Teachers struggled through Great Depression

The Great Depression was the worst economic catastrophe in the nation’s history, and the effects ran deep. The teaching profession was hammered as well, though the dedication of many teachers persevered in the interest of their students.

Many teachers lost their jobs or suffered dramatic pay cuts in the Depression – if they were paid at all. As a result, thousands of teachers were forced out of their homes, while others were reduced to panhandling.

Many schools, then and now, are dependent on public money, and in the Depression, there was precious little of that. In Chicago, the list of delinquent property taxes in one newspaper spanned 260 pages.

With such a huge drop in revenue, teacher salaries were decimated. In 1929, the average teacher’s salary in the United States was $1,420. By 1934, that figure had dipped to just $1,227 – the equivalent of just over $29,000 in today’s dollars.

It was even worse in country schools, as over 300,000 rural schoolteachers in the U.S. made less than $650 a year in 1934. In all, a third of the nation’s teachers earned less than $750 per year.

In Iowa, where schools were largely funded by property taxes that many in the Depression could not pay, salaries for rural teachers were set at a paltry $40 per month. Janitors in the Chicago school system, who were often hired on patronage, earned more than the average teacher.

The job security of many teachers was also in peril. By 1934, an estimated 20,000 schools, many of them rural, had either closed due to a lack of money, while others were on shortened schedules of three to six months. The number of teachers in the United States dropped by 25,000 from 1930-34.

It was particularly severe in the South, where Alabama closed five out of every six schools in 1932 and 1933. In Arkansas, the school year was cut to less than 60 days.

School spending also crashed in many parts of the nation, falling from $90.22 per pupil in 1929-30 to just $66.53 in 1933-34. As a result, many teachers did not have even basic supplies.

In May 1933, the Nation magazine wrote of the plight of teachers nationwide: “Homes have been lost. Families have suffered undernourishment, even hunger. Their life insurance cashed in, their savings gone, some teachers were driven to panhandling after school hours to get food.”

Between January 1931 and May 1933, Chicago public schoolteachers, many of whom had endured drastic pay cuts, received their monthly salaries just three times. Incredibly, the Chicago Board of Education began paying teachers in scrip, which was redeemable when businesses paid their taxes.

Not surprisingly, few entities honored the scrip. On April 17, 1933, Time Magazine reported that the 14,000 teachers of the city “have received only two weeks’ salary in cash since last June.”

On July 1, 1933, an article, penned by an anonymous high school teacher in Chicago, in the Saturday Evening Post described the traumatic experiences of many teachers in the Depression. The article was titled “Blank Pay Days.”

“If a girl in my class begins to grow thin and turns an ever-paler face toward me, more than human sympathy requires me to know why,” wrote the teacher. “It is my job. If a boy – a normally well-behaved and sensitive lad of 15 – is transformed into an ill-tempered daydreamer, I can sometimes read the answer in the patches on his clothing.”

The teacher continued that “we have lost about a fifth of our student body, youngsters who were obliged to go to work or to remain at home to take over household chores.” Though they had not been paid for months, some Chicago teachers tried to share their meager funds with students.

“With funds provided by teachers,” wrote the author, “a simple breakfast is fed to students who would otherwise attend their classes on empty stomachs in my school … when we discovered that some were dropping out of school because they did not have shoes or stockings, we teachers began to bring for secret distribution what garments we could round up among our friends.”

It was a grand gesture for many teachers, who were scraping by themselves. The writer of the article described her lunch on a normal day – “a midday sandwich and apple.” That was better than a teacher at another school, who subsisted on graham crackers and milk.

The author of the Post article added that, after four months of no pay, she left her apartment for one with her brother, his wife and two children, and their ill mother.

Chicago students, many of whom were in dire straits themselves, sympathized with the teachers and even organized a strike in April 1933. Around 50,000 students, many of them from the South Side, marched through the streets, armed with signs and chanting “Pay our teachers!”

The desperation of Chicago teachers led to numerous protests, some of which turned violent. In several instances, teachers marched on the mayor’s office, and elementary school teachers held a one-day “sick out” in April 1933.

On April 24, 5,000 teachers protested at five of the largest banks in Chicago, which had refused to honor the scrip. Chanting “Pay us! Pay us!,” the teachers turned over desks, smashed windows and threw ink at walls. Days later, another protest at a major Chicago bank seriously damaged the bank’s lobby and led to a clash with mounted police.

As their pay was continually delayed, Chicago teachers continued to stage additional, larger demonstrations, including a mass gathering on May 13, 1933, in Grant Park. Four weeks later, there was another clash with police in the Loop.

Finally, the Chicago Board of Education obtained a $22.5 million federal loan, which allowed teachers to receive all of their back pay in October 1934. But the scars of the Great Depression had left their mark on teachers, who struggled for survival while trying to guide the nation’s youth.

• Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Ill. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.