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A Snapshot of the Year 1930
By Arlene
Jennings, CG
Seventy-two
years ago census takers interviewed our relatives to gather information we
will finally see in April. It was the 15th decennial census since
enumerators first knocked on our ancestors’ doors in 1790. As genealogists
we may be anxious for the results of those interviews to fill in some bare
branches on the family tree. But what if we approach the pages of the
census conscious not only of the names, dates, and places, but also with a
sense of what it was like to be living in America at that time?
Census day was April 1. NARA
Volunteer, Charlotte Davis, was a high school student in Lee,
Massachusetts. She remembers the census taker coming to the house around
suppertime and saying, “It’s a long one, I’ll have to sit down.” And
Charlotte and her parents sat with the woman and answered the questions, and
indeed it did take quite a long time.
Herbert Hoover, a Republican, was
President. He had taken office in 1929. His Vice President was Charles
Curtis, a U. S. Senator from Kansas, of Native American ancestry. The two
had been rivals for the Presidency, never resolved their differences and
seldom communicated during their term of office. In the 71st Congress the
Republicans controlled the House by 267 to 163 Democrats and the Senate by
56 Republicans to 39 Democrats. (The 96th Senator was from the Farmer-Labor
party.) There were, of course, only 48 states. Alaska and Hawaii had not
yet entered the union.
Herbert Hoover
(1874-1964) 21
The stock market crash had occurred
just a few months earlier, on October 29 of 1929, and the Great Depression
had begun. President Hoover optimistically stated, "all the evidences
indicate that the worst effects of the crash upon unemployment will have
passed during the next sixty days."1
By March of 1930, at least 3.25 million people were out of work. Many of
those who were fortunate enough to have jobs had seen their wages or hours
of work cut back. Georgia Birkett, retired NARA volunteer, and a high
school student in 1930, recalls that eventually her father’s salary at GE
was reduced, and that he was transferred from Pittsfield to Lynn,
Massachusetts. Women, in particular, lost their jobs, especially if they
were married. Charlotte Davis remembers how difficult it was for women
whose jobs were given to men because the men were heads of families. But
Mary DeGiorgis, Georgia’s sister and also a retired NARA volunteer, was one
of the fortunate women who worked throughout the depression. In 1930 she
was at the library in Pittsfield in charge of binding and mending books.
By the end of 1930 there were
5,000,000 people out of work. Over 1,300 American banks had failed during
the year. The streets of New York City were teeming with the unemployed,
nearly 6,000 of them selling apples at five cents apiece. “Between 1929 and
1932 the income of the average American family fell by 40%, from $2,300 to
$1,500. . . . The decade began with shanty towns called Hoovervilles, named
after a president who felt that relief should be left to the private sector,
and ended with an alphabet soup of federal programs funded by the national
government and an assortment of commissions set up to regulate Wall Street,
the banking industry, and other business enterprises”2
under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Some statistics. The 1930 census
counted the American population at 122,775,046.3
Over the decade of the '30s the average life expectancy for males was 58.1
years, for females 61.6 years. Unemployment rose to 25 percent.4
The average annual salary fell to $1,368, a winter coat cost $28,5
a quart of milk 14¢, a pound of round steak 42¢, and a loaf of bread 9¢.6
It took the average household 91 days to earn enough to buy a year’s worth
of food, and that represented 25 percent of the household income.7
New York was the largest city in the country at 6,930,446, and Boston came
in ninth in population at 781,188.8
For comparison, at the time of the 2000 census, New York was still the
largest city at 8,008,278, but Boston had dropped to twentieth place with a
population of 589,141. The United States total population in the 2000 census
was 281,421,906.9
Political and economic distress was
global. European countries were still experiencing the fallout from World
War I. It was only in 1930 that the last Allied troops left the Rhineland.
France began construction of the Maginot line, its ill-fated defense against
German aggression. In September Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party won 107 seats in
the Reichstag, moving “overnight . . . from the smallest to the second
largest party in Germany.”10
Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy negotiated and signed a
naval disarmament treaty. In China the Nationalists were attempting to
overcome the communist forces of Mao Zedong. In Russia Stalin was
undertaking the forced collectivization of agriculture. In the United
States, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which raised U.S.
customs duties by an average of 20 percent, and that act would eventually
lead to retaliation and a deepening of the depression.11
Times were hard, and entertainment
provided a critical escape, especially low cost entertainment. Community
clubs, parlor games and board games grew in popularity. People read more.
Library circulation figures and the popularity of magazines reflect this
attraction to low cost entertainment in a time of “enforced leisure”.12
Mary DeGiorgis recalls the Pittsfield library as “a very busy place.”
Mystery novels especially were big. On the lighter side, the syndicated
comic strips, “Blondie” and “Mickey Mouse”, first appeared in 1930. Mickey
had started his career just two years earlier in “Steamboat Willie”.
Your relatives might have been
reading Ernest Hemingway, whose Farewell to
Arms was published in 1929. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “First Blood”, the
first of the Josephine Perry series, appeared in
The Saturday Evening Post in April.
John Steinbeck’s first novel, A Cup of Gold,
was also published in 1930. Edna Ferber’s
Cimarron was a best seller. Sinclair Lewis received the Nobel Prize
for literature, becoming the first American author so honored. In
children’s literature, Rachel Field won the Newberry award for
Hitty, Her First Hundred Years.
In bookstores today we are accustomed
to seeing large self-help and popular psychology sections, but interest in
the subject was just forming in 1930 when
Ladies' Home Journal asked Dr. Karl A. Menninger, “one of America's
most distinguished psychiatrists . . . to write a monthly column that would
address mental health issues and answer questions from readers. The result
was the widely popular column ‘Mental Hygiene in the Home’.”13
Radio was at a peak of popularity.
By 1930 there were radios in 12,000,000 homes, and the family could tune in
to the NBC or CBS networks.14
Among favorite shows were Amos ‘n’ Andy,
which had first aired in 1928, and The
Shadow, which was first broadcast on July 31, 1930. Among the radio
personalities of the time, was Will Rogers,22 born on a ranch in the Cherokee
nation and part Cherokee himself. He starred on Broadway, in movies, on
radio and wrote syndicated newspaper columns. Of his forbears, he
said, “My ancestors didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the
boat.”15
Walter Winchell (“The way to become famous fast, is to throw a brick at
someone who is famous") entertained with gossip.16
Radio in the home also offered the
opportunity to hear sports events. In baseball the Philadelphia Athletics
defeated the St. Louis Cardinals four games to two to win the World Series.
Lou Gehrig, first baseman for the New York Yankees, led the American League
in runs batted in. In college football Southern California took the Rose
Bowl over Pittsburgh, 47 to 14. And in hockey the Montreal Canadiens won
the Stanley Cup.
Beyond popular entertainment radio
provided information and access to culture. Your relatives might have
listened to Russell D. Owen of the New York
Times who won the Pulitzer
Prize for reporting on the Byrd expedition in Antarctica. In March there
was the broadcast of the funeral of William Howard Taft, the only man to
serve as both President of the United States and then as Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court. Both NBC and CBS began regular broadcasts of live
classical music during the year.
On a night out there were movies.
The decade of the 30’s was a “Golden Age” for Hollywood. NARA Volunteer,
Don Kirkpatrick, remembers seeing Slim Summerville in
All’s Quiet on the Western Front,
which won the Academy Award for Best
Picture in 1930. There was also Blue
Angel with Marlene Dietrich and Anna
Christie with Greta Garbo.
Or perhaps your relatives saw Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Edward G. Robinson
in the gangster
film, Little Caesar.
All Quiet on the
Western Front 23
There were gangsters in film and in
real life. This was the age of prohibition and speakeasies. Georgia
Birkett recalls Legs Diamond was active in Albany. She lived in Pittsfield
and she also remembers the good clean entertainment young people enjoyed at
the Blue Anchor Club at Pontoosuc Lake where they danced in the pavilion
under a crystal ball to the music of Glen Miller and other marvelous bands
that came to town. She and her partner once danced three times in a row to
“Tiger Rag”. After the dance the young people would swim in the lake.
Perhaps your relatives danced to the music of bands led by Louis Armstrong,
Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson as they toured the country. Among the
popular songs of the year they would have heard were “Walking My Baby Back
Home,” “Georgia on My Mind,” and George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm.”
In the arts, Grant Wood painted
American Gothic. Other widely
appreciated artists working in America at the time were John Steuart Curry,
Thomas Hart Benton, Edward Hopper and Georgia O’Keefe. In drama Marc
Conelly won the Pulitzer Prize for
The Green Pastures. In poetry the prize went to Conrad Aiken for
Selected Poems.
Grant Woods' American Gothic24
Our volunteers, Georgia, Charlotte,
Don and his wife, Tessie, were in high school. Another volunteer, Meta
Stark was in elementary school, but at home there were three baby boys to
help her stepmother care for, so she didn’t spend much time around school
after classes except for running on the track team. Tessie’s first
recollection was, “We didn’t have backpacks then. We carried our books
under our arms.” Don says the boys would sometimes strap them together to
carry them to school.
1930 Model A Ford25
For transportation to school Don
drove an old Ford Model-T he had picked up for $15, and he and his friends
kept it going “with baling wire and a pair of pliers”. They couldn’t afford
anti-freeze so in the winter they drained it at night and poured boiling
water into it in the morning. It took several of them to get it going with
one cranking it and one choking it. Charlotte walked and in the winter she
skied to school because it took time to get plowed out. Those were winters
of deep snows, she recalls. Students who lived two miles or more from
school received five or six dollars to pay for a ride but most walked anyway
because in those hard times more often than not the money bought Christmas
presents and bathing suits.
Don recalls the cars his dad and
neighbors drove - the Hudson, Essex, Pierce Arrow, Peerless, Marmon and one
we all still know, the Chevrolet. Georgia and Mary’s dad had an Essex.
Charlotte remembers that not every family had a car, and certainly only one
if they did.
For those who could afford the luxury
of air travel, Pan Am started service to the Caribbean and South America
with new destinations at St. Lucia, Caracas, Maracaibo and Rio de Janeiro.
In this year also, in a series of historic firsts for commercial aviation,
Pan Am became the first American airline to offer international air express
service. On April 20, 1930,Charles Lindberg, who pioneered Pan Am’s routes,
and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindberg, set a transcontinental speed record
flying from Los Angeles to New York in 14 hours, 45 minutes. (Anne was 7
months pregnant at the time.)
At home your family very likely had a
copy of the Sears Roebuck catalog. 44% of the population lived in rural
areas, and they in particular
might have ordered their clothing and a host of other items from Sears or
Montgomery Ward. Sears was selling not only items for the home but even
houses from the catalog.
One
of the 16 models offered in Sears 1930
Modern Homes Catalog,
The Jewell,
“Five rooms and a
bath,
Monthly payments
as low as $30 to $45,
Build complete on
your lot”26
With fewer women working outside the
home and the need to economize, conveniences were introduced along with
greater standardization in cooking methods. “The revolution began in 1930
with the publication of The Better Homes
and Gardens Cookbook.” Jiffy introduced biscuit mix, Wonder Bread
marketed the first sliced bread, Birdseye offered frozen food, and electric
stoves appeared on the market.17
And the Hostess Twinkie was created. Jimmy Dewar, bakery manager of the
Hostess bakery in Chicago, said, "Twinkies was the best darn-tootin idea I
ever had." The original sold two for a nickel and had a banana-creme
filling, replaced with vanilla creme when World War II created a banana
shortage.18
Practicality in clothing became
important. “Clothes had to last a long time so styles did not change every
season. The simple print dress with a waistline and longer hem length
replaced the flapper attire of the 1920's. The use of the zipper became
wide spread for the first time because it was less expensive than the
buttons and closures previously used. Another innovation of the 30's was
different hem lengths for different times of the day - mid calf for day
wear, long for the evening. Men's pants were wide and high-waisted. Vest
sweaters were an alternative to the traditional matching vest of the
three-piece suit. Hats were mandatory for the well dressed male.”20
1930's Day Dress27
There were significant developments
in 1930 in technology, engineering, architecture and science. A number of
new plastics were introduced which led to a new look in office machines.21
A 3M engineer invented the first transparent tape, marketed as “Scotch
Cellulose Tape.” The photo flashbulb first came into use. The process
leading up to the construction of Hoover Dam had begun, and in 1930
contracts for the sale of electrical energy to cover the dam and power plant
financing were completed. The first public television broadcast took place
in the United States, though it was some years from becoming an available,
affordable commercial medium. As for the technology of the census, punch
cards had been invented as a means of tabulating the 1890 census, and they
were still in use at the time the 1930 results were processed.
The Chrysler
Building, New York City28
The Chrysler
building in New York City was completed and became the tallest building in the world,
but it would be surpassed by the 102-story Empire State Building to be
completed the following year. In science an American physicist developed
the cyclotron and astronomers at the Lowell Observatory discovered the
planet Pluto.
But for so many
Americans living in 1930 what comes to mind first about the year is that we
had entered the Great Depression, and life was very challenging. For
researchers studying the 1930 census, having in mind these conditions of
the time will enrich the experience of using the census and contribute to
the retelling of family history.
_________________
Endnotes
1.
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downloaded 6 Jan 2002.
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