Countdown to 2000: Politics

Alex Coolman

At times, the Newport-Mesa area seems like an island of tranquillity,

isolated from the affairs of the larger world.

But in the early 1930s, it didn’t. Not by a longshot.

In fact, more than in previous decades of the century and more than in

contemporary times, politics of the 1930s made it impossible for area

residents to ignore the ways their fate was wrapped with the fate of

people across the nation.

The economy had taken a tumble, and even in this business-friendly

region, people questioned the rationality of the capitalist system that

was leaving people hungry and jobless.

David Cherry, a teacher at Newport Beach Grammar School, addressed a

gathering of the Costa Mesa Lions in 1933 and proclaimed that, having

“studied various economic plans in college,” he had decided “that the

socialist plan was most logical and just.”

And editorials in an issue of The Costa Mesa Herald tried just as

earnestly to grapple with the challenges of the Depression, declaring

that the nation had “a screw loose somewhere.”

“Millions of people are made poor by producing too much, while other

millions in need of those very same products cannot afford to buy them

because they are unemployed,” an editorial read.

These were not abstract questions for area residents. The paper reported

in 1933 that “over a hundred families in the Newport Beach area [are] in

dire need of all or a portion of the necessities of life,” with some of

the worst-hit families being local fishermen.

Groups like the Harbor District Socialist Club and the Costa Mesa branch

of the Works Progress Administration sewing project tried to find

solutions to the problems of high unemployment and scarce resources, as

did city leaders like Newport mayors Mark Johnson, (who served from

1928-32) and Hermann Hilmer (1932-36).

By 1936, the headlines would begin speaking again of business development

and the pressing need for housing construction.

For a while, though, it was hard times for Newport-Mesa.

Sources:

The Costa Mesa Herald

“Newport Beach: The First Century, 1888-1988,” James P. Felton, ed.