The Hunger March on the Harrisburg State Capitol

Hunger Marchers of the jobless and unemployed march on the Harrisburg state Capitol to demand relief.

The Hunger March on the Harrisburg Capitol occurred in the dogs days of Summer 1936. With the unemployment relief expired for over a week in the Commonwealth, the unemployed and jobless lobbied legislators to appropriate $100,000,000 in funds for relief. With advocacy and energy rising among the county governments, with unions and local political leaders; a march on the Capitol was organized on July 13, 1936. Then Governor, George Howard Earle III, and the General Assembly disagreed on the amounts; with the Senate Republicans wanting to appropriate $35,000,000 and Gov. Earle advocating for $55,000,000. In the evening of July 13, the jobless took over the galleries of the State House and Senate and the Capitol Rotunda. They demanded seats on the floor to plead their case and booed and jeered legislators as they debated the amount of money to provide for unemployment relief. In a midnight caucus, a compromise was made to provide $45,000,000 in funds until January 1937. The jobless rejected the compromise and the estimate that $45 million would be enough to feed their families, instead demanding the unemployment rate be set at $.64 a day. Staying overnight to continue the protest into the 14th, the marchers were housed and fed in the Farm Show building, with the Mayor of Philadelphia, Samuel Davis Willis, personally covering the costs of food for the protestors. Protests, lobbying and more marches would continue on the Capitol for the rest of 1936, but no organized movement as big and as bold as that of the Hunger March in mid-July would occur at the state Capitol, arguably to this day.