See America

Mordecai Lee

Description

Created in 1937 by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes and given formal status by Congress in 1940, the US Travel Bureau played a seminal role by setting the precedent for federal involvement in tourism. Business, otherwise hostile to FDR's New Deal, enthusiastically supported its work and Roosevelt, who significantly expanded the National Park system, saw increased tourism as a means to increase attendance, bolster economic activity, and counteract the Great Depression. The Bureau developed unusually extensive public relations and marketing programs that attempted to persuade citizens to travel more. The Travel Bureau also quietly engaged in vigorous marketing to encourage African Americans to travel, including sponsoring the 1940 and 1941 editions of the Green Book, the travel guide for African Americans facing segregated restaurants and lodging. Eventually, travel promotion was transferred to the Commerce Department by Congress and President Nixon with a federal surtax to fund it and where it continues today.
Preface
List of Abbreviations

Introduction

1. The Tourism Industry and Big Government: Origins of the US Travel Bureau, 1930–1936

2. The US Tourist Bureau: Birth by Administrative Action, 1937

3. The US Travel Bureau: Renamed and Expanded, 1938

4. When Business Liked (Part of ) the New Deal, 1939

5. Congress Decides It Sometimes Likes Agency PR: Statutory Creation, 1940

color gallery follows page 62

6. Promoting Tourism during a National Emergency, 1941

7. Travel Promotion in Wartime? 1942–1943

8. Postwar Revival: Interior's US Travel Division, 1946–1949

9. Last Try: Interior's Office of Travel, 1968–1973

Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• National
• États-Unis
• Central
• History of the Americas
• 20th century
• United States of America
• USA

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438478104
• Langue: English

Extrait

SEE AMERICA
SEE AMERICA
The Politics and Administration of Federal Tourism Promotion, 1937–1973
MORDECAI LEE
Cover image: Arches National Park, See America campaign, USTB poster. Frank S. Nicholson, New York City: Federal Arts Project, WPA, about 1940.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2020 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lee, Mordecai, 1948– author.
Title: See America : The politics and administration of federal tourism promotion, 1937–1973 / Mordecai Lee.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019036157 | ISBN 9781438478098 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438478104 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Tourism—United States—History. | Tourism—Government policy—United States. | United States. Department of the Interior—History. | United States. Travel bureau. [from old catalog]
Classification: LCC G155.U6 L43 2020 | DDC 917.304/92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019036157
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my sisters, who have kept me on the straight and narrow (in birth order, not playing favorites!): Riva Nolley, Tahirih Lee-Sursin, and Shirin Coleman
Contents
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Tourism Industry and Big Government: Origins of the US Travel Bureau, 1930–1936
Chapter 2 The US Tourist Bureau: Birth by Administrative Action, 1937
Chapter 3 The US Travel Bureau: Renamed and Expanded, 1938
Chapter 4 When Business Liked (Part of) the New Deal, 1939
Chapter 5 Congress Decides It Sometimes Likes Agency PR: Statutory Creation, 1940
color gallery
Chapter 6 Promoting Tourism during a National Emergency, 1941
Chapter 7 Travel Promotion in Wartime? 1942–1943
Chapter 8 Postwar Revival: Interior’s US Travel Division, 1946–1949
Chapter 9 Last Try: Interior’s Office of Travel, 1968–1973
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface
In 2017, the US Postal Service issued a set of stamps commemorating Depression-era federal posters designed by the graphic artists of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Selecting ten of the best and most iconic WPA posters, one was for an obscure federal agency called the United States Travel Bureau (USTB). WPA is one of the relatively well-known legacies of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, in part, due to its role in art. It hired artists, writers, playwrights, filmmakers, and actors who were out of work due to the Great Depression. Why? As Harry Hopkins, WPA’s director, famously said, “Artists have to eat, too.” His quip also reflected FDR’s strong political preference that it was much better to pay unemployed Americans during the Great Depression to work rather than to be on the dole. The key was to move away from the politically charged subject of relief, of supposedly merely handing out money to people who did nothing in return. That kind of welfare only reinforced the conservative political stereotyping of lazy and undeserving recipients.
The way FDR and Hopkins saw it, there was little difference between art and other categories of work that WPA paid people to do. After all, artists created lasting products just as much as the more visible and concrete WPA projects, such as post offices, forests, parks, dams, courthouses, soil conservation, and highways. WPA’s artists created murals in public buildings, books (including a series of state guides), handicrafts, paintings, plays, and sculptures. In particular, WPA sought artistic products that contradicted the image of highbrow and elitist art. It wanted art for the people. This is one of the reasons why its arts program included poster design.
Among other projects, WPA graphic artists designed posters in response to requests from federal and other public agencies. This 2017 stamp was from a poster that was part of a public relations campaign of the USTB to promote increased domestic tourism. The name of the campaign was “See America.” The poster showed a rider on horseback admiring the outdoor scenery of forests and snow-capped mountains of Montana. Hence, the text on the poster (and stamp) was “See America / Welcome to Montana / United States Travel Bureau.” (See figure 1 .) The Montana poster was one of a series of about seven that WPA graphic artists designed for USTB’s See America campaign. Some of the others promoted famous landscapes in national parks, including Arches National Park in Utah and the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. While many Americans continue to be aware of WPA buildings that are still in use, as well as having a vague awareness of its arts contributions, few would link WPA to the largely forgotten USTB.
USTB not only tried to stimulate domestic tourism through public relations (PR) projects like posters and its See America campaign, but it also played a quiet role in racial matters. The bureau used targeted PR to encourage African Americans to travel and to enjoy seeing the country as much as whites. This effort was admirable and important, particularly given that FDR sought to avoid taking actions to inflame the white power structure. As president, Roosevelt was very cautious on promoting civil rights. While African American voters supported him lopsidedly, their votes were counterbalanced by the outsize role of southern states in the Electoral College, the inordinate influence of southerners in Congress due to the seniority system, and the filibuster rule in the US Senate. These politicians would not only oppose any civil rights initiatives of FDR’s that required legislation or appropriations, but they could counterstrike by stifling the president’s other unrelated legislative proposals. That explains in part why FDR’s relatively modest and reactive measures to support civil rights were almost exclusively limited to executive orders and other internal management directives. He could issue them without a role for Congress, let alone its approval. One of the long-running political conflicts during WWII was his executive order creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) and the persistent congressional efforts to abolish or at least defund it (Lee 2018, 95–99; 2016, 99–101). In the context of FDR’s deliberate low profile and passivity on equal rights, USTB stands out. It proactively sought to reach an audience of African Americans as a segment of the general population for PR programs to encourage domestic tourism and travel.
For example, in 1936–37, an Interior Department study of parks and recreation facilities nationally included an examination of the “needs of Negro” citizens (US National Park Service [NPS] 1938, 7). In 1938, USTB’s New York office hired Charles McDowell, who had been the first African American agent for the Greyhound bus line. The bureau appointed him as a full-time employee (along with two African American women as assistants) to promote travel and tourism by African Americans. One of his assignments was to research “the problems attendant upon Negro travel throughout the United States.” 1 The next year, based on information McDowell collected, USTB published a twelve-page Directory of Negro Hotels and Guest Houses in the United States (USTB 1939e). Throughout 1939–40, he routinely contributed a column titled “Travel Notes” in USTB’s twice-monthly newsletter that was widely distributed throughout the eastern United States. In his byline, he was identified as head of USTB’s Division of Negro Activities. USTB’s Official Bulletin , which had national circulation, contained an article about its role in the publication of the new edition of the Negro Motorist Green Book (Green 1940). The title page of the book stated that it was “Prepared in cooperation with The United States Travel Bureau.” MacDowell also wrote an article in it about traveling in the South (McDowell 1940). In 1941, USTB released a seventeen-page updated and expanded edition of its Directory of Negro Hotels and Guest Houses (USTB 1941c). These openly conducted administration activities in support of African Americans were nonetheless low key enough that they never attracted the attention of racists in and out of Congress.
There was another oddity related to USTB. Historical narratives often focus on the persistent and insistent hostility that business had to the New Deal and to FDR. Roosevelt was depicted as the enemy of free enterprise and capitalism. His reforms, such as increasing regulation of Wall Street and expansion of the bureaucracy to protect workers’ rights, were greeted with stark hostility from chambers of commerce and business organizations. Those with economic advantages referred to FDR as a “traitor to his class,” indicating their implacable hatred of him (Brands 2008). Yet, oddly, business was an enthusiastic supporter of USTB, even though it was part of FDR’s presidency and a new federal program, expanding into an arena where it had never ventured before. The travel sector of the economy was substantial (perhaps a quarter of the economy), including resorts, hotels, travel agents, gas stations, and transportation companies, such as railroads, bus companies, and ships. By the late 1930s, the transportation subsector