THE POPULAR PRACTICE OF WOMAN-BLAMING IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION

One of the first impulses in these times of depression is to whallop the ladies. --Gail Laughlin, National Woman's Party

THE MARRIED WOMAN WORKER

Housewives were 'deserting the kitchens' of the country to take jobs when millions of men were out of work.

--Newspaper claims quoted in John N. Webb and Joseph C. Bevis, Facts about Unemployment, Works Progress Administration, Social Problems Series #4 (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1940).

"There aren't enough jobs for married men" and "Married women who work when they don't have to are just taking bread out of the mouths of others."

-- "Survey Shows 78 Percent Opposed to Wives in Pin-Money Jobs," New York Times, November 27, 1938, II, 4:1.

THE EMASCULATING WIFE

The women punished the men for not bringing home the bacon by withholding themselves sexually. By belittling and emasculating the men, undermining their paternal authority, turning to the eldest son. Making the eldest son the man of the family. These men suffered from depression. They felt despised, they were ashamed of themselves . . . They avoided home. --Psychiatrist Nelson Ackerman, quoted in Irving Bernstein, A Caring Society, 21.

THE PROSTITUTE

Conditions in New York are drifting back to a plane which we left twenty years ago . . . Street solicitation is again becoming an open sore.

--"Cleaning Up New York's Dance Dives," Literary Digest 110(August 1, 1931), 9-10.

The desperation of young women who cannot find work in this time of protracted depression is forcing many of the either directly into prostitution or at least into border-line occupations from which the ranks of prostitution are most generally recruited.

-- Seabury Report, quoted in The New Republic, December 30, 1931.

THE FEMALE HOBO

They go from jungle to jungle and from box car to box car without discrimination. Any place where there are men and boys, they know they will be welcome. They enter a box car or a jungle, and without more ado the line forms to the right.

--Thomas Minehan, Men on the Move, 140.

Heard many tales of women hoboes. One hobo told me how two women had lightened the journey of some twenty hoboes one night.

--Robert Carter, correspondent for The New Republic

"Boys are being crippled or diseased or worse" through their exposure to such women.

--Witness testimony during congressional hearings on transiency, 1933

WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION

The unemployed to whom the Federal program applies are those who are able-bodied but who can not find private jobs and are dependent on a helping hand because of the failure of the economic system. Jobs are ALL the WPA gives. It gives no direct relief, all of which is handled by the States and localities. Every WPA check is in return for work done.

--Harry Hopkins, "What is the 'American Way'?" An Address Delivered at the Chatauqua Institution, Chatauqua, New York, July 16, 1938. Published by the WPA (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1938).

The typical unemployed . . . worker on relief [is] a white man, thirty-eight years of age and the head of a household.

--Harry Hopkins, Spending to Save, 116.

ATTACKS ON WPA SEWING ROOMS AND THE CHRONICALY DEPENDENT FEMALE WORKER

[WPA women's work impedes] some of the most important objectives of a work program. Projects on which women are employed fail to prepare them to find jobs open to women in private enterprise or fail (as the sewing projects are said to fail) to maintain normal standards of production.

--Donald S. Howard, The WPA and Federal Relief Policy (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943), 284-85.

Custom compels an able-bodied man to work, [while] no such pressure applies to women.

--S.D. Ozer, WPA policy statement on women's work relief, p. 28 . He stated, "The chance of any considerable number of the women working on sewing projects becoming employed in private clothing industries is very slight."

 

PROMOTION OF WOMEN'S PROJECTS OF 'DEFINITE COMMUNITY VALUE: HOUSEHOLD WORKERS' TRAINING, HOUSEKEEPING AIDES, AND HOT SCHOOL LUNCHES

The value of the instruction is not limited to the improvement of the housekeeper's efficiency on her job. Clients whom she serves learn from her. She carries her training back to her own home, where her family are rendered healthier, cleaner, better fed and more comfortable because she knows better how to care for them. Neighbors learn and are benefited in turn; and gradually better standards spread through the whole community.

--Press release, Public Information Section of the WPA, New York City, for release on March 23, 1938. WPA Women's Division Files, RG 6, National Archives.

The bulk of the women's program . . . has been built around their traditional skills, and has taught thousands of women to make clothes, to can and to cook with knowledge of food values.

--Hopkins, Spending to Save, 169.