BEAUMONT IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION
by Judith Linsley
The 1920s, with its upward-spiraling (but fragile) economy, brought prosperity to much of the nation. On October 29, 1929 the stock market crashed, signaling the beginning of the Great Depression. For the next four years the world's economy plummeted.
Nationwide unemployment soared, but the Beaumont area's petroleum-based economy allowed it to miss the worst of the Depression for a year or so. Eventually, however, even Beaumont hit bottom.
The Depression affected virtually all Beaumonters. Agriculture, already depressed in the 1920s, worsened. Low-income families were reduced to dire poverty. Middle-class families lost their automobiles, telephones, and electricity-now unaffordable luxuries, not necessities-and even their homes. Many Beaumonters returned to keeping gardens and livestock in yards, alleys and vacant lots. Local rancher W.P.H. McFaddin offered his vacant land in the city for gardens.
Even the wealthiest sometimes had to scale back spending. A few were "land poor," with assets tied up in real estate, and without cash to pay their taxes, lost some of their property.
Many prosperous businesses folded; survivors were forced to cut both wages and the number of employees. City and county governments were in the same fix, because residents couldn't pay property taxes. The City of Beaumont issued I.O.U.'s to creditors and shut off the street lights downtown. One Christmas, millionaire oilman Frank Yount loaned the city money to cover the payroll.
Both of my grandfathers had made comfortable amounts of money in the 1920s; both lost it all but were lucky enough to keep their homesteads. My father had to work at a variety of different jobs to make ends meet.
My mother lost her job at the Tyrrell Public Library in a city cutback in 1933. She moved home and bravely told her diary, "We can always get along-we won't ever starve!" She was right, but there were probably times that she wondered.
There were bright spots. Beaumonters came to value home, family, and friends-and became resourceful. My mother learned to type and worked at the Hardin County Courthouse. My father made and sold concrete piers to buy lumber for his and my mother's first home. My grandmother, minus her telephone, stood on her porch each afternoon and blew a bugle to call her next-door relatives to coffee.
Beaumont had things to be proud of-a new Post Office and Jefferson County Courthouse, both built as part of a 1929 bond issue. The Civilian Conservation Commission, a New Deal agency, constructed roads and buildings at the city's Tyrrell Park. And in the 1932 Olympics Beaumonter Babe Didrikson (Zaharias) won the 80-meter hurdle and the javelin throw.
The Great Depression permanently affected the generation that survived it. My parents frequently referred to their lives "during the Depression," and never stopped being frugal, a legacy of the lean, needy years. They never forgot the hard times and made sure that my two siblings and I never did either.
References:
Judith Walker Linsley and Ellen Walker Rienstra, Beaumont: A Chronicle of Promise (Woodland Hills: Windsor Publications, 1982), 100-104.
Undated newspaper article, MWH Archives.
Unpublished diary, Esther Hooks (Walker), 1933.
Author's conversations with Esther Hooks and John H. Walker.
Jefferson County Courthouse, 1931.