LIVING IN THE U.X.A. At the height of the Great Depression, a group of unemployed Oakland workers decided to take matters into their own hands. The system wasn’t working, so they set up their own system. Money was nearly worthless, so they decided to live by barter. They called themselves the Unemployed Exchange Association and they soon went on to write a remarkable chapter in American economic history. This is their story.
At the height of the Great Depression, a group of unemployed Oakland workers decided to take matters into their own hands. The system wasn’t working, so they set up their own system. Money was nearly worthless, so they decided to live by barter. They called themselves the Unemployed Exchange Association and they soon went on to write a remarkable chapter in American economic history. This is their story.
Ju1y 1932. The economy has stopped-cold. Factories are locked, money is scarce. One out of seven Californians is unemployed. Social welfare programs are almost non-existent. Large numbers are destitute, hungry. Buildings stand vacant, boarded up. Food prices are next to nothing, but many thousands have nothing at all. California fields are rotting with tons of fruit and vegetables. Few farmers have money to pay harvesters; there is no market; many small farmers are losing their land. Thousands of children, women, and men have taken to the highways and rails, searching for survival.
"Hoovervilles," shantytowns of the homeless, have sprung up around the country over the past three years. The largest in the Bay Area is "Pipe City," near the railroad tracks by the East Oakland waterfront, where hundreds live in sections of large sewer pipe that were never laid because the city ran out of money. One of Pipe City's frequent visitors is Carl Rhodehamel, once an electrical engineer at GE, a cellist, an inventor of several key technological developments in radio and early “talkies," an orchestra conductor, a composer whose "Little Symphony" had once been a favorite with KGO fans. But now Rhodehamel is unemployed and down on his luck.
But not for long. There is a streak of genius in him that will sweep him out of Pipe City and into the leadership of an organization that will stir California and the country.
Rhodehamel and two others find an abandoned grocery store not far away, in Oakland’s Dimond-Allendale district that can be used for meetings. Soon a group of six unemployed men begin to meet and discuss ways out of their problems. All are skilled and experienced workers, but all realize it could be years, if ever, before they'll find work in their fields again. Since the system isn't working to provide their needs, they decide to form their own system. Since money is scarce, they dispense with money altogether. From now on they will try to provide themselves with everything they need to live by barter.
They begin by going door-to-door in the neighborhood, offering to do home repairs in exchange for "junk" from people's basements and garages. But to make their system really work they realize they'll have to grow larger. They distribute fliers, trying to gather all the unemployed in the neighborhood into the group.
On the evening of July 20, 1932, some twenty people meet at the Hawthorne School and organize the Unemployed (or Universal, as they'd later call it) Exchange Association, a title they immediately abbreviate to UXA. The X stands not only for exchange, but also for the "unknown factor" in an algebraic equation.
The UXA offers a new social equation to one neighborhood in Oakland – one whose echoes will soon be heard around a nation desperate for change. [cont.]
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Poster Comment:
The article is long but educational. Worth the read, imo, if only to see how illegal aliens weren't needed by farmers or anyone else. FDR wanted to shut down the self-help orgs like U.X.A, which is something of an indication that he viewed such endeavors as obstacles to his Communistic designs.