Connecticut's
"Little New Deal," 1931-1939
By
Herbert F. Janick
One
of the by-products of Franklin D. Roosevelt's efforts to combat
the Depression of the 1930s was to stimulate similar responses
on the part of state governments. Connecticut's "Little New
Deal" actually began in 1931 when scholarly Wilbur Cross
became governor. Connecticut's approach to the problems of the
Depression, however, was timid and ineffective, consisting often
of negative responses to Washington initiatives. Roosevelt's New
Deal was looked upon with suspicion. "We in Connecticut,"
Cross admitted in 1933, "don't quite understand what is in
back of it." As a consequence of Connecticut's passivity,
the Federal Government became the dominant force in the lives
of the people of the state during the Depression decade.
Because
of its dependence on manufacturing, Connecticut was hit early
by the Depression. A state survey conducted in the spring of 1932
estimated that 150,000 people were out of work, although a private
study placed the figure higher. An investigation made by the Metropolitan
Life Insurance Company in the same year found that the number
of people employed in factories of the state had fallen forty-five
percent below the 1929 level. Private charities were swamped by
requests for help. The Community Chest in Bristol, for example,
expended all the funds it raised in 1932 during the first six
months of the year. In turn, city governments were over-whelmed.
Six thousand unemployed sought relief in a single month in both
Bridgeport and New Haven.
State
government also proved impotent in this emergency. Governor
Cross,
inhibited by his fear of Federal control and his reverence for
frugal government, merely established an Unemployment Commission
to gather data on the economy and put into place a modest public
works program. Until 1933 he refused any Federal financial
assistance.
Cross remained so wary that in 1934 one exasperated National
Recovery Adminstration official publicly snapped that "the state can
now go to hell." Only in the area of labor relations was
Cross in step with the New Deal, consistently advocating unemployment
insurance and old age pensions. Yet, it was not until 1936 that
the General Assembly, motivated by fear of losing Federal Social
Security benefits, made such programs a reality.
Washington
filled the power vacuum in Connecticut. The growth of the Federal
presence in Connecticut is best illustrated in the area of unemployment
relief. Thousands of jobless were employed by such Federal agencies
as the Works Progress Administration (WPA); the Civilian Conservation
Corps (CCC), which operated fourteen camps in the state; and the
National Youth Administration (NYA). The projects on which Connecticut's
unemployed worked ranged from building airports to recording inscriptions
on gravestones. Symbolically, the WPA made repairs to the State
Capitol. By the end of the 1930s, many Connecticut citizens looked
to Washington rather than to Hartford for the solutions to major
problems.
For
Further Reading
There
is no single book that documents the Depression decade in Connecticut,
although many individual town histories do include portions
of
the story. Several dissertations are indispensable: Sister Mary
Murray, "Wilbur L. Cross: Connecticut Statesman and Humanitarian,
1930-35" (University of Connecticut, 1972) and Peter Lombanio,
"Connecticut in the Great Depression, 1929-1933" (University
of Notre Dame, 1979), record what happened. More analytic is the
older but invaluable Rowland Mitchell, "Social Legislation
in Connecticut, 1919-1939" (Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University,
1954).
*
Entry under revision.
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