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

FSA Newsletters

The Farm Security Administration was another New Deal agency that ran labor camps during the Great Depression. Like the Federal Transient Program, these camps also published newsletters. Although examples of FTP newsletters are scarce, James Gregory's analysis of FSA newsletters from the late 1930s in American Exodus sheds some light on the overall appearance, attitudes, and content common in this type of media. It also expands on the production process, providing a more complete understanding of how the New Deal might have been made. The New Deal shares many other features of FSA newsletters described in this excerpt, including community participation and the message of persistence.

"Tow-Sack Tattler, Pea-Pickers Prattle, Covered Wagon News, Voice of the Migrant- the colorful, free-form titles say much about the style of these tiny mimeographed publications. Supported by camp fees and published whenever someone volunteered to serve as editor, the format was usually wildly eclectic. More community bulletin boards than newspapers, they published a hash of contributions from residents and management. Letters, recipes, poems, jokes, stories, editorials, complaints, homilies, political opinions, discussions of current issues, reports of camp gossip, notices of meetings, lists of rules and regulations, jeremiads by camp managers- whatever was available went out in the next issue. It is this participatory aspect that makes the camp newspapers so valuable. We hear from children, parents, and grandparents, men and women, union activists and Pentecostal worshippers, those who liked California, and those who hated it. They wrote not only about issues, but also about day-to-day life. We witness their attempts at entertainment, their approach to humor, and their sense of propriety. In letters, poems, and gossip notes, they argued and agreed about community standards, morals, about right and wrong as they wrestled with the meaning of their California experience and reminded themselves what was important in life.

The message of persistence, determination, of 'try, try again' defined one of the essentials of what the migrants considered good character. No other theme was expressed as frequently or as passionately as the need to never let up, never quit, to always 'keep on goin' on'... 'Complainers,' 'grumblers,' 'gripers,' and 'whiners' came in for frequent criticism. 'All's not well that is the talk;/ A grumbler being the worst of the lot,' one poet chided. ' 'Taint no use to sit an' whine,' cautioned another version of 'Keep On A-Goin.' 'Now come on everybody, quit that complaining,' a letter writer at the Indio camp in the Coachella Valley urged. 'Every cloud has a silver lining. If you don't like things here in camp and the relief you get, be nice enough to keep it to yourself.'"1

Footnotes

  1. James Gregory, American Exodus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 142-144.↵

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