RoR: Forum

Viewed as �the people�s park� it was purchased in 1879 and maintained at public expense despite a vicious political struggle over a bond issue. At that time, two bonds were on the ballot, the other to improve Grand Boulevard, which would have benefited a minority, mostly better off and rich.

Detroit's schools have long been a political football. School Board President Mathilde Coffin (c 1894-1896) wanted to get away from rote memorization. She advocated "story problems" for mathematics, for instance. Although much of the resistance to her reforms came from within the public school system and from the Board itself, the Board at this time was embattled with Mayor Pingree who swore out warrants against Board members for taking bribes.

Education was always for the few who wanted it, among whom the largest block were ethnic European Catholics who paid for their own schools to provide their children with a better opportunity than they had. Those were the people who left the city first.

It was not so much the automotive industry per se but the fact that two of the largest -- eventually the two largest -- Ford and GM were both in Detroit, whereas Dusenberg, Nash, Willys, Winton, etc., were dispersed across the midwest. That made Detroit a One Industry Town, which is a predicate for disaster. (In fact, when computering undergoes a paradigm shift, Silicon Valley will follow Detroit and everyone will wring their hands and wonder why.)

It caused a riot on December 13, 1913, when Ford Motor Company drew 12,000 applicants to its Highland Park plant. Data can be broad when it comes from several sources, but in the main, it is important to try to put $5 into some perspective.

In 1900, per capita income $420 � The average hourly pay of manufacturing production workers in � 1909, the first measured year, it was about $0.38.
(Estimate based on far-flung data from the US Department of Commerce Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
In 1900 the average coal miner is making about $400 dollars a year;
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/1900/filmmore/transcript/transcript4.html
In 1910 the average non-farm wage is give an $634 per year.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/WagesandWorkingConditions.html
In the state of New York, in 1910, annualized union wages are $852.
The New York Times, April 17, 1911, Monday, Page 20,

Ignoring the 52-hour week or the employment of children age 10 in factories, the median wage was a mere $2 per day and the best chances � unionized work in New York � brought less than $3 per day.

Before this, Detroit was an unimportant, fair to middling town of about 100,000. The population tripled in one decade. The town had enjoyed the typical mix of local businesses supporting local needs with a balance of inward and outward flows. From a town of small shops where unskilled laborers were a clear minority, the town came to depend on uneducated people, largely from the South, who wanted guaranteed pay in return for mindless repetition of tasks they did not understand: industrial sharecroppers. The UAW was the poison and Father Conklin was the antidote. The 1943 race riots were started by whites, instigated by Nazi sympathizers seeking to disrupt the war effort.

The government programs, the entitlement philosophy, the unions, all were contributing factors, but all thrived in a society prepared for them.