Petaluma’s Past: California’s gut-wrenching year of 1933

Depression loomed, but on the good side, Prohibition was ending|

Nineteen-thirty-three was one of the worst of the Great Depression years.

We were still recovering from WWI, and were seeking reasons for our prolonged agonies. Physicist Albert Einstein had a suggestion.

“The machine age,” he said, “has been a greater contributing factor in creating the depression, than war debts.”

That wasn‘t the main cause of our problems in California, however.

Incredibly, in 1933, unemployment hit 28 percent in our state. Average wages were just $1,550 per annum, and one in five Californians were dependent upon public relief. On top of that, the “Dust Bowl” winds of the U.S. Great Plains had stripped off most of the tillable top soil there, forcing 2.5 million souls to flee, with thousands of them coming to “The Promised Land” of California. Hundreds of thousands of those refugees were immediately homeless here, of course, as our state’s farm income sank to half of what it had been three years previous.

Elsewhere in the world, one of the ugliest results of the Great Depression was the rise of Adolph Hitler in Germany. Appointed Chancellor in January of ’33, Hitler took advantage of the tough times, slyly warning, “Germany must find herself again or capitulate to Bolshivism.” The Nazi move, our Argus-Courier wrote at the time, “had taken Berlin completely by surprise.” Hitler further promised Germany that he would, in his words, “destroy all those seeking to damage our people.” To win national support, Hitler put kids in new Nazi uniforms and fed them well, and by the end of March, the Nazis had begun their country-wide boycott of Jewish shops and goods, lawyers and doctors.

It was disastrous, and stirred the early winds of World War II.

In the U.S., in an attempt to curb the Depression and reopen our failed banks, newly-elected President Franklin Roosevelt pledged, “We will not have another epidemic of bank failures.” FDR had replaced Herbert Hoover in ’33, and his “New Deal for America” began that winter. It included FDR’s ambitious pledge to employ over a quarter million men within the following four months.

In response to that news, the ailing stock market soared by 15 percent.

Petaluma got its new Post Office on D and 4th Street that year, and one could rent a furnished apartment with two rooms (at 127 Keller St.) for a mere $2 a week. If you couldn’t cook, you could get a room at 508 Third St., being advertised with the words, “Heat, Hot Water, Shower, Garage, Room & Board,” for $9 a week.” Speaking of low prices, The Pacific Market, at the corner of Washington and Kentucky, was selling something called “Corned Leg of Pork” at 13 cents a pound, bread was going for just 7 cents a loaf, and in, our very few petrol stations, gas was going for 10 cents a gallon.

Meanwhile, just in case you don’t believe history repeats itself, in that year of desperation Californians who’d been looking for something to blamed chose the recently coined issue of “Illegal Immigration” as the source of much of our problems. It was loudly proclaimed then that immigrants from the Philippines and Mexico were taking jobs away from citizens, and over the next three years, our government forcibly evicted 100,000 of those immigrants.

Sound familiar?

Other big news in ’33, nationally and locally, was the effort to end prohibition. On March 16, 1933, the U.S. Senate voted to start that historic move slowly, by voting to first allow beer to be manufactured and imbibed, if it was reduced in alcoholic content to 3.2 percent.

It had been, and is now, 5 percent.

Permits for manufacturing beer would cost $1,000, and the federal tax was to be $5 a barrel, bringing in sorely needed federal funds. The Senate vote was not unanimous, however, as one Senator from Bible Belt Texas, shouted out, “3.2 beer will still produce drunkeness!”

That gentleman was quickly booed down, as the bill was enthusiastically passed.

Interestingly, the California cities of Palo Alto and Pacific Grove pledged to, “Remain dry forever, no matter what the State or Nation do!”

Yeah, sure.

And the Women’s Christian Temperance Union immediately began what they called “The greatest anti-liquor campaign in history.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt announced that the White House would start serving beer in moderation. (FDR loved beer). In Petaluma, on April 7, service clubs, restaurants, hotels and cabarets also began the serving of ‘3.2 beer.’ California’s Governor, “Sunny Jim” Rolph, in a cheer-leading mode, suggested that beer would, in his words, “provide a pick-me-up for the people and make them forget the depression.”

Uh huh.

On April 6, our Argus-?Courier boasted the following headline: “Beer will be available for breakfast here.” For breakfast? Really?

The movement continued, as the City Council promptly announced it would license all places selling beer to be consumed ON premises. In an L.A. promo, sex-symbol actress Jean Harlow was shown christening a brewer’s truck with a beer bottle. And, as beer trucks once again rumbled through all of our streets on the April 7, beer was being sold at 15 cents a bottle. It was a small step toward totally killing prohibition, but it was, nevertheless, a step.

Yet, all was not bliss in California’s reaction to the federally sanctioned “near beer.” An article in the April 10 Argus headlined, “Grape Men Despair of 3.2 Market!” Apparently, the 1933 legalization of 3.2 percent “near wine” was not good in terms of quality-of-product, and local vintners vowed to hold-out until the entire Prohibition Act would be repealed.

In other events of the year, writer Ernest Hemingway took his first tour of Africa, construction had begun on both the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridges, and a disastrous earthquake hit L.A. (well, Long Beach) that March, with a Richter Scale of 6.4, causing over 40 million in damage and killing 120 people.

In happier news, Walt Disney released “The Three Little Pigs” in ’33, “The Lone Ranger” debuted on radio, “King Kong” was the big hit in the movies, the game ‘Monopoly’ was the hot gift of the year, and - ready for this? - something dubbed “The Loch Ness Monster” had been sighted in Scotland!

Possibly because the Scots had been imbibing better than just 3.2 percent beer.

(Historian Skip Sommer is an honorary member of Heritage Homes and the Petaluma Historical Museum. Contact him at skipsommer@hotmail.com)

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