Killing the Poormaster

July 2, 2012
Despised as a miser, Hoboken, N.J., poormaster Harry Barck—responsible for doling out relief to the poor—died on February 25, 1938, after an altercation with Joseph Scutellaro, one of the city’s many unemployed citizens. Barck was known for turning away starving families, assuming the men were too lazy to find jobs. President Roosevelt’s relief program, the Works Progress Administration, did little to ease the situation, as the unemployed far outnumbered available jobs. Complicating matters was the deep-seated corruption of both City Hall and the police department, which kept anyone outside the inner circle from finding work. Scutellaro—who’d repeatedly applied for aid and received a paltry $5.70 a month to feed a family of four—claimed the poormaster fell on a sharp desk spindle and died, but he was still charged with murder. Journalist Metz recounts Scutellaro’s trial—represented by famed Scottsboro Boys attorney Sam Leibowitz—and paints a sad picture of the lives of the poor in Depression-era Hoboken. Metz also focuses on Herman Matson, whose efforts to organize Hoboken aid seekers met with mixed success. While Metz’s well-rounded historical portrait possesses a genuine human center, she fails to whittle down her wealth of interesting material into a streamlined narrative. Photos, map. Agent: Michael Carr & Katherine Boyle, Veritas Literary.

October 15, 2012

The 1938 murder of Hoboken, NJ, Poormaster Harry Barck and the trial of his accused killer, second-generation Italian American Joseph Scutellaro, is the setting for freelance writer Metz's (How To Commit Suicide in South Africa) examination of the dispensation of public relief during the Great Depression. This well-researched book weaves the tragic story of the murder and trial with the author's research into anti-immigrant discrimination, old-school boss-dominated party politics, local and federal funding for relief, and the Works Progress Administration's work programs before the advent of professionalized social welfare. Metz also explores the change in public opinion about relief programs during the Depression, which shifted from positive to negative as the public began to see relief seekers as lazy. She takes what could have been a simple historical true-crime story and grounds it firmly in the era's social history, illustrating the problems faced by the impoverished who relied on relief handouts that were themselves at the whim of a corrupt authority. Full of footnotes, the book also offers an extensive bibliography as well as many photographs. VERDICT Recommended for general readers, historic true-crime buffs, and scholars of labor, social welfare, and political history.--Amelia K. Osterud, Carroll Univ. Lib., Waukesha, WI

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2012
True-crime works often promise that the examination of one crime serves as a lens for examining a wide range of social ills, but too often they deliver only a reworking of a crime, with merely a gloss of critique. Journalist Metz's recounting of a famous Depression-era crime, however, does a great deal to deepen our understanding of those desperate times. During the Depression, the poormaster of each community was in charge of handing out public aid, in the form of money or bread tickets. Poormasters were, literally, masters of the poorin total control of which supplicants in their offices would receive aid. Metz focuses on the 1938 killing of Hoboken, New Jersey, poormaster Harry Barck in his office by one rejected supplicant. In a detail worthy of Dickens, the spike that held rejected applications on the poormaster's desk impaled him. Whether the applicant stabbed Barck with his own spike or whether Barck fell onto it during an altercation was the central issue of much media speculation and trial testimony. This well-constructed work of historical nonfiction is heart-wrenching and thoroughly absorbing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)