When Roosevelt was radical, and Petaluma feared the unions

Historian Skip Sommer takes a look at 1935 in Sonoma County|

The year was 1935, the Great Depression was distressing the world, World War II was threatening in Europe, our Great Plains were suffering from the dust bowl and Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin were rising in power. The world was trembling with fear and change.

President Franklin Roosevelt’s proposed New Deal was on the positive side of the news. FDR had just begun his Works Progress Administration, which employed men and women in public works, such as construction of schools, hospitals, roads, parks and bridges. And that program had put over nine million Americans to work. Some of those projects, such as Santa Rosa’s City Hall and the airport, were completed here in Sonoma County.

The Industrial Revolution had vastly revised the work place and, along with the invention of the internal combustion engine, kick-started the move of the traditional family from the country to the city. Adding to those transformations, people were living longer and, it has been said, these three unstoppable social trends contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s, causing much misery through widespread unemployment.

By 1935, there were few answers available, as unemployment was still over 20 percent in the United States. California had 248,000 unemployed families, 1,343 of which were in Sonoma County. That year, there were 2.4 million Americans over the age of 65 and in dire need of help.

Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Party had been working on a plan to help the needy. It was revolutionary and it was very bold. The main thought was to ensure the American worker, the elderly, the retired and the sick against poverty. It was called The Social Security Act and FDR signed it on Aug. 14, 1935. Both Houses had Democratic majorities then, and it passed into law. That Social Security Act has been hailed as, “One of the most momentous legislative accomplishments in U.S history.”

The Act was planned to be funded through payroll taxes, and it didn’t come into being without a fight. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce broke with FDR on this issue, “vigorously and formally denouncing all phases of the program.” The Chamber stressed that business should regulate itself, and that The Act was a “dangerous Socialist trend.” The administration countered that it was crafted to be, “old age unemployment insurance, funded by payroll taxes - and not charity.”

Our Argus-Courier Editor, Emmett Olmsted, wrote, “Big businessmen have forsaken the President, and we cannot help wondering what the attitude of the small businessman will be. There is no doubt about the harmony that exists between the President and the smaller business man.” He warned, “The President is bent on creating a highly centralized federal control over industry and business, thus leading us to a greater and greater degree of socialization. Decisions such as this, have resulted in dictatorships. Our Democracy is at Stake!”

In an editorial of August 1935, Olmsted further opined, “The people are beginning to awaken to the fact the they are going to have a stupendous bill to pay as a consequence of the New Deal, when the time comes to find ways and means of raising the money to pay the bills. Is Roosevelt radical, and if so, how radical?”

Basically, the fight was between business and politics on this issue. The business man argued that politicians didn’t have a ‘business brain,’ and Roosevelt, of course, was a master politician but, it was claimed, he knew nothing of the “conduct of the complex business structure of American industry and agriculture.”

Editor Olmsted strongly suggested, “The President should stick, to his last (breath), as a politician!”

Other news of the year 1935 was the tragic Alaskan plane crash killing Wiley Post (the first person to fly around the earth solo) and Actor/Humorist, Will Rogers, Aviatrix Amelia Earhart flying the Pacific Ocean, the completion of the giant Hoover Dam, the flight of the China Clipper from Alameda to the Philippines, with the first Trans-Pacific delivery of mail, Babe Ruth hitting his 714th home run and, last but not least, the invention of canned beer. Also, to help relieve Americans of some of their depression funk, two new characters named Mickey Mouse and Porky Pig had been introduced to the talkies that year.

In Petaluma bargains, Schluckebier Hardware was selling the Thor Electric Washer-Ironer for just $79.50, the Petaluma Ice and Fuel Co., competing with electric refrigerators, advertised, “Ice doesn’t dry your food out.” At The Economy Market, bread was 8 cents a loaf and you could buy “beer, full strength, four bottles, 25 cents.” And at Leavitt’s Clothing, 115 Kentucky, you could find “Dizzy Dean Beanies, just what the boys want, 25 cents.”

I guess the world wouldn’t seem all bad, if you could wear a Dizzy Dean beanie.

But the major Sonoma County news of 1935 was the perceived infiltration of communists into our farm labor force, and how that fear was dealt with here. The “Red Scare” was making big headlines nationally, but Sonoma County, that year, also made national news for “the way we treat them here.”

On Aug. 26, two “asserted Sonoma County Communist agitators,” suspected of “radicalizing local labor unrest,” were tarred and feathered and driven out of the county. The men, Jack Green of Santa Rosa and Soloman Nitzberg of Petaluma, were paraded down Santa Rosa’s 4th street by a mob of some 300 vigilantes. After refusing to kiss the American flag, they were beaten and ordered to “clear-out of Sonoma County.”

The next day, The American Communist Party called for united action against the vigilantes and complained that the Sonoma County mob had, “operated with open cooperation of the police and sheriff’s office.” New vigilante outbreaks and violence were feared here.

The Argus-Courier Editorial the following day, opined that these were just, “ordinarily sane men, who have allowed their passions to get the best of their sound judgment,” and the violence had been, “condoned on the ground that the only way to get rid of Communists is to treat them rough and put the fear of God into them.”

The Editor concluded, “There is need of restraint.”

This episode became known nationally as “The Santa Rosa Treatment” of getting rid of The Reds.

That Sonoma County event exemplified the need to gain some control over lax labor practices at the time. Attempting to arbitrate such violence, FDR established his National Labor Relations Board to crack down on “Commie” influence in unions, while still encouraging better wages and working conditions. One of our most powerful presidents, Franklin Roosevelt, continued to get things done for two more terms with his “New Deal” for America.

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

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