FWP: the federal government stepped in to become the employer of last resort.
At its peak, the Writers’ Project employed about 6,500 men and women around the country, paying them a subsistence wage of about $20 a week.
Saul Bellow and John Cheever, and poet May Swenson. Distinguished African-American writers served literary apprenticeships on the Federal Writers’ Project, including Ralph Ellison, Margaret Walker, Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright.
In the late 1930s, Federal Writers recorded the life stories of more than 10,000 men and women from a variety of regions, occupations and ethnic groups.
But by the end of the Depression, the New Deal arts projects were under attack by congressional red-baiters. Following America’s entry into World War II, the Writers’ Project came to a halt
Benj. Botkin he hoped to foster the tolerance necessary for a democratic, pluralistic community.
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http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/progress/prohib/rent.html
“They began to think of someway to meet their ever increasing deficits. Someone evidently got the idea of having a few friends in as paying party guests a few days before the landlord’s scheduled monthly visit. It was a happy; timely thought. The guests had a good time and entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of the party. Besides, it cost each individual very little, probably much less than he would have spent in some public amusement place. Besides, it was a cheap way to help a friend in need. It was such a good, easy way out of one’s difficulties that others decided to make use of it. Thus was the Harlem rent-party born. . .”
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Reporter: Frank Byrd . . .September 22, 1938
“Slick” Reynolds, Black Jack dealer at the Symphony Club, located at 131st. St. and Seventh Ave. (Harlem) . . . maintaining a “buffet-flat” (pleasure house)
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?wpa:2:./temp/~ammem_m7d7::
There was plenty of dough in the party racket and it used to be the mainstay of a lot of the boys who needed to make a little extra dough. But the only trouble with staging rent-parties as an out-an-out hustle was the lousy crowd you had to cater to. You put out your cards, hire a piano-player, open your door an’ just wait for all sorts of studs and chicks to wander in. If you were lucky, you might get through the night without any major accidents — but I never seemed to have that kinda luck. Some punchdrunk [spade or dizzy?] broad was always breaking up my shindigs. First they’d get loaded to the gills with King Kong, start getting rambuncktuous an’ wanting to pick a fight at the drop of a hat. Some guy’d get accidently shoved or just naturally get evil cause his ol’ lady would dance more than once…same guy. The next minute, he’d be whooping like a wild Indian, waving his blade and threatening to cut anybody who came near him. Well, that’d most likely be the end of my party. Folks would start running in every direction — out
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October 4, 1938 . . . Bernice
“Well, that was the last of days-work (domestic work) for me. I figured that I was a fool to go out and break my back scrubbing floors, washing, ironing, and cooking, when I could earn three day’s pay, or more, in fifteen minutes. Then I began to understand how Hazel got all those fine dresses and good-looking furs.
From then on, it was strictly a business with me. I decided that if it was as easy as that, it was the life for me”
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In this case, some guys rented out one of these buses for a stag night and sped around the streets of Budapest about a week ago, wishing farewell to one of their friends, bringing along a dj and of course, a well-trained professional with a specialty in removing her clothes and providing massages with her derrière. You can follow the link from BKV Figyelő’s post to get to all of the pictures, or you can just cheat and let our slutty little sister point the way.
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