Hard times along U.S. Highway 34 during July 1932

Our neighbors born in 1932 turn 90 this year, but they have no memory of their birth year --- a year when one in four workers in the United States was unemployed. Banks across America had failed, taking life savings with them. With no jobs, no savings and no "safety net," many lost their homes. 

Men most often but sometimes entire families took to the road --- sometimes on foot with thumbs out --- looking for work. U.S. 34, then one of the major routes across the midlands of the United States, brought many through Lucas County.

Berry F. Halden, then editor and manager of The Chariton Herald-Patriot, captured a little of the flavor of that era for us in a story written and published on July 7, 1932, headlined, "Mamma, Poppa and Baby Unite to Furnish Evidence of Tragedy that Stalks the Path of the Great Army of the Unemployed." Here's the text:

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Grim tragedy stalks the path of the unemployed. Stories that play upon the heartstrings of those more fortunate are revealed in Chariton almost every day, as hitch-hikers thumb their way through the city over primary highway No. 34 --- men of ability, men of character, and men who one day day held responsible positions join with the flotsam and jetsam of humanity that moves back and forth across the nation in search of work, which will enable them to provide for themselves and their families.

In recent weeks, the ranks of the masculine "thumbers" have been augmented by a rather sizeable number of feminine hikers, but perhaps the most pitiable hiking spectacle that has been seen in Chariton was that of a man, his wife and year-old babe who visited this city yesterday en route "east." In the early evening the trio of nomads stopped at the Herald-Patriot office, where the head of the family made a sorrowful plea for aid.

From their home in the vicinity of Denver they were going "east" with no definite destination other than "any place where I can find some work to do," the man said. Very evidently a family of above average intelligence, education and character, the man had held a responsible position in a small city near Denver. "We were getting along fine," he said, "until the depression threw me out of a job. I have tried in every way I know to find work, but in the past four months I have had but one week's work.

"We are going east, where I don't know and it matters little just so long as I can find something to do. The thought of my wife and baby being forced to tramp along the highway almost drives me crazy, but there was nothing else for us to do. We couldn't stay at home and die. Maybe some place along the line I can find work that will help support these two people who mean more to me than anything else."

The man refused to give his name or the town from which he came. "Print the story, if you like," he said. "Maybe it will make your readers realize what a tough time this is for some of us. But I don't want to give you my name or my hometown for some of our friends might see the story, and you know I still have a little pride left, in spite of the embarrassment that has been mine since the depression kicked me out of a job."

It was a tragic story that he told. It was an even more tragic sight to see the splendid-appearing man in his late 30s trekking away with his sad-eyed wife and apparently unworried baby on his junket to the "east." It was still more tragic to remember that the sequel to this story is being written every day as the "thumbers" from the east head west and the western "thumbers" travel toward the east in the frantic scramble for work.

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The cartoons used as illustrations this morning are among the works of John Miller Baer (1886-1970), a delegate from North Dakota to the U.S. House of Representatives 1917-1920 whose political career ended as opponents accused him of being anti-American, perhaps even a socialist.

A cartoonist by trade, he sharpened his pencils and went to work for the National Railroad Union's newspaper, "Labor," where these were published during the 1930s.