Sorensen on Fearon, _Kansas in the Great Depression: Work Relief, the Dole and Rehabilitation_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (November 2007)

Peter Fearon, _Kansas in the Great Depression: Work Relief, the Dole 
and Rehabilitation_. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 
2007. x + 316 pp. $45 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-8262-1736-3.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Todd Sorensen, Department of Economics, 
University of California, Riverside.


Peter Fearon's book, _Kansas in the Great Depression: Work Relief, 
the Dole and Rehabilitation_, is a thorough examination of the role 
that the Kansas state government, the federal government, and the 
relationship between the two governments played in providing relief 
to those hardest hit by the Depression. Fearnon's work is rich in 
information drawn from primary sources. Probably the most important 
of these sources is the personal papers of John G. Stutz, the head of 
the Kansas Emergency Relief Committee, which was responsible for 
distributing the bulk of state-administered aid.

Fearon, Professor of Modern Economic and Social History at the 
University of Leicester, begins his book with a detailed examination 
of the beginnings of the Great Depression in Kansas. This first 
chapter describes not only how the economic downturn affected the 
Kansas economy, but also the first responses by the state government 
to the crisis. As we later see, the state's early adoption of a 
number of reform measures eased its adaptation to New Deal policies 
and distribution of New Deal aid.

The economic and demographic changes that took place in Kansas 
throughout the 1920s are described in detail. Fearon notes that 
during the decade before the Great Depression, manufacturing 
employment declined significantly (though at a lower rate than in 
many other states). On the agricultural side of the economy, an 
unusually moist decade created excellent farming conditions that in 
turn lead to a "curse of plenty" with downward pressure on wheat and 
other crop prices, creating economic distress for an already heavily 
mortgaged farm sector.

Records from the 1920s also allow us to gain some insight into the 
prior state of the social safety net that would be greatly 
transformed in the years ahead. The poor laws that existed in the 
1920s had changed very little from those that were set up shortly 
after statehood was granted in 1862. These laws put a strong emphasis 
upon the ideal that able bodied men should have no problem obtaining 
employment. A result of this was that serious stigma was attached to 
aid dispensed to these "undeserving poor." Two important 
institutional details of the pre-depression poor laws were that all 
responsibility for aid rested in the hands of the county, and aid was 
restricted to those who had been residents of the county for at least 
six months.

The first large New Deal-like spending from the Hoover Administration 
came from the Emergency Relief and Construction Act. Kansas was 
receptive to the type of money that would be available from the 
Emergency Relief Division (ERD), which was created under the act. The 
ERD would provide low-interest federal loans to states to undertake 
projects that would help reduce unemployment. The administration of 
these projects, however, would still rest with the states. Then 
Democratic governor, Harry H. Woodring, created the Kansas Federal 
Relief Committee (KFRC) to administer this money. The KFRC's members 
generally supported aid that would consist of work relief rather than 
handouts, and would be means-tested. The executive secretary of the 
KFRC was John G. Stutz, who went on to play an important role in the 
administration of relief throughout the New Deal. The KFRC also 
created similar style committees in each of Kansas' 105 counties.

With the November 1932 election of Franklin Roosevelt, federal 
involvement in state relief efforts was set to change significantly. 
At the same time, Alfred Landon, a Republican, was elected as the new 
Governor of Kansas. An important early decision made by Landon was to 
retain the majority-Democrat KFRC from the prior administration. 
While this was probably done more due to practical considerations for 
preserving continuity, it likely had positive political repercussions 
for the KFRC's future dealings with the new Democratic administration 
in Washington.

As mentioned above, Fearon's key primary source is the papers of John 
Stutz, whose role in the administration of relief is discussed 
throughout the text. Stutz was raised in Kansas and had degrees in 
political science and sociology from the University of Chicago. From 
the time of his graduation until his involvement with relief 
administration, Stutz was the executive director of the League of 
Kansas Municipalities, where he had become well respected nationally 
among those involved with city management. His efforts to exchange 
ideas with people in his position in other states lead to the 
founding of the American Municipal Association, the precursor to the 
National League of Cities. Fearon cites Stutz's already established 
managerial and bureaucratic talents when considering his role in the 
development of a nationally-respected infrastructure to provide 
relief support in Kansas. Stutz is credited with the development of a 
professional and well-educated network of social workers that 
distributed Kansas' federal aid dollars efficiently and effectively.

While a Republican himself, the level of respect that Stutz enjoyed 
from Democrats (at least initially) is evidenced by the fact that it 
was a Democratic governor who appointed him to his post with KFRC 
(later the Kansas Emergency Relief Committee (KERC)). Fearon also 
notes the initial lack of political tension between Washington and 
Topeka. This truce held reasonably well until the run up to the 1934 
elections, in which Landon was able to secure a second term. During 
the election, Stutz faced a number of personal and political attacks 
alleging instances of patronage and politicization of relief. At the 
same time, Democrats seemed to be promising that federal patronage to 
the state as a whole would increase should they strengthen their 
share of the state congressional delegation and retake the 
governorship. Political tensions increased even more as Governor 
Landon sought the Republican nomination and later challenged 
Roosevelt in the general election of 1936. While Fearon makes no 
direct comparisons to other states, it would have been interesting to 
see if there was an overall increase in the politicization of relief 
throughout the country in the run up the 1936 election, whether this 
effect was limited to states with Republican governors, or whether it 
was specific to Kansas, the home state of the Republican presidential 
candidate.

In addition to explaining the "why" of economic and political factors 
that determined how New Deal aid was administered throughout the 
1930s, the middle chapters also lay out in great detail the "how" and 
"what" of the workings of these programs. For instance, Fearon 
describes how the availability of funds for future relief efforts was 
influenced greatly by the 1933 approval by the state legislature of 
Landon's reforms to the tax code. Landon adopted the first state 
income tax, and levied a number of excise taxes. This was done both 
to broaden the tax base to allow for greater expenditures as well as 
to address equity concerns. These reforms allowed Kansas to move away 
from a revenue flow that was so greatly dependent upon property 
taxes; more revenue was to be collected from sources on the basis of 
ability to pay. Landon also required all taxing entities in Kansas to 
work on "cash basis" in order to avoid any deficit spending. While 
expanding relief spending, Landon also embarked on an austerity 
program that involved salary cuts to state employees, including 
himself.

A preference shared by both Kansas and the Federal government was the 
use of work relief over direct "dole" payments. The sources of 
funding to Kansas' counties evolved from Reconstruction Finance 
Corporation (RFC) grants at the end of the Hoover Administration to 
the Civil Works Administration in the first year of the Roosevelt 
Administration to the Federal Emergency Relief Administration through 
1935, and finally to the establishment of the Works Progress 
Administration (WPA). The last of these changes was probably the most 
significant to Kansas, as it meant the federal government taking over 
direct administration of relief spending.

Given Fearon's focus on the political struggles between Washington 
and the state government and alleged further politicization of aid 
leading up to the 1936 election, a longer in-depth discussion of the 
political motives behind the establishment of the WPA would have been 
beneficial: can this be seen as a case of the federal government 
taking over administration of a program from the states in order to 
increase the ability of the incumbent to spend money for political 
benefit?

The effect of the establishment of the WPA upon the KERC was 
profound: its funding was decreased dramatically and its mission was 
being tackled by another competing agency. KERC's preference for work 
relief over the dole meant a great loss to the WPA in terms of its 
effective scope. Democrats in Congress, frustrated with Stutz's 
running of KERC, were eager to have one of their own in the new post 
that would oversee the WPA's activities in the state. In the summer 
of 1935, Stutz was passed over for this position in favor of Evan 
Griffith, the state's re-employment director. Stutz resigned from his 
position with KERC and ended his role in relief administration in 
January 1937, after the defeat of the Republican gubernatorial 
candidate.

In addition to chronicling the development of the administration of 
New Deal relief in one state and providing some insight into the 
political and bureaucratic matters that governed this process, the 
book makes a number of other smaller contributions as well. Not least 
of these is a chapter on relief and the agricultural sector, to which 
Fearon devotes a fair portion of the book. While substantial, this is 
clearly less of a focus than his study of relief efforts outside of 
the agricultural sector.

Fearon also spends a notable amount of time discussing the plight of 
women on the relief rolls (or in many cases, merely trying to get 
onto the rolls). There are also illustrative accounts of tensions 
between natives and Kansas' small Mexican migrant community and of 
the relatively minimal racial tensions that arose as a result of the 
allocation of New Deal spending. Fearon gives several very 
informative accounts of how spending programs affected Kansas' 
relatively small African American community.

When examining why the Kansas relief administration was a success, 
Fearon concedes that some of the differences between Kansas' 
experience of relief during the Great Depression and the experiences 
of other states may have stemmed from a relatively less severe 
economic downturn in Kansas, a relatively homogeneous population, a 
significant out migration from the state that helped relieve 
pressures, and a lack of open hostility to relief in principle. 
However, he maintains that a great deal of the superior performance 
of Kansas' relief administration can be attributed to John Stutz and 
his managerial ability.

One thing that is lacking in the book is a more thorough discussion 
of how Kansas was different -- apart from the contemporary opinions 
expressed by federal officials involved in relief efforts. The book 
would have benefited from a more consistent set of measures to 
compare how the administrative structure of the relief programs was 
different from other states, how the politics behind the development 
of this structure differed, and how ultimately these may have 
affected outcomes of those dependent upon relief.

All in all, _Kansas in the Great Depression_ provides a well laid out 
description of the economic circumstances, political factors, and 
institutional details that lead Kansas to have what was widely 
perceived to be "a microcosm of what welfare professions were trying 
to create throughout the country."


Todd Sorensen is an Assistant Professor at the University of 
California, Riverside. He works in the areas of labor economics, 
migration and economic history. A recent work, "Migration Creation, 
Diversion, and Retention: New Deal Grants and Migration, 1935-1940," 
studies how New Deal spending affected internal migration during the 
Great Depression. toddas at ucr.edu.

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