The Great Depression; Interview with Frank Angelo. Part 1

During this period of time in 1931, some sources have said there were as many as 150 evictions a day. And 150 fast people have to leave the city looking for something. Do you ever see any evictions? I can honestly say that personally I never saw. I don't doubt that the figures are, you know, if you say those are the figures, those are the figures. I have, and obviously there were, there were evictions and that was part of the, you know, the social trauma of the times. There's no question about it. I personally, and my family,

where we lived, I never, you know, actually saw an eviction. But I don't, I don't, if you say those are the figures, I can, I can, I'm sorry, I pursued something I should have gone back to. That's right. What you were talking about before, which is that this retooling situation was something you accepted and was assigned a progress. Well, it was understood that you would, and the 30, you know, when the Ford Motor Company retooled and was starting to build the, the model, what was it? Okay, let's start again. It was really a V8. V8, okay. All right, okay, okay, okay. All right, so at that point, if, if, when Ford announced that they were going to start doing that, well, it would have been an indicator that the things were

changing, you know, beginning to improve that here was a company coming out with kind of a new model and so forth. The number of people employed, obviously, was much, was low, but what would happen in Detroit was that in the retooling process, you always had a low number, and then by, let's say, the first of September, when they really went into production, the companies would add thousands of men to their roles, and they would, they would peak, and then they'd start dropping them again at the, at the end of the model year, and, and, and then come summer, people found themselves pretty well, you know, out of work again, and then they, this was sort of a cycle that, you know, you had started out here low, and then you went to a peak employment and then came down and, and, and, and moved. That was sort of a, a rhythm of

life, I guess, people adapted to it. I don't, I'm not saying that they were all cheering and happy about it, because, you know, now, nowadays, they're, I've heard, as people say, gee, wouldn't it be great to be laid off so I could take a vacation and go to Europe? Well, in those days, I mean, you didn't go to Europe, you stayed home and worked in the garden, or you didn't have the money to do a lot of, a lot of other things. And, and basically, you had money to support your family, and you, you, you took care of that. So, but this is part of the, the, of life, it was, it's all right, let's come. Okay. Yeah, no, I didn't want to. So, as, as just the, you know, a normal family, what's your reaction to that sort of thing that they would come with these demands?

Well, at the, at the time, obviously there was, there was an economic and social ferment in. If I said that our families sat around the dinner table and discussed that these demands and had any great opinions on it, pro and con, it's not true. Now, there, that's not to say that others didn't. But, you have to, you have to understand one that Detroit at the time was a, a total open shop city. The, the attitudes that I was talking about, the, the people who lived here, they wanted to work and they wanted to, and they, and they were happy, you know, relatively happy in what they were doing. This was a, the list of demands that, that we, that was presented at that time. If you take and look very closely at it, these are the, these are the goals

that became part of the whole structure of the union movement. These are the goals that have been achieved by and large. I mean, you know, that, that, that have been achieved. In terms of, in terms of involvement, I can't, I would, I would say that perhaps my father and mother might have been sympathetic and we were sympathetic, but that there was no immediate involvement, no sense. And by God, let's join them, man, that man, the ramparts. I, as, I, for example, at that period during this period of, 31, 32, I was at Wayne City College and one of the things that I did is I, I got taken with the concept of industrial democracy and Norman Thomas was the patron saint of, of industrial democracy and he would come and all of, we, we'd go and,

and listen to Norman Thomas and, and we, we, we talked about, about that as, as a, as a factor. We never got into, in specific, such as, we're presented to the Ford Motor Company at that time. The thought of the six-hour day, well, gee, that would have been nice, but everybody figured that that would have gone way, you know, way out of line. And, but most, the, most, then of course, if you look at the list, you see that by the next, in, in that period, you began to develop the whole trend to industrial unionism in Walter Ruther and, and his brothers, who were at Wayne State University and, as a matter of fact, City College, they, they began to be very active and, and developing that. In terms of, in terms of my immediate family, I can't,

can't say that we were, okay. I should pursue the next question, which is, you're reading the paper in the next day. Yeah. What was your reaction to the story that some people have been killed, some of the martyrs have been killed, and some wounded, some of the Dearborn police were wounded, and the service department people wounded. What was your reaction? Well, I've got to be honest. I could, I could say that, you know, I was horrified, and I read the paper, and it was an incident in, at, at that time, of, of, of, of, of, of, of travail, and, and, and it was, sad and so on. I don't recall that, if I, I, I know quality of being honest, that I had no sense of real, you know, a real upset about it. It was sad, it was unfortunate. It was a terrible thing to happen. But to say that, you know, I said, now is the time to man the ramparts

and let's move ahead. That would, you know, I had no such feeling. And then that, I'm just being honest about it. I don't remember that. I later became involved in the Union organization. I tried to, I was one of the leaders in organizing the Union at the Detroit News, for example. In fact, eventually became president of the newspaper Gilded Detroit. But I was never what you'd call a fireman. I believed in Unionism. I finally came to the conclusion of made sense. And I participated in it and so on. But I was not the kind of, you know, have never been, someone who would grab a sign and start picketing and start yelling and, you know, demanding things. My approach has always been much softer approach. I always figured, let's reason together kind of guy. But I was active as a unionist. And

I was in a very formative period of my life at this particular moment. Okay. Let's cut your second. Speed. It's a reaction to statements like that when people are hearing, what did you feel about, what do you feel about those sort of statements? Well, if you're thinking, if I'm thinking in hindsight, obviously they were pretty stupid. But at the time statements like that sort of rolled off people's backs. I mean, they, you know, that's what these people said. But the reality, you didn't have to, you know, my parents didn't have to be told this. They knew what the reality was. The reality was that they were struggling to survive. And a lot of other people were doing the same thing. And the reaction basically was that they just, you know, they rolled off people's backs.

When Henry Ford said, for example, that he would shut down his plant before he would allow it. He would board up the front door of the Ford Motor Company before he would accept social security and then later unionism. Everybody laughed. They said, oh, well, you know, so what you'll manage is talking. And everybody, you know, so in terms of, in terms of, and this, again, I'm talking from my own memory, you know, people don't just sort of let it roll off their backs. And those people who were active became very active in the Democratic Party. And they began to, you know, began to think of those terms, began to think in terms of changes in the social structure. But I can't say that people became insuriated

or my guy just raised unsured at the cane because of these statements. The one statement that really got that got Ford in deep trouble and caused the biggest stir was when he had the independent, the dearborn independent, was his newspaper. And he, in effect, interjected a very anti-Semitic tone to the paper and then said that history was monk as you read it. That really created a stir. But this type of thing, you know, at the time, the newspapers, the free press in particular and the news to some extent, their whole approach to things was, well, you know, things are getting better. And there was no kind of reporting that there

would be today, for example, of a real major depression. If something comparable to the 1930 happened today, you know, the papers would be absolutely dripping with this sort of thing. In the 1930s, there was always, there was always an upbeat, the papers always are trying to say, hey, you know, things are getting better or will be getting better and so forth. And there was always, the tone of coverage, the tone of approach to things was in that vein. So if you could tell us about the auto industry in the 20s, starting in the late teens and working through the stock market crash.

Well, if you look at the auto industry, the development of the industry, Ford Motor Company in 1914, of course, came up with the eight-hour day, the five-dollar day, which had a tremendous impact on that in a second. In 1940, the auto industry in Detroit had a major turning point in 1914 when Ford came up with a five-dollar day. His philosophy was that he wanted to build a car, the people that worked at his plant could buy and own. He came up with a sociological department, for example, where they literally sent people into people's homes to be sure that they spent the money properly and their home was clean and so on. The whole process helped

Ford to take the leadership in the auto industry. And by 1920, in that period, Ford Motor Company was building about 55% of all the cars in the world. And there was a one-model thing. You could buy a Ford in black, and that was it. And everybody accepted that because it was a transportation and reasonably inexpensive transportation. Well, at the same time, in about 1920, for example, General Motors, I'd have to be careful, but at that point, Durant brought all the elements of General Motors together. And General Motors became a major force in the auto industry, about 1920. Chevrolet was there sort of competitive car with

the Ford Motor Company. And they began gradually to come out with cars each year and began to sell, hey, you don't have to buy a black car. We'll sell you one painted blue or can, or we'll give you seats inside that are in color and so forth. And this helped to create the competitive tenor in the auto industry that led to the idea that every year was a new model. And it became a very critical thing in terms of the life of the city of Detroit. And also, what happened was that by, I think, Chrysler came into the picture around 1925. He bought up a couple of the other old auto companies. And about 1926-27, Chevrolet was now leading Ford in terms of a number of sales. And created quite a, quite a consternation

within the Ford hierarchy. There was a feeling Ford himself, Henry Ford himself, was dead set on maintaining a very inexpensive, don't get too fancy kind of car. The people around him, and as I understand it, particularly his son Edsel and others, said, you know, you've got to do something because this is getting so competitive that all of a sudden Ford is going to be pretty much the tail end of the auto industry. And it was in 27 in that period when Ford suddenly, and he was a man of very stubborn in some ways. But when he said he made up his mind, he'd make it up, bang, that was it. And then one day he said,

okay, we'll have a new car. Tomorrow, bang, they shut down the plant, start building a new car. And he demonstrated this in other ways over the years. If you recall, he had demonstrated that at the time of World War I when he set out in a piece ship. He was going to stop the war. And he organized a piece ship and sailed it across the Atlantic. In 1939-40, when the UAW had organized the plant, he had said that he would shut the plant down before he would allow the Union to move into his plant. And then there was a strike. And all of a sudden out of a clear blue sky, there was a settlement. And the settlement went beyond even the UAW had asked for. He gave them the Union shop. But that was his kind of thing. Well, he shut

downed in 27. He shut down. And they went into the period of almost a year, building the Model A. The Model A then became one of the most important stories from, in many ways at that time, from a social, sociological, economic, and other place. This, the buildup became so great that the papers in Detroit, for example, were devastating competition who could get, you know, the first pictures, who could get the first story, the detail. And if you go back into the files, you'll find double eight column lines, big black headlines, you know, first pictures of the Model A. And then finally, when they set the date, and I don't

recall precisely, I don't have it at my fingertips, a precise date when they opened up, you know, and they showed them, you can see the Model A. It was the thousands of people across the country. I mean, there were just thousands. And they literally just, you know, would break down the door to get in to see this car. And in Detroit, they had the convention hall. And the convention hall was a very large hall. I would say, well, it was almost a block square. So, you know, it was a very sizable thing. And they had the Ford Model A on pedestals, about three areas of that hall. And I have, I've seen, I know, I've, I have pictures of, people were crushed, you know, crushed in, just to stand and stare at this time. And all

of the, all of the sales room and everything. And it was a very, very major, major thing. And of course, Ford was just barely getting started. And the car didn't really take off like he wanted. And of course, then you had to crash and the depression and, and, and a whole new set of challenges in the, in the industry. Great. Thank you. Cut your second. So, when I think in terms of the, of the period that we've been discussing the depression, I think of my mother, I think of the tremendous fortitude and courage that she showed. To me, she was an unsung here. I'll never forget, for example, when I was graduated in 1934 from Wayne University. She had saved up from, from the meager savings that she had. She gave me a watch when I walked out on the steps of the Masonic Temple

right after the graduation ceremony. And I knew how much it, you know, it had meant to her to get me that watch and how proud she was. And then the other thing that I remember about her, and I guess it says something about the, how people lived. And she had come and had married my father here in Detroit about 1912. And in 1939, I gave her one of the biggest thrills of her life. I drove her to New York to see the world's fair. And that was a very treasured moment because it meant so much to her. And, to me, of course, it was a real, a real moving thing. And it pointed out how people lived their lives, they lived for their family. And the fact that she had never been out of the city of Detroit, basically,

once she arrived here.