NATION

President of the United States: Franklin D. Roosevelt, his third term

Average annual wage: $1,750

Average cost of a new house: $4,075

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Average monthly rent: $32 per month

Average price of a new car: $850

Gallon of gas: 12 cents

Popular movies: “Citizen Kane,” “Dumbo,” “The Maltese Falcon”

• The Mount Rushmore sculpture featuring U.S. presidents was completed.
• A bill established the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.
• The first Jeep was produced.
• Ground was broken for NACA (now NASA) Lewis Research Center.
• The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 1938 Federal Wage & Hour Law, setting minimum wages (25 cents per hour) and maximum hours (44 per week) and banning child labor.
• The first gold record was presented to Glenn Miller for the “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”
• Plutonium was first produced and isolated by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg.
• The PGA established the Golf Hall of Fame.
• General Mills introduced Cheerios.
• The USO was established to entertain troops; Bob Hope performed his first USO show in California.
• NBC and CBS began broadcasting with the first two commercial TV licenses.
• The U.S. Office of Censorship was created to control information pertaining to World War II.

BROWN COUNTY

• The Rural Electrification Project brought electricity to Brown County. Construction started late in the year. By August 1942, Morgan County REMC served 1,539 consumers along 532 miles of power lines in Morgan, Monroe, Brown and Owen counties. In the Aug. 7, 1941 Brown County Democrat, writer Lee Bright called the REMC “one of the most laudable achievements of the last generation.” “Come to Brown County,” he wrote. “A new era awaits you.”
• The local telephone switchboard was expanded to allow 235 subscribers in the Nashville exchange. “When Miss (Marie) Poling, began her work here (in July 1933), the switchboard was closed at 9 o’clock at night and only in extreme emergencies was it possible to get a call of any kind through,” said a story in the July 10, 1941 Democrat. “Now she gives 24-hour service, which was established in 1936.”
• Grover G. Brown was re-elected as county superintendent of schools by the county board of education — his 21st year. Enrollment among all Brown County schools was about 1,500. The three high schools — Nashville, Helmsburg and Van Buren — had 343 of those students.
• In July 1941, the county commissioners approved $8,000 to be spent on paving about 8 miles of roads: State Road 135 north of Bean Blossom to Spearsville Road, State Road 46 “over the Duncan Hill … past the old Duncan schoolhouse where the bean dinners are held,” from 46 (now old 46) north on Greasy Creek, about 1 mile of the Bellsville-Columbus road near the county line, and from Story to about 3.15 miles west “to the foot of the hill south of John Lutes’ place.” The commissioners were approached at that same meeting by “a delegation of women from Helmsburg” who asked that they pave roads in that area because the traffic to Yellowwood Lake was so heavy. They had delivered a petition of 400 names to the county courthouse. The commissioners said “they would try to help them out another time.”
• New wage scales for county highway workers were approved: 25 cents per hour for laborers, 35 cents per hour for truck drivers, 40 cents per hour for “maintainer operation,” 45 cents per hour for large equipment operators and 35 cents per hour for assistant highway superintendents.
• Civilian Conservation Corps camps were still in operation, having been established nationally in 1933, but they were not enrolling workers fast enough to fill vacancies. Jack Woods was the county director of the Department of Public Welfare which enrolled unmarried, unemployed men between the ages of 17 and 23-and-a-half in the CCC. CCC workers completed many projects in Brown County State Park, including enlarging Lake Ogle by raising the dam 10 feet in the spring of 1941. That summer, one of the local CCC corps disbanded. Nationally, the corps’ budget was slashed and the CCC would cease to exist shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
• White-tailed deer were spotted on a farm south of Nashville. Deer had been reintroduced to Indiana in the 1930s and 1940s after being wiped out in the late 1800s due to predators, over-hunting and deforestation.
• Local and district public health officials and the Nashville Garden Club expressed concern about the open ditch that passed through Nashville, carrying wastewater, trash and septic material. “The odor from the ditch is a nuisance to all those living close to the ditch,” a report in the May 1, 1941 paper said. “The tin cans, filth and rubbish make a bad impression on any of the many visitors to Nashville who might see the uncleanliness and unsightliness of the ditch.” The Brown County Health Council decided to cover the ditch from State Road 135 to two blocks south of the main part of town and allow no one to connect into it with any wastewater or septic tank effluent.
• Painter Glen Cooper Henshaw remodeled a studio in the Odd Fellows Building (Village Green) which he shared with photographer Frank Hohenberger in downtown Nashville. In addition to portraits, the studio on two floors of the building contained inlaid and carved furniture and part of Henshaw’s extensive collection of pewter, according to an August 1941 story.
• Artist Lester C. Nagley Sr. of Trevlac, director of the Brown County Art School, offered lessons to 14- to 18-year-old Brown County boys and girls, made possible by Indianapolis benefactors who would become each one’s “art-Godparent.” He planned to teach sketching, watercolor painting, printmaking and designing. “Perhaps out of the youngsters of Brown County, I shall find a future Pennell or Vawter, or another Steele,” he wrote in the Sept. 4, 1941 Democrat.
• A systematic effort was underway to find all cases of tuberculosis in Brown County, led by County Nurse Catherine Lory. Free testing was made possible by purchases of Christmas Seals. “Our needs have never been greater in Brown County than they are right now,” reported a story in the Dec. 4, 1941 Democrat.

Sources: thepeoplehistory.com, onthisday.com, U.S. Department of Labor, Brown County Democrat archives, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, The Social Welfare History Project