A Fraying City Torn Asunder

Despite the postponement of the annual Mummers Parade because of rain and snow on New Year's Day, 1929 seemed to begin bright with promise. With just under two million people, Philadelphia was the third-largest city in the United States and the 10th-largest in the world. There were more than 4,000 musicians and only 2,291 lawyers.

Spring training was just a few weeks away, and The Inquirer predicted that the Philadelphia Athletics would field a powerhouse that would win the American League pennant. The nation was about to inaugurate a new president, Republican Herbert Hoover, and an Inquirer editorial gushed: "The country has made wonderful progress under Coolidge. There is no anticipation other than it will continue to make wonderful progress under Hoover." The Broad Street Subway, whose construction the newspaper had energetically supported, had just started running.

But a deeper look showed a city frayed at the sleeves, worn at the elbows. Only 9,280 building permits were issued in 1928, down from 15,500 in 1924. Nine thousand Philadelphians lost their homes to foreclosure in 1928, and in 1929, 14,841 additional houses would fall under the sheriff's hammer. In February, one in 10 wage earners in the city was unemployed. Shantytowns along the rivers and squatter settlements in the marshlands housed hundreds of poor families. For others, reduced hours, lost days, and smaller checks were the norm. Men could not support their families, and in Philadelphia more than in any other U.S. city, wives and children were forced to take jobs to help make ends meet.

The grim economic news had a positive side. Philadelphians grew less tolerant of corruption in City Hall, which was controlled by the notorious Vare family. "No machine in Pennsylvania ever outdid the Vares for ruthlessness," wrote historian Paul B. Beers. "They registered the dead, known as the 'cemetery vote.' They falsified the registration lists so much that once, 122 voters were said to be living in one Philadelphia single-family dwelling. They extracted job-application and payroll assessments in the school system and kickbacks in the county row offices.