NEW WILD WEST

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 154, 28 December 1936, Page 5

NEW WILD WEST

MISSOURI DAM

SPAOK-tOWNS & THEIR LIFE

(EjomuUtM,.Post's" Roprosontative.) ■^■^^FRANCISCO, December 2. jTJtg' Wi|d,^W. cst has returned, under t^^vjj^b^^hfi only difference is th'at^hSsa'ii'ejfiooseyelt-s frontier was a ph'^e"bfrfhe!rrii^ration to the Pacific; that o'fiii^kinsmari.'JFranklin Roosevelt, i is the result of expending limitless millions of. dollars from the public treasury,'. fToday, it is not the lure of gold : in ,the: Fqrty-niners' rush, but the luro of :w6rk in huge projects, such as, for instance, the world's largest dam, plannecLto discipline the Missouri'into becoming a commerce-carrier. The town of New Deal is the modern prototype of Deadwood, in the eighties, whose gunmen and bushrangers have given- ; way •to raw-boned, husky workers, ;albeit their diversions proclaimtit*the. most torrid spot of the new-Wild-W-est. Here, ten thousand w'arvveteran'sp'iiearby farmers, and plaiii.HoiDDes' vare earning a lucrative living,'^providing extra-curricular employment for a shack-town population of barkeeps; quack doctors, hash dispensers) radio mechanics, filling station operators, and light-roving ladies. Therea're six of these shanty towns: New Deal, 'Square Deal, Delano (the President's second name), Wilson, Park Grove, and Wheeler (called after Senator Wheeler, of Montana). They are "short" on law and sanitation, "long" on bars and taxi-dancers. These latter dance all night for a nickel a number. The fare buys his lady a five-cent beer for a dime. The management refunds the nickel. If she can drink sixty beer's she makes three dollars. Fre-, quently she does. HOUSING THAT FAILED. There are no long-horns nor lariats, nor two-gun men, though the saloons are as wide open as in the days of Buffalo .Bill-and Deadwood Dick. The habitues. came ■in second-hand cars since 4933, when, after the banks of the ■ country, closed, the newcomer at the White House selected this as the first...of' his mammoth schemes to put desperate, disillusioned people to work. Broken-down cars supplanted the covered, vfago.ns of an earlier day. The United States Army, entrusted with the task of housing the endless, polygiot cavalcade, applied business rules too severely. They built a modern town, equipped with dormitories, hospital,- Sanitation, etc., but provided quarters only for workers, overlooking their families. For such quarters they charged rents which left the married worker without enough margin to support a second home till he could send for his family. Consequently, he and his friends moved off the reservation, and built shanty towns. Grocers' boxes tin cans, and crazy doors formed the architectural motif; building paper topped it off. Here the new Wild West lived .in' weather that was .50 below zero, one way, and 110 above, the other. The army tried to.compel ' the newcomers to live in the barracks. They wrote to the nearest Democratic politician and won the right to remain. By day the menfolk are turning a mighty, restless river into four diversion tunnels, to carry it around the dam. By night they frequent one or more night "whooperies." A woman who conducted a dance hall in the Klondike'rush runs' the most popular of them. She is the first accredited millionaire of this newest "stampede."