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.The failure of this important industry threw shock waves into theother local canneries.Taking advantage of a glutted labor market, can-nery operators reduced the wages of those they did employ and favoredminority workers, who were less inclined to complain about the dimin-ished income.This jolt to an important local industry was doubled inthe winter of 1932 when a killing freeze virtually destroyed the citrus andmany of the vegetable crops of the valley.3The ripple effect reached into the rail yards.Demand for railroad carslagged, as did the ability to fund repair work on engines and cars.South-ern Pacific found its business reduced by 22 percent during the 1930s,with a $34 million loss.More than 2,200 Southern Pacific employees werereduced to three-day weeks.4 Layoffs and work reductions hit WesternPacific, too.Unemployment soared to 10 percent in Sacramento Countyin 1930.By 1932, 27,000 were without work.5The national scourge of bank failure hit in January 1933 when the Cali-fornia National Bank and the California Trust and Savings Bank closedtheir doors.The California National Bank had more than 9,000 com-mercial accounts, including some Catholic parishes, and the Trust andt h e d e p r e s s i o n a n d w o r l d wa r i i 161 Savings some 36,000.6 In order to prevent additional closures, airplanesand armored vehicles, carrying $13 million in cash, were quickly dis-patched from San Francisco.7Declining wages, layoffs, and straitened budgets created expecteddownturns in Sacramento consumption.Annual family income, peggedat $1,805 in 1929, fell to $1,344 by 1933.Railroad shop payrolls, one of themajor employers of the city, fell from $5.4 million in 1929 to $1.7 millionby 1933.8 In 1932 only 2,579 cars were sold in Sacramento County, rep-resenting a 43 percent decline from the previous year.9 Building permitvaluations fell from $5 million in 1928 to $3.6 million in 1931.the human face of the depressionStatistics tell only part of the story of Sacramento s struggle with the Depres-sion.The specter of homelessness and hunger grew substantially in the city,causing its nineteenth-century systems of social provision to falter.Hungry and homeless transients, who had for years alighted in Sac-ramento, now flooded into the state capital.10 The scores of trains thatentered and left the city daily brought men desperate to find work orwho had been driven out of other communities.According to a reportprepared for the State Emergency Relief Administration (sera), Sac-ramento had particular appeal due to the presence of large commercialemployment agencies and the needs of surrounding farms, ranches, lum-ber mills, and construction projects.Sacramento, the report declared, was one of the main centers for homeless men and migratory workers in theUnited States. 11Sacramento had a love-hate relationship with this migratory work-force.On the one hand, they provided needed labor for service jobs andother tasks.On the other hand, respectable Sacramentans suspected someof them of bringing crime and vice to the city.Sacramentans rememberedwith disgust the industrial armies of unemployed men that periodicallyswarmed through the Central Valley during the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries.Some of these transients had even been influ-enced by radicals of the International Workers of the World and broughtstrange and alien ideologies into the sacred precincts of capitalist Sacra-mento.These marchers had brazenly camped out in the city and virtu-ally demanded food, shelter, and work.Sometimes they were bribed to162 s a c r a m e n t o a n d t h e c a t h o l i c c h u r c h keep moving on, but in March 1914 violence erupted between an Unem-ployed Army of 1,400 men and city police and national guardsmen.12C.K.McClatchy frequently denounced them as bummers and even inthe depths of the Great Depression scorned the pest and plague of pro-fessionally unemployed blatherskites, windbags, and sons of rest menupon whose sensitive nerves a sawbuck has the same chilling effect asnake has upon the average woman. 13 Even though a 1901 revision of thestate constitution insisted on a residency requirement for county reliefand imposed penalties for dumping indigents on other counties, stillthe drifters came to Sacramento often in search of labor.Although cityleaders were suspicious, transients found sympathetic private or publiccharities to tide them over.The Great Depression sent thousands fleeing from other parts of thenation to California and increased the number of unemployed residentsand transients in the state capital [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.The failure of this important industry threw shock waves into theother local canneries.Taking advantage of a glutted labor market, can-nery operators reduced the wages of those they did employ and favoredminority workers, who were less inclined to complain about the dimin-ished income.This jolt to an important local industry was doubled inthe winter of 1932 when a killing freeze virtually destroyed the citrus andmany of the vegetable crops of the valley.3The ripple effect reached into the rail yards.Demand for railroad carslagged, as did the ability to fund repair work on engines and cars.South-ern Pacific found its business reduced by 22 percent during the 1930s,with a $34 million loss.More than 2,200 Southern Pacific employees werereduced to three-day weeks.4 Layoffs and work reductions hit WesternPacific, too.Unemployment soared to 10 percent in Sacramento Countyin 1930.By 1932, 27,000 were without work.5The national scourge of bank failure hit in January 1933 when the Cali-fornia National Bank and the California Trust and Savings Bank closedtheir doors.The California National Bank had more than 9,000 com-mercial accounts, including some Catholic parishes, and the Trust andt h e d e p r e s s i o n a n d w o r l d wa r i i 161 Savings some 36,000.6 In order to prevent additional closures, airplanesand armored vehicles, carrying $13 million in cash, were quickly dis-patched from San Francisco.7Declining wages, layoffs, and straitened budgets created expecteddownturns in Sacramento consumption.Annual family income, peggedat $1,805 in 1929, fell to $1,344 by 1933.Railroad shop payrolls, one of themajor employers of the city, fell from $5.4 million in 1929 to $1.7 millionby 1933.8 In 1932 only 2,579 cars were sold in Sacramento County, rep-resenting a 43 percent decline from the previous year.9 Building permitvaluations fell from $5 million in 1928 to $3.6 million in 1931.the human face of the depressionStatistics tell only part of the story of Sacramento s struggle with the Depres-sion.The specter of homelessness and hunger grew substantially in the city,causing its nineteenth-century systems of social provision to falter.Hungry and homeless transients, who had for years alighted in Sac-ramento, now flooded into the state capital.10 The scores of trains thatentered and left the city daily brought men desperate to find work orwho had been driven out of other communities.According to a reportprepared for the State Emergency Relief Administration (sera), Sac-ramento had particular appeal due to the presence of large commercialemployment agencies and the needs of surrounding farms, ranches, lum-ber mills, and construction projects.Sacramento, the report declared, was one of the main centers for homeless men and migratory workers in theUnited States. 11Sacramento had a love-hate relationship with this migratory work-force.On the one hand, they provided needed labor for service jobs andother tasks.On the other hand, respectable Sacramentans suspected someof them of bringing crime and vice to the city.Sacramentans rememberedwith disgust the industrial armies of unemployed men that periodicallyswarmed through the Central Valley during the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries.Some of these transients had even been influ-enced by radicals of the International Workers of the World and broughtstrange and alien ideologies into the sacred precincts of capitalist Sacra-mento.These marchers had brazenly camped out in the city and virtu-ally demanded food, shelter, and work.Sometimes they were bribed to162 s a c r a m e n t o a n d t h e c a t h o l i c c h u r c h keep moving on, but in March 1914 violence erupted between an Unem-ployed Army of 1,400 men and city police and national guardsmen.12C.K.McClatchy frequently denounced them as bummers and even inthe depths of the Great Depression scorned the pest and plague of pro-fessionally unemployed blatherskites, windbags, and sons of rest menupon whose sensitive nerves a sawbuck has the same chilling effect asnake has upon the average woman. 13 Even though a 1901 revision of thestate constitution insisted on a residency requirement for county reliefand imposed penalties for dumping indigents on other counties, stillthe drifters came to Sacramento often in search of labor.Although cityleaders were suspicious, transients found sympathetic private or publiccharities to tide them over.The Great Depression sent thousands fleeing from other parts of thenation to California and increased the number of unemployed residentsand transients in the state capital [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]