A Fraying City Torn Asunder

Out on the Main Line, the wealthy laid off their domestic servants and gardeners. Nevertheless, the wealthiest Philadelphians continued to live as they had before the Depression, which is to say quite well. The view from society's box seats was round after round of charity balls, dog shows, debutante debuts, and foxhunts. The Inquirer provided extensive coverage of these events, and the adjective "gay" often was attached to them. Indeed, there was a weekly column entitled "Gay Adventures." During the winter months, there were daily reports from Palm Beach, Fla., where many Philadelphians fled winter's chill.

But the truth of the times was clearer among ordinary Philadelphians, who saw their jobs being eliminated, their goods repossessed, and their lifetime savings vanishing in bank failures. In late November, Mayor Harry A. Mackey spoke of the "anguished and unspeakably miserable victims of some misfortune whose pleas flood the city at this time."

Within a year of the crash, Karl de Scheweinitz, secretary of the new Philadelphia Committee for Unemployment Relief, said private welfare funds were exhausted and many people had nothing to eat but dandelions. Several hospitals reported "definite cases of starvation." Within three years, 50 Philadelphia banks closed. As sheriff's sales multiplied, homeowners became tenants and the city's reputation for owner-occupied houses evaporated.

By April 1931, two in every five Philadelphia workers were unemployed or reduced to part-time employment. The jobless turned to peddling, and the mayor's office declared in 1932 that 1,200 Philadelphians were selling apples on the street. Homeless families moved in with relatives to form "combined families." People slept in chairs and on floors. A 1934 housing survey found 24,000 such combined families. There were fewer marriages, few divorces, and fewer births.

In his book Philadelphia Stories: A Photographic History, 1920-1960, Frederic Miller describes a spirit of community that grew as the Depression deepened. "People tried to take care of their own, helping in the ways they had often aided the unfortunate. Neighborhood stores generally offered credit, their owners sharing the misfortunes of their customers in order to stay in business, and because they wanted to help. The city's police stations, traditionally a last resort for the homeless, offered the rudimentary hospitality of concrete floors to more than five hundred men a night by fall 1930."