Great depression story. About how to deal with the suffering that the Great Depression brought about and i want to first talk a little bit about that suffering so we can see that. Economic epic opportunity fell pretty dramatically. This is a measure of us gross domestic product. So does anybody know what that might mean . Gross domestic product have a sense dan. I would be products in the us in general not imports or exports just products in the us and not just physical products, but all economic activity. So its its an attempt to measure all the academic activity thats happening in the economy. And so and of course, it wont catch everything, but it catches a lot of it and its good to compare across time and you can see that in 1929. Were over a hundred billion dollars in gross domestic product, but that started to fall pretty dramatically so that by 1930 were below a hundred million by 1931 were below 80 million by 1932 were below 60 million and were right about in the 50s, so were probably cut in half gross domestic product. Which means the economy shrank by by half, which is a terribly difficult thing now youre good. So so its what does that mean though . For people ordinary people well, unemployment row is pretty dramatically. Well, i think i have a pointer here that i can use so you can see i dont have a pointer. Laser pointer you can see that in 1929 the Unemployment Rate was 3. 2 percent and thats pretty low. Thats almost full employment. We would say. But by 1930 it had more than doubled to 8. 7 by 1931 to 15. 0 almost 16 unemployment. Thats really really high. By 193223. 6 and then almost 25 by 1933. So thats much higher than anything that you would have seen in your lifetimes or that weve seen since then so by comparison some recent peaks of unemployment in 2000 and 2010 Unemployment Rate was 9. 63 and thats in the wake of the great collapse of the of the market in the 2010 and then in 2020 with the pandemic we got up to about 8. 3 percent. So at its worst were about what we were in 1930, right . So we didnt nearly approach the 31 32 or 33 levels. So thats a really intense unemployment and what that means for folks is pretty serious. Now we are now today at 3. 8 percent. So were almost back down to the unemployment level that were in 1929. So were almost at full employment. Okay. What does that mean, though . For the Human Experience of unemployment and this is scotts run. Is anybody here from West Virginia . You know the scotts run is right near morgantown West Virginia, and its a Coal Mining Community and the lines were shut down. And so that miners were still there still in scotts run, but they had no source of income. They had no food and so their children were really really struggling. This is from 1935. So its after theyve had some relief this photo but this is family from scott throwing the kids. So the Hoover Administration was very concerned about childrens starving and they said that we want to send the Childrens Bureau out to look at whats happening at scotts run and see if we could do something to ameliorate that suffering and they were thinking about Something Like a milk program where they could bring milk to families and children could have milk. So the Childrens Bureau will solicited the help of the quakers social action division. And thats the thats the American Friends Service committee, and they went out to help figure out what was going on. And they when they looked at the extent of the suffering in scotts run, they said that they needed a bigger solution than just milk for kids. They needed something thats more comprehensive because it was such an intense suffering that was going on and kids were at risk. So they recommended something that would ultimately become the Subsistence Homestead Program and they said really to make it reasonable for families to live. They need to have a healthful house and you have us thats a domicile somewhere to live. They need to have enough land to grow a garden because probably theyre never going to have enough income to buy all their food, so theyre going to need to supplement the food that they would get with the garden. They need to have some kind of parttime work at least to some have some cash flow in so they could do something with their money. They would need to have some kind of Community Health services or when they get sick or they have babies or any other kind of health needs and they probably could use a cooperative dairy farm, which would be helpful for folks to sell the milk and also to have access to the milk. And ultimately the quaker is because there are social organization. Theyre very into community. They said what we want to do is transform this individualistic ethos. Into a Community Ethos that would change so we dont were not competing against each other, but were cooperating with each other in order to survive. So i thought when i a fairly dramatic transformation now the Hoover Administration said well that we distributing milk is one thing but having this comprehensive transformation is too much and we dont want to go that far. They said its too much like socialism. So were not were very nervous about socialism. We dont want to have that. In virtually all of western pennsylvania in the 1920s was a heavily republican area. So the all the newspapers were republican almost universally and so they all again agreed with that that we dont want socialism here. We dont want to have anything like that. Im going to talk about Westmoreland County in a bit. So thats why i have that up there. Better to go hungry than to become socialist essentially, but hoover lost the election in 1932 to Franklin Delano roosevelt and roosevelt introduced a whole bunch of different programs that collectively we call the new deal. One of those programs is the one that we want to talk about is, how do you how do you assist people who are struggling in old coal mining areas . So Eleanor Roosevelt, his wife was a really really strong advocate of trying to lift people up to make it so that people could live with dignity and support. And she sent emissaries out to see what was happening in the country. So he wanted to get firsthand accounts from people and some of those emissaries went out to scotts run to see what was going on and they said yeah, its as bad as people say the people really are suffering and we really need to do something about that. And so she thought okay. Why dont we establish . A Model Community near scotts run that could be to achieve all of the things that we talked about with the quakers and the Subsistence Homestead Division. Then become a model that others could emulate another places and eventually this subsistence homestand program established 34 communities. So the first one is in West Virginia near scotts run called arthur dale. The next that there are two in the West Virginia, theres one in western, pennsylvania. Theres one in tennessee and there are 29 other scattered throughout the country norveld, which is one. Well talk about here in west in western pennsylvania. Turn out to be the largest one so but 250 houses in the community. Four of those subsistence homestead communities were aimed at helping out of work minors. So this is we know of big big coal mining region and so one one of the was to allow. Stranded Industrial Workers people who are doing mining not farming out away from the cities to stay in this in the hinterland because the only places at this point that were really helping providing unemployment relief and food where the cities so you would go to the city the city would try and feed folks who are unemployed within the city who are struggling we didnt have a National Program yet. We didnt have statewide programs. But but you dont want everybody coming in from the rural areas into the city because it would overwhelm the system and the systems were already overwhelmed. So this was a really bad situation. So if we could develop these communities these satellite communities out in the rural areas. That would keep the coal miners in western, pennsylvania in West Virginia and tennessee, then they wouldnt be coming into the cities then they could allow themselves to succeed. They could we could make it possible for them to live with dignity and to live healthful and secure lives. So arthur dale was the first and i want to invite you to look at this image and this is the arthur dale. This is a house that was built in the orthodale community. What strikes you about this house or . Anything from that image that you want to observe or make note of does it look huge . Is it a mansion remember we looked at those Steel Workers homes . And the the superintendents homes and homestead pennsylvania is this which one is it more . Like do you think . John looks like you know a pretty average home i guess for the time on i know we talked about it last time with the cole families you would shove like two families usually in a house. I dont know if its kind of like that with this but no, so these would be one of the ideals was that each familys have its own house. So this wouldnt be a duplex but rather than individual house. For cold mining families can you see the outbuildings at all . And if i can get this other way that thing doesnt work and im not supposed to stray beyond this point, but theres to the left of the to the left of the house. You can see an out building. Looks like a smaller house maybe and behind it. You can see a grape arbor. Coming out from the back. So the idea was a families would be able to grow grapes and then use those for jams and jellies to eat themselves and then behind you can see a garage in the back as well. Arthur dale was the first of the communities and so all of the problems got sort of manifest in arthur dale and then got sort of in the other communities. So one of the things they want to move quickly in arthurdale. They bought prefab houses that were originally designed to be vacation homes or cottages on the seashore in new england, so they were not insulated. They were used only in the summer months typically. And so they bought them in mass and they were having them shipped down here, but as they were waiting for them to ship down they dug out the the foundations for the houses, but when the house is arrived it turned out that the foundations didnt match the houses. They had to redig foundations, and they had to readjust some of the houses. They had to insulate the house because they werent very well insulated. They had to do a lot of adjustments that sort of were awkward and expensive. Transitions on the move, but arthurdales where they figured all of that stuff out. Heres another image of one of the arthur dale. Houses i remember the the house is pretty small. Its only about 700 to 800 square feet. So thats not a very big house probably two bedrooms a bathroom. Side porches so that you can go out and not get wet in the rain you could you could get some shade. Tigard valley is also a place in West Virginia which was for unemployed coworkers. Coal miners you can see in tigard valley. Thats got a dutch kind of a dutch barn design. Each of the communities was supposed to be designed to be i want to say reminiscent, but thats not the right word of the region from which they came so that it would reflect in some way the culture of the region in which the community was built. And this is what the larger stretch of community was. There we go. You can see the different houses. In the back, some of them are not the dutch barn design, but in the back you can see that some of them are. Usually about five or six different House Designs within a community. Cumberland homes, tennessee was another Coal Mining Community. This is again. This is a house for one Single Family two bedrooms. Maybe three bedrooms living room kitchen on that first floor. It looks i well. Whats your impression of this house . I shouldnt impose. Mr. House you you would hate to live in . Lindsey tomorrow like just like a typical. Modern Family Household so it would it would fit in with today something today. Yeah might be a little bit smaller, but i think youre right. Its an attractive design. Its made a stone dandy. Do you want to jump in with it . Something i would the heartbeat it looks nice. Yeah, yeah. So cumberland homes in tennessee was also for coal miners and just as an aside has anybody in here ever heard of johnny cash the singer he grew up in a subsistence Homestead Community in arkansas. So he also lived in the substance home said not one of these four. Not one of these for though so westmoral at homesteads is the norvelt thats right around here and well talk about how it got its new name in a little bit. And you can what strikes you about this . This is a kind of a longer range view of the norveldt community or westmoreland homesteads. Does anything strike you in that imagery . And what point you first here to the Resettlement Administration that says here the subsistence the new deal had a whole bunch of different organizations and they kept reshuffling them. So the Subsistence Homestead Division became part of the Resettlement Administration. There were about 34 subsistence homestead communities built, but the Resettlement Administration had about another 70 or so, so theyre over a hundred. Communities built through the Resettlement Administration the subsistence homestead and there were still some other organizations that were building from the federal government as well. All right. Im gonna point you things that might not seem. Very meaningful. What is is this thing right here . So telephone pole its like a telephone pole. So probably that means that they had well, im sorry. Power so it could be electrical. It could be electrical lines and they also had phones they had phones and electricity. So thats and thats a big deal because the patch communities they were coming from often didnt have those things. Anything else about the houses or about the neighborhood . Does it look attractive to you feel like yeah, you would live there dans gonna live in cumberland, but youre gonna live live here at western, pennsylvania. Yeah, all right. Okay, so why Westmoreland County . Why do they build a community . Why do they choose and this is not very far from Saint Vincent campus about five miles from our campus. Why did they choose to build here part of it was that . There is a great need in western, pennsylvania so you can see that by two minutes Coal Production in about the World War Two where shes been world war one error was about 35 million tons in Fayette County and then about 30 in Westmoreland County, but by 1932 they were down to a third of that so they had really the production of Coal Production had declined very very dramatically in this period of time. And so these coal miners were out of work at one point. There were 500,000 coal miners in america and was down to about 200,000 actively working during a Great Depression. So there was a real concern about people being out of work. In Westmoreland County in 1933, so that was the peak of the unemployment that we saw in the last graph. 52 of people were fully employed 21 were under employed. Well talk about that in a second and about 27 were unemployed entirely. So 20 its even higher in Westmoreland County than it was in the nation as a whole but an underemployed person if somebody who wants to be working fulltime and cant work full time because theres not enough opportunity or the jobs dont have enough hours and one example would be the Us Steel Corporation was reluctant to lay off workers out right . So they said we want to employ people we want to spread out the work among all the employees, but that meant that of the period in 1933 the typical steel worker worked one day every other week, so they only got one out of 14 days that they were able to work and you just cant support a family or even yourself on one day a week. So those would be under employed folks. If you add the unemployed and the underemployed you have almost half the population of eligible workers who want to work who dont have a job who arent going to be able to do it. So this is a really this is a place of a suffering really badly and as evidence i want to i want to look at what was it like calumet is a western, pennsylvania colfax community. And coal patches what they call the small communities that were built around a mine entrance the shaft entrance. What strikes you about this photo . And we just were looking at the homestead photos . And looks pretty run down. It definitely doesnt look as nice. You just showed us. And i dont know if you can tell but this is actually a duplex. So thats half thats another family over there. And then these guys are over here. So youre saying it looks like its more run down than the other. Okay . Like the other houses you showed us earlier in the year. Yeah, yeah. The you would you would move fr