Surviving the Great Depression

1

I picked up the book off the shelf, red with bold blue lettering it was titled “Jesse Livermore’s Secret to Success”, an insiders guide to the stock exchange. I flipped through it, I knew hardly anything about the stock market, but it seemed to be the easiest way to get rich fast during these times. I knew I wasn’t going to become a millionaire, and I wasn’t about to throw all my life savings in to it, but I couldn’t stand to stand there as watch as the rest of the world became rich. I flipped the book over and glanced at the price, only $2.00, there was probably a good reason it was so cheap, but I bought it anyway, it might be useful.2

I made my way home, weaving through crowds of people who occasionally scattered to allow a honking Model T to get through. As I neared my apartment building the crowds diminished until only a few people, hurrying home, were left on the street with me.3

When I entered my apartment I hung up my coat and set the book on the kitchen table and called my sister’s name. She didn’t answer, and a quick look around the rooms showed that she hadn’t come home yet, she had been staying out later and later every day, it was now almost six o’clock, and if she kept going on like this we would soon be eating dinner at 9:00 each night.4

I sat down and picked up today’s paper, which I had not been able to read this morning in my haste to get to work. I glanced at the headlines, and quickly scanned a couple semi interesting articles; none of them of much importance, until a small editorial caught my eye. It’s headline read, “The Stock Market is Falling” It continued, saying that, contrary to what president Hoover had promised us, that stock prices were rising, that they would continue to rise, they were already falling! They had been falling drastically for over a month! It said it was only a matter of time before the market crashed completely.5

I sighed and glanced at the book I had just purchased, it was a waste to have bought it, every time I convinced myself to join the market I heard something like this, and I couldn’t let myself, and it was probably all wrong, even if the prices were dropping they would most likely recover, people had been claiming that speculation buying would bring an end to the market for years, and it never had before. I couldn’t be too careful though, I wasn’t poor, but I wasn’t rich either, I couldn’t afford to just throw money away.6

I heard quick foot steps approach the door and my sister’s voice as she said her goodbyes to her friends, someone else laughed shrilly and it echoed loudly in the hallway, they sounded drunk. I got up to tell her to come in before she woke up the whole building and got into trouble, but she stumbled in before I got to the door. When she saw me stopped laughing and straitened her skirt, she gave her friends one last smile and closed the door on them. 7

8

“Nellie, your skirt, it’s too short” I said9

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“I don’t know what you mean.” She answered “It’s much longer than everyone else’s” Then she changed the subject. “You won’t believe what Charlotte’s family have got” she hurried into the kitchen and began going through the sake of potatoes, selecting the freshest ones; I think she had just realized how late she was. “An electric refrigerator, she doesn’t have to bother with putting ice in it all the time, it just keeps its self cool with electricity,” she washed the potatoes and began slicing them and gestured to me to hand her the green onions. “And did you hear about the gas oven, and the vacuum cleaner? And we could really use a car. She was getting more excited by the minute. 11

“Are you drunk?” I asked 12

She glanced at me, surprised “No! Of course not, everyone else was, but I really don’t like to drink.” She filled a pot with water and dumped the now sliced vegetables into it. “I know we can’t afford that stuff right now, but we can take out a loan, that’s how everyone else pays for it all.13

I argued with her all through dinner, trying to convince her that we were just fine living the way we were now, that having a gas oven wasn’t worth losing everything we owned; which is what would happen if we couldn’t pay off the loan. As she left for bed, not bothering to do the dishes, she muttered something about falling behind the times and that it was plenty worth it. I called after her that she was getting more and more like a flapper every day and she didn’t even bother to answer me. I suppose it wasn’t an insult to her.14

Three days later the stock market plunged. At noon the next day, when we heard it wasn’t getting any better, Nellie and I went to Wall Street to watch it. Hundreds of people poured out on to Wall Street, some were just here to watch, like us, and they swapped rumors excitedly, and trying to figure out what was going on in the actual stock market. Some watched smugly as panicky stock brokers rushed by, trying to sell their stocks before they crashed, claiming that this was the end of the stock market that we were watching. One man excitedly pushed through the crowd, yelling that he would soon be rich, that the stock market would be back to normal by next week, and that he would own all the stocks by then. All I could only think about was how close I had come to joining the market only four days ago, I turned to tell Nellie how lucky we were, only to find that she had run off, and I had been standing in the middle of Wall Street alone. I scowled and looked around for her; she was no where in sight, but an excited crowd of people listening to a gleeful looking man caught my attention.15

By the time I made my way over to them the man had finished talking and the crowd was dispersing. I stopped a girl with blond, bobbed hair who I recognized as one of Nellie’s friends.16

“Emma! Did you hear that man just now? Do you know what’s going on?17

“Yes! The stock market was just saved! Richard Whitney just walked in a little while ago and started buying up the stocks at ridiculously high prices, same as Morgan, you know, in 1907?” 18

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“Yes, that’s great, I just hope it works, a lot of people are going to be hurt if it doesn’t,”20

“He was too late,” Emma’s gleeful expression faded slightly. “I’ve already heard about four people who’ve killed themselves, and I’m sure there’s more.”21

“Really?” I asked. “And I was just telling Nellie the other day, people put way too much trust in the stock market, maybe the crash was stopped this time, but it will happen again.”22

It was true, Richard Whitney, and some other Wall Street bankers, had managed to stop the panic caused by Black Thursday, but it didn’t last. I think people realized that this would probably happen again and they were better off getting rid of their soon to be worthless stocks, and by Tuesday the next week the panic was back, and it was even worse than before. Nellie and I decided to stay home after our neighbor, Mrs. Gotland, was seen helping her husband in to the building, he had a great gash across his head, apparently from falling down and being trampled on Wall Street. 23

Emma came over a little after two, bringing news of more suicides; more people had tried to stop the crash, but had failed. We were very lucky that this didn’t affect us more, I had been sent me home early from my job, and Nellie complained about the milk man not showing up, but we had food, and a roof, our savings were safe in a bank, and we really had nothing to worry about. Or so I thought.24

“I’m sorry, but at this time I’m afraid that we have gone bankrupt and have nothing to give you.” He then retreated quickly from the window and closed it as the yelling from the angry mob increased in volume again.25

26

I slowly made my way home, my expression now matching those of the aimless wanderers, I had lost everything.27

It only became worse in the coming weeks. The loss of our savings shattered many dreams that Nellie and I had, but it did not actually affect the way we were living just then, we did not rely our savings to get food and to pay our rent, we got that money from my job.28

I worked in a small shop that sold, and repaired mostly radios. But, as America fell in to a depression, no one was much interested in radios; especially since the only thing you could hear over the radio these days were Herbert Hoover’s pathetic speeches, all promising that everything would get better soon, and excuses for why he refused to provide for the starving people who now crowded the streets. As the shop lost money Lester and I were laid off, as we were the only workers not part of the shop owners family.29

We managed to hold on for another month by selling many of our possessions, but after four weeks we ran out of money, and, unable to pay our rent, Nellie and I were thrown out of our apartment. We begged the owner, Mr. Bettles, to give us time, we promised him double the rent next week, but he was deaf to our pleas, he was not about to put up with us when there could be someone else who could pay the rent on time, he too was running out of money. 30

31

Everyone was out of money, or close to it, and no one knew who to blame, some blamed it all on the stock market, but that didn’t make any sense. The real reason was that our whole country had been earning, and saving, and buying with money that didn’t completely exist for years. With all the loans, and margin buying, everyone owed someone money, or someone owed them money, it was a hole, hole that we had been falling into for a very long time. How had no one noticed?32

Nellie and I packed as much stuff as we had left and headed out to find a place to stay. All the shelters we found were already full, and I was hesitant to accept charity anyway. For the first two days we huddled together in a large camp that had been set up by the newly homeless in a nearby park. It did not help that the coldest days of the year were fast approaching. We stacked chairs, tables and other furniture and threw a tarp over it and build a huge fire in front, but the cold still managed to seep in at night, and we shivered uncontrollably. We had a fair amount of food that we had managed to keep with us, but Nellie could not help handing it out she saw starving people, kids walking by our makeshift home, and we soon ran out.33

When I stood in line with the rest of the homeless in the soup lines for the first time, when I accepted the bowl of watery soup and hunk of stale bread from the people who were handing it out, and saw how they looked at me, how they had sympathy for me, how they felt sorry for me, I hated it. I had never felt such anger, and shame in my life, I hated the people who gave me food, if it wasn’t for Nellie I would have shoved it back at them, yelled and cursed at them. It didn’t make any sense, what I was feeling, all I knew was that I hated the way they smiled at me, felt sorry for me, they were superior to me and they knew it. I wished they would just leave me to starve, and then I could at least keep my self respect.34

I learned to bear it though, I learned to bear it because I was not alone, there were hundreds, thousands going through the same things I was. Nellie and I lived like this for almost three years.35

This did not last forever, eventually our wretched excuse for a president, Herbert Hoover, ended his term and a new president took office, Franklin Roosevelt. Instead of leaning back and watching his country fall into ruin, while trying to convince himself that it wasn’t happening, Roosevelt went to work trying to turn our economy around. Among the many changes that he made, he invented a number of jobs for people to do in order to get money. 36

37

I left Nellie, by that time she had made a number of friends in the camp we were staying at so I was not worried about her, and joined 200 other men who helped repair bridges and roads around New York, at the end of six months I was able to return to Nellie with $180 in my pocket.38

This was not enough to get a permanent roof over us, but we were not dependent on charity any longer.<39

I continued to join work camps, which were part of the Civilian Conservations Corps, over the next couple of years. Eventually Nellie and I managed to rent a small apartment and we both managed to get temporary jobs and life began to resemble normal again.40

Neither of us managed to get permanent jobs, or get enough money to start a savings account again, until the beginning of World War 2, at that time I got a job in an airplane factory, and earned so much money that Nellie didn’t even have to work.41

Slowly, but surely we watched as America began to pull itself out of the Great Depression. 42