Geography 417
California for Educators

 

The  Great Depression and the World Wars

 

Objectives

•      Students will identify and discuss California’s role in the major events of the early 20th century, including the two World Wars and the Great Depression.

California Standards

•       Describe rapid American immigration, internal migration, settlement, and the growth of towns and cities (e.g., Los Angeles).

•       Discuss the effects of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and World War II on California.

•       Describe the development and locations of new industries since the nineteenth century, such as the aerospace industry, electronics industry, large-scale commercial agriculture and irrigation projects, the oil and automobile industries, communications and defense industries, and important trade links with the Pacific Basin.

•       Trace the evolution of California's water system into a network of dams, aqueducts, and reservoirs.

•       Describe the history and development of California's public education system, including universities and community colleges.

•       Analyze the impact of twentieth-century Californians on the nation's artistic and cultural development, including the rise of the entertainment industry (e.g., Louis B. Meyer, Walt Disney, John Steinbeck, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, John Wayne).

•       http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/hstgrade4.asp

CSET

•      3.2 Economic, Political, and Cultural Development Since the 1850’s. Candidates for Multiple Subject Teaching Credentials....

•      They identify patterns of immigration to California, including the Dust Bowl migration, and discuss their impact on the cultural, economic, social and political development of the state.

Web Link

•     California History On-Line

•      http://www.californiahistory.net/depres_frame_hard.htm

World War I

The Roaring 20’s

•      The 1920s were a time of great economic growth and prosperity, in part driven by the structural buoyancy brought by many new industries.

•      Unfortunately, the prosperity of the era was poorly distributed.

•      A variety of causes have been advanced for the Great Depression.

•      It is pretty clear that many industrial workers could not afford the items they were building.

•      Too much consumer debt…during a deflation…

•      Crisis of overaccumulation?

•      Smoot-Hawley Act?

•      Some economists believe this was part of a cycle.

Kondratieff Waves (fig)

•      Note the location of the 1870s’, the Great Depression,  and the present.

The Crash

•      The stock market crashed in 1929 precipitating the worst economic depression in the American History.

•      Businesses and banks failed everywhere

•      Thousands of investors and depositors lost everything.

•      California farm income in 1932 one-half of its 1929 level.

•      Building permits issued 1933 was less than one ninth what it had been eight years earlier.

•      Many lost their farms and their homes.

•      Unemployment in California - 28 percent in 1932

•      1934- 20% of all Californians on public relief.

Pipe City

•      An example of the conditions produced by the Great Depression were the encampments of homeless, called “Hoovervilles”. 

•      Near downtown Oakland some lived in huge concrete sewer pipes (not in the sewer), cardboard or cloth covered the ends.

•      More than 200 residents

•      Residents called their village "Miseryville," but the press dubbed it "Pipe City.“

•      http://newdeal.feri.org/ron/index.htm

 

Hooverville (fig)

Hooverville, Bakersfield (fig)

Hooverville, Oakland (fig)

Depression Photo (fig)

Depression Photo (fig)

Depression Photo (fig)

Depression Photo (fig)

Other Links

•      http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsowhome.html

•      http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/features/timeline/depwwii/depress/hoovers.html

 

•      Sound Clip: http://chnm.gmu.edu/exploring/20thcentury/photography/guthrie.html

•      Weedpatch Camp, Kern County

•      http://www.weedpatchcamp.com/index.htm

Deportees

•      As was the case during the _______ many Californians looked for a scapegoat for the economic problems faced by the nation.

•      Xenophobia and nativism.

•      Anti-Filipino riots broke out in several rural counties as well as in San Jose and San Francisco.

•      In 1935 Congress passed the Filipino Repatriation Act

•      California nativists also complained about Mexican immigrants also resulting in federal mass repatriation.

•      As many as 100,000 deportees left California for Mexico.

•      Is racism the cultural clothing of capitalism?

Dust Bowl Refugees

•      Many thousands of refugees from the plains states came to California seeking work.

•      They are known today as “Okies” and “Arkies”

•      Cultural legacy still alive today.

•      See the skills lab “Dust Bowl- Myth vs. Reality”, for in depth coverage of this topic.

•       http://www.csun.edu/~sg4002/courses/417/417_lab_hist_dust.htm

John Steinbeck

•      Steinbeck from Salinas.

•      Stanford University drop out.

•      Published a series of critically acclaimed novels, all set in California's central coast and valleys. 

•      Can you name any?

•      The most enduring account of the Dust Bowl refugees' trek to California is John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath

•      Published in 1939, it became a best seller and a movie followed closely.

•      The Kern County Board of Supervisors banned The Grapes of Wrath from public schools and libraries, and corporate landowners launched a campaign to extend the ban to other counties.

•      Pulitzer Prize in 1940.

Dorothea Lange

•      Came to California from East Coast and opened a photography studio in San Francisco.

•      Hired by the federal government in 1930 to make a photographic record of depressed conditions in the American South and Southwest.

•      Photographed Dust Bowl refugees and published account in 1940.

Migrant Mother (fig)

•      1936 pea pickers' camp in Nipomo, on Highway 101, south of San Luis Obispo.

Lange Explains…

•      "I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions.... She told me her age, that she was 32. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children had killed. She had just sold the tires from the car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me....“

•      So…what can we say about the “authenticity” of this photo…

Figure

An "Okie subculture"

•      Not all Okies were from Oklahoma.

•      Rural values and folkways, including their distinctive southwestern accents, food preferences, and country music….not to mention their conservative politics.

•      The dance halls and honky-tonks of the Okies fostered positive social interaction and reinforced group identity.

•      Known as "Nashville West," Bakersfield launched the careers of such notables as Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Glen Campbell, and Ferlin Husky

•      What city in California has multiple NASCAR drivers?

Sound Clip

•      http://www.buckowens.com/audio/tiger_by_the_tail.rm

•       

Total Engagement

•      The struggle between labor and capital in California was intense before the depression and was more so during the 1930s.

•      Overproduction and market depression led to food rotting in the fields while hungry workers looked on.

•      "There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success."                                       -   John Steinbeck

Unionization Efforts

•      Organizing was the only option for many.

•      16 hour days were common among cannery workers, who made fifteen cents an hour.

•      Women were important in the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA).

•      Louisa Morena became VP of the union, an important early voice among Latino labor.

•      Police responded to a strike with tear gas and fire hoses.

•      As authorities responded worker unions became more radical, occasionally affiliating with the Communisty Party.

•      Circle of violence continued, with workers getting the worst of it.

•      One of most conveniently overlooked components of American History is the history of labor.

•      Labor Day vs. May Day.

The San Francisco General Strike

•      The International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) went on strike in San Francisco in 1934 to demand better wages, working conditions and the right to organize up and down the coast.

•      The Chief of Police declared: "This strike is just a dress rehearsal by the Communists toward world revolution."

•      July 5, 1934, a thousand police officers attempted to clear pickets from the waterfront so that strikebreakers (scabs) to cross the “lines”.

•      Two killed and many injured.

•      National Guard called in.

•      The ILA called for a general strike and most unions in San Francisco and Alameda counties joined in for four days.

•      Alienated public opinion, but also demonstrated the strength of labor.

•      Federal arbitrators granted the ILA most of its demands.

The Politics of Depression

•      Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected in 1932, with a populist, pro-labor, demand-side economic plan.

•      Remains to this day a favored president of the working class who remember him.

•      Much of what we take for granted from the government was introduced by FDR.

•      Much rolled back since Reagan

•      “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

"Sunny Jim” Rolph

•      Republican James Rolph, Jr., former mayor of San Francisco, elected Governor in 1930.

•      Not effective in facing the issues presented by the depression, which may have encouraged his ugly populism.

•      When 2 suspected kidnapper/robbers were threatened with mob violence, Rolph publicly announced that due process would not be protected.

•      Angry mob battered in Santa Clara pulled the suspects from the jail and hanged them.

•      Rolph promised to pardons to mob members and called them patriots.

•      The Bay bridge is named after him.

Upton Sinclair

•      From Monrovia

•      Author of some 90 books including The Jungle, the expose of labor conditions in Chicago’s meat packing houses that got laws changed…about meat not labor.

•      Ran for governor in 1934 after leaving the Socialist party and joining the Democrats.

•      Wrote a utopian novel. I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future (1933) that told of his EPIC program for California.

•      Won the Democratic nomination but lost the incumbent Merriman.

EPIC

•      Short for End Poverty in California

•      Many socialist ideas included.

•      Idle factories and farmland, which would become state-run as cooperatives in order to put the unemployed back to work.

•      Of course the business community was strongly opposed, and the Republican party and third party candidates defeated Sinclair and the proposals.

•      Marked the birth of modern, mass-media politics, professional campaigners, attack ads.

•      The campaign included faked newsreels showing wild-eyed tramps coming to California to "launch the Sinclair revolution."

•      Later published his own account of the race I, Candidate for Governor, and How I Got Licked (1934).

Culbert Olson

•      Elected governor in 1938 – only Democrat between 1898 and 1958.

•      Why did the Dems have so many problems in California?

•      Was an atheist from a Mormon family.

•      Mother was a suffragette and elected to office in Utah.

•      New Dealer, but was unable to replicate the federal effort on the state level because Republicans remained in control of State Senate and the Dems in the assembly were divided.

•      Pardoned labor radical Tom Mooney, lost to Earl Warren in 1943.

Panaceas

•      What is a panacea?

•      There were a host of charismatic leaders who emerged, often with wacky plans to save the state and the country.

•      Why did this happen??

Sister Aimee

•      An itinerant evangelist who arrived in Los Angeles in 1918.

•      Built a five-thousand-seat temple for the members of her Church of the Four Square Gospel

•      Started the nation's first religious radio station.

•      Vanished in 1926.

•      Memorial services held but she returned telling everyone she’d been kidnapped.

•      Huge “homecoming” parade.

•      Hoax…she was having an affair.

•      Popularity declined since she did do good in the community, she maintained a following for years.

Technocrats and Utopians

•      What is technocracy?

•      Utopianism?

•      Howard Scott, a Los Angeles engineer believed that poverty could be eliminated through scientific management.

 

Ham 'n' Eggs

•       Many retirees who moved to California for the weather found themselves penniless when their bank failed or their retirement accounts were lost.

•       One simple plan was called Ham n’ Eggs offered old folks a weekly cash payment that was to be generated through taxes on individuals and business.

•       The promoters of the plan were exposed as corrupt just before the ballot initiative came before the electorate and was defeated in 1938.

The Townsend Plan

•      Another depression era pension plan hatched this time by Dr. Francis E. Townsend, a retired doctor from Long Beach.

•      The money had to be spent within one month, to restore "the proper circulation of money."

•      Financed by a 2 percent federal sales tax.

•      Who supported this plan?

•      Also failed, but the logic behind it is somewhat embodied in demand side or Keynesian economic theory, adopted by the FDR administration.

•      Social Security Act (1935).

Building California

•      The remarkable thing about the depression is the progressive outlook of the people and the government.

•      Some of the proof lies in the construction projects and the architecture of the era.

•      Los Angeles Olympics - 1932

•      Hoover Dam 1935

•      San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge -1936

•      Golden Gate Bridge - 1937

Coit Tower

•      (fig)

Coit (fig)

Golden Gate International Exposition

•      (fig)

http://www.postcard.org/ggie01.htm