The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 95, July 1991 - April, 1992 Page: 8
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
In 1931 the city stood over $32.5 million in arrears. After its initial year
the newly instituted city manager government trimmed the overdraft
by more than $400,000. In its second year city hall refunded the re-
mainder of the deficit, and the budget maintained a cash surplus for
the duration of the decade. By and large, this owed to the cutting of
municipal workers' salaries from 5 percent to 20 percent and the re-
lease of hundreds of employees. New city manager John Edy refused to
allocate funds for street paving or building a levee sewer along the
Trinity River downtown-despite significant pressure from the business
community. Teachers received their monthly paychecks without inter-
ruption, but the sums decreased; in the 1931-1932 school year, for ex-
ample, teacher salaries averaged $1,669 and in the 1932-1933 year only
$1,463. The Board of Education reduced the number of faculty by de-
manding the automatic resignation of married women employees."
As the monthly case load of the city welfare department rose to an
average of 2,8oo in 1931, city officials instituted a plan whereby the un-
employed labored one day per week on public works projects and were
paid in groceries bought by the city wholesale. After a prolonged cam-
paign the Laboring Men's Relief Association persuaded the welfare de-
partment to issue some cash payments in addition to food, but the city
continued to focus its efforts on encouraging self-sufficiency by subsidiz-
ing the planting of four hundred acres of vegetable gardens and dis-
tributing over one thousand packages of seeds to the unemployed. The
welfare department also operated a cannery so that vegetables could be
preserved for winter consumption. Noting that the thirty cents an hour
it currently paid day laborers "cost the city about 40 percent more than
if the work were done by private contract," the municipal government
cut the pay to eighteen cents an hour, to be discharged in groceries. As
in other southern cities, economy continued to be the first priority.'
(Table 1 compares Dallas, the fourth largest southern city in 1930, with
the other largest cities with respect to sources of relief funding.)
With an enervated municipal government, local social welfare in-
stitutions were called on to provide relief. Their resources disappeared
rapidly, however, and philanthropic activity lagged as well. An Ameri-
can Public Welfare Association survey concluded that "analysis of Com-
munity Chest giving in Dallas ... indicates an unusually small propor-
13 Roscoe C. Martin, "Dallas Makes the Manager Plan Work," The Annals of the American Acad-
emy of Political and Social Science, CXCIX (Sept., 1938), 65, Dallas Morning News, Apr. 28, 1932,
Fairbanks, "The Good Government Machine," 127-128; De Moss, "Dallas, Texas, During the
Early Depression," 119-122.
14De Moss, "Resourcefulness in the Financial Capital," 124, 125 (quotation), 126; Dallas
Morning News, Apr. 12, 1932. See also American Public Welfare Association, "Dallas Welfare
Survey," Southern Methodist University Library, Dallas, Texas (n.p., 1938).
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 95, July 1991 - April, 1992, periodical, 1992; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117153/m1/36/?q=yaqui: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.