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ElaineSturtevant
For the Kids...and the Corn
A fascinating mini-history on the beginnings of the federal school-lunch program, from the USDA (http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/lunch/AboutLunch/ProgramHistory_11.htm):
The depression of the 1930's brought on widespread unemployment. Millions of people in the cities lost their jobs and were without means of support for themselves and their families. They were obliged to seek help through public assistance programs.
Much of the production of the farm went begging for a market, surpluses of farm products continued to mount, prices of farm products declined to a point where farm income provided only a meager subsistence. Millions of school children were unable to pay for their school lunches, and with but limited family resources to provide meals at home, the danger of malnutrition among children became a national concern. Federal assistance became essential, and Congressional action was taken in 1935 to aid both agriculture and the school lunch program.
Public Law 320 passed by the 74th Congress and approved August 24,1936, made available to the Secretary of Agriculture an amount of money equal to 30 percent of the gross receipts from duties collected under the customs laws during each calendar year. The sums were to be maintained in a separate fund to be used by the Secretary to encourage the domestic consumption of certain agricultural commodities (usually those in surplus supply) by diverting them from the normal channels of trade and commerce. The object of this legislation was to remove price-depressing surplus foods from the market through government purchase and dispose of them through exports and domestic donations to consumers in such a way as not to interfere with normal sales.
Needy families and school lunch programs became constructive outlets for the commodities purchased by the USDA under the terms of such legislation. Many needy school children could not afford to pay for lunches and were sorely in need of supplementary foods from a nutritional standpoint. Thus they would be using foods at school which would not otherwise be purchased in the market place and farmers would be helped by obtaining an outlet for their products at a reasonable price. The purchase and distribution program was assigned in 1935 to the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation which had been established in 1933 as the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation to distribute surplus pork, dairy products, and wheat to the needy. In March 1937, there were 3,839 schools receiving commodities for lunch programs serving 342,031 children daily. Two years later, the number of schools participating had grown to 14,075 and the number of children had risen to 892,259.
Ideas to Return to a Fantastic School Lunch Program
Under the influence of the new TV program on ABD, "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" I have been inclined to research the history of the National School Lunch Program - how did we get to this unhealthy mess?!?
Along the way, I found a fascinating account of how rural communities overcame their difficulties in providing lunches to school children at the turn of the 20th century. What a difference it could make today to put a cow in the recess yard and encourage students to bring vegetables to cook the lunch together!
(from http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/lunch/AboutLunch/ProgramHistory_2.htm):
Nationally, rural schools had a special problem in attempting to establish warm noonday lunches for their pupils. Almost without exception there was no room available for setting up a kitchen and dining area. Children came to school from long distances, and their lunches at noon consisted mainly of cold sandwiches, many of them of questionable nutritive value.
Efforts were made beginning in the early 1900's to provide some means of warming certain foods brought from home or to prepare a hot food of some kind at school as a supplement to the foods brought from home. Public funds for such purposes were generally not available. But many ingenious teachers devised plans for preparing soups or similar hot dishes from meats and vegetables brought to school by pupils as a donation for the general use of all. Students took turns in helping to prepare the foods before the morning session began. Such dishes were cooked in a large kettle set on top of the stove which also heated the school room.
In Wisconsin, an extensive program known as "the pint jar method" was used in heating foods brought from home. Students were encouraged to bring such items as soups, macaroni, cocoa, etc. in a pint jar. The pint jars were set into a bucket of water on top of the room heater or stove, and by lunch time such foods would be piping hot. Much stress was placed upon the importance of students receiving some hot food at school each day to supplement the cold sandwiches (sometimes frozen solid by the time the student reached school).
In 1914 the Pinellas County (Florida) health officer, decided to experiment at the school to see what results would come out of a program which would provide each child with a half pint of milk a day. To get the program started a large white cow was placed on the playground with posters and other material to explain what was being attempted. Amid this setting the children were served their milk. The health officer was so impressed with the results that he suggested they serve a bowl of soup to the children with the milk.
A group of mothers and the principal planned and carried out the project serving the children a hot bowl of soup with crackers and one-half pint of milk. The meat and some of the potatoes were donated by the mothers. They also furnished the utensils, and the principal supplied the vegetables grown in the school garden.
Discussion Questions for March 22
Roosevelt said:
"Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference" and
"There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected." (Glory and the Dream, p. 142)
Which government do we have now, and which generation are we in?
Depression Apples
The following article was posted on the New York Times blog "Freakonomics" recently, looking at the possible over-sensationalization of depression era apple selling:
It may be the most emotionally powerful photograph to come out of the Great Depression: the well-dressed, unemployed businessman hawking apples for a nickel on a city street corner. It’s a poignant image—the stoic gentleman attempting to preserve a vestige of dignity for himself and his family. But is it an accurate reflection of the era? After all, no more than 5,000 out of 10,000,000 unemployed Americans actually sought relief selling apples.
Indeed, the skeptic has good reason to suspect historical sensationalism. University of Wisconsin historian Stanley Schultz writes that the street corner vendor is little more than a “stereotype,” one that’s “become romanticized in popular culture.” As he sees it, the actual suffering was “much less dramatic, and thus more dismal.”
But the collective experience of apple vendors should not be dismissed, for it reverberates well beyond their numbers. Ultimately, thousands of men spent thousands of hours on New York street corners during the Depression due to the efforts of a man named Joseph Sicker.
In 1930, just after the Crash, Sicker became chairman of the Unemployed Relief Committee of the International Apple Growers Association. Sicker’s approach to the problem of mounting unemployment was simple. He would start, as he put it, “an apple selling crusade.”
Sicker began his mission during “National Apple Week” in September, 1930. With a startup fund of $10,000 donated by the produce industry he arranged to sell boxes of apples to unemployed businessmen at rates that were about 10 percent below market price. Every morning the unemployed would meet at 66 Harrison Street to purchase a $2.20 box of 88 apples for $2.00 a box. From there they would fan out into the city (via carts or cabs they hired) to set up shop, tell their tales of woe to the ranks of the employed, and sell their subsidized apples. When they day was over they owed Sicker $1.75 to offset costs.
For a brief moment the vendors did well—very well. Although Sicker provided cardboard signs that read “Unemployed: Buy Apples 5 cents each,” many sellers devised their own price schemes. The New York Times reported that, in the fall of 1930, just after the program started, venders were selling apples as high as 50 cents a pop and grossing more than $16 a day. Clearly, some sellers were cultivating a “client base” willing to pay above market price to help a good person get through a bad time. Needless to say, as The Times noted, “Unemployed men and women flocked into the profitable trade,” becoming visible “on almost every street corner.”
And that, of course, was the problem. Come spring of 1931, the program was shot through with vendors. About 4000-5000 in fact. And they found themselves working under much less forgiving economic circumstances. Gone were the days of the 50 cent apple. Now all apples went for a nickel, and tips were rarely given. Factor in the cost of carting apples to a desired location, and it turns out that the typical vendor was netting about a penny an apple. This might have been a subsidized program, but the laws of supply and demand were still felt. And increasingly, they hurt.
Still, it was the Depression, and most vendors had no choice but to keep at it, collectively buying about 320,000 apples a day from the Association throughout 1931. Vendors offloaded so many of Sicker’s subsidized apples that he had to start importing supplies from Washington State—New York apples were gone. Eventually, Sicker’s Association was having to buy apples for $2.50 a box rather than $2.20—refusing all the while to pass costs on to the vendors. The Times explained, “The association’s problem is how to stop this unprofitable business without destroying a means of livelihood for so many men and women.”
Making matters worse was the fact that retailers were also getting slammed. One letter writer to The Times noted, probably correctly, that “it would be better for the retailers of the city to buy off all the apple sellers.” Feed and clothe the poor vendors, he added, “but get them off the street corners between the shop doors.” This plan might have made economic sense, but it ignored the fact that work—even if it was only selling apples—conferred self-respect, something that may have been just as important as money to many of the (male) vendors.
For better or worse, by the fall of 1931, relief came in the form of another economic endeavor: shoe shining. In 1931, before the influx of former apple peddlers, a conventional New York City shine cost a dime. The new guys offered it for a nickel. As one former apple-selling “freebooter” put it, “Yeah, business is better now. People don’t mind spending a nickel. They say, ‘what’s 5 cents anyway.’ But a dime—that’s money.” The Times observed, “men who last winter were selling apples [are] now carrying a rag, a bottle, and a box as stock in trade.” Shoe shiners, after making an initial capital investment, no longer had to pay carting fees or cover Association costs.
So why is it the apple peddler that gets all the glory? After all, at the height of the Depression—or at least when unemployment was the highest—the apple selling craze had diminished, yielding to shoe shining (at least in Manhattan). I think the answer has to do with symbolism. There’s something more noble in the image of two Americans standing together and exchanging a nickel for an apple than there is in one man hunched around the feet of another, face down, grunting it out. When we think about how resilient Americans were to have survived the Depression, we (understandably) prefer to imagine equals helping equals rather than the haves humoring the shoe-scrubbing talents of the have-nots.
FDR's Commonwealth Club Speech
A transcript of his "one radical speech":
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrcommonwealth.htm
Hoover Ball
Looks like a good workout!
From Wikipedia:
"Hooverball is a medicine ball game invented by President Herbert Hoover's personal physician to help keep then-President Hoover fit."
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