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[Music] welcome to conversations in North Dakota history sponsored by the State Historical Society of North Dakota I'm Virginia Heidenreich from the State Historical Society and today we're talking with dr. D Jerome tweetIn from the University of North Dakota we will be talking about North Dakota documentary film and photography in the 1930s dr. tweetIn why don't you start out by giving us a little background about what prompted this thrust for documentary film during the 1930s well as obvious during the 1930s that the hardest hit areas of the country the most depressed for a very long time really beginning with World War one and the decline of Agriculture then after the war was rural America there was a high degree of tenant farming with the 1934 in the 1936 drowse much of the farming community in North Dakota and in other Great Plains states was I think we can say essentially wiped out except for some areas and so here was a here was a clear area that that needed some kind of attention and Franklin Roosevelt moved very quickly to try solve the farm problem but first with the Triple A and some farm subsidy type programs that would bring some cash into into farm pockets but also general relief agencies like fer a that employed farmers in in construction tax and Road building but the the agency that had the most interesting responsibilities was created in 1935 by executive order and that was the resettlement administration and the resettlement administration which became very controversial had at its prime functioned a campaign again rural poverty and many of its programs really went counter to the tradition of American agriculture resettlement taking people from from marginal land moving them physically into model farm communities same thing was done in some ways with with suburbs they were to take marginal land out of production as well as give relief and so on and the the resettlement administration was reorganized in 1937 as the Farm Security Administration but of the New Deal programs I think the the resettlement administration which turned into the Farm Security Administration was the most controversial it had well most of the people it was headed by Rexford guy Tocqueville Tugwell a left-wing liberal idealist economist from Columbia who wanted to reshape rural America he was one of the chief of the of the social planners we've got to plan American agriculture and that would be one of the ways of removing war poverty and as part of that as part of that and in part because it was under fire as very left-wing some people called it a communism if you were moving towards somewhat communal farming it was attacked well let's just say that it was the most attacked of all the New Deal agencies and one of the things that it felt it should do and Tugwell was very strong on this was that a documentation should be made of rural poverty I mean we've got to record not only for history but to justify this New Deal program and one way to document was to establish within the resettled resettlement in administration and information division and this was broken down into publication radio scripts and radio promotion and it also had a photographic division and a a documentary division and Tugwell as well as Roosevelt thought we've got to document this we believe in order to justify in a lot of ways what the resettlement administration was doing let's show the people the country through photographs what rural poverty is really like and so beginning we're really in thirty-five but getting off the ground in 36 Tugwell appointed as head of the photographic historical division member the name of Roy Stryker now Roy Stryker was an economist and a liberal and a friend of extradited well one of the brain trust of the Roosevelt administration and but Stryker also had a great sense of image and he had done a book in 1925 I think called American economic life and how it can be improved and he illustrated that with the photographic work done by the reformer Jacob Riis who's a good friend of Theodore Roosevelt who took pictures of slums and bad conditions and and he realized that you know a picture's worth a thousand words and if if you're going to make a statement for attempting to improve real life or changing the economy let but show people what it's like and so that book caught the attention of Tugwell and they were good friends and then Doug Stryker had also come from a very strong and environmental family and he also in 1933 came out with a pictorial book called the Roosevelt year and so tagged well was much impressed although Stryker was not a photographer but he had a sense of what was good what images really ought to be used and so he headed then the photographic division and essentially set up a program where at which had as its first first and primary obligation to go to hire photographers to go out and document across the country in all the state's rural poverty and he hired some some well-known photographers like Walker Evans Dorothea Lange who had been photographing conditions in California especially with migrant workers and so on Russell Lee who was one who did photographed North Dakota John Vachon who started out as a messenger who didn't know a thing about a camera but was given a camera and did some very nice work for Stryker and Arthur Rothstein who also came to North Dakota and these were young liberal sensitive camera people and he wanted that liberal inclination and of course all of them went on to become nationally and internationally recognized photographers they got their start here and so in 1936 1937 this crew started across the country to photograph rural poverty and it was in 1936 37 that they first came to North Dakota especially Russell II John Rochon and Arthur Rothstein and so they took pictures across North Dakota's cross and in other places and they were looking for the best examples of poverty they weren't out here to photograph smiling people in nice houses there they they had a point to show now later striker expanded the photographic division or the mission of the photographic division to to come up over the years with a socially a photographic social history they wanted to document the role of the railroad for example in American history so for one year you get all kinds of railroad tracks and people with the railroad and railroad depots and and so on and in all the by then the Farm Security Administration during 36 through 43 when it was terminated captured on film about seven hundred and seventy two thousand photographs documenting not only rural poverty but documenting American social life and it is commonly accepted that this was the most far-reaching consequential photographic campaign in all of history and I was reading a quotation by the director of the New York Museum of Modern Art who said it was the most outstanding collection ever brought together in American history these people yes they were directed to take certain photographs but they also had a certain license to capture what they thought would be would be good photography and they were interested in in shadows and clouds and they were professionals who were after not only the picture but a well-crafted well-thought-out sensitive picture and one of the reasons reasons why the photographs is one looks at them and they're I have looked at those from North Dakota and Minnesota and smattering of others and I I've looked probably at about 7500 of them and they're about 3,000 uh North Dakota you get a sense of boy these people knew what they were doing there they're excellent photographic work and part of it part of the reason for that is they came on the scene with the newest equipment about this time the 35 millimeter a Leica from Germany and the Rolleiflex was replacing the Speed Graphic the lenses were faster you could do more with them and that's why it's excellent photographer photography there were times when when Stryker was not pleased he felt that he had too many pictures of clouds so we sent out a memo saying cut this picture taking of clouds we have enough clouds let's move towards taking pictures of people and pictures of people were always important but as you move towards the end of the 30s there's more of an effort to capture and capture people so it this New Deal agency was for the historian you know looking back extremely successful program it's not many people could afford film cameras during the 30s and some of our best pictures of North Dakota well the best pictures of North Dakota during the 30s come from the Farm Security Administration collection well you've talked a little bit about the pictures of people did any people regard these pictures as distorting reality at all where these these are pictures of people who are down and out and yes should have made people look rather bedraggled and yet did in fact their pictures do that yeah well in North Dakota being if not the hardest hit certainly one of the hardest hit you read the documentation and reports of people with federal relief agencies and without taking pictures miss Hickok who traveled throughout North Dakota in 33 and 34 and reported to Harry Hopkins who headed fer a she puts on in print a picture which is is one of destitution of threadbare people down and out of people that are in great wand and so yes there there was this kind of picture of North Dakota now when FSA photographers or resettlement administration photographers came to North Dakota they did emphasize they did emphasize the the drab the gloomy the down-and-out aspect I in 36 and 37 they spent a great amount of time in the hardest-hit area of North Dakota which was divided County Williams County McKenzie stark the Western third of the state which there was no crop at all I mean that was the the very heart of the Dust Bowl and in those years of 36 37 they spent very little or no time in the Red River Valley because the valley had escaped the total drought that you know there's still problems of course but the the pictures of 3637 tend to emphasize barefoot ill-clad children standing in front of a very small tarpaper Shack people living in dugouts people sitting in environments that would emphasize the poverty and and yes there was that but if you were to look at the FSA photograph for 3637 you cannot say this is North Dakota it's a it's a in this way it's distorted if you were to do a history of North Dakota in 1935 36 37 and just use FSA photographs then you would not present a well balanced view of North Dakota during that time so yes the photographs can be trusted as it's direct documents but they've got to be put in their context they've got to be put in the context it's very difficult even in 1940 42 when things were improving - to find pictures of happy people the the few that we do have in the state may be a sample of 200 not many happy faces and I suppose there weren't many happy faces but people must have laughed sometime during 36 and 37 now you had mentioned that there were some films done some agencies did work with with doing films yes throughout the country and also in North Dakota that's right the documentary division of the resettlement administration then the Farm Security Administration felt that there should be documentaries done and documentary film was really in its infancy but they they they wanted to produce high-quality films that could be shown in theaters and in at public meetings and so on that would chronicle the good things that were happening because of the New Deal and because of the work of the resettlement administration as well as other as well as wellas are the New Deal agencies and the the key man in this situation was a man by the name of parallel parallel rents grew up in in West Virginia he had was beginning to see what he called the rape of the land and pollution that early he writes in his personal memoir by his father who was always fighting to keep the bass alive and polluted streams and so he was very much aware of environmental questions and he was a film critic a film critic on the left he was not a communist but he he was on the Left politically and he didn't have much truck with Hollywood and glossing over American life he was very difficult on tuxedo dance films in the 1930s of which there were a great many and and he in 1931 he traveled the country and he was much taken much taken by the drought and we don't know exactly where he went but he was in on the Great Plains and he writes about that saying that it was just appalling to him how the business of machinery within a short time had so disturbed the Great Plains that the Dust Bowl resulted and he he went to Washington and he talked to Rexford Tugwell who was the administrator of RA and FSA and he said he wanted to make a film on the environment and the Dust Bowl especially well attacked well didn't want that he wanted a film on TV a Tennessee Valley Authority now the Tennessee Valley Authority was the most one of the most controversial of New Deal program because it took the Tennessee Valley it established public power you know the private power companies were not keen on this at all it wanted to take and and totally remake a part of the country and and this of course was high idealism and Tugwell love that as well as Roosevelt and others where you'd take this destitute part of the country flood ravaged and make it an ideal Valley and that's exactly what the federal government did through irrigation and use of water and dams generated hydroelectric power cheap Roosevelt was himself very upset that only six percent of Americans had rural electricity and this this program came under attack so Ted well wanted a film that would justify what was done there well Lorenz didn't he said maybe some time but I I wanted I want to do something in the environment of the Great Plains and so Doug well said fine and Lorenz had a great sense of proportion a great sense of place and he then set to work on the film that would become the plow that broke the plains which is still considered a classic and one of the first documentary films he hired a young crew men like Paul strand and Leo Hurwitz and Ralph Steiner now his crew was far to the left they were I suppose we could say communists that they felt capitalism should be overthrown and they were to work out the script and and present it to to to lorentz well part of the script called for a scene in which you would have millionaires dressed in tuxedos top hat smoking cigars the stereotype driving tractors plowing up the Great Plains placing placing the whole responsibility for the Dust Bowl and American business which was in in trouble because of the depression and on the fat cats of America well Lorenz blew his stack that's not what he wanted and there was great tension in the making of the film and Lorentz in the long run was able to prevail and did it did an environmental program our environmental film which showed generally the misuse of the land by humans and it's hard hitting it it is a film which makes its point and clobbers you over the head the premise being that the whole Great Plains area including most of North Dakota should never have been plowed in the first place it was a gigantic mistake and that's the premise I think it was cattle country and the ploughman came in and and ruined it there's an element underlying theme that these people were greedy and that during World War 1 we plowed and plowed fence defense for defense was the the government admonition and that's what farmers in North Dakota other places did much of marginal land in Western North Dakota came under cultivation during World War one when prices were high farmers did well 296 wheat very good and and you plowed much of the cattle country and he then you know in a very effective use of the juxtaposition of plowing and harvesting with the tanks and World War one makes the point that this should never been done and the reason for the Dust Bowl was was strengthened because of that and then he goes into some of the more the best Dust Bowl scenes that one can find where this was filmed as difficult he filmed grass in Montana they did go through North Dakota we cannot say specifically that things were filmed in North Dakota but it certainly applies to North Dakota and the the the segment on the 30s is devastating Dust Bowl peop
e being driven off the land because of the misuse of the land because the people plowed where they shouldn't apply because they were greedy for more money and more land that whole segment is extremely strengthened and in what I've read about the plow that Brooks the plains mostly done by people in film have missed this and that is the musical score for the plow that broke the plains is I think it's dependents done by Virgil Thompson who just died in 1989 at age 92 American composer who especially in this this segment on the 30s the background is the dust choking people dogs panting stock in big trouble and people leaving you have this almost a subliminal advertising part of the music is it goes into are you sleeping are you sleeping brother John well everybody's sleeping while this was all done and we weren't paying attention now it doesn't hit you over the head but it's there and the the hardest-hitting thing in the whole film I think is when you get into that section where these people are baked out they're dusted out over the sound of the doxology and there's a that's a real twist I think in a hard-hitting twist that praise God from whom all blessings flow comes across as these people are being wiped out and then at the very end the film focuses on the resettlement administration which which is help is helping all these farmers driven off the land helping to resettle them helping to feed them helping them to find new homes so it's a justification a hard-hitting one of the resettlement administration which was under heavy attack so somewhat of a justification for it but a a great documentary it's a propaganda documentary you have to keep that in mind as one looks at it but a great documentary anyway now there were some other films that were actually focused on North Dakota weren't there yes by other programs yes there were and the the one that exists and these things keep coming up in attics and hand offices and I'm sure the National Archives has more if we could dig them out but there was a film done called the Federal Emergency Relief Administration in North Dakota now fer a as it's called was the the first concerted effort on the part of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal to bring relief to the country to keep food on the table to keep roof over people's houses over people so they wouldn't starve to death and it came early in 1933 and lasted through 1935 and it funneled money into the states through the states to employ people in a series of different wide variety of of projects that we're very good not only have saved people but it improved the physical environment of of all states and especially North Dakota which at this time was we must say a relatively backward as far as as certain kinds of programs were concerned now for example in North Dakota AFV are a built 2,300 miles of roads that weren't there before and improved them and it built 88 tennis courts in the state would just had four or five it built swimming pool it employed people in construction which was one of the main thrusts the mine out athletic field the Jamestown athletic field ice rigs and so on now most of the most of the jobs for fer a were oriented towards men for for the most part men were head of household you had to be a head of household to receive this kind of government employment relief at which you could make depending on your status of poverty 38 to 40 dollars a month but there were programs for women to throughout the state the most most counties and cities had canning projects which women ran a women were involved in mattress factories from that kind of thing women were involved also in massive sewing projects making clothes for those that had no clothes so it employed a great many North Dakotans probably about 10 percent women 90 percent men and the a couple of points to be remembered about this and this is brought out in the film which we'll mention in a minute that the New Deal becomes very statistical well we didn't keep as a country statistical records before really nineteen Wow 1933 we didn't know how many people are unemployed in 1932 there were no records well the film points out that wants to get across to you how many people were employed how many mattresses were made how many child's diapers were manufactured how many blankets and so on how many how many bushels of potatoes were canned and all this kind of thing I'm part of that of course is to show people what was being done so fer a was very important to North Dakota it employed at any single time a hundred and ninety thousand heads of household now when you're looking at a population of 650,000 that is indeed many a high percent of the people in the state as heads of households being employed again North Dakota receive much more than the national share of fer a because of the because of the drought that devastated the state in 34 North Dakota received 10 million dollars in in federal money for fer a the state of New York with a much larger population received eight million Montana two million Minnesota five million so per capita North Dakota received more than any other state in the Union now the film brings us across it it's an hour film a silent film with subtitles I suppose for economy remember the name of Paul Paul Steiner went across the state filming projects wanting to project the positive side and this is a little in contrast to FSA this is upbeat this is progress these are people being employed projects being done an emphasis on swimming pools and young children splashing and swimming and smiling through the New Deal's bringing happiness to the American people and employment and it is a wonderful record and ice the only record we have of this kind of thing many people throughout North Dakota doing positive things whether it's building privies whether it's stuffing mattresses people-oriented but it's positive and I suppose in that film ah maybe 30 or 40 projects and it's the only existing film of projects and I learned from the film some projects I'd never heard of before so it was a upbeat in part or maybe totally who knows because of the coming election I think in 1936 it starts out by saying under our President Franklin Roosevelt we have made tremendous progress and we are attacking the problems of rural poverty and so on well with an election coming this this was this was all right for Roosevelt to have a movie that would go around the state showing my gosh we've employed 190,000 at any one time and we spend eight million dollars here and look how we've improved the Linton Park the Wahpeton swimming pool the mine out athletic stadium the Williston swimming pool and so on so this is a and then the quality of the filming is is not a documentary quality it's just somebody with a camera out there documenting the the films that are the the projects that would be made into a film so it's a it's I think you'd have to say it's a glowing account of a of a New Deal program that was very important to North Dakota and it does show that here we want to he went to want a picture on film the positive side of physical improvement as well as the emotional improvement of people's lives by giving them work so it's a little different kind of film what was the total time frame then that you could say that documentary film and photography was done you've talked about some different Changez and focus over at least a decade yeah well I suppose we could say that the the New Deal filming projects really began with the New Deal or shortly after it started because fer a Iran 33 or 35 and and and some of the footage was shot in 34 some of it was shot in 30 35 then you had the resettlement administration doing 35 and firm security up with documentaries and stills up to 43 and almost all the New Deal agency New Deal agencies had I don't want to call it their propaganda arm but their public relations and this is in part public relations you as Roosevelt said you know the only thing you had to fear is fear itself he saw the psychological aspect of depression and that you had to convince people of things weren't as bad that things were being done to lift their spirits and we know that President Roosevelt became a master at using the radio I mean he he sense that these relatively new although film wasn't new by that time but radio was these relatively new ways of reaching people were important he had that sense and other other agencies did the same kind of thing whether in print or rather in film the the Public Works Administration that built the larger things like post offices most North Dakota post offices and built by PW a they they had their own photographers taking pictures of what they were doing those pictures and what they were doing came out you know in a sizeable volume which was distributed all across the country in all about 1938 here here's what we're doing and so the Roosevelt in the New Deal and the the people worked in the New Deal like Tugwell and and and others like Ickes and so on and there was a sense that we've got to record this and of course for the historian it was it was wonderful that they did have this sense self-serving of course but for the historian who uses these things wisely a tremendous documentation of the country okay well I would like to thank you for joining us today dr. tweetIn to talk with us um about the history of documentary film and photography in North Dakota and I'd like to thank that those of us in the audience who have joined us again this is conversations in North Dakota history sponsored by the State Historical Society of North Dakota [Music]
