It accounts for the bite of his laughter, as he recalls those “hard times”: “Why did these big wheels kill themselves? He couldn’t stand bringing home beans to his woman, instead of steak and capon. It was a rarity to hear a Negro kill himself over money. There are so few who had any.”
And yet, even during the Great Depression, when the white man was “lowdown,” the black was below whatever that was. This hard fact was constantly sung around, about, under, and over in his blues.
I’m just like Job’s turkey,
I can’t do nothing but gobble,
I’m so poor, baby,
I have to lean against the fence to gabble.
Yeah, now, baby, I believe I’ll change town,
Lord, I’m so low down, baby,
I declare I’m looking up at down.
The men in the mine, baby,
They all looking down at me….
—Big Bill Broonzy
Here the images blur and time turns somersaults. It is the year of Repeal. A classmate and I appear at suddenly-legal taverns. A ritual, in the spirit of the day, comes into play: the house “pops” for every third beer.
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It was so in all the taverns we visited. Today, it is a custom more honored in the breach than in the observance.
None I know was more rewarded by the triumph of the Wets than the coppersmith, old Heinicke. He had been the lobby elder, ill, hard of hearing, grown weary with life. Suddenly, his services were in desperate demand by any number of breweries. The shortage of skilled coppersmiths was in direct ratio to the unslaked thirst for beer.
As a result of the six-day week he was putting in, the unexpected harvest of money and, most significantly, the delight in his skills, he was transformed, Faustlike, into a younger man. His newly purchased, super-heterodyne
radio set, in a baroque cabinet that occupied half his room, was heard loud and clear in all fifty quarters. Ascribe it to his exhilaration as much as to his deafness.
As for the others, political argument, often bitter, often hilarious, replaced desuetude. Aside from F.D.R.’s fireside chats, on Sundays a new voice dominated the lobby. It was Father Charles E. Coughlin, coming through the box radio, high on a wooden pedestal. There were those who muttered, “Turn the Roman off.” But it was Matthew McGraw, our gaunt, bespectacled, fiery-eyed night clerk (his resemblance to Father Coughlin was remarkable) who insisted the voice be heard.
Matt was something of an intellectual. Before the Crash, he had been a master carpenter. He was constantly quoting from books, weeklies and monthly radical journals. He inveighed against the moneyed interests, against the privileged, against monopoly. He quoted Debs, Darrow, Paine… . Somewhere between October, 1929, and November, 1934 (when the Union for Social Justice was formed), something had happened to Matthew McGraw. A forgotten man, his cup of wormwood had flowed over.
A printer remembers his father swinging from Bob La Follette, Wisconsin’s progressive Senator, to Father Coughlin. The hurt, frustrated man, hearing of the powerful, alien East, sought an answer. So did the gentle, soft-spoken salesman, who hardly questioned anything. “He has the right idea,” his daughter remembers him saying of the priest from Royal Oak. The salesman had voted for Roosevelt.
As for my mother, most of her tight-fisted savings were lost with the collapse of Samuel Insull’s empire. My errands to the bank were for nothing, it seemed. It was a particularly bitter blow for her. She had previously out-jousted a neighborhood banker. R. L. Chisholm insisted on the soundness of his institution—named, by some ironic God, The Reliance State Bank. Despite his oath on his mother’s grave and his expressed admiration for my mother’s thrift, she withdrew her several thousand. His bank closed the following day. Yet, the utilities magnate took her, a fact for which she forgave neither him nor herself.
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It was 1936. Having long abandoned any thoughts of following the law, I joined the Illinois Writers’ Project. I was a member of the radio division. We wrote scripts inspired by paintings at the Art Institute. They were broadcast over WGN, the Chicago
Tribune’s
station. Colonel McCormick, the publisher, was quite proud of these contributions to the city’s culture. Though the front page of his paper invariably featured a cartoon of a
loony, subversive professor in cap and gown, or a WPA boondoggler leaning on his shovel, he saw no inconsistency in programming the Great Artists series, with credits: “… under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration, Harry Hopkins, Director.” I am told he listened to them regularly, with a great deal of pleasure.
By chance, I became a gangster in radio soap operas, among them, “Ma Perkins,” “Betty and Bob” and “First Nighter.” The jobs were fairly frequent, but tenure was lacking. Cause of dismissal: Electrocution, life imprisonment, or being shot to death.
As the fervor of unionism spread, with an assist by the Wagner Act, the American Federation of Radio Artists was formed. There was hardly any dissent among the performers. There were, of course, obstinate executives, who played Canute, but the waves rolled over them. The climate, in this instance, was salubrious.
Not so, with other professional unions. The Newspaper Guild, for example. Perhaps my most vivid single memory—certainly my most traumatic—of the Thirties, with which I bring these impressions to a close, concerns this battle in Chicago. The Hearst morning newspaper, the
Herald-Examiner,
was suffering a long and critical strike. Outside the building, journalists picketed. The Hearst delivery trucks were manned by a hard lot; some I remembered as alumni of my high school; some with syndicate friendships. They were employed in a dual capacity: as delivery men and as terrorists. Whenever the situation presented itself, they’d slug a journalist-picket.
I see a tableau: a pale, bloodied reporter lying on the pavement as colleagues and passersby stare in horror. In the middle of the street stands a squat heavyweight, an auto jack in his grasp. His arms and legs are spread-eagled. He appears to be challenging all comers. Yet, I see, quite unblurred, the terror in his eyes.
The rest is history, which I leave to those whose less-flawed memories and reflections comprise this book.
BOOK ONE
The March
Jim Sheridan
It is a large hotel: a halfway house for its hundreds of guests, who are convalescing from nervous breakdowns. The benches near the entrance—and the lobby—are overflowing with the elderly and the young, engaged in highly animated conversations. On this summer’s evening, it was certainly the most alive area in the neighborhood.
He is sixty-three years old.
THE SOLDIERS were walking the streets, the fellas who had fought for democracy in Germany. They thought they should get the bonus right then and there because they needed the money. A fella by the name of Waters, I think, got up the idea of these ex-soldiers would go to Washington, make the kind of trip the hoboes made with Coxey in 1898,
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they would be able to get the government to come through.
D. C. Webb organized a group from Bughouse Square to go on this bonus march. Not having been in the army—I was too young for World War I and too old for World War II (laughs)—I was wondering if I would be a legitimate marcher. But the ten or fifteen other fellas were all soldiers, and they thought it would be O.K. for me to go. Webb said, “Come along, you’re a pretty good bum.” (Laughs.)
We went down to the railyards and grabbed a freight train. Our first stop was in Peru, Indiana. We jungled up there for a little while, and then we bummed the town, so to speak. Go to different grocers and give them a tale of woe. They would give us sausage or bread or meat or canned
goods. Then we’d go back to the railroad yards, the jungle, where we’d build a little fire and we’d cook it up in these cans. We’d sit around the fire and eat… .
Peru was the first division point outside of Chicago on the C & O
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We’d stop off and rest and scrounge up something to eat. We’d generally be told by the conductors the train was made up and ready to go out. Some of these fellas had come with their families. Can you imagine women and children riding boxcars?
The conductor’d want to find out how many guys were in the yard, so he would know how many empty boxcars to put onto the train. Of course, the railroad companies didn’t know this, but these conductors, out of their sympathy, would put two or three empty boxcars in the train, so these bonus marchers could crawl into them and ride comfortable into Washington. Even the railroad detectives were very generous.
Sometimes there’d be fifty, sixty people in a boxcar. We’d just be sprawled out on the floor. The toilet … you had to hold it till you got a division point. (Laughs.) That’s generally a hundred miles. You didn’t carry food with you. You had to bum the town. It was beggary on a grand scale.
In one town, D. C. Webb got up on the bandstand and made a speech. We passed the hat, even, among the local citizenry. The money was used to buy cigarettes for the boys. Townspeople, they were very sympathetic.
There was none of this hatred you see now when strange people come to town, or strangers come to a neighborhood. They resent it, I don’t know why. That’s one of the things about the Depression. There was more camaraderie than there is now. Even more comradeship than the Commies could even dream about. That was one of the feelings that America lost. People had different ideas, they disagreed with one another. But there was a fine feeling among them. You were in trouble … damn it, if they could help ya, they would help ya.
One incident stuck in my memory. We had reached a place in Virginia. It was a very hot day. In this jungle, there was a man, a very tall man. He had his wife with him and several small children. We invited them over to have something to eat with us, and they refused. Then I brought something over to them in an old pie plate. They still refused. It was the husband who told me that he didn’t care for anything to eat. But see, the baby was crying from hunger.
Finally, me and some others went down to bum the center of the town. I remember going into a drugstore and bumming a baby bottle with a nipple. Now, can you imagine a guy bumming a baby bottle with a nipple? It took me a few guts to work it up. I explained the circumstances. Then I went and bummed the milk.
When I got back to the jungle camp, it was kinda dark. I first reported
in to Captain Webb and then he kidded me about the baby bottle. “Christ,” I said, “that baby there’s gotta eat.” And he said, “This afternoon you got pretty much of a rebuff.” “Well,” I said, “I’m gonna try again.” So I went over and addressed myself to his wife. And I told her: here is the baby bottle. We had even warmed up the milk. But she looked at her husband, and her husband said he didn’t want it.
What could I do about it, but just feel blue? I didn’t look upon it as charity. It seemed to me that here was a fella’s pride getting the best of him.
The tragedy came when the train was going through Virginia.
We had to go through these mountain countries. The smoke from the stacks of the engines, and the soot, would be flying back through the tunnels and would be coming into the boxcars. So in order to avoid getting choked, we’d close the boxcars and hold handkerchiefs over our noses. There was quite a discussion about this. What would happen to the little infant? We was afraid it would smother. The mother was holding the baby, but the baby seemed very still. The mother screamed. We didn’t know what the scream was about. After we reached Washington, we found out that the baby had died going through the tunnels.
When the baby died, a feeling of sadness came over those in the boxcar. It seemed that they had lost one of their own.
When we got to Washington, there was quite a few ex-servicemen there before us. There was no arrangements for housing. Most of the men that had wives and children were living in Hooverville. This was across the Potomac River—what was known as Anacostia Flats. They had set up housing there, made of cardboard and of all kinds. I don’t know how they managed to get their food. Most other contingents was along Pennsylvania Avenue.
They were tearing down a lot of buildings along that street, where they were going to do some renewal, build some federal buildings. A lot of ex-servicemen just sort of turned them into barracks. They just sorta bunked there. Garages that were vacant, they took over. Had no respect for private property. They didn’t even ask permission of the owners. They didn’t even know who the hell the owners was.
They had come to petition Hoover, to give them the bonus before it was due. And Hoover refused this. He told them they couldn’t get it because it would make the country go broke. They would hold midnight vigils around the White House and march around the White House in shifts.
The question was now: How were they going to get them out of Washington? They were ordered out four or five times, and they refused. The police chief was called to send them out, but he
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refused. I also heard that the marine commander, who was called to bring out the marines, also refused. Finally, the one they did get to shove these bedraggled ex-servicemen
out of Washington was none other than the great MacArthur.
The picture I’ll always remember … here is MacArthur coming down Pennsylvania Avenue. And, believe me, ladies and gentlemen, he came on a white horse. He was riding a white horse. Behind him were tanks, troops of the regular army.
This was really a riot that wasn’t a riot, in a way. When these ex-soldiers wouldn’t move, they’d poke them with their bayonets, and hit them on the head with the butt of a rifle. First, they had a hell of a time getting them out of the buildings they were in. Like a sit-in.
They managed to get them out. A big colored soldier, about six feet tall, had a big American flag he was carrying. He was one of the bonus marchers. He turned to one of the soldiers who was pushing him along, saying: “Get along there, you big black bastard.” That was it. He turned and said, “Don’t try to push me. I fought for this flag. I fought for this flag in France and I’m gonna fight for it here on Pennsylvania Avenue.” The soldier hit him on the side of the legs with the bayonet. I think he was injured. But I don’t know if he was sent to the hospital.