If lessons from our past provide insight for our future, then it’s wise to remember the Great Depression of the 1930s. For us, the Wisconsin Jewish community, that means a trip through the pages of the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.
Annual subscriptions to the independently published Chronicle then cost $3; Milwaukee’s Federated Jewish Charities felt proud to have raised $138,493; and the country was sinking into what is still considered the worst economic crisis it ever had in its history.
The effects of the great stock market crash of Oct. 29, 1929, were not evident immediately to the Milwaukee Jewish community that numbered about 22,000 in 1925, according to “The History of the Jews of Milwaukee” by Rabbi Louis J. Swichkow and Lloyd P. Gartner.
The Nov. 1 Chronicle issue of that year was filled with news of the opening of a new Jewish Community Center on Milwaukee St.
In subsequent weeks, the pages reported on plans for the FJC’s campaign, which that year raised its then-record amount of money ($138,493), and on efforts to help support the Jews of Palestine.
Not until an editorial in the Dec. 20 issue did The Chronicle — then run by its founders, editor Nathan J. Gould and publisher Irving G. Rhodes —note how “The recent stock crash threatened a slowing up of the industrial momentum with consequent widespread unemployment and ‘hard times.’”
Yet optimism prevailed. In the Dec. 27 editorial, The Chronicle wrote, “We hail the advent of the new year 1930 with eagerness and hope.”
And The Chronicle carried virtually no mention of the steadily worsening economic conditions for the first months of 1930, not even in its April 18 special tenth anniversary edition (which was not really the tenth anniversary, as The Chronicle had been founded in 1921).
Affected the world
But the Depression afflicted countries all over the world and their Jews. The Chronicle’s May 23 issue reported that in Eastern Europe, the Depression was “bearing especially hard on the Jewish population.”
The article reported that some 90 percent of the Jewish workers in the Polish textile industry were unemployed, as were 70 percent of Jews in the “needle trades” there.
Then in May 30 issue, a Chronicle editorial commented on news reports that “the present economic depression” was sparking employment discrimination against Jews “in New York and other industrial centers.”
The Chronicle’s first indication that the Depression was afflicting local Jews came in a news report in the June 27 issue. The board of directors of the FJC held a special meeting “to consider the extraordinary demands for relief and service being made on its various organizations due to the present economic depression.”
In the autumn of 1929, Milwaukee’s Jewish Social Services Association — predecessor to today’s Jewish Family Services — was giving financial assistance to 50 percent more families than it did one year ago, The Chronicle reported.
Moreover, the JSSA spent $42,000 in 1929, but would require $55,000 to perform its functions in 1930, The Chronicle said.
In addition, Mt. Sinai Hospital, then the Jewish community hospital, was reportedly providing more free medical care to indigent families, The Chronicle said.
In an editorial in the same issue, The Chronicle opined, “These ARE Bad Times — For the Poor…. Times are bad. Business is bad. Involuntary unemployment is great. The poor are much poorer.”
In this and another editorial in the following issue, The Chronicle urged community members not to wait until the end of the year, but to pay pledges to the FJC campaign at once.
In the July 25 issue, a Chronicle editorial noted that the problem of maintaining synagogues “has become acute.” The editorial called for mergers of synagogues, particularly of those dedicated to one nationality, like “Anshe Hungarn” for Hungarians or “Anshe Roumania” for Rumanians.
The editorial generally treated this as a national problem and didn’t site local examples; but there were such ethnic synagogues functioning in Milwaukee at the time.
Meanwhile, other issues continued to print Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports about the poverty of Eastern European Jews.
Ultimately, in its Rosh HaShanah issue of Sept. 26, a Chronicle editorial expressed the view that the Jewish year, 5690, “has been the saddest of any since the horrible period of the World War [as World War I was known then].”
The Chronicle mentioned the suffering of the Jews in Europe, but also wondered, “Is there an American Jewish problem?”
“The Jew is a city dweller” in America, “engaged in commerce and industry,” but “great industrial units are eliminating the independent business man from the economic scene.”
Yet The Chronicle tried to maintain a positive attitude. “We’ll emerge stronger and healthier in mind, body and soul,” it said in an Oct. 10 editorial.
Quotas declining
Optimism proved hard to sustain, however. In the Oct. 24 issue, The Chronicle reported that the FJC set its campaign quota for $150,000.
“Although the depression has caused an increase in demand” for services from Jewish agencies, FJC leaders strove to keep the quota down to “a little more than was raised for the past two years,” The Chronicle reported.
This even though the JSSA faced 30 percent more demand for its services and “had to borrow from banks,” The Chronicle said in a Nov. 7 editorial.
But on Dec. 5, The Chronicle had to report that the FJC drive closed with a total of $126,500 — and that was due to “reductions by larger givers.”
In 1931, signs of economic pain increased. According to the May 15 issue, a drive to raise funds for the Jewish Agency for Palestine tried to set a goal of $30,000. By May 29, its leaders reduced the goal to $10,000 — and by June 5, the campaign raised about $9,600.
In the June 19 issue, an editorial lamented the existence of college graduates who can’t get jobs washing dishes.
A July 3 editorial took note of some of the calls for radical change born of the Depression, and rejected calls for “a new American revolution.”
An Aug. 21 editorial denounced as “blasphemous vandalism” how some government leaders advised farmers to destroy one-third of their crops to reduce oversupply and raise prices — at a time when some people were starving. “A perfect paradox of plenty and want,” The Chronicle wrote.
On Sept. 4, The Chronicle reprinted in its editorial space a message from the Commission on Social Justice of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Reform movement’s rabbinical group. This message called upon the federal government to launch a program of public works.
On Oct. 2, The Chronicle carried a national news report noting an increase in the number of Jewish families applying for aid from Jewish welfare institutions. The cost of this was $1.4 million in the first half of 1931, compared to $1.03 million in the same period of 1930.
Again, The Chronicle tried to encourage optimism. It titled its Oct. 16 editorial “We Can Conquer the Depression.”
The editorial also recounted the story of an apparently local man who had a fortune of “about $500,000” and had expenditures of “about $2,000 a month” who now was living on $150 a month — and found some advantages to it.
The man said he slept better, thought better and only had concerns about food, clothing and shelter. “Why worry about the Depression anyhow?”
A second editorial took note of how some people who were not suffering from the Depression found it difficult to enjoy social life and felt as though they should be mourning.
In the Oct. 30 issue, FJC leaders announced the 1932 drive; but in the Nov. 6 issue, the leaders announced that they couldn’t decide on a quota. They were “unable to state exactly how much is needed to meet the distressing condition of Jewish social service for the coming year,” The Chronicle reported.
Eventually, they did say that at least $130,000 from 3,500 subscribers would be needed.
In describing the work of the funded agencies, The Chronicle reported that Jewish Social Service Association spent 40 percent of its funds for “direct relief” and gave “over 1,900 people” support or service in the previous year.
Yet the effects of the Depression eroded the community’s ability to respond to it. By the Nov. 13 Chronicle, FJC leaders were hoping the community would raise $125,000. On Nov. 20, the total raised was announced at $115,000 — and that “will not be sufficient.”
Coming revolution
At the beginning of 1932, The Chronicle in a Jan. 15 editorial called upon Congress to declare war on the Depression. “It has already caused more suffering in the body and soul of America than all the wars ever fought.”
Bad news from elsewhere continued to roll in. On Feb. 12, The Chronicle carried a report that some 50,000 Jews were unemployed in Chicago.
The Chronicle staff tried to remain optimistic. A July 22 editorial found “Some Good in the Depression” in that it gave people “a healthier and saner outlook” and helped them “appreciate values not measured in dollars.” The editorial also urged readers to have faith that “The Depression will pass.”
Optimism remained hard to sustain. In the Oct. 7 issue, the FJC announced a goal of $100,000 for its drive, which chair Benjamin Saltzstein called “a Herculean task.” By Nov. 25, the announced achievement was only $56,000.
In an Oct. 14 editorial, The Chronicle noted the approach of “the fourth winter of the Depression” by reporting that while two million Americans were unemployed in 1929, 12 million were in 1932.
But 1932 also was a presidential election year. Though not a non-profit organization then, The Chronicle declined to endorse any candidate for president.
But when Democrat Franklin Roosevelt soundly defeated Republican Herbert Hoover, The Chronicle noted the magnitude of the change, calling it “The Political Revolution of 1932.”
Of course, that didn’t mark the end of the Depression. The Federated Jewish Charities dissolved itself in 1937, “four years after turning over its beneficiaries to the Milwaukee Community Chest for support,” according to Switchkow/Gardner.
But the country, the community and, with it, The Chronicle, survived and endured. In 1938, the Jewish community created the Jewish Welfare Fund, which in 1972 changed its name to the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
So Gould’s and Rhodes’ predictions proved right, eventually. May their confidence and accuracy pass on to us, only in a shorter time.
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