Becoming Entitled: Relief, Unemployment and Reform during the Great Depression by Abigail Trollinger

Abstract

Trollinger analyzes the impact of unemployment in Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s and the reaction to it by affected workers, social reformers, and government. During the 1920s, most unemployment was viewed as “voluntary” since work was always available; to encourage the search for work, charitable assistance was kept to a minimum. However, mass unemployment during the Great Depression made the voluntary-unemployment model unsustainable. Trollinger shows how groups of workers agitated for government-funded unemployment relief as well as for the provision of social insurance. Chicago’s extensive network of settlement workers supported these aims, and the New Deal legislation recognized that the unemployed, in distress through no fault of their own, were “entitled” to taxpayer-funded assistance. The fight to achieve worker-entitlement status is the central thesis of this clearly written monograph.New Deal policies went part but not all the way to securing entitlement. The key work-relief agencies—the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (fera) and the Works Progress Administration (wpa)—received public funding that was generous by historical standards but insufficient to provide relief for all applicants. Moreover, eligibility for relief work was not determined by unemployment status alone. Successful applicants had to be assessed by a social worker as “in need,” in other words, destitute. The eligible who were denied a place had to apply for poorly funded local relief. The Social Security Act (1935) included a provision for unemployment insurance, which worker groups and reformers had vigorously championed, but the federal–state funding model adopted, and the exclusions of groups of workers, was a disappointment. By the mid-thirties, the public had come to accept the concept of worker entitlement, and although the legislative attempts to assist the unemployed may have been too conservative, enormous progress had been made in just a few years. The advantage of Trollinger’s local study is that it shows how organized labor, settlement workers, and state officials worked in unison to fight for the acceptance of entitlement. Indeed, Trollinger argues convincingly that the positive role that these “middle ranks” played was crucial in transforming the public perception of the unemployed worker’s rights from skeptical to sympathetic.Trollinger employs overlapping methodologies of social and urban history. Her work is based on carefully selected primary materials, contemporary newspapers and periodicals, and a wide range of secondary sources that she deploys with great sensitivity and imagination. Her conclusions might have been strengthened if she had additionally explored the state files of key New Deal agencies, particularly the fera and the wpa, which are usually revealing at the county level. Since Chicago (Cook County) dominated the state of Illinois, the detailed observations of professionally experienced federal field agents there would have provided a valuable outside perspective on the provision of relief.The unemployed needed relief, but what they wanted even more was work. Persistent unemployment meant that costly relief measures had to be financed for far longer than policy makers had anticipated. Trollinger neglects economics and, as a result, does not include the fiscal tension between care for the unemployed and sustained economic recovery in her analysis. What was the structure of unemployment in the city? Did Chicago settlement workers and labor organizations have clearly articulated ideas about what measures should be taken to restore jobs? What was their view about the level of work-relief wages or, indeed, real wages in the private sector? Did they express any concerns about budget deficits and rising public debt? What were the differences of opinion between blue- and white-collar workers, and how did both groups view the position of women or people of color in the labor market?Trollinger’s admirable study reveals the important role of the middle ranks in New Deal decision making. In doing so, it prompts additional relevant questions that her methodology is unable to address.