While some seem to have plenty of food and money, the rising unemployment leaves many without. One wealthy couple sets up a place where the poor can get a hot meal. EF Hutton ventures down into Hell’s Kitchen to check on the soup kitchen sponsored by him and his wife Marjorie Merriweather Post. Historical section covers Al Capone’s soup kitchen, and a news update about the starving Mahatma Gandhi in British Occupied India. Other people and subjects include: January 1931, Salvation Army, Post Cereal fortune, Birds Eye frozen foods, General Mills, tenor Rafaelo Diaz, food insecurity, and the Great Depression effect on grandparents. Archival Music provided by Past Perfect Vintage Music, www.pastperfect.com.
While some seem to have plenty of food and money, the rising unemployment leaves many without. One wealthy couple sets up a place where the poor can get a hot meal.
EF Hutton ventures down into Hell’s Kitchen to check on the soup kitchen sponsored by him and his wife Marjorie Merriweather Post. Historical section covers Al Capone’s soup kitchen, and a news update about the starving Mahatma Gandhi in British Occupied India.
Other people and subjects include: January 1931, Salvation Army, Post Cereal fortune, Birds Eye frozen foods, General Mills, tenor Rafaelo Diaz, food insecurity, and the Great Depression effect on grandparents.
Extra Notes / Call to Action:
Nicki Woodard provided anecdotal research for: https://inculture.microsoft.com/arts/ancient-olympia-common-grounds/
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Archival Music provided by Past Perfect Vintage Music, www.pastperfect.com.
Opening Music: My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands
Section 1 Music: Organ Grinder’s Song by Jack Payne, Album The Great British Dance Bands
Section 2 Music: Sing, Baby, Sing / You Turned The Tables On Me by Carroll Gibbons, Album The Age of Style – Hits from the 30s
Section 3 Music: You by Carroll Gibbons, Album The Age of Style – Hits from the 30s
End Music: My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands
AS THE MONEY BURNS
Podcast by Nicki Woodard
Episode 049 – Ladies Section
Series Tag
00:00
[Music – My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands]
AS THE MONEY BURNS is an original podcast by Nicki Woodard. Based on historical research, this is a deep exploration into what happened to a set of actual heirs and heiresses to some of America’s most famous fortunes when the Great Depression hits.
Each episode has three primary sections. Section 1 is a narrative story. Section 2 goes deeper into the historical facts. Section 3 focuses on contemporary, emotional, and personal connections.
00:29
Story Recap
As the Great Depression builds, teen heiress Barbara Hutton finally had her grand debutante ball, but it is former It Girl Louise Van Alen who has snagged Prince Alexis Mdivani.
Now back to AS THE MONEY BURNS
Title
00:45
Ladies Section
[Music Fade Out]
Episode Tag
00:50
While some seem to have plenty of food and money, the rising unemployment leaves many without. One wealthy couple sets up a place where the poor can get a hot meal.
01:02
[Music – Organ Grinder’s Song by Jack Payne, Album The Great British Dance Bands]
Section 1 – Story
[Music Fade Out]
01:17
On a bitter cold January day, a woman walks with her two young children. Their eyes are a bit hollow from hunger and worry. They try to walk fast enough to warm up their bodies. They cross the street towards a soup kitchen, where a long, long line of other hungry customers wait. As the mother and children find the end of the line, the mother grows uncomfortable with the looks of the different men. All dressed in various clothing, some looking like they will soon be on a job interview. But their eyes are hollow and confused by the ongoing hard times.
Seeing the line is far too long, the wind far too bitter, and the uncomfortable nature of the men, the mother hurries her children along to find another form of food. They look at food carts, tempted to steal an apple or other items. They scour alleyways in hopes of edible garbage. Little shantytowns pepper along the way.
A strong wind blows newspapers about. The little boy picks up a sheet and holds it to his mother. She sees an article and determines to head in another direction.
02:23
A newspaper wrestles inside a warm limousine heading into the heart of Manhattan as a businessman reads the stock trades. Arriving at his destination, the businessman folds up the newspaper and leaves it in the seat. He nods to his chauffeur and leaves his briefcase in the car with instructions.
Outside the EF Hutton stock brokerage firm, the businessman crosses the street and hails a cab.
02:46
The woman with her children make their way up the steps into a church. They are escorted to the side waiting room with other women and children. When called, each will be led into yet another room.
The taxi drives deep into the heart of Hell’s Kitchen at Thirty-Fifth Street and Tenth Avenue. The businessman leans over, peeling off a few bills from a thick money clip, pays the taxi fee, and steps out.
From his mirror, the taxi driver sees the businessman cross catty corner into the old Bethany Methodist Episcopal Church that now serves as a soup kitchen.
03:19
Hungry men, young and old, devour their daily meal in one section. Over to the side away from view, women eat along with their children in the Ladies Section. There along with two other families, the mother with her children are seated at a table with blue tablecloth. A waiter comes up and explains the day’s menu, and the woman selects the options for her family.
Incensed, the tax driver hops out of his cab and rushes into the facility.
03:44
The mother looks at the lovely arrangement of flowers at her table. Tears forming in her eyes. She puts on a cheerful face to reassure her children. She sees the other relatively happy families at peace enjoying their nourishment. She sighs a moment of relief and begins to relax.
To the side the businessman looks around satisfied with the operation.
Waiters promptly bring over the hot meals. Service swift and generous. The mother politely but quickly devours the meal. Hunger taking over as sole focus.
04:15
The taxi driver bursts through the door then spots his customer.
“Hey! Don’t give him anything to eat!” The taxi driver shouts while pointing at the businessman. “He’s got money! He took a cab down here!”
Various silverware plink on the tables as everyone pauses momentarily in astonishment.
04:33
Immediately, the manager Major John LeCoq of the Salvation Army recognizes the businessman and promptly greets him with a handshake. The taxi driver gets angrier, and the Major goes to calm him down.
The Major whispers to the taxi driver, “That is Mr. EF Hutton. He and his wife are patrons of this establishment.” He offers the taxi driver a meal, then heads back to EF Hutton offering a personal tour of the facilities.
The slightly embarrassed taxi driver glances around. It is not the usual soup kitchen.
05:04
This is not some grubby desperate place for the poor. No small establishment where the hungry crowd in for meager rations. No long lines in the cold, rain, heat, or wind. Instead they gather in an adjoining room while waiting their turn. The men allow for women first. Some establishments have seats for 30 or so, that rotate. This place has room for over 180 at the same time, more than 700 meals within a day.
The tables are covered in blue oilcloths with bouquets of red roses. Formerly unemployed men, now white coat-tailed waiters walk around serving meals in a multicourse fashion. In the Ladies Section, women eat alone or with their children and even a few with their husbands. Children run about happy after being well fed.
The atmosphere is friendly and inviting with a slight more dignified restaurant feel. The taxi driver begins to blush, but the staff insists he sit down for a meal.
06:05
[Music – Sing, Baby, Sing / You Turned The Tables On Me by Carroll Gibbons, Album The Age of Style – Hits from the 30s]
Section 2 – History & Historiography
[Music Fade Out]
06:20
Though the rich still have their fancy parties, many are left starving and homeless as the Great Depression builds. In 1930, soup kitchens began popping up across the nation, and more and more as the year came to an end. The Salvation Army led the way, opening new locations in different cities – Sand Springs, Oklahoma, El Paso, Texas, Jackson, Ohio…
Meals would be provided during set hours. Some locations would also offer beds to the homeless. Limited options and choices. Places might have limited seating, thus many would wait outside in long lines for their turn.
By early January 1931, soup kitchens were becoming as common as taxis.
07:01
In one article, it pointed out that if you look at photos of those waiting the vast majority were men. I’ve done plenty of documentaries earlier in my career, and now seeing that note I can’t recall ever seeing females or children just men. Never thought of it nor the reason. However this article gave a reason. Women were uncomfortable in both the public shame and safety of going to such a location.
07:29
One institution intended to change that. An abandoned church in Hell’s Kitchen would serve as the location. EF Hutton and his wife Marjorie Merriweather Post donated at least $50k for the soup kitchen. The large structure allowed for more seating, a waiting area, and other benefits to the poor and hungry.
The couple sponsored two locations the Marjorie Post Hutton Canteen at Tenth Avenue and 35th Street and the Edward F. Hutton Food Station for Men on Seventeenth Street.
07:57
While the 1920s had been a lifestyle of opulence and conspicuous consumption, of which the Huttons definitely excelled. The stark realities of the Great Depression left a mark especially on Marjorie. Immediately after the Crash, she became quite devoted to helping the plight of those far less fortunate and struggling. This new passion drove Marjorie. She began fundraising and by February 1930 was head of the special gifts campaign committee of the Salvation Army’s Women’s Emergency Aid Committee. By the end of 1930, Marjorie alone had raised $50k toward the $500k goal.
08:33
Marjorie Merriweather Post was the only child and thereby heiress to the Post Cereal fortune, which she took over in 1914 upon her father’s death. At the time, the company was worth $20 million (today over $500 million) and making her the wealthiest American woman at age 27. She was a shrewd businesswoman even before her marriage to EF Hutton, who helped her expand her fortune considerably. She would long hold the title richest woman in America as compared to Doris Duke’s richest girl in the world moniker.
09:05
Marjorie’s Postum Cereal Company expanded into other products including Hellman’s Mayonnaise, Jell-O, Baker’s Chocolate, Maxwell House, and more. While yachting with her husband EF Hutton in the mid-1920s, Marjorie became aware of the freezing processes being developed by Clarence Birdseye and eventually acquired that company too in 1929, realizing its revolutionary potential to help women prep meals and replace the laborious canning process. EF Hutton was not as keen on the investment. It would take several more years for the latter venture to become successful, remember other grocer and home technology would have to expand to make this convenience convenient. In 1929, Marjorie formed the General Foods Corporation. In 1930, the Birds Eye frozen foods brand began testing consumer willingness to try the new retail food product.
09:56
So it would seem no surprise, that Marjorie’s charity work would extend to feeding others. She was deeply moved as a mother to help those in trouble. She intuitively understood the discomfort women would feel standing in line next to hungry and possibly vulgar men. Marjorie wanted to ease their discomfort and restore dignity for those needing assistance. Moving away from extravagant spending and entertaining, she would take the money formally spent on jewelry insurance and use it to finance the Marjorie Post Hutton Canteen.
10:24
The Canteen ran from June 1930 until 1935. On the anniversaries, Marjorie would hold special events like a pie eating contest. This would not be her only charity endeavor. In January 1931, Marjorie also hosts a recital with Metropolitan Opera tenor Rafaelo Diaz to raise money for the Samaritan Home for the Aged. In the spring, Marjorie plans to host a tea and charity ball for the Judson Health Center in Madison Square Garden.
The tenor himself (also featured in Episode 35 All The World Is A Stage) will soon make his way to Palm Beach, Florida as a guest of the Stotesbury’s and delight of the winter residents down there.
As banks continue to fail and economic situations get more dire, Marjorie pours herself intensely into her work. She will struggle with those in her class less civically minded, including her niece Barbara Hutton. However such devotion and hard work at times came at the price of neglecting her husband EF Hutton.
11:20
The rise of soup kitchens brought out the generosity of unlikely others. Only 10 days after one soup kitchen opened at 935 South State Street in Chicago, it was discovered one unidentified philanthropist was none other than crime boss Al Capone. South of the Loop, his State Street soup kitchen served 3 meals a day including soup, meat, bread, doughnuts, and coffee to over 1,100 and up to 2,800 jobless men daily with no questions about actual unemployment status. At the cost of $300 a day or $2,100 a week.
11:54
Don’t worry too much about Capone’s costs, at the same time his gambling palaces are netting a profit of $25-30k a month, as noted by one witness for the upcoming tax evasion trial. On the flipside, Scarface is being likened to Robin Hood and a gentle Jesse James in the press for this more charitable effort. Hiding out in his Florida arsenal home, Capone wanted the good press as the heat was rising from his tax evasion case. A photo will be posted via As The Money Burns Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook accounts.
In response to the inquiries, one of the managers issued the statement, “Capone feels on the account of the unemployment situation a great number of men are hungry and that something should be done to relieve their suffering. If the place continues to prove successful he will open two more.”
12:42
But the good deed is not without complications or above gangland violence, and as if to further the adage “no good deed goes unpunished.” In January 1931, a flunky gunman turned Capone’s soup kitchen manager Enrico Bertocchi was gunned down by other gangsters in a beat up automobile near county jail. The incident happened while a dentist was giving Enrico a curtesy ride home after they had met in a soda drink parlor. With bullets in his car and at least one grazing his scalp, the slightly wounded dentist survived, but letters in Bertocchi’s pocket indicated he was getting involved in a purchase of machine guns and shotguns possibly to start his own Chicago gang.
13:21
Oh, and there were rumors Capone didn’t exactly finance the soup kitchen himself but coerced local stores for donations. Still his “generosity” was spoken long after his incarceration. For Thanksgiving 1931, over 5000 people were fed. The soup kitchen lasted at least a year. After Capone’s stint at Alcatraz, he would later retire in Palm Beach. The State Street building was turned into a parking lot in the 1950s and has been slated to become modern apartments more recently.
13:51
Elsewhere hunger comes in other forms. In British occupied India, news is released that prisoner Mahatma Gandhi has lost an additional 8 pounds and now weighs 96 pounds during his confinement at Yeroda prison. The pacifist freedom fighter works tirelessly 16 hour days from his jail cell and has to be selective in his meals of milk and curds.
Tragedy can bring out purpose in some people, but it will take others a bit longer to grapple with the changing realities.
14:21
[Music – You by Carroll Gibbons, Album The Age of Style – Hits from the 30s]
Section 3 – Contemporary & Personal Relevance
[Music Fade Out]
14:37
There is not much of a jump today talking about rough times and food insecurity. The start of the pandemic immediately highlighted the plight of those children and families who rely on the school system to provide meals.
The confusing part is when people in fairly nice cars rolled up to receive handouts. Causing many to ask what is really going on?
The truth is that people can hide many things. The exterior doesn’t necessarily reveal what is happening on the inside. Sometimes the nice exteriors are meant to be a front.
15:08
My skepticism comes from multiple life experiences involving reversals of fortune into darker times. It never failed how one streak of good fortune and success would crash into struggle. Twice in my adolescence my family was fed by our church for a couple of months. It was done in a way no one knew what was happening. It was still quite demoralizing especially since not so long before there had been far better circumstances.
I had the strange oscillating experience of being better off than most of my friends and being worse off than them all within a few months or a year difference. I started junior high informed by my brother we were one of the richest and ended junior high being fed by our church. Those 3 years forever making an impression.
15:54
That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who can remember their grandparents or parents’ attitudes after living through the Great Depression or any of the major wars.
My grandfather was scarred by those scarce years and picking cotton with his siblings in rural 1930s Texas. After World War II, as a newlywed my grandmother’s family helped him set up a local grocery store, which the young couple ran together. Grandma always had something cooking in the tiny restaurant. Anytime some wayward traveler showed up needing food or hitchhiking, my grandfather insisted they eat a hot meal and then gave them a few dollars. My grandmother admired and explained with pride, “he never wanted to know someone left hungry then did something out of desperation.” My grandparents were always helping someone, and decades later their generosity was returned when the town raised the final $4,000 needed to pay off their mortgage staving off foreclosure, only weeks before their 50th anniversary. My grandparents proudly displayed the thank you letter signed by the town.
16:51
I know times are still tough for many, and we can’t be sure when this period will end. And even when it does, there will always be others who will find themselves for one reason or another in food insecure times.
As these tales keep turning, trust me we haven’t not hit the lowest point for some of our characters. The issue about lacking food will occur again.
17:13
On a lighter note about connecting with the past, I want to point out another project I got to participate in but only recently became public. Originally, it was slated to coincide with the 2020 Olympics, but things went awry and got delayed.
The Microsoft In Culture project with Greece’s Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sport.
A digital restoration of the archeological site of Ancient Olympia, the location of the original Olympics. As the pandemic began, I served as part of the research team with a specialty in coming up with historical anecdotes for the site. They digitally restored the various sites and have multi-lingual interactions for visitors. You can even explore the site remotely in a virtual round about and contribute to the site’s experience.
https://inculture.microsoft.com/arts/ancient-olympia-common-grounds/
The link will be available via the asthemoneyburns.com website.
Hook
18:17
[Music – My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Billy Cotton, Album The Great British Dance Bands]
Next when we return to AS THE MONEY BURNS…
Despite her own dire circumstances, one hostess continues her duties in supporting the arts. The show must always go on.
Until then…
Credits
18:34
AS THE MONEY BURNS is an original podcast written, produced, and voiced by Nicki Woodard, based on historical research. Archival music has been provided by Past Perfect Vintage Music, check out their website at www.pastperfect.com.
Please come visit us at As The Money Burns via Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Transcripts, timeline, episode guide, and character bios are available at asthemoneyburns.com.
19:06
THE END.