Hard Times

by Studs Terkel

  This was in spite of us. And we had a perfectly good staff. Nothing wrong with them. We simply had no idea of the independence, the role of citizens….

  It remained that way until ’49. Then we had to purge. The eviction of high income families, God bless us. The average income for the Addams families was $1,027. When their incomes reached over $1,250, they were evicted. It was a vicious, dirty thing to do. All over the country, I meet people who say: I was evicted from the project and moved into very inferior housing.

  Fights over the selection of sites didn’t exist in those days. It was a honeymoon, ten years of pure honeymoon. The only limitation on our capacity to produce was our brains. We didn’t know how to foster the idea that these people could think for themselves.

  By and large, they were two-parent families. Most of them were middle-class oriented, caught in the Depression. A large percentage were WPA families. They were people who were naturally mobile. They sought out a house because it was a good house.

  We had a pitiful percentage of Negroes. The sites for the early projects were vacant lands in white areas. It was the official Ickes policy that you did not change the complexion of a neighborhood. Race relations advisers, good people, didn’t go any further.

  We put twenty-four Negroes on single, segregated stairwells. Then came the turnover in white families, but none among the Negro occupants. We promptly broke up the segregated stairwells and had a steady increase of Negro intake. It was not until the veteran’s program in the late Forties that we really adopted an integrated policy.167

  There followed a descending pattern. The poorest people were heading that way by virtue of relocation—urban renewal. If they didn’t know what to do with a family, they’d send them to a project. So there was a crash input of people on welfare and broken families. The feeling of the “project people” changed. It wasn’t a question of their right any more. I can still hear the voice of one woman. In a bored tone, she was saying, “I got me a project. If I can’t get anything else, I’ll move in.” At that moment, I knew most clearly our families no longer felt as they used to.

  It was no longer a step up. It was a place where you were investigated. Private habits were never investigated in the old days. Because investigators felt they were being rooked by welfare families, the counting began of toothbrushes, birth certificates and sleeping arrangements. The institution of public housing fossilized, stiffened.

  If you’re the female head of a household and you don’t have an identifiable father of all the children, you’re really up against it. Welfare has broken up families because of the man-in-the-house rule. It’s venal. The damage we’ve done to human beings is incredible. Today, we don’t build homes, we build institutions.

  The New Deal was an enormous step. It was a leap forward. The Government assumed a responsibility toward subsidized housing. But we didn’t realize that the house is not enough. There’s the person. In ignoring his possibilities, we have a welfare generation. We begot it.

  Mick Shufro

  He is Public Relations Director of Roosevelt University; he works in a similar capacity for the American Association of Social Workers. In the late Thirties and early Forties, he was Assistant Director of the Chicago Housing Authority.

  A MOTHER of nine children was receiving two quarts of milk. Because of a budgetary crisis, she was cut down to one quart. She raised hell at the relief station. She became vituperative. The case worker wrote her up as a psychotic. And sent her to a psychiatrist. Fortunately, he responded as few did at the time. He said: When this woman stops reacting the way she does, let me know. Then she would be abnormal.

  At the time of the budgetary cuts, I found out that large dogs at the animal shelter received more per meal than a man on relief. I said so. One of the papers streamered it on the front page. The skeletal budget remained until, suddenly, more money was found.

  I couldn’t understand this sudden change of heart. Later I learned that shoplifting on State Street had become so great that the merchants petitioned the welfare people to give more monies, so that shoplifting costs would go down. It may have been that if a kid didn’t have clothing, his parents shoplifted a pair of pants or a sweater or something of that sort.

  I was once director of the Seamen’s Division of the Transient Bureau. These men had traveled and were well organized. They never came in to see me alone. It was always a committee. They objected to the rules. I suggested they make up their own rules about people staying there. There were about three hundred people living there at the time. They themselves made up a set of rules that was much stiffer than the Administration’s. I wouldn’t have made them for Alcatraz. But they made them up, followed them and came through.

  The answers they gave to the questionnaires were about eighty percent false. They would tell case workers personal problems that didn’t exist. It was deliberate. They were objecting to going through their personal history. They formed a committee. I agreed with them. I said: I don’t give a damn about your personal lives. If you’re eligible for relief, you’re going to get relief.

  Many laboring men were able to take relief without losing their self-respect or breaking down. The office worker or the professional very often broke down.

  There were all kinds of rumors going on then as now: the Negroes who lived in public housing projects couldn’t take care of their property. One day I saw a man in his Sunday clothes, digging in the garden out there. He said, “We have so many visitors watching over us, and telling others how the Negro lives, so I dress up in my best clothes when I’m gardening.” You’d see a mother snatch her little children when visitors came around, and they’d come down a few minutes later in absolutely pure white dresses. It was show business and also made its points.

  Is there a difference between “relief” then and “welfare” now?

  At that time, when we said relief, we meant relief. Everyone then you assumed was an able and willing worker, simply out of work. Today there are people society does not accept as workmen. Never having been given the opportunities, they are almost unemployable—“welfare people.”

  Elsa Ponselle

  She is the principal of one of the largest elementary schools in Chicago.

  I WAS the youngest one in the family, so I got the college education. My brothers and sisters wanted me to go. They couldn’t. It was a step up for us to have one daughter go to college.

  I began to teach in December, 1930, and I was paid until June, 1931. When we came back, the city had gone broke. We kept on teaching, of course. I didn’t go hungry and had a place to live. My father provided me with enough money to get by. But it was another thing for the men who were married and had children.

  They began to pay us with warrants, which carried six percent interest. A marvelous investment. But not for the teachers who had to take them for pay. They had to peddle those warrants for what they could get. It was a promise to pay when the city got some money. We didn’t think we’d ever get paid, but the businessmen knew better.

  There were some stores downtown we will always remember with gratitude. They took those warrants at a hundred percent. Remember the Hub, Lytton’s? They were wonderful. Old-timers like us still go there. There are some stores that will not be remembered with any love. They took it with a sixty, seventy-five percent discount. Many teachers were credited with only fifty percent. As time went along, they got it up to ninety. One of my friends bought a grand piano because she got a hundred percent on the warrant. (Laughs.) That was—if I may be forgiven for saying so—a hell of a note.

  Finally, with F.D.R. in the White House, somebody went to Washington and we got a federal loan. And that didn’t happen without a shove. At the time, the chairman of the Board of Education said we should be happy with what we were getting. We asked him if his wife could live on what we were making. A group got together and organized us. Everybody was heart and soul in the unions those days. Somebody said, “Why not a teachers’ union?” And why not?

  There w
ere objections, of course: We’re not tradespeople, we’re not laboring class. We’re professionals. As professionals, we’re entitled to starve to death quietly and with refinement. Some of us weren’t that much interested in being refined and professional. We were much more interested in improving our conditions.

  We didn’t have sit-ins, of course. That would hurt the children. We determined on one thing: We were not going to hurt the children. We went on teaching, whether we were being paid or not. We kept them apart from it.

  We marched down LaSalle Street, we marched down Dearborn, we marched down Michigan Avenue. We marched everywhere. People were appalled. Teachers were supposed to be meek and mild. We were supposed to be the bulwark of the status quo and here we were, joining the revolution. (Laughs.) We were on the side of the great unwashed. How could we do that? I’m really surprised at how many teachers joined the movement, especially the older ones. They marched. It gave the establishment a turn. One of them went to Washington and got the money for us.

  The Depression hit other members of my family. My brother, a tailor, like my father, was working one day every three months. He had a wife and two children. We were able to help him out. My sister-in-law came to me one day and said: “You want to hear something really funny? Johnny came home and said he had to bring some canned goods to school for the poor children. Where the hell is he gonna find kids poorer than we are?” We protected the kids from any idea that they were deprived.

  Today the kids blithely make $50 and off they go and spend it. As they very properly should. One time, somebody said to me, “What these kids need is to experience a Depression.” Two of us, remembering the hard times, screamed at him, “Never! Not in a thousand years!” I don’t care how blithe they are in spending money. Nobody should experience a Depression. No young person should.

  Do you realize how many people in my generation are not married? Young teachers today, they just naturally get married. All the young men are around. There were young men around when we were young. But they were supporting mothers.

  It wasn’t that we didn’t have a chance. I was going with someone when the Depression hit. We probably would have gotten married. He was a commercial artist and had been doing very well. I remember the night he said, “They just laid off quite a few of the boys.” It never occurred to him that he would be next. He was older than most of the others and very sure of himself. This was not the sort of thing that was going to happen to him. Suddenly he was laid off. It hit him like a ton of bricks. And he just disappeared.

  At our school, we had many Mexican children. When I get violent against big business, I think of those poor little kids. The Mexicans were imported to come up and work on the railroads, and when the work gave out, well, brother, can you spare a dime? They were thrust out, just like that. And they acccepted it. I mean, this was the way the world was.

  At a time, when it was raining and snowing and the middle-class children were all bundled up, or else kept at home. Our kids came to school every single day, whether they had anything to wear or not. ’Cause it was warm, the classroom was warm.

  The Mexican and Negro children were more used to being poor and hungry. The Italian and Greek children and their parents were stunned by it. You hear the saying today: if you really want work, you can get it. My nephew, not so long ago, said to me, referring to the Negroes: Ah, if they want a job, they can get it. I said, “If you ever say that again—I don’t care if you’re damn near forty years old—I’ll slap you! Your father couldn’t get a job in the Depression, and he wanted one.” Of course, he’s forgotten. But, ohhh, I felt all that old rage coming back.

  The parents of the children I have today are working, but some of them are very, very poor. During the Depression, when you were poor, you weren’t looking around and seeing … here’s a society in which everybody has something except me. What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with my parents, that we don’t have these things? By God, I’m gonna get some. I can’t blame them. They watch television, and everybody has everything. Why not me?

  In the Depression, it wasn’t only “not me,” it was “not you,” too. The rich, then, had an instinct for self-preservation. They didn’t flaunt their money, if you remember. They didn’t have fancy debutante parties, because it was not the thing to do. They were so God-damned scared they’d have a revolution. They damn near did, too, didn’t they? Oooohhh, were they scared! What’s more scared than a million dollars?

  The Depression was a way of life for me, from the time I was twenty to the time I was thirty. I thought it was going to be forever and ever and ever. That people would always live in fear of losing their jobs. You know, fear. And, yet, we had, in a way, a wonderful time. We were young.

  Remember? The one great thing was the end of Prohibition. The liquor we drank before was awful. Whoever thought about enjoying a drink? I’m talking about the bootleg. To this day, I can’t drink gin, because every time I get a very fine Beefeater martini, all I can remember is that white stuff I drank during Prohibition.

  How can you talk about the Depression without talking about F.D.R.? I remember when he was at the Chicago Stadium and all of us ran from school to get there. He came in on his son’s arm. We didn’t realize that he was really and truly crippled until we saw the braces. He got up there and the place just absolutely went up in smoke. What was tremendous about him was—with all the adoration—his sense of humor. He acted as though he didn’t take himself seriously.

  And Eleanor. Eleanor. I think she’s the greatest thing that ever happened to anybody. I think of the way they talked about her, about her looks, about her voice. I used to get so rabid. Why I didn’t have high blood pressure, I don’t know.

  Not so long ago, one of the parents said to me, “You know, you kind of talk like Eleanor Roosevelt.” I said, “You mean her voice?” She said, “Oh, no, your voice isn’t like hers.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “I don’t know. You just talk like Eleanor Roosevelt.” Wasn’t that something?

  Sergeant Vincent Murray

  A police headquarters on Chicago’s South Side.

  “I worked for the American Express Company for ten years. In 1933, I was laid off. I was out of work for a year. I went to different aldermen, but there were no jobs to be had. I was recalled by the express company when business picked up a little….”

  I JOINED the force in 1935. Five hundred young fellows were sworn in on that particular day. We were saddened when a reporter announced that Will Rogers and Wiley Post were killed in a plane crash in Alaska.

  Our starting salary was $2300 a year. We purchased our own uniforms, guns and shirts, et cetera. At that time, there were very few policemen drove automobiles. We’d come to work in a streetcar in uniform. When we’d get to the police station, there’d be fifteen or twenty policemen in uniform on that streetcar. Ninety-five percent of us went to work on streetcars.

  I look outside the window there, and to my right, looking west, I see 150 automobiles owned by detectives and owned by uniformed men. What I’m trying to bring out is the difference between 1935, ’36, ’37, ’38 and 1968. Now when I go and ride a bus downtown, I never, never see a uniformed man on a bus. They come here to work in all kinds of cars, Fords, Chevies, Chryslers, you even seen ’em come up in Cadillacs, Mustangs. At that time, we lived within our means. We didn’t live over our heads.

  These young fellows in the police department today, ninety percent of them are living over their heads. They have cars they can’t afford. They have colored televisions they can’t afford. And some of ‘em are talking about summer houses. And every one of ’em I will say are in debt over their heads. It’s impossible on what they’re gettin’. If they want to keep up, their wives will have to go out and work. Or else, they moonlight, get extra jobs. At that time, they couldn’t get two jobs. They were lucky to have one. Just here in the last month, they have allowed policemen to moonlight by driving taxi cabs.

  Today there are twenty squad cars where there used to b
e two. They probably had fifty foot men around the Loop. Now they might have ten foot men, the rest of them are in squad cars. It was interesting working in the Loop, back then. Every twenty minutes, we were stopped by visitors from out of town. They’d see a policeman in uniform and they inquire about different buildings, different restaurants.

  It was at the tail end of the Depression. Around the Loop, you had quite a few employment agencies. And we had an epidemic of con games. When these fellows would come out of this employment agency, this confidence man would walk over and pat him on the shoulder and say, “Pardon me, are you looking for a job?” He’d say, “Yes, I am.” “Well,” said this fellow, his name was Parsons, “I’ve got a job for you right now over in the Garland Building. Running an elevator. The job pays $30 a week.” Now $30 a week is a lot of money at that time.

  So the two of them go over to the Garland Building. This confidence man would take this young fellow on the elevator to the office of the building, and he would tell him to sit in the corner. And he would converse with somebody in the building. He’d walk back and say, “You got the job. You start to work tomorrow. But you need a uniform. The uniform’ll cost you $50.”

  So they’d get in a cab and they would go out to his house, and if this fellow didn’t have the $50, he borrowed it from his in-laws or his neighbors. He was so desperate to get that job. So he’d give ’em the $50 and Parsons’d say, “O.K., report tomorrow morning, and I’ll have your uniform for you.”

  The following day, the fellow would go down to the Garland Building and he would go up to the office and he would set there, and he’s looking for this fellow, Parsons. Mr. Parsons failed to appear. Then he’d go over and talk to the girl. She’d say, “I don’t know any Mr. Parsons.”

  We had about fifty complaints about this Parsons, who was taking these young fellows. Things got out of hand. The sergeant of the district took about ten young fellows and put them in plain clothes and told them to go around these employment agencies. We had a good description of him.