Managing the Great Depression, Forging the New Deal, 1929-1939

Youth and Ambition, Virginia Pitman, 1938. Mural created under the Federal Arts Project.

The Repatriation Years, 1930-1933

As your textbooks points out, the Great Depression led to 1/3 or as many as ½ of all Mexicanos leaving the United States for Mexico, some voluntarily, others less than willingly; it is speculated that about half of all Mexicanos who left the U.S. during this period came from Texas.In the census of 1930, almost 51,000 in Los Angeles were unemployed, roughly 10% of the gainful workers, and by the end of the year one out of five workers could not get employment. By 1933 unemployment was at 41.6% and wages had declined 38 percent.In August 1931 the California state legislature passed a law that made it a crime for any company doing business with the state government to employ “aliens” on public jobs. The discriminatory Alien Labor Act disallowed Mexicanos from working on construction sites, government office buildings, schools, highways, and other public works projects. Over 900 jobs were lost in the City of Los Angeles alone on the day the law was passed.As unemployment grew worse, the number of welfare cases escalated from 18,650 in the fiscal year 1928-29 to 42, 124 in 1930-31. Yet the number of Mexicanos on relief diminished from 21.5 percent in 1928-29 to 12.5 percent in 1930-31, despite the poverty in the Mexicano community. There was almost no federal relief yet, and so the allocation of resources fell to local officials who were able to discriminate amongst ethnic groups as they saw fit; thus in 1931, food allowances for “American” families were reduced by 10 percent, while allocations for Mexicano families were cut by 25 percent. Even the Catholic Welfare Bureau, which took care of the majority of assistance for Mexicanos, was ultimately pressured into this same sort of behavior, because once its money ran out, funding came from the Los Angeles Community Chest whose monies, in better times, came from private donations, but now came from public funds.

As economic conditions grew worse, many chose to leave the United States for Mexico – the first wave of repatriados were young, single men, white- collar workers, heading back to Mexico with a car or truck packed with furniture and other belongings, and learned skills and savings with which to build a better life in this or that big city in Mexico – they had profited from their several years living in El Norte. In the first two weeks of December 1930, roughly 2700 repatriados passed through Nuevo Laredo, and 800 more went through there and Nogales in a single day in early January, 1931. By the end of 1930, appr. 10,000 Mexicans had gone back, but for every hundred that left Los Angeles, another hundred took

A Mexicano family awaits the departure of a repatriation train, 1932

their place, arriving from the small rural towns of California’s interior looking for better public welfare programs in the big city.

Ironically, the old “push-pull” of the immigration tale was at work here, but in a weirdly reversed way. There were public officials in L.A. such as Charles P. Visel who were eager to rid the city and county of as many Mexicanos as possible. The new director of the Los Angeles Citizens Committee on Coordination of Unemployment Relief, he created a scheme to widely publicize a visit to the city by the regional immigration director to scare local “aliens” into leaving for Mexico voluntarily. Press releases were sent to all city newspapers, especially the foreign language press, stressing the coming campaign to rid the

At left: a mob scene at a 1931 repatriation train

city and county of as many Mexicanos as possible. The new director of the Los Angeles Citizens Committee on Coordination of Unemployment Relief, he created a scheme to widely publicize a visit to the city by the regional immigration director to scare local “aliens” into leaving for Mexico voluntarily. Press releases were sent to all city newspapers, especially the foreign language press, stressing the coming campaign to rid the city of all “deportable aliens.” L.A. newspapers ran articles with headlines such as “U.S. and City Join in Drive on L.A. Aliens.” They exaggerated alleged crimes committed by Mexicanos including shootings, fights, and rapes. Then, on February 26, 1931, a sweep was made in the Plaza district in which four hundred were detained (only seventeen arrested), but the desired effect was had – many Mexicanos left, and/or began to contemplate leaving the U.S for Mexico.

So much for the “push.” However, the “pull,” to keep Mexicanos IN the United States, was now swinging into being, led by local businessmen concerned over losing their large supply of cheap labor once the immediate unemployment emergency was over. The L.A. Chamber of Commerce rejected their initial support of repatriation and worked with local political leaders to strengthen their alliance with the rural landowners in the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys.At the same time the Mexican consulate, Rafael de la Colina, was angered over the American effort to scare Mexicanos out of the country – but was 100 percent behind any campaign to convince his countrymen to voluntarily repatriate. In fact, by late 1930, the consulate had received many visits from unemployed Mexicanos asking for financial assistance in returning to Mexico. Colina argued to local officials that offers of repatriation should be made not only to those on the welfare lists, but to Mexicanos in general. In March 1931 county sponsorship of “repatriation trains” was announced, and the consulate papered the Mexicano-dense areas of the county with flyers headlined: “Mexico llama a sus hijos” or “Mexico calls out to her children,” encouraging repatriation with a storyline that argued that with

the knowledge and skills learned in the United States, Mexicanos could be of great value, and earn a great deal by returning, to their motherland.The majority of those leaving in the second wave of repatriations were low-paid blue-collar workers, and once they returned, they discovered that there was little opportunity awaiting them in Mexico, regardless of whatever skills or knowledge they brought back with them. In addition, if they were family men, as most were, the transition back to Mexico was not easy for their wives and children; for the latter, it was absolute culture shock as they had been born and raised in the United States where even having lived in lower class circumstances, their standard of living had been significantly better than what they were now confronted with in Mexico. Women had to go

Repatriation headline from La Opinion, 1931

The Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, detail, group project of S.P.A.R.C., specific artists unknown, 1978-83

from cooking on gas ranges to open fires, and from flour tortillas to maize. Bathing was now in an exposed tub that had to be filled from a well – no more running water in a bathroom. “One woman who repatriated back to a family ranch from southern California at age seven remembered laughing at the first adults she encountered wearing sandals, large sombreros, and white cotton pants she called ‘pajamas,’ only to find herself crying months later when her clothes and that of her siblings ran thin and they had to begin dressing like other Mexicans.” Many children were held back in school as they could not read or speak Spanish. Many dreamed of returning to the United States when they grew old enough to go. The repatriates who did the best were generally those who had spent the least time in the U.S. and been the most isolated in the barrios – life in Mexico, for them, seemed familiar. Ironically, those most skilled and knowledgeable, the most “Americanized,” the ones that the Mexican government most wanted back to bring progress to their villages – became the most discontented. They looked for every chance to get back to the United States and, having enjoyed higher wages in the north and often having been members of unions, ended up becoming agraristas, or labor radicals, and were among the most demanding of the Mexican government in terms of living up to the promises of the Mexican Revolution and the Constitution of 1917.

“You see, there is precisely something about the United States which awakens me,” said one. “We saw in the U.S. that progress comes from work…and we remembered that here, the rich man don’t work, they just exploit the poor.”

With these and the following image, it helps to remember that it was not only Mexicanos that felt the hard hand of discrimination and racism at this time________________________________________________________________________

Interestingly, in Mexico City in late 1932 La Union de Repatriados Mexicanos (the Union of Mexican Repatriates) was formed to pressure the Mexican government to put a halt to repatriation efforts until they actually followed through on the promises made to the repatriados that had already come back. They asked that Mexican officials own up to the “painful reality” of the repatriate’s economic situation, and that they “stop the deception by the National Committee on repatriation which seduced potential repatriates with a thousand promises of improvement and aid to all Mexicans who

returned to their native country.” The Union sent a letter to La Opinion in Los Angeles in April of 1933 with photographs asking that they be published as honest documentation of the light of repatriados in Mexico, showing “they had returned only to die of hunger and to inspire pity at the doors of charitable organizations, where they receive only one meal a day.”

Increasingly many repatriados began to consider a return to the United States, only to find that this was an impossibility, even for those with impeccable credentials. Take, for example, Pablo Guerrero, who wrote from Mexicali, Baja California, with a request for legal immigrant status for himself, his wife, and his five children all of whom had been born in the U.S. and were therefore citizens:

“I worked in the U.S. of A. since 1904 with different companies. I registered in the world war in Johnson, Arizona, Cochise Co. I have never given my services to the Mexican government nor to the Mexican capital. I have worked all my life, since I was nineteen years of age, in the U.S. of A., and that is why I wish to return to the country where I am entitled to live with my children so that they be educated in the schools of your country and not in Mexico.”

Unfortunately most, including Pablo Guerrero, found no sympathy on the part of county officials.

But by early 1933 the flow of repatriation had petered out for several reasons: first and foremost, the majority of those inclined to go had already done so by that time; second, the grim reports about conditions in Mexico for repatriados had become widespread, discouraging further interest in the process; and third, the inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the promise of major changes in the distribution of relief funds, gave new hope to Mexicanos, and encouraged them to remain in the United States.

New federal laws made it illegal to discriminate in the allocation of relief funds on the basis of legal status, and relief funds could not be used to transport aliens out of the country; further, the new Federal Civil Works Program which was creating enormous numbers of good-paying jobs welcomed only American citizens or aliens who had begun the process of naturalization. So now, not only were there greater possibilities for relief for Mexicanos, there were compelling reasons to become American citizens. This would create a dramatic demographic in less than a decade – in 1930 the Mexican-origin population in California as a whole, the ratio of native-born to foreign-born was 91 percent; but by 1940, the native-born had become dominant by a ratio of 164 percent. Just as a side note – in Texas things were far worse than in California. The deportation campaign started there in 1928, before the Depression even started, so no economic justification can even be offered for what was done – so one can only conclude that racism was the primary motivating factor. Authorities often did not allow deportees to collect wages or sell property before sending them to Mexico; families were often separated.

Mexicans who challenged the deportations were denied fair hearings. As Rodolfo Acuna reports, “In July 1931, federal judge F. M. Kennedy heard the evidence in 83 cases, 70 of which violated immigration statutes, on one six-hour sessions. Kennedy found all of the immigration defendants guilty. The court deported 49 of them and jailed the rest.”

Remember the Alamo, indeed.

Mexicano workers on strike during the Depression

Mexicanas and the Labor Movement: Luisa Moreno

As your text points out, Luisa Moreno, was of Guatemalan birth, but her story is so inspiring and as she spent her working life in the service of Mexicanos and their labor struggle, her story must be included here. Born to wealth, she rejected her background and as a teenager was the lead organizer of La Sociedad Gabriela Mistral, which successfully forced the issue of admitting women to be admitted into Guatemalan universities. She received her university degree in journalism in Mexico City at the age of twenty, and by the following year was married with a daughter and living in New York City.

In 1930, when she was twenty-three, Under a Texas Moon was released. The film sparked a protest because the main character, a stereotypical Mexican of the time (a liar and womanizer), was offensive to Mexicano audiences. Police, in quelling the protest, accidentally killed one of the protesters, which led to a larger pan-Latino protest which Moreno joined – she later credited this with “awakening” her to her lifelong mission of working on behalf of Latino communities.

When the Depression hit, Moreno organized a garment worker’s union in Spanish Harlem, and in 1935 left her now-abusive husband and moved to Florida, where she was employed by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as an organizer. She became representative of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), and edited their Spanish language newspaper in 1940. She helped to organize cigar-rollers in Florida and pecan-shellers in Texas. She worked with cannery workers in

L.A. She settled in San Diego and helped to organize El Congreso de Pueblos de Habla Espanola (Spanish Speaking People’s Congress), taking a year off to travel the country speaking to Latino groups, rallying, motivating, organizing.

In 1940 she was invited to speak to the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born (ACPFB). Her ‘Caravan of Sorrow’ speech was a passionate description of the lives of migrant Mexican workers and the difficulties that they faced. She said, in part:

Long before the “grapes of wrath” had ripened in California’s vineyards, a people lived on highways, under trees or tents, in shacks or railroad sections, picking crops—cotton, fruits, vegetables—cultivating sugar beets, building railroads and dams, making a barren land fertile for new crops and greater riches … These people are not aliens. They have contributed their endurance, sacrifices, youth, and labor to the Southwest. Indirectly, they have paid more taxes than all the stockholders of California’s industrialized agriculture, the sugar beet companies and the large cotton interests that operate or have operated with the labor of Mexican workers. 

The speech was reprinted in its entirety in ACPFB pamphlets for many years, becoming even more well-known than its author.

During the years she lived in San Diego, Moreno, along with historian and activist Carey McWilliams and fellow labor organizer Bert Corona, was instrumental in helping to form the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee to help in the defense of the young men accused of murder in that famous criminal investigation in Los Angeles. She also was involved in investigations into attacks on Mexicans by U.S. armed forces personnel in the Port of San Diego, which was deemed “unpatriotic and un-American” by the authorities as this was going on during World War II. During the 1940s she organized the walnut pickers of El Monte, CA, and helped to organize the San Diego chapter of the Mexican Civil Rights Committee, working to educate people about stereotyping, racial profiling, and police brutality.

In 1950, when the anti-communist hysteria set in and Operation: Wetback was in full swing, Moreno became a prime target due not only to her having rubbed so many figures in positions of power the wrong way, but also because of the fact that labor leaders were listed for deportation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Moreno was offered the chance to stay in the country – if only she would testify against a friend as having bene a member of the Communist Party, but as she said, she would not choose to be a “free woman with a mortgaged soul.” She and her second husband left for Mexico and eventually Cuba, living there for a number of years before moving back to Tijuana. Moreno spent the last years of her life in her native Guatemala, dying in 1992.

Herbert Hoover: The Right Man at the Wrong Time

If you were to write resumes for every president, citing all they had accomplished before they were elected president, Hoover would be one of the best qualified men for the office. He was the classic example of the “rags to riches” American success story. An orphan who made himself into a multi-millionaire businessman by his 30s, he devoted himself during World War I to the effort to feed the people of Belgium, all the while making sure that the Germans did not appropriate the food; it’s estimated that Hoover kept 9,000,000 alive throughout the war. So Hoover knew about suffering and people in need. So why, with this recent experience, and his overall abilities, was he so unable to adequately deal with the problems of the Great Depression, which got worse every year that went by during his presidency? The problem was that Hoover had a very specific and rigid view of what had made the United States great. In his book, American Individualism, Hoover argued that there were only three things owed to the American people by their government: liberty, justice, and equality of opportunity; competition and individual ability would take care of everything else in terms of success or the lack of it.

America, Hoover argued, had been built by individuals who had taken care of their own problems and had not asked the government for a handout. Hoover believed that if the govern- ment even once gave money, food, assistance to people, it would permanently weaken them, and that would be the beginning of the end for the U.S. Instead, he argued that the traditional sources of public assistance would be enough to help people: the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and the YM/WCA. But what he did not take into account is that those organizations received their financing in the form of donations, and in these financially tightened times, people were not able to give as much to charitable groups as they had in the past. So the days, weeks, months, and even years went by, with Hoover and the Congress trying one thing and then another, but they were simply not equipped, in terms of their general ideological perspective (conservative), imagination and ability to think outside of the box, to deal with the catastrophe. The great economist John Maynard Keynes was asked in an interview if anything like the Great Depression had happened before, and he replied, “Yes, it was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted four hundred years.” As the Election of 1932 approached, the majority of American has lost their belief in Hoover and his administration, and were anxious for a change…

Below, you see the Bonus Army on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. The following two images show them camped out on the Mall, waiting patiently for Congress to review their

petition for assistance. The next two images after that show the men fighting with the police and federal troops who were attempting to drive them out of the capital, and the

burning of their camp; with grim irony the Capitol Building can be seen in the background…after all, were they not engaged in a lawful petition to their government?

The Bonus Army - 17,000 veterans, and all told, 43,000 people when wives & children are included

Election of 1932The single largest victory by a presidential candidate in American history (through today), and in

1936 FDR would win the second largest victory. When the presidency is won by this wide a margin, it tells us that the American people REALLY wanted a change. It also gives the winner a tremendous mandate (the authority to carry out a course of action based on the will of the great majority of the voters), ensuring that at least for a year or two, everyone in Congress, even the opposition party, is

going to cooperate with just about whatever the president wants – after all, senators and representatives have to run for reelection, and if their constituents know that they have been voting

against the designs of the president…they may not get reelected. Remember, every politician is always thinking about one thing more than anything else – winning the next election.

FDR to Save the Day!Even though this cover for Vanity Fair is from 1934, it conveys the feeling in the United States after the election – this new president, with the famous last name, conjuring memories of Teddy and the Square Deal (Theodore Roosevelt had only died in 1919), now on his way to the White House with a “deal” of his own, a New Deal – could he be the one to tame the bucking bronco that was the Great Depression?

A clearly unhappy Hoover and an ebullient Roosevelt on their way to theinauguration,January, 1933.

“The Roosevelt Touch”One of the hallmarks of Roosevelt’s presidency would be his trademark grin and generally cheerful demeanor. In his first inaugural address he had said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and he conveyed the truth of that in the way he conducted himself: getting out as much as he could to meet the people (whereas Hoover had holed up in the White House, rarely leaving), being driven and driving around himself in his specially equipped car that allowed him to operate the gas and brakes with his hands; smiling, chatting, asking people how they were doing, making himself accessible. He confronted one of the greatest challenges any president had ever faced as though there was nothing else he’d rather be doing.

OBAMA and ROOSEVELTRoosevelt (the Great Depression) and Lincoln (the Civil War) faced the greatest challenges of any presidents upon entering office. Many observed that President Obama faced the third greatest challenge in 2009 when he began his presidency, and there were quite a few parallels were drawn between Obama and FDR. In this cover from Time Magazine, published in the second week of his presidency, it’s clear that the editors of Time were expecting big things from this new president – that he should “learn from FDR.” As to whether he did or not – the verdict of history is still out.

And six months later in July, 2009, Time was perhaps trying to gently nudge President Obama in the right direction by reminding him, yet again -- be

a little bit more bold, more daring -- like FDR!

It was public knowledge that FDR was crippled from polio, but right from the start there was an unwritten understanding amongst the members of the press that they would refrain from publishing photos of the president in his wheelchair or in his leg braces and crutches: they believed that in this time of trouble the American people needed to see their leader as strong, not crippled. Ironically, many Blacks voted for FDR because even with his handicap he had accomplished so much; they liked that he was not a complainer. Only a half dozen or so photographs of FDR in his wheelchair survive; here you see him with his granddaughter.

The “Handicapped” President

Representative “bread lines” or “soup kitchen” lines, even when the line in question was for coffee and doughnuts or a full meal – the thing that always strikes me about these images is how well dressed the “down and out” people of the Depression were, these folks who needed to stand in line for an hours, hours, even, for a free, or extremely cheap, meal – not exactly the sort of folks you see in line at shelters nowadays.

“Those in need…”This map really gets to the heart of the matter – “Relief” refers to states where ‘x’ percentage of the families in that state could only survive because of money they got from their state governments every month. As you can see, in 1934, when FDR took office, the situation was particularly dire in the South, less so in some other areas. But still, at the beginning of 1933 25% of the working men and women in the United States were unemployed. To put that in perspective, perhaps you remember the worst unemployment numbers from 2008-2011 – they topped out at about 10%, and it was considered to be a national emergency. Now look again – 25%!!! And every sector of the economy was in trouble, but nowhere were things worse than in agriculture…

THE DUST BOWLThe plight of the farmer was nowhere more problematic than in the area where the Dust Bowl had literally destroyed the land’s ability to produce a crop. Planting and replanting on the same land, and not giving the soil time to regain its health, had broken the soil down into dust, and then unprecedented wind storms had howled down out of Canada and blown all of the desiccated top soil up, and off – like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz – into the distance. It blew across the United States…under the door of the White…across the buildings of New York City…and out onto sailing vessels in the mid-Atlantic, several thousand miles from the Midwest! Any of you see the science fiction film Interstellar? Well, dig the next few images…

TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION…sometimesStill with me? Didn’t lose you in those pics, did I, kids? Astonishing, huh? Like the end of the world…if you saw

Interstellar, it may interest you to know that the elderly people interviewed about the environmental collapse portrayed in the film and how it was affecting them, well, those were segments from interviews with folks who had lived through

the actual Dust Bowl of the early 1930s – amazing what you learn in a history class, huh?

Mother Earth Laid Bare, Alexandre Hogue, 1936There were many artists who were drawn to and inspired by the ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl. In the next image you see Joe Jones’ ironically titled American Farm, where the farm perches above the ruined landscape like Noah’s Ark, stranded on Mt. Ararat following the flood. Above, the title of Hogue’s painting speaks for itself. The four images following American Farm are by Walker Evans, the foremost photographic chronicler of the toll the Dust Bowl took on its human victims.

The New Deal tried to put people to work at tasks to which they were best suited; perhaps you saw the 2005 remake of King Kong? In the opening scene a group of actors are standing around and complaining because the Federal Theater Project was defunded by Congress and now they are all out of work. That’s how several of them end up employed on the expedition to shoot a movie on legendary Skull Island. (Amazing what you learn in a history class, what?) The New Deal employed writers to write, builders to build, theatrical folks to stage free theater in towns where no one had ever seen a play, musicians to play concerts free for the public, and artists to create art, particularly public murals. In the image below, you see New Dealers doing what they did best: building, planning, teaching, designing, surveying, and all in service to the American people.

The image below (like the previous one untitled because I downloaded it so many years ago I’ve lost the title, gimme a break, everybody’s human!) is a tribute to those men who worked their way across vast and inhospitable regions of the United States in the service of one of the New Deal’s greatest achievement – the Rural Electrification Project. Dig it: when FDR entered office in 1933, less than 50% of Americans had electricity in their homes; by 1945, when he died, nearly 100% of Americans had the juice flowing. Think of how we take for granted our ability to just push buttons, flick switches, lay down multi-strips…and think of how annoying it is when there is even a brief power outage. Now, think again – HALF of all Americans had NO electricity…until the Rural Electrification Project. Once their work was done, unless you were some bizarre old hillbilly, like the Unibomber in his cabin at the top of the mountain, then you had electric power, because every small town and every wide spot in the road had a line. No more need for light to read by from the fireplace, or a kerosene lamp – ELECTRICITY. And, as with all of their monumental projects, the people behind the New Deal knew that in order to sell it, they had create a catchy promotional campaign, and sell it to the American people through posters and ads in magazine. You will see some of these images in the next three slides following.

IMAGE 34

Pro-business critics ofthe New Deal have argued, then and now, that the real strength ofthe United States was crippled, tied down bytoo many federal bureaucracies, too much red tape, too many so-called‘alphabet agencies,’just as Gulliver was tied down by the Lilliputians in Gulliver’s Travels.

The Unfinished PortraitPresident Roosevelt was sitting for this portrait in the last months of his life, and he passed in the spring of 1945, before it was finished. The war was still being fought in Europe and the Pacific, and when news of his death reached Germany, soldiers on both sides, American and German alike, called cease-fires and came out to talk about it. Along with Hitler and Churchill, Roosevelt had straddled and defined the depression and war years, and they could not believe it, that FDR could be dead. The only man to have been elected president not just three, but four times, he was also the most important and is generally considered by the majority of historians to be the greatest president of the 20th century: everyone that followed him into the Oval Office would, in one way or another, be measured in their successes and failures by the yardstick of his legacy.