Geography 417
California for Educators
The
Great Depression and the World Wars
Objectives
Students will
identify and discuss Californias 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).
CSET
3.2 Economic,
Political, and Cultural Development Since the 1850s. 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
World War I
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.
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.
Hooverville (fig)
Hooverville, Bakersfield (fig)
Hooverville, Oakland (fig)
Depression Photo (fig)
Depression Photo (fig)
Depression Photo (fig)
Depression Photo (fig)
Other Links
Weedpatch Camp, Kern County
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?
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.
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.
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
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
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 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.
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."
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.
From Monrovia
Author of some 90
books including The Jungle, the expose of labor conditions in Chicagos
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).
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.
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??
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 shed 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.
What is
technocracy?
Utopianism?
Howard Scott, a
Los Angeles engineer believed that poverty could be eliminated through
scientific management.
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.
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).
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)