Document – Lorena Hickok Reports on Federal Relief Efforts (November 1933)

Document:

Minot, North Dakota, November 1, 1933

I visited today another North Dakota county—Williams county—in which the Federal Relief Administration, through the North Dakota Relief Committee, is supposed to be doing a 100 per cent relief job.

Again, as in Morton county on Monday, I found indications of inadequacy and a most urgent need for clothing.

I wish I could find words adequately to express to you the immediate need for clothing in this area. All I can say is that these people have GOT to have clothing—RIGHT AWAY. It may be Indian Summer in Washington, but it’s Winter up here. They’ve had their first snow. Snow is forecast for tomorrow. It’s COLD.

Into the relief office in Williston, county seat of Williams county, came today a little middle-aged farmer—skin like leather, heavily calloused, grimy hands—incongruously attired in a worn light flannel suit of collegiate cut, flashy blue sweater, also worn, belted tan topcoat, and cap to match. These clothes, he explained, belonged to his eldest son.

“They’re all we’ve got now,” he said. “We take turns wearing ’em.”

It was the first time he had asked for relief, he said, and he thought he could pull through the winter so far as food for his family and his livestock went, even though the grasshoppers did eat up most of his crop last summer.

But they needed clothes—badly and right away. They hadn’t been able to buy any for three years. Even last winter his children had been unable to go to school for lack of clothing.

There were nine in his family—he had seven children.

They needed AT ONCE a suit of underwear apiece, overshoes, and stockings all around. He wasn’t even mentioning shoes. Said they could get along if they had overshoes and socks to wear inside.

The secretary of the relief committee and I figured out what it would cost, at local retail prices, to provide these articles. It came to $40.50. Nine suits of underwear at $2 each, $18; nine pairs of overshoes at $2 each, $18; nine pairs of socks at 50 cents a pair, $4.50. Total, $40.50.

And that did not include things like jackets and sweaters.

“This is just a typical case,” said the secretary of the relief committee. There was certainly nothing framed about it. The secretary did not know I was in town until I showed up in his office. And the man was just one of the “customers,” who happened to wander in while I was there.

“What I’d like to know,” the secretary of the relief committee added, “is where we’re going to get the money to buy these things.

“In September we spent $8,000 on relief in this county. In October, Bismarck cut us down to $6,000. What we’re going to get in November I don’t know.

“It’s all federal money. All this county has got is tax warrants, and the merchants won’t take them.

“We’ve got 450 families on relief in this county now, and the number is increasing every day at the rate of about seven. Some days we have as high as 15 new cases. Six thousand dollars a month isn’t anywhere nearly enough to feed them decently and buy fuel—let alone providing clothing.”

So much for inadequacy. They told me in Bismarck Monday there were five counties in the state getting 100 percent federal relief. At this rate—$6,000 each for the two counties among the five I have visited so far—they’re putting out $30,000 a month. Nobody up here seems to know what we’re putting into the state per month. I mean to find out when I get back to Bismarck.…

All Summer I’ve been hearing, wherever I’ve gone, that there was going to be an urgent need for clothing this winter. As I write, I wonder, for instance, if any clothing has been distributed yet up in Northern Maine. It seems to have been a case of the relief people knowing all Summer that clothing was going to be needed this winter—but doing nothing about it. And now Winter is upon us. Up here in North Dakota, it has arrived. They must have clothing at once—NOW.…

The situation in North Dakota shapes up something like this:

A majority of the farmers—livestock breeders as well as wheat farmers—are actually bankrupt. I was told in Williston today that 95 percent of the farmers around there were bankrupt.

Those whose wheat crops were ruined by drouth or grasshoppers or hail—and there are a lot of them—are destitute.

Those who had a crop and the livestock men are not getting enough for their products to carry them through the winter.

Take the cattlemen. I enclose a check and a bill of sale I picked up today in Ray, about 100 miles West of here. If they don’t tell a story, I don’t know what would. Four cows, weighing a total of 4,000 pounds and raised at a minimum cost of $20 apiece, were sold on the Chicago market and netted the owner exactly $3.61! You never could convince that fellow that the price of farm products has gone up.…

In the closed bank at Ray today I spent an hour with two cattlemen, one of whom happens to be secretary of the Farmers’ Loan Association.

One of them had sold to the other 30 head of cattle for $310. The buyer shipped 27 of them to the market, and, after deductions for freight and commissions, received a check for $178.54. I saw the entry in his books.

“They weren’t prime,” he said, “but good stuff. Better than canning grade. And at that I did fairly well. Some cattlemen around here have netted as low as 35 cents per animal!

“We figure everybody’d be better off if the government bought them up at a low price and slaughtered them here and distributed them to the starving farmers.”…

The wheat farmers’ story is about the same, perhaps not quite so bad. Wheat in North Dakota today was selling for somewhere around 65 cents a bushel. They say it costs 77 cents a bushel to produce it. As much as they can, they’re holding their wheat back, hoping to get better price this year than last, when it sold for as low as 25 cents a bushel, they admit, but it is still, they insist, selling below production cost. The judge in Williston said there are 5,500,000 bushels of wheat stored in North Dakota elevators today awaiting a better price.…

One man told me that most of his neighbors have moved away in the last five years. Just given up and pulled out. Incidentally, in St. Paul the other day I heard of an employee of the state highway department who had seen along the roads in Western Minnesota in a couple of days seven covered wagons. Farmers, he said, who had lost their farms, and were just roaming about the country, like gypsies.…

Into the office of the Farmers’ Loan Association in Williston today there came a quiet, mild-mannered Scandinavian wheat farmer seeking a loan.

He’d been “hailed out again,” he said. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t had a really good year since 1916.

“Why do you stick at it?” I asked.

“No place to go,” was his reply.

His assets were 30 head of cattle, 16 horses, some hogs, some farm machinery, a tractor, which he hadn’t used for several years because he couldn’t afford to, and 320 acres of land.

His liabilities were: Bank of North Dakota, mortgage on a quarter section of his land, $800; farm implement company, $400; blacksmith, $300; hardware company, for spare parts, tools, etc., $1,000; back taxes, $600; U.S. feed and seed loans, $500. A total of $3,600.

During the conversation the secretary of the Farmers’ Loan Association, taking his application, asked:

“How are you fixed for the winter in food and clothes for your family?”

The man didn’t answer. Instead, his eyes filled up with tears—which he wiped away with the back of his hand.

The question was not repeated. And for the second time since I’ve been on this job I found myself blinking to keep tears out of my own eyes.

Review:

1. 1) According to Hickok, what were economic conditions like in 1933? What problems did the people of North Dakota face? What did they need?

2. 2) How were federal relief programs administered? Were they adequate to meet the needs of the people?

3. 3) What do these letters reveal about New Dealers like Hickok and Hopkins? What motivated them? What did they hope to achieve?