Ohio History Journal

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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

• 7
 

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.

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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."

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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.

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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).

• 11
 

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).

• 12
 

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.

• 13
 

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.

• 14
 

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.

• 15
 

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.

• 16
 

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.

• 17
 

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

• 18
 

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.

• 19
 

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.

• 20