1939 Class Banner

http://concordiamemoryproject.concordiacollegearchives.org/concordiamemoryproject/files/original/896d81573d827d351ee96f33c26455d5.JPG

      The early 1930s was a time when more than 15 million Americans were unemployed. This was one quarter of all wage-earning workers. President Herbert Hoover told Americans that patience and self-reliance were all they needed to get them through this “passing incident in our national lives.”  But this “passing incident” was one that touched every life and this included college students. Many students had to go home to help their families or find ways to get through this time.[1]This tough time was one that students had to be steadfast and had to endure many tribulations. Because of declining tax revenues, the education of college students was affected. In 1932-1933, poverty forced around 80,000 college students to drop out, which made the depression era the first peace-time period in the twentieth century when college enrollments in the United States declined. At this time, the college students had to find jobs, just like a student named Erling Rolfsrud who could no longer eat at the dining hall because of the issue of money. In this tough time, he had to get a job as a dish washer to have enough money to pay for tuition. After that, he got a job at the campus cafeteria. Rolfsrud and every other student at the time accepted “any job that could yield funds, food, or room.”[2] While the depression was bad, many students had to borrow money which led to students having a bad debt even up to $33,000 in the first year and it kept climbing each year. Because most on-campus jobs had been taken, many students had to find off-campus jobs. The percentages that were working at this time were 50 percent and would have been higher if more jobs were available. This meant that at this time, students had to work hard to pay off their debt while still trying to deal with school work and the decreasing of pay for students and staff at the college.[3] This is where the 1939 school banner comes in. “Be steadfast and endure” is what the banner says. At this time, the Great Depression was coming to an end and with all the bad things that went on, the college and students made it through this tough time. This banner means that the students stayed loyal to the college at this time and lasted through the suffering.

As you can see, this banner was like a trophy for the students at the college. In order to survive these tough economic times, they had to live their motto. They had to be steadfast and endure.

 

 

[1] Ellen Schrecker, "The Bad Old Days: Higher Ed during the Great Depression – The Chronicle Review." The Chronicle of Higher Education. Last modified June 16, 2009. http://chronicle.com/article/The-Bad-Old-Days-Higher-Ed/44526/.            

 

 [2] Erling NicolaiRolfsrud, With The Wind At My Back: College in the Thirties (Farwell, Minn.: Lantern Books, 1988), 55-59.

[3] Carroll L. Engelhardt, On Firm Foundation Grounded: The First Century of Concordia College: Surviving the Great Depression (Moorhead, Minn: The College, 1991), 106-130.

 

 

 

 

 

Work Cited

 

 

Engelhardt, Carroll L. On Firm Foundation Grounded: The First Century of Concordia College:Surviving the Great Depression. Moorhead, Minn: The College, 1991.

 Rolfsrud, Erling Nicolai. With The Wind At My Back:College in the Thirties. Farwell, Minn.:Lantern Books, 1988.

Schrecker, Ellen. "The Bad Old Days: Higher Ed during the Great Depression – The  Chronicle Review." The Chronicle of Higher Education. Last modified June 16, 2009. http://chronicle.com/article/The-Bad-Old-Days-Higher-Ed/44526/.