Hard Times

by Studs Terkel

  The reason I fight probably as I do, I remember my dad organizing a committee of depositors for closed banks. And passing out handbills is one of the things I remember. For many a month and many a year, he held meetings. He did a pretty good job on this, ’cause I remember him saying you got two cents on the dollar back, that would be quite a windfall. He often wondered how he’d pay his mortgage off. The few cents he was able to get out was enough to pay the mortgage on the house.

  He had to sell the machinery for so much on the dollar in order to pay off his debts. He never did owe anybody. When he went bankrupt, everybody got paid off on whatever he owed. Not like you read today, in today’s paper, a guy owes six, eight million dollars and they laugh it off. In them days it was some kind of scandal if you owed somebody any money.

  I remember my first bank account. I carried a sign during the Depression. In Chicago, there was a great day in them days, was May Day. And it wasn’t Communistically affiliated. In Chicago, May Day was the day for everybody to express themselves. Whether they were a bum, he could get in line of the parade. Or a big fraternity alliance.

  My dad was president of the depositors of the closed Polish banks. I’ll never forget the sign I carried: I AM A BOY. YOU HAVE TAKEN MY MONEY. DOES MONEY MEAN AS MUCH TO YOU AS IT DOES TO ME IN YOUR BANK? IF YOU NEED THIS MONEY, TAKE THE KEYS TO THIS BANK, THROW ‘EM IN THE LAKE AND STAY IN JAIL. The man in jail at the time was the banker. He is buried in St. Adalbert’s—he committed suicide. I’m tryin’ to think of his name, ’cause he was a great legend behind closed banks.

  If you’d say a thing like that: it’s Communist. Well, it isn’t Communist. I remember the unions being organized in them days. And little splotches of factory environment that was dissatisfied would march in these parades. Certain factions would assemble on May Day: WESTERN ELECTRIC EMPLOYEES: ORGANIZE FOR BETTER BENEFITS. DON’T JOIN THE COMPANY UNION. That was a bad word.

  As a kid, I remember picking up ten milk bottles for a penny in the junk yard to get that penny. And with these pennies, I was able to accumulate enough pennies to buy a bag of marbles. I used to get a hundred marbles for a dime. That was ten marbles for a penny. Then I’d sell ‘em five marbles for a penny. Which made me a penny. Even then, I was trying to accumulate money by buying something and selling it. And to this day, it seems to instill itself upon me as I’m always buying and selling. It seems to get in your blood, it seems you seem to get like Jewish. I’m doin’ the same thing with my kids now. I’m trying to instill that they can buy something, sell for a profit, put the profit away, take the next and reinvest it. The Depression taught me this.

  I say we shouldn’t go through another, it was so horrible. I feel for some of these people today that feel that we owe them a living that perhaps this is what we need. But then I go back and say: well, if it happens to them, where will we … to try to say to my children you’ll have to go through Depression. Or that loaf of bread that’s so easy getting now, that they’d have to go get it like I had to chase somewhere. And who would give it to ’em for a nickel?

  My mother used to go with me down Maxwell Street. I can still see the mess of people walking back and forth, and barkers trying to get you into the doors and gypsy women trying to tell your fortune. Even now that I know about prostitution, I can just imagine they used to operate on that street in them days, winkin’ at ya. Women on the corner winkin’. What was she winkin’ about? In them days, you didn’t know what she was winkin’ about. Today you’d know.

  And oh, how could I forget the booze, the beer-running days. I used to go to Sacred Heart Church. The man that used to distill the booze and beer used to hide it in the basement of the church. Revenue officers would never believe that the church was the sanctity for the beer. I remember going down in the basement of the church, the beer smell was there. I’d say: what are all these barrels of beer doing here? And good Father Healy, he used to be quite a little devil with all that beer down there. I think he survived because he used to hold the beer down there. If the revenue agents ever knew that the churches were the sanctity for beer runners! Joe Fusco—he was investigated several years ago for his tie-in with Capone and all that—Joe Fusco was a great supporter of the Sacred Heart Church. Of course, Sacred Heart Church was a great supporter of Joe Fusco, too.

  Beer, there was a Depression, but they still had their beer. I don’t remember anyone being alcoholic or get out of hand like they do today. I own a liquor store. How’d I ever get in the liquor business? I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I love children. And people in Chicago hate me. They think I’m a bigot and a racist.

  You try to show your children respect, and you try to show your children authority, but there’s always gonna be in this world somebody that thinks they’re better than the law. Today it’s the breakdown of law and order today causing all this turmoil that we’re having today. I don’t think it would be allowed in them days to let it get out of hand, where you can spit at an officer or hit him or dare him to touch you. You woulda been smashed. Why, you didn’t even talk to ’em, you were thrun in. It never happened to me, but I can still see some of the older folks that something happened, they were thrun in the old paddy wagon. I remember crawling in the alley of the old Scotland Yard station to see the men behind the bars. By looking at those people behind the bars that I gained respect for law and order.

  That’s another thing. I don’t ever remember saying to my parents: I don’t want to do my homework. The work was there, you had to do it as part of your survival. Bred into you as part of your characteristic. The Polish people are famous for the belt. I remember my dad saying: go stand in the corner and kneel on some rice, that’ll teach ya. I remember many a time saying: Gee, dad, I can’t learn this. Well, get in that corner and kneel on that rice.

  In them days you knew the parents were authority. You knew if you behaved anywhere, there was a lickin’ in store for you. A good solid whack. To this day I still carry a belt.184 I can say to myself: what’s good for me, what helped me to learn, and I’ve never been arrested for disobedience—these kids today, why are they getting away with murder, talking back with their elders? When I have kids standing in front of me: Who do you think you are, telling me not to do this? Who are you to say I can’t break this? I’d like to take a poke at ’em or take a belt and give ’em a couple of good whacks. Then they say: We’ll sue ya. In them days the father was the boss.

  I remember running up the streetcar and meeting the father. Also I remember not running up to meet him because I had it coming for something I done wrong. What I did wrong, I can’t recollect today.

  Did you ever feel scared of your father when he wasn’t working? When he felt low?

  Oh, yeah. After all, he’s lost his bank account, he’s worked hard, he’s a foreigner, he can’t speak English, in fact he had to change his name in order to get a job. He was discriminated. I suppose he blamed a lot of things on this happening, on Hoover. I suppose he would take it out on the kids. But a kid could sense there was something wrong, and he’d stay away from the issue.

  The people that were in the adjoining flat, they had to go on relief. They were Lithuanians and were very wonderful people, too, with their culture. They survived the Depression on potato bread, with gravy and soup.

  Bones, beef bones, and there was a big hunk of meat besides. The beef bone, the celery, the cabbage, the beets or onions and tomato, all thrun in that pot. And what a fragrance! Today you don’t smell them fragrances. And loaves of bread. How can you forget the loaves of bread? They musta been about ten pounds and about three feet in length. These are the reflections that I treasure.

  I do remember this family getting for relief purposes prunes, which they used to make prune pudding. I remember raisins being in the diet of re-liefers.

  In them days, you didn’t get it like today, $400, $500 because they have three kids. In them days you got a bag of groceries and this was it. You learned how to eat and make it last. Everybody learned how to prepare. If she didn’t
know, she’d give it to somebody who knew how. And they divided between themselves. I don’t remember anybody ever being hungry.

  As hard as it was, my mother was always able to put away two cents, five cents, ten cents, to make sure we worked ourselves out of that community. It was a good community, but they had their mind to progress farther.

  Here I’m talkin’ about the hard life I had, here’s a guy comes through tellin’ ’em, well, we have to integrate, everybody’s gonna live equal. Oh no, not after the way I worked like I did, nobody’s gonna live equal. You start off rough, if you come rough into Chicago. You don’t start in equal with me. You go on the bottom rung and start climbing up. The Negro has got to learn. God put us in this world just to fight our way forward, up the ladder or down the ladder. Whether we’re black, white or green.

  Suppose a Depression came to America again?

  Chaos, chaos. I just dread. I don’t talk about it. Never be able to live. I’d be able to live. My house is almost paid off and the taxes are high. You wouldn’t believe you’re sitting on $900 a year taxes. Thank goodness I know how to make a buck. But if things keep on the way they are, and making me a Nazi between my neighbors and my Negroes, I won’t have no business.185

  If a Depression hits, what would happen? It would be a civil war. There’d be murder, greed, there would be manifestation of such magnitude as has never been seen in this world. Money means nothing, it’s hunger. To get whatever another person has, I’ll take it away from ’em. If somebody doesn’t have it, they’ll do everything to get it.

  Was there a different attitude among people in the old days?

  Yes. If anybody knew how to make something to keep or last longer—they traded recipes, they traded clothes—they’d give hints and there was no what they call keeping up with the Joneses. If the lady across the street got color TV, I got a color TV. I’m against it. A lady down the street got an organ, you have got to get an organ.

  You have a Hammond organ… .

  Yeah, I know. See, everything is because somebody else has got it, you gotta have it. We gotta keep up with the Joneses.

  POSTSCRIPT: Before the conversation ended, he was asked one last question :

  Are you … do you have a conflict within you … ?

  “Yes I do. I have a conflict inside of me. It hurts that I have to say to a Negro I can’t accept you as a neighbor because of the area. In front of my club, I took it upon myself to speak for open housing. And the people booed me. I did such a terrific job for open housing that they threw books at me and everything. When the vote came out, it was my hand only for open housing. I’m not really against integration, but the membership says to me: we’re going to be against integration. My club having four hundred people has made me president. That puts me in charge of their opinion. They tell me they can’t live with a Negro, and I believe it.

  “By coincidence, today, I’m talking to a most charming little Negro girl. You’d want her for a neighbor. But you can’t. It’s fantastic, a shame. It’s gotta come out of your mouth the opposite of what you feel inside. Isn’t that crazy?”

  Horace Cayton

  Sociologist; co-author (with St. Clair Drake) of Black Metropolis.

  He had come to Chicago from Seattle, where his father was editor of a Negro newspaper, and he himself had served as a deputy sheriffs. His grandfather, Hiram Revels, was the first black Senator from Mississippi, following Reconstruction.

  I’LL TELL YOU how naive I was. This was along 1930, 1931. When I first got to Chicago, I came into the Union Station, got into a taxi cab and told the driver, “Take me to the best Negro hotel.” He turned around and looked at me like I was a fool. He took me to the only hotel he knew. It was a whorehouse. I was never so hurt in my life. I don’t know what I imagined. Something, oh, fancy, like the Ritz. Only it wasn’t the Ritz.

  I had a romantic notion about the black belt, the cabarets, the jazz—that was there, too. When we rolled out Michigan Boulevard and cut over to South Parkway, it was exciting. I walked around the streets, day and night, just like I did in Paris. It was a fantastic world. I met wealthy Negroes, but I knew nothing of the masses.

  I was eating lunch on the South Side. I saw a group of Negroes marching by, marching by twos together, and silent. Not loud and boisterous. These people had a destination, had a purpose. These people were on a mission. They were going someplace. You felt the tension.

  I still had my dessert to eat, but I was curious. I got in the back and marched along. I was dressed better than they were, but they showed no animosity toward me. I said to the chap next to me, “Where we going?” He said, “We just gonna put some people back in the building. They were evicted.”

  It was a ramshackle building. A shanty, really. A solid crowd of black had formed and they were talking great … what Robert E. Park186 called an “indignation meeting.” They used to have these indignation meetings down South, where Negroes just let off steam because they couldn’t contain themselves, from some injustice that had been done. They’d lock the doors and have an indignation meeting and curse out white people. Here was action.

  They moved out from the church just rags of covers, broken down bedsteads and a chiffonier back into the house. Then they had a spiritual meeting. The weather was below zero at the time. We stood there and heard the sirens. Police cars. Everyone grew tense. A frail, old black woman waved her hand and said, “Stand tight. Don’t move.” They started to sing: “… Like a tree that’s standing in the water, we shall not be moved… .” Then they sang another wonderful song, “Give Me That Old Time Religion.” (He sings a phrase, ending with “… It’s good enough for me.”) They added Communist words: “It’s good enough for Brother Stalin, and it’s good enough for me.” And they had other verses, like: “It’s good enough for Father Lenin, and it’s good enough for me.”

  While they were singing, the tension was felt in the crowd. The sirens were there like a Greek chorus, coming from all directions. Somebody said, “It’s the Red Squad.” The old woman said, “Stand fast.” But they came through like Gangbusters, with clubs swinging. They pulled the old woman off, but in the general confusion, she disappeared in the crowd.

  I didn’t run because I was so taken up with this great drama. I had never really felt the Depression and what it had done to human beings till then. I don’t know why I wasn’t clubbed. I was on the outside and I was better dressed. 187

  Truth is, the Communists made very little inroads with the Negro people. The Communists embraced many of the causes, but the black people didn’t take them seriously. For example, the Party would have a float in the Bud Billiken parade down South Parkway.188 But they really didn’t penetrate. They raised issues that Negroes were interested in and they learned a lot from the Communists. They accepted help from anybody. Why shouldn’t they? They’d be damn fools if they didn’t.

  One of the reasons the Communists flopped is they didn’t know how to deal with the Negro church. The church was the first Negro institution, preceding even the family in stability. Even in slavery where there was really no family tie, the first organization was the church. The Communists came in flat-footed with this vulgar Marxist thing. I was lucky I didn’t join. Now I say that, ’cause at my age, I don’t give a damn what I join. Hell, I mean, let them drop dead, the bunch of them.

  The church played a role in the black community during the Depression … ?

  Adam Clayton Powell’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, his dad had, had led that church and got a great deal of strength from it. Father Divine epitomized that whole period. He was the essence of it. Father Divine was God in a brass bed.

  One time in New York, I was in the Village. There was a little fish and clam juice restaurant. A pretty little white girl worked there. She said, “I was born in Father Divine’s Heaven.” She was ten or twelve before she found out Father Divine wasn’t God. She was white as snow. She was from Crumb Elbow, that was his community. All his churches were called Heavens. He would buy hotels, and the
y’d be Heavens. He fed more people during the Depression than anybody.

  That indignation meeting in Chicago shocked me to my depths. The grimness of hunger and no place to sleep, of cold, of people actually freezing to death.189

  I remember the original lie-in. Negroes were out of work, after promise after promise after promise. One day a group of them lay down in front of the streetcar tracks. They all had white conductors and white motormen. They couldn’t come through. Mayor Kelly tried to make a deal with them. They were going to lay down and stop the God damn traffic from running through. They would erect a wall of human beings, a black wall. They hoped for jobs. They didn’t really hope for and didn’t get platform jobs. But there were people digging ditches for the utilities, just common labor. And Negroes weren’t on there. So they said, “We’ll just shut off the damn thing. It can’t work and we’re starving and these gangs of workers doing most of the menial work were white. Right in the black community.190

  Do you remember the attitude of the black community then in contrast to today’s … ?

  In spite of the Depression, there was hope. Great hope, even though the people suffered. To be without money is a disgrace in America today. The middle class looks upon welfare Negroes as morally corrupt because they haven’t worked. But in the Depression, there were so many whites who were on relief. So the Negro would look, and he wouldn’t see any great difference. Oh, there was a difference: a disproportion of Negroes on labor than on skilled jobs in WPA. But if Negroes were on relief, so were whites: we’re gonna have a better day. That was the feeling. That hope is gone. It’s crystal hard now. It’s hatred and disillusion.

  What was the black people’s atitude toward Roosevelt?

  Oh yeah, that was something. He broke the tradition. My father told me: “The Republicans are the ship. All else is the sea.” Frederick Douglass said that. They didn’t go for Roosevelt much in ‘32. But the WPA came along and Roosevelt came to be a god. It was really great. You worked, you got a paycheck and you had some dignity. Even when a man raked leaves, he got paid, he had some dignity. All the songs they used to have about WPA:I went to the poll line and voted