Just a little history: Remembering the Depression

By Carol Pelosi, Editor

Are we about to experience a second Depression because of the COVID pandemic or will we have an economic recovery as soon as there are enough vaccinated people to make it possible? We can certainly hope for the latter, but we should not forget the suffering and dislocation of the Depression of the 1930s.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal saved us then, or at least kept us afloat until the enormous economic boost of the tanks, ships, planes and weapons Americans built for World War II. We can hope that President-Elect Joe Biden with his ambitious plans to rebuild our infrastructure, deal with climate change and help us to return to a normal way of life will succeed.

And Merry Christmas because Christmas doesn’t change even when how we celebrate it has to change at times.

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Very few people had a dime in their pockets in Wake Forest or anywhere in the country in the early 1930s.

Between four and five million people in the United States were without jobs. In Wake Forest, Royall Cotton Mill President Don P. Johnston could either run the mill and lose money or not run the mill and lose the workers, if they could find a place to go.

In 1931, a spinner worked 55 hours a week and made $7.94 while a ply spooler could work the same hours and take home $15.51. Johnston had to reduce the pay scales later. “If the figure of 95 families you give me is proper,” Johnston wrote to the mill Superintendent G.H. Greason on Jan. 19, 1933, “this means $5.00 per family per week during this period.”

Over on Faculty Avenue, the pickings were just as slim. When Dr. J.L. Lake retired from his position as physics professor after 33 years in 1932, his annual stipend was $500. Later, in 1938, the college began paying professors who retired at 70 a sum of $100 a month. The salary for a full professor in the academic year of 1931-1932 was $2,460.

Those were the years when people worried about their bank, if they had enough money to put in one. Over 1,300 banks had closed across the country in 1930, and they continued to topple. The locally-owned Bank of Wake and Citizens Bank both closed their doors in the next two years and Durham Bank and Loan Company (which would become CCB and is now SunTrust/Truist) would not open a branch until 1934. The only local financial institution to go through the period unscathed was Wake Forest Savings & Loan, founded in 1922.

When the two banks closed, more than $9,000 of the town’s money and the savings of hundreds of people disappeared. The late Roy Powell remembered the Bank of Wake was able to pay its depositors 10 cents on the dollar.

The women of the town formed a Local Welfare Committee to help those in the direst need, but they only considered white people. In 1935, Mrs. Hubert M. Poteat and Mrs. Tom M. Arrington appealed to the town commissioners to give lights and water to one woman and charge it to charity. In 1936, $10 of the town’s budget was for poverty relief.

Some relief for laid-off mill workers and other men came from the Works Progress Administration, which paid for several construction projects in town: improvements in the water and sewer system, the first post office (every other post office up to then had been either in rented buildings or the postmaster’s home), a new gymnasium for the Wake Forest School on Sycamore, the Community House and the first swimming pool, and building Back Street (quickly renamed Wingate).

Johnston’s son recalled that his father thought it likely the terrible poverty would spark a revolt. “Those were the days when I heard my father at breakfast speak of revolution, and one evening, when a speeding motor car crashed and exploded near our home, I thought they had begun to throw bombs.”

Instead of workers throwing bombs, the revolution in Wake Forest came from sober businessmen, Johnston included, who staged a taxpayers’ revolt of sorts.

It began in 1931, when John M. Brewer wrote “on behalf of overburdened taxpayers,” asking the town board to cut its salaries and reduce the tax rate, then $1.40 per $100. “We do not feel this will cause any hardship to the gentlemen affected due to the big drop in the price of commodities and the increased purchasing power of the dollar.” At that time, Mayor Andrew J. Davis’ salary was $600.

There was little reaction, and the voters that year elected almost the identical board: Davis as mayor with Commissioners S.W. Brewer, F.W. Dickson, J.H. Gorrell, George Greason and William Powell, who soon resigned.

There were more overburdened taxpayers in 1932 when the commissioners proposed a tax rate of $1.25 per $100, and they turned up at a town board meeting.

Dr. W.R. Cullom, Dr. R.M. Squires and Dr. George W. Paschal were there from the college, Don Johnston from Royall Cotton Mill, hardware store owner I.O. Jones, grocery store owner Jesse Hollowell, William R. Powell (who had resigned from the town board and soon would almost lose his Faculty Avenue home, Cameron Heights, because of unpaid taxes), Clyde Coppedge and Harvey Jones made up the delegation. These were the days when people could speak to the town board but had to leave the room while the board held its discussion.

The commissioners dropped the tax rate to $1.15.

Then in 1933, when the town board minutes say “a large number of citizens of the town” turned out for the budget public hearing, the commissioners appointed a committee of Dr. Paschal, Don Johnston and I.O. Jones to help cut the tax rate, which was pared to $1 per $100.

Two years later, S.W. Brewer was elected mayor, narrowly beating out Davis. But the voters also elected a brand-new set of commissioners – Harvey Holding, Don Johnston, Dr. Paschal, Clyde Coppedge and Dr. C.S. Black from the college faculty.

The mayor’s salary was reduced to $300, and the new board began to try to realize a few dollars by selling the properties the town had acquired in the 1920s through the tax sales. The board also pressed town residents to pay all their back and current taxes and street assessments.

At that time, the town owned enough property that it hired W.R. Timberlake to collect the rents. His payment was 20 percent of the money he collected. It is not clear if Timberlake was the town police chief at the time.

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