In the early 1930s, as the country was sinking deeper into the Great Depression, Allentown’s General Harry C. Trexler, arguably the area’s wealthiest citizen, went seeking an elderly female friend who he was concerned about. On finding her he asked, “So tell me, how are bearing up under these hard times?” Her reply came swiftly. “Well, General,” she replied, “I always lived like it was hard times.”
Trexler was said to have later told this story to his friends. Pennsylvania Dutch frugality and hard work, it seemed to say, were virtues shared by the community. They would be the solution to whatever economic distress the town and the larger country was suffering from, if only they were followed.
Trexler died tragically from injuries he received in an automobile accident shortly thereafter. So, he did not live to see how Allentown handled this national and worldwide economic catastrophe. But in the 1970s a young graduate student, Ernest B. Fricke, began research on how Allentown did during the Depression. What he found by digging into the files and microfilm rolls of the Morning Call piqued his interest.
Although a great deal of economic distress could be found in Allentown, as was the case in the rest of the country, the community, particularly the business leadership, was able to organize and limit the extent of its impact. It cooperated with federal government New Deal programs and local efforts…