Hard Times (71 page)

 

BEFORE THE CRASH, I was with a small publishing house in New York. I was in charge of all the production and did most of the copy. It was a good job. The company was growing. It looked like a permanent situation. I was feeling rather secure.

I realized that people weren’t secure in the publishing business. There was no tenure. We didn’t have any union. That was the first move I made, organizing the Book and Magazine Union in New York.
¹⁸¹
A lot of white collar people at the time felt unions were not for them. They were above it.

Until 1935, I had my job with this publishing house. They insisted I take a month vacation without pay and a few other things, but it wasn’t really too distressing. It became tougher and tougher.

I was fired. No reasons given. I think my work with the union had a good deal to do with it, although I couldn’t prove it. What hurt was that I’d gotten pretty good in writing technical books for boys. I had three published. By now, with things getting tight, no publisher wanted any book that wouldn’t be a best seller.

I was out of work for six months. I was losing my contacts as well as my energy. I kept going from one publishing house to another. I never got past the telephone operator. It was just wasted time. One of the worst things was occupying your time, sensibly. You’d go to the library. You took a magazine to the room and sat and read. I didn’t have a radio. I tried to do some writing and found I couldn’t concentrate. The day was long. There was nothing to do evenings. I was going around in circles, it was terrifying. So I just vegetated.

With some people I knew, there was a coldness, shunning: I’d rather not see you just now. Maybe
I’ll
lose my job next week. On the other hand, I made some very close friends, who were merely acquaintances before. If I needed $5 for room rent or something, it was available.

I had a very good friend who cashed in his bonus bonds to pay his rent. I had no bed, so he let me sleep there. (Laughs.) I remember getting down to my last pair of pants, which looked awful. One of my other
friends had just got a job and had an extra pair of pants that fit me, so I inherited them. (Laughs.)

I went to apply for unemployment insurance, which had just been put into effect. I went three weeks in succession. It still hadn’t come through. Then I discovered the catch. At that time, anybody who earned more than $3,000 a year was not paid unemployment insurance unless his employer had O.K.’d it. It could be withheld. My employer exercised his option of not O.K.’ing it. He exercised his vindictive privilege. I don’t think that’s the law any more.

I finally went on relief. It’s an experience I don’t want anybody to go through. It comes as close to crucifixion as…. You sit in an auditorium and are given a number. The interview was utterly ridiculous and mortifying. In the middle of mine, a more dramatic guy than I dived from the second floor stairway, head first, to demonstrate he was gonna get on relief even if he had to go to the hospital to do it.

There were questions like: Who are your friends? Where have you been living? Where’s your family? I had sent my wife and child to her folks in Ohio, where they could live more simply. Why should anybody give you money? Why should anybody give you a place to sleep? What sort of friends? This went on for half an hour. I got angry and said, “Do you happen to know what a friend is?” He changed his attitude very shortly. I did get certified some time later. I think they paid $9 a month.

I came away feeling I didn’t have any business living any more. I was imposing on somebody, a great society or something like that.

That ended with a telegram from Chicago, from the Illinois Writers Project. I had edited a book for the director, who knew my work. He needed a top editor to do final editorial work on the books being published, particularly the Illinois Guide. I felt we really produced something.

This was the regional office, so I worked on Guide books for four or five other states. The
Tribune
said it cost two million and wasn’t worth it. No matter, they were really quite good.

The first day I went on the Project, I was frightened as much as I’d ever been in my life. My confidence had been almost destroyed in New York. I didn’t know a single person here. But I found there was a great spirit of cooperation, friendliness. I discovered quickly my talents were of use.

Had been in Chicago about a month or two. I remember I wanted to buy a suit on credit. I was told nobody on the WPA could get credit in any store in Chicago. It was some years later before I could establish credit of any kind.

I bought an inexpensive radio, an Emerson. My son, David, who was four or five, dictated letters to his mother to be sent to his grandmother: “We have a radio. We bought it all ourselves. Nobody gave us it all.” Apparently, he had resented that he and his mother had been living rent-free
in Ohio. And she may have been getting clothes from her sister. Yeah, there was an impact even on the very young.

 

 

There was a feeling that we were on the verge of a bloody revolution, up until the time of the New Deal. Many people, among them, intellectuals, without knowing what else to do, worked with the Communist Party. The Communists naturally exploited this. It began to change with the New Deal and pretty much came to an end with the Russian-German pact.

I remember a very sinking feeling during the time of the Bank Holiday. I walked down to the corner to buy a paper, giving the man a fifty-cents coin. He flipped it up in the air and said, “This is no good.” And he threw it in the middle of the street. (Laughs.) Some took the Holiday as a huge joke. Others had hysteria, like this newsboy: there isn’t any money, there isn’t anything. Most people took it calmly. It couldn’t get much worse—and something was being
done.

Everyone was emotionally affected. We developed a fear of the future which was very difficult to overcome. Even though I eventually went into some fairly good jobs, there was still this constant dread: everything would be cut out from under you and you wouldn’t know what to do. It would be even harder, because you were older….

Before the Depression, one felt he could get a job even if something happened to this one. There were always jobs available. And, of course, there were always those, even during the Depression: If you wanted to work, you could really get it. Nonsense.

I suspect, even now, I’m a little bit nervous about every job I take and wonder how long it’s going to last—and what I’m going to do to cause it to disappear.

I feel anything can happen. There’s a little fear in me that it might happen again. It does distort your outlook and your feeling. Lost time and lost faith….

 

I WAS IN BUSINESS for myself, selling clothing on credit, house to house. And collecting by the week. Up to that time, people were buying very good and paying very good. But they start to speculate, and I felt it. My
business was dropping from the beginning of 1928. They were mostly middle-class people. They weren’t too rich, and they weren’t too poor.

All of a sudden, in the afternoon, October, 1929 … I was going on my business and I heard the newspaper boys calling, running all around the streets and giving news and news: stock market crashed, stock market crashed. It came out just like lightning.

I remember vividly. I was on my route, going to see my customer. It didn’t affect me much at the time. I wasn’t speculating in the market. Of course, I had invested some money in some property and some gold bonds, they used to call it. Because I have more confidence in the gold bonds than the stock market. Because I know the stock market goes up and down. But the gold bond, I was told from the banks, is just like gold. Never lose its value. Later we found to our sorrow that was fake.

They turned out to be nothing. Those banks, they’d take the people’s money that they were saving, they would loan it out a mortgage on the property. The property was worth $100,000, they would sell $200,000 gold bonds on that property. The banks.

I have suspicions the bankers knew. They were doing it for their own personal gain. If it wasn’t for the Crash, this fake would probably keep going on. Lotta these banks closed down overnight.

We lost everything. It was the time I would collect four, five hundred dollars a week. After that, I couldn’t collect fifteen, ten dollars a week. I was going around trying to collect enough money to keep my family going. It was impossible. Very few people could pay you. Maybe a dollar if they would feel sorry for you or what.

We tried to struggle along living day by day. Then I couldn’t pay the rent. I had a little car, but I couldn’t pay no license for it. I left it parked against the court. I sold it for $15 in order to buy some food for the family. I had three little children. It was a time when I didn’t even have money to buy a pack of cigarettes, and I was a smoker. I didn’t have a nickel in my pocket.

Finally people started to talk me into going into the relief. They had open soup kitchens. Al Capone, he had open soup kitchens somewhere downtown, where people were standing in line. And you had to go two blocks, stand there, around the corner, to get a bowl of soup.

Lotta people committed suicide, pushed themselves out of buildings and killed themselves, ’cause they couldn’t face the disgrace. Finally, the same thing with me.

I was so downcasted that I couldn’t think of anything. Where can I go? What to face? Age that I can’t get no job. I have no trade, except selling is my trade, that’s all. I went around trying to find a job as a salesman. They wouldn’t hire me on account of my age. I was just like dried up. Every door was closed on me, every avenue. Even when I was putting my hand
on gold, it would turn into dust. It looked like bad luck had set its hand on my shoulder. Whatever I tried, I would fail. Even my money.

I had two hundred dollar in my pocket. I was going to buy a taxi. You had to have your own car to drive a taxi, those days. The man said: You have to buy your car from us. Checker Cab Company. So I took the two hundred dollar to the office, to make a down payment on the taxi. I took the money out—he said the kind of car we haven’t got, maybe next week. So I left the office, I don’t know what happened. The two hundred dollar went away, just like that. I called back: Did you find any money on the table? He said no, no money.

Things were going so bad with me, I couldn’t think straight. Ordinarily, I won’t lose any money. But that time, I was worrying about my family, about this and that. I was walking the street just like the easy person, but I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.

I didn’t want to go on relief. Believe me, when I was forced to go to the office of the relief, the tears were running out of my eyes. I couldn’t bear myself to take money from anybody for nothing. If it wasn’t for those kids —I tell you the truth—many a time it came to my mind to go commit suicide. Than go ask for relief. But somebody has to take care of those kids….

I went to the relief and they, after a lotta red tape and investigation, they gave me $45 a month. Out of that $45 we had to pay rent, we had to buy food and clothing for the children. So how long can that $45 go? I was paying $30 on the rent. I went and find another a cheaper flat, stove heat, for $15 a month. I’m telling you, today a dog wouldn’t live in that type of a place. Such a dirty, filthy, dark place.

I couldn’t buy maybe once a week a couple of pounds of meat that was for Saturday. The rest of the days, we had to live on a half a pound of baloney. I would spend a quarter for half a pound of baloney. It was too cold for the kids, too unhealthy. I found a six-room apartment for $25 a month. It was supposed to be steam heat and hot water. Right after we move in there, they couldn’t find no hot water. It wasn’t warm enough for anybody to take a bath. We had to heat water on the stove. Maybe the landlord was having trouble with the boiler. But it was nothing like that. The landlord had abandoned the building. About two months later, all of a sudden—no water. The city closed it for the non-payment of the water bill.

My wife used to carry two pails of water from the next-door neighbors and bring it up for us to wash the kids and to flush the toilet with it, and then wash our hands and face with it, or make tea or something, with that two pails of water. We lived without water for almost two months.

Wherever I went to get a job, I couldn’t get no job. I went around selling razor blades and shoe laces. There was a day I would go over all
the streets and come home with fifty cents, making a sale. That kept going until 1940, practically. 1939 the war started. Things start to get a little better. My wife found a job in a restaurant for $20 a week. Right away, I sent a letter to the relief people: I don’t think I would need their help any more. I was disgusted with relief, so ashamed. I couldn’t face it any more.

My next-door neighbor found me a job in the factory where he was working. That time I was around fifty. The man said, “We can’t use you.” They wouldn’t hire nobody over forty-five. Two weeks later, this same man said, “Go tell Bill (the name of the foreman) I sent you. He’ll hire you.” They hire me. They give me sixty cents an hour. Twenty-year-old boys, they were paying seventy, seventy-five cents an hour. They were shortage of hand, that’s why they hire me.

I read in the paper that some place they’re paying a good salary, dollar an hour. I took the street car to go look for that job. On the way … I don’t know what happened … something, like kicked me in the head. I said: I’m going back to my old business. People are now doing good, people’s working in the war factory. So I got off the street car and I came into the store I was dealing with before.

I told them I was gonna go back to my old business. They laughed at me: What are you gonna sell? You can’t find no merchandise. I said: Whatever you people are selling, I’ll do the same thing. All this time that I was working, skimping, and my wife was working, I had saved $400. So I invested that $400 and start to go back into business.