eral assistance was either needed or desirable. Only rarely did
observers warn of the supreme test to which our obsolete relief
system was soon to be subjected. In any event, a major depres-
sion broke late in 1929, and before the waters had begun to
recede, more changes had occurred in a few short years in our
attitude toward relief, and in the relief system itself, than had
occurred in the three centuries since the first English coloniza-
tion in the United States. ¹⁶

Shortly after the crisis of 1929 the volume of unemployment
grew steadily. Conservative estimates ¹⁷ indicate that there were
3,825,000 unemployed in the United States in January 1930.
In August there were 4,599,000 persons without work and by
December the number of unemployed had reached 6,963,000.
Many of these unemployed had little or no savings to fall back
upon and were quickly forced to apply for relief. The first
reaction of the localities was to attempt to meet the problem
through an extended use of the facilities then available. Local
public agencies and private welfare agencies redoubled their
efforts to meet the ever increasing relief problem of 1930 and
1931. When the regular agencies proved inadequate, both pub-
lic and private local emergency relief organizations were set
up -- primarily in the cities.

At the beginning of the depression, it is estimated that
private charity was meeting approximately one-fourth of the
relief bill of the country as a whole. ¹⁸ In the larger cities it
often played a much more important role. The relative impor-
tance of private charity, however, fell sharply as the depression

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