The Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935

After World War One, veterans were offered a service bonus payable in 1945. And that was a fine and good thing, but along came the Great Depression and many of the veterans, displaced by the economic hard times, lobbied Congress to pay the bonus sooner. In 1932 thousands of them demonstrated in Washington D.C. They set up a camp and there they stayed. President Hoover eventually ordered the marchers out of the city by force. It wasn't a pretty sight.
The next year the marchers returned and President Roosevelt persuaded many of them to take jobs building the Overseas Highway in the Florida Keys.
While working on this project, they were hit by a hurricane on Labor Day, 1935. It was the most intense hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States. 164 Keys residents were killed that day, along with 259 veterans. The stories from this storm are gripping and I won't go into them here; there are several books that do a better job of it than I could in a little blog entry.
How does this relate to our area? It doesn't really, except that some of those bonus marchers stayed at my mothers house in Washington D.C. all those years ago, and every Labor Day I wonder if any of them made it out of the Keys alive.

Top Photo: The 1935 Hurricane memorial on Upper Matecumbe Key, Florida. Bottom Photo: Florida Keys at sunset, both Canon EOS 20D.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA)

(LoC) On April 8, 1935, Congress approved the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, the work relief bill that funded the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Created by President Franklin Roosevelt to relieve the economic hardship of the Great Depression, this national works program (renamed the Work Projects Administration beginning in 1939) employed more than 8.5 million people on 1.4 million public projects before it was disbanded in 1943. The WPA employed skilled and unskilled workers in a great variety of work projects—many of which were public works projects such as creating parks, and building roads and bridges, and schools and other public structures. The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was one of several projects within the WPA created to employ people with skills in the arts. Other arts projects included the Federal Art Project (FAP), the Federal Music Project, and the Federal Theater Project. When these projects were created, they were known collectively as Federal Project Number One—or more informally, “Federal One.”Among the well-known writers employed by the Federal Writers’ project were Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, May Swenson, and Richard Wright. Continued

The Civilian Conservation Corps

 

(Wikipedia) The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program for unemployed men, providing vocational training through the performance of useful work related to conservation and development of natural resources in the United States from 1933 to 1942. As part of the New Deal legislation proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), the CCC was designed to aid relief of the unemployment resulting from the Great Depression while implementing a general natural resource conservation program on federal, state, county and municipal lands in every U.S. state, including the territories of Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The CCC became one of the more popular New Deal programs among the general public, providing economic relief, rehabilitation and training for a total of 3 million men. The CCC also provided a comprehensive work program that combined conservation, renewal, awareness and appreciation of the nation's natural resources. Continued

Image: "CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) boys at work, Prince George's County, Maryland" (Carl Mydans/Library of Congress).

 

Emergency Banking Act

(Wikipedia) The Emergency Banking Act (the official title of which was the Emergency Banking Relief Act) was an act of the United States Congress spearheaded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression. It was passed on March 9, 1933. The act allowed a plan that would close down insolvent banks and reorganize and reopen those banks strong enough to survive. In summary, the provisions of the act were as follows: Continued

The Dust Bowl: Tonight on PBS

Watch The Dust Bowl Intro on PBS. See more from The Dust Bowl.

Woody Guthrie

(Wikipedia) Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter and folk musician whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is "This Land Is Your Land." Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress.
Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Pete Seeger, Joe Strummer, Billy Bragg, Jeff Tweedy and Tom Paxton have acknowledged Guthrie as a major influence. Continued

Historic Photo Archive Re-Emerges

(NYTimes) Roy Stryker, founder of the Farm Security Administration’s photography project, was determined to compile a visual encyclopedia of the United States in the 1930s and ’40s and preserve it for future generations.
So, while photographers like Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Russell Lee crisscrossed the country, Mr. Stryker was sending boxes of prints to Ramona Javitz, the director of the New York Public Library Picture Collection, to make sure there was a repository other than the National Archives. ... None of the prints Mr. Stryker had donated were cataloged until Stephen Pinson, a photography curator, came to the New York Public Library in 2005. He hired two catalogers and they discovered that some 1,000 photos in the New York collection were not among the negatives in the Library of Congress collection. Continued

Caught Out of Time

(NYTimes) One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, historians have the benefit of a perspective not accessible in earlier remembrances. One interesting angle is to look at older histories of the war, tracing its place in our national consciousness and rediscovering details that take on new relevance today.
Fifty years ago, as the Civil War centennial got underway, Robert Penn Warren wrote of the struggle as if it were an ancient epic, one that “affords a dazzling array of figures, noble in proportion yet human, caught out of Time as if in a frieze, in stances so profoundly touching or powerfully mythic that they move us in a way no mere consideration of ‘historical importance’ ever could.”
It seems impossible that voices from what Warren calls our “Homeric period” could survive into the age of audio recording, yet a small number have. The perspective on the Civil War that might seem most elusive is in fact the most tangible: that of enslaved children. Thanks to the Work Progress Administration’s Federal Writers’ Project, and the careful stewardship of the Library of Congress, voices of onetime slaves who lived well into the 1930s are now just a few clicks away. Continued

Photo: PP78.47 – Slave house on Webster land (Route 136 between Calvary and Cresswell), Harford Co., Mason. Neg Z8.467.B6; dup/copy neg Z6.1550.B6. (Maryland Historical Society)

The Works Progress Administration (WPA)

(LoC) On April 8, 1935, Congress approved the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, the work relief bill that funded the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Created by President Franklin Roosevelt to relieve the economic hardship of the Great Depression, this national works program (renamed the Work Projects Administration beginning in 1939) employed more than 8.5 million people on 1.4 million public projects before it was disbanded in 1943. The WPA employed skilled and unskilled workers in a great variety of work projects—many of which were public works projects such as creating parks, and building roads and bridges, and schools and other public structures. The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was one of several projects within the WPA created to employ people with skills in the arts. Other arts projects included the Federal Art Project (FAP), the Federal Music Project, and the Federal Theater Project. When these projects were created, they were known collectively as Federal Project Number One—or more informally, “Federal One.”Among the well-known writers employed by the Federal Writers’ project were Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, May Swenson, and Richard Wright. Continued

1933: Civilian Conservation Corps established

(Wikipedia) The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program for unemployed men, providing vocational training through the performance of useful work related to conservation and development of natural resources in the United States from 1933 to 1942. As part of the New Deal legislation proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), the CCC was designed to aid relief of the unemployment resulting from the Great Depression while implementing a general natural resource conservation program on federal, state, county and municipal lands in every U.S. state, including the territories of Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The CCC became one of the more popular New Deal programs among the general public, providing economic relief, rehabilitation and training for a total of 3 million men. The CCC also provided a comprehensive work program that combined conservation, renewal, awareness and appreciation of the nation's natural resources. Continued

Image: "CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) boys at work, Prince George's County, Maryland" (Carl Mydans/Library of Congress).

Port dredging helps reclaim vanishing island

(Baltimore Sun) While most of the Chesapeake Bay's islands are slowly vanishing beneath the waves, one not far from Baltimore is staging a remarkable renaissance. Poplar Island, former hunting retreat, hangout for politicos and black cat farm, had nearly washed away by the late 1990s. But it's since been restored to the size it was when it was still a thriving 19th-century farming and fishing community, using muck dredged from the shipping channels leading to Baltimore just 34 miles to the northwest. Continued

Pictured: Off for Jefferson Island. Annapolis, MD, June 25. Loaded to the gunwale with members of the Cabinet and Democratic members of the Senate and House, the first boat shoves off for Jefferson Island where President Roosevelt will give the politicians a first-hand account of his seven-point legislative program, 6/25/37 (Library of Congress)

In Roosevelt Archive, History as He Made It

(NYTimes) A month after the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Joseph P. Kennedy, the American ambassador in London and father of a future president, expressed grave doubts about “this war for idealism” against Hitler.
“I can’t see any use in everybody in Europe going busted and having communism run riot,” Kennedy wrote to Marguerite LeHand, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s personal secretary. Continued

Image: Library of Congress

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

(LoC) - On April 8, 1935, Congress approved the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, the work relief bill that funded the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Created by President Franklin Roosevelt to relieve the economic hardship of the Great Depression, this national works program (renamed the Work Projects Administration beginning in 1939) employed more than 8.5 million people on 1.4 million public projects before it was disbanded in 1943. The WPA employed skilled and unskilled workers in a great variety of work projects—many of which were public works projects such as creating parks, and building roads and bridges, and schools and other public structures. The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was one of several projects within the WPA created to employ people with skills in the arts. Other arts projects included the Federal Art Project (FAP), the Federal Music Project, and the Federal Theater Project. When these projects were created, they were known collectively as Federal Project Number One—or more informally, “Federal One.” Among the well-known writers employed by the Federal Writers’ project were Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, May Swenson, and Richard Wright. Continued

Photo: John Collier

1933: Civilian Conservation Corps established

(Wikipedia) The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program for unemployed men, providing vocational training through the performance of useful work related to conservation and development of natural resources in the United States from 1933 to 1942. As part of the New Deal legislation proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), the CCC was designed to aid relief of the unemployment resulting from the Great Depression while implementing a general natural resource conservation program on federal, state, county and municipal lands in every U.S. state, including the territories of Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The CCC became one of the more popular New Deal programs among the general public, providing economic relief, rehabilitation and training for a total of 3 million men. The CCC also provided a comprehensive work program that combined conservation, renewal, awareness and appreciation of the nation's natural resources. Continued

Image: "CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) boys at work, Prince George's County, Maryland" (Carl Mydans/Library of Congress).

Cullen Harrison Act

(Wikipedia) The Cullen-Harrison Act, enacted by the United States Congress March 21, 1933 and signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt the following day, legalized the sale in the United States of beer with an alcohol content of 3.2% (by weight) and wine of similarly low alcohol content, thought to be too low to be intoxicating, effective April 7, 1933. Each state had to pass similar legislation to legalize sale of the low alcohol beverages in that state. Roosevelt had previously sent a short message to Congress requesting such a bill. Sale of even such low alcohol beer had been illegal in the U.S. since Prohibition started in 1920 following the 1919 passage of the Volstead Act. Throngs gathered outside breweries and taverns for their first legal beer in many years. Link

Emergency Banking Act

(Wikipedia) The Emergency Banking Act (the official title of which was the Emergency Banking Relief Act) was an act of the United States Congress spearheaded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression. It was passed on March 9, 1933. The act allowed a plan that would close down insolvent banks and reorganize and reopen those banks strong enough to survive. In summary, the provisions of the act were as follows: Continued

From New Deal to New Hard Times, Eleanor Endures

(NYTimes) Early spring, in the Depression year of 1935. A poor girl from coal-mine country, a dark-haired girl of 4, rocks beside her mother and two sisters in a car moving through the rain-swept night. Soon they will join her father, a Great War veteran who pads his shoes with cardboard. He has been working for months on some distant government relief project. When the car finally stops, the sleepy girl can see only a blur of mud and midnight. Continued

Photo: Red House, West Virginia. Ben Shahn (FSA/OWI/Library of Congress).

Christmas in Williamsburg

(Baltimore Sun) If your only exposure to Colonial Williamsburg occurred in the company of a busload of unruly middle-schoolers, you owe yourself a return visit during December, when the air is cooler, the streets are quieter and the town is dressed in its holiday finest.
... But since the 1930s, when workers were paid $1 a night to baby-sit the burning candles in the windows of the houses on Duke of Gloucester Street, Colonial Williamsburg has been the scene of a decorating competition that has only escalated despite the stringent rules that the materials used must be from nature and available in the 18th century. And, since the historic attraction began rethinking its mission in the mid-1990s and changed its lecture approach to a live theater teaching model, there is plenty happening in the Colonial city, with programs, music and events geared to the holidays. Continued

Photo: Scene of Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg, Virginia, with soldiers and wagon train, William McIlvaine, 1862. (Library of Congress)

The CCC on "American Experience"

(PBS) In March 1933, within weeks of his inauguration, President Franklin Roosevelt sent legislation to Congress aimed at providing relief for unemployed American workers. He proposed the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to provide jobs in natural resource conservation. Over the next decade, the CCC put more than three million young men to work in the nation’s forests and parks, planting trees, building flood barriers, fighting fires, and maintaining roads and trails, conserving both private and federal land. Continued

Note: While PBS is airing this show nationally at 9:00 tonight (EST), Maryland Public Television won't be showing it until five in the morning. They did the same thing with a recent show on the FSA. Does MPT have some sort of problem with New Deal history? It's starting to look that way. - Falmanac

Photo: CCC blacksmith in PG County Maryland (Library of Congress).

The Case of the Inappropriate Alarm Clock

(Errol Morris) ... Claims of posing, false captioning, and faking regularly appear in much the same way as they appeared in the 1930s. Clearly, Photoshop is not the cause of these controversies. They predate Photoshop and other modern means of altering photographs by more than a half century. But they allow us to ask an important question. What can we of the Great Recession learn from the photographs of the Great Depression? Continued

Photo: FSA/Library of Congress