Great Depression
Background Information for Teachers and Students
Excerpt from Johnson County 1825-2005: A Pictorial History
Making Do With Some Help
Many in Johnson County struggled during the Depression to meet the needs of their families. Families saved and re-used whatever they could, traded and bartered for the goods and services they needed, and even made products to sell from left over materials. The county extension office’s home demonstration agent offered a number of educational programs to help women re-think and re-use their resources. Over one hundred homemakers attended a 1933 program to teach them how to redesign and renovate clothing. A 1934 class demonstrated how to prepare liver loaf, stuffed heart, and calves brains, in an effort to encourage women to make greater use of the unusual cuts of meat that were often wasted on farms. For several years, each of the fourteen women’s units of the Johnson County Farm Bureau adopted a rural, needy family for the winter, providing them with clothing, food, and other necessary supplies.
Federal relief programs also provided necessary assistance to Johnson County families in need, among them, the Civil Works Administration (CWA). The CWA was administered by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and provided jobs for more than twenty million men and women nationally during 1933 and 1934. CWA workers made improvement so both local public building and private homes. In 1934, they upgraded the septic systems at Shawnee-Mission Rural High School and constructed twenty-two privies and eighteen septic tanks at private homes. They also helped build the State Deaf School In Olathe; one article in the Johnson County Democrat quoted local businessmen who credited the CWA with stimulating the city’s economy by fifty percent in 1934.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was another important source of relief for Johnson County residents. In Kansas, the program employed approximately seven thousand people in every county across the state, who built roads, decorated post offices and other public buildings, and gathered and published state and local histories. In Johnson County, WPA projects concentrated on public improvements and community service needs. One of the most extensive projects in Johnson County was the creation of the 256-acre Gardner Lake, built by WPA workers for drought relief and tourism. Initially conceived by local businessman E.F. Alexander, the project dammed Kill Creek north of Gardner’s city limits. Work began in 1936 with 245 WPA workers, who installed flood lights to allow for work to continue twenty-four hours a day. Workers also constructed small cottages and a beach house. When the lake opened in May 1940, a beach and picnic grounds were among the recreational amenities.
The federal government also developed programs to train young people. In September 1935 the National Youth Association established a training camp at an abandoned golf course in today’s western Shawnee to instruct unemployed women between the ages of 18 and 25 in sewing, cooking, psychology, waitress training, and crafts. The camp hosted 426 women, in groups of up to seventy each session; and according to the report in the Kansas City Star, a 1936 survey indicated that 90 percent of those women were gainfully employed.
Beyond the federal government, the local community came to help needy families. Local women operated sewing rooms to provide clothing to the unemployed and others in need. Other relief workers planted vegetable gardens to supplement winter food supplies. In 1934, for instance, the county extension office established 480 relief gardens to assist families on the relief rolls, and the Federal Emergency Relief Association allocated $333.00 to purchase seeds for cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, spinach, beans, peas, and onions. A five-acre community garden was planted that year in Olathe near the rock quarry; people on the relief rolls canned 1,400 quarts of produce at the Olathe High School. Residents could also receive special assistance with painting and repairing their property.
