Page 6 - Demo

The railroad lines and highways that once ferried prosperity into Lynchburg and carried goods from its factories to the rest of the nation served as conduits for drifters while economic conditions worsened during the Great Depression. The needs of thousands of transients put pressure on both the city and local charitable organizations as they struggled to care for the Hill City’s permanent residents. In 1933, the New Deal came to the rescue and launched a successful program that Lynchburg and the transients found mutually beneficial. The story of how a city initially opposed to the government program came to embrace the Federal Transient Bureau’s work is interesting in itself, but few who lived in Lynchburg through the depression would soon forget the tragedy that focused the nation’s attention on their city and its transients.
Lynchburg’s New Deal Tragedy:
The
Transient Bureau Fire
of 1934
BY JEFFREY S. COLE
The Cost of Caring
With seven separate lines converging, offering forty-one daily departures, Lynchburg was an important regional railroad hub in 1929. While businessmen promoted the city’s connectedness and centrality, the same elements brought problems, as weaknesses in the US economy prompted Americans to take to the roads—especially the railroads—in search of opportunity. In the year the stock market crashed, local welfare agencies were faced with providing
for between 100 and 200 drifters each month. Because the cost of caring for transients was expensive (from $1 to $3 per case), local agencies sent wanderers
to the city jail in order to conserve relief and welfare funds. More than 800 “free- lodgers” from thirty different states found
refuge at police headquarters in 1929. Signs of economic weakness were
beginning to appear in the Hill City long before the symbolic beginning of the Great Depression in October 1929. During the first three months of that year, private relief organizations in the municipality expended nearly $7,000 for relief to wandering families and men traveling alone. “Lynchburg is paying from its public funds too much for the care of undeserving transients,” remarked the director of
the Associated Charities. Funded by the Community Chest, the Associated Charities found itself on the front lines of relief and provided a range of services, from helping people find employment to fighting juvenile delinquency.
By the middle of 1930 the burden of caring for transients reached a crisis
point in Lynchburg. During July workers at the Associated Charities, Travelers
Aid Society, and Salvation Army came
in contact with drifters from every state but California. Odd jobs that were to
be had in earlier months were no longer available because of the mounting relief demands from Hill City residents. Locals came first and the Associated Charities decided to take a hard line toward the transients. Bessie Lamb Woolfolk, the organization’s director, stated, “We
will have to tell them that we cannot
do anything for them. We are actually taking food out of the mouths of needy Lynchburg persons when we give money to transients asking help.” The tough stance of the Associated Charities did not last long. Out of concern for needy human beings, the organization modified
 LYNCH’S FERRY