlie, actor, 239.
Charity, growth" of public, 8-9 ; com-
munity, 46. See also Relief.
Chase, Stuart, author, 53; on region-
alism, 154; on technology, 291.
Chemistry, applied, 297-280.
Chemurgy, advances, 280.
Chicago, slums, 39-40, 125, 126;
strikes, 115; racketeers, 117-118;
education, 189; library, 244; news-
papers, 245.
Chicago Sun, launched, 245.
Chicago Tribune, opposes New Deal,
89; rivals Chicago Sun, 245.
Child labor, under NRA, 84, 88; leg-
islation, 119, 182-183, 296; in
346
INDEX
Southern agriculture, 179, 182; de-
creases, 181-182.
Children, Depression affects, 31, 202;
New Deal aids, 98, 181, 185, 224;
suburbs benefit, 131; kidnapped,
184; and social-security act, 208,
275; radio for, 233; books for,
251 ; refugee, 301 n. See also Birth-
control movement, Child labor.
China, Japan attacks, 308; aid for,
311.
Christian Front, organized, 206-207.
Chrysler Building, erected, 2, 14.
Churches, and Depression, 211-213;
cooperate, 215-216; on movie cen-
sorship, 238; on gambling, 242;
on war, 306-307. See also Catholic
Church, Federal Council of
Churches, Religion.
Churchill, Winston, and Second World
War, 314-315.
Cities, industrial concentration in, 7-
8; Depression hits, 16, 38-40; mi-
gration to and from, 133-134;
Negroes in, 164; bibliography of,
332-333* See also Urban life and
cities by name.
City-planning movement, 128-129,
155.
Civil Works Administration, accom-
plishments of, 74-75.
Civilian Conservation Corps, 72, 172;
history of, 185-187, 222, 223;
bibliography of, 331-332.
Clapper, Raymond, columnist, 247.
Clubs, book, 251; writers', 254. See
also Associations, Organizations.
Cohan, G. M., actor, 265.
Colleges and universities, NYA in,
188; in 1920's, 190; Depression
affects, 190-191; innovations in,
191-193; academic freedom at,
193, 301; student attitudes in,
195, 197, 214, 307; sports in,
220; aid writers, 260; promote
amateur theater, 262; consumer
education in, 278.
Colonial Williamsburg, restoration of,
270.^
Columbia Broadcasting Company, and
television, 281.
Committee for Industrial Organization
(Congress of Industrial Organiza-
tions), formed, 111-112; supports
New Deal, 112-113; and strikes,
113-115, 120; and labor act, 118;
unionizes agriculture, 136, 175.
Committee to Defend America, formed,
310-311.
Commonwealth and Southern, TVA
and, 170-171,
Communists, foment unrest, 16, 94-
95, 111, 116; opposed, 38; as
authors, 251, 253-254; influence
drama and art, 262, 264, 267; as
pacifists, 306.
Compton, A. H., scientist, 288, 291.
Congress of Industrial Organizations.
See Committee for Industrial Or-
ganization.
Connelly Marc, playwright, 158.
Conservation, in agriculture, 143, 144,
172-173, 296; regional planning
in, 155; in South, 166; bibliogra-
phy of, 334-335. See also Civilian
Conservation Corps, Tennessee Val-
ley Authority.
Consumers, and installment buying, 7;
expenditures of, 272-273; and
health, 273-276; and cooperatives,
276-277; and advertising, 277-
279; attempts to educate, 278-
279;bibliography of, 336-337.
Cooperatives, farmers', 137, 139,
276-277; general growth of, 276-
277.
Copland, Aaron, composer, 266.
Corey, Lewis, on capitalism, 259.
Corwin, E. S., political scientist, 105.
Cotton, surpluses, 139; crop control,
141; for jobless, 142; production
under AAA, 145; picker, 146.
Coughlin, C. E., propaganda of, 206-
207, 231, 302; supports Willkie,
313.
Creston, Paul, composer, 266.
Crime, Depression affects, 37, 184;
and racketeering, 117-118; and
kidnapping, 184-185.
Culbertson, Ely, bridge expert, 219.
Cummings, E. E., poet, 249.
Currency, withdrawn from circulation,
62; efforts to stabilize, 68; and
commodity-dollar theory, 68-69.
See also Gold, Monetary policy.
Curry, J. S., artist, 269.
INDEX
347
Gushing, Harvey, autobiography of,
258.
DANCING, radio influences, 234; jit-
terbug, 235-236.
Darling^ J. N., conservationist, 222.
Davidson, Donald, on regionalism,
157.
Davidson, Jo, sculptor, 270.
Davis, J. S., on agricultural policy,
Davis, *J. W., attacks New Deal, 95.
Dawes, C. G., and RFC, 48.
Dawson^ Carl, on regionalism 154.
Debts, increase in national, 6, 92,
311; war, 23-24, 305.
Democratic party, in 1932, 15, 50-
54, 71; in 1936 % 103-104; labor
supports, 113; in campaign of
1940, 312, 313.
Dennett, Tyler, biographer, 258.
Detroit, discontent in, 38; Negroes in,
164.
De Voto, Bernard, author, 257-258.
Dewey, T. E., ends racketeering, 118.
Dies committee, on Theater Project,
264.
Diet, of poor, 39; improved, 137,
200; changes in, 138, 283; and
medical research, 282-283. See also
Food.
DiMaggio, Joe, baseball star, 221.
Disney, Walt, cartoonist, 236-237.
Divorce rate, 198.
Doisy, E. A., scientist, 282, 286.
Dollard, John, author, 159.
Dos Passes, John, author, 248-249,
253.
Douglas, Lloyd, novelist, 214.
Douglas, Paul, analyzes propaganda,
304.
Douglass, A. E., scientist, 285.
Drama. See Theater.
Dreiser, Theodore, pacifist, 306.
Drinking, increases, 94. See also Pro-
hibition.
Drought, refugees, 173-174; victims
aided, 44, 275; conditions drama-
tized, 173 n. See also Dust Bowl.
Dubos, R. J., researches of, 284.
Duchin, Eddy, band leader, 234.
Du Ponts, radio program, 230; and
industrial research, 279-280.
Dust Bowl, story of, 173-176; pic-
tures of, 248, 267.
Dutra, Olin, golfer, 221.
EDMONDS, W. D., novelist, 255-256.
Education, New Deal promotes, 98-
99, 168, 187-189; agricultural,
150; in South, 159, 161; Negro,
163; adult, 168, 190; progres-
sive, 189; and academic freedom,
195-196; through radio, 232-233;
expenditures for, 273; consumer,
278-279; bibliography of, 337-
338. See also Colleges and univer-
sities.
Eighteenth Amendment, repealed, 71.
Einstein, Albert, physicist, 290, 301.
Empire State Building, completed, 14.
Employment, increase in federal, 82;
under WPA, 98; of refugees, 301.
See also Unemployment.
Engelbrecht, H. S., author, 305.
Engle, Paul, poet, 256.
Esqture, begun, 249,
Evans, Rudolph, sculptor, 270.
Evergood, Philip, artist, 269.
Export-Import Bank, created 91.
FCA. See Farm Credit Administration.
FSA. See Farm Security Administra-
tion.
FBI. See Federal Bureau of Investi-
gation.
FCC. See Federal Communications
Commission.
FERA. See Federal Emergency Relief
Administration.
FFB. See Federal Farm Board.
FHA. See Federal Housing Authority.
FRB. See Federal Reserve Board.
FSA. See Federal Security Agency.
FTC. See Federal Trade Commission.
FWA. See Federal Works Agency,
Fair-labor-standards act, passed, 118-
119; provisions of, 119, 182.
Family life, Depression affects, 26-27,
29-32, 173-175; and reduced size
of family, 178, 200; bibliography
of, 325-326.
Farm Credit Administration, created,
140.
Farm Security Administration, absorbs
Resettlement Administration, 131;
activities of, 136-137, 174, 275.
348
INDEX
Farm tenancy, types of, 134-135;
grows, 135-136; efforts to allevi-
ate, 136-137; declines, 137. See
also Tenant farmers.
Farmers, under Hoover, 16, 135, 138-
140; New Deal aids, 90-91, 140,
148-149, 151, 168, 296; attitude
of, toward New Deal, 123-124,
151-152; jobless, 132; income of,
145, 147; and advancing technol-
ogy, 146-148, 149; transient, 174-
175; cooperatives, 277. See also
Agricultural adjustment act, Agri-
culture, Sharecroppers, Tenant farm-
ers.
Farrell, J. T., author, 253.
Fashions, Depression affects, 28; cy-
cling influences, 225.
Father Divine (George Baker), evan-
gelist, 217.
Faulkner, William, novelist, 136, 158-
159.
Fay, S. B., historian, 303.
Federal Art Project, accomplishments,
267-270.
Federal Bureau of Investigation, influ-
ences youth, 185.
Federal Communications Commission,
230.
Federal Council of Churches, and un-
employment, 1 5 ; and birth control,
179; and social welfare, 211, 215-
216.
Federal Emergency Relief Administra-
tion, career of, 72-76; compared
with WPA, 97; union, 115; stud-
ies rural problems, 131; and re-
gionalism, 156; other activities of,
174, 181, 188, 191, 201, 262,
274; bibliography of, 331.
Federal Farm Board, created, 139;
merged in Farm Credit Administra-
tion, 140.
Federal Farm Mortgage Corporation,
created, 90-91.
Federal government, enlarged sphere
of, 42-43, 81-82, 90-91, 94; new
concept of, 91; Roosevelt describes
functions of, 121. See also New
Deal.
Federal Home Loan Banks, established,
49-50; New Deal continues, 55;
promote group health, 276.
Federal Housing Authority, creation
and accomplishments of, 126, 127.
Federal Music Project, accomplish-
ments, 266.
Federal Reserve Board, curbs specula-
tion, 5; powers enlarged, 66; sur-
veys production, 311.
Federal Reserve system, Long favors,
65; New Deal strengthens, 90.
Federal Security Agency, established,
210.
Federal Theater Project, career of,
262-264.
Federal Trade Commission, controls
advertising, 279.
Federal Works Agency, absorbs wel-
fare activities, 121.
Federal Writers* Project, accomplish-
ments, 260-261.
Fiction, authors and types of, 253-
256, 257.
Field, Marshall, III, publisher, 245.
Fish, Hamilton, attacks New Deal, 95 ;
isolationist, 310.
Fisher, Irving, economist, 1.
Fisher, Vardis, Writers' Project aids,
260.
Flanagan, E. J., in "Boys* Town,"
185.
Flanagan, Hallie, directs Theater Proj-
ect, 262-263.
Flannagan, John, sculptor, 270.
Food, costs, lOn-., 272; distribution,
16, 47, 142; poor lack, 38-40;
advertising, 277-278; frozen, 282;
and vitamins, 282-283. See also
Diet.
Food, drug and cosmetic act, passed,
279.
Food Stamp Plan, adopted, 142.
Football, college, 220; professional,
220-221.
Ford, Henry, honors Edison, 1; bi-
ography of, 67; defies NRA, 85;
and Muscle Shoals, 166; interested
in chemurgy, 280.
Fortune, launched, 3, 248; on arma-
ments, 305. See also Fortune polls.
Fortune polls, prohibition, 94; birth
control, 179; marriage, 197; Share-
Our- Wealth scheme, 206; radio
versus newspaper, 230; government
interference, 297-298; anti-Semit-
INDEX
349
ism, 302-303; national election,
313.
Fosdick, H. E,, clergyman, 211.
Franco, Francisco, heads Spanish re-
volt, 307-308.
Frankfurter, Felix, influence of, 58.
Frazier-Lemke act, Supreme Court
and, 104, 106.
Freeman, D. S., biographer, 258.
Frost, Robert, poet, 252.
GABRIEL, R. H., historian, 257.
Gallup, George, forecasts popular opin-
ion, 247. See also Gallup polls.
Gallup polls, work relief, 73; Su-
preme Court, 105-106; strikes,
114; popular literature, 1 5 8 r?. ;
birth control, 179; child labor,
182; government agencies, 187;
academic freedom, 196; old-age
pensions, 210; church attendance,
213; motion pictures, 241; gam-
bling, 243; health insurance, 275;
unemployment, 292; New Deal ac- v
complishments, 294; internationaf
issues, 307, 308, 309, 315.
Gambling, forms of, 242-243.
Gannett, F. E., opposes New Deal, 89.
Garner, J. N., and relief, 48.
Gatty, Harold, aviator, 228.
Gehrig, Lou, baseball star, 221.
General Motors, abandon plant, 17;
and unionization, 111, 114.
Georgia, Fact-Finding Movement,
159; education, 161.
Germany, rise of dictatorship in, 300;
refugees from, 300-302; sympathy
for, 303; and pact with Russia,
309; attacks U. S. ships, 314. See
also Hitler.
Gershwin, George, composer, 158,
265.
Gettys, Warner, on regionalism, 154.
Gibbs, F. A., physician, 284.
Gideonse, H. D., educator, 192-193.
Girdler, T. M., fights unions, 115.
Glasgow, Ellen, novelist, 158.
Glass, Carter, declines appointment,
62, 65.
Glass-Steagall act, provisions of, 66.
Gold, Michael, novelist, 253.
Gold standard, Hoover and, 51;
Roosevelt and, 55, 65, 68, 69.
Golf, Depression affects, 219; minia-
ture, 220; champions, 221-222,
225; WPA furthers, 224; in cities,
225.
Gompers, Samuel, labor leader, 109,
112; on minimum wage, 118.
Good Neighbor policy, 310.
Goodman, Benny, band leader, 235.
Goodman, Johnny, golfer, 221.
Graff, R. F. de, publisher, 250.
Graham, F. P., educator, 159.
Grand Coulee Dam, built, 91, 172.
Great Britain, leases bases, 310; Amer-
ican aid to, 311.
Great Depression, causes of, 6-12; be-
gins, 12; deepens, 12-19; interna-
tional aspects of, 20-24; women
in, 25; family life in, 26, 29-32,
178; affects fashions, 28-29; low-
ers morale, 30-31, 32-37; causes
riots, 37; affects health, 39-40,
274; Hoover attacks, 41-50; as
campaign issue, 51-54; youth in,
181, 183-184; crime and, 184-
185; affects education, 190-191;
affects morals, 196-197; intensifies
problem of aged, 201-202; atti-
tude of churches toward, 212-213;
affects amusements, 219-220, 222,
236; affects transportation, 226-
227; affects reading habits, 244;
portrayed in novels, 255; affects
theater,. 261-262. See also New
DeaU Unemployment.
Great I Am movement, 217.
Green, Paul, novelist, 159.
Green, W. L., heads A. F. of L., 112:
on sit-downs, 114-115.
Greenberg, Seymour, tennis champion,
225.
Gropius, Walter, architect, 271, 301.
Cropper, William, artist, 269.
Grosz, George, artist, 269, 301.^
Group Health Association, established,
276. >
Group theater, spreads, 262.
Guffey-Snyder law, Supreme Court
against, 104.
Guggenheim, H. F., honored, 3.
HALPER, Albert, novelist, 253.
Hanighen, F. C, author, 305.
Hansen, M. L., historian, 257.
350
INDEX
Harkness, E. S., benefactor, 190.
Harlow, Jean, actress, 237.
Harris, Roy, musician, 265, 266.
Hart, Moss, playwright, 34, 265.
Harvard University, House plan, 190;
Tercentenary, 193; refugees at, 301.
Hatch act, passed, 100.
Hatcher, Harlan, on FWP, 260 n.
Hawley-Smoot tariff, passed, 21, 138.
Hays, Will, motion-picture censor,
238.
Health, Depression affects, 30, 32-33,
39-40, 274; state legislation con-
cerning, 94; New Deal promotes,
98, 99, 168, 181, 186, 274-275;
slums impair, 127; poor in South,
161; of nation improves, 200; and
accidents, 226; Hoover administra-
tion and, 273-274; group plans to
promote, 275-276; and advertis-
ing, 277-278; medical research ben-
efits, 282-284. See also Birth-con-
trol movement, Medical care.
Hearst, W. R., opposes New Deal, 89,
196; and 1936 campaign, 104.
Heatter, Gabriel, radio commentator,
230.
Heiser, Victor, autobiography of, 258.
Hellman, Lillian, playwright, 262.
Hemingway, Ernest, novelist, 254.
Hepburn, Katharine, actress, 238.
Hertzler, Arthur, autobiography of,
258.
Hey ward, DuBose, playwright, 158.
Hicks, Granvffle, critic, 254.
Hill, Lister, for Negroes, 165.
Hillis, Marjorie, author, 34.
Hillman, Sidney, and Non-Partisan
League, 113.
Hjnes, Duncan, restaurants, 225.
Hirsch, Joseph, artist, 269.
History, works on, 257; WPA sur-
vey of, 261; and foreign propa-
ganda, 303.
Hitler, Adolf, rise of, 300; and Spain,
307; and Roosevelt, 308-309; in-
vades Poland, 309; overruns Hol-
land and Belgium, 310; invades
Russia, 314.
Hoffman, Malvina, sculptor, 270.
Holding companies, flourish, 5-6; reg-
ulated, 67, 91.
Holmes, O. W., influence of, 58.
Home Loan Banks. See Federal Home
Loan Banks.
Home Owners* Loan Corporation, set
up, 91; accomplishments, 124.
Hoover, H. C., on poverty, 1 ; on
causes of depression, 11, 20; as
scapegoat, 15, 44-45, 61; seeks to
prevent wage cuts, 17; surveys un-
employment, 18-19; and tariff, 21;
for trade associations, 22; sponsors
moratorium, 24; and Bonus Army,
37; attacks Depression, 41-50, 55;
attitude of, toward relief, 45-49,
51; in 1932 campaign, 50, 51-54;
contrasted with Roosevelt, 55-56,
3-64; financial policy of, 62; sa-
tirized, 64; for prohibition, 71;
organized labor under, 107-108;
aids farmers, 139; committee on
medical care, 273-274; and Bel-
gian relief, 304 n.; for arms re-
duction, 304-305; imperialism un-
der, 310n.
Hoover, J. E., youth admire, 185*
Hoover Dam, appropriation for, 44;
completed, 77; government oper-
ates, 91.
Hopkins, H. L., on unemployment,
8 n.; directs FERA, 72-73, 76; di-
rects WPA, 97; and adult educa-
tion, 190; receives Pearl Harbor
news, 316.
Hopper, Edward, artist, 268.
Hours of labor, under NRA, 84; un-
der WPA, 97; regulated, 108-109,
119-120.
Housing, Depression affects, 29-30,
49; unemployed lack, 38; under
Hoover, 49-50; under New Deal,
124-128, 131, 168; prefabricated,
128, 168; private expenditures for,
272; model, 296; bibliography of,
Howe, George, architect, 271.
Howe, L. M., supports Roosevelt, 50.
Hubble, E. P., astronomer, 287.
Hughes, C. E., Supreme Court justice,
105, 106.
Hull, Cordell, secretary of state, 152;
on Monroe Doctrine, 310; and Ja-
pan, 316.
Humason, Milton, astronomer, 287.
Humor, combats Depression, 13; mag-
INDEX
351
azine, 249; writings on, 257-258.
See also Cartoons.
Huston, Walter, actor, 240.
Hutchins, R. M., university presi-
dent, 192.
Hutchinson, Paul, editor, 211.
ICKES, H. L., heads PWA, 76; dis-
counts press, 313 73.
Immigration, in rural life, 150; de-
clines, 300-301.
Imperialism, U. S. retreats from, 310.
Income tax, increased, 92; states adopt,
93.
Indians, in CCC, 186; legislation for,
18677.
Installment buying, increases* 7; co-
operatives aid, 277*
Institute for Advanced Study, started,
286-287.
Institute for Propaganda Analysis,
creation and work of, 303-304.
Insufl, Samuel, utility magnate, 3, 4,
5; discredited, 66.
International influences, on Depression,
20-22; on socialization, 58, 59; on
currency, 68; on CCC, 185; on
social security, 207; on photogra-
phy, 248; on magazines, 249; on
art, 267; on architecture, 271; on
medicine, 284; on science, 286,
290.
Interstate Commerce Commission, in-
creased powers of, 90; and rail-
road, 227.
Investment-company act, passed, 68.
Investment trusts, thrive, 6.
Investments, foreign, 21. See also
Speculation, Stock market.
Isolationism, factors contributing to,
23-24, 68, 303; and "America
First" movement, 310; Republican,
312-313. See also Pacifism.
JACOBSON, Edmund, author, 34.
James, Henry, biographer, 258.
James, Marquis, biographer, 258.
Japan, U. S. policy toward, 280, 308,
309, 311, 315; attacks Pearl Har-
bor, 315-316.
Jasper, H. H., physician, 284.
Jehovah's Witnesses, activities of, 216.
Jews, prejudice against, 206-207,
302-303; welfare activities of, 211,
215-216; in motion-picture indus-
try, 237-238.
Johns Hopkins University, medical re-
search at, 284.
Johnson, Alvin, editor, 259; on anti-
Semitism, 302.
Johnson, C. S., Negro educator, 166.
Johnson, H. S., heads NRA, 84-85,
87.
Johnson, Josephine, author, 159.
Jones, Jesse, heads RFC, 69.
Jones, R. T., golf champion, 221.
Josephson, Matthew^ author, 67.
Journal of the History of Ideas*
founded, 259.
Journal of Social Philosophy* founded,
259.
Joyce, James, author, 252.
Juvenile delinquency, 184.
KALLET, Arthur, debunks advertising,
277.
Kaltenborn, H. V, radio commentator,
230.
Kansas, prohibition in, 93.
Kaufman, G. S., playwright, 34, 265.
Kent, Frank, columnist, 247.
Kent, Rockwell, artist, 267.
Kern, Jerome, composer, 265.
Kerr-Smith tobacco-control act, passed,
141.
Keynes, J. M., influences New Deal,
59, 60, 77.
Kidnapping, laws against, 184.
Kieran, J. M., coins "brains trust/* 53.
King, Wayne, band leader, 234.
Kiplinger, W. M. on anger with
Washington, 89; on pacifism, 304.
Klein, Julius, on Depression, 13.
Klemperer, Otto, conductor, 301.
Klineberg, Otto, anthropologist, 285.
Knox, Frank, on Pearl Harbor attack,
316.
Ku Klux Klan, and Silver Shirts, 302.
Kuhn, Fritz, and German-American
Bund, 302.
Kurath, Hans, editor, 259.
Kurusu, Saburo, in Washington, 315,
316.
LABOR, attitude toward FERA, 73;
under Hoover, 107-108; New Deal
laws regarding, 108-110, 118-119;
352
INDEX
horizontal versus vertical, 111-112;
in politics, 112-113; attempts to
organize relief workers, 115-116;
social activities of, 116; corrupt
practices of, 116-118; public atti-
tude toward, 297; bibliography of,
329. See also American Federation
of Labor, Committee for Industrial
Organization, Hours of labor, Na-
tional Recovery Administration,
Strikes, Unemployment, United
Mine Workers, Wages,
Labor's Non-Partisan League, sup-
ports Roosevelt, 113.
Lachaise, Gaston, sculptor, 269-270.
La Guardia, Fiprello, 48, 224*
Land, Edwin, inventor, 281.
Landon, A. M,, presidential candidate,
103.
Lange, Carl, bacteriologist, 301.
Lange, Dorothea, photographer, 248.
Lauritsen, C C, scientist, 289.
Lawes, L. E., on newsboys, 88.
Lawrence* . O., scientist, 289.
Lawrence, Josephine, novelist, 201.
Lawrie, Lee, sculptor, 269.
League of American Writers, radicals
in, 254.
Leech, Margaret, historian, 257.
Legion of Decency, founded, 238.
Lehman, H. H. governor, doses banks,
63*
Leisure, Depression affects use of, 219-
220. See also Amusements, Sports.
Lemke, William* presidential nominee,
204.
Lend-lease, act, 311; Republican
stand on, 312; applied to Russia,
J XT'*
Leonard, J. N., author, 67.
Lerner, Max, on collectivism, 259.
Lescaze, William, architect, 271
Levin, Meyer, novelist, 253*
Levine, Jack, artist, 269.
Lewis, J. L., labor boss, 115, 117,
297; heads United Mine Workers,
108; and CIO, 111-113; political
activities of, 113, 313.
Lewis, Sinclair, novelist, 240, 252;
wins Nobel Prize, 255; novel of,
dramatized, 263.
Libraries, WPA aids, 98, 99; in
South, 161; under TVA, 168;
effect of Depression on, 244-245;
presidents found, 321-322.
Life, founded, 248.
Lighting, improved farm, 148; ad-
vances in, 281.
Lilienthal, David, TVA chairman,
171, 176.
Lindbergh, C. A., son of, kidnapped,
184/1.; sets transcontinental record,
228; isolationist, 228.
Lindley, E. K*, on Roosevelt, 50.
Link, H. C, author, 214-215.
Lippmann, Walter, on Roosevelt, 50;
on New Deal, 54-55; influence of,
247; as author, 259.
Literary Digest polls, 247, 307.
Literature, bibliography of, 339. See
also Books.
Little, Lawson, golfer, 221-222.
Living Age, propaganda in, 249.
Loesch, F. J., heads crime commission,
117.
Lombardo, Guy, band leader, 234.
Long, Huey, 23 1 ; and monetary issue,
65; and slum conversion, 125;
promotes Share-Our-Wealth cam-
paign, 205-206; helps found
Southern Review, 249-250.
Long, P. H., clinician, 284.
Loomis, A. L., physician, 284.
Lorentz, Pare, producer, 1 73 n.
Los Angeles, unemployed in, 183;
Utopian Society, 202.
Louis, Joe, heavyweight champion,
221.
Louisiana, hanks suspend payment,
62; poll tax, 163.
Luce, Henry, publisher, 248.
Ludlow amendment, 307.
Lumpkin, Grace, novelist, 253.
Lundberg, Ferdinand, author, 67.
Lynching, 164; bills against, 166n.
Lynd, R. S., analyzes propaganda,
304.
MACARTHUR, Douglas, disperses
Bonus Army, 37.
McCormick, R. R., publisher, 245;
opposes New Deal, 89.
McKellar, K. D., and TVA, 171.
McLaglen, Victor, actor, 240.
MacLeisk Archibald, poet, 174, 256;
Librarian of Congress, 260 n.
INDEX
353
McMath, Robert, astronomer, 287.
McNary, C. L., vice-presidential can-
didate, 152.
McNary-Haugen bill, 152.
Magazines, advertising in, 3, 13; cir-
culation of, 14-15, 161, 250; ef-
fect of Depression on, 244, 249,
250; contents of, 247-248, 249-
Z50; history of, 257; scholarly,
259; photography in, 269. See also
magazines by name.
Maltz, Albert, novelist, 253.
Mankind United, formed, 217.
Mann, Thomas, novelist, 301.
Marble, Alice, tennis champion, 222.
Marquand, J. P., novelist, 257.
Marriage, attitude of youth toward,
197; Depression affects, 198; war
increases, 198-199; legislation gov-
erning, 199.
Marshall, G. C., chief of staff, 312.
Marshall, Robert, introduces term
"boondoggling," 74-75.
Martin, "Pepper," baseball star, 221.
Massachusetts, birth control, 180;
child labor, 182; crime, 184.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
atomic research at, 289.
Matthiessen, F. O., literary critic, 257.
Maverick, Maury, for Negroes, 165.
Mead, Margaret, anthropologist, 285.
Medical care, public concern for, 273-
274; New Deal program of, 274-
276; bibliography of, 336.
Medical profession, Depression hits,
18; and birth control, 179-180.
Medical research, advances, 282-285.
JMdlon, A. W., resigns as secretary of
Treasury, 15; biography of, 67;
gift of, 269.
Mencken, H. L., critic, 252.
Merriam, Frank, elected governor, 203.
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company,
housing project, 127.
Metropolitan Opera Company, broad-
casts, 233-234.
Middle West, attitude toward tariff,
21; agriculture, 147; and trade
agreements, 152.
Middletown, on tariff, 21-22; Depres-
sion in, 27-28; family life, 31 ; ap-
proves WPA, 99; on American
way, 101-102; favors "tried and
safe," 296; attitude toward totali-
tarianism, 300.
Migration, from South, 161; Negro,
163-164; of farmers, 173-175;
of youth, 183-184.
Millay, Edna St. Vincent, poet, 256.
Miller, Caroline, novelist, 158.
Milles, Carl, sculptor, 270.
Millikan, R. A., scientist, 288.
Millis, Walter, author, 303.
Mills, Ogden, attacks New Deal, 95.
Minimum- wage law, invalidated, 103;
upheld, 106.
Minnesota, old-age pensions, 201.
Mississippi, banks, 63; Negroes, 162;
child labor, 182.
Missouri, Negro education in, 163.
Mitchell, C. E., banker, 5, 66.
Mitchell, Joseph, author, 253 n.
Mitchell, Margaret, novelist, 158, 255.
Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo^ architect, 271.
Moley, Raymond, brain truster, 53.
Monetary policy, New Deal, 68-70,
90-91, 92. See also Currency.
Monroe Doctrine, Hull on, 310.
Moody Bible Institute, on Depression,
212.
Moody, Helen W., 222.
Moore, D. S., composer, 265, 266.
Moratorium, Hoover declares, 24, 44.
Morgan, Harcourt, and TV A, 176.
Morgan, J. P., aids jobless, 47; in-
vestigated, 66; and war profits,
305.
Morgan, T. H., scientist, 285-286.
Mormon Church, and relief, 212.
Moses, Robert, park commissioner,
224.
Motion pictures, themes treated by,
185, 237, 239-241; progress of,
236-237; movements to improve,
237-239; devices for increasing at-
tendance at, 241-242; music in,
26"6; bibliography of, 340-341.
Mott, F. L., historian, 257.
Mount Rushmore Memorial, com-
pleted, 269.
Muller, H. J., scientist, 286.
Mumford, Lewis, author, 291.
Muncie, Ind., Depression hits. 16-17.
Munich settlement, 308.
Munro, W. B., on regional govern-
ment, 15 6 72.
354
INDEX
Murphy, Frank, settles strike, 114.
Muscle Shoals, nitrate plant, 166, 169.
See also Tennessee Valley Author-
ity.
Music, popular, 13, 265; under fed-
eral sponsorship, 99, 266-267; in
theater, 158, 265; radio, 233-234;
jazz and swing, 235-236; operatic
and symphonic, 265-266; organ,
281-282; bibliography of, 341.
Mussolini, and Spain, 307; Roosevelt
and, 308-309.
Myrdal, Gunnar, on USHA, 127.
NLB. See National Labor Board.
NLRB. See National Labor Relations
Board.
NRA. See National Recovery Admin-
istration.
NY A. t See National Youth Adminis-
tration.
National Archives, created, 257.
National Association of Manufactur-
ers, condemns tax increases, 92;
sponsors movie shorts, 102; and
NLRB, 109.
National Cancer Institute, established,
275.
National Economic League, on pro-
hibition, 71.
National Education Association, on
women teachers, 25; pacifism of,
306.
National Farmers' Holiday Association,
formed, 140.
National industrial recovery act, passed,
78.
National Labor Board, created, 109.
National labor-relations act, passed,
96.
National Labor Relations Board, deci-
sions, 109-110; and strikes, 115;
and unions, 297.
National League of Women Voters*
and consumer movement, 278.
National parks, increase, 222, 223;
visitors to, 223.
National Planning Board, encourages
city planning, 128-129; evolution
and demise of, 156 n. See also Na-
tional Resources Committee, Na-
tional Resources Planning Board.
National Recovery Administration,
created, 82; aims, 82-83; Section
7A of, 83, 108, 109; accomplish-
ments, 73, 83-84, 86, 88; John-
son heads, 84; defied, 85; invali-
dated, 86, 96, 104, 182; defects,
86-87, 295; the press and, 88;
proposes equal pay for Negroes,
162-163.
National Resources Committee, on
farm income, 147; regional plan-
ning under, 171-172; studies con-
sumer spending, 272. See also Na-
tional Planning Board.
National Resources Planning Board,
studies effect of federal public works,
100. See also National Planning
Board.
National Union for Social Justice, or-
ganized, 206.
National Youth Administration, pur-
pose of, 187; enrollment in, 187;
work of, 187-188, 266; evaluated,
188-189.
Negroes, New Deal benefits, 84, 127,
164-165, 186; as farmers, 150;
in literature, 158; education of,
159, 163; depressed condition of,
162-166; migrate, 163-164, 175;
lynching of, 164, 166 n.; spokes-
men for and against, 1 65 ; improved
attitude of South toward, 165-166;
religious cult of, 217; as authors,
253; as actors, 264; as singers,
266; bibliography of, 325.
Neher, H. V., scientist, 288.
Nelson, Byron, golfer, 222.
Neutra, Richard, architect, 271.
Neutrality acts, passed, 305-306, 309.
Nevins, Allan, biographer, 258.
New Deal, Roosevelt adopts phrase,
53 ; Hoover as sire of, 54-55; con-
ception and objectives of, 57-60;
regulates stock exchange, 67-68;
monetary policy of, 68-70, 90-93;
hostility to, 88-89, 94-95; and
1936 campaign, 101-103; urban
and rural attitude toward, 123,
151-152; housing under, 124-128;
regionalism, 156; South tinder,
160; accomplishments assessed,
294-299; bibliography of works
on, 319-320. See also Recovery,
Relief, Roosevelt, F. D., and agen-
cies by name.
INDEX
355
New Masses, attitudes of, 249, 254.
New York City, depression in, 16,
27, 38; suicides in, 40; aids job-
less, 47; sales tax, 93; airport, 98;
crime, 184; education, 189; recrea-
tion, 224.
New York state, banks close, 63; and
regional planning, 155; child labor
in, 182.
New Yorker, cartoons, 89-90.
Newspapers, financial news in, 3 ; hos-
tile to New Deal, 88-89, 143, 313;
organize Guild, 88; crusade, 159;
versus radio, 230, 231-232; De-
pression affects, 244, 245; con-
solidate, 245 ; t tabloid, 245-246;
content analysis of, 246-247; on
totalitarianism, 300.
Newsweek, founded, 247.
Nicaragua, marines withdrawn from,
310 n.
Niebuhr, Reinhold, religious views of,
214.
Nieuwland, J. A., scientist, 280.
Nobel Prize winners, in fiction, 255;
in drama, 255; in science, 285-286,
289, 290.
Noble, Robert, pension-plan promoter,
204.
Norrjs, C. G., novelist, 178.
Norris, G. W., conservationist, 167.
Norris-La Guardia act, Hoover ap-
proves, 55, 107-108.
North, attitude toward tariff, 21; at-
tempts to discourage Negro migra-
tion, 164.
North Carolina, poll tax, 163; birth
control, 180.
North Dakota, prohibition, 93.
Novels, on social conditions, 136,
158-159, 253-255; inspirational,
2 1 4-2 1 5 ; magazines compress,
250-251; historical, 255-256.
Nye, G. P., investigates war profits,
305; applauded, 306.
Nye committee, influence of, 78.
O'CONNOR, Harvey, author, 67.
Odets, Clifford, playwright, 221, 262.
Odum, H. W., sociologist, 136; on
regionalism, 157-158, 159, 161 n.
Office of Scientific Research and De-
velopment, work of, 290.
Ogburn, W. F., sociologist, 291.
O'Hara, J. F., clergyman, on home
life, 31-32.
O'Hara, John, novelist, 254, 255.
O'Keeffe, Georgia, artist, 269.
Oklahoma, prohibition in, 93; mi-
grants, 174-175, 225.
Old-age assistance, abroad, 200-201;
lacking in U. S., 201; Depression
complicates, 201-202; federal and
state, 201, 207-208; schemes, 202-
205; under social -security act, 207-
208; Gallup poll on, 210.
O'Neill, Eugene, wins Nobel award,
255.
Opera, broadcast, 233-234; new, 265.
Optics, advances in, 281.
Organizations, increased stress on, 2;
for unemployment relief, 46; yonth,
194-195; Depression affects, 219;
sport, 223; aid consumers, 278;
anti-Semitic, 302; pacifist, 306.
See also Associations, Clubs.
Oxford Group Movement, 216.
PM, founded, 246.
PWA. See Public Works Administra-
tion.
Pacifism, religious cults preach, 216-
217; economic argument for, 304;
expressions of, 306-307. See al&o
Isolationism.
Painting, mural, 267-268; realistic,
268-269.
Pari-mutuel betting, legalized, 243.
Parker, Frank, tennis champion, 222.
Parks, spread of public, 222-224.
Parran, Thomas, surgeon-general, 275.
Patman bill, rejected, 37.
Pearl Harbor attack, 315-316.
Pecora, Ferdinand, grills Wall Street,
66.
Pegler, Westbrook, columnist, 247.
Pelley, W. D., and Silver Shirts, 302,
Pepper, Claude, for Negroes, 165.
Perkins, Frances, on Black-Connery
bin, 119; and CCC, 185.
Perry, R, B., biographer, 258.
Philippine independence, 310 n.
Photography, improved, 246; in-
creased use of, 248, 318; micro-
film, 261.
Physics, advances in, 288-290.
356
INDEX
Pitkin, W. B., author, 200.
Playgrounds, increased use of, 223-
224.
Pocket Books, launched, 250-251.
Poetry, types of, 256.
Poland, invaded, 309.
Poll tax, in South, 163.
Population, urban and rural, 130,
160; migration, 133-135; bibliog-
raphy of, 324.
Port of New York Authority, set up,
155.
Porter, Cole, composer, 265*
Post, Wiley, aviator, 228.
Pound, Ezra, poet, 256.
Prefabricated houses, progress of, 128;
TVA, 168.
Prices, predepression, 3, 10-11; trade
associations control, 22; cartels af-
fect, 23; attempt to raise, 68;
under NRA, 84-85; low farm,
139-140; AAA raises, 145.
Prisons, population of, 184.
Prohibition, debate over, 70-71; re-
pealed, 71, 93, 242; state, 93-94,
Project Workers* Union, organized,
115.
Propaganda, student, 194-195; social-
security, 202-207; of Jehovah's
Witnesses, 216-217; radio, 230-
23 1 ; motion-picture, 23 9-240 ;
magazine, 249; through drama,
261-262; foreign, 303; analyzed,
303-304; bibliography of, 341-
342. See also Isolationism, Pacifism.
Psychology, advances in, 284-285.
Public finance, under Hoover, 5 5 ; un-
der Roosevelt, 65-66, 68-70, 90-
92; and annual cost of government,
93. See also Currency, Gold.
Public- opinion polls, on New Deal,
89; on prohibition, 94; on birth
control, 179; on Roosevelt, 194;
on marriage, 197; on Huey Long,
206; of ministers on social prob-
lems, 211; on radio versus news-
paper, 230; on radio music, 234;
popularity of, 247; on government
interference, 297-298; on anti-
Semitism, 302-303; on war, 306-
307; on 1940 election, 313; bibli-
ography of, 341. See also Gallup
polls.
Public - utility - holding - company act,
passed, 67, 96; aims of, 91.
Public Works Administration, set up,
76; achievements, 76-78, 224,
295; and Supreme Court, 106;
Federal Works Agency absorbs, 121;
housing under, 125; increased out-
lays for, 210; bibliography of, 332.
Public Works of Art Project, work of,
267.
Publishing, effect of Depression on,
244. See also Books, Magazines,
Newspapers.
Pulitzer prize winners, in fiction, 159.
RFC. See Reconstruction Finance Cor-
poration.
RA. See Resettlement Administration.
REA. See Rural Electrification Admin-
istration.
Racketeering, labor, 117-118; gam-
bling^ 243.
Radio, in campaigns, 52, 54; for
"fireside chats/' 65-66, 95, 230-
231, 309; popular programs on,
220, 230, 233-235; sport broad-
casts, 221; development, 229-230;
commentators, 230; for propa-
ganda, 230-231; advertising, 231-
232; educational programs, 232-
233; telephone, 281; bibliography
of, 340.^
Railroad retirement act, Supreme Court
against, 104-105.
Railroads, federal regulation of, 90;
carry migrants, 1 83 ; Depression af-
fects, 227; improved, 227.
Railway labor act, upheld, 106,
Rainer, Luise, actress, 240.
Rainey, H. P., educator, 159.
Rankin, J. E., Negrophobe, 165.
Ransom, J. C., on regionalism, 157.
Raper, A. F., sociologist, 136, 159.
Raskob, J. J., on wealth, 4.
Rawlings, Marjorie K., novelist, 158.
Reader's Digest, on highway mortality,
226; popularity and content of,
250.
Recession of 1937-1938, 151, 209-
210.
Reconstruction Finance Corporation,
under Hoover, 47-48, 51; New
Deal continues, 55, 65; powers
INDEX
357
enlarged, 90; increased outlays for,
210; aids railroads, 227.
Recovery, as campaign issue, 5 1 ; given
priority, 95-96, 299; New Deal
fails to achieve, 295, See also Na-
tional Recovery Administration.
Recreation, TV A, 168-169; consumer
cost of, 272* See also Amusements,
Sports.
Refugees, German, 300-303; children,
301 n.
Regionalism, defined, 154; city, 155;
state, 155; federal, 155-156, 171-
172; debate over, 156-157; South-
ern, 157-158; in literature, 158-
159; retreat from, 172; evaluated,
176; and atomic research, 290;
bibliography of, 333-334. See also
Tennessee Valley Authority.
Relief, urban, 16, 39, 45-46, 47,
123 ; under Hoover, 45-50; as cam-
paign issue, 51; unemployment, 71-
72; state, 97; rural, 131-133;
Negro, 162-163; transient, 174;
children on, 181; census, 181;
church and, 211-212; ^ public atti-
tude toward, 294; bibliography of,
330-331. See also Civilian Con-
servation Corps, Federal Emergency
Relief Administration, Old-age as-
sistance, Works Progress Adminis-
tration.
Religion, and birth control, 179,
180; socialized, 211-212; attitude
of, toward Depression, 212-213;
wanes, 213-214; writings on, 214-
215; cults of, 21 0-21 7; bibliog-
raphy of, 337. See also Churches.
Reno, Milo, leads farmers' revolt, 140.
Republican party, in 1932, 50, 51-
54, 71; in 1936, 102-104, 299;
in 1940, 152, 299, 312-313.
Research, industrial, 279-282; medi-
cal, 282-285; in natural sciences,
285-290; support for, 286-287;
atomic, 289-290. p
Resettlement Administration, creation
and accomplishments of, 131, 275.
Restaurants, Depression affects, 27; in-
crease, 28; guide to, 225.
Rice, Elmer, playwright, 262.
Richberg, D. R., and NRA, 87.
Roberts, Kenneth, novelist, 255-256.
Roberts, O. J., Supreme Court justice,
106.
Robeson, Paul, singer, 266.
Robinson, Boardman, artist, 267.
Robinson, Earl, composer, 266.
Robinson-Patman act of 1937, passed,
87.
Rockefeller, J. D., biography of, 67;
restores Williamsburg, 270.
Rockefeller Center, completed, 14;
murals, ^ 267, 269-270.
Rogers, Ginger, actress, 240.
Rogers, Will, on Roosevelt, 67; killed,
228; statue of, 270.
Roman Catholic Church. See Catholic
Church.
Rome, Harold, composer, 265.
Roosevelt, Eleanor, as columnist, 247.
Roosevelt, F. D., on holding company,
5; and veterans* bonus, 38 n.; as
1932 presidential candidate, 50-54;
contrasted with Hoover, 55-57, 63-
64; fails to collaborate with
Hoover, 61; attempt to kill, 63;
inaugurals of, 63-64, 124-125; fi-
nancial policy of, 65-66, 68-70;
fireside chats of, 65-66, 95, 230-
231, 309; praised, 67, 85 n.. 79-
80; against prohibition, 71; at-
tacks unemployment, 71-72; as
author, 79; and NRA, 82, 86, 87;
hostility to, 88, 89-90, 143,
252 nt, 298-299; seeks middle
course in social legislation, 95; on
recovery and reform, 95-96, 299-
300; on WPA expenditures, 97 n.;
reelected in 1936, 103-104, 294;
and Supreme Court, 104-106; and
labor, 109, 113, 115, 118-119;
and pump priming, 120; on role of
government, 121; and farmer, 136,
140, 143, 152; reelected in 1940,
152-153; aids South, 159-160;
and Negro, 165; conservation un-
der, 167, 169-173; on child labor,
182; popular with youth, 194;
opposes Townsend plan, 204; ap-
points committee on social security,
207; on recession of 1937-1938,
209-210; on religion, ^ 215; as
stamp collector, 219; satirized, 265;
dedicates Jefferson Memorial, 270;
appoints committee on uranium.
358
INDEX
290; quarantine speech of, 307;
asks nonaggression pact from Hitler
and Mussolini, 308-309; and Cana-
dian defense, 310 n.; renominated
in 1940, 312; press support of,
3 13 7?.; announces Four Freedoms,
314; acts against Axis, 314; drafts
Atlantic Charter, 314-315; appeals
to Hirohito, 315; receives news of
Pearl Harbor, 316.
Roper, Elmo, forecasts popular opin-
ion, 247,
Rorty, James, author, 248; on adver-
tising, 277,
Ross, E. A., sociologist, 134.
Ross-Loos clinic, begun, 276.
Rourke, Constance, author, 257-258;
directs art project, 268.
Rugg, Harold, author, 195, 291.
Rural Electrification Administration,
creation and accomplishments of,
148.
Rural life, Depression affects, 26, 131-
-139, 173-175; nonfarm, 130;
community spirit in, 149-151; city
influences, 150; birth control in,
180; old-age relief in, 202; reli-
gion in, 212; health in, 273. See
also Agriculture, Farmers*
Russia, Soviet, recognized, 58; scien-
tific research in, 286; and Spain,
307; German pact with, 309; at-
tacks Finland, 309; Hitler invades,
314.
Rust brothers, inventors, 146 n.
Rutherford, J. F., founds Jehovah's
Witnesses, 216.
Ryan, J. A., clergyman, 211.
SABBATH, secularization of, 213.
St. Lawrence seaway, Hoover favors,
55; exemplifies regionalism, 155;
Senate rejects, 3 1 n.
Sales tax, adopted, 93; in South, 161*
Sandburg, Carl, poet, 25 6 ; biographer,
258.
Santayana, George, novelist, 257.
Saroyan, William, playwright, 262 n.
Saturday Evening Post, reacts to De-
pression, 13*
Schlink, R J., debunks advertising,
277.
Schmeling, Max, boxer, 221.
Schoenberg, Arnold, composer, 301.
Schools, under WPA, 98; and child
welfare, 185; Depression affects,
189. See also Education.
Science, affects religious attitudes, 214;
and industry, 279-281 ; and health,
282-285; natural, 285-290; and
atomic research, 289-290; applied
to human welfare, 290-291; bibli-
ography of, 335-336. See also
Technology.
Scott, Howard, and Technocracy, 291.
Scottsboro case, 1 64 73.
Scribnefs Commentator, propaganda
in, 249.
Sculpture, federal sponsorship of, 269-
270.
Second World War, affects marriage,
198-199; early stages of, 308-311,
315-316; U. S. prepares for, 311-
315.
Sectionalism, and regionalism, 157;
biracialism affects, 162-166. See also
Regionalism.
Securities and exchange act, passed, 67.
Seldes, George, author, 305.
Selective-service act, passed, 198, 311;
Republican stand on, 312.
Seligman, E. R. A., editor, 259.
Sex, new attitude toward, 196-197;
preoccupation of movies with, 237-
238.
Shahn, Ben, artist, 269.
Share-Our- Wealth campaign, 205-
206.
Sharecroppers, described, 134-136,
175; efforts to alleviate, 136-137;
portrayed in novels and movies,
136, 158-159, 175, 239; TVA
employs, 167-168; portrayed in
art, 267, 269.
Sheeler, Charles, artist, 268.
Sherman, A, G. f builds trailer, 225-
226.
Sherwood, R. E., dramatist, 258.
Shotwell, J. T., analyzes propaganda,
304.
Silver-purchase act, passed, 69.
Sinclair, Upton, crusades to end pov-
erty, 202-203; pacifist, 306.
Siporin, Mitchell, artist, 269.
Sit-down strikes, occur, 113-115;
attitude toward, 114-115. 297.
INDEX
359
Skyscrapers, completed, 14.
Sloan, John, artist, 268-269.
Slums, lack food, 39; improved, 124,
125, 126-127, 296; depicted in
movies, 239-240.
Smith, A. E., and Roosevelt, 50; on
commodity dollar, 68.
Smith, A. H., scientist, 282.
Smith, G. L. K., promotes Share-Our-
Wealth plan, 206 n.
Smoking, increases, 27.
Snell, Bertrand, quoted, 67.
Social-security act, background of,
202-207^.passed, 96, 207; and
Supreme Court, 106; provisions of,
181," 207-208, 2?5; criticized,
208-209; modified, 210; popular-
ity of, 296; bibliography of, 332.
Sockman, R. W., clergyman, 211.
Soil - conservation - and - domestic -allot-
ment act, passed, 143.
Soil Erosion Service, work of, 172.
South, attitude toward tariff, 21;
prints currency, 62; NRA in, 85;
prohibition in, 93; AAA in, 148;
education in, 159, 161, 163;
Roosevelt's concern for, 159-160;
depressed condition of, 160-162;
migration from, 161; Negro prob-
lem in, 162-166; conservation in,
166-172; birth control in, 179-
180. See also Regionalism, Section-
alism and states by name.
Southern Conference on Human Wel-
fare, meetings of, 165.
Southern Tenant Farmers* Union, agi-
tation of, 136.
Spain, rebellion in, 307-308.
Spies, T. D., scientist, 282.
Sports, Depression affects, 219; col-
lege, 220; professional, 220-221;
amateur, 221-222; New Deal fur-
thers, 223-224,
Stalin, decrees "united front," 94.
Stallings, Laurence, playwright, 240.
States, declare bank holidays, 62-63;
ratify Twenty-first Amendment,
71 ; under FERA, 72; taxes of, 92-
93; prohibition in, 93-94; welfare
legislation in, 94, 201, 208, 210;
relief expenditures of, 97; and
WPA, 98; regional planning by,
155: legalize birth control, 180;
approve child-labor amendment,
182; pass teachers* -oath laws, 196;
require blood tests, 199; acquire
parks, 222-223; legalize gambling,
243. See also states by name.
Steel industry, strikes, 115.
Steffens, Lincoln, memoirs of, 258.
Stein, Gertrude, autobiography of,
258.
Steinbeck, J. E., novelist, 175, 254-
255; Writers* Project aids, 260.
Sterne, Maurice, artist, 267.
Stimson, H. L., against Ludlpw
amendment, 307; protests invasion
of Manchuria, 308.
Stock market, speculation increases, 3-
6; crashes, 12; Hoover's view of
crash of, 43; slump of 1932, 61;
investigated, 66; regulated by Con-
gress, 67-68.
Stolberg, Benjamin, attacks New Deal,
95.
Stone, H. F., Supreme Court justice,
105.
Straus, Nathan, USHA administrator,
127.
Streit, Clarence, favors international
league, 310.
Stribling, T. S., author, 158.
Strikes, NLRB deals with, 110; in-
crease, 110-111, 115, 118; sit-
down, 113-115; public attitude
toward, 114-115; decrease, 120;
student, 195; depicted in movies,
239; depicted in literature and art,
255, 262, 267.
Suburban development, 130-131.
Suffrage, Negro, 163.
Suicides, and Depression, 40.
Sullivan, Mark, columnist, 247; his-
torian, 257.
Supreme Court, favors trade associa-
tions, 22; invalidates NRA, 86; in-
validates minimum- wage law, 103;
Roosevelt and, 104-106, 143; on
company unions, 107; on sit-down
strikes, 115; on wages and hours,
120; and crop control, 142-143;
on Negro education, 163; upholds
TVA, 171; on child labor, 182-
183; and Jehovah's Witnesses,
217; and Great I Am movement,
217 a.
360
INDEX
Swedzko, Andy, golf champion, 225.
Swing, R. G., radio commentator,
230.
TVA. See Tennessee Valley Authority.
Talbot. RX., on sex, 197 n.
Talmadge, Eugene, governor, 159; as
Negrophobe, 165.
Tariff, Hawley-Smoot, 21, 51; re-
gional attitudes toward, 21-22*
Tate t Allen, on regionalism, 157.
Taylor, Deems, writes opera, 265; on
WPA music, 266.
Taylor, M. C, appointed to Vatican,
215.
Taylor grazing act, passed, 173.
Teachers'-oath laws, spread, 196.
Technocracy, vogue of, 291.
Technology, affects economic condi-
tions, 11-12; on the farm, 146-
148, 149; advances, 291-293; ex-
hibitions, 318.
Tech wood Homes, built, 125.
Telephones, decrease, 27; writing,
246; radio, 281.
Television, progress of, 281,
Tenant farmers, praise WPA, 96;
under AAA, 145-146; migrate,
159, 174. See also Farm tenancy.
Tennessee Valley Authority, Hoover
against, 55; created, 77, 166-167;
accomplishments, 91, 167-169; op-
posed, 169-171; rates as yardstick,
169-170; personnel, 171; admin-
istration of, 176-177; cooperatives,
277; bibliography of, 334.
Tennis champions, 222, 225.
Texas & New Orleans Railway case,
Supreme Court decision in, 107.
Theater, popular plays of, 34, 136,
158, 221, 255, 258, 262-265;
music in, 158, 265-266; Depres-
sion hits professional, 261-262;
boom of amateur, 262; under fed-
eral sponsorship, 262-264; bibliog-
raphy of, 341. See also playwrights
by name.
Theatre Guild productions, 158,
164n.
Thomas, Lowell, radio commentator*
230.
Thompson, Dorothy, columnist, 247.
Thomson, Virgil, composer, 266*
Tilden, W. T., tennis champion, 222.
Time* men honored by, 2-3; adver-
tisements in, 3; popularity of, 247,
248.
Tittle, E. R, clergyman, 211.
Tobacco, crop control, 141, 145; con-
sumer cost of, 272.
Toscanini, Arturo, conductor, 233-
234, 30L
Totalitarianism, rise of, 300.
Townsend, F. E., clubs back, 150;
devises pension plan, 203-204; in-
vestigated, 294; for Willkie, 313.
Trade, associations, 22, 83; cartels
affect, 22-23; agreements, 152.
Traffic problem, 129-130.
Transportation, regulated, 90; WPA
aids, 98; and traffic problem, 129-
130; and regional planning, 155,
169; bus and rail, 226-227; air,
227-229; consumer expenditure on,
272.
Transradio Press Service, formed, 232.
Travel, tourist, 225; trailer, 225-
226; bus and rail, 226-227; air,
227-229. See also Transportation.
Triborough Bridge, completed, 77.
Tug well, R. G., brain truster, 53 n.;
directs Resettlement Administration,
131; writes textbook, 195.
Tunney, Gene, boxer, 221.
Turner, F. J., on regionalism, 157.
Twain, Mark, and term "new deal,"
53. m
Twentieth Amendment, ratified, 61.
Twenty-first Amendment, ratified, 71.
Tydings-McG'ume act, passed, 3 1 n.
Tyson, M. D., scientist, 282.
USHA. See United States Housing
Authority.
Unemployment, before Depression, 8;
technological, 11, 290, 292; De-
pression increases, 15-16, 19; dem-
onstrations, 16, 37; census, 18-19,
209; women and, 25; lowers mo-
rale, 32-37; breeds vagrancy, 38;
Hoover's policy toward, 46; Amer-
ican Legion combats, 46-47; Roose-
velt's proposals for relief of, 71-
72; PWA aids, 77; -NRA relieves,
84; recession of 1937 increases,
118; war alleviates, 120, 311; ur-
INDEX
361
ban, 123; rural, 132, 148; Negro,
162, 164; of youth, 183; of teach-
ers, 191; old-age, 200; insurance,
208, 210; the church and, 212,
215-216; depicted in movies, 240;
bibliography of, 321, 330-331.
Union party, in 1936, 204.
United Mine Workers, dissension
within, 107; growth of, 108; and
CIO, 111-112.
United States Chamber of Commerce,
and NRA, 83.
United States Housing Authority, Fed-
eral Works Agency absorbs, 121;
accomplishments of, 126-127.
University of Chicago, innovations in,
192; abolishes intercollegiate ath-
letics, 220; research at. 288.
Urban life, Depression affects, 27; tin-
employment and relief in, 123-
124, 202; improved housing in,
124-127; city planning in, 128-
129; traffic problem in, 129; in-
fluence of auto on, 129-130; food
distribution in, 142; influences rural
life, 150; recreation in, 223-225.
See also Cities and cities by name.
Urey, H. C, scientist, 288-289 ^con-
cerned with social role of science,
290, 291.
Utility companies. See Holding com-
panies.
VANCE, R. B., social scientist, 136,
159.
Van de Graaff, R. J., scientist, 289.
Vandenberg, A. H., against Roosevelt,
102.
Van Devanter, Willis, retires from
Court, 106.
Van Doren, Carl, biographer, 258.
Veterans, New Deal aids, 38 n.; com-
pensation reduced, 70. See also
Bonus Army.
Vines, Ellsworth, tennis champion,
222.
Vitamins, research in, 282-283.
Vorse, Mary H., on labor racketeers,
118.
WPA. See Works Progress Adminis-
tration.
Wages, cut, 17, 18; under FERA, 73 ; j
under NRA, 84, 85; WPA, 97;
regulated, 119-120; in South, 160-
161.
Wagner, R. F., heads labor board,
109; and CCC, 185; introduces
health bill, 275.
Wagner labor-relations act, Court up-
holds, 106; provisions of, 108,
110, 115.
Wagner-Steagall act, passed, 126.
Wall Street, book on, 3; investigated,
66. See also Stock market.
Wallace, H. A., as secretary of agricul-
ture, 142, 144, 151; as vice-presi-
dential candidate, 153; on child
welfare, 181; as author, 215.
Walsh-Healey public-contracts act, ef-
fect of , 119, 182.
War^cost, profits and debts, 304-305;
attitude of clergy and youth toward,
306-307, See also Second World
War.
War Policies Commission, testimony
before, 305.
Warbasse, J. P., surgeon, 276.
Warren, G. F., commodity-dollar
theory of, 68.
Warshow, R. I., author, 3.
Wealth, distribution of, 10, 272, 294;
shrinks, 17; farmers* share in, 138.
Wealth-tax act, passed, 96, 206.
Weidman, Jerome, novelist, 254,
Weill, Kurt, composer, 301.
Welles, Orson, broadcasts, 23 1 j actor,
241, 263-264.
West, Mae, actress, 237, 238.
Wheeler, B. K., isolationist, 310.
Wheeler-Howard act, aims of, 186 n.
White, W. A., on 1932 election, 54;
and aid to Allies, 310-311.
Wilbur, R. L., on the home, 31.
Wilder, Thornton, playwright, 265.
Willard, Daniel, on capitalism, 36-37.
Willkie, Wendell, presidential candi-
date, 152, 312-313; against TVA,
171.
Wilson Dam, Supreme Court on, 171.
Wilson, Edmund, author, 248, 259.
Wilson, Woodrow, and Muscle Shoals,
166, 169; Nye committee investi-
gates, 305.
Winant, J. G., heads mediation board,
11L
362
INDEX
Winrod, Gerald, anti-Semite, 302.
Wolfe, Thomas, novelist, 255.
Women, wage-earners, 25-26, 31;
fashions for, 28-29; improved
health of, 181; and the church,
213; in sports, 222; columnists,
247; magazines for, 249; and con-
snmer movement, 278, 279; scien-
tists, 285; as pacifists, 306, 307;
bibliography of, 325. See also
Birth-control movement. Women's
clubs.
Women's clubs, activities of, 296,
306.
Wood, Grant, artist, 269.
Woodin, W. H., secretary of Treasury,
65.
Woods, Arthur, heads employment
committee, 46.
Woollcott, Alexander, put off radio,
230.
Woolsey, J. M., judge, 252.
Work relief, and FERA, 73-74;
ended, 120n.; urban, 123-124. See
also Civil Works Administration,
Public Works Administration, Na-
tional Youth Administration.
Works Progress Administration (Work
Projects Administration) , succeeds
FERA, 76; raises morale, 25^7;
wages and hours under, 97, H9-;
expenditures, 9LZ-98-; accomplish-
ments, 9#-9, 295b weaknesses, 99-
101; and unionization, 115; Fed-
eral Works Agency absorbs, 121;
and Resettlement Administration,
131; and regionalism, 156; child
welfare under, ^ 185; adult education
under, 190; increased outlays for,
210; recreation under, 213, 224;
aids transportation, 228; writers*
project, 260-261; Historical Rec-
ords Survey, 261; aids actors,
musicians, artists, 266-270; public
attitude toward, 294 n.; defense
projects, 311.
World Court, Senate rejects, 305.
World's Fair, New York, 97, 224
281, 293; Chicago, 128, 292; San
Francisco, 293.
Wright, R L., architect, 271.
Wright, Richard, author, 253, 260.
YALE University, building program,
Young, Stark, novelist, 158.
Youth, Depression hits, 29, 33, 181,
183-184; political views of, 193-
196; organizations, 194-195; mor-
als of, 196-197; and marriage,
197-199; religious attitude of,
213-214; war sentiment of, 307;
bibliography of, 326. See also
Civilian Conservation Corps, Na-
tional Youth Administration.
Youth-hostel movement, 223.
ZlNSSER, Hans, physician, 284.
Zorach, William, sculptor, 269-270.
Zugsmith, Leane, author, 253.
