Hard Times (28 page)

 

This family … the Rural Rehabilitation program came along, the RRA. I had the joy of certifying certain families from the relief rolls to go to the land bought by the government. To have better houses, to have equipment. And I saw this family move to a different house. Saw that woman’s face come alive—the one who’d been in that stupor—her children clean, her house scrubbed—I saw this family moved from a hopeless situation… . The man had been a sharecropper. Apparently, he had once been a very good worker. There he was with nothing, till … I could go on about that… .

I had twelve families in this program. And Ella Mae had twelve. It was a beautiful farm, maybe two, three hundred acres. With houses, not two-room shacks. Ella Mae and I were involved in the thrilling task of selecting the families. Ella Mae would say, “I think Jess Clark would be good.” And Davis, the man in charge of the program, would say, “That old, lazy bum? He’s not gonna be able to do nothin’. You’re just romantic.” So we became personally involved in seeing these people prove their own worth… .

Every month the program was threatened with lack of funds. We didn’t know if Congress was gonna discontinue it. A lot of the public thought the money was being spent foolishly.

 

 

The first thing I did when I got back, I got out of the car and rushed over to the courthouse—to know how did those people perform. Did they make it?

I talked about this one white family. There was a Negro family, nine of them living in one room. The man was not young; he was in his sixties. But he impressed me as being a strong person—who would really make it, if he had a chance. Every one of the people we had certified had done well and had begun to pay back the loans. Not one of them had been lazy and done a bad job. They were absolutely vindicated. The people were vindicated, not us.

 

In 1934, she and her husband moved to Washington, D.C. They were there eleven years. “I’d been invited to a First Families of Virginia Ball at the George Mason Hotel. I’d been picketing it the week before, because they paid their workers some ridiculous wage, oh like seventy-five cents an hour. When I answered the invitation, I didn’t just say Mrs. So-and-So regrets she’s unable to accept … ; I wrote a letter and said I couldn’t possibly go to a hotel where the wages were so unfair. My husband was very much surprised. He said, ‘I never dreamed you would take that kind of stand.’ Well, I never dreamed I wouldn’t
.”

 

I’d like to think that even if we hadn’t lost our house, even if I hadn’t the job with the Civil Works Administration, I might have waked up someday. But maybe I would just have worked on the Community Chest or the St. Luke’s Fashion Show. I don’t know. Maybe I’d never have understood how people feel if I weren’t subjected to it.

Maybe you do have to experience things personally…. Do people in Lake Forest, or Grosse Point, or Scarsdale have to have their houses burned down and bombed before they recognize the state of the society? As long as it happens a few miles away—or in the city, if you live in the suburbs—you just read about it… .

 

POSTSCRIPT:
“I went to a women’s board meeting of a great university. On the way, I had taken the wrong exit from the superhighway and had to go through an area, where I was appalled by the look of the people, living in absolute hopelessness.

“
I said to one of these women, ‘Have you driven through this neighborhood decently?” She said, ‘Diana, dear, with all the new housing projects and everything, it’s much, much better.’ I realized at once that nothing I could say would make them understand… .”

 

I HAD four half-grown children and not much to get along with. I was looking, one day, in the hope that Winston had left a safety deposit key or some receipts. ’Cause they were surprised he had left so little. I came and said, “Is this it?” I can see my brother-in-law’s face: “That’s a streetcar check.” I’d never seen one. I had the electric.

The first thing he said, “How much can you get on with a month?” I
said, “Whatever I have. All you have is what you’ve got. Then you get on with it.” There are a lot of things you can do to save money. I used to say, “It’s hard to start up high. It’s easier to start out low.” So I got along low.

About 1930 a friend suggested we go into the negligée business. For a year, she and I were together. We made them and sold them. I could make wonderful clothes. I didn’t learn it, I did it. I was never helpless. When I was a girl, the only way I could have a dress was to sew it. In the South, if you were a lady, you sewed. You didn’t cook. You might not have money for shoes, but you had someone to come in and cook. They didn’t charge anything. They took home with them anything that was left over.

 

 

I had a lot of fun making the third floor into a business place, with a tea shoppe in the corner. The customers would come in to be a fitted and so on. I got a good sewing woman and went into business in a big way. We cleaned up the market on that kind of garment.

I called it my little dressmaker’s home. All my friends felt so badly. They felt I was really giving up the world. You don’t know how snobbish people used to be. But they tried to help me. I didn’t feel a bit of shame.

I had quite a lot of friends and they were all loyal in keeping up with me. I gave them their money’s worth in every way—charm and interest and—oh, I made all kinds of things. I had one woman who had a slightly illicit affair with a doctor. (Laughs.) I designed a velvet grown which she could wear when he came to see her in the evening. All kinds of things. (Laughs.)

But I was always a bit of a rebel. All my friends sent their children to the Latin School. So I sent mine to Francis Parker.
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I’m very happy I did because I learned a lot things.

 

 

No, they were pretty mean to me part of the time. Because they wouldn’t see I was giving them their money’s worth. Some were afraid they’d get stung.

When we really almost had no money, I sold a lot of silver. It was very high then. Also, I had a lot more than I needed. That made the railroad fare to go East and join the children. They were all at Eastern schools now. Their education was paid for in grandfather’s will. If I’d had them
come to Chicago, I’d a had to pay their fare. I decided it would be cheaper to go to Washington.

It was a great, handsome hotel there called the Admiral. It had a lot of suites used for retired admirals and their guests: that’s why they named it that, maybe. We took one of the apartments. They were very inexpensive. $5 a day for two bedrooms, a sitting room and a bathroom. It was in the early Thirties.

We had bought a lot of big boxes of cereal and big bottles of milk from the grocery. We’d get a certain number of things from the hotel. The elegant waiter would come with this beautiful tray, and then we’d all sit down and divide it up, who gets the Corn Flakes, who gets this, who gets that. It all came out beautifully. We lived like queens for weeks there, at that place.

I was there when we came off the money business. When the moratorium happened, the Bank Holiday. I didn’t have any money, but I didn’t mind. I was just as well off as before. And had the thrill of hearing Roosevelt say those wonderful things: We have only to fear fear itself.

 

 

In those days we didn’t talk about things like that. (Laughs.) That was not conversation. A lot of people objected to Mrs. Roosevelt. I think she was wonderful. All my fine ideas I get from my children.

I became more serious-minded. But I never did get interested in the sufferings of the world as a lot of people. Like my daughter. I’m not quite so much that way. But I became aware of it… .

 

IN 1930, it was slack time. He didn’t have a job, my husband. Even now, the painter’s work is seasonal. So I went to work those times when he wasn’t working, and he took care of the boy.

Yah. He said he’s walking upside-down, if you know what that means. (Laughs.) You start walking on the floor, and then you put yourself upside-down, how you feel. Because he couldn’t provide for his family.
Because when we got married, he actually said: “You’re not gonna work.”

One thing we ever got from bad times is the shoes from the Democratic Party. During election, somebody had brought the basket with the chicken and shoes for my son. One friend of ours used to tease when the boy had those shoes on. He says they are Democratic Party shoes. That’s the only thing we ever got.

When Depression came, I got me a job with a family, and they had a chauffeur, cook, chambermaid, general maid, laundress. I was kitchen helper. They were wealthy. The lady didn’t even meet me till two weeks after I was hired.

I didn’t work very long there. On account of the banks closed, they had to put out so many help. Him and her were in Florida when it happened. The daughter and son was on Astor Street. He wrote a letter, said: Put some of the help off, we can’t afford it any more, and you don’t deserve it either.

We had so little money in the bank that even if the bank was closed, it didn’t matter much. I don’t take it hard. (Laughs.) When Mrs. Roberts was younger, I would tell her: Work is not that kind of thing you must do. You just do it the way you like it, for enjoyment. It’s not punishment. I enjoy work.

I always went to our club, working people. Gatherings. We heard a lotta good speakers, who would tell life isn’t like it should be. But revolution wasn’t near, no nearer than it’s now. (Laughs.) Not anywhere nearer than it is now.

The trouble with my life is that I been confined to housework, and I haven’t been able to observe the world. My world is been closed. So my observation—even if I was capable—there was a fence around.

 

MY FIRST THOUGHT—When you say Depression—is Samuel Insull. He was sort of a symbol. Somebody who made a fetish of success. He represented all that was most unattractive about the period that preceded the Great Crash of ’29. He used his power in unattractive ways: such as building the
Opera House and forcing the abandonment of the Auditorium, which is so much superior… .

People were forced into subscribing to the Opera Building.
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It was held over their heads like a club … businessmen in Chicago, who were in some manner obligated to the Insull interests. They had to put a certain amount of money into it, otherwise Samuel Insull would withdraw his support.

The Opera House was finished the year of the Depression. I remember having to go to the opening night performance of
Rigoletto
. Everyone was sitting around there with grim faces, because the Depression had hit. Everyone knew the market was sliding. There we sat in those pink velvet boxes, grimly looking at each other, while forked lightning took place on the stage. In the rain and storm scene of the last act, Insull could let himself go, being president of Commonwealth Edison. You’ve never seen such rain on the stage or such lightning or such thunder.