Hard Times

by Studs Terkel

  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.

  Julia Walther

  A wide range of interest is evident in the books that fill the shelves, and in the painting on the walls. There is a touch of old world ambience to the apartment. The appurtenances, though expensive, are unobtrusive.

  Through the window, across Outer Drive, where cars are exceeding the speed limit, we see the Lake, serene on this spring afternoon… .

  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.68 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.

  The poor Arnold Fletchers had just been inveigled by Insull to buy one of those expensive boxes. We sat with the Fletchers in their box. They couldn’t be happy about what was happening on the stock market that day. They couldn’t be happy about their lives. Moreover, they couldn’t be happy about the music on the stage. It was so awful. The whole performance was so terrible. The staging was dreadful. The scenery was Insull taste from beginning to end. And that curtain! That over-designed, over-decorated gilt thing. I can only remember it as a sheer nightmare. 69

  They all just hated Insull, the people in the boxes. At that moment, they hated him more than ever. And then they found themselves slithering down the toboggan. With the Insull crash, when his empire folded.

  My husband’s losses were really quite shattering. We felt they were perilous days. By 1926, Fred had built up the Corporation.70 It had begun with a lumber company which had belonged to his father. The men who had been presidents of the merged companies were older than he and had more experience. They could hardly wait to get rid of him as soon as the Corporation was formed. In fear of this happening, he borrowed money in order to gain the fifty-one percent control.

  When the Crash came, the banks withdrew their support, stock held on margin was called in. Fred, unable to meet this in the falling market, lost everything he had. He was completely wiped out. Fred always laughingly said, “The only million dollars in my life I ever saw were those I lost.”

  I felt the fever period was unreal. And the Depression was so real that it became unreal. There was a horror about it, with people jumping out of windows.

  I remember the first time motoring under the Michigan Avenue Bridge, under those streets, where the Tribune is, and seeing not hundreds, but thousands of men, rolled up in their overcoats, just on the pavement.

  I remember being so horrified, so overwhelmed. The only other thing that had as great an impact on me happened at the beginning of the First World War. It was 1914, the day of the Battle of Metz. My brother and I sat as children in the coupé of the train, leaving Germany. We could hear the big guns and the cannons. They started to load the wounded onto our train. They pulled in a colonel. They went into war those days with bright suits. This one happened to have one of the most beautiful verdant green, with scarlet stripes going down his trousers. The man had a chest wound and the blood kept dripping, just slowly drip-drip-drip-drip on the floor.

  The men, lying under the bridge, was the same kind of first experience of something, of realizing that life was not the way you had thought it. Until you actually see someone dying, you can’t know what war is like. Now I have an inkling of what the Depression was for some people, although I never slept under the bridge.

  Do you think a Depression will ever come to America again?

  I don’t know. I’ve been told it can never happen again. However, there is one thing that does trouble me. I went to Germany in ‘34 and ’38. I saw what Nazism did. I was troubled by Americans saying: “But this could never happen with us. The Germans are a strange people with whom we have nothing in common—beasts.” I knew this wasn’t true. This kind of thing can happen any place, given certain circumstances… .

  There was a terrible depression in Germany. Along comes a man who tells them they’re a great nation, all they have to do is believe in themselves and follow him. He promised them the sun, the moon and the stars. The German intellectuals and comedians made fun of him and the Nazis in their night clubs. I heard one in the Platzl in Munich. The audience loved it, adored it. But it didn’t stop Nazism. They won over the lower middle classes… .

  The Depression overwhelmed us, yes. It was terrible. But we had hope: This is not going to kill us. I don’t think people can say that nowadays. If a Depression came now, I’d be afraid, terribly afraid… .

  Member of the Chorus

  Win Stracke

  A Chicago balladeer. Founder of the Old Town School of Folk Music.

  I WAS A SOLOIST at the Fourth Presbyterian Church from ‘33 to ’40. The parishioners were very well-to-do people, whose families had come from New England to Chicago many years ago. I was just beginning to wake up to the fact that there was such a thing as politics and influences in our society. I hadn’t really been conscious of a sort of class distinction between the supporters of Alf Landon and the supporters of Roosevelt.

  I remember very clearly the Sunday morning before the election of ’36. When I got up to sing my solo part at the services, I looked out over the congregation, about nine hundred or a thousand, and it was one sea of yellow. Everybody was decorated with large yellow Landon sunflower buttons. Just the impact of the thing suddenly made me realize there is such a thing as class distinction in America.

  The pillar of another church, where I had previously sung, was a very wealthy Chicago industrialist. Great deference was paid to him. At one evening service, he gave a sermon. This was about 1933, in the depths of the Depression, and there was a lot of political protest around. He got up and said that he had searched the Bible from cover to cover and he could not find a single word or sentence or phrase to indicate that Jesus was against capitalism. (Laughs.)

  In 1937, ’38, I was working with an octet at the Old Heidelberg.71 We were infuriated because the waiters would stand around reading the Völkischer Beobachter, the official Nazi paper. It had been a traditional practice, when a customer had a birthday, they would send up a bottle of Rhine wine—the sommelier would bring up a tray and proceed to pour a glass for every member of the octet. I would say, “We’re very happy to salute Mrs. So-and-So,” or whoever it was. Then we’d hold up our glasses and sing “Soll Er Lieber.”

  A couple of us said: Ah, the hell with drinking this Rhine wine. So we announced to the headwaiter: no more Rhine wine. The management was furious. We said, “If you don’t like it, we’ll quit.” So we finally settled on the idea that they’d serve us Cuba Libras. From then on, we saluted birthday guests with Cuba Libras. (Laughs.)

  I still had my job at the church. So I’d do the first show in my costume: a red
jacket, white pants and long Prussian boots. Of course, we had those little pepperbox hats. Heidelberg cadets. I’d sneak in the back way of the Fourth Presbyterian, put a robe over my Heidelberg outfit and sing sacred songs. (Laughs.)

  In the Depression, the business of being a singer had lots of hardships. We were all hurting for dough. During one job, a once-a-week radio broadcast, our compensation was a room in the Allerton Hotel. The idea being: if we showed enough initiative, we’d rent the room and thus have compensation for our singing. I was never able to rent my room. The hotel was only about thirty percent occupied, so they weren’t giving anything away.

  We had one sponsor of a Sunday morning radio program, who owned cemetery lots. We sang old-fashioned hymns and talked about the memorial park. We were paid fifteen bucks apiece. He persuaded us to make recordings, so he could save money. Somehow the old codger talked us into taking, not money, but cemetery lots. I still have seven of them. (Laughs.)

  In 1939 I was a chorus member of WGN’s “Theater of the Air.” I saw and heard Colonel McCormick every Saturday night. There was a ten-minute segment where he’d expound on the defense of Detroit against the Canadians or how he first observed artillery from a balloon at the Battle of Chantigny.

  One time I remember he was sitting on the aisle. Next to him was his wife, next to her was his Great Dane, and next to the Great Dane was (laughs) Governor Dwight Green. When the Colonel began his speech, the dog started to snuffle loudly. The Colonel’s wife reached over into the Governor’s breast pocket, took out his handkerchief and held it over the dog’s muzzle. After the talk, she just reached over, put it back in the Governor’s pocket. (Laughs.)

  In 1940, I was fired by the Fourth Presbyterian Church. I had become active, singing for various causes. I hadn’t gotten too much static from this because they were worlds apart. The farm equipment workers were on strike against the McCormick Works. First time since the Haymarket affair. I sang at the union hall. During the evening a film was shown by a local finance company: how strikers could borrow money, during the emergency, and repay it, with interest.

  I had heard the minister of the church had been visited by a woman, complaining of my activity. I received a letter from the chairman of the music committee, a member of an old Chicago family, saying my services were no longer required.

  The funny thing about it is this man was head of the finance company whose film was shown. So my conclusion was: It’s all right to loan money to strikers at interest, but don’t sing for ’em for nothing. (Laughs.)

  Before my last service, the minister took me up to his study and prayed for me. He asked the Lord to give me guidance, to straighten me out. After the prayer, he strongly suggested I leave town and change my name.

  High Life

  Life is just a bowl of cherries,

  Don’t make it serious,

  Life’s too mysterious.

  You work, you save, you worry so,

  But you can’t take your dough when you go-go-go,

  So keep repeating it’s the berries.

  The strongest oak must fall.

  The sweet things in life,

  To you were just loaned,

  So how can you lose what you’ve never owned.

  Life is just a bowl of cherries,

  So live and laugh at it all.

  —words by Lew Brown, music by Ray Henderson72

  Sally Rand

  A dancer.

  “I was twenty-six in 1930. A good age to start savoring things. I was born in the last naïve moment America was ever to enjoy … between the Spanish-American War and the First World War. Things were S.S.&G. —Sweet, Simple and Girlish.”

  Hers was a rural Missouri childhood and a Kansas City adolescence. When she arrived at the age to be giggly, her father, a West Point graduate, said, “the giggly girl causes grief.” She was raised according to the old homilies: Virtue triumphant, Honesty prevailing… . “It poorly prepared us, who grew up in this innocent way, for the Thirties.

  “Suddenly, all the copybook maxims were turned backwards. How could it be that a man who had been at his job thirty years couldn’t have a job? How could it be that a business that had been in business for a lifetime suddenly isn’t any more? Friends of mine who had been to Harvard, Yale and Princeton jumped out of windows. With accuracy. The idea of the stock market guittin’ was unbelievable. Only naïveté permitted us to believe this could go on forever… .”

  “For those who lived with little money, it didn’t make much of a difference. I never saw money until I was nine or ten years old. On $100 a month, my father supported us. We were clothed, sheltered, well fed. There was always enough of everything—except love.”

  When she was six, she saw Pavlova dance. “I sat up and wept uncontrollably. At that moment, there was born this true knowledge: I was going to be a dancer, a ballerina.” She traveled with Adolph Bolm’s ballet company throughout the Midwest, “bringing culture to the masses.” (Laughs.)

  In Hollywood, she worked as a Mack Sennett girl and was under contract to Cecil B. De Mille. “I followed him every waking minute. I was at story conferences, I saw every rush, I was a little ghost. When he went to the men’s room, I waited outside.” Her stage name had been Billie Bett. “De Mille took Rand off of a Rand-McNally map.”

  A close friendship developed with Mary Pickford. “Later when Doug Fairbanks achieved a more sophisticated marriage with Lady Ashley, Mary turned to religious contemplation. She wrote a book, Why Not Try God? Subsequently, she married Buddy Rogers.”

  Sally Rand traveled the Orpheum circuit with her company, “Sally and Her Boys.” The impact of the Depression caused canceled bookings. Her wealthy friends went broke.

  THESE BEAUTIFUL YACHTS that cost a half million dollars were sitting around with barnacles on them. These are the people who had jumped out of windows. Who’s gonna buy a yacht? A man came up to me and said, “Hey, any of these yachts for sale?” I said, “Are you kiddin’? They’re all for sale.” This guy was a bootlegger. So I sold half-million-dollar yachts to bootleggers. For five or ten thousand dollars. And took my six percent commission on them. Beautiful.

  They used to have their own fast boats, to go beyond the three-mile limit, or eight-mile limit or whatever it was, to pick up their booze. By now, all the federal agents knew their boats. So they took these yachts and decorated them with pretty girls in bathing suits, like going out for a little sail. Load up and come back.

  The interiors of those boats were done in rosewood, gold handles on the toilets and all that jazz, great oil painting in the salons. They’re now jammed up with loads and loads of wet alcohol. The interiors of them were gutted and ruined.

  Every hotel in the Loop was in 77-B. This was being in bankruptcy to Uncle Sam—legitimately. I couldn’t pay my bill. I didn’t have any food or whiskey or anything. I went to the management and said, “I never ran out on a hotel bill in my life. I don’t have a job, but I’ll get one. Meanwhile, I can’t pay what I owe you.” They said, “Don’t worry. Nobody’s in the hotel anyway.”

  One of the boys in the show, Tony, said, “Don’t worry. All my uncles are stagehands and the rest of ’em are bootleggers. Pick out a night club you want to work, we’ll work.” I looked at these freaks, with these little postage-stamp stages… .

  Up to this time, the most sexy thing I’d ever done is Scheherazade in the ballet. I thought a girl who went on the stage without stockings was a hussy. (Laughs.) I got a job, $75 a week, only because Tony’s uncles were delivering alky to Frankie, the owner.

  Now I’ve got to find a number to do. I can’t do a toe dance there. I went down to Maybelle Shearer’s costume shop. She had a lot of old fans laying on the counter. I’d been wanting to do “White Birds Fly in the Moonlight” for a long time. I used to see these white herons come down on my grandfather’s farm. I’m harking back to Pavlova and her bird dance, “The Swan.” As a youngster, I tied wings on my shoulders. I’m glad I had the good taste even then to know this wasn�
��t it. Then I saw pictures of Isadora Duncan. I may have been a fine dancer, but I wasn’t ready to create. So, necessity being the mother of invention… .

  I picked up a pair of these feathered fans that prima donnas used to hit the high note with. Any time any female puts a fan in her hand, she instantly becomes a femme fatale. A coquette. I’ve seen this happen down in the Ozarks at Baptist revival meetings. The lady in a poke bonnet and calico picks up a palmy fan and instantly becomes the Queen of Sheba. So I picked up the fan and looked in the mirror. I immediately tried my inscrutable smile and the whole thing. Suddenly I saw the fans did exactly what I wanted.

  I ordered a beautiful pair from New York. The fans came C.O.D. and I couldn’t spring them, having no money whatsoever. Ollie, a girl I knew, who was running a floating crap game, said, “Don’t worry about a thing. Petey’s coming in from Canada with a load. He’ll be loaded.” When Petey came back, the rear end of his Buick looked like a sieve. He’d been hijacked and no money to spring the fans. But he hocked his rings, and they sprung the fans for me.

  I went to the club for my opening, but Frankie didn’t remember me: “Who the hell are you?” So I called Tony: “He won’t let me open.” So Tony, Petey and another boy came into Frankie: “It’d be a terrible thing if this place got a stink in it.” Frankie was horrified: “Wha-wha-wha-what?” So I rehearsed the whorehouse piano player, and Tony went over and clouted two of the Chez Paree’s73 best blue spotlights. So there I stood… . I intended to take my chiffon nightgown and make a classic little Grecian tunic out of it à la Isadora Duncan. I was saving that nightgown for an occasion, but it hadn’t come yet. I didn’t have a chance to get back to the hotel… . I was announced!

  So I stood on the threshold of decision, in a pair of slippers and a pair of fans, period. Either I went on or Frankie would have every excuse to fire me. So I rationalized, I said, “All righty, who’s gonna know what’s behind these fans anyway?” And they didn’t. That night I proved the Rand is quicker than the eye.