The Great Depression and the New Deal: Transient Division Newsletter from Macon, Georgia

About this Source


The U.S. Response to Transient Men

Vol. 1, No. 33 of The New Deal is a newsletter from a transient camp in Macon, Georgia. Camp Macon, like many other transient camps, was created by the Federal Transient Bureau as a place for homeless people to live and work during the Great Depression. Published on November 9th, 1934, this issue captured Georgia amid an economic crisis, where the Depression continued to exacerbate existing Southern poverty. Georgia's suffering had begun a decade earlier; the production boom in the 1920s led to falling cotton prices, an essential crop for the region's economy. In addition, drought and an infestation of boll weevils further damaged the cotton economy.1 These conditions and Georgia's long-time dependence on cash-crop agriculture left many families especially vulnerable to the negative effects of the Great Depression. For example, the average Georgia farm family during this time had no electricity, water, or an adequate diet.2 Such conditions were even harsher for Black Georgians, who often faced perpetual debt due to unfavorable sharecropping arrangements and systemic disadvantages.3 Despite Southern urban cities like Columbus and Macon being slightly more protected than impoverished rural areas due to their established textile and cottonseed oil mills, manufacturers were not immune to the national market downturn that led to mass layoffs. 4 

Georgia collaborated with welfare organizations like the Salvation Army and the Family Welfare Society to meet the rising housing emergency and even frequently used jails to shelter unhoused people.5 As the crisis worsened, however, public opinion became more antagonistic than empathetic. For example, numerous homeless shelters in Chicago made their policies harsher, limiting stays to one to two weeks.6 These fears were partly fueled by the media which commonly portrayed homeless people as murderers, burglars, and culprits. 

Hostility in turn defined governmental assistance programs' intended recipients, dividing envisioned "transients" from "hobos." "Transients" were perceived as a product of the current economic order and were homeless by necessity rather than choice. "Hobos," on the other hand, were considered criminals, perverts, and psychopaths who were content with being antisocial and unemployed.7  Camp Macon’s newsletter exclusively—and in all likelihood intentionally—refers to its homeless population as transients. Despite the difference between "transients" and "hobos," citizens in major cities still displayed little enthusiasm or empathy for homeless people, seeing them generally as "hobos" taking up local jobs, resources, and shelters. 

To meet the homelessness crisis, in 1933 the federal government established both the Federal Transient Program (FTP) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which aimed to prevent transiency among young unemployed men by placing them in camps to carry out conservation projects.8 The CCC and FTP prioritized assisting young "transients" over "hobos" as officials believed the former could still be saved from becoming chronic, antisocial criminals like the pre-Depression "hobos."9 This initiative was fueled by the prominent fear that if men remained “on the road too long,” they would become “real hobos, true degenerates and outcasts in society” by choosing a lifestyle that transgressed the boundaries of heteronormative American society where men worked to provide for their wives and children.10 The FTP and CCC, then, acted as channels that molded at-risk young men into the fit of their ideal society. 

Race also affected the degree of care transients received from society and the government relief programs, reflecting the prominent racial inequality that existed during the Depression era. In 1934, an evaluative study of Atlanta’s transient programs found that a white mob formed outside a transient bureau to drive Black transients away.11 Additionally, federal relief programs like the Civil Works Administration (CWA) paid Black skilled workers significantly less than skilled white workers, and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) gave Black tenants little to no money from seasonal crop reductions.12 Camp Macon’s newsletter provides no insight into how racial inequality affected the Black experience in camp life, but some inferences can be drawn from other sources. In a St. Louis bureau, white and Black transients were housed in separate buildings.13 Racial discrimination likely contributed to the South’s low number of Black transient applicants.14

Camp Life

The Transient Bureau used job training to shape these supposed social outcasts into hard-working, normative men. The Bureau’s aversion to "handouts" was reflected in transient men's work on community relief projects like the repair or construction of public buildings, national park improvements, the building of swimming pools, and archaeological excavations.15 Residents could then save their earnings, or use them to pay for services in the camp. The "Late News Flashes" on page 13 of Camp Macon’s newsletter demonstrates this, announcing that “all men applying for meal tickets at the noon meal must have worked five hours per day.” Residents could also spend 5 cents of their earnings on various services from the camp barber, Mr. “Pop” Ingram.16 

While work was an important aspect of transient camp life, residents also entertained themselves through several camp services. For example, Camp Macon appeared to be a well-established and accommodating place for transients. It had many amenities, including a school, library, dining hall, infirmary, and barber. These camps also had special activity divisions where recreation and education served to “rectify the conditions” that engendered poverty.17 Activities were staffed by the residents and included educational classes, boxing, and handicraft workshops. A few activities highlighted in Camp Macon’s newsletter are a visit from the San Carlo Grand Opera Company, Saturday night shows, and a class in psychology.18

Furthermore, the learning community also appears to have been quite active at Camp Macon. There are numerous references to the quality of the Educational Department, and page ten features an advertisement for a class exploring the psychological causes of the failure of Prohibition. The library also received a column and discussed twenty-four new additions to the collection that were donated that week.19 Residents had access to these books and classes for all ages.

The importance of education is a prominent theme not only in Camp Macon but across transient camps state and nationwide. The Transient Bureau used educational resources to both seamlessly transition young men into the workforce (and thus help the economy), and to guide transients back towards social normalcy, where they could provide for their families through work. Camp Tuggle’s newsletter strongly urges transients to take up educational opportunities. Their commanding officer emphasizes that taking classes in job training will “benefit you greatly as long as you live” and will leave transients with the “assurance that you are adding to the sum total of human happiness and social progress."20 Camps used education as a part of their orderly agenda to push men towards a life of “settling down” where they would soon become diligent working husbands.21

Bonding during group activities and work provided in Camp Macon most likely contributed to the strong sense of community evidenced throughout this newsletter. The authors chose to introduce, thank, and memorialize various people within Camp Macon, from members of the Transient Bureau to upstanding residents. There was also a relationship with another camp nearby, Camp Commerce; Macon’s newsletter dedicates an entire page to updates from what appears to be their sister camp.22 This window into another Georgia transient camp serves as a useful comparison to Camp Macon; it reveals that conditions and amenities were relatively consistent across the Georgia Transient Division.

Production and Content of the Newsletter

The newsletter was produced via a mimeograph, a printing machine that only required one person to operate and printed up to 1,000 copies at a time. It was used primarily for non-professional printing, such as in schools, offices, and government. The illustrations in the newsletter could either be stenciled or designed on-site. This distinction is visible on certain pages; “Safety Mentions” on page six, for example, appears to have hand-drawn illustrations. In contrast, the front cover has neater images with no backgrounds, indicating they may have been produced with stencils. The articles were written by a local team “by and for members of the Macon Transient Bureau."23 It is possible this newsletter was produced through a New Deal job training program; men were taught how to work in various professions, newspaper reporting and production likely being one of them.

Different camps used different artistic and editorial techniques, which are explored on page fourteen - “Still Catty.” For example, the pages on this newsletter are one-sided; the editorial staff advises the “Transient Bulletin” from New Mexico that their choice to type on both sides “hurts the effect.” They admire the art of the “Wind Jammer” and the humor of the “Arkansas Traveler.” These newsletters were both informational and artistic endeavors. Camp Macon’s attention to the techniques of other Transient Bureau newsletters indicates that their publication was important to them, as they strove to produce a visually interesting and well-written newsletter.

The content of the newsletter also gives insight into the life of Camp Macon. The New Deal sets an overwhelmingly positive tone despite the circumstances of its creation. Throughout the newsletter, there is a persistent perspective of gratitude and self-improvement; this attitude is especially potent in the editorials (page three), which encourage appreciation for the little things in life and challenge the readers to “keep on keeping on.” Throughout the newsletter, amenities like the library and mess hall are celebrated, as are noteworthy community members. Even the staff’s criticism of other transient camp publications reflects the drive for self-improvement. Camp Commerce’s page shares Camp Macon’s attitude with its eagerness to share its various diversions and amenities. Complaints are few and far between; this outlook in a time of such hardship may seem unexpected, but was a defining feature of the newsletter. Although these attitudes might reflect the genuine feelings of the camp members, they also aligned with the FTP's vision for its assistant programs and communicated a vision of a return to social normalcy.

The transient newsletters rarely touch on topics that stray from the Transient Bureau’s intended vision of the camp, raising the question of possible censorship. These newsletters seldom express transient fears about reentering the workforce, criticism regarding the regimentation of the camp, or non-normative opinions or lifestyle practices. However, there are plenty of sections that reflect the Bureau’s intention to incorporate transient men back into the country as well-functioning members of society. For example, Camp Liberty’s newsletter reminds transients that their nation “needs young men and young women with excellent vision, who are able to see all about them the duties that must be performed."24 Thus, the intense optimism of the newsletter might have been another platform through which the Bureau guided transients away from the "hobo" path of social deviance. 

Controversies and Liquidation of the FTP

Another theme rarely mentioned in transient newsletters is the same-sex sex practices that existed within some of the camps. Homosexuality was a salient fear of both the public and government officials and may have contributed to the demise of the FTP transient camps. As previously mentioned, one of the initial goals of the FTP and CCC was to save young men from becoming criminals, especially what they termed "sexual deviants," who were characterized by their unrestrained, non-marital sexuality that defied the heteronormative home.25 People commonly believed that these men were among the transient population since survival on the road often meant trading sexual favors for food or money.26 These behaviors were at odds with what society deemed appropriate sexual relations, especially since they disrupted the heterosexual, capitalist family unit. 

The work of early sexologists who argued that “men detached from the normative home were more likely…to engage in same-sex acts" also shaped the popular perception that transient men would fall into deviancy if they continued non-normative practices, like exchanging intimacies of food and clothing or living in boxcars filled with men.27 To return men to the heteronormative home, the FTP and CCC provided “adequate facilities” to prevent young men and boys from further mingling with “degenerates and perverts” who would introduce them “into evil habits” or queer behaviors.28 Essentially, these government programs served to re-accustom men to the heteronormative domestic life, which would in turn stabilize the nation’s economy.

Despite the FTP's and CCC’s goals, some historians have highlighted how the mixing of boys and older men in the camps eventually resembled the homosexual relationships that existed in life on the road. A 1934 handbook of the National Association for Travelers Aid and Transient Services accentuated this point when they concluded: “Homosexual activity in the camps was to be expected."29 Although Camp Macon’s newsletter does not reflect this expectation, some camps’ newsletters and magazines show how some camps became a space to explore same-sex sexual behavior and non-normative gender performance. For example, cartoons depicting gender inversion and homoerotic desire were common jokes in newsletter cartoons.30 Some camps also had predatory relationships that may or may not have resembled those in homeless society, where older men forced boys to do sexual favors, steal, and beg.31 In their newsletters, gossip columns and poetry sections included suggestive language such as "wolves," "chickens," and "lambs" to hint at how older men preyed on younger, vulnerable boys in the camp.32

The controversy surrounding homosexual culture within the camps led the public to view the camps as a continuation of the problem of transiency, rather than a solution. For example, the writers of Twenty Thousand Homeless Men: A Study of Unemployed Men in the Chicago Shelters, claimed that one of the main causes of unemployed men was the “lack of normal sexual experiences with women."33 Transient camps, in the public imagination, prevented normative sexual experiences, and in fact, encouraged same-sex sexual practices by "herding" men together.34 These beliefs, which spread the fear that transient programs were increasing the number of "perverts" in the homeless population, further degraded opinions of the camps. 

Officials and citizens also believed the program made homeless men dependent on free room and board, and accustomed to a life without the responsibilities of marriage and full-time employment.35 Bertha McCall, director of the National Travelers Aid Association, explained that “[w]ay back in our subconscious we dislike the strangers who come in and we think they do not merit any special assistance…This reacts in the attitude of those responsible for allocating funds for services to people in need.”36 

In late 1935, the FTP announced its liquidation after only two years of operation.37 President Roosevelt instructed Congress that “The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief…We must preserve not only the bodies of the unemployed from destruction but also their self-respect, their self-reliance and courage and determination.”38 Without a program to support them, "unemployable" transients were stranded while the "employable" ones were given jobs by the WPA (Works Progress Administration).39 All but three transient bureaus in Georgia closed—Atlanta, Savannah, and Macon. Camp Macon changed its face, becoming a Works Progress camp.40 All across the country, camps that were abandoned following the end of the FTP were offered to the CCC or WPA.41 Camps repurposed by the CCC were mainly used to train workers for environmental conservation, domestic infrastructure construction, and overseas military construction on the Western Front during World War II. 

State and federal general relief funds soon became restricted to only the “locally settled,” which caused an increase in transient intake per city. For example, each day on average, Memphis, Philadelphia, and Atlanta refused assistance to between fifty to two-hundred transients.42 Exclusive relief policies pushed the homeless back to seeking shelter in box cars, trains, and railway stations. Moreover, desperate young transients were once again left vulnerable to older men who exchanged sexual favors for shelter and food.43 The end of the FTP was one of the first steps the federal government took to surrender its responsibility for combatting homelessness in the United States.

Camp Macon’s New Deal newsletter not only reveals what life in a transient bureau camp was like for endangered men during the Great Depression but also offers a rare opportunity to study transient communities' perspectives of their experiences through their own voices. The newsletter also sheds light on how racial and sexual prejudice shaped U.S. federal and local policies during the early 1930s, as homosocial living communities were deeply stigmatized, and racial segregation limited Black people's access to resources and opportunities. Ultimately, The New Deal sits at the heart of many American histories, from the social to economic, to artistic, providing a rich ground of study for historians working across time and space.

Footnotes

  1. Jamil Zainaldin, "Great Depression," New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Sep 29, 2020,  https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/great-depression/.↵
  2. Zainaldin, "Great Depression." ↵
  3. James Giesen, "Sharecropping," New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Sep 29, 2020,  https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/sharecropping/.↵
  4. Zainaldin, "Great Depression." ↵
  5. Department of Public Welfare, "Report for the years 1929, 1930 and 1931" (Atlanta, 1932), 14-15.↵
  6. Chris Wright, “‘Shelter Men’: Life in Chicago’s Public Shelters during the Great Depression,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 111, no. 3 (January 2018): 36.↵
  7. Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and American Citizenship, 1900-1969 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 103. ↵
  8. Ibid., 91.↵
  9. Ibid., 103. ↵
  10. Nathan Tye, “Making Homes on the Road: Transient Mobility, Domesticity, and Culture in the United States, 1870s-1930s” (PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010), 13, 265.↵
  11. Lula Jane Gambrell, "Characteristics of Negro male transients applying to the Federal relifer administration, Atlanta, Georgia, 1933-34" (master's thesis, Atlanta University, 1935), 39.↵
  12. Gambrell, "Characteristics," 41.↵
  13. John F. Ptak, “A Tiny Peep at the African American in the Great Depression & Dust Bowl Migration, 1935,” JF Ptak Science Books, accessed June 11, 2023, https://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2015/11/opportunity_journal.html.↵
  14. Gambrell, "Characteristics," 39.↵
  15. “Essay: The Federal Emergency Relief Administration,” Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) Collection (University of Washington: University Libraries), accessed December 10, 2022, https://content.lib.washington.edu/feraweb/essay.html.; John Bourisseau, “Transient Camps in Chagrin,” Chagrin Falls Historical Society & Museum, published December 14, 2017, https://www.chagrinhistorical.org/transient-camps-in-chagrin/. ↵
  16. Paul Hammond, "Notice," The New Deal 1, no. 33 (1934): 13.↵
  17. Wright, “‘Shelter Men,’" 56.↵
  18. "Office Chatter," The New Deal 1, no. 33 (1934): 5; Paul Hammond, “Notice," New Deal 1 no. 33 (1934): 11; Lon Hergon, "Educational," New Deal 1 no. 33 (1934): 10.↵
  19. The Library Staff, "Library," New Deal 1 no. 33 (1934): 5.↵
  20. “Message from your Commanding Officer,” Bonus Blues 1 no. 2 (1935): 1.↵
  21. Canaday, Straight State, 108.↵
  22. Minford, "Camp Commerce News," New Deal 1 no. 33 (1934): 4.↵
  23. "Editorials," New Deal 1 no. 33 (1934): 3. ↵
  24. “Service,” Alabama-Georgian 2 no. 9 (1935): 2. ↵
  25. Canaday, Straight State, 98.↵
  26. Ibid., 99.↵
  27. Tye, “Making Homes on the Road,” 13.↵
  28. Canaday, Straight State, 105.↵
  29. Ibid., 109.↵
  30. Ibid., 110.↵
  31. Nels Anderson, The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man, 3 ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923; Eastford, Connecticut: Martino Fine Books, 2014), 146.↵
  32. Canaday, Straight State, 112.↵
  33. Edwin H. Sutherland, Twenty Thousand Homeless Men: A Study of Unemployed Men in the Chicago Shelters (Chicago, IL: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1936), 105.↵
  34. Canaday, Straight State, 120.↵
  35. Ibid., 128. ↵
  36. Joan Crouse, The Homeless Transient in the Great Depression (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), 91.↵
  37. Canaday, Straight State, 128.↵
  38. Crouse, The Homeless Transient, 204.↵
  39. Canaday, Straight State, 129. ↵
  40.  "3 Transient Bureaus Are To Serve Georgia," Atlanta Constitution, August 1, 1935.↵
  41. "Transient Camps May Go Under WPA," Kershaw County, South Carolina History,  accessed August 6, 2023, https://www.kershawhistory.com/1935/10/02/transient-camps-may-go-under-wpa/.↵
  42. Canaday, Straight State, 129.↵
  43. Ibid., 130. ↵

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