1933. The toothbrush mustache was in, Prohibition was on the way out. The nation was in its third full year of the worst economic depression in US history. The Stock Market crash of October 1929 had caused banks to fail, and depositors lost their savings. There was mass unemployment and homelessness. On taking office in March 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established a series of federal recovery and relief programs to try to address the crisis. One of the programs was the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) created under the Federal Emergency Relief Act of May 1933. The Federal Transient Service (FTS) was a division of FERA created in July 1933, designed to provide transients arriving in a new city with food and shelter and, if possible, a job- at no cost to the state or local governments. On August 10, Los Angeles’ new mayor Frank Shaw restored James E. Davis to power as Chief of Police. Continue reading →