USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1916-1955 > Part 15
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PITTSFIELD IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION - FIRST PHASE: 1930 - 1933
The United States Employment Service, the Federal Farm Relief Emergency Program, the Home Owners' Loan Corpora- tion (HOLC), and other Federal agencies established offices in Pittsfield. That of the Employment Service was immediately swamped with hopeful registrants.
On the day the HOLC office opened, more than a hundred distressed families, some formerly well-to-do, applied for loans to save their homes from being taken by the banks on mortgage foreclosures or being sold by the sheriff for delinquent taxes. Hundreds in the city saved their homes through HOLC, which simultaneously was aiding the banks, relieving them of un- profitable real estate on which the mortgage loans, advanced in boom times, often exceeded the now severely depressed sales value of the properties.
Though disappointed not to get more, Massachusetts received $2,000,000 as its initial grant from the Federal Emergency Re- lief Administration. Of this, Pittsfield was allotted almost $60, 000, partly for use in direct relief, partly to help finance locally- sponsored projects to provide work for the unemployed.
Such projects had to be approved by the state and regional officials of the Civil Works Administration. CWA funds could be used only to pay wages. The local sponsoring authorities had to provide whatever materials and equipment were required.
Upon this basis and with an additional Federal grant of $150,000, the city had more than 900 people at work on CWA projects by the end of 1933. They were engaged, for the most part, in improving streets and bridges, extending water and sewer mains, constructing sidewalks, laying drains, clearing and beautifying parks, developing playgrounds, planting and trim- ming trees.
Other projects were later added, including some of a clerical and professional nature to employ hungry typists, secretaries, social workers, nurses, teachers, musicians, artists, writers, and others with special skills and training. All of these had to eat, too, and liked a roof overhead.
A knitting project for women was established. The work paid $12 a week, but this seemed a fortune to many. As a con-
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sequence, more than two hundred women eagerly sought work on this project which unfortunately offered only thirty-two jobs. Work for women was later expanded and directed to making shirts, trousers, comforters, mattresses, and similar essentials for those on relief. The work was carried on in the empty Vic- tory Mill, one of the old Tillotson mills, the use of which had been offered for the purpose.
The winter of 1933-34 was a very severe one, the coldest and snowiest in many years, and rigorously tested the mettle of those doing outside jobs on work relief.
As the men got paid only when they worked, most of them insisted upon working every day, no matter what the weather. On December 29, 1933, with several feet of snow blanketing Pittsfield and the temperature down to 30 degrees below, seven to eight hundred of them-almost all of the working force- appeared on the job and worked throughout the day.
Yet these were the "loafers" who declined to do anything but "leaf raking," as some in Pittsfield and many elsewhere de- clared. There was never a grosser libel, never anything more un- American, than the abuse that a few of the more fortunate heaped upon the unemployed, who by this time numbered almost 20,000,000, the largest single group in the country, representing almost every class and condition from coast to coast, a good American cross-section.
The great fiasco of the New Deal came not in work or home relief, but in quite another field-in the much-ballyhooed Blue Eagle campaign of the National Recovery Administration. Di- rected at business and industry, NRA was designed to establish fair labor practices and stop ruinous price cutting. Employers in every field were to form voluntary associations for the self- regulation of their businesses by adopting fair competition codes, which, when approved in Washington, were to have the force of law, notwithstanding any anti-trust legislation. Among other things, employers were "voluntarily" to raise wages and shorten hours to get the economy out of the doldrums.
The NRA campaign began with great publicity in Pittsfield late in July 1933, when the postmen delivered President Roose-
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PITTSFIELD IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION - FIRST PHASE: 1930 - 1933
velt's appeal directly into the hands of employers on instructions from Washington. There was a great rush among storekeepers, banks, offices, factories, and other businesses to obtain and dis- play the official Blue Eagle insignia of the NRA, proof that the displayers were cooperating in the program. A huge NRA parade was organized to stir up enthusiasm.
Wages and employment temporarily rose. The Berkshire Woolen Company gave its workers a 10 per cent raise, partially restoring heavy cuts made before. Other mills raised wages. The General Electric plant granted a 5 per cent increase to its 2,300 workers-less than a third of the number employed four years before. A month later, it added 10 per cent to the wages and salaries of all those earning $2,500 a year or less.
At the same time, some local firms, both retailers and manu- facturers, were cited for violating the state laws on hours and wages. Complaints multiplied that many were not complying with the NRA fair competition codes. The confused experiment in business cooperation ended when the Blue Eagle was brought down and done to death in the celebrated Schechter "sick chicken" case, in which the U. S. Supreme Court declared NRA unconstitutional.
Its demise occasioned little lament. The consensus in Pitts- field and elsewhere was that the act, far from helping the small businessman as it had been designed to do, actually tended to promote monopoly by big business and to raise prices at the expense of the already distressed consumer.
As part of the NRA recovery program, Pittsfield launched a spirited "Buy Now" campaign in the fall of 1933. To attract customers, the stores offered "stupendous" bargains. Merchants and business associations recruited what some called "storm troops"-Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and others-who were sent out to drum up trade by carrying signs, distributing handbills, and punching doorbells. At nine on the appointed morning, all sirens and factory whistles let out a sustained blast to remind everybody in town that shop doors were open and waiting to receive a panting multitude.
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But the day was not much of a success in spite of the noise and the offer of many special inducements. For one thing, a bona fide shopper (who had a sales slip to prove it) could ride home free on one of the new "square-ended" buses, which had their engines in back and not out in front under a long hood.
By this time, buses had entirely supplanted the street cars which had seemed so wonderful and "modern" not so many years before. In the summer of 1932, the few remaining trol- leys, once the "high-toned carriers of the crack Berkshire line," made their last run in Pittsfield, bumping slowly along the rails to Berkshire Park to be burned there.
The pride of the line, the palatial parlor car known as The Berkshire Hills, which every summer day for years had offered sightseers an extensive tour of the "Purple Hills" from Great Barrington to Bennington, Vermont, ended up as a lunch wagon on the road to Albany, where it still serves as a roadside diner.
Most of the abandoned car tracks remained in the streets for five or six years until they were taken up and sold as scrap to Japan, which soon threw the steel rails back at us in the form of shells and bombs during World War II.
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VIII
Pittsfield in the Great Depression Second Phase: 1934-1939
TN 1934, MARKING A CONSIDERABLE IMPROVEMENT, the city began to function under a new and better governmental structure. The many years of increasing criticism of the old 1891 charter led at length to drastic revision.
A change had been made in 1927 when the term of the mayor and all elected officials was extended from one to two years. This assured greater continuity of policy and administration, and removed the expense and frequent confusion attending an- nual elections.
This change was kept and many more were made in the new charter adopted in 1932 by an overwhelming majority. In place of the old Board of Aldermen of seven members and the Com- mon Council of fourteen members, it substituted a single legis- lative body, a City Council of eleven members, one elected by each of the seven wards and four elected at large.
The School Committee was reduced from fourteen to seven members, one elected by each of the wards for a four-year term. The City Clerk was the only other elected official. All candi- dates were to run on a nonpartisan basis, without party designa- tion.
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The large city departments of Public Works, Public Welfare, and Public Health, formerly directed by 3-man Boards, were placed under single commissioners, appointed by the mayor with the approval of the City Council. All other chief officials were similarly appointed except the City Solicitor, whose name did not have to go before the Council for approval. The mayor was empowered to remove any official appointed by him if a majority of the City Council approved.
In addition to his large appointive power, the mayor was given a veto over the acts of the City Concil. To override the mayor's veto required a vote of at least eight of the Council's eleven members. Under the new "strong mayor" type of govern- ment, the powers of the Council were further restricted. It might reduce the appropriations asked by the mayor in his an- nual message or in later requests. But it could not increase them.
In the first nonpartisan election under the new order, Allen H. Bagg, mayor in 1905-07 and always a Republican, ran for mayor against Patrick J. ("P.J.") Moore, the Democratic in- cumbent. Bagg and Moore had been rival candidates for the office twenty years before, in 1913, when Moore had won by 54 votes. In the 1933 election, Moore carried all of the wards except 4 and 5-"the Solid South." Here Bagg was given such high majorities that he won with more than 600 votes to spare.
As his first act, the new mayor made a clean sweep in all offices, appointing his own men, putting in no one, so many complained, but "good Republicans." However that may have been, the nonpartisan character of city elections tended to re- move certain undesirable pressures and has met with general approval down the years.
The first mayor to devote his full time to the office, Bagg followed his predecessor's policy of financial retrenchment, being anxious to strengthen the city's credit.
"You can fool some of the people, but you can't fool the banks," he said-a statement open to some doubt in view of the banks' heavy investments and total losses, shared by some of the local banks, in the notorious multi-million dollar frauds of Ivar Kreuger and Samuel Insull, not to mention the com-
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PITTSFIELD IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION - SECOND PHASE: 1934-1939
plete collapse of other huge financial empires under less ques- tionable circumstances .*
In any case, Mayor Bagg cut expenditures to the bone and ordered a more determined effort to collect unpaid taxes. Those long delinquent in paying their water rates had their hydrants shut off, leaving them without any drinking supply or sewage facilities until the State Health Board objected and had service restored. Street lights in outlying areas were turned off, as were many traffic lights in the business district, even along busy North Street, which aroused sharp complaints.
Wage and salary cuts for city officials and employees, includ- ing teachers and all employed in the schools, remained in force. School services were curtailed again, resulting in the dismissal of thirty-four teachers. Appropriations for the Public Works Department fell to $355,000, having declined from more than $1,000,000 in 1929.
On the other hand, the costs of public welfare continued to rise steeply-from $74,000 in 1929 to $101,500 in 1930, to $655,840 in 1933, and to almost $1,500,000 in 1934. Of this last sum the Federal government contributed $640,200, which was spent almost wholly in paying wages on work relief projects.
Other Federal agencies and the Red Cross made contributions in kind, giving almost $100,000 worth of flour, cloth, coal, and other essentials for free distribution among the needy. Without these and other forms of outside aid, the city would have had either a huge deficit, or a much larger tax rate. The latter was high enough as it was for poverty-stricken times, being $40 a thousand.
Public Welfare had become the largest of the city depart- ments. Suddenly called upon to shoulder an unprecedented load, pushed and pulled by political pressures, it had stumbled a bit,
*Just at this time it transpired at the great banking investigations in Washington that J. P. Morgan and his partners, President Alfred Wiggins of the Chase National Bank, President Charles Mitchell of the National City Bank, Otto H. Kahn, and other financial titans had paid no Federal income tax since 1930 while millions of Ameri- cans in modest circumstances, worried sick about how to pay their grocery bills, were digging deep into their pockets to keep the Federal government afloat.
The income tax laws were found to contain loopholes so large that smart operators could drive through them not only ox-carts, but whole racing stables and ocean-going yachts.
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
which was not strange. Want of sufficient trained personnel led to confusion and inefficiency. Its records and bookkeeping left much to be desired. Without any guiding philosophy or clear policy directives, the department had to improvise as best it could.
In 1933, Mayor Moore, desperately needing $600,000 to feed the hungry and meet the city's other obligations, had ap- proached the local banks for a loan. They informed him that they would advance no more money unless welfare operations were drastically overhauled. Finally, after the resignation of the Public Welfare superintendent, the banks granted the $600,000 loan, six months after it had been applied for. Meantime, it had seemed on more than one occasion that Public Welfare would have to suspend for want of funds to carry out its functions.
In 1934, under the new charter, the administration of welfare was improved. Abolishing the old 3-man Welfare Board elected by the voters, the charter provided for the appointment of a single commissioner to head the department. To that post, Mayor Bagg appointed Charles H. Hodecker, who is still in office. Hodecker was also placed in charge of the local Emer- gency Relief Administration, largely financed by Federal funds.
The Welfare Department soon moved to larger quarters in the Howard Building on Fenn Street. Previously, it had con- ducted its business at City Hall, in the Council Chamber and wherever there was room for a desk-along the corridors, or in any empty space at all. There was no privacy whatever for in- terviews on intimate personal and family problems. The City Hall, already too small for ordinary needs, was packed all day and often far into the night with men and women in desperate need of work or relief. Halls and stairs were so crowded that the mayor and others had difficulty and occasionally some em- barrassment in pushing through to reach their offices.
Established in more adequate quarters, Public Welfare was completely reorganized to achieve greater efficiency and remove the cause of many just criticisms and complaints. But adminis- trative reform did nothing to solve the main problem-how to
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PITTSFIELD IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION - SECOND PHASE: 1934-1939
reduce poverty and lighten the relief rolls by finding jobs for the unemployed.
In many respects, 1934 was the worst of the Great Depression years in Pittsfield. Though employment and payrolls did not fall off, they did not increase either, and many younger people had come into the labor market. A number who had struggled to keep off the relief rolls were now at the end of their re- sources and had to apply for assistance. Those on the welfare and unemployed lists increased 20 per cent over 1933, rising to almost 1,500 families, more than a tenth of those in Pittsfield, with the cost per family averaging about $10 a week.
Foreclosure and tax title cases went up 35 per cent over 1933, giving Register of Deeds Walter S. Dickie one of his busiest years. New building construction fell to $347,000, not a tenth of what it had been in 1929. The authorities established a Civic Improvements Work Relief Program, setting aside $120,000 for the purpose. But this was merely a bookkeeping item. In- stead of being spent for home relief, money would be used for work relief on projects of some permanent value.
Most Americans, especially those in extreme need, showed remarkable restraint during these years under circumstances that would have tried the patience of a saint. In Pittsfield, many families on relief went hungry for days at a time when food orders did not arrive on schedule, held up for no necessary reason. People were put on and taken off the public assistance rolls in an often arbitrary fashion.
In January 1934, with the temperature plunging down to zero and below, those employed on the work projects had to walk to their jobs because the city suddenly refused to transport them in its trucks. To save a few dollars, the city had taken out no liability insurance on its trucks and feared the risk of damage suits if any passengers were injured.
Then hours and wages on CWA projects were cut. A few weeks later, overnight and without any explanation, all local CWA projects closed down, leaving 1,400 people to walk the streets, harried by worry and uncertainty, not knowing where to turn. Shortly, again without explanation, they were back on
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
their jobs, only to be told that CWA projects would end per- manently about two months later.
Early in 1934, several hundred formed a Pittsfield League of Unemployed. More than 800 attended the League's first reg- ular meeting, which chose as president Maurice J. Cavanaugh, a former member of the City Council.
Little more than a week later, state police came in to hunt for "Reds" among the local unemployed. Sharply criticized for this, Mayor Bagg denied that he had asked for the police, or for any investigation.
Holding their annual convention in Washington at this time, the Daughters of the American Revolution were shown a "Communism map" vividly marked to indicate the 1,500 "dangerous centers" in the country. Pittsfield appeared prom- inently as a "Red" center, which was ridiculous and an insult to the community.
In conservative circles all union activity, or anything remotely similar, was suspect in spite of the fact that national policy in this regard had been quite explicitly stated in the NRA act. Its much-cited Section 7a guaranteed workers the right "to or- ganize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing," a provision soon written into permanent legisla- tion. Many employers were not yet prepared to accept this "radical" doctrine, though it is now accepted as a matter of course throughout the country, chiefly because labor took con- certed steps to assert its rights.
With wages low and prices rising, the employed as well as the unemployed were restive. Workers at the local button fac- tory in one of the old Tillotson mills walked out in protest against wages of $8 a week or less. Uniting their forces, they organized what was said to be the first button-makers union in the world, but lost the strike. Electrical and plastics workers at the General Electric plant talked of organizing. But the local labor front remained relatively quiet until the fall of 1934 when a nation-wide textile strike was called, partly for better wages and working conditions, but primarily for the right to organize.
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PITTSFIELD IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION - SECOND PHASE: 1934-1939
Because they were unorganized, the strike did not imme- diately affect the Pittsfield mills. Those in North Adams, how- ever, were unionized and the workers there, having struck, dis- patched representatives to Pittsfield to help organize. The North Adams group was met at the city line by Chief of Police Sullivan, who, setting up a road-block, ordered them to turn around and "never come back."
But back they came, individually or in small groups, and a Pittsfield local of the United Textile Workers of America was organized at a large meeting in Curtin Hall on Peck's Road. Workers walked out of the mills of the Berkshire Woolen and the Wyandotte Worsted, the chief operating plants, and estab- lished picket lines around the factories. The pickets were joined by Dr. Albert Sprague Coolidge, a professor at Harvard and a candidate for United States Senator on the Socialist ticket. Coolidge also addressed General Electric workers at the main gates of the plant.
Dr. Coolidge's presence embarrassed those advocates of "law and order" who were arguing the desirability of "roughing up" the pickets a bit, for Coolidge was the son of Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, one of the city's best known and most re- spected citizens, a generous contributor to many of its causes, founder of Pittsfield's already world-renowned South Mountain Chamber Music Festival.
As a co-sponsor, her son had come to attend the festival which was just then being held, with hundreds of notables in attendance. A black eye for Coolidge, it was obvious even to the more obtuse, would be a black eye for the town and there- fore to be avoided.
No violence marked the strike, which soon ended with neither side making any concessions. This strike, though lost, was the beginning of the powerful modern trade union move- ment in Pittsfield.
Even at the depths of the depression, bread-and-butter wor- ries did not wholly occupy the city, which found opportunities to enjoy some of the pleasures of life. In 1933, a Community Concert Association had been established, bringing to Pittsfield
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from year to year many famed musicians and singers. Fritz Kreisler, Josef Hofmann, Jascha Heifetz, Jose' Iturbi, Lotte Lehmann, and Marian Anderson were among those who per- formed before large and appreciative audiences in the high school auditorium. The Berkshire Musical Association, com- posed of musicians and friends of music in the county, was organized in 1934, principally for the performance of ora- torios by mixed choruses.
Also in 1934, after a lapse of some years, the unique cham- ber music festival at South Mountain was resumed. Organized in 1918, the festival had been held annually at South Moun- tain down to 1924 when its sponsor-creator, Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, gave the Federal government an initial sum of $94,000 for the erection of an auditorium in Washington for the performance of chamber music, regarding this as the best method "to nationalize the art."
The auditorium was built adjoining the Library of Congress and here, along with concerts throughout the year, the South Mountain festival was presented until 1934 when Mrs. Coolidge decided on a "home-coming." The renowned festival was brought back to Pittsfield where it has since remained, its fame growing with the years.
The first of the resumed festivals on South Mountain opened with the César Franck quartet, the composer's only work of the kind, played by the South Mountain String Quartet which Mrs. Coolidge had founded in 1924. Along with accepted classics in the field, the festival presented the works of several young American composers for the first time. Mrs. Coolidge was always especially interested in encouraging talent and affording it an opportunity for recognition, offering prize awards for new compositions or commissioning them directly. Also interested in acquainting the public with European chamber music or- ganizations, Mrs. Coolidge had brought the Casella-Poltronieri- Bonucco Trio from Rome to contribute to the program. For the first time, the festival concerts were nationally broadcast from South Mountain.
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PITTSFIELD IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION - SECOND PHASE: 1934-1939
It was in 1934, too, at the worst of the depression, that an- other great musical institution was established in the Berkshires -what has become the famed Tanglewood symphonic concert series in neighboring Lenox. The first of the series was present- ed on the Dan Hanna Farm in Stockbridge, where some mem- bers of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra gave three con- certs with Henry Hadley as conductor.
In 1936, the festival was moved to the Lenox estate of Mrs. Margaret Emerson. Here Serge Koussevitzky led the Boston Symphony in three concerts played in a huge tent covering a half acre or more. One summer storm all but brought the tent down, pointing to the need of better quarters, and the renowned Tanglewood Shed was built, a unique structure. The $100,000 Shed, financed by public subscription, was dedicated in 1938.
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