Andrew Ground

November 29th, 2019

AMST 395, Prof. Fingal

Tu/Th 11:30

The 1930’s in California

On February 12th, 1935 the Macon was hit by a storm off the coast of Point Sur. When

it’s tailfin was sheared off the airship slowly fell, crashing nose first into the Pacific

Ocean(Eckstein, “Exploring the Wreck of USS Macon, The Navy’s Last Flying Aircraft Carrier”,

article on https://news.usni.org/, accessed November 9th, 2019). Many onlooking Californians

could relate their lives to the scene, feeling a kinship with the helium powered vessel for a brief

moment with a shared sense of dimming prospects in life. The world in it’s cruelty had decided it

was not one where the airship could survive. In a similar way, the state of the world decided the

economic attitudes of the 19th century couldn't survive either. The only difference was that the

true storm for the world had yet to come. The almost ten-year span of the Great Depression

would have with them numerous moments of watershed, decisive points from where, much like

for the Macon, there would be no return not only for Californians, but for Americans as a whole.

By itself the decade of the Great Depression saw a great influx to the population of

California, satisfying the dreams of boosters who for decades, painfully marketed California to

the rest of the United States and the World with promises of sunshine and beaches with

Fransiscan padres growing orange groves in their mission gardens.

One of these great migrations would be the men, women, and children of Kansas,

Ohklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas remembered in works such as Steinbeck's The
Grapes of Wrath and the music of Woody Guthrie. Collectively termed Okies, they would

become almost synonymous with the decade itself in California as more than 200,000 of these

Middle Americans had been ushered westward by a harmonic convergence of circumstances. Not

only by the Great Depression, but also by the choking blizzards of black dirt known as the Dust

Bowl, “Crops began to fail with the onset of drought in 1931, exposing the bare, over-plowed

farmland. Without deep-rooted prairie grasses to hold the soil in place, it began to blow away.

Eroding soil led to massive dust storms and economic devastation...”(history.com Editors, “Dust

Bowl”, article on https://www.history.com/, accessed on November 11th, 2019).

The apply named “Dirty Thirties” saw the Okies in poor and destitute conditions as the

migrants were driven into the arms of a state more than welcoming of cheap labor that could

work in the agricultural industry of the San Joaquin valley. Some of the most common depictions

of the Great Depression are typically that of unemployment signs, tent cities, and soup kitchen

lines. In a time where 12% of the country’s population was unemployed the narrative is typically

conveyed through somber, black and white photographs by those like Dorothea Lange(Fingal,

Lecture, 10/22/19), where people were seemingly convinced that they were victims of their own

poor decisions. An example of this grim-faced stoicism could be easily found in the abandoned

stockpiles of pipes that converted into Pipe City where it’s 200 inhabitants were still determined

to make the best of things:

Though the human honeycomb down by the water’s edge was Oakland’s last
refuge of the destitute, Pipe City defied expectation — it was organized,
self-reliant, spunky. A burly, out-of-work construction crew chief, “Dutch”
Jensen, served as mayor; Frank Sewell was appointed police chief. Jensen, who
negotiated the men’s squatters’ rights with the concrete company, ran Pipe City on
three simples rules: no drinking, no slovenliness, no “talking politics.” He
organized the community into subsections and sent them out each day to scavenge
for food, dropping the day’s harvest into the communal stew at night. Any spare
food was kept in a common — and well-guarded — storeroom. Pipe City dwellers
 didn’t beg and accepted no government assistance. As news of Pipe City spread,
however, more fortunate Oaklanders pitched in to help, bringing food, blankets,
mattresses, clothing and shoes. On Christmas Day, every man ate a turkey dinner
with cranberry sauce.(Davis,”A Haven in Hard Times” article
http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/, accessed on November 11th, 2019)

Despite this ban against politics these settlements would be termed “Hoovervilles” by those who

associated the poor state of living with the namesake president.

In the unavoidable necessity of political involvement we see events that disagree with the

typical depiction of events such as the San Francisco General Strike. In 1934, the Austalian-born

Harry R. Bridges led the ILA(International Longshoremen's Association) on a strike beginning

in May and on July 5th:

...a thousand police officers attempted to clear pickets from the waterfront so that

strikebreakers could do the work of the striking dockworkers. In the ensuing riot,

sixty-four people were injured and two strikers were killed. The governor sent in

the National Guard to prevent further violence...”(Graves, article on

http://www.csun.edu/~sg4002/courses/417/readings/, accessed on May 8th, 2019).

They would call for a general strike and be joined by most of the other unions within San

Francisco and Alameda. The labor movement would eventually settle as federal arbitrators

granted the ILA most of its demands of improved working conditions, wages, and increased

bargaining rights.

The New Deal would do it’s best to settle unrest that risked spilling out into other areas of

society. Providing construction jobs, engineering projects, and sponsoring artists that manifested

itself in the form of roadwork, electric sub-stations, schools, and art galleries. Areas such as
Alcatraz, Alameda, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, and many other areas receiving these

improvements.

Despite the attempts of the New Deal to put a bandaid on the bleeding wound of the

economy, it would not be enough. It was only entering the second world war that the effects of

the Great Depression would be removed from America or at least transformed into a state the

general populace could better tolerate. In California, this wartime infrastructure alongside the

army bases war contracts would see the state become crucial not only in the ensuing World War,

but for the conflicts of the Cold War that would span into the later half of the century.

The relevance of the Okies in California is a watershed moment as it gradually flows

down the channels and floods the basin. Their experience was that a group displaced by man

made mistakes combined with several contributing environmental factors. As the world enters

another period of vast displacement of people the lessons learned in the past will only become

more relevant, not less so.