Caught in the Trough

ANONYMOUS

I

FOR the first time in my life I am facing financial insecurity of the sort that I had always supposed people of the middle classes must escape by virtue of good blood, gentle breeding, and adequate education. My father is a college professor in comfortable circumstances. My maternal grandfather was a lawyer who enjoyed more than a degree of ante-bellum prestige, my paternal grandfather a physician and gentleman planter of the Old South. My mother and father were both left patrimonies sufficient to provide their children with luxuries and educational opportunities in excess of those a professor’s salary would warrant. I was graduated from one of the large Eastern colleges, received my Master’s degree from the University of Chicago, traveled abroad for the finishing touch my parents prescribed, taught in the history department of a woman’s college for three years, and in 1920 married a man whose future seemed secured by connection with a legal firm of good standing.

For nine years our income rose steadily — from $3000 in 1920 to about $7000 in 1929. Even with this salary, saving was not easy. At first there were the expenses incident to the birth of two babies. Then there were the clubs my husband joined because he was urged to do so by his employers, who looked to the widened contacts a young associate might bring to the firm. It seemed important that we should live in a good part of the city. Because my training had not been of a domestic sort, I felt that I could not do without a maid in the children’s infancy. Still, during the first years we kept up a $20,000 life-insurance policy and by the beginning of 1929 had about $2000 in 6 per cent bonds.

It was then that we bought a house in the suburbs. The two older lawyers had made my husband a junior partner with a 20 per cent interest in the earnings, which, according to the net income of the year before, promised to be about $8000. It did not seem extravagant, therefore, to buy a house that cost $15,000. Our savings made the first payment. The house was financed by a $9000 first mortgage and a second mortgage of $4000, payable in installments of fifty dollars a month. The ninety-five dollars we were assuming in interest and curtailments was only twenty dollars in excess of the rent we had been paying, and a large part of it could be interpreted in terms of savings.

But there were expenses which had not entered into our reckonings. The car that had been serving us for some time had to be replaced. In the suburbs one must have shrubs and a garden; and, when a house is built on a hillside, there must be grading and retaining walls. Outdoor expenses that seemed to us necessary came to $1000.

The sum of $750 went at once for new furniture, curtains, and draperies. To cap it all, that year the earnings of the firm fell off sharply. Instead of the $8000 my husband had expected, his income was but $7000. It was a close squeeze for us, but we managed to finish the year 1929 without going into debt. We had a house and garden that represented the expenditure of $16,000, in which we figured our equity at $3600; our car and furniture had no liens against them; but there was no money in the savings bank.

II

Almost at once the depression gathered momentum. Several mergers and failures took from my husband’s firm clients whose retaining fees had been valuable considerations. Our income for 1930 decreased to $5000. With our living scaled to the larger amount, it was by dint of what we thought the strictest economy that we reached the end of the year without plunging into debt. We were not alarmed, however. Though there was much talk of hard times when our friends gathered in the evenings, there was little real pessimism. The country had passed through many such storms. Its seaworthiness was never questioned. On December 31 our neighbors gathered to bid farewell to one of the worst years America had ever seen and to welcome another that would surely bring a return of prosperity. No one mentioned the analogy between the depression and the days of stress that lasted from 1873 to 1878. That other post-war reaction was too far away to be remembered.

But prosperity did not come. Steadily the collections of my husband’s firm decreased. Not only was 20 per cent of the profits inadequate to support our family, but business had fallen off to such an extent that the older members of the firm, who had built up its clientele, no longer needed an associate. During January and February of 1931 my husband drew $200 a month, and the first of March the partnership was dissolved by mutual consent. The first of April he secured a position in the legal department of a life-insurance company at a salary of $200 a month, where the work was both uninteresting and without a future. At the end of each trying four weeks, however, we clutched our $200 with the grip of the drowning. My husband might have accepted the alternative of hanging out his shingle and starting afresh. The hazards seemed too great — what with the house on our hands and two children to feed and clothe and educate, and no liquid savings.

Our first thought, of course, was to sell the house and lower immediately the standard of living which had not seemed too high two years before. We hoped that we could salvage the $4350 that we had put into it and get the full $16,000 value. Gradually, however, we were forced to believe the real-estate agents, who told us that there was no purchaser at any price, and that houses were simply not being sold. Our offer to sell for $11,650, the sum covering the two liens, has brought no prospective customers. On the first of October a curtailment of $500 on the first mortgage was due. For a time there seemed no way to raise the necessary sum. Finally the holder of the second mortgage permitted us to increase our indebtedness to him by advancing the money for the curtailment.

The first of December my husband lost his position with the life-insurance company. The fault, admittedly, was not his. It merely became necessary to cut expenses and decrease the office force. At that moment the pittance which had been coming in with comforting regularity ceased abruptly — and at the season when men were prating of peace on earth and good will toward men. For the sake of the children we maintained an outward semblance of Christmas merriment, while our hearts were filled with heavy forebodings.

Obviously there was nothing for my husband to do but open a law office of his own. First he did try to secure another position. He talked to his friends; he made inquiries of strangers. Had he been a day laborer, he could have applied to an agency. There seems to be no organization, however, that caters to the needs of professional men whose income has been $8000 a year and who are willing to do anything at any price. Besides, the professional man who has been trained to await the coming of business lacks the sort of initiative needed in such an emergency as that in which we found ourselves. Bankruptcy would be no solution of the problem, for our current bills are negligible, and nothing could lift from us the moral obligation to meet those second-mortgage notes, which are held by a man who has been gallant and understanding.

III

We are now struggling along from day to day, in hand-to-mouth fashion, like Mr. Micawber. During the first three months of 1931, and particularly during the terrible month of March when nothing was coming in, we were forced to borrow upon our life-insurance policies to the full extent of their loan value, for we had not then adjusted ourselves to the economies that we later found possible. Although we are still living in an eight-room house, we have no domestic assistance except that furnished by a washerwoman who comes once a week.

If the salary in the legal department of the life-insurance company had continued, we might have managed to keep our heads above water, despite the loss of so large a part of our income. My husband cut the grass, worked the shrubs and flowers, and waxed the floors. I did the marketing at a cashand-carry store, as well as the cooking and the cleaning. The ninety-five dollars that had to be found each month for interest and second-mortgage payments was an item as fixed as the orbit of the sun. We cut our other expenses to the bone. We spent thirty-five dollars a month for food, and miraculously stretched the remaining seventy dollars of my husband’s salary to cover taxes, insurance premiums, and other household items such as telephone, electricity, gasoline, and fuel. I managed by means of part-time work and the twenty-five dollars a rented room brings in monthly to buy the essential clothes and incidentals and contribute to certain other unexpected expenses.

College teaching is the profession in which my training and experience lie. In my community there is no opening in a college. Even if our local school board were not prejudiced against employing married women in the high school, I could hardly undertake work so time-consuming when I am constantly needed by the children in the home. Consequently, I have found a modicum of tutoring, a bit of research work connected with a historical society, and have sold a few magazine articles based upon college theses. In all, I have averaged an income of about $100 a month — this since the beginning of last April.

In December 1931, my husband brought in nothing. In January, collections from a few small cases netted $116. We have no idea that February will yield anything like that much, and we do not know what we can depend on in the future. Since the children must be fed, payments on interest, insurance, and taxes have not been met. We have not been able to pay for the fuel oil bought in October. Yet in a few days we must ask for an extension of credit, for our supplies are practically exhausted. This situation would have seemed impossible a few years ago. Here we are, two people with college degrees, people of industry, training, and experience, about to qualify for the bread line! Whether I can continue to stand the strain of a sixteen-hour working day is problematic. Then, too, there is always the chance that, even if my health survives, the demand for my outside work may cease. Grueling labor performed without hope saps youth and energy and all the creative powers that come as the heritage of the normally endowed.

In the beginning we tried to continue the social activities in which we had always taken part, but the drain on time and resources proved too great. Now the extra expense of sandwiches and tea is prohibitive. To our mortification we have discovered how soon one can be forgotten when it is impossible to reciprocate social courtesies.

Yet we are too busy and too weary to miss our former pleasures a great deal. I love my home, with its shady side porch swept in summer by a gentle breeze; with its four airy bedrooms, chintz-hung and restful; with its spacious living room, where furniture is grouped pleasantly about a colonial mantel; with its sunny breakfast nook, its green and white kitchen, and its tiled baths. I love the log fire which is prolonging the life of that oil for which we have not paid.

On the other hand, I long to be freed of the burdens the house imposes. The expanse of floor space must be kept polished; little finger prints must constantly be wiped from white woodwork; nickel and brass and long mirrors must be bright and shiny. The old standard of living to which our lives have accustomed us is something of which we can never be rid. Even if there is no maid, meals must be conducted with a certain amount of decorum. Our morale requires that there be no letting down in those details that we hold as dear differentiations setting us apart from the great unwashed and unlettered multitudes.

So, abstractly and concretely, we are shackled to our traditions. Hours are consumed cleaning the ornate silver that came from a grandmother who used to consign its intricate pattern to the care of slaves, in dusting and polishing carved mahogany that is a beloved, though burdensome, heritage. Cumbered and fettered as we are, there is no chance for us to live easily on the day laborer’s income. The ancestral furniture and silver now have small market value, even if we could bring ourselves to part with them. My diamond engagement ring would bring about twenty-five dollars from a pawnbroker, I am told. No antique dealer would offer a third of their value for my grandmother’s highboy and love seats.

IV

We have to fight on, sustained by the belief that our children may eventually reap the benefits of our endeavors. It is not only their material welfare that concerns us, no matter how driving are the tasks that each day presents. We must help them with their lessons in the evenings. We must guide their activities. We must direct their reading. Past generations are pressing upon us to equip generations yet to be. Our children must not be denied normal pleasures, must not be permitted to develop the sense of inferiority which small differentiations from their friends inevitably engender; they must live in a home open to their playmates, must not feel the strain that their parents cannot escape.

Besides, I am convinced that parsimony should not be instilled into them; they must be taught to assume their share of expenses without losing their self-respect. Though I was not reared in affluence, my childhood was free from financial worries. No one, so far as I know, in my husband’s family or in mine ever set out deliberately to make money. Our progenitors belonged to the professional classes, who took more or less for granted enough wealth to provide the necessities and cultural advantages, enough to afford freedom from carking care. I do not remember in my youth ever hearing a discussion of ways and means. Consequently, one of the most unpleasant features of our present predicament is the dollar consciousness which has been forced upon us.

Perhaps the cultured middle group in America needed to be shaken out of its complacency. Yet, as complacency passes, something valuable is being lost along with it. This was the class that gave balance to the vulgar extremes of poverty and wealth, both of which exerted an enervating influence upon the social order. The results of this merging of the middle class with the lower must remain for time to show.

Within me an intermingling of Scotch and Irish blood is responsible for the feeling that, while big expenditures need not be made, it is degrading to indulge in penuriousness. My position may not be defensible, and I am not attempting to defend it. I am merely accepting and making the best of it.

My husband has passed the age when a new start in life is likely to meet with success. Younger men, if times ever get better, will no doubt have another chance. Older men, well established in their professions, may be able to hold fast till the country is on its feet again. My husband, caught in the trough at forty and looking ten years older than he did two years ago, will scarcely be able to pull himself out and start uphill again. His situation is like that of the college boys who enlisted during the World War and were never able to complete their education.

Looking back over the last decade, we have those regrets that are the product of hindsight. Buying the house in the suburbs was the cardinal mistake which we should like most to see undone. Yet, at the time, there were many to advise us to buy, and there was no Cassandra to warn of coming disasters. We believed that the purchase of the house would add to our financial stability, would prove an incentive to saving, and would provide a permanent home which would eventually be paid for. The little girl, who was pale and anæmic, is now fat and rosy-cheeked. The boy is a finer, ruddier chap for the trees he has climbed. Though we may lose the savings that have gone into the house and carry for years the rest of those first-mortgage notes, nothing can take from us the good that has come to the children; whatever happens, they are starting life with splendid physiques.

While we have succeeded in keeping melancholy from touching these young lives, the children have not entirely escaped the new seriousness that has come upon us, and are satisfactorily assuming a share of responsibility. Certainly intensity of effort has drawn my husband and me closer together. Beneath the frank facing of facts and the ghastly undercurrent of fear which characterize our attitude toward the future, there is always the glimmer of hope. Perhaps, after all, there is some truth in the old stories of magic; perhaps there may be a fairy godmother who will some day wave her wand above us.