Through a Glass, Darkly

by Charlotte Miller

  Janson turned to see Estelle’s hand covering the side of her face, and he was disappointed that he had missed it again. Her mouth was open as she stared at his Aunt Olive. For probably only the second time in her life, Janson was almost certain she could not think of anything to say.

  He had to fight the urge to walk over and ask her if it was the best she could do.

  The Depression had them down, but Janson knew they were better off than many. The news that came out of the radio at Stubblefield’s store seemed to be all grim. A stir had been caused back in March when Colonel Lindbergh’s baby son was kidnaped out of his home in New Jersey—and everyone knew of Colonel Lindbergh after his flight to Paris five years before. Shock rode high that someone would steal a baby from under his parents’ roof, and that shock only deepened when the news came that the child was found dead. What’s this world coming to?—people asked each other, that someone could do such a thing.

  In June, fifteen thousand war veterans descended on Washington demanding early payment of the compensation bonuses they were supposed to be paid in 1945. They camped on the outskirts of the city, many having brought their entire families, and they tried to pressure the Senate to pass the Bonus Bill.

  But the Bill was defeated, and when President Hoover sent out troops to disperse the Bonus Marchers, a melee ensued in which tear-gas bombs were thrown, people were trampled, and the camp burned to the ground. What’s this world coming to?—people asked again. What was the world coming to when war veterans with hungry families are attacked for asking only for their due.

  Relief funds were running short, church and charity organizations hard-pressed to handle the numbers needing relief. More and more people lost homes, farms, businesses. Land seemed to be going up on the auction block almost daily, and leaflets circulated announcing when some farmer’s land was going up for auction and asking other farmers to try to block the sale—but always the sales continued.

  The percentage of the unemployed kept rising. Homeless, jobless people traveled the country, looking ever farther for the prosperity that was supposedly “just around the corner.” President Hoover had promised the previous year that the Depression was “only temporary”—but nobody believed that anymore. Times were tough. And they seemed to be getting tougher.

  In July, Elise told Janson of hearing a new voice coming over the radio at the Stubblefield’s store, that of New York’s governor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mr. Roosevelt had won the Democratic nomination for President, and had gone on the radio talking of a “New Deal” for the country, a way to pull the United States out of the Depression. This Roosevelt wanted to put the unemployed men to work at nature conservation. He wanted to control the crop surpluses that had ruined the price of cotton, among many other things in the years previous, and he wanted to repeal Prohibition.

  In the weeks that followed, it seemed that all anyone could talk about was this FDR—he was calling for relief to help those needy and hurting, unemployment insurance, old-age benefits, help with farm mortgages, and advocating financial reforms, “sound money,” and many other things that Janson little understood. Elise seemed to find hope in the words of this Franklin Roosevelt, but Janson could only think that words could not solve anyone’s problems, and that maybe not even God Almighty could end the problems the country had gotten itself into.

  In that autumn of 1932, words Henry Sanders had often spoken came home to roost on his son’s doorstep: “Credit’s what kills most sharecroppers.” Henry had never wanted his son to have to ’crop another man’s land on halves as he himself had done—but necessity had brought Janson to that place.

  Janson truly learned the meaning behind those words that autumn. The crop was picked and sold at market, and the proceeds divided, with Janson’s share going first to cover the store credit the family had had to run in order to survive—but there was not enough even to cover the charges. The year’s work had all been taken, the entire cotton crop, and they were left with no money with which to face the winter. Worse still, there was a balance owing at the store, a balance that hung around Janson’s neck like a lead weight.

  He sold the hogs they had been fattening for months, hogs they had taken in exchange for back-breaking work he and Stan had done in another man’s fields in addition to their own. Stubblefield had threatened eviction, had threatened that there were more and better farmers who could produce better yields of cotton and who would not end the year in debt—he had to be paid or they would be added to the homeless who wandered the highways, or forced to live off the charity of their family, possibly even be forced to give Henry, Catherine, and Judith over to someone else so that the children would at least have shelter and food. He sold the hogs, their source of meat for the winter, and gave the money to Stubblefield to clear the remainder of the charge at the store—not next year, he swore to himself; I’ll be damned if next year I’ll charge a thing that might leave my family in trouble for the winter. Not next year.

  But he had sworn so many things to himself, and each had come true as if to show him that he could not tempt God with promises made to himself: working in the mill, sharecropping another man’s land, seeing Elise working in the fields—his Elise, picking cotton. He knew that he would never forget the sight of her dragging the long pick sack behind her, a sack so heavy that her shoulders ached from its weight far into the night—his Elise, her fingers scratched and bleeding, working in the red fields under the hot sun. He had wanted for her a place of their own, a good life for her and the children. It would break her heart in a few years to see Henry picking cotton along with the rest of them. On their own land it would have been different; at least on their own land their children would be working to make life better in the future, not merely working to survive the day, the week, the year. Picking then would be different—it would be their own cotton, worth the hours and hours of backbreaking work.

  Many farm families had children in the fields by the time they were Henry’s age, but Janson wanted his son, and his daughters as well, to have at least the memory of a childhood, a memory that he, himself, did not have. The boy was only four—Janson had gone into the fields on a row of cotton with his mother when he was four years old. His son and his daughters would not until they were at least six; then there would be both school and work to occupy their minds. Until then the boy would remain a boy, and the girls would be girls, and Janson could pick a little harder, chop the cotton or work later into the dusk each day, to afford his children that. Henry, Catherine, and Judith would have the time to be children, unlike the sons and daughters of most of the sharecropping or land-owning farmers in the area—he had sworn that to himself, and to Elise as well. He had sworn that.

  Winter lay ahead, winter on the land of a man he had grown to hate, a man who he believed had cheated him out of the half of the crop due him in exchange for his and his family’s work—he did not trust the long column of figures that Stubblefield worked over before telling him there was not even enough to cover the store charge: “Credit’s what kills most sharecroppers”—he could now tell his father what truth those words really held.

  Somewhere along the way he had made a wrong choice, taken a wrong turn, and had damned his entire family because of it. He could not see where that choice had been made, that turn taken, for he had only done what he had had to do. But somehow he had failed and had set his family in this direction from which they might never escape. Even the food hoarded for the winter did little to allay that feeling—they were all damned. Damned by the Depression, damned by the sharecropping, damned even by this red land they worked, land that would never be their own. Winter was coming, a winter he faced with dread.

  Two years—two years on the farm, and they were no better off than when they had come here. But few people were better off than they had been two years before. The Depression had hit hard, and with a fierceness not restricted to the cotton mills and villages and sharecroppers of the South. Elise had t
old him of tales she had heard on the radio at Stubblefield’s house when fitting Mrs. Stubblefield for a new blouse, stories she had heard on the radio at the store, or in the gossip of the Baptist churchwomen on Sundays after services—there were bread lines in the big cities, people sleeping out in the open on street corners, selling apples just to earn a few cents to feed hungry children. People fought over food scraps behind New York restaurants, and murdered other men for a pair of shoes or a coat. The entire world had gone mad.

  President Hoover had been defeated in the election, and that man, Roosevelt, was coming into office. Roosevelt promised a “New Deal” that would bring recovery and reforms—all well and good, Janson thought. Hadn’t Hoover said he would wipe out poverty, that there would be “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage?” Hadn’t Hoover promised to help farmers who were hurting even back in ’28 when he had first come into office?

  Well, farmers weren’t helped, and neither was anyone else. The country was a mess, uncountable people out of work, thousands hungry, cold, desperate, and Janson felt this Roosevelt would have no more effect on the Depression than Hoover had.

  Things got worse. In the months after the election, the country came to a complete standstill. President Hoover could do nothing because Congress waited for Mr. Roosevelt, and Mr. Roosevelt could do nothing until he was inaugurated in March. The business upswing from earlier in the year came to a grinding halt—what Mr. Roosevelt would do seemed to be all that anyone could talk about.

  Rumors sent the banking system into panic—Roosevelt intended to play with the currency. Inflation, reflation, panic—everyone whispered. People who could started converting everything they owned into cash, hoarding gold. Runs began and by mid-February the banks were in the worst trouble yet.

  “I heard on the radio at Stubblefield’s house,” Elise said one day after returning from fitting Mrs. Stubblefield for a new dress, “the governor of Michigan declared an eight-day bank holiday in his state because of so many runs—”

  All well and good, Janson thought. Michigan was a long way off, and the local bank had gone under years before, taking all their money with it. He did not care what happened to a bunch of folks in some state way up north.

  “Someone tried to shoot Roosevelt,” Stan announced as he came in from the store no more than a day later. “It was on the radio, some man in Florida—”

  “He get shot?” Janson asked, surprised that someone would try to shoot the man who had just been elected to be President.

  “No, some other man got shot instead—”

  The notion of repealing Prohibition was now with the states to see if they wanted to make liquor legal again—might as well, Janson thought. As many bootleggers and stills as there are in the woods around here, they might as well.

  More and more states declared bank holidays, desperate to stop the mad runs that were causing failure of bank after bank. By March 3rd, the day before the inauguration, the banking system had completely broken down. Business had come to a halt. Finance had come to a halt. Farmers waited, shopkeepers waited, mill villagers waited, the men of Wall Street waited—something had to be done. The country could take no more of this.

  Saturday, March 4th came, the morning chill, citizens waiting and desperate. Nobody seemed to be moving about on the roads as Janson and his family walked toward the Stubblefield store. Elise wanted to hear what the new President would say once he was sworn in, as did Stan, and Janson had agreed to go along, though he cared little for what some rich man from up north might have to say about anything. Gran’ma appeared to care even less, saying that she thought Mr. Roosevelt was “full of himself,” but she came along anyway just not to be left out of the goings-on.

  Tim Cauthen had walked to the Sanders house early that morning from the mill village, and he and Sissy remained outside as everyone else went in, the two young people sitting on the splintery wooden steps that led up to the store porch as Sissy watched Henry and Catherine play outside with the other farm children. Janson noted that the store was crowded as the screen door shut behind them. It looked as if everyone in the area had come here for the same reason, to hear what this Roosevelt would have to say.

  Cigarette and cigar smoke hung visibly in the air. Stubblefield was behind the counter, for once not seeming to care that so many people were loitering in the store—he probably thought some buying would go on while so many people were there, Janson told himself.

  The radio was turned on and Stubblefield adjusted it to bring in the station clearer and the voices from so far away, up at the White House in Washington, D.C. The announcer’s voice rang falsely cheerful to Janson’s ears as Janson turned to look at the farmers and sharecroppers around him, men whose faces were just beginning to recapture the sunburn they usually wore, at women as worn and faded as their cotton dresses, the skinny children, and the courting young people. It seemed odd to Janson that so many people had come to one place to listen to the speech of one man, a man that so many people had put so much stock in.

  To Janson, they were doomed to disappointment. This Roosevelt could work no miracle and end the Depression as so many hoped. Perhaps not even God Almighty could do that, and certainly no one human being could do all the things this man had said he would do.

  Elise and Stan seemed to see hope for them all in this Roosevelt, as did so many others, and they stood now, the believers and the unbelievers alike, gathered together listening to the radio in Stubblefield’s store, waiting to hear words saying that it would be better, that—really, this time—prosperity was just around the corner.

  Roosevelt was sworn into office, Janson hearing for the first time the strangely accented voice.

  The room grew quiet and Janson could hear the steady tick of a clock. The voices of the children playing outside came in through the screen door, children who on other days were as likely to be found picking or hoeing or chopping cotton as to be found in a school. A man coughed. A baby began to cry and was taken outside, and everyone waited to hear the words that would come from the box on the counter.

  “This is a day of national consecration,” Roosevelt began, “and I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.”

  Janson studied the faces of the others in the room. There was hope on the faces of some, hope as he had not seen in these hard, recent years; outright skepticism on the faces of others. Doubt, assurance—but they all listened, everyone listened, their eyes on the radio, seeming to rest their futures in the words that came through in that strange voice.

  “This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance . . .”

  Elise slipped her hand in Janson’s and squeezed, smiling up at him.

  “In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no market for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families is gone.

  “More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.”

  The voice continued, talking of the need to put men back to work, of action he would take—action which they
all craved so badly. Applause interrupted him time and again, but still the voice continued.

  “I am prepared under my Constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require . . . and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”

  Applause, loud and enthusiastic, came over the crackling radio as those in the room stared.

  “In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us,” the new President said. “May He guide me in the days to come.”

  PART THREE

  Chapter Eleven

  Everyone wanted Roosevelt to do something, and do something he did. The day after the inauguration the new President declared a national bank holiday, closing banks nationwide until each could be looked into and those found financially sound could reopen. By Monday, March 13th, some banks had opened their doors again and action had been taken to cut federal expenses—President Roosevelt was as good as his word, Elise told Janson, though Janson himself could see little effect from this Roosevelt’s word.

  The Agricultural Adjustment Administration was started to help the farmers, the Civilian Conservation Corps to put young men back to work, the Tennessee Valley Authority to bring electricity to the countryside, and the National Industrial Recovery Act to help keep business in line. Federal relief was instituted, and the blue eagle of the NRA began to appear in store windows and businesses everywhere—things were getting better, people started to say to one another. Men were beginning to go back to work, and relief funds were again available for those still unemployed. Hope was rising, and with that hope also came the complainers—men were being encouraged not to work by relief monies, some said; the unemployed were not going back to work fast enough. Hours were cut so that other people could be employed—prosperity was just not coming back as quickly as it should.