Hard Times (75 page)

We bought it at $1, $1.50 a thousand. But we figured by the time it ran out, it was worth $5 a thousand. So when a million feet went through the mill, you could deduct $5 million from your income tax return. Depletion allowance. You see, when the stump is left, that’s the end of the capital. Like oil and coal.

 

 

No, not in those states. We had houses to liquidate and a railroad and a big store. These towns belonged to the company. You should have seen
our offices, beautiful. Like old plantation mansions. Our money was made with cheap wages. A dollar a day. Mostly Negroes. We sold it en bloc to speculators.

People would fight for those jobs. A case of supply and demand. Why didn’t we pay more? That was the going wage. You had to make money. You see, without money, we would never have been able to build those mills. We were capitalists. It was free enterprise. We employed a lot of men, so you certainly can’t blame us.

 

What did who do?

 

 

Oh. Some of them got jobs with other companies. Some of them lost their jobs. That was a tragedy.

Then I realized my life-long ambition to be on the board of directors of several companies. First thing I know, I’m sixty-eight and in good health. So I quit. I finally made it to the Gold Coast. So I just follow my own investments. Got rid of all the cats and dogs. I only buy blue chip stocks. All I do is study stocks and give advice to widows, who live in my building. They stop me in the lobby every day: “What’s good today?” I give’em free advice.

“
The wealthy have a place to run. My people are caught in a trap. They’re lower middle class, the forgotten ones. Every member on our board is a former liberal. Our best ideas come from the skilled laborers. They have the pulse of the people. They feel abandoned by their priests and their schools. They are hurting, hurting, hurting… . They have no place to go but themselves. They don’t hate Negroes. They may prefer whites, but that doesn’t mean they hate Negroes. And nobody really wants to admit hate… .”

 

THE REASON a man works is not because he enjoys work. The only reason any of us work is because if we don’t work, we don’t eat. To think that any man may sit in society and say: I don’t wanna. O.K., if you want to starve, starve. He’ll work. Believe me, he’ll work.

Those who went through the Depression have a little more pride in their possessions, have a little more pride in the
amount
of possessions they have. They know that it was a fortunate person in the Thirties who have as much as they have today. They’re much more money conscious.

Money is important to people, especially children of the Depression. You can see when they come into the office here, they’re trying to see: Am I a wealthy or am I a poor lawyer? If I’m poor, they don’t have that much confidence. They’re sort of happy that they’re shaking hands with some of the wealthy.

I hate people to know how much money I have. I would never want to admit it if I was broke. I would never want to admit I was a millionaire. One thing the Depression did was to make us secretive. It was ours. During the Depression, nobody would admit that they were broke. My friends who went through the Depression with me, I’ll never know how much money they have, because they won’t talk about it. Whether they’re broke or wealthy.

In the Depression, you didn’t want to admit you had problems, that you were suffering. This is mine. If I don’t have the money, that’s my problem, not your problem. If I did have money, that’s not your affair. I don’t know if our family was particularly secretive….

The last Depression was blamed on the lack of regulation. This Depression which is coming will be blamed on too much regulation. The way we’ll try to get out of it is to truly go back to a free system of exchange. Whether that’ll work, I don’t know.

People blamed Hoover for the Depression. He had no control over it. If the Depression hits now, they’ll blame the Government. You always have one danger when you blame Government: disturbances tend to create chaos. Chaos will create a demand for a strong man. A strong man will be most repressive. The greater the Depression, the greater the chaos.

I don’t think we’re basically a revolutionary country. We have too large a middle class. The middle class tends to be apathetic. An apathetic middle class gives stability to a system. They never get carried away strongly, one way or the other. Maybe we’ll have riots, maybe we’ll have shootings. Maybe we’ll have uprisings as the farmers did in Iowa. But you won’t have revolution.

I remember standing in my father’s office in the Reaper Block,
¹⁹¹
watching a march on City Hall. I was seven or eight. I remember his comment about red flags and revolution. He said, “The poor devils are just looking for bread.” They weren’t out to harm anyone. All they were marching for was food. I thought: Why were they looking for food? There were plenty of stores.

There was always talk in the house about the financial crisis. I remem-ber
listening to Father Coughlin about money changers in the temple. I lived in a Protestant neighborhood. It seemed there were more Protestants listening to Father Coughlin than there were Catholics. My father listened to him. He was like everybody else: anybody that had a solution, they’d grab onto it.

But he was a liberal and a Democrat and a strong supporter of Roosevelt. One of my favorite pastimes, during the campaign, was sitting across the front room, watching him repeat after Roosevelt as Roosevelt talked. You know, telling off the other side. Since most of his brothers-in-law were conservative Republicans, he enjoyed that particularly.

I went along with him. I can remember writing a term paper in high school: “The Need for a Planned Economy.” I take it out and read it once in a while, just to see how foolish youth can be. How could anyone take that seriously?

The income tax changed me. I was making some money. It burned me up thinking now I had to file it with the Government. It was the fact that I had to sit down and report to somebody what I made. I had to keep records. And I’m so tired of keeping records.

I’m a happy-go-lucky Irish type. As long as I’ve got enough money to pay rent next month, I’m happy. I don’t like to sit down: Did I make a big fortune or did I lose a deal? How much did I pay the secretary? How much did I pay for the cabs? Half the time when I had arguments with Internal Revenue, I don’t keep track of those things. We have to be bookkeepers: ten cents for the cab tip, twenty-five cents for a meal, what have you. We’re building the bookkeeper type. The New Deal and all those agencies contributed to this….

Of course, we had social problems thrown in with the Depression. We had the beginning of the liberal movement in which Communists were in the forefront. They made use of labor with strikes, sit-ins, the many problems we had at that time. A free economy would have straightened out these problems.

Looking back, many individuals would have been hurt, etc. But as a result of the programs, many more are now hurt than would have been hurt at the time. In an attempt to alleviate a temporary situation, they’ve created a monstrosity.

Many of the people I knew in law school, children of the Depression, talked about how they had to quit school for help. The father who had been a doctor took a janitor’s job. They would do anything rather than take public money. Then it was just the thought that you couldn’t take someone else’s money. It was a matter of pride. Now I have some of that left over… .

 

POSTSCRIPT: “
And there’s the added feature: I am somewhat of a snob. My children are going to know some of the best of society. Not the best,
necessarily. Though money is an indication. They’re going to know the best who are working a little harder, applying themselves with greater effort, and will be going further. We work a great deal for our children. It’s nice to think there are wonderful ditchdiggers in the world, but that’s for somebody else’s daughter.”

 

I TRAINED my own self to cook. I always been a listener and a long memory. I could listen to one of Betty Crocker’s whole programs and memorize for years afterwards. Cook it. I never doubted myself in nobody’s kitchen. Which always means I had a job. You felt this independent because you knew they needed you. That’s why I studied to be a good cook.

If it was an ordinarily rich family, you had the whole house under your control. So I ordered the food and I cooked somethin’ and it didn’t turn out the way I want it, I dumped it out and cooked somethin’ else. ‘Cause I’m tryin’ to learn how to be a good cook. Rich people could afford me.’Cause when you make mistakes, if I got money, I ain’t gonna cry about you wasted sugar, you wasted this, you wasted that. I quit those jobs.

In 1937, I was workin’ for a very wealthy family in Wichita Falls. Her husband was a doctor. She told me she was going to have forty people for lawn dinner, ate outdoors. When you work for them rich people in the South, you don’t go and buy no frozen peas and beans and rolls. Uh-uh, you cook them rolls, you shells them peas, you string them beans….

She was supposed to get some caterers in to serve this food, because this food has got to be cooked in the kitchen and served outside. I kept askin’ her: Has she seen the caterer mans? No, she said, she’d get ’em. So this week came and I asked her again. The dinner was to be Tuesday. No, but she’d get ’em.

So I said to myself: This woman intends to make me serve this meal from this stove, after cookin’ for forty people. And you serve it in courses, yeah. So I said: Mm-hmmm, I better start plannin’ what I’m gonna do with her now. Another thing I didn’t like about her, she was a very stingy person. I was gettin’ kinda bored with this house anyway. And gettin’ more independent, too. Remember, I was a pretty good cook by now. She’d have this habit … when I get through work, I want my money,
and I don’t want to have to ask you for it or wait two hours, while you fool around. Give me my money. I tell ‘em: give it to me while I’m livin’.

Every week when I get through workin’ she would go and get in bed. She would lay there and pretend she was sleepin’. I come in. (Utters a mock sigh.) Oh, go in there, Emma. I think my purse is in there. And when I get back with that purse, she’d be dozed off again. And you gotta stand there and call her gently: here is your purse.

So I knew she wasn’t gonna get anybody to help me. So that Monday, week before, we had to start the gatherin’ of vegetables. She says, “We’ll start orderin’ the stuff Monday.” They always say “we” when they mean “you.” So Monday we brought about a bushel and a half of green beans, washed ‘em, packing ’em away. She ordered about three hundred pounds of ice, ‘cause the refrigerator couldn’t hold it all. Then she was gonna serve peaches with cream on ’em. I opened all the peach cans and poured’em in crocks and then put that down in ice.

 

 

This you also has to serve. This is before dinner, along with the drinks. They is the whiskiest folks you ever saw.
Then
you serve this hot dinner. Imagine anybody putting all this work on one human being.

I know I’m gonna leave. But since she has been so nasty, I’m gonna put her into a real doozy. She got forty people, doctors, teachers, oil mens, that all hadda be big shots. Some of ‘em comin’ from New York. Mm-hmm this here is real nice.

So I works up until Saturday. All the food is prepared for the Monday cookin’ for the Tuesday servin’. That Saturday, I had to wake her up again, that sleep: give me my money. I said to myself: Sister, if you knew what I had on my mind, you wouldn’t lay down.

That Sunday, I was supposed to go back at eleven and fix their lunch. I got my money and I didn’t see no point to it, because I’m not goin’ back there. With all this food stacked up, corn cut off the cob, big tub and half full of that …

She did call Sunday the lady next door: Was I sick? I didn’t answer. She didn’t worry much. She know
I had to be there
on Monday. That Monday, I went visitin’. I’m a week advance on my rent and I got about $6 in my pocket. I’m rich. I was supposed to be on the job at eight o’clock. I didn’t get out of bed till nine. I decided I’d lounge around till the last of the week. A good cook is always in demand.

So on Monday she calls the lady where I rented from, where I had servant quarter in the back. You see, when I’m workin’ for a family like
that, I always rent some place else. Because when you lose your job, you don’t lose your house.

So eleven o‘clock, I come back from visitin’. This other white lady said, “That woman you work for says you had all the food fixed up out there and she’s got forty rich people that is comin’ there for dinner Tuesday, and you left and didn’t say nothin’ about it. Is you sick?”

“No, ma’am, I’m not sick.”

“How come you didn’t go to work?”

I said, “Didn’t I pay you your rent Saturday?”

“Yes, you did.”

“When the time comes you don’t get your rent, that’s the time you says somethin’ to me. But when I work, whether I work or don’t work is none of your business. That woman been knowin’ for six weeks she was gonna have forty people there. She thinks she’s gonna make me do all that work for that same $7. Not on your life.”