Vestiges from New Deal remain in NWI as new jobs plan emerges
FDR wasted no time fighting the Great Depression in making projects happen
As Congress weighs President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion American Jobs Plan to boost the economy after a yearlong and continuing pandemic shuttered businesses and erased jobs, brick-and-mortar remnants from another era of economic despair can still be found in Northwest Indiana.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to the White House in 1933, he didn’t waste time floating ideas.
Brought on by the 1929 stock market crash, the Great Depression created an epidemic of job losses, soup kitchens and bank failures. As millions hungered for jobs, a 1,000-year drought called the “Dust Bowl” battered the Midwest, decimating farm fields and endangering livestock.
Millions of Americans lost jobs and endured health crises in 2020 as the country struggles to rebound against the COVID-19 pandemic. A member of the Indiana University faculty in Bloomington sees economic parallels in the two eras.
“Politicians are openly making this analogy,” said Will Winecoff, assistant professor of political science at IU. “Part of the justification is the New Deal worked in the past where we were facing a similarly muscular response from the government.”
He cited a recent jobs report that showed 500,000 people filed new unemployment claims.
“That’s just an absurd level,” said Winecoff, who works in Woodburn Hall, a Bloomington campus building constructed by the New Deal public works program.
“Even though we’re starting to recover, we are a long ways from a return to normal.”
In 1933, Roosevelt called his policies “priming the pump.” Early on, he convinced Congress to authorize $3 billion to state and local governments for direct relief payments to needy Americans.
After a year, the philosophy shifted as criticism of “handouts” grew. Replacing the initial effort were work-relief programs that paid workers for performing jobs that benefited communities.
The popular Civilian Conservation Corps enlisted
about 2 million unemployed unmarried men, aged 17 to 25 for forestry and agricultural projects in 1933. They lived in military-type camps and planted trees, built bridges and reservoirs, and cleared park trails.
A CCC group came to Indiana Dunes State Park in 1933 and camped at the site of Dunes Creek near the park’s Pavilion.
They built Wilson Shelter, a partially enclosed building with a fireplace near a trailhead. It was named for a local meatpacking family.
The largest of Roosevelt’s “alphabet soup” programs was the Works Progress Administration.
The program put about 9 million Americans to work building roads, bridges and public buildings. Local projects include the post offices that still stand in Crown Point and Hobart, the Hammond Civic Center and the Wicker Park Clubhouse in Highland.
Roosevelt didn’t forget the arts either. Out-of-work artists painted murals that still line the post office walls in Crown Point and Hobart.
James Lane, a local historian and retired IU Northwest history professor, said the purpose of the New Deal and Biden’s proposals focus on stimulating the economy and putting people to work.
“The workforce back then was heavily industrial … that’s shrunk considerably today,” Lane said. “Today, the effort to stimulate small business is probably just as dire.”
Brad Miller, regional director for Indiana Landmarks, said several WPA projects targeted preservation efforts of historical sites.
“That played a big part in how preservation got professionalized,” said Miller. “They put out-of-work architects to work to preserve old structures.”
Besides a construction impact, the New Deal inspired a vital artistic renaissance through its Federal Writers and Federal Theatre projects.
Fresh perspectives emerged from Black authors such as Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright, along with Saul Bellow, Nelson Algren and John Steinbeck.
Gary historian and writer Sam Love said Betty Kessler Lyman, a Gary homemaker and artist, wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt seeking money for a children’s theater. Kessler Lyman called her troupe the Mickey Mouse Players.
Her persistence landed a $3,282 grant in 1936.
Love said more than 1,800 children gave performances across the city for two years. They offered traditional and ethnic folk tales and puppet shows.
Because the theater was organized through the segregated Gary school district, Love said Black children couldn’t perform with whites and had their own separate unit.
By 1939, Congress cut funding for the Federal Theatre Project, amid complaints the program was becoming a hotbed of Communism.
Love said the children’s theater brought the city together and provided a brief respite for residents from their financial struggle.
“Can you imagine the anxiety and fear people were experiencing?” said Love. “
“This was the government bringing the community together for its own best interest. It was a reassurance and shined an important light on our culture.”