Four voices from the Great Depression | Throughline

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0:19 This is America in pursuit, a limited-run series from Throughline and NPR.

0:25 I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

0:27 Each [music] week, we bring you stories about life, liberty,

0:30 and the pursuit of happiness in the United States that began 250 years ago.

0:36 There are no jobs.

0:39 Most of us have had no breakfast.

0:42 Some have had scant rations for over a year.

0:46 Hunger makes [music] a human being lapse into a state of lethargy,

0:49 especially city hunger.

0:53 The Great Depression [music] was one

0:55 of the worst economic disasters in modern history.

1:00 [music] It started in 1929 and lasted through the next decade.

1:04 Is there any place else in the world where a human

1:06 being is supposed [music] to go hungry amidst plenty without an outcry,

1:10 without protest, where only [music] the boldest steal or kill for bread,

1:15 and the timid crawl the streets?

1:18 It was marked by massive unemployment, hunger, homelessness,

1:21 [music] and a general sense that the country's future was in peril.

1:29 It's [music] too terrible to see this animal terror in each others' eyes.

1:36 The Great Depression left a lasting imprint on the people who lived it.

1:40 So, today on the show,

1:42 we want to immerse you in the era and let

1:44 the people who lived through it tell their own stories.

1:48 Stories captured in oral histories, diaries,

1:51 and essays brought to life through reenactment.

1:54 Four people, four vastly different experiences

1:58 from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, from all over the United States.

2:05 My name is Henry Wright.

2:08 I never missed a meal, but I postponed a few.

2:11 Henry Wright went looking for adventure [music] in the Great Depression.

2:15 Riding the rails from coast to coast,

2:17 he learned things about himself and the world.

2:21 With a certain amount of pride, [music] he called himself a hobo.

2:25 Bouncing from city to city, [music] seeking his fortune.

2:29 Is this thing on?

2:30 Oh, hello.

2:32 Meridel LeSueur was a writer born and raised in the Midwest.

2:35 [music] I've lived in cities for many months.

2:39 Broke, [music] without help.

2:41 Too timid to get in the bread lines.

2:43 Meridel spent the Depression in unemployment offices and soup kitchens,

2:48 talking to people, mostly [music] women, documenting what she saw and heard.

2:53 I was so broke.

2:56 Quite often, [music] I was with no money in my pocket.

2:59 The most I ever had is maybe one or two [music] dollars.

3:04 The least was, well, normally I got 10, [music] 15 cents.

3:10 You can call me Fong.

3:12 Fong spent [music] the Great Depression in San Francisco's Chinatown.

3:17 He experienced the era [music] at the street

3:19 level and the everyday minutia of economic struggle.

3:23 Hello.

3:24 I'm Dorothy [music] Height.

3:26 In a strange way, everybody had a feeling of common suffering.

3:31 There was a kind [music] of sense that everybody's having a hard time.

3:35 Dorothy Height grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania.

3:40 [music] And when the Great Depression hit home,

3:41 she was eager to escape to the big city for college.

3:45 She moved to Harlem in New York.

3:47 But as luck would have it, [music] the Depression would follow her there.

3:51 Henry, Meridel, Fong, and Dorothy's stories,

3:55 captured in oral histories, diaries, and essays,

3:58 give us a window into what it was like to live through this time.

4:02 A moment that often gets reduced to one archetype of American suffering.

4:06 [music] Their stories, their voices, are the ones we don't generally hear.

4:13 So with that, we give you four lives [music] of the Great Depression.

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5:45 In a strange way, everybody had a feeling of common suffering.

5:53 There was a kind [music] of sense that everybody's having a hard time.

5:58 You didn't have a feeling that some

5:59 people were making it and some were suffering.

6:04 But at the same time, everybody had to compete with everybody [music]

6:08 for the scarce things that there were.

6:17 [music] [music] My fellow citizens, this broadcast tonight marks

6:26 the beginning of the mobilization of the whole nation [music]

6:30 for a great undertaking to provide security for those of our citizens

6:35 and their families who through no fault of their own [music]

6:39 face unemployment and privation during the coming winter.

6:43 In the shadow of the elevated, a nickel is still a piece of money,

6:46 and everything can be bought from a 10-cent necktie to a 30-cent flop,

6:51 which means a place to sleep.

6:53 The very fact that the uh young men and women

6:56 of today have nothing easy to look forward to is

6:59 a good thing for them because the very thing that is

7:02 a stumbling block to one man is a springboard to another.

7:06 The very thing that crushes one man elevates another.

7:09 Many have lost the savings of a lifetime.

7:12 Many are unemployed.

7:14 All know all the misgivings of doubt and the grave concern for the future.

7:19 On church steps after dusk are sprawled unfortunates who must be up

7:23 at the crack of dawn for a front spot in the bread line of Mr.

7:27 Zero, who somehow manages to obtain food for men

7:31 who don't seem able to get it for themselves.

7:38 [music] It's one of the great mysteries of the city.

7:59 Where women go when they are out of work and hungry?

8:04 There are not many women in the bread lines.

8:05 [music] There are no flop houses for women as there are

8:08 for men where a bed can be had for a quarter or less.

8:12 You don't see women lying on the floor at the mission in these free flops.

8:15 [music] They obviously don't sleep in the jungle

8:17 or under newspapers in the park.

8:20 There is no law I suppose against there being in these places.

8:23 But the fact is they rarely are.

8:28 Yet there must be as many women out of jobs

8:31 in cities and suffering poverty as there are men.

8:35 What happens to them?

8:36 Where do they go?

8:40 This is from Meridel Le Sueur's essay called Women on the Breadline.

8:44 It was published [music] in 1932 in a Marxist publication called New Masses.

8:52 Try to get into the YW without any money or looking down at the heel.

8:58 Charities take care of very few and only those that are called deserving.

9:04 The lone girl is under suspicion

9:06 by the virgin women who dispense [music] charity.

9:12 I've lived in cities for many months broke without

9:16 help too timid [music] to get in bread lines.

9:21 I've known many women to live like this until they simply [music]

9:24 faint on the street from privations without saying a word to anyone.

9:32 A woman will shut herself up in a room

9:34 until it's taken away from her and a cracker a day and be as quiet as a [music]

9:41 mouse so that there are no social statistics concerning her.

9:59 You have guys going around from building to building selling meat.

10:03 They sell pork for 25 cents, 35 cents a pound, cheaper than the butcher shop.

10:09 And you don't have to walk around, they come to you.

10:12 What we know about Fong comes from oral history interviews

10:15 that he gave in San Francisco's Chinatown when he was 67,

10:19 decades after the depression ended.

10:21 [music] He was a big man.

10:23 He wore a windbreaker and an old woolen sailor's cap, navy blue.

10:28 He didn't say where he lived or his name.

10:31 He just [music] said, "Call me Fong." Now,

10:35 during the depression, I was so broke.

10:39 Quite often, I was with no money in my pocket.

10:43 The most I ever had is maybe one or two dollars.

10:47 The least was, well, normally I got 10, 15 cents.

11:06 I never missed a meal, but I postponed a few.

11:10 We went to Oakland on the Chili Pepper and crossed

11:13 the bay on the hobo's ferry to San Francisco.

11:16 For Henry Wright, the Great Depression was a journey.

11:20 Born in Missouri in the early 20th century, Henry grew up in an orphanage.

11:25 At age 16, he got kicked out with just $20 and a change of clothes.

11:31 So, with few options, he set out to find adventure.

11:35 The Skid Row was full of bombs.

11:39 About noon, we passed the Saint Francis Church.

11:41 There were about 2,000 depression stiffs lined up.

11:45 The priest was giving each a nickel as they filed by one at a time.

11:49 Some going around the block to line up again.

11:52 It's not a very fast way of getting rich.

11:58 We celebrated Christmas in Oakland.

12:02 It was on the main drag on New Year's

12:04 Eve in Oakland that I got in another inevitable fight.

12:08 It lasted nearly a block past the Swell Theater

12:11 and ended up when a voice behind me said,

12:12 "Beat it, the cops." I escaped down a side street and down an alley.

12:32 [music] Dorothy Height was living in Harlem, New York at this time.

12:38 She was a college [music] student and she knew she was lucky.

12:41 She had food to eat, a roof over her head.

12:44 So, she wanted to find a way to do something to help where she could.

12:49 Well, there were all kinds of organizing efforts in the churches.

12:53 One of the most significant ones, I think,

12:55 was at the time that we realized that we were

12:57 spending [music] what little money we had and we're getting nothing.

13:02 And Adam Powell [music] came into the picture

13:04 and he organized a people's committee.

13:06 And what he called for was that we learned

13:08 to spend [music] no money where we could not work.

13:11 And he taught us that, no matter how little you had,

13:15 your power [music] was in what you did with it.

13:18 And that to me was an indelible lesson.

13:21 Dorothy had also seen the depression destroy her hometown.

13:26 But, it was in Harlem that she saw how

13:29 resilient people could be in the face of utter desperation.

13:34 When Adam Powell called this group together, he said to us,

13:37 "You can take your own condition in [music] your own hands." And that was

13:43 the time that he started [music] the movement to get jobs on 125th Street.

13:59 In June 1933, Washington became the spawning ground for what

14:03 was perhaps the most startling egg ever hatched by Franklin D.

14:06 Roosevelt's New Deal, the National Recovery Act.

14:10 Aim of the NRA was government control

14:12 of major American industries through codes of fair dealing.

14:16 These fixed maximum hours and minimum wages.

14:20 Roosevelt come out and [music] he created the word NRA.

14:24 Gave work to people, a lot of guys, but later on, it got so sour.

14:30 Like they got jobs.

14:31 [music] For instance, I went in on one of them, a railroad job inside Elko.

14:38 They paid $72, I think.

14:41 [music] And they gave you jobs like that so you can make a living.

14:44 And I worked there a few months.

14:45 [music] It was awfully hot, hot like everything.

14:50 In fact, [music] you could see the blaze in the afternoon.

14:53 When the sun shines so blazing,

14:55 you can actually see the [music] atmosphere of it,

14:57 just the blaze moving around hotly.

15:02 [music] And people come back working in the railroad, they come back for dinner,

15:05 they practically stink because their clothing been in the sunlight so damn long.

15:11 And that's [music] the way it is.

15:13 In the working out of a great national program

15:17 which seeks the primary good of the greater number it

15:20 is true that the toes of some people are

15:23 being stepped on and are going to be stepped on.

15:28 But these toes belong to the comparative few who seek to retain or to gain

15:36 position or riches or both by some shortcut that is harmful to the greater good.

15:44 I lived out there.

15:46 You don't go nowhere.

15:47 It's right out in the middle of the desert, see?

15:50 That's the way it is.

15:52 I did it almost [music] any kind of work, but nevertheless, at that time,

15:56 I was nothing but a helper, a waiter, dishwasher, and all that.

16:01 See, they're always trying to push you down to these jobs,

16:04 no matter how much or how good you are.

16:07 Like that NRA was like all the other things.

16:09 At first, you don't realize, but nevertheless, in due time and in the long run,

16:14 you find out it will never have any advantage toward the Chinese.

16:25 I met a fellow on the corner of Wall Street who, from casual observance,

16:29 would have been taken for an office worker

16:32 or a dapper salesman with his Panama hat, his nice suit, and his sport shoes.

16:37 After I introduced myself, he said he wasn't having much luck.

16:41 I've been bumming them right and left since the morning rush,

16:44 and I've only made 290.

16:46 I thought that seemed like a good day's work at 50 cents an hour.

16:51 Trouble with me is that they know me too well,

16:54 and when they see me coming, they cross the street.

16:58 It does give me pleasure, though, to bum some of those big financiers,

17:02 but it seems to break their heart to jar loose a dime.

17:17 It is appalling to think [music] that these women,

17:20 sitting so listless in the room,

17:22 may work as hard as it is possible for a human being to work,

17:26 may labor night and day, wash street cars from midnight to dawn,

17:31 and offices in the early evening,

17:33 scrubbing for 14 and 15 hours [music] a day, sleeping only 5 hours or so,

17:38 doing this their whole lives, [music] and never earn one day of security,

17:45 having always before them the pit of the future.

17:54 The endless [music] labor, the bending back, the water-soaked hands,

17:58 earning never more than a week's wages,

18:01 never having in their hands more life than that.

18:13 By the mid-1930s, [music] more people were returning to work,

18:17 and people like Henry, Dorothy, Maridell, and Fong forged ahead.

18:22 But the memories of the Great Depression

18:24 would continue [music] to linger for years.

18:31 [music] And that's [music] it for this week's episode of America in Pursuit.

18:41 If you want to hear the full-length episode,

18:43 check out Lives of the Great Depression,

18:46 and be sure to join us [music] next week.

18:48 We're going to stay with the Great Depression

18:50 and turn to the story of Frances Perkins,

18:52 [music] the first woman Secretary of Labor,

18:55 who saw the nation suffering [music] and pushed for solutions.

18:59 They needed to have a system that would

19:01 provide some income support for people [music]

19:06 when they get to the phase of their lives where they are simply less employable.

19:11 The woman behind Social Security [music] and the New Deal.

19:14 That's next week.

19:16 Don't miss it.

19:17 This episode was produced by Kiana [music] Moghadam and edited

19:21 by Christina Kim with help from the Throughline production team.

19:25 Thank you to our amazing cast.

19:26 [music] I'm Jamie York.

19:29 I was the voice of Henry Wright, my grandfather.

19:32 I'm Lawrence Wu and I played Fong.

19:35 I'm Natalie [music] Barton.

19:36 I read the writings of Meridel LeSueur.

19:39 My name is Kiana McGee and [music] I was the voice of Dorothy Height.

19:43 The soundtrack for this episode was composed and performed

19:46 [music] by one of our favorite artists, Hania Rani.

19:49 You also heard music by Ramtin Arablouei and his band Drop Electric.

19:53 Special thanks [music] to Julie Cain, Irene Noguchi,

19:56 Beth Donovan, Casey Miner and Lindsey [music] McKenna.

19:59 I'm your host, Rund Abdelfatah.

20:02 Thanks for listening.

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