22-6 | Reporting the Plight of Depression Families
MARTHA GELLHORN, Field Report to Harry Hopkins (1934)
From Martha Gellhorn to Harry Hopkins, Report, Gaston County, North Carolina,
November 11, 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Harry Hopkins Papers, Box 66. Online
transcript available at http://newdeal.feri.org/hopkins/hop08.htm.
Journalist and novelist Martha Gellhorn’s heartrending field report describing impoverished
Gastonia, North Carolina, families vividly captures the desperate hope of depression-era
families. Hired by Harry Hopkins, Franklin Roosevelt’s point man for federal relief efforts,
Gellhorn detailed the enormous challenge facing the administration. Compounding the epic
humanitarian crisis she encountered was the political opposition, which she singled out as one
among many obstacles hampering relief efforts.
All during this trip [to North Carolina] I have been thinking to myself about that curious phrase
“red menace,” and wondering where said menace hid itself. Every house I visited — mill worker
or unemployed — had a picture of the President. These ranged from newspaper clippings (in
destitute homes) to large colored prints, framed in gilt cardboard. The portrait holds the place of
honour over the mantel. . . . He is at once God and their intimate friend; he knows them all by
name, knows their little town and mill, their little lives and problems. And, though everything else
fails, he is there, and will not let them down.
I have been seeing people who, according to almost any standard, have practically nothing in
life and practically nothing to look forward to or hope for. But there is hope; confidence,
something intangible and real: “the president isn’t going to forget us.”
Let me cite cases: I went to see a woman with five children who was living on relief ($3.40 a
week). Her picture of the President was a small one, and she told me her oldest daughter had
been married some months ago and had cried for the big, coloured picture as a wedding
present. The children have no shoes and that woman is terrified of the coming cold as if it were
a definite physical entity. There is practically no furniture left in the home, and you can imagine
what and how they eat. But she said, suddenly brightening, “I’d give my heart to see the
President. I know he means to do everything he can for us; but they make it hard for him; they
won’t let him.” I note this case as something special; because here the faith was coupled with a
feeling (entirely sympathetic) that the President was not entirely omnipotent.
I have been seeing mill workers; and in every mill when possible, the local Union president.
There has been widespread discrimination in the south; and many mills haven’t re-opened since
the strike. Those open often run on such curtailment that workers are getting from 2 to 3 days
work a week. The price of food has risen (especially the kind of food they eat: fat-back bacon,
flour, meal, sorghum) as high as 100%. It is getting cold; and they have no clothes. The Union
presidents are almost all out of work, since the strike. In many mill villages, evictions have been
served; more threatened. These men are in a terrible fix. (Lord, how barren the language
seems: these men are faced by hunger and cold, by the prospect of becoming dependent
beggars — in their own eyes: by the threat of homelessness, and their families dispersed. What
more can a man face, I don’t know.) You would expect to find them maddened with fear; with
hostility. I expected and waited for “lawless” talk; threats; or at least, blank despair. And I didn’t
find it. I found a kind of contained and quiet misery; fear for their families and fear that their
children wouldn’t be able to go to school. (“All we want is work and the chance to care for our
families like a man should.”) But what is keeping them sane, keeping them going on and hoping,
is their belief in the President. . . .
These are the things they say to me: “We trust in the Supreme Being and Franklin Roosevelt.”
— “You heard him talk over the radio, ain’t you? He’s the only president who ever said anything
about the forgotten man. We know he’s going to stand by us.” — “He’s a man of his word and
he promised us; we aren’t worrying as long as we got him.” — “The president won’t let these
awful conditions go on.” — “The president wanted the Code. The president knows why we
struck.” — “The president said no man was going to go hungry and cold; he’ll get us our jobs.” .
. .
I am going on and on about this because I think it has vast importance. These people will be
slow to give up hope; terribly slow to doubt the president. But if they don’t get their jobs; then
what? If the winter comes on and they find themselves on our below-subsistence relief; then
what? I think they might strike again; hopelessly and apathetically. In very few places, there
might be some violence speedily crushed. But if they lose this hope, there isn’t much left for
them as a group. And I feel [if] this class (whatever marvelous stock they are, too) loses its
courage or morale or whatever you want to call it, there will be an even worse social problem
than there now is. And I think that with time, adding disillusionment and suffering, they might
actually go against their own grain and turn into desperate people. As it is, between them and
fear, stands the President. But only the President . . . .
What has been constantly before me is the health problem. To write about it is difficult only in
that one doesn’t know where to begin. Our relief people are definitely on below subsistence
living scales. (This is the unanimous verdict of anyone connected with relief; and a brief study of
budgets clinches the matter.)
The result is that dietary diseases abound. I know that in this area there has always been
pelagra;1 but that doesn’t make matters better. In any case it is increasing; and I have seen it
ranging from scaly elbows in children to insanity in a grown man. Here is what doctors say: “It’s
no use telling mothers what to feed their children; they haven’t the food to give.” . . . “Conditions
are really horrible here; it seems as if the people were degenerating before your eyes: the
children are worse mentally and physically than their parents.” . . . “All the mill workers I see are
definite cases of undernourishment; that’s the best breeding ground I know for disease.” . . .
“There’s not much use prescribing medicine; they haven’t the money to buy it.” . . . “You can’t do
anything with these people until they’re educated to take care of themselves; they don’t know
what to eat; they haven’t the beginning of an idea how to protect themselves against sickness.” .
. .
The medical set-up, from every point of view, in this area is tragic. In Gaston County there is not
one county clinic or hospital; and only one health officer (appointed or elected?). This gentleman
has held his job for more than a dozen years; and must have had droll medical training
sometime during the last century. He believes oddly that three shots of neo-salvarsan will cure
syphilis; and thinks that injecting this into the arm muscle is as good as anything. Result: he
cripples and paralyzes his patients who won’t go back. He likewise refuses to sign sterilization
warrants on imbeciles: grounds “It’s a man’s prerogative to have children.” Another doctor in this
area owns a drug store. He was selling bottled tonic (home-made I think) to his mill worker
patients as a cure for syphilis. This was discovered by a 21 year old case worker, who
wondered why her clients’ money was disappearing so fast. When asked why he did this he
said that syphilis was partly a “run-down” condition, and that “you ought to build the patients up.”
Every doctor says that syphilis is spreading unchecked and uncured. One doctor even said that
it had assumed the proportions of an epidemic and wouldn’t be stopped unless the government
stepped in; and treated it like small-pox. . . .
Which brings us to birth control. Every social worker I saw, and every doctor, and the majority of
mill owners, talked about birth control as the basic need of this class. I have seen three
generations of unemployed (14 in all) living in one room; and both mother and daughter were
pregnant. Our relief people have a child a year; large families are the despair of the social
worker and the doctor. The doctors say that the more children in a family the lower the health
rating. These people regard children as something the Lord has seen fit to send them, and you
can’t question the Lord even if you don’t agree with him. There is absolutely no hope for these
children; I feel that our relief rolls will double themselves given time. The children are growing up
in terrible surroundings; dirt, disease, overcrowding, undernourishment. Often their parents were
farm people, who at least had air and enough food. This cannot be said for the children. I know
we could do birth control in this area; it would be a slow and trying job beginning with education.
(You have to fight superstition, stupidity and lack of hygiene.) But birth control would be worked
into prenatal clinics; and the grape vine telegraph is the best propaganda I know. I think if it isn’t
done that we may as well fold up; these people cannot be bettered under present
circumstances. Their health is going to pieces; the present generation of unemployed will be
useless human material in no time; their housing is frightful (talk about European slums); they
are ignorant and often below-par intelligence. What can we do: feed them — feed them pinto
beans and corn bread and sorghum and watch the pelagra spread. And in twenty years, what
will there be; how can a decent civilization be based on a decayed substrata, which is incapable
physically and mentally to cope with life?
As for their homes: I have seen a village where the latrines drain nicely down a gully to a well
from which they get their drinking water. Nobody thinks anything about this; but half the
population is both syphilitic and moronic; and why they aren’t all dead of typhoid I don’t know. (It
would probably be a blessing if they were.) . . .
[T]here is [also] a problem of education. (Do you know that the highest paid teacher in a school
in North Carolina gets $720 a year? This is not criticism of the teachers; it is a downright woe.)
But the schooling is such awful nonsense. Teach the kids to recite the Gettysburg address by
heart: somehow one is not impressed. And they don’t know what to eat or how to cook it; they
don’t even know that their bodies can be maintained in health by protective measures; they
don’t know that one needn’t have ten children when one can’t feed one; they don’t know that
syphilis is destroying and contagious. And with all this, they are grand people. If there is any
meaning in the phrase “American stock” it has some meaning here. They are sound and good
humored; kind and loyal. I don’t believe they are lazy; I believe they are mostly ill and ignorant.
They have a strong family feeling; and one sees this in pitiful ways — for instance: if there is any
means of keeping the children properly or prettily clothed, it is done; but the mother will be a
prematurely aged, ugly woman who has nothing to put on her back. And the father’s first
comment will be: could we get shoes for the children so they can go to school (though the father
himself may be walking on the ground). . . .
I hope you won’t misunderstand this report. It’s easy to see what the government is up against.
What with a bunch of loathsome ignoramuses talking about “lavish expenditure” and etc. And all
right-minded citizens virtuously protesting against anything which makes sense or sounds new.
I’m writing this extra report because you did send us out to look; and you ought to get as much
as we see. It isn’t all there is to see, by any means; and naturally I have been looking at the
worst and darkest side. But it is a terribly frightening picture. Is there no way we can get it before
the public, no way to make them realize that you cannot build a future on bad basic material?
We are so proud of being a new people in a free land. And we have a serf class; a serf class
which seems to me to be in as bad a state of degeneration maybe, in this area, worse than the
low class European who has learned self-protection through centuries of hardship. It makes me
raging mad to hear talk of “red revolution,” the talk of cowards who would deserve what they
got, having blindly and selfishly fomented revolution themselves. Besides I don’t believe it; it
takes time for all things including successful rebellion; time and a tradition for revolutions which
does not exist in this country. But it’s far more terrible to think that the basis of our race is slowly
rotting, almost before we have had time to become a race.
P7-6 | Labor Organizer Describes Latino Plight in America
LUISA MORENO, Caravans of Sorrow (1940)
Luisa Moreno, “Caravans of Sorrow,” in Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in
the United States, ed. David G. Gutierrez (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1996),
120–123.
The crisis of the Great Depression impacted the Latino population of the American Southwest,
magnifying their economic vulnerabilities and exacerbating ethnic discrimination. In response,
labor and civil rights activists rallied, creating an infrastructure of advocacy to affirm Latino rights
and identity. Guatemalan immigrant Luisa Moreno emerged as a leader of these efforts,
organizing the Spanish-Speaking Peoples’ Congress in 1939. In her statement before the
American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born in 1940, which came to be known as
the “Caravans of Sorrow” speech, she raised awareness of the discrimination facing
Spanish-speaking people and demanded equal justice for them.
Today the Latin Americans of the United States are seriously alarmed by the “antialien” drive
fostered by certain un-American elements; for them, the Palmer days1 . . . have never ended. In
recent years while deportations in general have decreased, the number of persons deported to
Mexico has constantly increased. During the period of 1933 to 1937, of a total of 55,087
deported, 25,135 were deportations of Mexicans. This is 45.5 percent of the total and does not
include an almost equal number of so-called voluntary departures.
Commenting on these figures, the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born wrote to
the Spanish-Speaking Peoples’ Congress in 1939: “One conclusion can be drawn, and that is,
where there is such a highly organized set-up as to effect deportations of so many thousands,
this set-up must be surrounded with a complete system of intimidation and discrimination of that
section of the population victimized by the deportation drive.”
Confirming the fact of a system of extensive discrimination are university studies by . . . many
other professors and social workers of the Southwest. Let me state the simple truth. The
majority of the Spanish-speaking peoples of the United States are victims of a setup for
discrimination, be they descendants of the first white settlers in America or noncitizens. . . .
Only some 5 or 6 percent of Latin American immigrants have become naturalized [because of]
the lack of documentary proof of entry, because entry was not recorded or because the
immigrants were brought over en masse by large interests handling transportation from Mexico
in their own peculiar way.
Arriving at logical conclusions, the Latin American noncitizens, rooted in this country, are
increasingly seeing the importance and need for naturalization. But how will the thousands of
migrants establish residence? What possibility have these people had, segregated in “Little
Mexicos,” to learn English and meet educational requirements? How can they, receiving hunger
wages while enriching the stockholders of the Great Western Sugar Company, the Bank of
America, and other large interests, pay high naturalization fees? A Mexican family living on relief
in Colorado would have to stop eating for two and a half months to pay for the citizenship
papers of one member of the family. Is this humanly possible?
But why have “aliens” on relief while the taxpayers “bleed”? Let me ask those who would raise
such a question: what would the Imperial Valley, the Rio Grande Valley, and other rich irrigated
valleys in the Southwest be without the arduous, self-sacrificing labor of these noncitizen
Americans? . . . Has anyone counted the miles of railroads built by these same noncitizens?
One can hardly imagine how many bales of cotton have passed through the nimble fingers of
Mexican men, women, and children. And what conditions have they had to endure to pick that
cotton? . . .
These people are not aliens. They have contributed their endurance, sacrifices, youth, and labor
to the Southwest. Indirectly, they have paid more taxes than all the stockholders of California’s
industrialized agriculture, the sugar beet companies and the large cotton interests that operate
or have operated with the labor of Mexican workers.
Surely the sugar beet growers have not been asked if they want to dispense with the skilled
labor cultivating and harvesting their crops season after season. It is only the large interests,
their stooges, and some badly misinformed people who claim that Mexicans are no longer
wanted.
And let us assume that 1.4 million men, women, and children were no longer wanted, what
could be done that would be different from the anti-Semitic persecutions in Europe? A people
who have lived twenty and thirty years in this country, tied up by family relations with the early
settlers, with American-born children, cannot be uprooted without the complete destruction of
the faintest semblance of democracy and human liberties for the whole population.
What then may the answer to this specific noncitizen problem be? The Spanish-Speaking
Peoples’ Congress of the United States proposes legislation that would encourage
naturalization of Latin American, West Indian, and Canadian residents of the United States and
that would nurture greater friendships among the peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
The question of hemispheric unity will remain an empty phrase while this problem at home
remains ignored and is aggravated by the fierce “antialien” drive.
Legislation to facilitate citizenship to all natural-born citizens from the countries of the Western
Hemisphere, waiving excessive fees and educational and other requirements of a technical
nature, is urgently needed. . . .
You have seen the forgotten character in the present American scene — a scene of the
Americas. Let me say that, in the face of greater hardships, the “Caravans of Sorrow” are
becoming the “Caravans of Hope.” They are organizing in trade unions with other workers in
agriculture and industry. The unity of Spanish-speaking citizens and noncitizens is being
furthered through the Spanish-Speaking Peoples’ Congress of the United States, an
organization embracing trade unions and fraternal, civic, and cultural organizations, mainly in
California. The purpose of this movement is to seek an improvement of social, economic, and
cultural conditions, and for the integration of Spanish-speaking citizens and noncitizens into the
American nation. The United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America,
with thousands of Spanish-speaking workers in its membership, and Liga Obrera of New
Mexico, were the initiators of the Congress.
This Congress stands with all progressive forces against the badly labeled “antialien” legislation
and asks the support of this Conference for democratic legislation to facilitate and encourage
naturalization. We hope that this Conference will serve to express the sentiment of the people of
this country in condemnation of undemocratic discrimination practiced against any person of
foreign birth and that it will rally the American people, native and foreign born, for the defeat of
un-American proposals. The Spanish-speaking peoples in the United States extend their fullest
support and cooperation to your efforts.