Great Depression and World War II
In the three years after the stock market crashed in 1929, 50 Philadelphia banks closed. Of those only two were large, Albert M. Greenfield's Bankers Trust Company and the Franklin Trust Company. Savings and loan associations also faced trouble, with mortgages of 19,000 properties being foreclosed in 1932 alone. By 1934, 1,600 of 3,400 savings and loan associations had shut down. Hospitals reported cases of starvation as early as 1931 and unemployment peaked in 1933, when 11.5 percent of whites, 16.2 percent of African Americans, and 19.1 percent of foreign-born whites were out of work. Mayor J. Hampton Moore blamed people's economic woes, not on the Great Depression, but on laziness and wastefulness, and claimed there was no starvation in the city. Soon after, he fired 3,500 city workers, instituted pay cuts, forced unpaid vacation, and reduced the number of contracts the city awarded. This saved Philadelphia millions of dollars, and the efforts kept the city from defaulting on its debts, but were unpopular among the unemployed. The city relied on state money to fund relief efforts. Moore's successor S. Davis Wilson instituted numerous programs financed by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal's Works Progress Administration, despite condemning the program during his mayoral campaign. At the peak of WPA-financed jobs in 1936, 40,000 Philadelphians were employed under the program.
With encouragement from the state government and labor's founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), Philadelphia became a union city. Many trade unions discriminated against African Americans for years, and they were closed out of some labor advances. Workers' dissatisfaction with conditions led to numerous strikes in the textile unions, and the CIO organized labor in other industries, with more strikes taking place. During the 1930s, the Democratic Party began to grow in Philadelphia, influenced by the leadership of the Roosevelt administration during the Depression. A newly organized Independent Democratic Committee reached out to residents. In 1936, the Democratic National Convention was held in Philadelphia. The majority of voters in the city reelected the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt as president; they also voted for Democratic Congressmen and state representatives. City government continued to be dominated by Republicans, but the politicians were elected by small margins.
The beginning of World War II in Europe and the threat of the U.S. becoming involved generated new jobs in defense-related industries. After the U.S. became involved in the war in 1941, the city mobilized. Philadelphia consistently met war bond quotas and when the war ended in 1945, 183,850 residents were in the U.S. armed forces. With so many men serving in the military, there had been a labor shortage; businesses and industries hired women and workers from outside the city. In 1944 the Philadelphia Transportation Company promoted African Americans to positions as motormen and conductors (from which they had previously been excluded) on public transportation vehicles. Resentful, other PTC workers protested and began a strike that nearly immobilized the city. President Roosevelt sent troops to replace the striking workers. After a federal ultimatum, the workers returned after six days.
Read more about this topic: History Of Philadelphia
Famous quotes containing the words depression, world and/or war:
“Mental health data from the 1950’s on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depression and feelings of uselessness. This isn’t surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crow’s feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)