Historians have differed over how to explain the influence of New Deal social policies at the local, state and national levels. Some have argued that Roosevelt's New Deal programs, by expanding the role of government, created opportunities for political entrepreneurs to use federal programs to build a base of support for themselves and the Democratic Party in their communities.[1] The lives of Florence Wyckoff and Helen Hosmer indicate that a more complex and organic process occurred in San Francisco. Both women came of age in the early-1930s and were profoundly influenced by the human suffering and injustice they witnessed during the Depression. San Francisco's 1934 General Strike radicalized them both and helped propel them into social reform work. Contemporary events caused them to take action, yet much of their inspiration and many of their ideas and programs derived from an older generation of social reformers. Indeed, both women developed close ties with a network of people and organizations who shared their social reform objectives. This network of supporters and allies included recent graduates and professors from the University of California(UC) at Berkeley, union leaders, journalists, physicians, the San Francisco YWCA, social workers, elected officials, staff members of New Deal agencies and others with both liberal and radical political views. Hosmer and Wyckoff labored successfully to strengthen and expand that network. The story of their work indicates that in San Francisco, a network of like-minded individuals and organizations, not political entrepreneurs, used the opening offered by the New Deal to push their own reform programs. Rather than just being shaped by the policies of the Democratic Party, the members of this diverse political network used the party as a vehicle to advance their own social agenda. The stories of Helen Hosmer and Florence Wyckoff also dramatically illustrate the influential roles women played in advancing reform politics during the 1930s.Florence Wyckoff was raised in a liberal household, and was deeply influenced by her paternal grandfather, the distinguished and rather patriarchal director (1865-1909) of the Institute for the Deaf and Blind, located in Berkeley. Because of her grandfather and also her father, who was a prominent UC Berkeley professor, Florence Wyckoff grew up as part of a closely knit social network which included both eminent liberal intellectuals and patrons, such as Phoebe A. Hearst.[2] Although she had always been sensitive to social injustice, Florence Wyckoff's exposure to human misery as a youth came through literature and plays, rather than direct experience. As an undergraduate at UC Berkeley from 1922 to 1926, she studied science and philosophy before choosing to major in art. She was not particularly interested in politics as a student; indeed, she later stated that when she was a student, communist propaganda had struck her as "idiotic."[3]
Wyckoff's attitudes and concerns changed dramatically as a result of her direct exposure to the hardships people were enduring during the 1930s. Before she moved to San Francisco in the fall of 1931, Wyckoff said she "had been living the life of a protected little girl in a society where little girls were supposed to move in carefully selected circles."[4] Indeed, while traveling in Europe with her family during 1929-30, Wyckoff stayed in a palatial Italian villa, and socialized with people such as Ezra Pound and the princess of Greece.[5] Living in San Francisco brought her into daily contact with the "hopeless and bedraggled" people waiting in bread lines near her art studio. The Depression tore away the protective barrier which had once surrounded her.
Florence Wyckoff was also strongly influenced by people she met through her involvement with the San Francisco YWCA's Industrial Committee. Members of the YWCA staff politicized her, interpreted events such as the 1934 General Strike for her, and introduced her to union leaders. Wyckoff also became involved with Alexander Meiklejohn's San Francisco School for Social Studies after meeting his wife, Dr. Helen Meiklejohn, through the YWCA.[6]
Wyckoff joined the San Francisco YWCA shortly after it had become more deeply involved in promoting a social reform agenda. When the San Francisco YWCA was formed in 1878 it sought to assist the large numbers of women who were leaving their homes for paid work in factories, offices, and retail stores, in finding work, "good boarding houses, ... wholesome recreation, companionship and religious instruction."[7] The International Board of the YWCA called on local organizations to make the improvement in the status and working conditions faced by women in industry a top priority as early as 1891. There was little response from the "Y" in the United States for almost three decades.[8] In 1920 the influence of the Social Gospel movement, and pressure from working women, led the National YWCA to endorse the "Social Ideal of the Churches," recently adopted by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, which recommended social reform legislation and endorsed the right of workers to organize and engage in collective bargaining.[9] By the 1930s the National "Y" was calling for a "more equitable distribution of wealth in the interest of all the people;" and the "continuance and furtherance of social legislation" including: minimum wages, shorter work hours, unemployment and health insurance, old-age pensions, and the abolition of child labor. In addition to maintaining its commitment to the right of industrial, agricultural, household, and white-collar workers to organize, the National also urged the federal government to eliminate racial segregation, promote economic opportunities, protect their civil rights, and pass anti-lynching legislation.[10]
By 1929 the San Francisco YWCA expanded its community involvement considerably, and began to carry out the policies recommended by the National Association's, such as improving the conditions of working women and women immigrants. A Public Affairs Committee was formed in 1930. The Committee worked closely with organizations such as the League of Women Voters, and took positions on international, national, and local issues. During this period, the "Y" condemned a widely-publicized lynching in San Jose, formed an Anti-sweatshop committee, and participated in the activities of a local housing commission.[11]
In the Spring of 1932, the "Y" hired Brownie Lee Jones, a graduate of a union organizing school in New York state called Brookwood College, to head the newly-formed Industrial Department. Jones was asked to recruit young "low-wage mercantile, mechanical, and office workers," to the "Y" and to work with other agencies in the city to secure better working conditions for those women."[12] One of the first issues Jones' department worked on was protecting the minimum wage law. After working closely with professor Emily Huntington of UC Berkeley, who headed a research committee which pioneered cost-of-living studies, the YWCA lobbied against proposals by politicians in the state capitol to cut the minimum wage.[13] After Roosevelt's election, the "Y" also worked closely with federal relief agencies.[14]
Florence Wyckoff's involvement with Brownie Lee Jones' Industrial Department played a central role in her process of politicization. For example, Wyckoff stated that Jones "really knew something about worker's education and the labor movement and the history and significance of it, and the significance of women's role at that moment in the labor movement..."[15] Wyckoff also recalled that Jones brought in women labor leaders such as Jennie Malyas, the head of the local branch of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), to speak to the members of the Industrial Department.[16] Other actions of Jones' Department during this period included: raising scholarship money to send ten young women to the Western Industrial Summer School to be held in August 1934 at Occidental College in Los Angeles, writing a code covering domestic workers for the New Deal's National Recovery Administration, visiting a number of local factories and businesses to gather information, and requesting that the YWCA Board of Directors endorse the appointment of a new director for the state's Department of Industrial Relations, and also support the Wagner-Lewis Unemployment Insurance bill.[17] Along with these political, educational, and policy-making activities, the Industrial Committee organized more traditional YWCA functions. These were intended to provide "wholesome recreation" and companionship and included such activities as dancing, picnics, talks on how to "Keep Young and Beautiful," and a Marriage Education Class.[18]
Along with the YWCA, the Meiklejohns' School for Social Studies played an important role in the development of a liberal network in San Francisco during the 1930s. Wyckoff became involved with the School after meeting Dr. Helen Meiklejohn through the YWCA.
Alexander Meiklejohn grew up in a working class home and maintained a strong commitment to workers throughout his career in education. Meiklejohn had been asked to resign as head of Amherst College in the 1920s as a result of his controversial educational ideas; afterwards he established an Experimental College at the University of Wisconsin; and ultimately helped create a curriculum which centered on the study of the "Great Books", at the University of Chicago and St. John's College.[19]
In San Francisco, Meiklejohn worked with his wife to begin an experiment in adult education. The curriculum they established for the San Francisco School for Social Studies engaged adults of diverse backgrounds and occupations in weekly, and sometimes quite heated, discussions. In one such meeting, a member of the Bakery Wagon Drivers Union squared off with Jack Shelley (who was later elected major of San Francisco) in a fiery debate of the Constitution; in another session a longshoreman extolled the virtues of Plato's philosophy, while a young stockbroker championed Karl Marx; discussions were also conducted for recent migrants who were members of the ILGWU.[20]
The Meiklejohns sought to instruct their students on the meaning of democracy, "freedom, law, and society; of liberty and obligation; and of the relation of these to each other."[21] The Meiklejohns believed "a creative use of diversity" rather than a shallow "unanimity" was key to fostering a healthy democratic society. They believed that it did not matter if people argued, but it was vital "that they argue about the same things." For the Meiklejohns, "the price of freedom is mutual responsibility of thought, ... about whatever is vital to the common body."[22] The Meiklejohns played an important role in strengthening the ties between white union leaders and liberals, and helped to construct a cross-class consensus of values and concerns.[23]
In addition to the importance of institutions such as the YWCA and the Meiklejohns' School for Social Studies, key events also played a dramatic role in politicizing Florence Wyckoff. The 1934 San Francisco General Strike was perhaps the pivotal event of the decade in San Francisco. For Wyckoff, the Strike was the high point of the 1930s, "The whole city remembered it and it was a sort of paroxysm that occurred in which all of a sudden everybody began to see their relationship to each other."[24] And the "brainless and idiotic" behavior of business leaders during the Strike, "really made your eyes fly open."[25]
Helen Hosmer was working near the waterfront, at Sperry Flour Company, during the Strike. After seeing the National Guards' armed units lined up behind gunny-sack barricades she said, a "switch took place in my mind...suddenly I was aware of the strike, of what was going on."[26] Hosmer was also astounded to learn from a man who had witnessed the police shoot two strikers that the local press misrepresented the incident in their story, reversing the account which this witness had given them.[27] Up until that point in her life, Hosmer had rejected the socialist beliefs of her working-class Jewish parents; she had wanted desperately to assimilate with her Gentile peers. Music, not politics, had been her passion.[28]
The Criminal Syndicalism trial held early in 1935, further politicized Hosmer. "That was one of the most shocking things that ever took place in California. It was all because the farm workers wanted a little more money for picking cotton."[29] Hosmer's experience working as stenographer for Leo Gallagher, the defense attorney in the case, led her to conclude that the judicial system and corporate interests were working together to deny the defendants a fair trial.[3]0 The repressive nature of the Criminal Syndicalism Law was also evident to the San Francisco YWCA's Public Affairs Committee which announced in May, 1935 that it supported repeal of the law.[31]
In 1935, shortly after the end of this trial, Hosmer was able to find a job working for the information division of the Farm Security Administration (FSA).[32] This job fully politicized Hosmer by exposing her to the brutal conditions endured by migrant farm workers. She also learned that large commercial farm interests used their immense political power to try to block the extension of FSA camps into their localities. These farmers realized that the FSA camps would create a protected environment for farm workers and labor organizers. Consequently, they fought the FSA camps "every inch of the way."[33] In one case, growers in the Imperial Valley asked U.S. Senator McAdoo, a Democrat, to pressure the FSA not to build camps in their area34. After FSA officials discovered the wretched conditions in southern California, Hosmer was asked to tour migrant camps throughout the state to examine conditions first hand.
During one trip she arrived at a camp where over two hundred and fifty white and Mexican families were camped. The families had come after seeing advertisements for work, but when they arrived they were told the crops were not ready for harvesting. Hosmer recalled that tents had been pitched in muddy water, and there was no food. There were only three cans of condensed milk for about sixty infants. In one tent she remembered seeing a family with three children and an infant who was dying from pneumonia. Three days later when the food she had requested from the FSA office arrived, there were over four hundred families at the camp. With far more workers than jobs, growers cut wages in half. The workers went on strike. Hosmer stated, "I came back from the trip quivering and shaking; sickened by what I had seen in one of the richest states in the Unites States."[35]
As the FSA continued to assist the states migrant farm workers, the grower's political allies used new tactics to pressure the agency into moderating its work. A political witch hunt began, and suspected communists were targeted for removal. Hosmer was even targeted by conservatives after they learned that she had worked with Leo Gallagher on the Criminal Syndicalism case. Fortunately for Hosmer, the Regional Director of the FSA was willing to protect her. However, he said he could only do so if she became a perfect worker, and was willing "to wear gloves and slick up a bit;" he also suggested she consider marrying the man people had seen picking her up from work.[36] Although Hosmer was willing to follow this advice to the letter, she was ultimately frustrated that the California FSA would not openly admit that the problems facing migrant farm workers could only be solved through union organizing.[37]
This frustration led Hosmer to resign from the FSA in 1937 and establish the Simon J. Lubin Society, named after the "champion of the underdog of California agriculture," with donations from three of the division heads of the San Francisco FSA Office.[38] A small circle of San Francisco liberals also helped Hosmer organize the Society.[39] Her goal was to forge a coalition among small farmers, farm workers, and urban labor by showing that they shared a common enemy: the repressive corporate and financial interests which dominated California agriculture. Hosmer succeeded in building an organization based on a shoe-string budget and a staff of committed volunteers which influenced politics throughout the state. Subscriptions by farmers to the Society's newsletter grew to approximately three thousand; a large number of city dwellers also subscribed. Although seldom quoted, the Society's files were an important source of information on migrant worker conditions for journalists and writers.[40] Hosmer was able to convince Harry Bridges' speech writer that the ILWU union head must state in his 1937 debate with business leaders that "the forces that were trying to suppress farm labor and small farmers were the same forces that were trying to destroy the unions on the waterfront in the city."[41] Hosmer believed that the San Francisco business organization called the Committee of 43, and the Associated Farmers were, "interlocked through their shipping, canning, processing, banking, and land operations into one organization."[42]
Hosmer was able to win the endorsement of a broad-based group which included journalists, professors, ministers, actors, and elected officials from San Francisco and southern California. The politicians who endorsed the Society included: Congressman Jerry Voorhis, Assemblymen Samuel Yorty and Ellis Patterson, and Senator Culbert L. Olson. Indeed, when Olson was elected Governor in 1938, he asked the Society for its recommendation for the head of the State Board of Agriculture, and honored it, by naming Stewart Meigs to the post.[43]
While Helen Hosmer was working with the Farm Security Administration, Florence Wyckoff had been helping produce "revolutionary" theater productions, and starting a school for workers. Shortly after the 1934 General Strike, Wyckoff co-founded the San Francisco Theater Union (SFTU) with George Bratt, a man she had impulsively approached several years earlier at a bread line and asked to do some carpentry work for her. Bratt's real passion was theater. He left the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York city and came to California hoping to produce uncorrupted and "revolutionary drama," using the unemployed and workers on the waterfront as the actors. Wyckoff worked as the secretary, publicist, and fund-raiser for the SFTU from the spring of 1935 through the next several years. Concerned that the SFTU wouldn't survive without broad-based community support, Wyckoff set about signing up members of what she called "the liberal establishment" as members of the Theater Union's advisory board. This "establishment" included family friends who were on the UC Berkeley faculty, ministers, a school friend whose husband was a lawyer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and a member of the Meiklejohn School faculty. Not all of them agreed with what the SFTU was doing, but they were willing to defend it from attacks based on the principle of free speech.[44]
In addition to cultivating the backing of this liberal establishment, Wyckoff, through a contact of her brother's, asked to be introduced to leaders of the local Maritime Unions. She was interested in having the Unions sponsor the SFTU, and also provide talent for their plays. One of the men she met in this process was Captain Arvid Peterson, who had played an important role locally in Upton Sinclair's 1934 gubernatorial campaign. Peterson became a long-time friend of the Wyckoffs; he also was an enthusiastic supporter of the SFTU, and played roles in a number of its productions.[45] Peterson also introduced Wyckoff to Norma Perry, the indispensable secretary to Harry Bridges and the ILWU; Perry, in turn, provided Wyckoff with an inside perspective of the labor movement.[46]
While she worked with the SFTU, Florence Wyckoff continued her involvement with the YWCA's Industrial Committee. During the first few months of 1935, Brownie Lee Jones convinced Wyckoff of the need to organize a school for workers, and recruited her to work with a number of labor leaders such as Jennie Malyas of the ILGWU, other YWCA staff members, and Dr. Helen Meiklejohn, to sponsor a one month summer school for workers. This Pacific Coast School for Workers was held in Berkeley, on the grounds of the Pacific School of Religion, during the summer of 1935, and continued through 1939. Eventually, the school was jointly administered by the Workers Education Bureau of the AFL, the UC Berkeley Extension Division (Wyckoff's father was the head of the Division), the State Department of Education, and the California Association for Adult Education. Wyckoff recalled that they intended to set up a school to train workers in the practical skills of running a union: governance, bookkeeping, arbitration and negotiation, making contracts, and so forth. The stated goals of the school were broader: "to provide opportunities for workers to study the social and economic problems of present day society, to train themselves in clear thinking and adequate expression, and to develop a desire for study as a means to the understanding and enjoyment of life." The school's instructors included professors from UC Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, members of the Works Progress Administration, and Henry Melnikow, one of the pioneers of labor arbitration and negotiation on the west coast.[47]
While she was working with the Pacific Coast Labor School, Wyckoff heard of the difficulties the labor movement was having organizing agricultural workers. Using her contacts with friends at the San Francisco Farm Security Administration, she traveled to several FSA camps to recruit farm workers to the Pacific Coast Labor School. Although she was able to convince a few families to let their son go to the school, none of them went on to become labor organizers. However, the trip introduced her to the problems faced by migrant workers, and to the camps set up by the New Deal to help them. Wyckoff called the FSA camps one of the "great programs" of the New Deal.[48]
In 1937, Wyckoff began working with other Democrats to elect Culbert Olson as California's first Democratic governor in the twentieth century. Yet again, Brownie Lee Jones had influenced Wyckoff's decision. Wyckoff stated that, "gradually, the whole political scene began to become more real to me. I saw that we were about to have a very exciting election with a big change in government." Wyckoff organized Olson's calendar of speaking engagements and appearances in northern California. She also coordinated the work of several Policy Planning Committees which wrote policy briefs for Olson on issues such as health care and relief programs. Wyckoff brought together members of the liberal network she had met growing up, through her activities at the YWCA, and at the San Francisco School for Social Studies to work on the Committees. For example, the Health and Welfare subcommittee included both Alexander and Helen Meiklejohn, Brownie Lee Jones, the Executive Director of the YWCA, George Kidwell of the Bakery Wagon Drivers Union, and UC Berkeley professors Barbara Armstrong and Emily Huntington.[49]
In forming these committees Wyckoff attempted to build broad support for Olson's future legislative agenda. As she stated to one of Olson's top advisors, "All of these groups have lifelines out to large popular organizations through which support for legislative programs could be gained."[50] Wyckoff recalled later that her approach was influenced by the ideas about community involvement advocated by the California Conference of Social Work. According to Wyckoff, people felt one of FDR's weaknesses had been that his "brain trust" did not have any connection to rank and file workers, community groups, or PTAs.[51]
Other members of the Policy Planning Committees had different motivations for their involvement. UC Berkeley Professors Barbara Armstrong and Helen Huntington participated because they were interested in establishing a "compulsory" health insurance system in California. Helen Huntington was the daughter of a member of the UC Medical Center faculty and a protégé of UC Berkeley Professor of Economics, Jessica Peixotto. Peixotto was a leader of the group of "social" economists at Berkeley who were interested in labor, poverty, and social insurance. Huntington developed a strong interest in "social insurance" from her course work with Peixotto at Berkeley, and from the year she spent in England where she was introduced to their "growing but incomplete social insurance" system.[52] Because of her work with Professor Peixotto's Heller Committee for Social Economics, Huntington served as an advisor to the State Department of Social Welfare when it was establishing benefits for families with dependent children, and for single working women.
Huntington's older colleague, Professor Armstrong, shared similar interests. Armstrong was the executive secretary of the California Social Insurance Commission from 1917-19; she also helped draft the old age insurance clause of the 1935 Social Security Act.[53] After California's unemployment insurance law passed in 1935, Armstrong and Huntington focused their energies on the issue of health insurance. Boosted by the renewed national interest in health insurance created by the 1935 National Health Survey, Huntington and Armstrong began to work with several other professors at Berkeley, including Robert Oppenheimer, to prepare a position paper which articulated what they considered were the essential aspects of a good health insurance system.54 Consequently, Wyckoff included individuals on her Policy Planning Committees with a long-standing commitment to social reform. The Olson campaign presented them with an opportunity to implement their agenda, just as the New Deal provided social reformers throughout the country with opportunities to turn their goals for social reform into public policy.
In recognition of her important contribution to helping elect him governor, Olson appointed Florence Wyckoff as Community Relations Director for the State Relief Administration.[55] She was now responsible for traveling throughout the state to convince county governments to contribute at least fifty percent to the state relief budget. Her job was particularly difficult in southern California where growers were adamantly opposed to state and federal control of relief disbursements. Growers wanted workers removed from relief roles so that they would be forced to work for low wages. The growers in Visalia were particularly opposed to Wyckoff's efforts. Wyckoff became so angry with their intransigence that she complained to the State Director of Finance. The Director told her to tell the local merchants that unless their County Supervisors agreed to support the State Relief Association, all state funds would be cut off to them. The threat brought about the desired effect, though it proved to be only a temporary solution.[56]
Battles over the administration of the State Relief Administration (SRA), and county control of relief distribution raged throughout most of Olson's term as governor. Large growers and their Republican allies, along with members of his own party, attacked Olson's calls for increased state spending for relief programs and declared that the SRA was infested with communists. Motivations for the attacks varied, (Republican attacks were based on opposition to SRA support for farm workers, while Democrats opposed the Governor's attempts to expand his influence in the Party) but Democratic and Republican opponents alike used anti-Communist rhetoric and witch-hunting tactics.[57]
Under the former Republican governor, the head of the SRA had consistently sided with the growers in agricultural labor disputes, and would deny workers relief benefits if they refused to work for substandard wages, or if they declined to break a strike. In contrast, Olson's director of the SRA sided with the workers in a May 1939 cotton-picker's strike; he declared that workers would not be denied relief if they refused to work for less than the amount they had bargained for in the strike. After this new policy was announced, agricultural interests successfully lobbied their state representatives, causing them to vote en mass to block Olson from establishing a commission to recommend more generous wage scales for all agricultural workers. Grower's political allies and Olson's political opponents formed special committees to investigate communist influence in the State Relief Administration, and in the newly-formed State, County, and Municipal Workers Association (CIO). Olson's opponents focused on the Workers Alliance, an organization of unemployed workers led by two-time Communist Party candidate for the U.S. Senate, Alexander Noral. Noral claimed that his organization included over 42,000 members in 186 locals throughout the state. Olson's opponents also accused the assistant state administrator of the SRA, who opposed county control of relief disbursements, of being a communist, and successfully pressured the Governor to remove him. From the start of his administration, Olson was prevented from increasing the budget of the SRA to handle the huge increases in relief cases resulting from federal cutbacks.[58] In short, Olson's political enemies used red-baiting tactics quite effectively to prevent the governor from carrying out the political program which the San Francisco liberal network had helped shape.
The Progressive Era, World War I, and the Suffrage Movement fundamentally influenced the lives of an older generation of women reformers; similarly, the Depression and New Deal deeply influenced Wyckoff and her peers.[59] The social dislocation and human misery created by the Depression broke through the protective barrier surrounding Florence Wyckoff, and propelled her into social reform activities. Along with Helen Hosmer, Wyckoff was also profoundly effected by the bloody methods employed by San Francisco's 'captain's of industry' to try to crush the 1934 Waterfront Strike. These events made an indelible imprint on both women. Wyckoff was also deeply influenced by the network of social liberals in San Francisco that she met through the YWCA and the San Francisco School for Social Studies. At the YWCA she met Brownie Lee Jones and Mrs. Helen Meiklejohn. Both women belonged to an older generation than Wyckoff, and both were deeply committed to advancing the labor movement in general, and women's role in the labor movement in particular. This commitment led Meiklejohn and Jones to work closely with the unions such as the ILWU, along with unions primarily composed of men. Their commitment to the labor movement also led them to form the Pacific Coast Labor School. And they both successfully recruited Wyckoff to the cause. This is but one example of how the New Deal created opportunities for an older generation of social reformers, not only to advance their political program, but also to recruit a younger group who had been politicized by the Depression. Wyckoff's work with professors Emily Huntington and Barbara Armstrong on the Olson Campaign's policy planning committee is another example of this process. This older generation had been advancing reform measures such as social security, minimum wage and maximum hour legislation, health insurance, and mother's pensions, for many years.[60] The programs they helped establish had a lingering influence on this younger generation. For example, some forty years after visiting the FSA camps, Wyckoff still believed they effectively addressed the needs of migrant workers and said she was "trying to do the very same thing ... in Watsonville."[61]
Wyckoff's career also provides us with evidence of how New Deal liberalism brought some of these younger social reformers into the Democratic Party.[62] Olson's effort to create a 'little New Deal' in California, captured Wyckoff's interest because it offered her the possibility of bringing about "a big change in government." Indeed, Olson's support for labor and social welfare legislation mobilized important members of the San Francisco liberal network I have described. Brownie Lee Jones, Annie Clo Watson, and Mary Cady (all officers in the YWCA), participated in the Olson campaign policy planning committee on health and welfare; Alexander and Helen Meiklejohn also participated in the process, along with George Kidwell, head of the Bakery Wagon Drivers Union.[63] It is certainly significant that Olson made George Kidwell Director of Industrial Relations for the state after winning the election, and that another member of the committee besides Wyckoff was appointed to a position in the State Relief Administration.[64] This information indicates that San Francisco liberals viewed Olson's candidacy as an opportunity to advance a social and political agenda they had been formulating from the beginning of the decade, if not earlier, as in the case of Emily Huntington and Barbara Armstrong. Olson used patronage to try to build his influence, and to reward his supporters, and the staff members of federal agencies were important supporters of Olson's campaign and administration.[65] Nevertheless, describing this matrix of relationships as a "pro-growth coalition" obscures the importance of social welfare concerns as motivation for political involvement and policy creation. Additionally, the notion that political entrepreneurs construct such coalitions, discounts the initiative demonstrated by networks of social liberals, such as the one which developed in San Francisco during the 1930s.
Endnotes
1 John H. Mollenkopf, The Contested City, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).2 Florence Wyckoff, "Fifty Years of Grassroots Social Activism," an oral history conducted and edited by Randall Jarrell, (UC Santa Cruz, McHenry Library, 1989), pp. 16-20, pp. 24-32 and pp. 33-34.
3 Ibid., p. 52.
4 Ibid., p. 79.
5 Ibid., pp. 66-72.
6 Wyckoff could not actually recall if she joined the YWCA after attending the Meiklejohn School, or the reverse. However, the YWCA's 1933 Annual Report shows both Helen Meiklejohn and Florence Wyckoff as members of the Industrial Committee. In either case, it appears that Mrs. Meiklejohn introduced Wyckoff to a larger social network of San Francisco liberals. See also Wyckoff's interview by Gabrielle Morris in the Bay Area Foundation Series, vol. 3, p. 109.
7 Florence M. Romaine, "History of the YWCA in San Francisco: 1878-1930", San Francisco YWCA Files, p. 1.
8 Ibid., pp. 77-79.
9 Ibid., pp. 80-81.
10 "Actions of the Thirteenth National Convention YWCA," 02-08 May 1934, Philadelphia, San Francisco YWCA Files pp. 28-31.
11 Romaine, p. 67.
12 YWCA Board of Directors, Minutes, 29 April 1932, San Francisco YWCA Files; Florence Wyckoff, "Fifty Years of Grassroots Activism," p. 89; and The Brookwood Review, 20 March 1923: p. 1. Out of the nearly seventy such schools formed in the early-1920s, Brookwood was the only residence school for workers.
13 YWCA Board of Directors, Minutes. 08 December 1932, San Francisco YWCA Files.
14 Romaine, p. 69.
15 Wyckoff, "Fifty Years of Grassroots Activism," p. 89.
16 Ibid., p. 90.
17 San Francisco YWCA Board of Director's Meeting Minutes, 26 April 1933; 19 January 1934; 09 March 1934; 23 March 1934.
18 1935 and 1936 Annual Reports from the Business and Industrial Department, San Francisco YWCA Files. These Reports indicate the active involvement of Chinese and Japanese-Americans, which was typical of the YWCA in general, and also state a desire to include African- American women. Clubs for these women were established by 1939.
19 Oral history interview with Charles A. Hogan conducted by Amelia Fry, "Women in Politics Oral History Project", Helen Gahagan Douglas Project, vol. II, (Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley, 1981), pp. 367-368.
20 Alexander Meiklejohn, 1872-1964 - Memorial Meeting, Berkeley, California, 31 January 1965: pp. 11-12. A copy of this tribute is held at the Bancroft Library of UC Berkeley.
21 Ibid., p. 13.
22 Ibid., p. 12.
23 The liberals I am referring to include Alexander and Helen Meiklejohn, Jack Shelley, Florence Wyckoff, Charles Hogan and members of the League of Women Voters. Hogan was a member of the School's faculty. Wyckoff stated that he became the executive director of the UNESCO Western Hemisphere office in San Francisco. Hogan was also active in urban renewal efforts in both San Francisco and Washington D. C., before World War II; for example, he helped to revive the San Francisco Housing Association. Wyckoff, p. 82. Taped interview of Charles A. Hogan by Amelia Fry, Helen Gahagan Douglas Project, vol. 2, Women in Politics Oral History Project, (Regional Oral History Office, UC Berkeley, 1981), pp. 365-368.
24 Ibid., p. 89.
25 Wyckoff, "Fifty Years of Grassroots Activism," p. 87.
26 Helen Hosmer, "A Radical Critic of California Agribusiness in the 1930s," an oral history conducted by Randall Jarrell, (UC Santa Cruz, McHenry Library, 1992), p. 26.
27 Ibid., p. 27.
28 Ibid., pp. 10-15.
29 The Criminal Syndicalism trial stemmed from the arrest of seventeen members of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) on 20 January 1934. They were charged with multiple violations of the California criminal syndicalism law. The trial began in January 1935. On 01 April, eight of the seventeen defendants were found guilty. The decision was reversed by the Court of Appeals in 1937. For a more complete account of the case see Cletus Daniels, Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farm Workers - 1870-1941; and Hosmer, p. 28.
30 Ibid., pp. 31-32.
31 San Francisco YWCA Board of Director's Meeting Minutes: 13 May 1935.
32 Hosmer's oral history contains contradictory information about the dates of her employment with the FSA: IX, p. 38.
33 Ibid., p. 38.
34 Ibid., p. 39.
35 Ibid., pp. 40-42.
36 Ibid., p. 36.
37 Ibid., p. 37 and p. 47.
38 Ibid., p. 55. These three men were: Jonathan Garst, Fred Soule and Omer Mills. Each pledged to give Hosmer $25 per month.
39 Ibid., p. 65. Hosmer recalled that about ten people came to the meeting where the Society was founded. She only named three individuals specifically however: Dr. Russell Rypins ( a well known San Francisco doctor "who had been moved by the plight of agricultural workers") and Leigh and Hope Althern ('a young couple new to the problem but interested'). Rypins was named the chairman of the Society.
40 According to Hosmer, John Steinbeck repaid his debt for using the Lubin Society's files for his series on migrant workers published in The San Francisco News by giving her permission to assemble them into a book, Their Blood is Strong. The Lubin Society kept all the proceeds resulting from the sale of the book to support their work. Hosmer, pp. 56-57.
41 Ibid., pp. 71-72.
42 Ibid., p. 72.
43 Ibid., pp. 56, 65, 66, Appendix.
44 Ibid., pp. 79-84.
45 Ibid., pp. 87-88 and pp. 91-93.
46 Wyckoff, "Fifty Years of Grassroots Activism," vol. 2, p. 32.
47 Ibid., pp. 93-96 and the 1938 "Yearbook for the Pacific Coast School for Workers," (UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library). The school was originally called the "Western Summer School for Workers."
48 Wyckoff, "Fifty Years of Grassroots Activism," vol. 1, pp. 110-112.
49 Oral History interview of Florence Wyckoff by Gabrielle Morris in the Bay Area Foundation Series, vol. 3, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley, 1976, 165.
50 Wyckoff, "Fifty Years of Grassroots Activism," vol. 2, 3.
51 Ibid., pp. 3-4. The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley has copies of the California Conference of Social Work bulletins from the 1920s through 1945. As of 1927, there were nearly 2,000 members state wide, 506 of whom were from San Francisco, and 562 from Los Angeles. Conference Bulletin, 30 June 1927.
52 Emily Huntington, "Emily Huntington: A Career in Consumer Economics and Social Insurance," an oral history, interview conducted by Alice Green King, UC Berkeley Regional Oral History Office, Earl Warren Oral History Project, 1971, 40.
53 Ibid., pp. 49-51.
54 Ibid., pp. 53-57.
55 That Wyckoff was appointed to any position at all is significant since there were only about 1,000 jobs available for more that 12,000 hungry Democrats. Robert Burke, Olson's New Deal for California, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953), p. 37.
56 Wyckoff, "Fifty Years of Grassroots Activism," vol. 2, pp. 20-22.
57 Burke, pp. 83-162.
58 Ibid.
59 Susan Ware, Beyond Suffrage, Women in the New Deal (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 20.
60 Ware, p. 97.
61 Wyckoff, "Fifty Years of Grassroots Activism," vol. 2, p. 32.
62 Wyckoff's involvement in the Democratic Party is also an example of the increased involvement of women in the party during the 1930s. Roosevelt and other Democrats, such as Olson, provided women with opportunities to contribute their talents to the party. In addition to rewarding women for their work for the party, the tremendous expansion of social welfare programs during the New Deal enabled large numbers of women to gain responsible positions in the government. Ware, pp. 3-5, 46-66, 68-70 and p. 80.
63 Wyckoff, interview by Gabrielle Morris, p. 165.
64 Ibid., pp. 165-66 and Burke, p. 39.
65 "Fifty Years of Grassroots Activism," vol. 2., pp. 34-35. Wyckoff noted that representatives of federal agencies were members of the health and welfare policy committees, and that after the election federal workers were important resources for the Olson Administration.
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