BERNARD STERNSHER
Depression and New Deal
in Ohio: Lorena A. Hickok's
Reports to Harry Hopkins, 1934-1936
Lorena A. Hickok, newspaperwoman and
friend of Eleanor
Roosevelt, served as Harry Hopkins'
Chief Field Investigator during
his tenure as head of the Federal
Emergency Relief Administration
(FERA) between 1933 and 1935 and the
Works Progress
Administration (WPA) from 1935 to 1938.
Born in East Troy,
Wisconsin, in 1893, Hickok began her
journalistic career with the
Milwaukee Sentinel and the Minneapolis Tribune. She moved to New
York in 1926 and worked for the Mirror
before joining the Associated
Press. There she covered the political
activities of Franklin and
Eleanor Roosevelt and in 1932
accompanied them on campaign
swings across the nation. By
inauguration day she was one of Eleanor
Roosevelt's most intimate friends.
Realizing that her close
relationship with the First Lady was
affecting her detachment as a
journalist, Hickok resigned her job with
the AP to work for Harry
Hopkins in the new relief
administration. After her service with the
New Deal, Hickok returned to newspaper
work but retired in 1945
because of poor health. She then
collaborated with Mrs. Roosevelt in
writing Ladies of Courage, which
was published in 1954. Hickok also
wrote The Story of Franklin D.
Roosevelt (1957), Reluctant First
Lady (1962), and biographies of Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan
Macy,
and Walter Reuther. She died in 1968.1
Hickok recalled Hopkins' instructions
when he hired her in 1933:
What I want you to do is to go out
around the country and look this thing
over. I don't want statistics from you.
I don't want the social worker angle. I
just want your own reaction as an
ordinary citizen. Go talk with preachers
and teachers, businessmen, workers,
farmers. Go talk with the unemployed,
those who are on relief and those who
aren't, and when you talk with them,
don't ever forget that but for the grace
of God you, I, any of our friends might
Dr. Sternsher is Professor of History at
Bowling Green State University.
1. New York Times, May 3, 1968, 54; Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and
Franklin (New
York, 1971), 464-65, 483.
Lorena A. Hickok 259
be in their shoes. Tell me what you see
and hear. All of it. Don't ever pull
your punches.2
Hickok's reports received President
Roosevelt's attention. In
December 1933 he said they were
"perfectly grand. She is trained to
follow a trail; she is after quail and
she won't flush a rabbit."3
Hickok's reports to the "Minister
of Relief"4 are in the Papers of
Harry Hopkins in the Franklin D.
Roosevelt Library. Her four
reports on Ohio were dated May 25, 1934,
May 28, 1934, October 10,
1935, and May 18, 1936. The first
report, which described in detail the
operations of a subsistence homesteads
project near Dayton, is not
presented here. The other reports have
been reorganized and
condensed, but no matter of substance
has been omitted. Three main
themes emerge from these reports: Works
Progress Administration
activities, Roosevelt's prospects at the
polls, and technological
unemployment resulting from plant
modernization. Certainly
developments in Ohio, which Hickok's
reports illuminate, should
command the attention of historians of
the Great Depression since the
collapse of the economy hit the Buckeye
State hard: Ohio, Illinois,
New York, and Pennsylvania together
accounted for more than a
third of the families on unemployment
relief in early 1933.5
2. Paul A. Kurzman, Harry Hopkins and
the New Deal (Fair Lawn, 1974), 158.
3. Lester G. Seligman and Elmer F.
Cornwell, Jr., New Deal Mosaic: Roosevelt
Confers with his National Emergency
Council (Eugene, 1965), 17, quoted in
James T.
Patterson, The New Deal and the
States: Federalism in Transition (Princeton, 1969),
58n.
4. This title is borrowed from Searle F.
Charles, Minister of Relief: Harry Hopkins
and the Depression (Syracuse, 1963).
5. Ibid., 26. Despite the severity of the depression in Ohio,
historians have done
relatively little work on the Buckeye
State in the 1930s. On relief in Ohio see Aileen E.
Kennedy, The Ohio Poor Law and its
Administration (Chicago, 1934); David J.
Maurer, "Public Relief Programs and
Policies in Ohio, 1929-1939" (Ph.D. dissertation,
The Ohio State University, 1962),
especially 108-21 on the WPA; Idem., "Relief Prob-
lems and Politics in Ohio," The
New Deal: The State and Local Levels, eds. John
Braeman et al. (Columbus, 1975),
77-102; J. Otis Garber, "Depression Activities,"
Ohio in the Twentieth Century,
1900-1938, comp. Harlow Lindley, vol.
VI of Carl Witt-
ke, ed., The History of the State of
Ohio (Columbus, 1942), 435-74, especially 460-69 on
the WPA; Irwin V. Shannon, Southeastern
Ohio in Depression and War: The Disinte-
gration of an Area (Columbus, 1943); Dayton H. Frost, Emergency Relief
Administra-
tion in Ohio 1931-1935 (Columbus, 1936); and Wayne McMillen "Unemployment
Relief
in Ohio," Social Service Review,
IX (September 1935), 464-83. An uncritical work on
the governor in the years 1929-1931,
when a persisting policy of inadequate response to
the Depression in the way of relief
began, is Harvey Walker, Constructive Government
in Ohio: The Story of the
Administration of Governor Myers Y. Cooper, 1929-1930
(Columbus, 1948). On the governor in the
years 1931-1935 see Frederick D. Hill,
"Legislative Activity during the
Governorship of George White" (M.A. thesis, The
Ohio State University, 1955).
260 OHIO HISTORY
Report of May 28, 1934
Lorena Hickok's first report on Ohio was
written in Dayton on
May 25, 1934, and described her visit to
a subsistence homesteads
project near the city, an undertaking
sponsored by the Department of
the Interior and associated with
farm-craft, self-help cooperatives
operating on a grant from the FERA.6
The second, written in Lan-
sing, Michigan, three days later,
presented "a few observations on
self-help cooperatives" based on
careful inspection of the Citizens'
Service Exchange in Richmond, Virginia,
and the Dayton Association
of Cooperative Production Units. About
three-fourths of the report
was devoted to Dayton.
Hickok began her second report with a
discussion of the
participants' prospects for industrial
reemployment:
My approach to them [the cooperatives]
has been that of one looking for
some way out of the big load that I am
convinced, after conversations with
many employers, is never going to get
back into private industry-that
stranded generation I've been worried
about.
Incidentally, here is some dope on that
subject. In Dayton the relief
administration has taken on a former
personnel manager with General Motors
to go over the relief load to weed out
those who are employable and try to get
jobs for them. She approaches it with
the practical knowledge of the kind of
people that are wanted in private
industry. She hasn't gone far enough with
the survey yet to have any figures, but
I was told that she was simply
flabbergasted at the large number of
heads of families on relief who haven't a
Chinaman's chance of getting back into
private industry. In the majority of
cases, I was told, they are to be
considered unemployable because they are
beyond the age limit, which around
Dayton-in plants like Frigidaire and the
National Cash Register Company-is 45.7
Hickok was skeptical about the
cooperative subsistence
homesteads. She felt it was
"probably too early to tell whether the
self-help cooperatives offer any
solution of this problem. Those I've
seen are still in a highly experimental
stage, apparently. There's an
idea there, I believe-and a promising
one. But it hasn't developed
very far yet." Walker Locke, editor
of the Dayton News, told
Hickok, "It's hard to fit an
American into any cooperative enterprise.
He's too individualistic." "He
may be right," Hickok noted, stating
6. Concerning this project see Jacob H.
Dorn, "Subsistence Homesteading in Day-
ton, Ohio, 1933-1935,"Ohio
History, LXXVIII (Spring 1969), 75-93, 146-49. On relief
in Dayton see Albert Emil Staub,
"Unemployment Relief and Private Philanthropy in
Dayton, Ohio, during the Great
Depression, 1930-1933" (M.A. thesis, Miami Universi-
ty, 1963).
7. Hickok's reference to the age limit
of forty-five for employment in the Dayton
area accorded with 1930 census data
"which show definitely that forty-five years is the
upper age limit for employment in
industry." Martha U. Tidd et al., "Family Problems
of Today," Sociology and Social
Research, XX (July-August 1936), 528.
Lorena A. Hickok
261
that she had run into a good deal of
distrust towards the cooperatives
on the part of businessmen,
participants, social workers, and the
public in general, who tended to look
upon them as "pipe dreams."
For the moment, she felt, "if the
self-help cooperatives are to offer
any solution to the problem of those who
are never going to get back
into private industry, they must do two
things: they must become
self-sustaining, and they must be run by
the participants themselves."
The ones she had seen appeared to be
"a long, long way from
becoming self-sustaining" since
they lacked markets in which they
might sell their surplus and acquire
working capital. As for
self-direction, "Dayton started out
on the theory that the participants
could run their own cooperative. The
results, they tell me, are
disappointing. The Dayton system isn't
functioning much just now.
They're in a process of reorganization,
and part of the reorganization
consists in taking control away from the
participants."8
If Hickok saw as a problem "those
who are never going to get back
into private industry," there were
implications in her report that the
participants in the cooperatives looked
forward to returning to private
employment and that the cooperatives
would not prove to be a
satisfactory home for those who were
unable to do so. In fact, even
work relief seemed, at least to the
Daytonians, preferable to the
cooperatives as a substitute for regular
employment:
I haven't any clear idea as yet as to
the feeling of the participants. Proponents
say, of course, that the cooperatives
have done a marvelous thing for the
morale of the participants. The relatively
few participants from whom I have
been able to get any sort of frank
statement have given me a rather mixed
impression.
I have the feeling that many of them
regard the cooperative simply as a
makeshift. Just something to carry them
through until they can get jobs. I
have the impression that the majority of
them, were they offered jobs in
private industry, would say, "To
hell with this," and rush to the job. Perhaps
that's just as well, but, if that's the
way they feel, I wonder how happy the
permanently unemployed would feel in
cooperatives. Some of the participants
8. These limitations would not have
surprised Rexford G. Tugwell, who in 1935 be-
came head of the Resettlement
Administration which assumed responsibility for subsis-
tence homesteads projects. Tugwell
"did not subscribe to the subsistence homestead
idea as preached by M. L. Wilson and the
back-to-the-land enthusiasts." He saw sub-
urban resettlement as the most
significant response to coming population movements,
stating in 1933 that "we must be
prepared to absorb very large numbers of persons
from farms into our general industrial
and urban life" and that "our subsistence
homestead projects . . . will function
merely as small eddies of retreat for exceptional
persons." In early 1937 Tugwell
restated his belief that the subsistence-homesteads
projects rested on the invalid theory that industry
would move to the workers. Wilma
Dykeman and James Stokeley, Seeds of
Southern Change: The Life of Will Alexander
(Chicago, 1962), 212; Rexford G.
Tugwell, "The Place of Government in a National
Land Program," Journal of Farm
Economics, XVI (January 1934), 65; Idem., "Co-
Operation and Resettlement," Current
History, XLV (February 1937), 74.
262 OHIO HISTORY
struck me as being a little
wistful-still hoping against hope that they might
be able to get their "real"
jobs back. Of course they faced a test when CWA
[Civil Works Administration, 1933-1934]
came in. In Richmond, I was told,
relatively few went over. In Dayton, I
gather, they all tried to get CWA jobs!
Hickok also commented on the feeling
among relief recipients
about reemployment in "real"
jobs. They were less optimistic than
the people in the cooperatives:
I spent one hour in the relief office in
Dayton Saturday. It was enough.
Same old story.
"They're restless," I was
told. "They're tired of being out of work. They
want jobs, salaries, a normal way of living.
We don't know what's going to
happen. Many of them are realizing now
that they aren't going to get back
into private industry. God only knows
when they'll break loose!"
You feel that restlessness all through
this part of the country. It just seems a
settled thing in people's minds that
there's going to be a lot of
trouble-strikes, riots.
Take that Toledo situation [the
Auto-Lite strike in the spring of 19349]. The
papers said that out of a mob of 3,000
only 300 ever worked in the plant, were
actually strikers. Undoubtedly there
were some outside agitators, but
certainly not 2,700 outside agitators.
Who were, then, those people who were
so desperate that they were willing to
go out there and face National Guards'
rifle fire over something that was none
of their business-people who never
had jobs in that plant and never would
have?
I am afraid most of them were our relief
clients. And I think most of the
relief workers would agree with me on
that.
Well, in all this unrest, there is still
one stabilizing influence.
"The President's still got
'em," said Mr. Locke.
And I guess he has, despite all the
growling you hear from the businessmen
and politicians these days.
Hickok's observations about Daytonians'
preference for "real"
jobs or work relief over subsistence
homesteading or home relief
9. Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years:
A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941
(New York, 1969), 218-29; Philip A.
Korth, "The Auto-Lite Strike: Methods and Mate-
rials," Labor History, XVI
(Summer 1975), 412-17; Sam Webne, "United Auto Work-
ers, Toledo, Ohio: A Chapter in the
History of Labor Strife and Development" (M.A.
thesis, University of Toledo, 1949);
William Haskett, "Ideological Radicals, The
American Federation of Labor and Federal
Labor Policy in the Strikes of 1934" (Ph.D.
dissertation, University of California,
Los Angeles, 1957), 160-95.
On the Toledo Chevrolet strike in the
summer of 1935 see Sidney Fine, "The Toledo
Chevrolet Strike of 1935," Ohio
Historical Quarterly, LXVII (October 1958), 326-56.
See also Tom Clapp, "Toledo
Industrial Peace Board, 1935-1943," Northwest Ohio
Quarterly, XL (Spring 1968), 50-67; Ibid. (Summer 1968),
97-110; Ibid., XLI (Winter
1968-1969), 25-41; Ibid. (Spring
1969), 70-86; Ibid., XLII (Winter 1969-1970), 19-28. On
relief in Toledo see John N. Sobczak,
"The Inadequacies of Localism: The Collapse of
Relief in Toledo, 1929-1939" (M.A.
thesis, Bowling Green State University, 1975).
George R. Leffler and G. Burman Curry,
"Ohio Cities Battle Tax Limitations," Na-
tional Municipal Review, XXIV (July 1935), 391-97, 418, refer to Akron, Canton,
Cin-
cinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton,
Toledo, and Youngstown, which together ac-
counted for 40 percent of the state's
population.
Lorena A. Hickok
263
accorded with the findings of a number
of investigations in the 1930s.
These inquiries cited the benefits of
work relief and its preferability,
forcefully expressed by recipients, to
home relief, whether of the dole
or market-basket kind. Work relief had
its shortcomings with respect
to maintenance or development of skills
and good work habits,
quality of supervision, recognition of
quality work and possibilities of
advancement, but the financial and
psychological benefits were
undeniable. It gave a man an income, a
routine, a function in society,
an improved status at home, and some
control over his own affairs.
The recipient could spend his wages as
he saw fit without sharing the
responsibility for the family's
decisions with a "lady caseworker."10
Approval of work relief, moreover,
amounted to acceptance,
conscious or otherwise, of the existing
economic order since the New
Dealers assumed that the work relief
program would be terminated
with the revival of private enterprise.11
Report of October 10, 1935
Hickok's third and fourth reports on
Ohio were both written in
Washington several days after she
returned from the Buckeye State
and depict a change from near despair
(third report) to optimism
(fourth report) regarding WPA operations
and the President's
electoral prospects.
In the first part of her third report,
Hickok described "our show,"
the WPA, established under the Emergency
Relief Appropriation Act
of April 1935 to create federal jobs for
able-bodied relief recipients
while leaving care of the unemployable
to state and local
governments:
I hardly need tell you, I daresay, that
our program in Ohio is in an awful
mess. And since my return to Washington
I realize that Ohio isn't so much
10. Ruth Shonle Cavan and Katherine
Howland Ranck, The Family and the Depres-
sion: A Study of One Hundred Chicago
Families (Chicago, 1938), 159; Sol
Wiener
Ginsburg, "What Unemployment Does
to People: A Study in Adjustment to Crisis,"
American Journal of Psychiatry, XCIV (November 1942), 444-45; Margaret Cochran
Bristol and Helen R. Wright, "Some
Aspects of Work Relief in Chicago," Social Ser-
vice Review, VIII (December 1934), 641-42, 645-46, 649-50, 652;
Sidney Roslow, "The
Attitude of a Group of Relief Workers
toward Work Relief," Psychological Bulletin,
XXXII (October 1935), 576; Dorothy Mack,
"Psychological and Emotional Values in
CWA Assignments: A Study of Sixty-One
Families on Relief before and after CWA,"
Social Service Review, IX (June 1935), 256, 260-64, 266-67; E. Wight Bakke, Citizens
without Work: A Study of the Effects
of Unemployment upon the Workers' Social Rela-
tions and Practices (New Haven, 1940), 257-60, 281, O. Milton Hall,
"Attitudes and
Unemployment: A Comparison of the
Opinions and Attitudes of Employed and Un-
employed Men," Archives of
Psychology, No. 165 (March 1934), 46.
11. Charles, Minister of Relief,
passim; William W. Bremer, "Along the 'American
Way': The New Deal's Work Relief
Programs for the Unemployed," Journal of Ameri-
can History, LXII (December 1975), 638.
264 OHIO HISTORY |
|
different in that respect from many other states. Twenty-six thousand men working, out of a quota of some 200,000. In Cincinnati, where we are supposed to put 32,000 men to work on WPA, 3,000 were at work. The figures were about the same-or worse-for Cleveland and Toledo. Projects all delayed. Messed up. Many thousands fewer at work than we had on the old work relief program [CWA]. In Cincinnati a crowd of 200 or so milling around the relief-WPA office. Cops on all the doors. Pressure groups threatening trouble. In Toledo men coming around every morning and beg- ging, with tears in their eyes, "For God's sake, Mister, when are you going to give us work?" Hickok warned that the situation was "aggravated by our relief policy"-failure to take care of the employables while "cutting relief allocations as though we were actually putting the employables to work. We're getting a bad reputation for not living up to our promises. That's because we have no policy that we consistently follow." She found relief standards appallingly low, with many families lacking adequate food, clothing, and heat. The morale of WPA people was "all shot to pieces. Charlie Stillman quitting and going back to the University after taking an awful beating. Feeling |
Lorena A. Hickok 265
utterly futile and let down. At that,
though, they weren't feeling any
worse than most of the staff here in
Washington."12 It was
imperative, Hickok urged, either to put
the employables to work or
"announce that we'll carry them on
relief and do it. Personally, I
think we're going to have to carry them
on relief. From what I've
seen since I came back, I am not
optimistic about getting them to
work very soon."
Hickok also discussed the President's
situation in Ohio, which she
found "damned serious. Most of the
people I talked to gave him
about an even chance of carrying the
state. I'd give him less than an
even chance. I don't see how he can
carry Ohio if things-go on as
they are." Roosevelt needed "a
well knit program that clicks and is
properly presented to the public"
as well as political organization.
The farm program was "just
fair," but "about the farmers I refuse to
be gloomy. I talked with a number of
farmers. By and large those
boys are going along with Roosevelt. I
can't see it any other way.
And whatever help Roosevelt needs among
them in Ohio, I believe
[Senator] Vic Donahey can provide."
The work relief program,
however, "isn't clicking at
all." The overriding need was
employment, and just as Hickok was
pessimistic about "the chances
of getting them to work very soon"
on WPA, so she was concerned
about the continuing advance, amid
depression, of technology. Nor
did she feel that FDR any longer enjoyed
the "can't lose" status
Locke had mentioned to her in Dayton a
year and a half earlier:
Right now I wouldn't give a plugged
nickel for all the support Roosevelt
would get from the unemployed in Ohio if
the election were held tomorrow.
However-if we get 'em to work-all may be
forgiven. But get 'em to work
we must, or see that they are taken care
of on relief. And we mustn't kid
ourselves too much about industry
putting them to work right away. I don't
believe industry is going to, no matter
how much better business gets. You
can just bet your last dollar that every
dollar released for plant
improvements-and the money is beginning
to flow now, I understand-is
going to be spent laying men off instead
of putting them to work. We've
simply got to be more realistic about
these technological improvements.
Hickok had little opportunity to
discover what the workers were
thinking about, although "Lord
knows, I try to find out!" In
Cleveland she "had a break,"
meeting a young man, a "darned
intelligent chap," who was a roller
in a steel mill. He said workers
were concerned first of all with the
failure of their wages to keep up
12. Stillman, whom Hickok credited with
"A magnificent effort to run a nonpolitical
show," resigned as WPA
administrator in Ohio on October 31, returning to his post as
Director of the School of Social
Administration at The Ohio State University. He was
succeeded by Dr. Carl Watson of Findlay.
266 OHIO HISTORY
with the increase in living costs over
the past two and a half years.13
His wages were higher than those of most
of the men in the plant, and
to make ends meet they resorted to
various schemes such as selling
coal on commission. Unhappy about their
plight, they either blamed
the President or took the attitude, as
the roller put it, "Oh, what's the
use? He can't do anything about it. He's
just another President. Big
business is running the show." They
were apathetic toward the
Wagner Act and unionization, and they
evidenced a deep feeling of
insecurity:
He says he all the time hears the
remark, "If I was sure I'd be working two
months from now." More of the
"If this guy in Washington doesn't quit
fooling around and retarding recovery,
I'll lose my job" fear. On the other
hand, I believe they'd follow him if
they had confidence that he really was on
their side and was strong enough to give
big business a licking. I asked the
roller-man what they thought about
Father [Charles E.] Coughlin, Huey
Long, etc. Toward Father Coughlin,
indifference, he said. "But some of them
almost wept when Huey died," he added.
"What we want is some boy to
lead us who's got guts. We thought
Roosevelt was the one, but we're
beginning to think we were wrong."
They'll vote for Roosevelt against a
reactionary Republican, probably-unless
this feeling of insecurity gets a
stronger hold on them, and their
employers seem to be cultivating that feeling
of insecurity all along the line. But if
the Republicans should put up, by any
unforeseen chance, a guy with a
reputation at all for being a liberal, it would
hurt Roosevelt, plenty. It might help if
we got the cost of living down a little,
but they'd rather have wages go up. A
few months ago when I was in
Michigan, people were being held in line
behind the President because they
liked his personality and had faith in
his integrity. Now they're beginning to
look upon him as
"ineffectual." They have the impression that he's playing
both ends against the middle, that,
after all, he's just a politician. Of course,
there isn't any question that he'll have
organized labor with him. But how
much is that worth? Frankly, I don't
know.
It is not surprising that Hickok did not
think the New Deal was
being "properly presented to the
public":
The public relations end of it is
inexcusably bad. Roosevelt has more
friendly papers in Ohio than in any other
state I know of. Six Scripps-Howard
papers, to begin with. The Cleveland
Plain Dealer and Jimmy Cox's paper in
Dayton, both friendly. I met a number of
these managing editors and editorial
writers. They'd go a long way with the
President and with us if we'd only
take them in, be frank with them. We
don't. The Roosevelt program simply
isn't being sold in Ohio.
13. Bernard Bellush, The Failure of
the NRA (New York, 1975), 136, 152, states that
from early 1933 to early 1934 "the
actual amount of merchandise being moved was
decreasing for the country as a
whole" while dollar sales rose because of a 25 percent
increase in prices. Increases in wage
rates were not large enough to offset price in-
creases, and higher hourly wage rates in
some important industries did not translate
into equally higher total wage payments,
weekly or annual, because of "the shorter
hours of the NRA years."
Lorena A. Hickok
267
Finally, in her third report Hickok
noted that with respect to
political organization "the picture
is bad, but could be straightened
out. [Martin] Davey of course is
bad." According to historian James
T. Patterson, "of all the
uncooperative Democrats, none outdid
Martin Davey, Ohio's governor from
1935-1939." Davey refused to
urge the state legislature to
appropriate adequate relief funds, and he
used FERA money to strengthen his own
faction in the state party.
He abolished the state relief
commission, bestowing its authority on
political allies in the counties. One
Davey ally, the Democratic state
chairman, condemned Hopkins for appointing
Republicans to relief
posts and thereby betraying the
President. Hopkins launched an
investigation which revealed Davey's
politicization of relief. As a
result, Hopkins federalized relief in
Ohio in 1935. "Men such as
Davey," Patterson concluded, "campaigned as cooperative
Democrats, rode into office on the party
label, and stayed until their
camouflage wore off. Too many of the
nobodies-the [Albert B.]
Chandlers [of Kentucky] and the
Daveys-were politicians first and
policymakers second."14
Hickok was mistaken when she declared
that Davey did not have
"a Chinaman's chance" of being
reelected in 1936.15 "Anyway," she
admonished, "the President can't
afford to play with Davey." She
believed Roosevelt should stay out of
the Ohio situation unless the
Democrats nominated Charles Sawyer of
Cincinnati, whom she
thought the President could endorse.
What Roosevelt really needed
14. Patterson, The New Deal and the
States, 61-62, 156, 166. On Davey's governor-
ship see also Maurer, "Public
Relief Programs," 129-41; Francis R. Aumann, "Ohio
Government in the Twentieth Century:
From White to Bricker (1931-1940)," in
Lindley, Ohio in the Twentieth
Century, 78-88; Ralph J. Donaldson, "Martin L.
Davey," The Governors of Ohio (Columbus,
1954), 179-83; C. B. Nuckolls, "The Gov-
ernorship of Martin L. Davey of
Ohio" (M.A. thesis, The Ohio State University, 1952);
and Charles, Minister of Relief, 76-81.
15. Davey defeated Attorney General John
W. Bricker by only 126,688 votes while
Roosevelt carried Ohio by more than
600,000. In 1938 Davey was narrowly defeated by
former Lieutenant Governor Charles
Sawyer of Cincinnati in the primary. In 1940 he
lost to Bricker by a record-breaking
364,467 votes, while Roosevelt carried the state
over Wilkie by 186,356. Thomas A. Flinn,
"Continuity and Change in Ohio Politics,
Journal of Politics, XXIV (August 1962), 543-44, concludes that "the major break in
Ohio politics comes between 1932 and
1936 and is registered in the presidential election
of 1936. Urban industrial counties which
before had found the Democratic party mod-
erately attractive at best, moved
decisively into the Democratic camp. A partially off-
setting movement of traditional
Democratic voters to the Republican party was going
on also in the 1930's in east central
and northwest Ohio." Bernard Sternsher, in Con-
sensus, Conflict, and American
Historians (Bloomington, 1975), 148,
using Paul T.
David's sophisticated measurement of
party strength in his calculations, arrived at the
following percentages of the vote
received by the two major parties in Ohio: 1914-1929:
Democratic 46.6-Republican 51.8;
1930-1945: Democratic 49.2-Republican 50.5; 1946-
1962: Democratic 48.3-Republican 51.0.
268 OHIO HISTORY
was his own organization, headed by
Senator Robert J. Bulkley, who
was strong in the cities, and Senator
Donahey, who "has rural Ohio
in his pocket. Neither of them is tarred
with the Davey brush.
Everybody says they're pretty smart and
reasonable."16 Otherwise,
according to journalists, Democrats,
federal office-holders, and
pre-Davey county chairmen with whom
Hickok had had friendly
talks, Roosevelt could write off Ohio.
Report of May 18, 1936
Lorena Hickok's final report covered a
trip of a little more than two
weeks through Ohio, including visits to
Cleveland, Cincinnati,
Columbus, Youngstown, Akron, Toledo,
Springfield, Dayton, Lima,
Findlay, and several smaller towns and
villages "to get the rural
picture." In this report, she
commented at length on plant
modernization.
In general, the WPA, a year after its
creation, had become
reasonably well organized. Because of
pessimism about
reemployment in the Mahoning
Valley-Youngstown area, the WPA
enjoyed the support of local Republican
politicians, who were
"scared stiff of what might happen
if there were no WPA." Among
"our own people," the WPA
workers,
the feeling is a whole lot better than
it was last September when I was in
Ohio. I daresay it's much better than it
was back in the Winter, too! The
program has settled down now to a good
pace. Overcrowding has been
largely eliminated. With decent weather
here now, it is possible to do really
good construction work. Men can see
results, and they like it. There is very,
very little shovel leaning. In fact, the
only place I saw any shovel leaning in
the whole state-and I visited projects
in a lot of places-was on that Lake
Front Boulevard in Cleveland. I was told
that conditions were very much
better than they had been. That job has
always been a kind of "Siberia."
Hickok found that Cleveland was also
exceptional with respect to the
caliber of WPA personnel, although
there, as in the rest of the state,
politicization of WPA had been
prevented:
Our own WPA show in Ohio is one of the
best I've ever seen. Very clean as
regards political messing around. There
just doesn't seem to be any. Most of
the district directors went over from
the old relief show [FERA]. Charlie
16. On Bulkley see Edward J. Peltz,
"The Senatorial Career of Robert Johns
Bulkley" (M.A. thesis, The Ohio
State University, 1968). Bulkley was elected in 1932
and lost to Robert A. Taft in 1938.
Donahey was elected governor in 1922, 1924, and
1926, and senator in 1934, when he
defeated the incumbent Simeon D. Fess. On Taft
see James T. Patterson, Mr.
Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft (Boston,
1972), and on Fess see John L. Nethers, Simeon
D. Fess: Educator and Politician
(Brooklyn, 1973).
Lorena A. Hickok
269
Stillman's old crowd. By and
large-Cleveland was the exception, rather than
the rule-capable. And three of them told me stories to
show how
marvelously Doctor Watson backs them up
when the politicians [especially
Senator Bulkley, who, Hickok gathered,
was attempting to gain control of the
Cleveland Democratic organization] start
getting tough. You can just see that
it's a good show. I've got so I can
almost tell when I walk out on a project
whether they have "political
foremen" or not!
Hickok went into some detail about the
problems of the Lake Front
Boulevard project. It was extremely
difficult to work on during the
winter, it had been damaged by spring
storms, it had "always had the
bulk of the unskilled, hard-to-manage
labor in Cleveland," and it had
involved controversy over its
location-"our boulevard has been
shoved way out in the lake." This
project had also occasioned a clash
between Mayor Harold H. Burton, who was
"of course out for all he
can get out of the federal
government," and Joseph Alexander, WPA
Director in Cleveland, over protection
of the boulevard from the
weather; Alexander, on engineers'
advice, rejected Burton's proposal
of a breakwater in favor of a stone
riprapped embankment. The
Cleveland people, Hickok concluded,
"certainly are funny, though.
Talk about the 'gimmies'! I spent a
whole day looking over our proj-
ects there, and it seems to me that on
repairs to some of their public
buildings we've gone right to the
line-so close to maintenance that it
isn't funny. Yet they are never
satisfied."17 The Cincinnati personnel,
on the other hand, although they
resented federal direction, were
17. On the WPA in Cleveland see Charles
D. Dunfee, "Harold H. Burton, Mayor of
Cleveland: The WPA Programs,
1935-1937" (Ph.D: dissertation, Case Western Reserve
University, 1975); Daniel F. Ring,
"The Cleveland Public Library and the WPA: A
Study in Creative Partnership," Ohio
History, LXXXIV (Summer 1975), 158-64. Resi-
dential segregation and occupational
patterns are analyzed in Christopher C. Wye,
"The New Deal and the Negro
Community: Toward a Broader Conceptualization,"
Journal of American History, LIX (December 1972), 621-39. On the black voters' re-
sponse to the New Deal see David Weber,
"Negro Voting Behavior in Cleveland,
1928-1945" (M.A. thesis, Kent State
University, 1971). On the black community see
Christopher C. Wye, "Midwest
Ghetto: Patterns of Negro Life and Thought in Cleve-
land, 1929-1945" (Ph.D.
dissertation, Kent State University, 1973). On the unemployed
in the early years of the Depression see
Helen M. Walker, "Some Data Regarding 162
Families Affected by Unemployment Known
to the Cleveland Associated Charities,"
The Family, Supplement, XIV (June 1933), 131-35; and Lillian L. Otis,
"Unemploy-
ment and its Treatment in
Non-Residential Families: A Study of Fifty Non-Resident
White Families Known to the Cleveland
Associated Charities," Ibid., 136-43. On relief
see Howard W. Green, Nine Years of
Relief in Cleveland, 1928-1937 (Cleveland, 1937);
Idem., Two Hundred Millions for
Relief in Cleveland, 1928-1938 (Cleveland,
1938); Idem., Unemployment and Relief
in Cleveland (Cleveland, 1938). Social welfare activ-
ity is treated in Judith Trolander,
"Social Settlements in the 1930's: Cleveland" (Ph.d.
dissertation, Case Western Reserve
University, 1973); and Raymond F. Clapp, "A Decade
[1924-1933] of Social Work in
Cleveland," Social Service Review, IX (March 1935), 34-57.
See also Donald F. Knox, "The
Impact of the Great Depression on Cleveland, Ohio"
(M.A. thesis, The Ohio State University,
1959).
270 OHIO HISTORY
much happier than they had been the
previous fall.18 "Toledo is
swell. More ingenuity in that program
than in almost any other I've
seen." As always, "money
troubles were the chief concern of the
WPA setup in Ohio when I was there. But
that isn't confined to
Ohio!" There had been a cut in WPA
rolls in Ohio in the spring of
1935, and "in Ohio, I think they do
a fairly good job of it." The
directors personally kept on top of the
situation, and, as Wayne Coy
of the Washington office said,
"there are ways and ways of saying,
'No'. Except in the Mahoning Valley, the
amount of fussing stirred
up by the cut was much less than one
would expect."
After attempting to gauge the attitude
of workers, the unemployed,
the middle class, and the electorate in
general toward the President,
Hickok was optimistic about Roosevelt's
chances of carrying Ohio-
in contrast to her pessimism of the
previous fall. For information
about Roosevelt's standing among workers
she again interrogated the
"darned intelligent" roller in
a Cleveland steel mill whom she had
met in the fall of 1935. He reported a
good deal of unrest among the
steelworkers, arising from insecurity-a
belief that their jobs were
doomed-but "so far, their
uneasiness is not finding any concrete
expression." They showed little
interest in unions or a labor party:
"They were simply bewildered-and
scared." In any case, the Presi-
dent apparently would have their
support:
Ninety per cent of them, he believes,
will vote for Roosevelt this Fall.
Simply because they feel that he does
understand the situation-"even if he
can't do anything about it," an
expression you hear often from them. "He
means right." They'd probably like
him better were he more to the Left.
Among these people Father Coughlin is
gaining a good deal of influence again
. . . Landon, Vandenberg, Knox-not [sic]
of them mean anything to the steel
workers. Most of them are violently
anti-[Herbert] Hoover of course.
Hickok's informant did not expect
uneasiness to go unexpressed in
some concrete form indefinitely. He
predicted:
Within the next few years-perhaps about
ten-"the damndest blowup you
18. A WPA project in Cincinnati is
described in Joyce C. Maurer, "Federal Theater
in Cincinnati," Cincinnati
Historical Society Bulletin, XXXII (Spring-Summer 1974),
28-41. A favorable response to New Deal
assistance is delineated in Ernest Collins,
"Cincinnati Negroes and
Presidential Politics," Journal of Negro History, XLI (April
1956), 131-37; see also Tyrone Tillery,
"Cincinnati Blacks and the Great Depression,
1929-1938" (M.A. thesis, University
of Cincinnati, 1973). On unemployment and relief
in Cincinnati in the years of Hickok's
visits to Ohio see "Employment Census of Cin-
cinnati, 1934," Monthly Labor
Review, XXXIX (September 1934), 647-49; Beulah
Amidon, "A City Looks at Work and
Workers," Survey Graphic, XXV (May 1936),
315-18, 343-44; "Employment in
Cincinnati, 1936," Monthly Labor Review, XXXIV
(October 1936), 873-75. On social
welfare activity see Community Chest of Cincinnati
and Hamilton County, The First Twenty
Years 1915-1935 (Cincinnati, 1935), 59-80.
Lorena A. Hickok
271
ever heard of, led by a lot of New York
Kikes." I asked him why he and
other young men like him, feeling that
this thing is inevitable, didn't get active
in the labor movement and try to lead
these people. I met with only cynicism.
Well, anyway, this year it looks as
though these workmen-those who have
jobs, those who have jobs but are afraid
of losing them to a machine, those
who have lost their jobs-will be largely
for Roosevelt this Fall. Anywhere
from 75 to 90 per cent. The story is the
same, all over Ohio.
Among the unemployed Hickok found ironic
evidence of
Roosevelt's enjoyment of a "can't
lose" status:
One thing that is going to work to the
advantage of the president politically,
although it is terrible for the
unemployed, is the relief standard-for direct
relief-in much of Ohio [left to the
states and localities with the formation of
WPA]. Very low. In some places very
badly administered. In Youngstown,
wholly political. And the poor devils
who have to take it are perfectly aware
of the fact that it was much better when
the federal government was in the
picture. Mostly they seem to be wistful
about it, rather than resentful because
we pulled out and turned them over to
Davey and the state legislature.
So much for the workers and the
unemployed. They are on our side.
The steel roller's prediction of a
blowup "within the next few
years-perhaps about ten," proved to
be too conservative. In May
1937, the Steel Workers Organizing
Committee struck the plants of
Youngstown Sheet and Tube and Republic
Steel. There followed two
months of violence and destruction of
property in Trumbull, Mahon-
ing, and Stark counties and in
Cleveland, with Governor Davey send-
ing the National Guard into northeastern
Ohio.19
In regard to Roosevelt's "can't
lose" status even among the un-
employed on inadequate direct relief,
some relevant studies con-
ducted in the 1930s should be cited.
Attempting in 1934 and 1935 to
ascertain attitudes toward the
depression of Chicago relief recipients,
Ruth S. Cavan and Katherine H. Ranck
found that attitudes towards
19. John F. Shiner, "The 1937 Steel
Labor Dispute and the Ohio National Guard,"
Ohio History, LXXXIV (Autumn 1975), 182-95; Michael Speer, "The
'Little Steel'
Strike: Conflict for Control," Ibid.,
LXXVIII (Autumn 1969), 273-87; Patricia Ann
Terpak, "Youngstown and the Little
Steel Strike" (M.A. thesis, The Ohio State Uni-
versity, 1971); Ray M. Baughman,
"Organization of the Steel Workers at the Republic
Steel Corporation Plants in Stark
County" (M.A. thesis, Kent State University, 1968);
and Marcus A. Roberto, "Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Martin L. Davey, and the 'Little
Steel' Strike in Ohio" (M.A.
thesis, Kent State University, 1969). On attitudes in
Youngstown in the early years of the
Depression see "Our Youngstown Survey," Re-
view of Reviews, LXXXIII (January 1931), 81; and on conditions see Joseph F. Heffer-
nan, "The Hungry City," Atlantic
Monthly, CXLIX (May 1932), 538-46. In addition to
the writings cited above on labor
developments in northwestern Ohio (Toledo) and
northeastern Ohio (Akron, Canton,
Cleveland, Youngstown), a volume concerning un-
ionization in southwestern Ohio
(Cincinnati, Dayton) is available: John G. Kruchko,
The Birth of a Union Local: The
History of UAW Local 674, Norwood, Ohio, 1933 to
1940 (Ithaca, 1972); as well as an article on a labor action
in rural southeastern Ohio.
Larry D. O'Brien, "The Ohio
National Guard and the Coal Strike of 1932," Ohio His-
tory, LXXXIV
(Summer 1975), 127-44.
272 OHIO HISTORY
relief, particularly as symbolized in
the individual caseworker, were
"rather emotional and active,"
as opposed to the passive reactions to
the depression. Relief was
"immediate, specific, personal"; the de-
pression seemed "remote, vague,
impersonal" as a causal agent di-
rectly affecting the details of daily
life.20 Because complaints about
the relief system did not extend in a
basic way to the depression, the
social order, or even the work relief
program, it is not surprising that
carping criticism of the relief system
did not extend to the New Deal.
Among unemployed Philadelphians, one
study pointed out, the great
interest in their lives was obtaining
food and work.21 Among un-
employed Chicagoans, Cavan and Ranck
reported, "the chief concern
was to secure reemployment as soon as
possible." Meanwhile, most
of these Chicagoans "placed their
faith in the New Deal not out of
any hope that the New Deal would
reorganize the economic system
and perhaps prevent future depressions.
They took a more personal
view: the federal government had not let
them starve, and it had pro-
vided work."22 Alfred
Winslow Jones agreed, in essence, with Cavan
and Ranck in his analysis of the
attitudes of employed and un-
employed Akron workers (as well as the
attitudes of business leaders
and middle-class groups) towards the New
Deal.23
Hickok was uncertain about the middle
class, among whom she
thought the "feeling is
divided," as it was among the farmers of Ohio,
where the Agricultural Adjustment
Administration was less
intelligently handled than in Indiana.
In the Hoosier State "they went
out and sold [Secretary of Agriculture
Henry A.] Wallace and his
program-and along with them the
President-to the farmers. They
didn't in Ohio." Western Ohio
farmers were prosperous,
But when you talk with them you hear an
awful lot about government
extravagance. And a lot about people
being unemployed because they won't
work. And so with the middle class. I
dined one evening in Cincinnati with
four high school teachers, and I had the
battle of my life with two of them
who insisted that people were out of
work because they didn't want to work.
Hickok thought Roosevelt was stronger in
northern and eastern Ohio
than in the southern and western parts
of the state. She cited a poll
taken on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland one
Saturday morning by a
friend of hers who asked the first
twenty-five people she met who was
20. Cavan and Ranck, The Family and
the Depression, 153.
21. Rosemary Reynolds, "They Have
Neither Work Nor Money," The Family, XII
(April 1931), 36.
22. Cavan and Ranck, The Family and
the Depression, 160.
23. Alfred Winslow Jones, Life,
Liberty, and Property: A Story of Conflict and a
Measurement of Conflicting Rights (Philadelphia, 1941), 336-37.
Lorena A. Hickok 273 |
|
going to win the election. Nineteen said Roosevelt, three said a Republican, and three were not sure. Only three of the nineteen who specified Roosevelt were not going to vote for him. Politicians in the northern part of the state predicted a big victory for Roosevelt, while those in the southern part trimmed the estimated majority down or thought the election might go either way. Hickok offered an observation about Republican politicians that indicated their lack of confidence while suggesting Roosevelt's "can't lose" status-with respect to responsibility for hard times-even among the opposition: In one city-I promised not to tell which one, or who told me-I was given information that the Republicans were having a tough time trying to get money out of the wealthy men-no matter how much the latter may howl against Roosevelt. They don't think Roosevelt can be defeated, I was told, and this IS interesting-haven't any faith in things being any more satisfactory for them even if a Republican should be elected! The impact of plant modernization on reemployment, the third main theme of Lorena Hickok's final report on Ohio, has often been neglected in discussions of the New Deal's failure to achieve full employment. Her comments on this subject call for some introductory remarks. Gross national product declined from 104 billion dollars in 1929 to 75 billion dollars in 1933, then rose to 110 billion dollars in 1937 on the eve of the recession that began in the fall of that year.24 Meanwhile,
24. Douglass C. North, Growth and Welfare in the American Past: A New Economic History (Englewood Cliffs, 1966), 170. |
274 OHIO HISTORY
unemployment rose from 3.2 percent of
the labor force (1,500,000) in
1929 to 30 percent (12,500,000) in 1932,
then declined to 14.9 percent
(7,500,000) just before the recession of
1937-1938.25 These figures
indicate the difficulty of combating
joblessness during a depression.
In good times as well as bad the economy
must grow in order to
provide jobs for people entering the
labor force. During the Great
Depression this ever-present necessity
was accompanied by the need
to find employment for millions of
workers who had been laid off
after the Great Crash. This double
requirement produced, as it were,
a treadmill kind of situation. While
unemployment declined from
12,500,000 in 1932 to 7,500,000 in 1937,
the labor force increased by
2,500,000 workers-500,000 per year.26
The New Dealers' awareness
of the problem of finding jobs for the
annual increment to the labor
force-primarily young people completing
or leaving school or
college-was evident in their creation of
the Civilian Conservation
Corps for the eighteen to twenty-five
age group. In the meantime,
technological advance-the introduction
of labor-saving capital
equipment into the manufacturing
process-continued apace, as
Hickok's report indicated:
On this trip I had my first close-up
view of what plant modernization in a
big way is doing to employment and how
it is affecting the psychology of the
workers and the community generally. It
made a powerful impression-so
powerful that I'm afraid all my thinking
about Ohio may be colored by it
somewhat.
Of course I had heard, traveling about
the country in the last three years, a
good deal about plant modernization. In
Baltimore last Fall, for instance,
people told me about the new rolling
process that was about to be installed at
the Sparrows Point plant of Bethlehem
Steel. A conservative estimate then
was that it would lay off, permanently,
a thousand men.
In Pittsburgh, just before I went into
Ohio, a WPA engineer told me about
the modernization of one steel plant in
that area. Eight men in that plant, he
said, were going to replace 1,500. I
thought his figures were crazy.
In Cleveland, however, I hunted up a
young steel roller, whom I had met
last Fall through some of the labor
union people. This young man is by no
means the inarticulate, uneducated sort
one usually encounters among
workingmen. He is a university graduate
and belongs to a family that helped
to write the history of steel in Ohio.
Just now he is a steel roller because he
likes it and because he can't get
anything else to do. His father, seven uncles,
25. Ibid., 169. These figures, which historians invariably cite do
not count workers in
emergency countercyclical programs such
as WPA employed. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics used a
normal-jobs-to-be-created instead of a job-seekers definition of un-
employment. With correction of this
major conceptual error, unemployment levels for
1933-1941 are reduced by 2-3.5 million
people and the rates by 4-7 percentage points.
Michael R. Darby, "Three-and-a-half
Million U.S. Employees have been Mislaid: Or,
an Explanation of Unemployment,
1934-1941," Journal of Political Economy,
LXXXVIII (February 1976), 2-16.
26. Charles, Minister of Relief, 169,
is the source of the figure for the 1930s.
Lorena A. Hickok 275
his grandfather, and his
greatgrandfather all were steel workers.
I told the young man what the engineer
in Pittsburgh had said and asked
him if the figures were crazy. He
grinned and shook his head.
"No," he said. "My
brother is an engineer, and he's going to be in charge
of that plant."
He then went on to tell me that the
plant in which he works, were it large
enough to roll sheets of steel of the
size required for turret top automobile
bodies, could, with 350 men and its
present machinery, turn out 5,000 tons a
day. In Cleveland, he said, there is
another plant, modernized although not
particularly successfully, which can,
with 120 men, turn out 2,400 tons an
hour. In other words, with modern
equipment and about one third the number
of men, it can almost equal in two hours
a day's output from his plant!
From Cleveland I proceeded to
Youngstown, and there I got a real jolt. I
found steel production up to 1929-and
10,000 fewer men employed than in
1929. That figure is probably away off,
too, on the conservative side. It was
obtained from the local Chamber of
Commerce. In the last three years the
steel mills in the Youngstown area have
spent $10,000,000 on plant
modernization. One mill, I was told, is
starting a $2,000,000 modernization
program this Summer. What happens when a
plant has been modernized is
this: a steel ingot goes into a big
electrically operated machine. In a few
minutes, a couple of hundred yards away,
out it comes in sheet steel, all
ready to be shipped to Detroit. Half a
dozen processes and a couple of
re-heatings have been eliminated. And
the labor consists of three or four
bright young men in white shirts pressing
buttons away off up in a gallery
somewhere. Ninety percent of the males
employed by WPA in Youngstown, I
was told, are former steel workers. And
day in and day out there is a
procession into the WPA office of former
steel workers, not on relief yet, but
out of work-and out of work for good, so
far as the steel industry is
concerned. The larger percentage of this
is unskilled, "roustabout" labor, of
course. But there are plenty of skilled
workmen among them-rollers,
catchers, shearmen, heaters, and so on.
And there's no place for them in
these modernized plants. To run that
nice new machinery, the companies are
going out after recent college and high
school graduates, and, since the
number they need is so small, they are
taking only the most promising of the
lot.
You can imagine the effect of this sort
of thing on the community. In the
Mahoning Valley there are nearly half a
million people, all dependent,
directly or indirectly, on employment in
this [sic] steel mills. One can picture
them, back in 1933, staring up at those
stacks, rejoicing when the smoke
began pouring out. That used to mean
work, wages, money going into the
retail stores. Now a great pall of rich,
black and yellow smoke hangs over the
valley. But now comes the machine. And
the money goes to New York-not
into the pockets of the workmen. There
is the queerest, most depressing
"feel" of gloom around the
place.
One of the worst things about it is the
lack of understanding-or even
interest-on the part of the general
public outside the Mahoning Valley.
For instance, in Akron, only 60 miles
away, I found an old friend of mine,
who handles public relations for the
Goodyear rubber people, very much
irritated over their recent strike [in
February and March 193627]. "Do you
27. The "recent strike" in
Akron was a sit-down action by the United Rubber
276 OHIO HISTORY
know what started it?" he demanded
in an exasperated tone. "We put in a
conveyor system and let out a few hand truckmen, and
that started the whole
thing." I described to the
gentleman the situation in Youngstown and tried to
get over to him the possibility that perhaps the
Youngstown psychology might
have penetrated to Akron. "Oh, that
will all be balanced up," he said
carelessly-and changed the subject.
Hickok also was disappointed in the lack
of awareness of
conditions in the Mahoning Valley on the
part of two important
Democrats, Charles Sawyer and Senator
Bulkley. Sawyer thought the
President was "too nonchalant"
about unbalancing the budget, and
"that was about all he had to
offer." He was wholly ignorant of the
situation in the Mahoning Valley. Nor
did Hickok believe Senator
Bulkley was aware of it. Dr. Watson
"told me that he had to remind
Bulkley that he was Senator for the
whole state of Ohio-not just
Cleveland."
Two broad themes regarding the New Deal
emerge from Lorena
Hickok's reports: how difficult it was
to combat the depression-to
alleviate the hardship it inflicted on
the citizenry and to achieve
recovery; and how relatively little
Ohioans demanded or expected of
those charged with improving conditions.
The work-relief program
was intended to alleviate psychological
suffering, loss of self-respect,
and material deprivation-Roosevelt thus
preferred it to the less
expensive and more easily administered
dole-but it took almost a
year to make it comparatively sizable
and workable. Even so, as
Hickok's references to shortages of
funds indicate, the program left
many unemployed unaided. Nor was it
large enough to produce full
realization of its sponsors' secondary
aim-attainment of recovery
through enhancement of consumer
purchasing power. This limitation
reflected the New Deal's failure to
utilize Keynesian countercyclical
fiscal policies in a systematic way.
Finally, plant modernization made
it more difficult to reduce
unemployment. Hickok's reports lend
support to the view that technological
advance did not come to a halt
during the Great Depression.28
How little Americans demanded or
expected of those charged with
Workers of America against the Goodyear
Tire and Rubber Company from February 14
to March 21, 1936. See Ruth McKenney, Industrial
Valley (New York, 1939), 275-379;
Bernstein, Turbulent Years, 593-98;
P. W. Litchfield, Industrial Voyage (New York,
1954); Harold S. Roberts, The Rubber
Workers (New York, 1944); Walter Galenson,
The CIO Challenge to the AFL: A
History of the American Labor Movement, 1935-
1941 (Cambridge, 1960), 266-82; and Daniel Nelson, ed.,
"The Beginning of the Sit-
Down Era: The Reminiscences of Rex
Murray," Labor History, XV (Winter 1974),
89-97.
28. See for example Robert Sobel, The
Age of Giant Corporations: A Mi-
croeconomic History of American
Business 1914-1970 (Westport, 1972),
122-52.
Lorena A. Hickok 277
improving conditions is apparent in
Roosevelt's enjoyment of a
"can't lose" status, evident
in the election of 1936, despite the New
Deal's limited gains in the battle to
overcome the Depression. The
change in Hickok's feeling from
pessimism in October 1935 to
optimism in May 1936 regarding the
president's prospects at the polls
may seem to have resulted from his
much-written-about shift from the
First New Deal of 1933-1934, with its
emphasis on cooperation
between government, business, labor, and
agriculture, to the Second
New Deal of 1935-1938, with its
anti-business rhetoric. Perhaps this
tirade against "economic
royalists" convinced the workers that
Roosevelt would stand up to the
"big boys," but this explanation of
their overwhelming support for Roosevelt
in 1936 is not persuasive.
Whether Roosevelt launched the Second
New Deal with his State of
the Union message of January 4, 1935, in
which he stressed the
themes of reform and social justice, or
with his transmittal of a
so-called "soak the rich" tax
bill to Congress on June 19, 1935
(historians differ on this matter of
chronology), Hickok found no basis
for optimism in workers' attitudes as of
October 1935. Roosevelt's
anti-business rhetoric, moreover,
intensified considerably in the
campaign of 1936-well after Hickok's
optimistic report in May of
that year.
A more plausible explanation for the
President's "can't lose"
status is that as the nation moved into
an election year, Ohioans faced
the prospect of actually making a choice
in the voting booth. In this
situation, as Ohio workers' views on
"regular" employment, work
relief, and corporate property rights
suggest, they preferred Roosevelt
to radicalism or socialism.29 They
also preferred Roosevelt to
Republicanism, which they associated
with Hoover's inadequate
response to the Depression. Despite the
limitations of the New Deal's
accomplishments, these gains were
sufficient, given the nature of the
competition or alternatives, to produce
a landslide, based on
substantial support by the middle class
and businessmen as well as
workers and the unemployed, and an
enduring electoral coalition.30
29. On the attitudes of Akron workers
toward corporate property rights see Jones,
Life, Liberty, and Property, 289-90, 300-06, 325, 330-39, 357-63, 372-74.
30. Bernard Sternsher, "The
Emergence of the New Deal Party System: A Problem
in Historical Analysis of Voter
Behavior," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, VI
(Summer 1975), 127-49, identifies the
election of 1936, rather than the election of 1928
or 1932, as the "critical" one
in the formation of the Roosevelt Coalition.
BERNARD STERNSHER
Depression and New Deal
in Ohio: Lorena A. Hickok's
Reports to Harry Hopkins, 1934-1936
Lorena A. Hickok, newspaperwoman and
friend of Eleanor
Roosevelt, served as Harry Hopkins'
Chief Field Investigator during
his tenure as head of the Federal
Emergency Relief Administration
(FERA) between 1933 and 1935 and the
Works Progress
Administration (WPA) from 1935 to 1938.
Born in East Troy,
Wisconsin, in 1893, Hickok began her
journalistic career with the
Milwaukee Sentinel and the Minneapolis Tribune. She moved to New
York in 1926 and worked for the Mirror
before joining the Associated
Press. There she covered the political
activities of Franklin and
Eleanor Roosevelt and in 1932
accompanied them on campaign
swings across the nation. By
inauguration day she was one of Eleanor
Roosevelt's most intimate friends.
Realizing that her close
relationship with the First Lady was
affecting her detachment as a
journalist, Hickok resigned her job with
the AP to work for Harry
Hopkins in the new relief
administration. After her service with the
New Deal, Hickok returned to newspaper
work but retired in 1945
because of poor health. She then
collaborated with Mrs. Roosevelt in
writing Ladies of Courage, which
was published in 1954. Hickok also
wrote The Story of Franklin D.
Roosevelt (1957), Reluctant First
Lady (1962), and biographies of Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan
Macy,
and Walter Reuther. She died in 1968.1
Hickok recalled Hopkins' instructions
when he hired her in 1933:
What I want you to do is to go out
around the country and look this thing
over. I don't want statistics from you.
I don't want the social worker angle. I
just want your own reaction as an
ordinary citizen. Go talk with preachers
and teachers, businessmen, workers,
farmers. Go talk with the unemployed,
those who are on relief and those who
aren't, and when you talk with them,
don't ever forget that but for the grace
of God you, I, any of our friends might
Dr. Sternsher is Professor of History at
Bowling Green State University.
1. New York Times, May 3, 1968, 54; Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and
Franklin (New
York, 1971), 464-65, 483.