Depression life, learned firsthand
Finding a job in 1934 was nearly impossible for the 17 million people who were unemployed at the height of the Great Depression.
The national unemployment rate was 21.7 percent – far higher than the 6.5 percent reported in October 2008.
Many of those people sought help in shelters in cities around the country.
Tacoma Times reporter Bill Ripple spent 13 hours in a downtown shelter at 1901 Jefferson Ave., learning to live like the transients and homeless men. The shelter was one of several in Tacoma that housed those who had nowhere else to go.
Ripple donned shabby clothing to get into the shelter under a fake name, according to a story that appeared Monday, Nov. 26, 1934.
He found more than 400 people seeking shelter. They ate unidentifiable food, were given one towel per 75 residents and slept on tables and floors.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected two years earlier and was promoting his New Deal plan to stabilize the financial markets and stimulate the economy.
Leaders in Washington, D.C., were debating a national unemployment insurance system. Opponents feared that those who didn’t have jobs would receive only temporary help and that getting them work was a better goal.
The amount of products coming out of U.S. factories had declined and companies couldn’t get loans they needed to expand their business. The Dow Jones industrial average closed that Monday at 102.16. (The Dow hit bottom in July 1932, closing at 40.56. Its peak had been 378.23 in September 1929.)
Ripple found men in the Tacoma shelter who’d been out of work for years. Some wandered from state to state, trying to find something to do.
He made friends with a bald, middle-aged likeable fellow. The man had farmed successfully in southwest Washington. Three years earlier he’d lost everything, then gone on the road. He’d just come up from California.
The shelter was the only place these men could get regular meals. Ripple joined them for just one. When he entered the facility, he was given two meal tickets, one for breakfast and one for dinner. The men ate in shifts.
Out in grocery stores in downtown Tacoma, shoppers could find 10 cans of Van Camps beans for $1 or five cans of Heinz mincemeat for $1.
The average Thanksgiving dinner for six people cost $4.70, up $1.30 from the previous year because Midwest growers produced 15 percent fewer crops than in 1933. A 10-pound bird cost $3.30, up $1 from the previous year. A can of pumpkin doubled in price to 17 cents.
In the food line at the shelter, the men received potatoes, sauerkraut, a mysterious-looking stew and a small piece of butter. The mystery stew turned out to be rabbit, though it came with bones, not meat.
Bread was stacked on the table, still in the original loaf shape. There was a rough-looking hole in the side of the loaf. Ripple asked a companion why it was there.
The reply: “Oh, That’s where the rats have been into it.”
The plates were cleaned despite complaints about the menu.
The men weren’t happy to be living in such conditions. Several hundred gathered after dinner to talk about how to improve their accommodations. One man dramatically held up the remains of a mouse, declaring that it had been found in the mush that morning.
They made a list of demands that included:
No forced labor, three wholesome meals a day, adequate clothing and medical attention, thorough cleaning and fumigation of the shelters, health inspections of all cooks and kitchen employees, razor blades and tobacco given when needed, and good ventilation.
W.T. Barnett Jr., supervisor of the shelters, showed up to talk with the men. He told them he’d consider their demands but that the state of Washington was in charge of the funding and the supplies.
When it came time to go to bed, Ripple found there were far more men than accommodations.
He wandered the main floor looking for a place to stay, only to find the tables and the good spots on the floor already taken, with many residents using newspapers for blankets.
Guests who made it to the upper floors where the beds were, were allowed to bathe and were given white nightgowns.
Ripple finally found six straight-backed chairs and made a bed by lining three on a side facing each other.
“Without blankets or mattress, it wasn’t exactly a comfortable night, but I got in a few hours of sleep,” he wrote.
His final words:
“About 6 a.m., I crept out to resume my normal life. The experience left me with a peculiar feeling. What a difference a few clothes, a home and a little money make! It might have been you or I down among those hollow-cheeked, dejected homeless men.”
Marcelene Edwards: 253-597-8638
