Arthur Rothstein, the Farm Security Administration and Hagerstown

Rothstein in 1938

Roy Stryker probably in Washington D.C.

By Caleb Lindsey

HIS 240, Spring 2025

Arthur Rothstein was an American photographer who worked in Maryland for the Farm Security Administration in the later 1930s. Rothstein was born in 1915 in New York to Jewish immigrants Isadore and Nettie Rothstein, and in the early 1930s he began attending Columbia University and pursued a degree in chemistry. At Columbia Rothstein founded the University Camera Club and was the photographic editor of the yearbook. When one of Rothstein's professors, Roy Stryker, was hired by the federal government to head the Information division of the Resettlement Administration (and later the Farm Security Administration), Rothstein became the first photographer to be sent out to photograph rural communities and resettlement projects.

From 1935 to 1940 Rothstein took around 80,000 images across the entire nation. This included time spent on multiple occasions photographing in Maryland. The major focus of his work in Maryland was on the Greenbelt town project, although Rothstein also worked on photographing rural communities like those in Garrett County and around Hagerstown.

In the westernmost portions of Maryland the decline in the demand for coal had severely damaged the economy, leading to high unemployment among miners. The rail companies also laid off workers, and in some areas unemployment reached nearly 50 percent. Even though spared the ecological disaster of the Midwest, farmers in the Hagerstown area faced extremely low crop prices and debt problems, the very issues which Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal programs, like the "Resettlement Administration" were meant to address.

Poster made by the Resettlement Administration.

All of Rothstein's work in the 1930s was financed and catalogued by the New Deal programs the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration. The Resettlement Administration was the idea of Rexford Tugwell, a economics professor at Columbia University and a member of FDR's New Deal brain trust. The Resettlement Administration constructed suburban homes, camps for migrant workers, schools and churches, and gave loans to farmers, resettled tenant farmers, and provided healthcare to rural areas. The photography project within the Administration served to document Administration progress and the general conditions of Americans. Arguably the photography project was entirely engineered to be a propaganda producer for the New Deal to maintain public support. The Resettlement Administration encountered problems in 1937 when its projects were going over budget yet achieving dubious results. Rexford Tugwell resigned after allegations of communist sympathies, and in the same year the Resettlement Administration was re-named the Farm Security Administration and placed under the authority of the Department of Agriculture.

The logo of the Farm Security Adminstration.

The Farm Security Administration continued the most effective programs from the Resettlement Administration while slowing down the least effective. The loan department was the new centerpiece of the administration. While the majority of other projects were cut back, the Photography department was untouched in the transfer.

When America joined World War 2 in 1942 the Farm Security Administration was refitted for war with its agricultural directives absorbed into the War Food Administration and its photography branch reattached to the Office of War information where it was led by Roy Stryker. And war time economy would be the key factor in economic restabilization, as illustrated in areas like Washington County, Maryland.

In the second half of the 1930's the Hagerstown area emerged from the darkest part of the depression. The economic life returning to Hagerstown was primarily due to national rejuvenation in which urban economic recovery drove the use of Hagerstown as a transportation hub, creating revenue for Hagerstown. Nonetheless a secondary factor was the Works Progress Administration which improved the economy through infrastructure investment. The Hagerstown area economy would scrape by, slowly improving until America joined World War 2 when the economy boomed because of wartime production.

In 1945 the Office of war information was dissolved and the photography department was dissolved with it. The agriculturally concerned portions of the Farm Security Administration resumed their pre-war responsibilities on a much smaller scale under the new name of the Farmers Home Administration.

As for Rothstein, he left the Farm Security Administration in 1940 and joined Look magazine as a photographer. In 1943 Rothstein enlisted as an officer in the army signal corps and was deployed in the Burma-China theater. He remained in China as a photographer for the UN until 1947 when he rejoined Look magazine. When Look went out of business in 1971 Rothstein joined Parade magazine where he worked until he died in 1985 at 70 years old.