Podcast Tuesday "Three Minutes"
Parading to fight the Depression
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History
An estimated ten thousand people turned out in Amsterdam on a raw and windy November 9, 1933 to parade for economic revival.
The Depression gripped the nation and former New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt had become President that year.
Roosevelt was launching his New Deal social programs, a key part of which was the National Recovery Administration or NRA.
According to the Albany Evening News, the NRA parade was the biggest in Amsterdam’s history and featured hundreds of marching mill workers, office employees and school children. There were scores of floats, bands and drum corps.
The Evening News was founded in the 1920s and was pro-New Deal in its coverage of the Amsterdam parade.
Republican Mayor Robert Brumagin was on hand to review the Main Street line of march at a reviewing stand at the Church Street intersection. But newly chosen Democratic Mayor-elect Arthur Carter was receiving cheers from the crowd, according to the Evening News, as Carter walked at the head of the contingent from the James T. Bergen American Legion Post.
Carter, who was listed as a state employee in a 1932 City Directory, would serve as mayor for a decade. Carter and his city were in a sense rewarded by the Roosevelt administration in subsequent years with $100,000 in federal funds plus federally funded WPA workers to partially defray the cost of building Amsterdam’s municipal golf course. The golf course opened in 1938 bearing Carter’s name.
The Evening News was optimistic the day of the NRA parade in 1933, “Over 6,000 men and women employees of Amsterdam’s leading mills appeared unanimous in their enthusiasm for the NRA regulations which had set the city mills humming after two years of desultory operation.”
A picture of the parade shows a line of workers from the Yund, Kennedy and Yund knitting mill walking five and six abreast behind a banner displaying the NRA symbol, a blue eagle. The mill was located at the foot of Eagle Street.
The clipping was provided by Margaret Buchner Phillips, one of the marching knitting mill workers. Phillips said she and four fellow marchers worked in the office at Yund’s--Violet Northrup, Mildred Schufelberg, Ruth Ballard and Gretchen Ruback.
In the picture, the knitting mill contingent is passing Whelan’s Drug store at the corner of East Main and Chuctanunda Streets, current location of the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame. There are spectators along the sides but probably more people are in the parade. It appears windy and rainy with American flags fluttering along the parade route and what look like flyers littering the sidewalks.
After the parade, William C. Grace from NRA headquarters in Washington delivered the main address at a nighttime rally held on the South Side of Amsterdam at the National Guard Armory, now the Amsterdam Castle. Phillips was an usher at the event.
Michael J. Wytrwal was NRA chairman for Montgomery County. Wytrwal was a prominent businessman in the predominately Polish neighborhood on Reid Hill. His family operated a coal yard, drugstore and furniture store.
Wytrwal told the rally that 1,600 local people had been put to work since the NRA began.
“Factory payrolls in Amsterdam have more than doubled,” Wytrwal said.
According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, the NRA was one of the most controversial of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. It established codes of fair practice for businesses and tried to provide jobs, raise wages and improve working conditions. Critics said the NRA was too authoritarian.
In 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed and invalidated the NRA’s compulsory codes as an improper expansion of the President’s executive powers into the area of legislation.
Thanks to contributions from Patricia Chadwick, Judy Draus and Diane Hale Smith our 2020 fund raising campaign for The Historians Podcast has climbed to $1,190. That’s 26% of our $4500 goal for the year. Please contribute online at www.gofundme.com/historians-podcast-2020-fund-drive Or donate by mail, make out a check to Bob Cudmore and send to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, N.Y. 12302. Your help is much appreciated.
Mohawk Valley Weather, Tuesday, February 25, 2020
Clouds will increase, thicker and lower tonight ahead of
a cold front. Some spotty light rain or snow showers are possible
tomorrow with temperatures still running above normal. A weak warm
front will lift towards the region Tuesday night into Wednesday
associated with a complex storm system with more clouds and light
precipitation. A secondary low pressure system will move northeast
from near southern New Jersey Wednesday night, and then move
across the region on Thursday bring a widespread rain and snow
event.
Wednesday, February 26, 2020-From the Archives of Historians Podcast- August 3, 2018-Historians Episode 226- Scott Haefner, site manager, talks about Old Fort Johnson, the 1749 limestone house William Johnson built on the Mohawk River in colonial New York. It was fortified during the French and Indian Wars.
Thursday, February 27, 2020-1959 Soap Box Derby.
John Blanchard, a 13-year old Fort Hunter boy, won the Amsterdam Soap Box Derby in 1959. Blanchard defeated Bobby Nadler, Jr. of Amsterdam by a margin of about 10 inches. An estimated three thousand people watched the 49 racers on Lindbergh Avenue......
Episode 307
Friday, February 28, 2020-Professor Peter Ward explores the history of personal cleanliness over the past 400 years in Europe and North America in his book, “The Clean Body.”
Montgomery County Events
https://www.co.montgomery.ny.us/web/sites/news/events_all.asp
Saturday, March 14, 2020 from 1-8pm
The City of Amsterdam is excited to announce that there are 24 local bars and restaurants participating in Amsterdam’s St. Paddy’s Day Pub Fest-More information Montgomery County NY Blog
http://www.visitmontgomerycountyny.com/amsterdams-3rd-annual-st-paddys-day-pub-fest-sponsored-by-jackson-hewitt/
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