Time of Despair Time of Hope Guarino GSL24gardenstatelegacy.com/files/Time_of_Despair_Time_of_Hope_Guarino... · T he Great Depression was an unprecedented period in our nation’s

Time of Despair,

Time of Hope

New Jersey in the Great Depressionby Arthur Guarino

Time of Despair, Time of Hope Arthur Guarino | www.GardenStateLegacy.com Issue 24 June 2014

photo: David W. Steele 'Depression Breadline' by George Segal, 1999 - metal: bronze - Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJhttp://www.groundsforsculpture.org/Artwork/Depression-Breadline

The Great Depression was an unprecedented period inour nation’s history in which the scars were deep anddevastating. The nation saw unemployment rates that

never went below 14 percent and for a full four years—1932,1933, 1934, and 1935—was never below 20 percent. In Detroit,Michigan, automobile production dropped by two-thirds, whilethe number of factory workers in the city’s biggest industrydecreased by more than 50 percent. Many businesses acrossAmerica were wiped out, never to open their doors again.Families lost their unprotected savings because they hadtrusted banks that were either poorly run or caught in the tideof the panics of the early 1930s. Children starved becausetheir parents could not provide them food; young girls soldtheir bodies for a nickel just so they could eat. Men took tobegging on the streets across America because they were outof work and had no where to turn for help. Still other menabandoned their families and rode the rails across the UnitedStates with the hope finding a job in a new city or state and be


Top: The Trenton Evening Times from“Black Thursday.”

www.genealogybank.com

Above: A solemn crowd gathersoutside the Stock Exchange after thecrash.

http://en.wikipedia.org

able to regain their dignity. Women became the heads of theirhouseholds when their husbands left and they had to care fortheir children.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was the antithesis ofthe “Roaring Twenties” in which it had been easy to become amillionaire, sometimes literally overnight. All one had to do, itseemed, was to put a small amount in the stock market andwatch their investment grow to unheard of wealth. It was toogood to be true but there seemed to be no end in sight. WhenAmerica elected a new president, Herbert Hoover, he was notexpected to change things, but rather simply make sure thatthe economic ship would continue on its journey to wealth andprosperity. Even though there was a horrific “dust bowl”brewing in the farm belt of the Midwest, America was still theland of plenty with the proverbial chicken in every pot and anew car in every garage.

Like the rest of America, New Jersey shared in the wealthand prosperity of the 1920s. This was seen in the developmentof such corporate juggernauts as Bell Laboratories and withsuch new construction as the Camden-Philadelphia Bridge. Anew airport was opened in Newark in 1928 and the WrightAeronautical Company was established in Paterson, placingthe Garden State at the fore of the emerging age ofcommercial aviation.

To this day, historians still debate whether PresidentHoover did enough in the wake of “Black Thursday” on October24, 1929, when the stock market took a huge nosedive.Democrats at the time—and for decades afterwards—denounced Hoover as taking a hands-off “laissez-faire”approach in the belief that government should not interferewith the economy, but rather let it heal itself.

He attempted to bolster the nation’s spirits by maintainingthat prosperity was around the corner, but with more thanthree-million people losing their jobs in April 1930, hisreassurances seemed hollow. Ultimately, more than 13.6-million people became unemployed, a third of America’s workforce.


President Herbert Hoover http://en.wikipedia.org

When the Great Depression hit, thousands of NewJerseyians who lost jobs began to rely on relief funds to feedtheir families. Teachers, fireman, policeman, and city workerswere denied pay raises when the economies of their citiesstarted to go bad. Sometimes, these same towns and citiescould not afford to pay anything at all: if you were a teacher orpoliceman in New Jersey during the Great Depression youoften worked for nothing.

The Hoover administration created a Federal EmergencyRelief Administration in 1932 (later folded into the WorksProgress Administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt). On the statelevel, the New Jersey Emergency Relief Administration gave$10-million to bankrupt cities and towns.

The Great Depression’s Effect on New Jersey

The start of the nation’s worst economic period was not onthe mind of the people of Trenton as they celebrated“Education Day” as part of the state capital’s celebrations of its250th birthday. The Armory in Trenton was opened to the publicas new innovations were on display that embodied Trenton’smotto: “Trenton Makes, the World Takes.” Spectators watched inawe as they saw the Roebling steel rope used for bridgebuilding, fine Lenox china for dining, and a new invention thatwould take entertainment to a new level unheard of in humanannals: the television. The future never looked brighter as20,000 children marched in a parade on Trenton’s State Street,while the mayor gleefully rejoiced, “What a perfect schoolsystem! What perfect physical specimens!”

An historian recorded for the event: “And so we pass on,with the comforting realization that the Trenton of Today isbetter than the Trenton of Yesterday and the confidentanticipation that the Trenton of Tomorrow will be better thanthe Trenton of Today.”

Ironically, on that same October 29th of 1929, as the statecapital was celebrating its wonderful today and sunnytomorrows, some miles to the north in New York City, WallStreet was collapsing, soon to take Trenton and the nation


...if you were a

teacher or

policeman in

New Jersey

during the Great

Depression you

often worked for

nothing.

down with it. The stock market fell and fell hard and with it thefortunes of millions.

Industrial towns like Trenton were hit especially hard asmanufacturing declined and thousands of New Jersey’sworkers lost their jobs. John A. Roebling’s Sons Company,Trenton’s biggest employer, asked its workers to reduce theirwork hours by 50 percent in order to avoid layoffs. In MorrisCounty, The Warren Foundry and Pipe Company, a largeemployer which operated one of the two remaining operationalmines in the county, was struggling and announced a tenpercent wage reduction so it could stay open. But in manyparts of New Jersey, workers and laborers were told evenworse news: there was no work at all.

Goldberg’s Department Store located on South BroadStreet had been a fixtue of life in Trenton for nearly 25 yearswhen the Great Depression began. They would launch anaggressive marketing campaign to keep up consumerconfidence in order to encourage shoppers to buy its products.They had even created “Trenton Day”—a special sale day


The manufacturing might of Trentonwas on display at the IndustrialExposition held, ironically, on the veryday Wall Street was crashing,launching the Great Depression.


incorporating local pride they had initiated some 20 yearsbefore that took on special imperative during the Depression.The launched additional campaigns to boost spirits and

encourage a belief thatthings would work out intime. Among theirheadlines was anannoucement how theywere:

“Inaugurating a TRENTONPROSPERITY CAMPAIGN

urged on by ourconfidence that all

conditions point to an optimistic future!”

Goldberg’s, like other businesses in New Jersey, kept theirfingers crossed and hoped that Wall Street’s crash was only aminor hiccup and business would soon return to normal.

Unfortunately, it was not meant to be.Bank failures further aggravated the state’s economic

condition. For example, the Linden National Bank and TrustCompany and the State Bank of Linden were closed in earlyApril 1931 by bank examiners and the State Department ofBanking and Insurance. It would be reopened by “a group offinancially responsible persons [who] would take over thebanks, put in enough money to insure the banks againstshortage of ready cash and continue to operate.”

“Breadlines” and “soup kitchens” became increasingly partof the American landscape. The Daily Record in Morris Countyreported in January 1931 that The Market Street Mission,located in Morristown, “during the past week . . . has cared formore homeless and unemployed men, by furnishing lodgingsand meals, than in any other similar period for many yearspast, it being necessary to install additional sleeping facilitiesto meet the demand . . . It was found necessary to place cots


Goldberg’s Department Store inTrenton had established their “TrentonDay” sale long before the GreatDepression, but it took on addedsignificance in its wake. This ad, fromthe October 31, 1935 Trenton EveningTimes, was one of several coveringnine full pages of the paper! The “GreatEvent,” as they called it, was billed as ajob-creating enterprise that would“speed the return of prosperity!”


in the reading room and the chapel to take care of those whoneed help.”

St. Mary’s Hospital, located in Hoboken and run by theFranciscan Sisters, opened a soup kitchen to help thedestitute. The Hoboken kitchen fed 200 to 300 people twice aday and stayed open for many years.

People relied on handouts all over the country, but thesituation in New Jersey was so desperate that the state tookto issuing begging licenses. These licenses were issued to thepoor and unemployed in the state since government fundswere becoming exhausted due to the overwhelming demandfor relief.

There was no federal or state unemployment insurance,


Soup kitchens a breadlines popped upthroughout the nation as public andprivate groups struggled to find themeans to bring relief to a growingnumber of unemployed and homelessAmericans. This one, in Chicago, isinteresting because it was opened bythe infamous gangster, Al Capone.

http://en.wikipedia.org

and some private businesses stepped up to help alleviateconditions. The Daily Record reported that employees of theJersey Central Power and Light established a specialunemployment fund while a bakery, for a number of weeks,baked approximately 50 extra bread loaves every Saturday todistribute to families that were referred by the Central Bureauof Social Service and local churches. Hipson’s Dairy in MorrisCounty distributed gallons of skimmed milk to families withsmall children while department stores in the area gavechildren’s clothing to the needy for the winter. AmericanLegion Post No. 59 in Morristown had a town-wide drive forcanned foods, and clothing and shoes that were no longerneeded. As stated in the local newspaper, “The call from theLegion comes to the people of Morristown . . . You helped theboys when they were ‘Over There.’ Now help them to help yourown people ‘Over Here.’”

The scale of the crisis, however, was greater than could behandled by private relief efforts. Chester I. Barnard, director ofthe New Jersey State Emergency Relief Administrationreported in April 1932 that the state’s unemploymentpredicament was quite desperate since there wereapproximately 600,000 destitute persons in the state. DirectorBernard also reported that private charities and municipalitieswere not able to provide help to those individuals who were outof work and that $20 million in immediate relief was needed.

Public works projects provided some relief, but it was onlytemporary. Once a job was done, workers found themselvesonce more unemployed.

On June 29, 1931, The Daily Record published a desperateplea in the form of a letter from Clyde Potts, the mayor ofMorristown, who wrote: “ . . . the Brookside Reservoir is nowsubstantially completed . . . it is necessary for the Town to layoff men . . . about fifty or more men will be thrown out of work. . . I am asking the citizens of Morristown who have any workto do on their property or any repairs or renewals about theirhomes to be made that they make them now so as to continuethese men in some remunerative employment whereby they


The Jewish Chronicle newspaper fromNewark, NJ, reported in theirSeptember 25, 1931 issue on theefforts of Chester I. Barnard as heundertook the nearly impossible taskof coordinating relief for New Jersey’sunemployed.


can take care of their families.”Even those fortunate enough to have jobs saw their wages

cut since both businesses and municipalities were doing whatthey could to stay operational. In Paterson, the 1932 municipalbudget as set out by the city’s Finance Board eliminated anysalary increases for police and firemen. The Finance Board feltthat “salary increases were not justified this year in the face ofgrave conditions.” The Board was also looking to cut thewages of teachers and other municipal workers due to theeconomic crisis engulfing the nation and New Jersey. In EastHanover Township, the board of education decided not to payany bills or obligations for the month of April due to low funds.The local newspaper reported that the teachers should feelfortunate since, “if the teachers are not held up any more thana few weeks for their money they may count themselves luckyfor in many places they have not been paid for manymonths. . .” In Netcong, teachers saw their salaries cut 5% bypaying “the teachers the full amount of their salaries and thenhave them donate to the Board the amount of their voluntarycontribution, this protecting their rights of tenure.”

The City of Trenton’s mayor, Frederick Donnelly, tried todeal with the crisis through the establishment of a publicworks program but it failed miserably: the program found workfor only 500 of the 7,000 unemployed, at $3 a day and then thefunds ran out. The State of New Jersey tried to set up a reliefprogram in 1936 in which a family of three could get $55 permonth which was the bare minimum for food, shelter, heating,and clothing. But due to the hundreds of thousands ofsuffering families who were on relief, the state could not affordto run the program for long. The New Jersey Emergency ReliefAdministration shut down on April 15th, 1936, shortly aftergetting started, due to funds drying up so quickly. Towns,counties, and municipalities were on their own in dealing withthe state’s economic disaster.

Tired of what they percieved as inaction by their politicalleaders in Trenton, a small group of unemployed who had beencamped out at the State House, dubbing themselves an “army


The New Jersey

Emergency Relief

Administration

shut down on

April 15th, 1936,

shortly after

getting started,

due to funds

drying up so

quickly.

of unoccupation,” staged a sit-in protest at the State Senatechamber starting April 20, 1936. They were peaceful andsucceeded in attracting the attention of the media to theirplight as they burlesqued the politicians, holding mock votesand proclamations. “We’ll do just as much as the real

Legislature,” one of the protestors told the StateGazette. “Nothing.”

But attention was all they were able to reallyachieve. Governor Harold Hoffman could only urgethem to put pressure on their legislators to supportincome and sales tax measures seen as the only way toraise the needed funds. The best the protest got was apromise by Hoffman to send telegrams to State Senateand House leaders to stay in constant session untilsome solutions might be found.

To many, such a response seemed like yetanother example of indifference from the top down or

at least too timid in the face of the monumental crisis. While hemay have intended it as words of comfort, many took hisassertions that this was merely “a temporary halt in theprosperity of a great people” as a sign of his being too muchthe economic conservative for such desperate times.

Homeless families evicted from houses and apartmentsthroughout the nation gathered in shantytowns they dubbed“Hoovervilles” to reflect their lack of confidence in thePresident. Hoovervilles had no running water, no electricity, nosanitary facilities or sewers, and no support services bymunicipal governments. These people were on their own, andsaw no help in sight.

In Trenton, a type of Hooverville developed on Hamilton’sDuck Island. Those who had fallen to the bottom of society’sdesperation went to the city’s rail yards and were known ashoboes. They settled into these shanties and called themhome.

The darkness of the times for so many was captured in a1931 poem by Anthony DeRuggiero who wrote in “No HelpWanted”:


Homeless families gathered inshantytowns dubbed “Hoovervilles” asa reflection of their disappointmentand frustration with the Hooveradministration’s seeming impotence todeal with the growing crisis. This onewas set up in New York City’s CentralPark in the shadow of some of thecity’s most expensive apartments.

http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com

In the town of many richesBringing sufferings and many promisesStill, no help wanted, no help wanted.

Men walk the streets in ragsStarving and begging for cash;Morristown, Oh Morristown what shame is upon usStill, no help wanted, no help wanted

But despite the darkness the nation and New Jersey was in,hope was on the horizon and it was coming in the form of aman in a wheelchair wearing pince-nez glasses, clinching acigarette holder between his teeth, and evoking a positiveattitude that spoke loud and clear, “We have nothing to fear . . .”

The New Deal and New Jersey

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the change the countryneeded in its most desperate of times. When Roosevelt waselected in 1932, he won all but six states, getting 22-millionvotes, and promising a New Deal for the nation. He was notspecific in what his New Deal would do, but he believed inaction, in trying something—and if that something did not work,try something else. But above all, do something to get resultsand get the country moving ahead, to not stay in the economicand psychological depression it was in.

In FDR’s first one hundred days, he introduced legislationthat Congress passed that was designed to create jobs andbadly needed programs to stimulate the American economy—and help its people understand that government could make apositive impact in the lives of all Americans. FDR’s New Dealhad a profound impact on New Jersey and helped the staterebound from its economic doldrums.

A key program started in FDR’s first hundred days was theCivilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The CCC was designed toemploy young men between 18- and 25-years-old for six


President Franklin D. Roosevelthttp://en.wikipedia.org

months to one year to perform construction or conservationwork. This involved building new bridges, dams, roads, andhighways as well as planting more than 17-million acres ofnew trees for forests. The pay was $30 a month and the youngmen had to send $25 home to their families from theirpaycheck. The CCC achieved two goals simultaneously:putting young unemployed men back to work and saving thenation’s decimated forests. The CCC was also known asRoosevelt’s Tree Army and they planted an estimated threebillion trees from 1933 to 1942.

New Jersey benefited from the CCC as a unit wasestablished in Bergen County to help with tree planting andreforestation. There were also camps set up in Alpine,Hasbrouck Heights, and Teterboro, New Jersey, in order tohave the CCC Boys work along the cliffs of the Palisades andin the marshes of Hackensack Valley. CCC Boys also worked inHigh Point State Park from 1933 to 1941 in developing its layout and their work is there to this day, still used by visitors.Indeed, many parks we enjoy in the Garden State wereestablished by or improved upon by the CCC, including:Roosevelt Park (Edison), Cheesequake State Park, VorheesState Park, Hackle Barnet Memorial State Park, RingwoodState Park, Bass River State Forest, Belleplain State Forest,High Point State Park, Jenny Jump State Forest, Penn StateForest, Stokes State Forest, etc.

FDR’s vision for America was encompassed under theWorks Progress Administration, known as the WPA. The WPAwas established as a permanent jobs program, starting in 1935and lasting until 1943, in which it employed 8.5-million people.The WPA was more than just creating “busy-work” for theunemployed—it materially improved the nation’s infrastructure,being involved in the creation of more than 250,000 projectssuch as building bridges, roads, highways, and governmentbuildings which included thousands of post offices.

In New Jersey, the WPA resulted in the construction of theLincoln Tunnel, Jersey City Armory, Matawan Regional HighSchool, additions to the Jersey City Medical Center (now The


Dedicated March 31, 2003 in RooseveltPark, Edison, New Jersey, this statuewas donated by John Meszaros,President of NACCCA Chapter 24. It isone of two CCC statues in NJ and oneof fifty-four in the country.

http://www.waymarking.com

Beacon), Roosevelt Stadiums in Jersey City and Union City,Rumson Fair Haven Regional High School, Rutgers Gardens,Rutgers Stadium, and Weequahic High School. HinchliffeStadium in Paterson was also a product of the WPA. At itsheight of popularity, it hosted professional baseball gamesincluding games played by the Negro Leagues, professionalfootball games, high school athletic competition from baseballto football to track and field, auto racing, and rock concerts.

Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City was a 24,500 seatvenue that was constructed for $1.5 million and hostedminor league and major league baseball games, boxingmatches, and local schools and college sportscompetitions. Perhaps one of the most famousbaseball games played at Roosevelt Stadium occurredwhen Jackie Robinson played there with the MontrealRoyals (against the Jersey City Giants) on April 18,1946 and broke the “color line” in minor leaguebaseball. His performance with the Royals would leadto the Brooklyn Dodgers calling him up to the majorleagues for the 1947 season as the first African-American player in the league.

But the WPA was not only parks, stadiums, androads—it was also a way to support the arts and theintellectual culture of America, giving work to artists andwriters as well. Artists were hired to paint murals in the newpost offices the WPA was building across the nation and inNew Jersey. At the post office in South Orange, in EssexCounty, for example, Bernard Perlin painted an oil-on-canvasentitled “Family Scene” in 1939. Also in 1939, at the post officein Pompton Lakes, in Passaic County, A. Stirling Calder, madea cast stone work of Benjamin Franklin. Other artists werehired to create works of art throughout New Jersey, fromClifton to Atlantic City. In New Jersey alone, 2,566 muralswould be painted and 17,744 sculptures created. There wereWPA art shows and poetry-readings, as well as a FederalTheatre Project (FTP) that included a Negro Theatre Projectorganized by such well-known white actors as Orson Welles


Jackie Robinson being congratulatedafter his first home run, at RooseveltStadium, Jersey City, April 18, 1946. http://flannelofthemonth.blogspot.com/2010/08/

bobby-thomson-jackie-robinson-and.html

and John Houseman to give a boost to African-Americantheater. One of these NTP branches was located in Newark,NJ.

History would also benefit from the WPA. In 1933, theHistoric American Buildings Survey (HABS) hired people to gomake a survey of as many of the antique buildings as theycould find, in every corner of the nation. Many of New Jersey’shistoric structures were recorded in great detail and HABSdrawings and photos are still used today by architecturalhistorians and conservators.

As part of a broader Federal Writers’ Project, the HistoricRecords Survey and Ethnic Survey captured some of thevanishing voices of generations from the turn of the century.The stories of immigrants who settled in places like Newarkand Jersey City were recorded, as well as audio recordings ofinterviews with African-Americans who recalled first-handexperiences with slavery.

A unique result of FDR’s New Deal program in the GardenState was the creation of the borough of Jersey Homesteads,located in Monmouth County, in 1937. The borough was aunique idea to help the state’s farming and manufacturingbase by acting as a cooperative and was under the discretionof the Resettlement Administration. The idea was thatfarmland was bought by a corporation created by the federalgovernment but controlled by a board of directors headed by aMr. Benjamin Brown. The community consisted of two-hundred homes and different public buildings with itseconomic focus consisting of a farm and a garment factory.The goals of the project were threefold: people could escapepoverty by working in the factory or farm, demonstrate toeveryone that cooperative management was possible andprofitable, and that government intervention in the economycould work. The press release by the United States Departmentof Interior for March 10, 1935, stated the planned communitywas “to accommodate 200 needle trade workers and theirfamilies, the Jersey Homesteads project is outstanding byreason of the fact that it will be the first subsistence


The WPA supported the arts inAmerica with various shows such asthis one in Newark, NJ.

Gordon Bond

homestead community in which the major activities of thehomesteaders will be conducted on a cooperative basis.” Whilethe Jersey Homesteads cooperative did not last through WorldWar II, it was a bold attempt by FDR’s New Deal program to getpeople to work for a while by trying something, even if itultimately failed. On November 9, 1945, the borough’s namewas changed to Roosevelt in honor of FDR who had diedearlier in the year.

The Legacy of the Great Depression and New Jersey

The Great Depression was a devastating economic andfinancial episode for the nation and New Jersey, but theysurvived. Survival meant long term changes such as theintroduction of Social Security, unemployment insurance, theSecurities and Exchange Commission, the Federal DepositInsurance Corporation, and many rules and regulations thatchanged the American economy. But it has also allowed for thepostwar growth of the middle class, an opportunity for a secureretirement, and a social safety net for many Americans. Thechanges also mean an expanded role for government, on anational and state level, that many have come to expect, whetherin times of a natural disaster or an economic crisis.

For New Jersey, FDR’s call to action in confronting the GreatDepression meant the construction of schools, post offices,roads, and highways that are still in use today and are the resultof the policies of the New Deal. But also, the ability to rally arounda leader who, despite his own disability, was able to rise aboveseemingly insurmountable challenges when all seemed lost


For New Jersey,

FDR’s call to

action in

confronting the

Great Depression

meant the

construction of

schools, post

offices, roads,

and highways

that are still in

use today and are

the result of the

policies of the

New Deal.

Time of Despair Time of Hope Guarino GSL24gardenstatelegacy.com/files/Time_of_Despair_Time_of_Hope_Guarino... · T he Great Depression was an unprecedented period in our nation’s

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