Hard Times
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84 Another renowned gambler of the time.
85 William Hale Thompson, three-term mayor of Chicago.
86 A gambler and fixer of reknown. He was involved in the Black Sox scandal of 1919.
87 Smith & Wesson, revolver manufacturers.
88 It was alleged that he was one of Capone’s executioners in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. He was killed in a bowling alley in 1936, on the eve of St. Valentine’s Day.
89 M. M. Neely, Governor of West Virginia, 1941-1945.
90 “Several hundred autopsies have confirmed that many miners die of heart failure when coal dust clamps the small arteries in their lungs in a stiff unyielding cast which eventually puts a critical load on their hearts.” Robert G. Sherrill, The Nation, April 28, 1969, p. 533.
91 A “rube” vaudevillian, best known for “The Specialist,” a routine based on outhouse humor.
92 E. Haldemann-Julius blue books. They were sold for a nickel or a dime: philosophical, political, scientific and literary classics.
93 Rural Electrification Administration.
94 Captain Joseph Patterson, the Colonel’s cousin, publisher of the New York Daily News.
95 His were primarily non-political cartoons. His most celebrated, “Injun Summer,” has been reprinted every season for many years.
96 EPIC (End Poverty In California) was the symbol of Sinclair’s candidacy.
97 Dorothy Comingore, a former film actress (Citizen Kane), recalls, “I saw heaps of oranges covered with gasoline and set on fire and men who tried to take one orange shot to death.”
98 Rexford G. Tugwell is one of the original members of Roosevelt’s “Brain Trust” along with Dr. Means’ colleague, Adolph A. Berle.
99 William H. Woodin.
100 Cordell Hull.
101 Rexford G. Tugwell, Under Secretary of Agriculture. It was he who suggested Henry Wallace as Secretary of Agriculture. A political scientist: “Rex was my intellectual mentor.”
102 The Mayflower Hotel was a favorite gathering place for the lobbyists of various interests.
103 His associate, the other assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture.
104 He had an occasion to visit “Cotton Ed” Smith, U.S. Senator from South Carolina, a vociferous opponent of many New Deal measures. Apropos of nothing, the Senator told him: “You seem like a nice, intelligent young man. I don’t know why you work for the Government. Get out where you can make an honest living.”
105 President of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU).
106 It was now called the Farm Security Administration (FSA). “Rex left, I guess, in’37. He became the chief target of the anti-New Dealers. I think he felt his usefulness had been impaired. I’m also sure he was tired.” Dr. Will Alexander succeeded Tugwell.
107 See John Beecher, p. 277.
108 “He sent me a letter of congratulations when I was appointed administrator of Farm Security.”
109 “In states like Alabama, the tax would amount to as much as $40. It was a bar to poor people voting, particularly Negroes.”
110 Roosevelt’s press secretary.
111 Head of the Historical Division of the Resettlement Administration. “He’s the guy responsible for these magnificent photographs.”
112 Henry Morgenthau, Roosevelt’s Secretary of Treasury.
113 Alfred E. Smith, in 1928, running for President against Herbert Hoover, failed to carry New York State.
114 Cordell Hull, Secretary of State during Roosevelt’s first three terms.
115 The Jim Farley Story, by James A. Farley (New York, McGraw Hill, 1948).
116 J. Hamilton Lewis, pink-whiskered, pearl-gray-spatted fashion plate, was a Democratic Senator from Illinois.
117 Political boss of Kansas City for many years.
118 The conversation took place before his appointment by President Nixon. He was at the time Chairman of the Board of the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company.
119 The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
120 Senator from Virginia; Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
121 It’s completely autonomous. Of course, it’s a creation of Congress and its members are appointed by the President, but it has an air of independence few other agencies have, because we’re not under the General Accounting Office. There has been a continuous battle. Congressman Wright Patman believes the board should be under Governmental control.”
122 Dos Passos was covering the Republican and Democratic conventions for The New Republic.
123 See Cesar Chavez, p. 53.
124 Secretary of Treasury from 1921 to 1932.
125 In his autobiography, John L. Spivak, a journalist, recounts his investigation of the matter. During his visit to Butler’s home, the General … “an extraordinary man, described ‘what was tantamount to a plot to seize the Government, by force, if necessary.’” In 1935, “Butler, on a national radio hookup, denounced the Congressional Committee for suppressing parts of his testimony, involving the names of important men.
“Roger Baldwin, who did not look with friendly eyes on communists because they denied free speech and free press, issued a statement as director of the American Civil Liberties Union: ‘The Congressional Committee investigating un-American activities has just reported that the fascist plot to seize the government … was proved; yet not a single participant will be prosecuted under the perfectly plain language of the federal conspiracy act making this a high crime. Imagine the action if such a plot were discovered among Communists!’
“Which is, of course, only to emphasize the nature of our government as representative of the interests of the controllers of property. Violence, even to the seizure of government, is excusable on the part of those whose lofty motive is to preserve the profit system… .” From A Man In His Time, by John L. Spivak (New York, Horizon Press, 1967), pp. 329-30.
126 Congressmen Joseph Martin and Bruce Barton, Republicans.
127 Harold Ickes, Roosevelt’s tart-tongued Secretary of Interior.
128 Robert Jackson, Roosevelt’s Attorney-General; later Associate Justice of the Supreme Court; eventually, the United States’ judge at the Nuremberg Trials.
129 He was in a demonstration on Boston Common. Upton Sinclair, in Boston, describes “how the mounted police tried to ride me down and chased me on horseback.”
130 John Wexley’s They Shall Not Die, a play based upon the case. Ruth Gordon enacted the role of Ruby Bates.
131 Two Catholic journals: the first, a lay monthly; the other, a Jesuit weekly.
132 A German ocean liner, bearing the swastika.
133 In 1935, during the Ethiopian War, Fascist Italy was collecting gold, silver and copper. In exchange for their wedding rings, women received steel rings, inscribed: “Gold to the Fatherland.”
134 Machines for harvesting and threshing wheat.
135 Big Bill Heywood, a top leader of the IWW.
136 It was, once upon a time, one of Chicago’s finest restaurants.
137 In 1935, he was assassinated by Carl Austin Weiss in the capitol building at Baton Rouge.
138 Dr. Arthur J. Altmeyer. He was Commissioner of Social Security for a number of years.
139 CWA (Civil Works Administration).
140 “Below the Mason-Dixon Line, all preachers are called ‘Doctor,’ whether they’ve been to school or not.”
141 “Nigger, as used down South, wasn’t a dirty word. Today we can’t even say ‘chiggers,’ we say ‘chigg-roes.’ ” (Laughs.) “Now we have to say ‘black,’ don’t we?”
142 “The only way they could fill the football stadium was for Huey to attend the game. In one case, he agreed on condition that the newspaper, begging him, cancel Westbrook Pegler’s column. Pegler started out as a Gerald Smith hater and Huey Long hater. Later, he turned on the Roosevelts. A few years ago, in Tucson, he said, ‘The greatest mistake in my life was not joining Gerald Smith 25 years ago.’
“I used to have a lot of fu
n with Eleanor myself. I said she was a very generous woman. She left her teeth at the Elks’ Lodge. (Laughs.) I used to talk about the children. We were raised up to believe that if you married cousins, the children would be silly. It was never more graphically demonstrated than with the Roosevelt family. (Laughs.) When Eleanor came back from the South Seas and said the boys in the hospitals looked sad, I said, ‘If I looked up into a puss like that, I’d have a relapse.’” (Laughs.)
143 “It was a political speech to himself,” said Senator Russell Long. “He anointed himself as Huey Long’s successor. He made a great impression.”
144 “In those days, I spoke at the Rose Bowl to 110,000 people. Think of that.”
145 For fifty-six years, he served, in sequence, as reporter, editor and president of the Kansas City Star.
146 Senator William E. Borah of Idaho.
147 In 1937, there had been clashes at the River Rouge plant between the service men at Ford, who had been holding out against the CIO, and UAW organizers. The La Follette Committee held hearings, subsequently, and confirmed the union’s charges of company violence.
148 “It’s a funny country. If you call it by its right name, you’re branded a radical. In most countries, people name their economic system. We should talk about our economic system as capitalism, as others call theirs socialism. Then you either defend it or attack it. We use the parliamentary name, democracy, rather than the economic name, capitalism. That’s a product of our public relations drive… .”
149 “It may be that many contradictions in our society have been resolved by New Deal legislation and other stopgap measures, as well as union bureaucracy. This may stop much militancy. But this country can no longer be defined by geographical borders as it was before the Depression and World War II. You’ve seen the Chase Manhattan ad: Our Man in Rio. Our man everywhere. It’s a world-wide system, and it’s breaking up. In places like Vietnam—and Guatamala and Mozambique…. Whether a revolution takes place here or not, it will affect us. Capitalism ain’t what it used to be….”
150 Joe Louis regained the heavyweight championship of the world from Max Schmeling, by virtue of a first round knockout. Date: June 22, 1938. Previously, Schmeling had K.O.’d Louis in the twelfth round. Date: June 19, 1936.
151 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
152 Secretary of Treasury.
153 Ben, a nineteen-year-old college student: “My grandfather owned a car, but it never left the garage. He had it jacked up for two years. Gasoline was just too expensive. He told how he polished the car once a week. How he took good care of it, but he never drove it. Couldn’t afford it.”
154 One of the Federal Arts Projects (WPA) under the auspices of the New Deal. “It was an idealistic concept to encompass the whole country—to make the unemployed actor an entertainment worker. To do his share.” It employed not only legitimate theater actors and dancers, but vaudeville and circus performers as well.
155 T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral was the most celebrated case in point.
156 Documentary theater, based upon circumstances and controversial issues of the time: Triple-A Plowed Under concerned the New Deal’s farm program; Power dealt with rural electrification; Third of a Nation (a phrase taken from the F.D.R. Inaugural Address of 1937) commented on the housing crisis.
157 The Jolson Theater was larger than the Maxine Elliott.
158 Veteran character actor.
159 An expensive dining room-club in the Plaza Hotel.
160 “You prime tobacco when you pull the leaf off the stalk. It may have thirty-five or forty leaves. You take the leaves off the bottom, ’cause it matures there first….”
161 Music Corporation of America.
162 Black Theaters, featuring live artists. The films were merely stage-waits.
163 New York Daily News.
164 Publisher of the paper.
165 A couple of years after its Broadway opening, the play came to Chicago. “We opened to rave notices. They carried me down the aisle on their backs, the audience did. Opening night in Chicago was just the greatest opening night I’d ever known. A couple of months afterwards, I was in California. I heard, over the air, we were closed by Mayor Kelly. He exercised his power capriciously in revoking the theater’s license. As I understand it, Mrs. Kelly walked in with her priest, and she was offended by it.” The case was in the federal courts; a District Court decision in favor of Kirkland; a reversal by the Circuit Court of Appeals … , “so we moved down to St. Louis. We kept our full company on full salary in Chicago for five or six weeks, waiting for a decision….”
166 One of the first public housing projects in Chicago. It was open for occupancy in the spring of 1938.
167 Miss Wood was subjected to violent attack for insistently pursuing this policy, particularly by local and state politicians.
168 An association of black lawyers.
169 Popularly known as the “West Side Bloc,” celebrated for its close syndicate connections.
170 Michael (Hinky Dink) Kenna, alderman of the First Ward for almost half a century, and Matthias (Paddy) Bauler, alderman of the Forty-third Ward, forever and ever, it seemed.
171 Sylvester Washington, a black policeman, celebrated and feared on the South Side. He had a reputation as trigger-happy.
172 Beverly Hills. A middle-class suburb on the Far South Side.
173 Landlord of the building.
174 A precinct police station. The busiest in the world, then.
175 She attended numerous poor people’s conventions in the Thirties.
176 The landlord’s building custodian.
177 John M. Smyth Co., one of the better furniture stores in Chicago.
178 He services engines at the end of a run.
179 Hereafter referred to as the ILD.
180 An adjunct of a Chicago jail at the time.
181 “I was also engaged at that time in organizing the Consumers Union. Our idea was to help people of what we now call the inner city to buy more intelligently. Advertising was even less regulated than it is today. Merchants were on the make. Now, Consumers Union, still a worthwhile organization, serves the middle class well. But I’d like to think some day it will get into the ghettos and do some real work.”
182 Women’s Christian Temperance Union; headquarters, Evanston.
183 Chicago’s open market area; gradually disappearing as expressways converge upon it.
184 Though he carried the belt, during the conversation, his little boys ran under and around him, delightedly, unafraid.
185 The majority of patrons at his liquor store are black.
186 Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago; mentor of Horace Cayton.
187 His impressions of this incident appeared as an article that year in The Nation.
188 An annual parade on the South Side, sponsored by the Chicago Defender. It was a feature for children. Merchants and social clubs of the area would have floats.
189 “Mrs. Mary Eggleston’s apartment at 1449 E. 65th Street is without heat in Saturday’s near-zero temperatures because the building’s owner hadn’t connected a furnace…. For warmth, Mrs. Eggleston and her four children wear sweaters and overcoats and huddle around a kitchen range…. There used to be five children, but 14 year old Nadine died Monday. She had sickle anemia and her mother thinks her death was hastened by the cold … ‘the doctor told me to keep her warm… .’” (Chicago Daily News, January 25, 1969)
190 “They were laying that track from Fifty-first and South Park to Cottage Grove and none of the colored boys was workin’. And some of ’em said, ‘What the hell are we gonna do?’ So one of the fellas, said, ‘Follow me.’ So they fell in line right there on Fifty-first Street, and that gang of men walked up to them fellas that were working and take the shovels away from them. And told ‘em to get the hell outa there. They’d taken them jobs, they been workin’ on the surface lines ever since …” (Clyde Fulton, an eighty-five-year-old black man, recalling the early Thirtie
s)
191 An office building in the Loop, since torn down. Many lawyers had their quarters there.
© 1970, 1986 by Studs Terkel
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Terkel, Studs, 1912—
Hard times.
Originally published: New York: Pantheon books, 1970.
eISBN : 978-1-595-58760-2
1. United States—History—1933—1945. 2. United States—History—
1919—1933. 3. Depressions—1929—United States—Personal narratives.
4. United States—Economic conditions—1918—1945. 5. United States—
Social conditions—1933—1945. I. Title.
E806.T.91 86—5077
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