1930’sBy: Ian Sheppard

The Depression

“I know you don’t know what it means, but there’s a depression going on all over the country. People can’t find jobs and these are very, very difficult times for everybody.” pg.2 paragraph 11

What was the Great Depression?

The Great Depression took place from around 1929 to about the start of world war II.

The Great Depression was an event were the New York stock exchange collapsed and stocks and currency lost most of their value.

This caused a ripple effect that lead many other economies to fail.

When world war II started it gave many unemployed workers jobs in industry and the military which ultimately ended the Depression.

John Dillinger

“I put my head down and started shooting out apologies out like John Dillinger shoots out bullets.”pg.17 paragraph 1

Who Was John Dillinger?

John Herbert Dillinger (June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934) was an American bank robber in the Depression-era United States. His gang robbed two dozen banks and four police stations. Dillinger escaped from jail twice. Dillinger was also charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana, police officer during a shoot-out, Dillinger's only homicide charge.

In 1933–34, seen in retrospect as the heyday of the Depression-era outlaw, Dillinger was the most notorious of all, standing out even among more violent criminals such as Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde. (Decades later, the first major book about in '30s gangsters was titled The Dillinger Days.) Media reports in his time were spiced with exaggerated accounts of Dillinger's bravado and daring and his colorful personality. The government demanded federal action, and J. Edgar Hoover developed a more sophisticated Federal Bureau of Investigation as a weapon against organized crime and used Dillinger and his gang as his campaign platform to launch the FBI.

Decoder Rings

“It was like something was telling there was a message for me on this flyer but I didn’t have the decoder ring to what it was.”pg.6 paragraph 5

What Are Decoder Rings

A secret decoder ring (or secret decoder) is a device which allows one to decode a simple substitution cipher - or to encrypt a message by working in the opposite direction.

As inexpensive toys, they have been often used as promotional items by retailers, radio and television programs from the 1930s through to the current day. Decoders, whether badges or rings, are a fun way for children to tap into a common fascination with encryption, ciphers, and secret codes, and are used to send hidden messages back and forth to one another.

The most well-known example started in 1934 with the Ovaltine company's sponsored radio program Little Orphan Annie.

Jazz & The Blues

“Next the paper said, Masters of the New Jazz, then in the middle of the flyer was a blurry picture of the man I have a real good suspicion about.”pg.7 paragraph 2

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in black communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. Its African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation, and the swung note. From its early development until the present day, jazz has also incorporated elements from American popular music.

As the music has developed and spread around the world it has drawn on many different national, regional, and local musical cultures giving rise, since its early 20th century American beginnings, to many distinctive styles: New Orleans jazz dating from the early 1910s; big band swing, Kansas City jazz, and Gypsy jazz from the 1930s and 1940s; bebop from the mid-1940s; and on down through West Coast jazz, cool jazz, avant-garde jazz, Afro-Cuban jazz, modal jazz, free jazz, Latin jazz in various forms, soul jazz, jazz fusion, and jazz rock, smooth jazz, jazz-funk, punk jazz, acid jazz, ethno jazz, jazz rap, cyber jazz, Indo jazz, M-Base, nu jazz, and other ways of playing the music.

President Herbert Hoover

“The mouth organ man said, Naw, son, what you’re looking for is Hooverville, with a v, like President Herbert Hoover.”pg.66 paragraph 8

Who Was He?

Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was the 31st President of United States. He achieved American and international prominence in humanitarian relief efforts and served as head of the U.S. Food Administration before and during World War I. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business under the rubric "economic modernization". In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover easily won the Republican nomination, despite having no elected-office experience. the United States (1929–1933). When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 struck less than eight months after he took office, Hoover tried to combat the ensuing Great Depression with government enforced efforts, public works projects such as the Hoover Dam, tariffs such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, an increase in the top tax bracket from 25% to 63% and increases in corporate taxes. These initiatives did not produce economic recovery during his term, but served as the groundwork for various policies incorporated in Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.

The Mission

“I’d have to wake up real early if I wanted to get to the mission in time for breakfast, if you were one minute late they wouldn’t let u in for food.”pg.44 paragraph 3

What Was the Mission?

The mission was a government program funded by the businesses of the affected area.

The mission was a program that helped feed those who’d been affected by the Depression.

Unlike soup kitchens today the mission served breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Organized Labor

“First I save you from being eaten by some vampires in Owosso, then you seem to have survived my daughter’s paincakes and finally that police officer saves you from the feared and loathsome labor organizers of Detroit.”pg.136 paragraph 1

Organized Labor and Unions

  The New Deal created a hospitable climate for unions. Congress passed one of the New Deal's earliest measures, the National Industrial Recovery Act, in 1933 to aid the country's economic recovery. The NIRA included a provision that guaranteed workers the right to belong to a union and to negotiate with management. It also created the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which established codes of fair competition for the country's various industries. When the Supreme Court struck down the NIRA in 1935, Congress quickly replaced it with the National Labor Relations Act, which was authored by New York Senator Robert F. Wagner.  Later known as the "Wagner Act," the law created a National Labor Relations Board to supervise union elections and guarantee workers' rights to bargain collectively.

     When the Depression began, less than three million of the forty-eight million workers belonged to labor organizations. The dominant union in the country, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), paid little attention to industrial workers and tended to cooperate with management. Long-time president of the United Mine Workers (UMW), John L. Lewis, and other leaders of industrial labor unions broke from the AFL. Three weeks later, on November 10, 1935, they formed a new  national union, the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO). It later became known as the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

     Emboldened by the Wagner Act, industrial workers did not wait to take action. In the rubber industry, workers at three companies in Akron, Ohio, staged "sit-down strikes" against management. Rather than forming a picket line, rubber workers occupied the plant until their demands were met. Owners resisted calling in the military and police to suppress the sit-down strike for fear that company property would be damaged. Despite union leader opposition to the tactic, the sit-down strikes won concessions. A larger and more combative sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, in December 1936 led to industry recognition of the United Auto Workers (UAW).

Packards

“I’d guess your daddy would have to burn premium in that big Packard, wouldn’t he?”pg.140 paragraph 5

Packards 1

Packard was an American luxury automobile marque built by the Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan, and later by the Studebaker-Packard Corporation of South Bend, Indiana. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last in 1958.

Packard was founded by James Ward Packard, his brother William Doud Packard and their partner, George Lewis Weiss, in the city of Warren, Ohio. Being a mechanical engineer, James Ward Packard believed they could build a better horseless carriage than the Winton cars owned by Weiss, an important Winton stockholder.

In September, 1900, the Ohio Automobile Company was founded to produce "Packard" autos. Since these automobiles quickly gained an excellent reputation, the name was changed on October 13, 1902 to the Packard Motor Car Company.

Entering into the 1930s, Packard attempted to beat the stock market crash and subsequent Great Depression by manufacturing ever more opulent and expensive cars than it had prior to October 1929. The Packard Twin Six, designed by Vincent, was introduced for 1932 and renamed the Packard Twelve for the remainder of its run (through 1939). For one year only, 1932, Packard tried fielding an upper-medium-priced car called the Light Eight.

As an independent automaker, Packard did not have the luxury of a larger corporate structure absorbing its losses, as Cadillac did with GM and Lincoln with Ford. However, Packard did have a better cash position than other independent luxury marques. Peerless fell under receivership in 1929 and ceased production in 1932.

Packards 2

Packard also had one other advantage that some other luxury automakers did not: a single production line. By maintaining a single line and interchangeability between models, Packard was able to keep its costs down. Packard did not change cars as often as other manufacturers did at the time. Rather than introducing new models annually, Packard began using its own "Series" formula for differentiating its model changeovers in 1923. New model series did not debut on a strictly annual basis, with some series lasting nearly two years, and others lasting as short a time as seven months. In the long run, though, Packard did average approximately one new series per year.

To address the Depression, Packard started producing more affordable cars in the medium-price range. In 1935, it introduced its first sub-$1,000 car, the Packard 120. Car production more than tripled that year and doubled again in 1936. In order to produce the 120, Packard built and equipped an entirely separate factory. By 1936, Packard's labor force was divided nearly evenly between the high-priced "Senior" lines (Twelve, Super Eight, and Eight) and the medium-priced "Junior" models, although more than ten times more Juniors were produced than Seniors. This was because the 120 models were built using thoroughly modern mass production techniques, while the Senior Packards used a great deal more hand labor and traditional craftsmanship. The Junior models were very fine cars; they were just not in the same quality league as the Seniors. Although Packard most certainly could not have survived the Depression without the highly successful Junior models, the Juniors did have the effect of diminishing the Senior models' stellar and exclusive image among those few who could still afford an expensive luxury car. Adding insult to injury, the 120 models were more modern in basic design than the Senior models. For example, the 1935 Packard 120 featured independent front suspension and hydraulic brakes, both features that would not appear on the Senior Packards until 1937.

Machine Gun Kelly

“It seemed like it would be real easy for Machine Gun Kelly to point at some poor slob and say, That’s the guy who ratted me out, lefty. Finish him off.”pg.133 paragraph 3

If You Don’t Know Who He Is

George Celino Barnes (July 18, 1895 – July 18, 1954), better known as "Machine Gun Kelly", was an American gangster during the Prohibition era. His nickname came from his favorite weapon, a Thompson submachine gun. His most famous crime was the kidnapping of oil tycoon and businessman Charles F. Urschel in July 1933 for which he, and his gang, collected a $200,000 ransom. Their victim had collected and left considerable evidence that assisted the subsequent FBI investigation that eventually led to Kelly's arrest in Memphis, Tennessee on September 26, 1933. His crimes also included bootlegging and armed robbery.

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

“Son, there just aren’t too many places a young Negro boy should be traveling by himself, especially not clear across Michigan, there’re folks in this state that make your average Ku Kluxer look like John Brown.”pg.143 paragraph 1

The KKK

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism. Since the mid-20th century, the KKK has also been anti-communist. The current manifestation is splintered into several chapters with no connections between each other; it is classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. It is estimated to have between 5,000 and 8,000 members as of 2012.

The first Klan flourished in the Southern United States in the late 1860s, then died out by the early 1870s. Members adopted white costumes: robes, masks, and conical hats, designed to be outlandish and terrifying, and to hide their identities. The second KKK flourished nationwide in the early and mid-1920s, and adopted the same costumes and code words as the first Klan, while introducing cross burnings. The third KKK emerged after World War II and was associated with opposing the Civil Rights Movement and progress among minorities. The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent reference to the USA's "Anglo-Saxon" blood, harking back to 19th-century nativism and claiming descent from the original 18th-century British colonial revolutionaries.