Hard Times (70 page)

“With a jury trial, you can hardly try one—at most, two—cases a day. At the rate of two thousand cases a week, in four months you’d have 32,000 people asking for jury trials. If they closed every court in this state, you still wouldn’t have enough judges to try your case. And then you’d wish there were a man like Heller, who had the courage to tell you: Why don’t you mind your own business and let him mind his business?”

One of them said, “I admire your candor, but you’re not doing yourself any good.” He was right. When I ran for office, the real estate organizations sent out thousands of letters: I have no respect for private property. They defeated me. They keep score. The poor are so busy trying to survive from one day to the next, they haven’t the time or energy to keep score.

There was a man running against me, who said you can evict people without notice, if it’s done peacefully. We agreed to have a public debate. He didn’t show up. In the election—in the very neighborhood where many of the tenants live—he got thousands of votes and I got hundreds.

During those hard times, I learned a good lesson. A good deal of the misery that the poor suffer—and ignorance—is due to the fact that they’re not organized. They’re isolated, brainwashed.

I could have remained on the bench until I died. If I could have degraded myself … just go along. I couldn’t do it. But I was on the bench for twenty-one years—and that, to me, is a miracle.

 

 

ONE OF THE GENTLEMEN at work was telling me he wanted to take his daughter to a hamburger drive-in. She said: I don’t want to be seen with you. It seems like it’s not “in” to be seen at a drive-in with your parents. You’re some kind of kook. You never saw this during the Depression,’cause they went through everything, all for one and one for all, within a family.

I think a Depression now might even solve this problem of civil rights. It would be man for man. I don’t think there’d be as much prejudice. If you’re going to be standing in a bread line, whether you’re white or black, and someone of the other skin will give you a piece of bread, you’re not gonna turn it down. This might solve the whole problem.

I think some people would really go insane. My family has told me of people who had really gone crazy during the Depression of ’29. The financial losses they took. I think history would repeat itself all over. A lot of people, who invest a lot of money, who are used to living on fifty, sixty thousand, they might just go crazy, not having that much. He wouldn’t know what to do. Psychologically, his mind couldn’t take being a second-class average Mr. Joe, after being on top for so long.

I try to put away something. I have it either in investments or a savings account. Then if I want something, I know the money is there. I bought a suit one time on credit, and after I paid the suit off, I tore up the credit card. Another thing: my generation, we’re so clothes-conscious. But I betcha they’re worrying about how they’re gonna pay that next charge when it comes up.

 

Does your job disturb you, at times ..
. ?

 

No, ‘cause I feel it’s bread in my mouth and I’ve got a job to do. The only thing that bothers me is when a nice guy—we have to garnish his wages, ’cause that’s the only way we’re gonna get that money. He’s got to realize when he signs a home improvement contract, he signs this note—he has this obligation. It’s not me. I didn’t put the knife in their back. I’m just doing a job.

 

 

To ME, the Depression’s a story told. Just like World War II. To me, it means nothing, except I’d hate to experience it. I’m not used to low-class living.

 

 

Middle-class. (Laughs.) I’m on my own now, and it’s rough. (Laughs.)

 

 

If I could get hold of a pill, that would end everything. And everyone I really cared for, I wish they’d do the same thing. I’d be afraid to experience it. I just couldn’t take it. I couldn’t see having my family starve, I really couldn’t.

 

 

Yes, I want a lot of things right now.

 

 

I was afraid of my father. Getting a pair of shoes or something like that, it was left up to me. When I baby-sat, I used my own money because I didn’t want to ask my father for too much. But I never starved. I’ve never really been hungry.

 

 

I feel sorry for them and I don’t. Their husbands or themselves can go out and get work. I know there are so many jobs to be had by them. The Welfare Department should be cleaned up. All the good money that’s going to waste.

One of my girl friends, she works at this steel company. She was this secretary there. A lot of colored fellas worked there. This one she was telling me about: he’d work for six months or eight months, he’d quit. First, he’d get thrown in jail and then he’d call up his wife so that she could get aid from the state. That’s what really gets me. I can’t really see my good tax money going to waste. And I haven’t been paying it that long, but I will be.

I just want one happy life, that’s it. And have a family and a nice little home, car, just to be comfortable. A housewife.

 

 

DEPRESSION, it means loneliness. It was just a time when everything was very lonely and depressing. Everybody was like individual, fighting to keep their family alive. My mom, when she was young, went through it. So
now she tries to give me everything, because I don’t have to go through it.

My father’s family had it real good. There were four guys in the family. Each one had their own car in the middle of the Depression. They had brand new cars. They had a nice home. All my mom keeps telling me is how hard she had it and how easy my father had it.

If it happened today, I don’t think the country’d be able to stick together like they did in the first one. I think the whole place would just fall apart. And America’d be completely ruined. Everybody seems to be just out for themselves. You gotta get a bigger car than your neighbor. Your daughter has to be dressed better than your neighbor’s daughter. Where back then it seemed like everybody tried to help each other, now it’s hard to get a relative to help you. Really. Why should I help him? I could have a bigger car and show that I’m much better. Because today everybody’s all to themselves.

Like when I lived in Jacksonville, Florida. I was six or seven. A false alarm went off—they blew the alarm to take shelter for fallout. In case there’s an air raid. Well, it went off. We were in school at the time. Everyone was going nuts. People were running around. They didn’t care what happened to the kids. They were all to themselves.

They were all running out into the street. There were so many cars, you couldn’t even get across the street. People wouldn’t let you in their cars, if you wanted to get in. There were mothers running, and their kids were following behind them screaming.

It was so terrible, these people. You could tell they didn’t care. Some people thought the Russians were coming. And the teacher said: Everybody, get under your desks. Other teachers were running around: What are we gonna do with the kids? And then it seemed like the teachers just disappeared.

Outside was terrible. Cars were packed. Women were running with children, and maybe four men in one car, and yet they wouldn’t open the cars to let the women with the kids in. They weren’t even going two miles an hour. There were so many people, nobody could get by. Yet nobody would help anybody else.

It’s probably gotten worse now. If anything ever happens—like you say, a Depression—probably the whole country would be overrun by Communists or it’ll be nothing … unless everybody gets together and fights for everybody, not just themself.

I feel sorry for most people on welfare today, I really do. But it’s something I don’t like to talk about because when I think of things that depress me, I’d rather just block it out of my mind and say, well, I’ll think about it tomorrow. There are rotten ones, and you just don’t want to take the time to think about the poor ones.

I consider myself rotten in those ways. Because I think about these people who are really starving, right now, living in shacks—and yet I’d go completely out of my mind, so I’ll think about it tomorrow. I don’t want to think about it now. There’s a lot of people who don’t even take the time to think at all.

 

I WAS TWENTY-ONE when I started and very inexperienced. My studies at school didn’t prepare me for this. How could I cope with this problem? We were still studying about immigrant families. Not about mass unemployment. The school just hadn’t kept up with the times. We made terrible blunders. I’m sure I did.

There was a terrible dependence on the case worker. What did they feel about a young girl as their boss? Whom they had to depend on for food, a pitiful bare minimum? There was always the fear of possibly saying the wrong thing to her. The case worker represented the Agency. We seemed powerful because we were their only source of income. Actually, there was little we could do.

I had a terrible guilt feeling. I was living rather well sharing a nice apartment with two other girls. My top pay was $135 a month, which made me well off. Yet there were constant layoffs. I always felt that if I lost my job, I might go on relief, too. So I never really had a sense of security myself.

I think most case workers felt as I did. Though there were quite a few who were self-righteous. They felt some of the people weren’t looking hard enough for work. Or they were loafers. They believed some of the
stuff that came out in the newspapers. Even then. They sometimes made it very difficult for the clients. There was a lot of hypocrisy and sham.

I worked with both whites and blacks. One could say the blacks were more accustomed to poverty. But they still said, “I wouldn’t come here if I had work.” There was a lot of waiting around the relief offices. Where they came to pick up their food orders. These places were mostly old warehouses, very dismal. That was another thing, dispiriting. Sitting around and waiting, waiting, waiting….

The case worker was often the object of their anger. Where else could they give vent to their feelings? So they took it out on us. They didn’t know the cause of their problems. Of course, there were tensions. At one time, my job was to cover the entire city. I often worked at night. I found myself in very strange neighborhoods at all hours. I took it as a matter of course. Yet I knew when these people felt put upon….

In 1934, a case worker was killed by her client, while sitting in the chair at his home. A youngish white man living with his mother. The story is: she had promised him a job. CWA was coming in. He was so overwhelmed by his joblessness he became maddened to the point where he shot her. He dragged his mother to the district office. He killed the supervisor, a clerical worker and then killed his mother and himself.

We were all frightened. Bulletins were issued to all the offices: case workers could take a moratorium on visits. We weren’t told we
must not
visit. So I decided I’d go anyway. I was young and felt the clients needed me. (Laughs softly.) If this were to happen now, would I go? I don’t know.

I remember, for a time after that, peering into the window, before I rang the bell. I guess I was pretty scared. One family said to me it was terrible, but some case workers deserve to be killed. He looked at me and smiled, “But not you, Miss Barth.” (Laughs.)

I’ll never forget one of the first families I visited. The father was a railroad man who had lost his job. I was told by my supervisor that I really had to
see
the poverty. If the family needed clothing, I was to investigate how much clothing they had at hand. So I looked into this man’s closet—(pauses, it becomes difficult)—he was a tall, gray-haired man, though not terribly old. He let me look in the closet—he was so insulted. (She weeps angrily.) He said, “Why are you doing this?” I remember his feeling of humiliation … this terrible humiliation. (She can’t continue. After a pause, she resumes.) He said, “I really haven’t anything to hide, but if you really must look into it….” I could see he was very proud. He was so deeply humiliated. And I was, too….