Greenwood County History-
1930s (Part 6 of 10),
The following history of 1930 is the continuation of the column created by Mike Pitko in a chronological order.
On Sept. 28, 1934 the first night football game with lights was played at McGinnis Field against Madison. The game started at 7:30 P.M. with a crowd estimated to be 1,800. Eureka won the game 13 to 6.
The closing days of 1934 finds more than 25 1/2 million persons-one out of every five in the nation- looking to the federal government for all, or a substantial part, of their support.
In the nine-month period of April 1934 to December 1934, the cost of the relief program in Greenwood County was $116,272. During April there were 395 families on relief and that increase to 737 families by December. The average relief granted per family per month by December was $19.00.
The mayor of Eureka, at the request of the State Highway commission, ordered city workers to remove the 10-foot steel flagpole that was in the center of the intersection of Main and Third streets. The pole, with its big concrete base was considered dangerous to traffic on highways U.S. 54 and State 22. Workman have been working the last three days tearing down the concrete base. (This was no small concrete base. It was a tradition for some years for the high school to have a pep rally around the pole and cheerleaders got up on the concrete base to lead cheers.)
Approximately $5,400 is being loaned to farmers in Greenwood County under the Emergency Relief Adm. A total of 79 farmers on relief have applied for and are receiving loans. These loans are to be paid back next fall if crops and prices are good. A number of these farm families are buying cows and horses through this same plan. It is the first time in threeor four-years farmers are able to look forward to a good crop year and are glad to be able to continue farming.
In June of 1935, Eureka City officials went to Topeka to meet and discuss city projects with Kansas Emergency Relief Commission (KERC). Two projects discussed were the removal of debris and cleaning up the site of the Masonic Temple fire(where the post office is now) and preliminary plans for the Eureka Lake project that would be four miles north of Eureka. The water from Fall River has a lime content which makes it impossible to soften the water, the dam is in need of repairs and the reservoir above is filling with sand and silt.
Forty million dollars have been spent on relief and welfare in Kansas during the past sixteen months. This amounts to more than was spent in the ten-year period from 1924 to 1933. There are eleven classifications in the general program. A drought relief program resulted in the purchase of 521,000 head of cattle at a cost of $7,522,000. Canning factories turned out 13 million cans of meat and 25, 000 hides as well as 430,000 sheep pelts were processed. An average of 540 transient cases has been handled monthly. Work-relief which is the most important program had distributed 23 million dollars. Families on relief increased from 30,000 to 83,747 in about a year. Ten thousand in Kansas were enrolled in CCC camps which cost around $2,500,000. Subsistence gardens cost $100,000. Seed alone cost $47,000, wind erosion program in the spring covered 4 million acres of western Kansas at a cost of $400,000.
In July 1935, the state engineer of water resources in Topeka approved the project for a lake and county recreation park. (Eureka Lake) The project will now be submitted to the new (WPA) Works Progress Administration for approval. The lake will cover 260 acres, with a capacity of 1.2 billion gallons of water, water depth maximum 54 feet and have 6 1/2 miles of shoreline.
Kansas PWA plans are now to be handled in Kansas to speed up the application and approval process. The old wage zones have been discontinued and local officials will be able to award contracts on the basis of wage scales prevailing in their communities. Communities willing to put up their 55 per cent of construction costs on projects would be given first consideration in the allocation of the 4-billion-dollar relief fund. Public Works Administration will receive applications for auditoriums, school and university buildings, electric light and power plants and distribution systems, wharves, highways, bridges, hospitals, city halls, fire and police stations, jails, libraries, sanitary sewage systems, public buildings, storm sewer systems, water supply and distribution systems, and other similar projects.
Certain other projects regardless of cost, examples are recreational facilities, parks, playgrounds, small dams, ditches, street repair, malaria control, airports, sidewalks, gutters and curbs, levee works, landscaping, grading, farm to market roads, reservoirs and swimming pools shall likewise be within the jurisdiction of the WPA.
In August of 1935, Eureka was awaiting word from Washington on the Eureka Lake project. This project will be sponsored by the City of Eureka. The land, plans, transportation of laborers to and from the project, small equipment and tools are to be furnished by the city. The heavy equipment, materials and labor will be furnished by the federal government under the WPA program. This project will furnish employment to 340 men for one year. Federal funds will be approximately $257,000 and sponsor’s contribution (City of Eureka),$ 59,000.
The WPA wage scale was set in Kansas with a range from $32 a month for unskilled labor to $79 for professional and technical services. Greenwood County fell in the wage scale for counties in which the population of the largest municipality was under 5,000-unskilled, $32; intermediate, $38; skilled, $44, and professional and technical, $48. This scale is based on a 40-hour week.
The Treasury Department advertised for a building site for a new Eureka post office building. In all cases where possible bids should be submitted by actual owners of properties and not by agents. Six sites were offered, ranging from donation to $10,850. Site No. 1 was on the southwest corner of Main and First Street (Home Bank drive through site), Site No. 2 was on the east side of Oak Street, between Second and Third Street, Site No. 3 was on the west side of Main Street between 12th and 13th Streets, adjoining the North Side School on the north, Site No. 4 was where the Masonic Temple stood before the fire, Site No. 5 was at the northwest corner of Elm and Second and east of the old fire station, which was on the alley, Site No. 6 was on the southwest corner of Fourth and Walnut.
By August 1935, county relief administrators have increased and diversified their work relief projects in order to take care of practically all employable women from relief families where there is no other able bodied wage earner. The number of women on relief has not increased noticeably in Kansas, but counties have been convinced that work for women is as desirable as work relief for men.
Sewing rooms have proven to be the most popular projects in as much as they produce garments much needed be relief clients, and because the sewing room provides employment for women who have not much training in other technical skills.(There was a sewing room on the second floor of the Cartwright Building, which was located south of the Eureka library) The number of counties operating sewing rooms has increased from 45 in January 1934 to 93 in June 1935. Public libraries also have been greatly benefited from women’s projects.
Early in November 1935, the City of Eureka was notified that the site at Third and Oak was selected for the site of the new post office and the bid of $2,500 was accepted. The building will cost $68,000 to construct.
The Greenwood County commissioners appointed Dr. David Basham as part time county health officer at a salary of $100 per month, with allowance of 5 cents per mile for traveling expenses. Dr. Basham was also appointed county physician and surgeon for the care and treatment of the county poor at a salary of $125 per month and 5 cents per mile for travel expenses.
Seven hundred twenty- nine women’s projects were operating in June, including sewing rooms, libraries, dying of cloth and yarns, manufacture of leather coats from leather processed from drought relief cattle hides, repair and reconstruction of furniture, weaving, mattress making, packaging of dry milk and a variety of non-manual and educational projects including supervising of music, dramatics, arts, domestic science, crafts, recreation, play grounds, adult education, tap dancing, sketching, basketry, pottery, hooked rugs, home economics, and community singing. Women were set at work transcribing occupational classifications, as clerical assistants for the Planning Board, as stenographers for farm bureau offices and at collecting historical data.
The outstanding activity from the women’s section of the engineering department has been the initiation on a state-wide scale of the projects for utilizing 300,000 pounds of wool from drought relief sheep.
The CCC will call for enrollees for the Civilian Conservation Corps in October 1935. There have been two important changes made in the eligibility for the men wishing to enroll. The age limit has been lowered to 17 years and up to 28 years of age. Young men who are regularly in attendance at school are not to be selected. The thirteen months rule has been rescinded. Honorably discharged men who have served longer than thirteen months, may now be re-selected if they meet all other eligibility requirements.
In November 1935, a special election was held for the Eureka school district for $30,000 in bonds to assist in the construction and equipping of an auditorium- gymnasium at the high school. This amount represented 55 per cent of the cost of the project. The Federal Government would pay 45 per cent of the cost of the project. The American Legion, Eureka Club and Lions Club all voted one hundred per cent in favor of the project. Enrollment at the high school from 1927 to 1935 has increased slightly more than 70 per cent. The largest room at the high school at present is the study hall. It has 118 single desks. Whenever assemblies are held two of the smaller students are seated at each desk and even when that is done more than one hundred students have to stand during assemblies. There is no stage at the high school. Neither is there a gymnasium of any kind at the high school. The bond issue passed 362 to 214.
