Hard Times

by Studs Terkel

  Before if you wore a badge, it meant something. Today you wear a badge, you better watch out, ’cause somebody’ll try to take you to see if they’re as good a man as you are. And we’re getting older, not younger. (Laughs.)

  Today it’s tougher for evictions than it was in our day. Today if you evict anybody, you not only have to evict the people, you have to evict about seven or eight organizations that want the people in there. And each can come up with some legal point, why they should remain without giving the landlord any rent. Now I’m not for the landlord. They bled ’em in some of these buildings, I understand. They may be perfectly right. But as far as following the law is concerned, that’s something else.

  Max R. Naiman

  A lawyer. He is sixty-five, though his appearance is that of a short, forty-year-old wrestler.

  “I was a restless youth. In 1918, at the tender age of fourteen, I shocked and thrashed grain. I made three treks to the Western states. I worked the harvest fields of the Dakotas, Montana and so on. I used to ride the rods and the blinds. I was a hostler178 in the freight yards of Idaho. I met the Wobblies. I lived in jungles. They were great educational centers.

  “As a farm worker I was victimized. One farmer beat me out of my pay. Where was I gonna find a lawyer to defend me … ? I graduated law school in 1932. Out of a class of eighty-five, there was just six that threatened to shove off. The mailman stayed on his job, the bank clerk stayed on his job, the policeman on his job, follow me? But I joined the International Labor Defense.179 Defending workers. My clients educated me. We spent many hours, waiting to be called. This was the practice of the court, to keep us waiting….”

  THERE WERE quite a bit of evictions taking place. As good fortune would have it, the Unemployed Councils developed. They were a bunch of Robin Hoods. They would wait until the bailiff put the furniture out in the street and put it right back where it came from. If there was a padlock in the way, well, then, it was removed, you see? The people were placed back in to the despair of the landlord.

  Sometimes these Robin Hoods were so forthright and brazen, they put up a label, stick it on the door: This furniture was moved back by Local 23 of the Unemployed Council.

  There was a case where the bailiff and his deputies came to move out a Negro family. The family was a little bit on the alert. They were expecting some legal action, not having obeyed the court’s order to get out. The head bailiff shoved his foot in the door and yanked out his pistol to command attention. And also to compel the people to open the door. A struggle developed between the bailiff and the lady of the house. In the course of the struggle, the plank that constitutes the outer edge of the door came off. So the woman picks up the plank and—in the language of the streets —socked him across the wrist and forced him to drop his gun. With the leader of the deputies being thus disabled, they abandoned their attempts to remove the people.

  Naturally, warrants were issued for the arrest of this lady and a male companion. It might have been her husband. My clients. It was my practice in those days, trusting very few judges, to always demand a jury trial. It was a long process as against bench trials, where you stand up and give your ditty and it’s all over in a matter of minutes. Both my clients were deeply depressed. It’s common knowledge when an officer is a victim of bodily harm, of course, a job is done on ’em. There was confusion, the lying that went on. The prosecution’s witnesses were thoroughly discredited. The jury found my clients not guilty.

  I was hurrying down the corridor to get over to another court. My client had her arm wrapped into mine. She was trying to hold me still for a minute. Finally she stuttered and she says, “Counsel, I loves you so much, I wish I had you in the bushes.” (Laughs.) Cases such as those ran into the hundreds. This was my greatest reward. (Laughs.)

  Another type of arrest was where clients used to sit at relief stations and wait all day in distress. The distress could be a baby left at home. It could simply be the red tape in getting processed. I had a woman who asked for an increase in the supply of milk for her children. She became very impatient and began to remonstrate. The relief staff could become irritable if the clients attempted to be persuasive. Naturally she was arrested.

  She was taken over to the psychopathic hospital. It was a new development in administration tactics at that time. Before it was just straight out-and-out prosecution, subjecting you to fine or imprisonment. This was a new technique: the judge and two psychiatrists, no jury.

  The director of Relief, Raymond Hilliard, was well known to me, and I, to him. He apparently took a very hostile attitude toward me. As I went to telephone why the psychiatrist, who was gonna testify on behalf of my client, hadn’t yet appeared, I passed by Hilliard and a police officer. He made a very disparaging remark. Provocative. I paid no attention.

  Suddenly I was wheeled around on my heels. I find myself face to face with Hilliard. He says to me. “I promised you something. Here it is.” And delivered a blow to my face. I was flabbergasted. I backed off. He kept on advancing. I got tangled with my briefcase and my arm in getting my coat off. Somehow I managed to untangle myself before he got much closer. I went over on the counter-offensive. I know a little about the art of fighting. I learned from Jack London that you have to get the first blow and make it decisive. This is from his Call of the Wild.

  So I advanced with all the energy I could and delivered about two or three blows to this big hulk of a man. He buckled at the knees and down he went. Of course, when you saw him again, he was bleeding profusely. The policeman rushed up and grabs ahold of me. A little, diminutive woman, who was sitting in a car rushed up she said, “Arrest that man. I saw how that big fellow came behind that little one and hit him.” (Laughs.)

  He talks to Hilliard, who is now mopping the blood off his face: “Do you want me to arrest him?” Hilliard says no. Then he turns to me as though he wanted to effect reciprocity: “You want to arrest him?” I says no. The little woman persisted: “I’m from Milwaukee and I saw what happened. Arrest that man.” Meaning Hilliard.

  As I got to the office, lo and behold, I face a gentleman and he says, “I know what happened to Hilliard. He was taken in for emergency aid. I heard you were all beat up.” I said, “You got the facts wrong.” “Aw,” he says, “the city editor sent me to get a picture. Point at your face with your index finger.” I says, “I’ll give you about ten minutes to get out of here.” “Oh,” he says, “don’t take offense. Give me a fighting pose, then.” I says, “This I’ll do.” The next day, the Tribune knighted me “Battling Naiman.” (Laughs.)

  The ILD would defend anyone engaged in struggle. As far as I know, it did not discriminate concerning one’s politics. The police would often refer to them as Communists. I never stopped to ask.

  Few people are aware that brutality did not start yesterday. It’s a well established way of the past, especially in the Thirties. Some people were holding an open-air meeting in Peoria in the park. The police came around to break it up. They pulled the speakers off the stands and hauled ’em all off to jail. They also grabbed hold of a preacher who protested.

  The victims were taken into a large room, say twelve by fifteen. The police made each one run a gauntlet, where they could each take a sock at ‘em as they went through. They were put in jail without an opportunity to communicate with anybody. Before the local justice of peace, the whole five of ’em were convicted and sent down to the prison in Vandalia, Illinois. The ILD found out and asked if I would go down and see what it was all about.

  In those days, not only were the clients impecunious. Some lawyers were impecunious. I once led a relief organization of three hundred lawyers. I was in a delegation of six that went to Washington. Ultimately, they did set up a project for lawyers. You think it’s only workers who were affected by the Depression? (Laughs.) I had very little dough. I was not paid for this activity. The first three or four years of my practice, I had to borrow to live. Occasionally, one would pick up a little case and make a few dollars.

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bsp; Be that as it may. On this occasion, I ran a writ of habeas corpus—that’s a high and holy writ—and got all five of ’em released from custody. Outside the courthouse on this hot July day, we examined our finances, collectively. I must have had about $1.57 in my pocket. The others, of course, had nothing and they were far from home. What could be done with $1.57? We deliberated on the subject.

  If one man availed himself of $1.57, there’d be nothing left for the others. We were going to divide and eat to satiety or starve to the extent $1.57 would permit us. We bought a quantity of bread and milk, basic food. (Laughs.) We had our supper in the park, and then we laid to sleep for the night. We formed a ring around a huge tree and each one’s head had for a pillow the butt of the fellow in front of him. (Laughs.) The canopy of heaven and the stars above were our blankets. (Laughs.) And our guard was a most beautiful moon.

  The police invariably arrested these labor leaders. A little skirmish took place in South Chicago. Three or four people were beaten and sent to the Bridewell Hospital.180 The police lieutenant pulled out a leaflet that announced a picket line and protest. His lifted his eyes very dramatically and lifted his hands with his palms to the ceiling and said, “Man, is there gonna be trouble!” I didn’t press him for what he meant. The next day was the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937.

  I handled other matters in the Thirties. Some young men were going to Spain to fight on the Loyalist side. They joined the Lincoln Brigade. A lot of them streamed into my office, to look over their insurance policies, their wills. What lingers in my mind is the caliber of these men. There was this young lawyer. He was an editor for the publishers of legal books, but he wrote briefs on the side for the ILD. In the summer of ’36, along that time, I got a card from this fella. Postmarked around the Pyrenees Mountains. He was crossing from France into Spain. The next I hear is that he volunteered to go over the top with hand grenades in his belt to silence a fascist machine-gun nest. The snipers got him.

  Virden. A little town in southern Illinois. I stayed in the home of a miner’s family. Just because the mine was shut down and he had nothing to pay his rent with, he’s thrown out on the street. The furniture of the five defendants….

  They had a local council of unemployed. These fellows took the furniture out to the heart of the square and piled it right up against the monument … the mattresses and the chairs and the stove. To call attention of how courts, real estate operators and the Main Street boys treated an old pioneer family. This so infuriated the pillars of society that they brought charges of unlawful assembly.

  Well, for miles and miles around, long caravans of broken-down Model T Fords, with flat tires and what not, packed the courthouse in support of these arrested miners. Neighbors would come around and visit the house. And share their food with each other. And share their little old rackety cars, going places. The warmth that existed in, let’s say, a little joint misery.

  Today people are so busy with their cars and with their TVs and so on, that humanism has a little blow to it.

  I’m looking forward to Social Security that I may be entitled to. This is one of the programs that always appeared on leaflets raised by people in the struggle for better conditions. There was a slogan among the people: Pass Social Security Legislation. Today thousands of people, when they walk to the mail boxes and pick up their Social Security checks, owe it to these pioneers, who were called every bad name you could think of….

  NOTE: He was the original, after whom Richard Wright created the lawyer, Max, in his novel of the Thirties, Native Son.

  Judge Samuel A. Heller

  Retired.

  I SAT in the Morals Court for a year or so. One day I had twenty-three defendants, prostitutes. About five or six visitors attended. They were obviously slumming. I said to them: “It’s fortunate that we don’t have people here to come to revel in the misery of others. I’m delighted that sensitive people of your type are here.” (Laughs.)

  The girls were all broke, not a penny among them. I thought the visitors were touched. One, the daughter of a former mayor, said, “I want to donate $25 for handkerchiefs, so the girls can wipe away their tears.” Handkerchiefs!

  In the Thirties, I sat in many police courts. Monday was usually the most crowded day. Most of the drunks were picked up on Saturday night, and kept in jail over Sunday. This police officer was walking up and down with a biily. He hit them in the shins: “Stand up, you’re in a courtroom.” I said, “Get out of this court and come back without the club.” He said, “They’ve got to respect the court.” I said, “Do you? How dare you bring a billy into this courtroom?”

  One of the fellows was bloody. He said the police hit him. This same officer said, “He was talking against the Government.” I said, “He’s not an enemy of the Government. You are. He has a right to his opinion.”

  Those forty men were terror-stricken, standing in line. I said, “Are you afraid of me? Would you be afraid of me if you saw me on the streets? Please relax.” I saw some of them I had discharged scrubbing floors. One was washing an automobile. He said the captain told him to do it. I told the captain to pay this man fifty cents. Since when is he entitled to free labor?

  Some men I had already discharged were being lined up against the wall in the back of the room. I discovered that a railroad agent was telling them: If you don’t work for us out in Dakota, the judge will send you back to jail. I said, “Get that man.” He ran out.

  I called the railroad office. “There’s a man making an employment agency out of my courtroom. What’s his name? I’m issuing a warrant for his arrest.” They didn’t know, they said. So I threatened to issue a John Doe warrant and arrest whoever is in charge of that office. If it’s the president of the company, he’ll be arrested.

  The man showed up the next day. He said the police and the other judges always let him do it. That’s how they got day laborers. They’d send ‘em out west for six or eight weeks and let ’em bum their way back.

  There was a judge in those days who had fun with drunks. He’d say, “Hold up your hands. Ah, you’re playing piano.” Some of them had the shakes. I said to him, “My God, what are you doing? These people are scared stiff.”

  These same judges who had fun with the wretched, oh, did they humble themselves in civil courts! They’d look at the names on the legal briefs. If it was a big firm, oh boy, did they bow! A lot of votes there from the bar association. These same judges, who were so abusive to the poor, were so scared here. You have a chance if the person coming in is as weak as you are—or as strong as you are. There are rights. Everybody’s got rights on paper. But they don’t mean three cents in actual life.

  While sitting in the Landlord and Tenants Court, I had an average of four hundred cases a day. It was packed. People fainted, people cried: Where am I going? I couldn’t bluff them and tell them to make an application, there’s a job waiting. I was told my predecessor had taken down their names and qualifications. He promised them help. On my first day, I came across thousands of cards in filing cabinets. I told the clerk I was going to examine these files to see how many of these people got jobs. My mistake. Within twenty-four hours, all the files disappeared.

  A woman with three children, one in her arms, walked all the way downtown. No carfare, no defense. Oh, they were all desperate and frightened. When I’d come in, they stand up. I would tell them: Will you please sit down, so I can sit down?

  These defendants all had five-day notices: if you don’t pay rent in five days, suit to dispossess is started. There is no legal defense. Out of a job means nothing, sickness means nothing. I couldn’t throw these people out. So I interpreted the law my way: five days was the minimum. No maximum was set. I gave everybody ten days. Of course, I offended the real estate brokers. I made them still more angry by allowing an extra day for each child in the family. Finally, I was giving them thirty days.

  About that time a group of real estate men invited me to lunch. Each was introduced: this one was five thousand tenants, that one,
eight thousand. There were about sixty thousand tenants represented—if I may use that word—by these few men. After the meal, the man who had cordially invited me, suddenly became hostile. The others smiled, as though they knew what was coming up. He said,“I’m going to speak straight from the shoulder. Isn’t it a fact that judges favor tenants because there are more voters among the tenants than among the landlords?” All of them laughed.

  I got up and said, “You didn’t speak straight from the shoulder. If you did, you’d have said, ‘Are you playing politics in court?’ Now I’ll answer straight from the shoulder. If I were playing politics, I’d play politics with youse guys.” I purposely used the vulgar expression. “Because you have long pockets and long memories, and you support those who serve you. Who are these tenants who come into my court? They’re destitute, out of jobs, poverty-stricken. When election day comes, one’s out looking for a job, another will sell his vote for fifty cents to buy his baby milk, and most will forget it. There’s no political reward in helping the poor. But what makes you think the man who sits in judgment between the landlord and the tenant must have the mentality of a renter?

  “Someday you’ll succeed in intimidating the judge who sits in my place. He’ll have the chance of throwing four hundred families out on the streets of the city each day. When a man is hungry and out of a job, and nobody knows it, he can control himself. But when his few pieces of furniture are thrown out into the street, his neighbors know it. He has nothing to lose. A wise man comes along and says, ‘Idiots, why don’t you organize? Quit paying rent. When you get the five-day notice, ask for a jury trial.’ ”

  One of the real estate boys said to me, absolutely astonished, “Can they ask for a jury trial?” So I said to this brilliant man, “What makes you think the right of trial by jury is limited to rent collectors?