In April 1940, a young California photographer working for the

National Youth Administration documented the lives of the youth of California, gripped by depression as they prepared for the coming war.

Excerpts from his photo essays follow

Kern County, California, April 9, 1940, This girl came from the OK state three years ago and lives with father in a rural slum in Wasco, Kern County..."We got mighty tired of roaming around."...The girl never got a chance to finish high school and will be nineteen "come August 11."...

Digging Up Potatoes

This potato field near Edison, Kern County, is in a new potato area which has been developed in the last two or three years. Potato fields are divided into two sections about thirty-five feet long by stake lines running diagonally across the rows. Potato digging machines run up and down the rows, followed by the field workers picking potatoes. Each worker is responsible for one section, which must be clean before the machine returns. The rate these machines travel, and the speed at which pickers must work, varies with the soil conditions and the efficiency of the machine. Wages are thirty-five cents an hour.

This year there was a tremendous oversupply of labor in potatoes. Men and women hunting for work waited at the ends of the rows for a picker to drop out. Some were willing to pay five or even ten dollars for a place in the field, at thirty-five cents an hour. The natural result of this could be the speeding up of the potato digging until someone dropped out of exhaustion.

Sitting on a sack of potatoes

Exploited almost exclusively by

young people, hitch-hiking has become an accepted means

of transportation for the job hunter, the traveler between

school and home in the holidays, and the

personable young fellow who is

habitually on the move.

The Ethics of Thumbing

A \A distinct code of ethics has developed around hitch-hiking. One must never flag a woman, or a car with a woman passenger. It is improper to thumb from just in front of another's established "stand", and a reasonable distance must be established further down the road. It is even considered bad form to stop and talk with another thumber for more than a few minutes

The Fourth in a Line of Thumbers

• Youngsters With Older Hobo

• Two youngsters aged 15 and 16 traveling in the company of an older hobo. Here they are returning to the train after having filled some empty whisky bottles with drinking water at the railroad water tower.

Said the older one, "He ain't at since yesterday morning." And then "Don't publish my pitcher in the paper. If my paw saw it, he'd beat hell out of me. I'm sposed to be thumbing." Their story was that they were returning from a visit to an uncle's in San Francisco to their home in Southern California, but their grimy appearances revealed they had been riding the freights for some time and traveling companions volunteered that they had come from Arizona. In Fresno that evening town police booked them as vagrants, and along with about fifteen others riding the same freight they were given sixty days.

Helping a New-Comer

Between Bakersfield and Fresno, Calif., April 11, 1940, Twenty years old and he has

been hopping freight cars on the bum for two years. His home,

which he has visited occasionally for two or three days at a time, is in Oakland,

California. There his father, on WPA, his mother, who is

engaged as a domestic when she can find work, … At one time

he enrolled in the CCC, but quit after six months because the

army routine was distasteful to him and went back to hopping the freights. He is a complete hobo and is not seriously in

search of employment. He has no desire to travel as a

gentleman hitch-hiker. "I wouldn't thumb. Freights is a lot

better."

In the Freight Car

Cause and effect.

This young man reading the war news holds an application blank for employment

in the Lockheed aircraft plant.

One of the phenomena of aircraft employment in the early months of 1940, after the cash and carry program

had been put into effect, was the crowds of men in the lines

outside the personnel departments of the aircraft

plants. A line of two thousand a day was not unusual. After a

few months the lines were reduced to about a hundred a day, due to the exhaustion of most of the available local

material and the closer cooperation between

vocational schools and plants. Many of the persons in the

lines at this time had appointments.

Line Outside the Lockheed Plant

About fifty to seventy-five percent of the applicants are young men in their late teens or early twenties. Many of them have had some aircraft

experience in the Naval Reserve, the NYA aircraft shops or private industry. Others have had vocational training in sheet metal work or die

and pattern work or have had experience as machinists. Many of them are here not because they need jobs but because they feel that working in an

airplane factory is more romantic than pumping gas or whatever other job they may have. A recent general raise in wages in the skilled classification

from an hourly rate of 90¢ to $1.02 is a more material inducement.

Oakland, California, April 23, 1940, Out of High School for a

year, their contribution to the family income is

wood from a WPA project. "You get

awful tired hanging around the house alla time, so I thought I'd chop some wood." Neither have had a regular job since

getting out of high school.

Hauling WoodHauling Wood

Industry's increasing demand for specialized training and education has both raised the average age of employment and increased the dilemma of youth. For those who emerge from high school without

either the means or the scholastic requirements for college, there usually follows a period of dislocation. The discouraging search for work is accompanied by spare time which is spent in hanging around. With a

growing realization of the need for occupational training, and anxious to become independent of home ties, many try to find a means of learning

while being paid. To some, the army or navy offer a solution.

San Francisco, California, May 9, 1940, One of the solutions to getting tired

of hanging around. A group of selected navy recruits receiving last

instructions before they actually sign up for

enrollment. Interviewed, all of them gave us their reason for enlistment the

desire to learn a trade. Most of these boys come

from a rural areas; on third of them had

discharge papers from the CCC.

Navy Recruits

Los Angeles, Calif, May 1, 1940, This twenty-three year old is a journeymen carpenter

at present working as an apprentice bricklayer in order to learn more than one trade. The boat he is building in his spare time both serves as an

interesting hobby and is expected to provide him with inexpensive living quarters. Should he fail to find other

employment, he plans to use the boat a means of livelihood

by becoming a fisherman. When the keel was laid, he had dreams of escaping to a South Sea Island paradise; his plans

have subsequently become more practical.

Building a Boat

Looking in his pocket for his surplus

commodities card. "Not having a job is bad enough, but you keep goin' down and

purty soon you're here and the spirit is gone. I turn my face when someone I know real well comes along the sidewalk. It takes the spirit when you're in

here and then you haven't anything left."

Looking for His Card

Unlike most youth, who are more than willing to be photographed, those in relief lines usually object.

These fellows waiting in line at the Surplus Commodities Depots in Hayward and San Leandro

all demanded to know where and by whom their pictures would be used. Many turned their backs,

refusing to be photographed, and only about a quarter of them finally consented. Most of them are here with cards issued not to themselves but to their families. Without exception, they feel very keenly

the stigma they believe attached to any form of direct relief.

High school student carrying home

surplus commodities for his family on relief. He has an

NYA job cleaning up the chemistry

laboratory at $10.00 a month. He wanted a Saturday afternoon

and Sunday job to provide him with spending money.

"Every time they get something good, ya don't get a chance to get any." He had just

discovered that because his father had recently been

reinstated on WPA, he was no longer

eligible for surplus commodities. The "something good"

was oranges. Surplus Commodities Depot, San Leandro, May 3,

1940.