Dorothea Lange photographed this homeless family nearly Brawley, Calif., in 1939. They had been picking cotton in Phoenix but moved on when the work ran out. They hope for relief in San Diego.
The Great Depression did not bypass our little oasis city. Even if, as historian Bradford Luckingham writes, the city's newspapers paid little attention to the 1929 crash and most Phoenicians, like most Americans, didn't own stock, the hard times soon arrived.
The severe contraction from 1930 through 1933 claimed two of the city's six banks and two of its five building-and-loan associations. Another, Valley Bank, was on the edge of failure. Depositors were wiped out in these pre-FDIC days. Arizona's big Three Cs of copper, cattle and cotton were decimated as demand collapsed. Twelve theaters closed in Phoenix. The state actually lost population in the early 1930s. The average income of American households fell by 40 percent from 1929 and 1932.
In Phoenix, unemployment grew while businesses closed and relief organizations were overwhelmed. My grandmother told stories about Okies and Texans arriving in jalopies, sometimes on foot or as hobos on freight trains. Victims of the Dust Bowl came by the thousands to the Salt River Valley, not, as in Grapes of Wrath, going as far as California (something confirmed by Philip VanderMeer in his insightful Desert Visions and the Making of Phoenix).
So don't believe it if you hear the shorthand that "Phoenix barely felt the Depression." Much less that its economic recovery came because of the "rugged individualism" of Phoenicians. For the second time in its young life, Phoenix was rescued by the federal government.
The Great Depression was the overarching story of Phoenix in the 1930s. And the New Deal not only saved the city and state much suffering, but arguably had greater effect because of their small populations and economic composition. Arizona voted overwhelmingly for FDR, who is shown campaigning in Phoenix in 1931. He is at the wheel of the car as always, with Sen. Carl Hayden and Gov. George W.P. Hunt beside him. It proved a good bet.
II.
The city in 1930 was a compact box that ran from Buckeye to Thomas and a little past 19th Avenue and beyond 24th Street. The population was 41,000, a nearly 66 percent increase over the previous decade. Phoenix had much to be proud of — and much to hide away.
The city had won the northern main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad and the mission-style Union Station had opened in 1923 at the foot of downtown. A more ambitious plan to make Fourth Avenue a gateway from the depot to the heart of the city failed. But with the SP and the Santa Fe, the city had finally been connected with mainline rail service. Union Station saw the wildly popular Rexall Train stop in 1936, pulled by a streamlined New York Central steam locomotive and packed with displays promoting the drug-store chain. The Santa Fe began its Super Chief streamliner, among the most glamorous of the new style of fast passenger trains. Although the Train of the Stars regular route was through northern Arizona, it made promotional stop at Union Station in the late 1930s.
The mainline made Phoenix a popular winter destination for Hollywood stars and the wealthy from the Midwest (the Arizona Biltmore opened in 1929). The trains also eased travel for those who had been coming to the town for some three decades for its clean air, especially people with TB and other breathing ailments ("lungers"). The railroads promoted the city. They also had ticket offices facing each other, the SP in the Hotel Adams, and the AT&SF across the street.
Most of Phoenix's best buildings had been completed or started thanks to the abundant capital of the Roaring Twenties. Among them, the art deco masterpieces Luhrs Tower (1929) and Professional Building (1932). Also, the Security Building (1928), Phoenix Title and Trust Building (1931), the Hotel Westward Ho (1928) at 16 stories the tallest building in the state, and the majestic Maricopa County Courthouse and Phoenix City Hall (1929). The Orpheum (1929) and Fox (1931) theaters opened as the finest movie palaces. Many were outfitted with the transformative "refrigerated air" when even the nicer homes had to make do with fans and sleeping porches.
These were the gems of a prosperous and dense downtown that mostly turned residential north of Van Buren, although many of the Victorian mansions of the "Millionaire's Row" still stood on west Monroe Street. North of Van Buren were streets lined with bungalows and palm trees. West of Seventh Avenue were other inviting residential neighborhoods, interspersed with the Carnegie Library, running past the state capitol. The City Beautiful Movement graced the Kenilworth neighborhood, built around the stately school of the same name, with parkways along Portland and Moreland Streets (now the Roosevelt Historic District). Many of these areas were served by electric trolley cars. Prohibition was in effect, but Phoenix was a wide-open Western town with abundant speakeasies and a supply chain that originated with Al Capone's organization (Capone was one of the many celebrities who stayed at the Westward Ho).
The Twenties had been better to agriculture in the Salt River Valley than to many farm regions in America. Demand for cotton had recovered from its collapse after World War I. More importantly, thanks to the federal government the water supply was guaranteed, not only with Theodore Roosevelt Dam, but also Mormon Flat Dam (1925), Horse Mesa Dam (1927) and Stewart Mountain Dam (1930). The 500 miles of canals left by the Hohokam were being reclaimed, widened and extended. Trees lined the canals. Almost any crop could be grown and, thanks to refrigerated box cars, transported to markets back east.
Much farming was still the small scale Jeffersonian experiment that began with the Newlands Act. Families (including mine) were restricted to 160 acres, although enterprising types found their way around this and amassed larger landholdings. But the federally imposed regulations regarding ownership, combined with the Valley's rich soil and controlling the fickle river meant stability to this most important economic engine. Another help: Washington kept pushing out the time frame for water users to repay the federal government.
But the city also boasted a variety of manufacturing concerns, along with the many businesses — from banks to cotton gins and rail-car icing facilities — that served farming. The city had two radio stations. Despite its isolation in a largely empty West, Phoenix was much of what urbanists talk about now: human-scaled, walkable and with a highly local, diverse and sustainable economy.
III.
Things were different on the "wrong" side of the tracks. The Phoenix of 1930 was both a Western and a Southern town, reflecting the sensibilities of its many former Confederate early settlers. Jim Crow was not as severely enforced here as in Mississippi, but many stores and restaurants refused to serve blacks, Mexicans, American Indians, Chinese and Japanese. Swimming pools were segregated.
The Japanese, who proved to be master farmers in south Phoenix, had been targeted by the Arizona Alien Land Law, which sought to prevent them from owning property.
Minorities were kept out of many jobs. An exception was the better paid work of Pullman porters on the railroads, represented by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and minority entrepreneurs in segregated business districts. Minority labor was, however, prized by growers. Jobs were available in the fields and produce sheds near the railroad tracks along Madison and Jackson Street. Poverty was extreme. Indoor plumbing was rare.
Most schools were segregated. The Phoenix Union Colored High School (later George Washington Carver High) had opened in 1926. Neighborhoods were also rigidly segregated. The poor and minorities were kept in south Phoenix, south of Van Buren and east of Seventh Street, and in the worst slum in the city around Seventh Avenue and Buckeye Road. It was here that the Catholic priest Emmett McLoughlin would become beloved and, by the powerful, despised. He called this neighborhood "a cesspool of poverty and disease."
The thirties saw the mass deportation of 1 million Mexicans, an estimated 60 percent of whom were American citizens. The federal government stood aside as counties, states and companies sent Mexicans to Mexico. It was sold as a "repatriation" where they could "be with their own people and speak their own language," also freeing up jobs for Anglos. Families were broken up. Many did not even speak Spanish. It is unknown how many were deported from Maricopa County but deportations did take place from Arizona.
IV.
The relative weight that should be assigned to the many causes of the Great Depression is still being assessed and debated. Both Herbert Hoover and John Maynard Keynes traced it to the financial imbalances left by the Great War and the harsh peace treaty of Versailles.
In addition: massive economic shifts, particularly in agricultural labor; the self-defeating orthodoxy of the day that demanded balanced budgets and the gold standard; destructive Federal Reserve policy; a rickety banking system; the Dust Bowl; the Smoot-Hawley tariff increase, and a huge speculative bubble in the laissez faire twenties.
It was the greatest crisis the nation faced since the Civil War and it spared no state, city or town. Copper prices plunged as the economy contracted, devastating Arizona's No. 1 industry. Mines closed, some permanently. Some towns never came back, at least as mining districts (Jerome among them).
Even well capitalized operators, such as Phelps Dodge, laid off massive numbers of miners. It is difficult for today's Arizonans to understand how important mining was to the state then; the collapse of copper prices was at least as big or bigger a proximate disaster as the housing bust — but no safety net existed in 1930.
Large numbers of unemployed mine workers and their families came to Phoenix. They were joined by the population of the southern plains, fleeing the Dust Bowl, or, farther east, a farm depression that had been going on for as long as a decade or more. Highways and railroads had evolved enough to make Phoenix easier to reach. Some of the Okies, Texans and Arkansans had relatives here; most only hoped for a new chance.
Unfortunately for them, all commodity prices — including cotton and citrus — tumbled as contraction became depression and deflation set in. From 1930 through 1933, the hardship, desperation and fear played out in Phoenix in much the same way as in all of America. Even those who had jobs worried they would lose them. Shop owners were forced to cut off credit to longtime customers in a bid to survive. "Hoovervilles," makeshift camps of tents and shacks, appeared in and around the city (a notable one was in the separate, unincorporated settlement of Sunnyslope).
Among the big local casualties was the Agua Fria River Project, which had been private effort since the 1880s to dam the river and reclaim land just east of the White Tanks. McMicken Dam, or Frog Tanks Dam, was finally completed in 1927 under the supervision of engineer Carl Pleasant. But the vision of a rival to federal reclamation, probably never realistic in the best of times, died as the economy declined.
The crisis quickly swamped churches and charities, as well as the modest county "relief" — making today's conservative call to replace the federal safety net with private charity a grotesque joke. Grandmother, the wife of a railroad conductor, would make sandwiches for "hobos," who would wait politely at the back door.
Life went on, and for Phoenix in a spectacularly lurid way with the Winnie Ruth Judd affair. Dismembered bodies, romantic intrigue, escape to Los Angeles aboard a train, the infamous trunks leaking blood and a seeming femme fatale from pulp fiction — the story riveted the nation. The journalist Jana Bommersbach has made a convincing case that Judd was railroaded by the powerful, which would not be the last time justice was bought and miscarried in Phoenix.
The city also had plenty of straightforward lawlessness. For example, the night of May 19, 1936, two burglars coming out of Arnold's Pickle Co. on Van Buren Street got the drop on two police officers arriving in the east-side radio car (PPD had installed the state's first police radio system in 1932). Another officer, Earl O'Clair, arrived. One burglar fled but the other threatened to kill one of the cops he held hostage.
When O'Clair refused to give up his sidearm, a last-man-standing shootout ensued. The burglar's .45 jammed when he tried to shoot one hostage. O'Clair shot twice. The suspect returned fire with a .38 he stole from the cops, peppering the police cars. The battle continued down the alley and as far as Monroe Street before the burglar, who also had a robbery conviction, fell dead. O'Clair, who went on to become chief, fired six shots and hit six times. Even then, Phoenix could be a dangerous town.
Hollywood continued making distractions, which seemed even more important in such dark times. Mae West even visited the Orpehum in 1933 (above). The Legislature still met informally in the coffee shop of the Hotel Adams, as it has before and would continue to do into the early 1960s.
The ruin suffered by even wealthy farmers and the loss of the tax base put most civic projects on hold. But not all: The Desert Botanical Garden opened in 1939 in what would become Papago Park, led by botanist Gustaf Starck and wealthy patron Gertrude Webster. Another prize was the Phoenix Open, started in 1932 and revived in 1938.
V.
When Franklin Roosevelt became president in March 1933, the nation began a long, but very real turnaround (contrary to the revisionism of today's right-wing writers). Unlike the tragic Hoover, Roosevelt was insistent on using the power and resources of the federal government to help individuals. Critical to his success, he was willing to experiment.
The New Deal worked out exceptionally well in Phoenix. One reason may have been the size of the place in relation to the aid received. The historian Lawrence Arlington estimated that Arizona received $342 million in federal aid from 1933 to 1939 — about $5.8 billion in today's dollars — and paid only $16 million in federal taxes. Also, most Phoenicians were too close in time to the fruits of the Newlands Act to have any libertarian fantasies. They knew that without the federal government, Phoenix would have died.
Assistance from Washington came in many forms, including the Works Progress Administration, Bureau of Public Roads, Public Works Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps (which had three camps around Phoenix) and assorted farm aid and agricultural price stabilization programs. Together, they employed thousands and became a huge driver of recovery. Del Webb, a big FDR supporter, made his early wealth from New Deal contracts.
By 1935, the federal government was the county's largest employer and buyer of goods and services. Among the major CCC projects were building improvements to South Mountain Park and the new Papago Park (above right). New Deal money helped Phoenix acquire the land for Encanto Park and erect some of its enduring buildings (and some that didn't, notably the bandshell). Eastlake Park and Grant Park were two other New Deal gifts. Huge numbers of New Deal projects were completed in Phoenix and Arizona.
North High, the city's second high school, was built in 1938, followed a year later by Phoenix Junior College. The federal Public Works Administration also built the state capitol annex with Jay Datus painting the mural "The Pageant of Arizona Progress." The PWA also built Glendale's water system. The Works Progress Administration built the stadium at the state fairgrounds.
Federal funds helped the city acquire the land for Sky Harbor Airport and the WPA paved its runways and aprons, as well as build its first terminal and administration building. The Spanish Colonial revival U.S. Post Office and Federal Building was constructed in 1936 at Central and Fillmore. Murals were painted by La Verne Nelson Black and Oscar Berninghaus; they're still there. (The project began under Hoover, but the plaque credits Roosevelt and his Postmaster General — and political fixer — James Farley).
Infrastructure building didn't stop with roads, parks, the airport and schools. During the 1930s, Bartlett Dam was built on the Verde River. CCC crews completed more than 700 separate jobs for the Salt River Project. All these projects put thousands of people to work and left enduring buildings, roads, dams, parks and the airport.
VI.
Some New Deal experiments were embraced more than others. The Farm Security Administration established cooperatives such as Camelback Farms to aid displaced farm families. The Subsistence Homestead Division of the Interior Department had its own plans for "urban farming" by the poor on small plots of land. One result was Phoenix Homesteads. These projects brought out the "deserving" vs. "undeserving" poor debate, with many Phoenicians worried they were drawing undesirable elements.
These efforts gave ammunition to critics who worried about socialism and considered Roosevelt ("that man in the White House" — they couldn't stand to say his name) a "dictator." But like the genuinely socialistic Casa Grande Valley Farms, a project of the Federal Resettlement Administration and run by Walter Packard, they gave temporary relief but failed in the long run.
The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), intended to create jobs for unskilled laborers, led to the first riot in modern Phoenix history. According to retired Commander Robert Demlong at the Phoenix Police Museum, some FERA workers went on strike on Sept. 7, 1934, and clashed with an angry crowd.
Although the local newspapers didn't report the event, other papers did with headlines such as "Police Battle Communist with Clubs and Tear Gas," "Phoenix Guards Against Rioters," and "Serious Labor Trouble Reported in Phoenix, Arizona." The strikers demanded higher wages and relief quotas. Police attempting to protect non-striking FERA workers were met with bricks, rocks and hammers. The melee injured 73 and 60 arrests were made. Gov. Benjamin Moeur put the National Guard on standby. FERA was eliminated in 1935 and its mission taken by the Works Progress Administration.
Even as the New Deal largely succeeded, class and ethnic resentments flared. The former were at work in resistance to such endeavors as the Phoenix Homesteads. They also galvanized the Associated Farmers of Arizona, formed by wealthy landowner (and liquor baron) Kemper Marley. The organization's goal was to stamp out the "communism" represented by farm workers complaining about the dismal and unsanitary growers camps and an effort by the CIO to organize them. Marley's men succeeded.
Anglos who formed the Anti-Alien Association attacked and made threats against Japanese farmers. This criminal activity eased when the state Supreme Court struck down the Alien Land Law and "respectable" leaders, such as Gov. Benjamin Moeur, intervened. But the soil had been tilled for the later Japanese internment during World War II.
Thanks to the success in agricultural price stabilization, cotton rebounded and demand grew as the world militarized in the decade. This created a large demand for workers; mechanization had yet to reach most Arizona cotton fields. Yet quarters were segregated and pay less for minorities. Historians generally argue that the New Deal was disappointing in its achievements for minorities compared with white citizens.
The administration did include the slum southwest of downtown in a nationwide study, finding it to be the worst in America. This was where Father McLoughlin was sent after being ordained in 1933. He became an indefatigable advocate for the poor; a scourge of the city fathers. He was named the first chairman of the federally funded Phoenix Housing Authority. Much of the slum was cleared for the Matthew Henson projects for blacks. The Marcos de Niza projects were built for Mexican-Americans and the Frank Luke projects for Anglos.
McLoughlin never became reconciled to Phoenix's maltreatment of the poor and marginalized, saying they were regarded as "rejects of a lusty, sprawling, boasting cotton-and-cow town trying hard to become a city...veneering itself with the gloss of a symphony orchestra, a little theater and a necklace of resort hotels."
VII.
The non-farm private sector began a slow recovery, too. It helped that Phoenix had already attracted some wealthy patrons, such as the chewing-gun mogul who built the Wrigley Mansion. As the toffs benefited from the New Deal, even as they called Roosevelt "a traitor to his class," they returned with money to spend.
One fruit was the Camelback Inn, funded by John C. Lincoln. The shy founder of Lincoln Electric in Cleveland had come to Phoenix in 1931 when his wife Helen was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He returned regularly and invested in copper mines and land.
Fighting for its life, Valley Bank hired Walter Bimson to be its president. Bimson would go on to become one of the most consequential civic stewards in the city's history. But immediately, he went about repairing the bank. Having worked in Hoover's Reconstruction Finance Corp., Bimson had no hesitation about accepting federal help. He famously told his officers to make loans. Less well known is that he leveraged New Deal financial programs to help. Valley became the biggest bank and most powerful corporation in the state.
Local manufacturing received a boost as the technology became available to provide air conditioning at an affordable price for houses, with the evaporative cooler. The first major breakthrough in allowing Phoenix to be habitable year-round by large numbers of people sold widely.
While the New Deal improved much of the city's infrastructure, the effervescence of inspired architecture from the 1920s was gone; not another major building would rise downtown until after World War II and the City Beautiful and art deco sensibilities were lost. Chinatown crumbled, too, as wealthier Chinese moved out leaving the dense, intriguing fabric of the old district which was absorbed by the Deuce.
The better times — interrupted by a sharp recession in 1937 when FDR tried austerity — inspired city leaders to attempt to broaden the economy further with a pricey national advertising campaign by the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce to attract tourists. It was picked up by the railroad marketing departments, too.
Phoenix had several nicknames: City of Palms, the American Eden and the Nile Valley of America among them. But the chamber came up with "The Valley of the Sun" and it stuck. The campaign proved highly successful.
By the end of the decade, the population drain had been reversed and in many ways Phoenix was as prosperous as ever. But this was almost entirely because of aggressive federal assistance. Ironically, the Depression and New Deal shattered the vision of FDR's cousin Theodore, champion of the Newlands Act. Agriculture was still king at the end of the decade, but it was more highly concentrated (as would happen in ranching). The Valley had fewer family farms, especially on the Newlands model.
Whatever its self-mythology, Phoenix and Arizona ended the decade more dependent on Washington than ever.
The thirties — Gallery (click for a larger image):
This overhead view, looking northwest, from 1936 shows a wealth of detail about the city. In addition to downtown, we can see the Warehouse District along the Southern Pacific tracks, the SP Freight Station, Union Station, Central Arizona Light and Power natural gas storage towers, and the "south of the tracks" neighborhoods of territorial-era houses.
It's 1933, the worst year of the Depression, and we're looking northeast from the Warehouse District (McColloch Brothers Collection/ASU Archives).
First Avenue looking north past the Maricopa County Courthouse/Phoenix City Hall, Fleming Building, and Phoenix Title and Trust Building (now Orpheum Lofts).
Here's a better view of the Phoenix Title and Trust Building, with financing in the pipeline in better times but finished in 1931. This is sometime in the '30s. Note the Owl Drug Store at the corner. Owl had several downtown locations.
Plenty of detail on this high-resolution photo of the northwest corner of Central and Washington. From the activity, you'd never know it's 1931, heading into the depths of the Depression.
A 1935 advertisement that ran around the country. Note special rates for railroad passengers. "Valley of the Sun" was coined by the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce to help revive the local economy through tourism (Brad Hall collection).
It's Christmas season 1936 and this is the southeast corner of First Street and Adams by Dorris-Heyman Furniture.
The Hotel Adams at Central Avenue and Adams Street.
The walkable commercial block between First Avenue and Central, including Baker's Shoes and the Studio Theater.
Busy Central Avenue looking north from Washington Street toward the Hotel San Carlos and the Westward Ho. The pedestrian clothing makes it summer.
Another view of Central looking north in 1938. The banners are for the Fiesta Del Sol.
An overhead view in 1936. Central Avenue runs lower-left to upper right past the Post Office and Hotel Westward Ho. Just north (left) on Central and across from the hotel is Central Methodist Church. Trinity Cathedral is in the upper right. Note the dense, walkable streets.
Crowds lined up outside the courthouse for the 1932 trial of Winnie Ruth Judd. The low part of the building was Phoenix Police Headquarters for decades; today it's the Phoenix Police Museum.
Judge Howard Speakman, who presided over the Judd trial.
Interior of the Phoenix Rescue Mission. The depth and scope of the Depression overwhelmed private charities, but they remained important throughout the crisis (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives).
Drought refugees from Tennessee in Phoenix, 1936, hoping to find farm work. (Dorothea Lange, Library of Congress).
Camelback Farms, a Farm Security Administration project just outside the city.
Hard times: A man hauling water.
The top of the Heard Building looking southwest. Radio was the electronic mass medium of the era and antennas sprouted on Phoenix buildings.
Jefferson Street looking west past the Jefferson Hotel, Luhrs Building, and Luhrs Tower. All still stand.
The Phoenix skyline and South Mountains as seen from the Westward Ho. On the left is the never-finished Moser's Folly mansion. To the right of the Luhrs Tower is a natural gas tank by the railroad tracks.
A 1935 Parade moves down Central past the Hotel San Carlos.
At 601 W. Washington, Phoenix firefighters show off an engine in 1939. (McCulloch Brothers/ASU Archives)
WPA workers widen and pave Van Buren Street in 1936.
The WPA constructed the administration building facing McDowell at the State Fairgrounds in 1938.
No more train delays: The Central and 17th Avenue underpasses were completed with New Deal money. This view is from 1940.
The famous Santa Fe Super Chief makes a visit to Union Station in 1939.
This rare overhead of the depot was taken in 1930. It shows the layout of passenger tracks and, at bottom, the bypass for freight trains. Note the boxcars serving the Warehouse District along Jackson Street.
West Palm Lane in what is now the Willo Historic District. Then it was near the northern city limits.
An overhead of Palmcroft. Building was paralyzed by the Depression, it taking years for this exclusive neighborhood to become complete.
Inadequate storm sewers caused city streets to flood after big rains. This is Roosevelt in 1932.
These tents marked segregated quarters for African-American cotton pickers in Pinal County.
The Camelback Inn in the 1930s.
Far out in the desert, a look south toward Camelback Mountain.
Back in the oasis, this is Central Avenue north of McDowell, where the street was lined with handsome mansions.
The Jaycees Rodeo of Rodeos Parade in 1937 (McCulloch Bros. Collection/ASU Archives). After steady improvement, a recession hit the country that year when FDR cut back on stimulus.
A map of the city circa 1930.
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My book, A Brief History of Phoenix, is available to buy or order at your local independent bookstore, or from Amazon.
Read more Phoenix history in Rogue's Phoenix 101 archive.
Thanks for another fine article Talton.
One has to chuckle at all the anti -federal government rhetoric exuded by present day post - Reagan know nothing Republican politcians in Arizona, a state that owes its survival to the New Deal.
You can 't be too ignorant to succeed in the present day mindless GOP.
Posted by: jmav | April 29, 2014 at 03:33 AM
Fine article! Dorothea Lange, who took all of those beautiful, haunting photographs-like the one at the top of the article-also was able to do that work because of the New Deal. Farm Security Administration, I think. I also thought of the great boxer, Zora Folley, who was born in 1932, but whose family were cotton pickers in the southeast valley. Mr. Folley later became a member of the Chandler (!) city council, and was the only man Ali couldn't get mad enough at to berate him in the ring.
Posted by: Pat | April 29, 2014 at 05:15 AM
As a child I gazed with wonder at the disappearing economy of migrant farm workers, tubercular patients, and working poor. Sunnyslope was like West Virginia in the desert with shacks on dusty roads, old prospectors with leathery faces and no teeth, and deep, deep poverty. By the 1960s, that poverty was fast disappearing although today you can see the new poverty taking root where the old once stood. The old was haunting and poignant. The new is charmless and bewildered.
My father was a protégé of Emmett McLaughlin. Dad was fairly rare in his medical profession: a New Deal liberal who advocated socialized medicine. But the go-go post-war prosperity made him a player and he soon traded his Henry Wallace values for LBJ's gravy train. The nation had finally freed itself of an agricultural economy where the bounty was inseparable from the bitter tears that produced it. Life was about buying things and we were flush with cash.
Cliven Bundy is much on our minds and I wonder if he illuminates that part of our character that gladly took government largesse while detesting the lessers who were also helped. By 1972 my father hated liberals because his old world had turned upside down. He had made millions (and blown most of it). The government that had been helpful to him was now his enemy. The grapes of wrath had turned into the champagne of unimaginable wealth where too much was never quite enough. It seems our fate as a species is to always want more than we have or need. The hunger gene is the ghost of ancient poverty forever hounding us.
The 1930s explained the Greatest Generation's drive and dreams, and it explains our current dyspepsia. Today's right is more interested in explaining how the undeserving poor ruined everything. But we were all complicit here. You don't go to an orgy and then complain that some people acted like pigs. If you're honest, you admit that this one-time gift of cheap oil, lebensraum, and effective government made us fat, dumb, and happy. Except, the happy part was the goal more than the outcome.
Posted by: soleri | April 29, 2014 at 07:10 AM
Great article Rogue! I especially enjoyed the Father McLoughlin angle. Good on you for writing on this time in Phoenix.
Posted by: eclecticdog | April 29, 2014 at 09:40 AM
Thanks to Pat for the Zola Folley reference. Interesting man and story (go to Wikipedia and read about it, the links at the bottom are good too).
Posted by: eclecticdog | April 29, 2014 at 10:39 AM
Excellent piece, greatly enhanced by the well-selected photographs. Are they all by Dorothea Lange as Pat mentioned?
I get a sense of the American Eden in some of these images.
Posted by: Gary O'Brien | April 29, 2014 at 12:53 PM
I hope this turns into one of those more popular posts. It's a trove of information contained in a narrative that suits me just fine.
And, what soleri said:
Posted by: Petro | April 29, 2014 at 05:13 PM
Really impressive package (this blog entry). I don't know anything about Phoenix in the 1930s so I'll just keep quiet and admire the design and the insights.
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | April 29, 2014 at 07:31 PM
VERY impressive Jon
Obviously a chapter in your book on the Valley of the Sun.
Not much I can add to this.
I did discuss this with a mate. She said every week from 1936 until 1953 her entire family went to the Studio, the Rialto and other downtown theaters. They enjoyed the visual News and then following feature film. She has very vivid memories of the WWll news films.
and it was also a Hispanic town. Note The Cisco Kid was showing according to your photos.
Posted by: cal Lash | April 30, 2014 at 12:50 AM
Note Steve Benson's cartoon in today's Arizona Republic (042914) was great and there was a guest column by a Keating foundation person endorsing more education
Posted by: cal Lash | April 30, 2014 at 12:54 AM
NBA owner Sterling was long over due for a big fall. Weakness, failure to follow thru and greed on the part of others kept him in power. And for me it was The Sting. Played out by his girl friend and Magic Johnson.
She get 15 minutes of sleazy fame and a few bucks. Magic he will get the Clippers.
Posted by: cal Lash | April 30, 2014 at 01:02 AM
Rogue has now passed 17,000 comments. Thanks to the smartest, most erudite and fun bunch I have ever encountered. We've come a long way from "Zbig" at AzCentral. (And contrary to what some say, no conservative has ever been blocked or banned from the site).
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | April 30, 2014 at 03:33 PM
“(And contrary to what some say, no conservative has ever been blocked or banned from the site).” Even me. Thanks Rouge.
BTW: tornados and flash floods for the last couple of weeks. Beats the shit out of heat waves and droughts I guess.
Re: Phoenix in the thirties. It’s remarkable that a real city doesn’t need to be all that big or dense to be a real city.
Posted by: wkg in bham | April 30, 2014 at 04:26 PM
i have known some great TOWNS of 10,000 or less.
Posted by: cal Lash | April 30, 2014 at 05:07 PM
At Cal: “Towns less than 10,000.” Yeah, me too. But they’re mostly redneck places. But being basically a redneck myself I like redneck places. But I like a little culture when the mood strikes. A little place within about a 100 miles of a city about right.
Posted by: wkg in bham | April 30, 2014 at 06:52 PM
100 miles and a Grey Nurse
(also called a C note)
and U can go back to redneckville feeling relieved.
Sterling
Posted by: cal Lash | April 30, 2014 at 09:59 PM
Or in Phoenix (less than a 100 miles to Miami,AZ and 20 bones) in the 30 and 40 and 50's for culture it was Top of the World.
Lefty
and for high school young studs it was the Key Stone Hotel where you could always count on the cops being there to help not book you.
Posted by: cal Lash | April 30, 2014 at 10:06 PM
Zbig was an over-the-top commenter on AzCentral who relished verbal jousting for its own sake. He didn't make logical arguments or attempt persuasion. He issued edicts from on high that showed occasional brilliance and frequent boorishness before collapsing into a cesspool of invective. The good 'ol days.
AzCentral unleashed a torrent of free speech some 10 years ago that was astonishing. Most of it was good but the right's inveterate tendency to bullying and cruelty soon capsized the enterprise. Words are weapons and always have been. But when coupled with crudeness and name-calling, they are just flung poo in a monkey cage. AzCentral tried unsuccessfully to moderate the enterprise but our "Constitutional right" to say anything we liked soon became another debacle of unbuffered democracy.
I surf the net a lot and almost always scan the comment sections. Local media have always been the worst. The story doesn't even have to be political for commenters to begin demonizing Obama (Hillary will soon replace him). Race is, sorry to say, the main flashpoint if the story is about crime. The crime doesn't even need a black protagonist for this to happen. It's just a reflexive crime = scary black people tic.
Jana Bommersbach was the liberal heartbeat of Phoenix back in the 1980s. If you watched Channel 8's Horizon, you probably remember her on the Friday news round-up along with John Kolbe and Max Jennings. She was its star - lively, convivial, funny, and incisive. Sadly, that star was eclipsed when her fellow provocateur at the New Times, Mike Lacey, decided it would be cute to poke fun at Jan Brewer, then a legislator, who proposed outlawing naughty words in some venue or another. Brewer had read the words in the public hearing, so Lacey took the recording of it and blasted the naughty words in front of the State Capitol. Jan Brewer talks dirty! The local journalistic community was outraged at the stunt, which then decided that anyone associated with the New Times was no longer welcome in its lofty aerie. Bommersbach lost her Channel 8 gig as a result, and Horizon became as boring as Phoenix.
Bommersback came out of retirement and blogged sporadically on AzCentral. Sadly, our local vermin decided it would be fun to bully her about her appearance (remind you of someone?). Every blog posting unleashed a cascade of abusive comments whose purpose was simply to silence her. It worked and she eventually gave up altogether.
The customary way to silence an important voice is simply take away their real estate, as when the Republic fired Jon Talton. That's all changed, of course, and it's mostly good. The bits and pieces of community conscience come together here online in a way that simply no longer exists for those reading the print version. National media are much better at policing their venues, so there are amazingly good conversations everywhere. Ultimately, even the titular forum no longer matters (I've read great conversations on Facebook!) but it does matter if people respect their commons. That commons is what sustains all of us especially the outliers on the fringe. We may not be changing minds here but we are changing ourselves every time we stretch our self-definitions to include a bit more of "not me".
Posted by: soleri | May 01, 2014 at 07:34 AM
Ah -Top of the World, and Keystone Hotel, such memories for those of us who came of age in Phoenix in the 50s.
A 20 was your proof of age. It was bad to go close to an election though. The local Sheriff always closed them then.
Posted by: Ramjet | May 01, 2014 at 09:58 AM
Talton was not fired he was water boarded until he decided to live in a place not over ran by dullard zombies, out of control developers and religious zealots.
Posted by: cal Lash | May 01, 2014 at 10:22 AM
Ramjet is your first name Roger?
and did you buy a brick when the tore down the Keystone and appropriately gave the proceeds to the boy scouts. Many of whom earned their eagle badge with great climatic performances behind closed doors.
Posted by: cal Lash | May 01, 2014 at 10:29 AM
Soleri,
well it took Phil Boas many years but finally he is the head of the Arizona Republic editorial board. Possibly by default. It probably makes his relative's and about 30 percent of Arizona's population happy.
Unlike his predecessors he does not answer my e-mails. Even though Kevin Wiley and I disagreed a lot at least she responded even after she went to Dallas.
Personally my choice for the editorial chief would have been Benson but then like Talton he is too much a lightning rod.
Posted by: cal Lash | May 01, 2014 at 10:45 AM
Cal, if Phil Boas seems like weak tea, I'm not sure I'd blame Gannett or whoever owns the Republic now. Newspapers as print media are struggling everywhere. That said, it does seem more than a coincidence that Phoenix itself is struggling to find its place in the cosmos. The internet has radically decentralized the flow of information so niches are more important than ever. In Portland, alternative and neighborhood newspapers have replaced the center-right dinosaur, the Oregonian as primary suppliers of the current zeitgeist.
I look at the readers of actual newspapers and see very few young people. Is this a civic catastrophe? I certainly would have thought so 20 years ago. Now, I'm not so sure. Newspapers steadily improved prior to the digital revolution but there was no way they could compete with explosion of new online media. And in some ways, this is great for consumers. If you enjoy reading a wide range of opinions - and most news junkies do - not having to rely on Phil Boas for those choices is really a good thing.
When I was young, the Republic offered very limited fare, and very few if any libearls on their op-ed pages. We got a steady diet of pro-Franco pieces from Pulliam in-law Michael Padev, for example. Reg Manning's increasingly incompetent cartoons could never make up for his Pulitzer Prize. Bernie Wynn's chirpy political reporting was bilge. As time went on, the Republic expanded their stable to include a wider variety of columnists. When Steve Benson came on board in the 1980s, it actually began to feel a bit edgy. By the time the Republic replaced "war hero" Duke Tully with Pat Murphy, it was at its peak, with good investigative reporters, reliable local pundits and excellent arts' critics. Sad how most of that is gone.
I used to say that every city gets the newspapers it deserves. In the early '90s, Phoenix seemed to finally be growing up instead of just out. To look at the landscape today is more than disappointing. It's shocking, in fact. On the plus side is that Arizona's flaccid civic spirit, weak news media, and neglected public square no longer mean you have to consume news that usually disguised this reality. You can come here, for example. And for that, we should be grateful.
Posted by: soleri | May 01, 2014 at 01:35 PM
Congratulations Arizona is finally number one!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/college-sexual-assault_n_5247267.html
disgusting!
Posted by: cal Lash | May 01, 2014 at 02:02 PM
"...earned their eagle badge with great climatic performances behind closed doors."
I'm not sure I wanna know what this is about.
Posted by: eclecticdog | May 01, 2014 at 02:08 PM
Cal, Oddly enough my real name is Roger. Makes for a really easy handle. I didn't buy a brick but I probably paid for a few of them though. Buenos Tardes.
Posted by: Ramjet | May 01, 2014 at 02:21 PM
It all reminds me of a statement made by an ex mother in law from Douglas, AZ.
She said "we didnt have rape we had whore houses!"
Posted by: cal Lash | May 01, 2014 at 02:29 PM
The problem is that good journalism costs money. Experienced journalists, the ones with the skills to illuminate complex issues and hold the powerful accountable, can't afford to work for free. And this is where the death and self-inflicted wounds of major newspapers come in. There's plenty of information in many localities; less real journalism. What I do for Phoenix here is rare pro bono work, subsidized by my day job and foolish love for home.
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | May 01, 2014 at 03:07 PM
Seattle's May Day protest parade for workers' rights and immigration reform is about to begin.
It is a huge event worthy of a great city that values diversity and progressive ideals. Most participants are peaceful and law-abiding.
But every year a few self-proclaimed anarchists break windows, fight the police, etc. Do they realize this is not Sticking It To The Man? The Man lives in a gated property far away.
They are trashing public spaces and downtown, which represents the commons. The Man hates the commons and spends great treasure to trash them, too.
So, just remember, if you cause havoc downtown, you are doing the work of the Koch brothers and all their allies.
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | May 01, 2014 at 03:18 PM
My family, which stretches from Phoenix to Globe, Superior, Miami, Morenci has many tales about the red-headed stranger in the black hat. We don't need to go into details.
Cal, you could be my daddy, or uncle or cousin.
Posted by: Ruben | May 01, 2014 at 03:45 PM
"Experienced journalists, the ones with the skills to illuminate complex issues and hold the powerful accountable,"
Jon U know what happens to the above when they take on the powerful. They get water boarded until they end up like Gary Webb.
"To Kill the Messenger"
And when others try and bring the powerful to their knees, they have go into exile in a foreign place, waiting to be rendition-ed and placed in a dark solitary hole in an american for profit prison.
Posted by: cal Lash | May 01, 2014 at 04:00 PM
Ruben R U suggesting U R my son and my grandson?
I thought that only happened in the movies.
Posted by: cal Lash | May 01, 2014 at 04:02 PM
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS INFORMATION, REALLY HELPED BECAUSE I AM WRITING A TEN PAGE PAPER ON ARIZONA THROUGH THE 1930S-1940s!!!
Posted by: Celina Duran | August 03, 2017 at 12:25 AM
Really enjoyed the photos thanks for those Rogue. However, your political commentary below those photos reveal a bit of a nut. Funny how it’s the self proclaimed “progressives” that are so rabidly and angrily against those with differing points of political views. My Italian immigrant family was just as, if not more violently, “discriminated” against as were the mexican immigrants, and yet they flourished and assimilated without the need for “parades” and other hysterical victimology that has now become big business for the Hispanic. Look at all the other groups that somehow did just fine. Not difficult to see why.
Posted by: Smather J | June 05, 2018 at 02:26 AM
I appreciate this article a lot. Like another commenter, I ,too, have to write a 10 pg. paper on this topic. I was overwhelmed by writing my first research paper and put it off until the last week. This history of Phoenix during that time has given me an excellent starting place.
Posted by: Kirsten Findlay | August 02, 2021 at 05:07 PM
Thanks so much, Kristen!
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | August 02, 2021 at 10:16 PM