1937

  

The Dust Bowl:  Thousands of families are driven from their land.

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“I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.” 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

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January 20: In his Inaugural Address, FDR asks if the nation has reached “the goal of our vision.” He answers this way: 

I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager…..

 

I see millions whose daily lives in the city and on the farm continue under conditions labeled indecent….

 

I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot….

 

I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory….

 

I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. (1127-41)

 

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“Bastards laid on our doorstep.” 

A GOP congressman, Rep. Herron Pearson of Tennessee, complained that only 18 of 77 major bills passed by Congress in FDR’s first term had  originated in that body, “where all ought to have originated.” The rest, “had an illegitimate birth, conceived in sin and sharpened in iniquity somewhere downtown, and were brought up here and the bastards laid on our doorstep with the command of the Executive that we acknowledged parentage.” (1127/-42)

 

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Time-Life notes that not all Americans were suffering. But economic changes did come. More people kept their cars longer, and the number of auto repair shops and gasoline stations doubled during the Depression. 

The five-day work week was spreading, and people found they had more time for leisure. Bridge-playing and even stamp-collecting became popular. Listening to the radio filled many hours – and, as E.B. White wrote – when rural folk spoke of “The Radio,” they meant “a pervading and somewhat godlike presence which has come into their lives and homes.” 

Sundays were still slow days, with Tom Wolfe describing men, women and children leaving a church in Ohio: “People talking, laughing, streaming out from the dutiful, weekly … disinfection of their souls,” moving “into bright morning-gold of Sunday light again, and standing then in friendly and yet laughing groups upon the lawn outside.” 

“On Sunday afternoon,” Sherwood Anderson added, “the small town man gets his car out.” A drive in the country and a picnic might be planned. (1127/252, 256, 262)

 

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Spring: Production finally exceeds levels not seen since the “Great Crash,” but, “The moment Roosevelt attempted to cut back on spending and relief and to balance the budget in 1937, the economy began going sour again, wiping out most of the gains that had been made since 1933.” (1127-43) 

The Neutrality Act continues the policy of “cash and carry,” at the urging of FDR. In effect, it aids England and France, which have the hard currency and shipping to purchase supplies – including oil. One historian later says, it was the only way the United States could “remain economically in the world and politically out of it.” The U.S. continued its “passive role” through the next year – at a time when even England and France were trying appeasement. (1127/54-55)

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In production for three years, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is finally released by Walt Disney. As Time-Life notes,  financiers were reluctant to loan Disney “the nearly $2 million” needed to make the film. “Friends and enemies warned Disney that the public would never pay to sit through an 80-minute fairy tale. … The movie quickly broke all previous attendance records, grossed eight million dollars and was translated into 10 languages.” (1129/203)

 

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A close call for a seven-year-old child. 

In a review of a new book on Lorraine Hansberry, author of A Raisin in the Sun, The New York Times notes,

 

In 1937, the family moved to a white neighborhood — the story she revisits in “Raisin.” A segregationist landowners’ association challenged the sale of the house. White mobs harassed the family, on one occasion throwing a concrete mortar through the window. It narrowly missed Hansberry, who was 7 years old.

 

These years taught Hansberry the necessity of fighting on all fronts. Her father filed a lawsuit, and Hansberry recalled her “desperate and courageous mother,” home without him, “patrolling our house all night with a loaded German Luger, doggedly guarding her four children.” (See: 1959, for more on Hansberry’s life.)

 

 

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June 4: A dust storm, driven by fifty-mile-per-hour winds sends a “roller” two miles high, and a hundred miles wide, sweeping over Goodwell, Oklahoma.

 

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June 16: Marc Blitzstein, a 32-year-old composer begins his rise to fame with production of his pro-labor “opera,” The Cradle Will Rock. At this point, his wife of three years has died, and Blitzstein’s homosexuality is no secret to his friends. A choral opera on Sacco and Vanzetti he had completed had never been performed – due to Blitzstein’s left-wing political beliefs. (He later admits, when called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, that he was a communist from 1938 to 1949, although he refused to name names.) 

A review of a book on Blitzstein’s life in The New York Times, includes this explanation of what happened:

 

This pro-labor opera, which opened under the direction of Orson Welles, became a landmark of Broadway history: government security guards padlocked the theater; the cast, crew and audience staged a spectacular exodus to another theater, secured at the last minute; Blitzstein sat alone on the stage at a rented upright with Welles at a desk off to the side, setting the scenes; cast and musicians performed from the audience.

 

A limited run in late spring 1937, a performance for steelworkers over the summer and a full Mercury Theater production were all overwhelming successes, and Marc Blitzstein became a marquee name. After Bernstein led the Boston-area premiere in 1939 while still a Harvard undergraduate, playing Blitzstein’s score by heart, the two became friends for life.

 

When World War II came, he renounced his draft deferment, and at age 37, joined the Eighth Army Air Force. He composed music related to the war, for example, Airborne Symphony,” and coached the U.S. Army Negro Chorus. 

 

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Summer: Harold Ickes writes that FDR, “is punch drunk from the punishment that he has suffered recently.” (1127-44)

 

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“The epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading.”

 

October 5: Speaking in Chicago, FDR gives what is called his “Quarantine Speech.” In it, he correctly noted, “vast numbers of women and children, are being ruthlessly murdered with bombs from the air.”

 

To paraphrase a recent author “perhaps we foresee a time when men, exultant in the technique of homicide, will rage so hotly over the world that every precious thing will be in danger, every book and picture and harmony, Every treasure garnered through two millenniums, the small, the delicate, the defenseless – all will be  Laast are wrecked or utterly destroyed.

 

If those things come to pass in other parts of the world, let no one imagine that America will escape, that America may expect mercy, that this Western Hemisphere will not be attacked and that it will continue tranquilly and peacefully to carry on the ethics in the arts of civilization.

 

If those days come “there will be no safety by arms, no help from authority, no answer in science. The storm will rage till every flower of culture is trampled and all human beings are leveled in a vast chaos.”

 

If those days are not to come to pass – if we are not to have a world in which we can breathe freely and live in amity without fear – the peace-loving nations must make a concerted effort to uphold laws and principles on which alone peace can rest secure.”

 

FDR speaks of “interdependence…which makes it impossible for any nation completely to isolate itself from economic and political upheavals in the rest of the world.” He adds that the U.S. has been lucky, able to put its money to work rebuilding roads and bridges and dams – and on reforestation. Yet,  “I him am compelled and you are compelled, nevertheless, to look ahead.” 

He warns, “the epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading.”

 

War is a contagion, whether it be declared or undeclared. It can engulf States and peoples remote from the original scene of hostilities. We are determined to keep out of war, yet we cannot insure ourselves against the disastrous effects of war and the dangers of involvement. … America hates war period America hopes for peace. Therefore, America actively engages in the search peace.

 

Loose pages in my files, from a chapter of book titled, The Decline of Neutrality, 1937-1941, pp. 2168-2170).