In the early days after the Crash, a run had begun on the local bank. Fueled by rumor and a general panic, people had flocked to the bank to withdraw their money, frightened of an imminent collapse. Everyone kept hearing stories of banks in other small towns going under, reports on the radio of big city banks closing their doors forever, rumors circulating that local bank officials had invested heavily in the stock market using depositors’ money and maybe even contents of safety deposit boxes—the bank was going to fail, everyone was quite certain of it, and they rushed to get their money out before it could collapse and wipe out an entire life’s savings.
A disaster had been averted, the run stopped, by Walter’s immediate intervention—the bank was sound, he told the people of the county; their money was secure, and there was no reason for panic.
But confidence was holding on by a thread.
Walter knew what would happen if the run resumed—the bank would never have enough cash on hand to redeem every account. There was money out on loans and in sound investments—but the citizens of Eason County would never understand that. They had put their money in the bank, and they believed that there it should stay—if the run resumed, the bank would collapse, and, with it, his fleeting control over the panic-stricken citizens of the county.
It seemed now to Walter as if he were walking a tightrope, just waiting for the right wind to come along and blow him from its surface—and, with him, the entire county. Nerves were stretched taut, in the Easons and in many other of the county’s finest citizens who had suffered heavy losses in the Crash. Stock prices were rising again, but the damage had been done, and Walter now waited for the other shoe to drop. County businesses were already suffering to one degree or another; a few citizens had been completely wiped out in the Crash, and with that, more suicides within one two-week period than the county would normally have suffered in years.
But it seemed the county would survive, though business had dropped, crime had already increased, unemployment was growing, and Walter had had to avert a near-run on the bank. It would survive—it had to survive, Walter told himself. It was Eason County.
Janson did not understand what had happened with the stock market, nor did he really care. He saw no way it could affect him or his growing family, so he gave it little thought. What was happening in the village, however, concerned him greatly.
Houses had been broken into on the quiet village streets while mill workers were working their shifts in the mill, including Clarence and Dorrie’s house just a few streets from their own, and even the Baptist parsonage on a day when Reverend Satterwhite was preaching a funeral. People were beginning to look at each other speculatively, and many began to lock their doors at night and ask neighbors to watch their houses while they were away. Blame started to fall more and more on the men, sometimes entire families, who rode the rails through Pine, many of whom were only seeking work elsewhere, much as Janson had done after he lost his land. The men were often caught and thrown off the trains, making small camps near the railroad tracks at the edge of town until they could hop the next freight car out, traveling the country in growing numbers as more and more people became unemployed—and these “tramps,” as the good citizens of Eason County called them, were looked at with increasing distrust as being behind the thefts and much of the other trouble in the area.
But Janson knew better. He suspected Buddy Eason and those two friends of his, and had seen them about the village more than usual—and he remained silent, as did others with the same suspicions. No one could afford to lose jobs now, for they were too hard to come by, and locking doors and watching neighbors’ houses was little enough to do to remain employed.
The mill had cut back to five days a week, and was now operating on three reduced shifts. No jobs had been lost yet due to hard times, but there were fewer and fewer hours to work, no doubles, and yet more mouths to feed in the Sanders’s crowded three rooms. There was less money to go into the bank each payday, but still they managed to put a little aside each week, the security of that savings making it easier to get by in a world that seemed now unsure.
Like everyone else they knew, the Sanders family began to economize, to cut corners in every possible way they could. Elise lost sewing work from a few of the ladies in town and in the mill village, and was never paid by many others strapped for money.
Stan sought work for after school and on weekends, but had little luck—men with families to support were taking on part-time jobs just to have a wage coming in. Janson began to cut cord wood, weave baskets, and bottom chairs for other mill families in his off-hours from the mill, and Stan helped—anything to increase the family’s income. There were six in their three rooms in the mill house—that was six hungry mouths to feed, six pairs of feet to put shoes on, six backs that needed warm clothes before winter set in.
Everyone was saying that times would be better in only a matter of months. There was talk about stock market gains in what was becoming known as the “Little Bull Market,” and more and more people began to chant, “Prosperity is just around the corner,” until Janson became sick of hearing it and seeing no results—where were the doubles, the “any number of hours you could want” times in the mill? More and more people were out of work as summer approached—but still, they said, prosperity was just around the corner.
It was in Brown’s Grocery on Main Street on an afternoon near the mid part of the year that Janson heard President Hoover’s voice come over the staticky, crackling wooden box on the counter as Mr. Brown adjusted the dial: “We have now passed the worst,” the President’s voice said, “and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover”—I hope so, Janson thought.
But, however well intentioned the President’s words were, the worst had not passed and no recovery was yet within sight. Businesses sagged all the more, and religious and charity organizations, already taxed by the numbers of the unemployed, were burdened even further. There was a general state of worry within everyone, and, with that worry, wild rumor began to circulate again. A run began anew on the bank, and this time not even the power and influence of Walter Eason could stop it.
Janson was leaving the Feed and Seed on Main Street that afternoon after having gone to check on the hoe and mattock handles he had made and left there to be sold—on consignment, Mr. Abernathy had called it, though Janson had never heard the word before. On consignment or not, not even one had been sold, and Janson was leaving the Feed and Seed no better off than when he had come there. He had hoped to make at least a little something from the handles, for the family could use any money he might bring in. As things were, if times did not improve in the mill soon, he would have little choice but to get into their savings at the bank just for them to survive.
As he made his way down the sidewalk toward the heart of downtown that afternoon, he kept trying to think of anything that might allow him to make extra money. There had been less and less sewing for Elise to do over the past months, and even Janson had not been able to collect for her on some of the work she had done, or on what had been due him for several days work re-bottoming chairs for a widow-woman who lived in the village. Everyone was short on cash. That didn’t help when Janson’s own family was short as well.
He heard thunder in the distance as he reached the corner where he would turn to go back toward the village. He stopped for a moment, staring up at the sky—but then the knot of activity before the bank building at the far end of the downtown drew his attention. Cars were stopped haphazardly in the street. A truck sat in the throughway itself, and a team and wagon as well, even though Janson knew it should be no farther down than the wagon lot at the far side of the Feed and Seed and the dry goods store.
Janson could hear shouts even from where he stood the length of downtown away, the raised voices tightening a knot of worry inside of him as he crossed the street and started down the sidewalk on the opposite side. Men and women moved toward the front
of the bank building, joining those already there. As Janson drew nearer, he could see people pounding on the closed doors of the bank—closed doors in the middle of the business day, something inside of him warned. He turned and started to grab hold of the man nearest to him, determined to find out what was going on—but was shoved aside by a cursing woman as she moved to the front of the building, and he felt a momentary shock as he recognized the woman to be Helene Price.
Helene’s face was red and her hair poking out wildly beneath her cloche hat. The hat was sideways on her head, dipping down to almost cover her left eye. Her dress was buttoned wrong, gaping open at her bosom, and hitched up on one side, showing torn lace at the tail-end of her slip. Her pocketbook gaped open, spilling its contents as she grabbed someone else and shoved him aside. She was cursing with almost every breath, and Janson kept hearing the words: “. . . goddamn sons-of-bitches, steal my money . . . goddamn sons-of-bitches . . .” though he could make out little else.
He took hold of the man nearest to him, yanked the man around, and then shook him hard enough to almost send the eyeglasses from his face. “What th’ hell’s goin’ on—why’re th’ doors locked?”
“The bank failed! Our money’s gone!”
“‘Gone’—what do you mean ‘gone’?”
“They gambled it away on stocks. They lost most every goddamn cent we had in there, and they closed the doors to keep us from getting what’s left.” He tried to jerk free, and Janson released him at last, his mind reeling at the thought. His money couldn’t—
He turned and grabbed another man, swinging him around to face him, vaguely recognizing the man’s face as that of a deacon from the Baptist church in the village.
“They cain’t have lost all th’ money,” he shouted into the deacon’s face. “I had my money in there; they cain’t gamble away my money.”
“They did, you goddamn fool. Th’ sons-a-bitches lost everything. Th’ bank’s gone. All our money’s gone—”
Janson stumbled back, away from the building, away from the locked doors, away from men and women who pounded uselessly for entry they would never have. The police were moving into the crowd now, trying to disperse the people, and he could see Walter Eason arriving—but his mind could register only the one thought: his money was gone. The money he had saved through months and years of work had been stolen again, just as surely as when Elise’s brother, Bill, had stolen it. All that work, all that saving, all that hope, all his dreams—gone again. He had made Elise and the children do with even less than he could have given them, had scrimped and saved—and it had been for nothing. It was almost beyond comprehension that the bank could take his money and close its doors and leave him and his family without a cent—why had he put it in the bank in the first place; why try to protect it from small thieves in the village, just to have it stolen by a bigger, more powerful, thief.
Later he walked toward the mill village over the hard-packed clay streets—there was maybe two dollars in coins in a fruit jar at home. How could a family of six survive with only that little money and the next pay envelope not coming for days, and that envelope based on shortened hours this week in the mill? Scrimping, saving, starting all over again—the dream of his land and home seemed distant and unreal now, that red land where he had been born, where his parents had lived and worked and died, seemed so far away, so far from Elise, and from their children. There was nothing left—nothing—and he did not want to start over again.
He had done that twice already.
There was no strength left in him as he trudged toward home. All gone—nothing left—nothing.
Janson stared up at the mill house his family shared with the bickering Breedloves—three rooms under a rented roof, a house only half their own. That was what he had given to Elise, asking her to be patient, telling her there would be better as soon as he could provide it, that white house on those red acres he had been born to. He had promised her so much, so much—he could have given her new dresses and nicer things for the house, could have given the children new clothes and store-bought toys, but he had asked them to wait, to do without—and, now, for nothing.
He could hear angry voices across the street, could feel tangible tension in the air the village over. His family had not been the only ones to lose a life’s savings in the bank’s failure, but at the moment he felt as if they were. It was personal, very personal.
The noise of the mill’s machinery seemed to close about him as he stared up at the house, the sight of the lint floating everywhere—he had lost. That was the one thing he was certain of that day: he had lost. Somehow in a battle he had not even known the world was waging, he had lost—and now the mill would hold him, him and Elise and their children. How could he start over again now. Again.
Janson forced himself to walk up the slight rise and across the yard, then up onto the front porch. He moved through the quiet rooms, then stopped in the doorway to the kitchen, hearing Elise humming to herself as she worked at the woodstove. He watched her in her faded cotton dress and too-big apron, her back to him as she stirred the contents of a black pot on the stove. She was holding their daughter with one arm, while Henry played on the floor nearby, the boy unmindful of him as he banged at the bottom of an overturned pot with a spoon.
Janson thought of the life Elise had known before him. She had lived in a big, fine house; she’d had all the money in the world—he had promised her so much more. So much.
He did not make a sound, but she turned as if she had sensed his presence. A smile came to her face, then her expression changed as her eyes moved over his own.
Henry was suddenly on his feet, rushing across the room with the spoon still in hand. Janson picked him up and into his arms, then turned to look at Elise again—she was staring at him still, her blue eyes moving over his face, and for a moment he could only look at her.
“It’s gone, Elise. Th’ money we had in th’ bank, all of it, it’s gone.” He watched her set the large spoon aside and hold Catherine even more closely to her. “Th’ bank’s failed—everythin’s gone, everythin’—”
She moved toward him and he drew her close, holding her and their daughter, and their son.
“It’s gone, everythin’—” he said again, his face against the softness of her hair, unable to say more. “It’s gone—”
It was gone again—the money, all the work, the hopes, their dreams, all stolen again. But this time, added to the anger of loss, was the rage of not understanding, of knowing no one person they could blame.
But, it was not just the Sanders family. It was not just Eason County. There were bank failures, runs and panics the country over. As the months passed, business slacked off even more, throwing additional people into unemployment, and the charity groups could do little now toward relieving even a portion of the suffering, so heavy was the need. More and more farmers, after a decade of low farm prices and high surpluses, were going under. Businesses were closing. People defaulted on mortgages and loans, losing homes and property, and throwing the already suffering banking system into even worse straits for cash.
Entire families, unemployed now and dispossessed of homes, rode the rails seeking work, or camped on the outskirts of towns in shanty-villages that were coming to be known as “Hoovervilles.” People looked to President Hoover, some with blind faith that he would pull the country through, others with curses that he had caused this Depression. There were cries for federal relief—but relief was not coming, and thousands looked toward the months ahead praying that prosperity must surely be ‘just around the corner.’ There was plenty to buy in the stores, but no money to buy with, as more people lost jobs and worry took up permanent residence in the hearts of most.
To Elise, as to many, that worry was never far from her mind, but compounded with the weekly worry that each pay envelope could be the last, was the worry over how Janson had taken the bank failure and the loss of the mon
ey he had worked so hard to save. He did not talk much these days, but silently went through the motion of living. There were less and less hours in the mill, and he spent the time when he was not on shift silently working in the garden or playing with the children, chopping wood, bottoming chairs, or making baskets for whatever they might bring. There were few people with cash to spare, and he now often traded work to other village families or families uptown, coming home with eggs or flour, a chicken or ham, a length of cloth, or even a book for Elise in exchange for work he had done. He worked harder now than he had before, but something had gone out of him the day the bank failed, and Elise worried that she might never see it in him again. She knew he was holding onto his dreams by their bare remnants, keeping them silent and locked inside, fighting his own fear for their existence—she knew and she kept her silence, telling herself it would be a long, hard struggle back, but they would do it. They had done it before, and they would do it again—if only times were not so hard.
The mill began to lay off. The least productive, especially the most recently hired, lost their jobs. Some families were left with no wage coming in, and Elise knew that Janson thanked God daily that he still had a job. The mill often ran only three or four days a week, but each penny earned helped lessen the load. A growing number were out of work, and fear lived within those who still held their jobs—if the mill cut back to only one shift—
Everyone was cutting corners, pinching pennies, worrying from one week to the next over shorter hours and what the future might bring. Tempers were running high, and that feeling of impotence, of undirected rage at a world that seemed to be slowly falling apart around them, found direction at first one person, and then another. There were complaints in the village as workers were laid off but continued to stay on in mill houses, Walter Eason telling those newly unemployed that they could remain in their homes and pay rent, though he knew that most would not have the money with which to pay. The unemployed gossiped against those working, looking at their own children and thinking of the cold, lean months ahead when those children might have to go hungry. Bank officials had fled town amid accusations that bank funds had been mismanaged, just a bare, few steps ahead of angry men threatening violence. Transients near the depot were roughed up, one man nearly beaten to death, when rumors circulated that the hobos were coming in as cheap labor to take jobs in the mill and overall factory. Violence erupted against Negroes and against anyone who seemed the slightest bit different. Everyone seemed to be looking for some other party to blame—but times had to get better, Elise told herself. Things would go back to being again as they had been before. The mill would pick up and begin to rehire. There would be more hours for Janson and the others still working, and Janson would again be able to save toward his land.
Through a Glass, Darkly Page 17