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California Getaways
Christmas in Cali: A Chicago Tribune advertisement during the Great DepressionOne of the iconic pictures of the Great Depression is Dorthea Lange’s “Toward Los Angeles”. In class we discussed the irony behind the photograph between the migrant hitchhikers and the billboard advertisement. There are several pictures, similar to the Dorthea Lange photograph, that depict people down and out standing near an advertisement for a more luxurious lifestyle. These photographs caught my attention as we discussed them in class because of the contrast they showed between the homeless and those lucky enough to afford luxuries. I wanted to do more research on the advertising of the time, and how it reflected the gap between the really rich and the really poor.
I came across the Chicago Tribune Ads during the Great Depression era. There were 30 images on the page that I looked at of past ads. The ads reflected the Depression in the discounted rates and “depression deals”, but they still advertised luxury goods. There were ads for lingerie, jewelry, expensive cigars, bicycles, and cameras- all items that would be considered extras for many people during the Depression. One of the ads I found interesting was the $100 silver fox scarf. As thousands of people were scrounging for food, others were buying $100 dollar fox scarves. Thinking about the down-and-outers we talked about in class, and contrasting them to the people who could afford luxuries, such as a fox scarf, really confirmed the gap in wealth during the Depression. Some people benefited from the Depression with the deflated prices on certain goods while others were hungry on the streets.
Another one of the ads boasted a “Christmas in Cali” package that was $106.45 for a round trip fare to and from California. I found this extremely ironic as the homeless people we study mainly headed towards California to find work. This ad was an ad to send people to California not to work, but to spend their Christmas on a Cali vacation. So, as many homeless people traveled to California in search of some sort of Promised Land, others vacation to California as a getaway from their already comfortable lives. In keeping with the “travel habit”, the migrants heading toward CA for work weren’t the only ones who traveled during this period. Apparently, others were able to travel for weekend trips to avoid the cold during Christmas and spend it in the warm heat of California. People traveled west, but different groups had extremely different reasons.
Vacationers
Your post reminds me a lot of something we discussed in the first week of class - the growing phenomenon of leisure travel during the 1930s. While a few of the authors we've read briefly touched on this subject in their works, we've yet to really see a work about travel for travel's sake written from this period. We know that many people were still making money and prospering during the Depression; we know that they too were "hitting the road" in their own way. But I agree with you that it's really hard to comprehend these facts in the face of everything else we've read and seen. You'd like to think that if someone had enough money to travel to California on vacation, they would also be willing to give some of that money to their fellow man. I know in my mind that it was possible for certain social groups to be basically oblivious to the plight of men around them, but it is truly a difficult concept to stomach.