August 4, 1999
Revised and annotated February 24, 2001
Typeface changed on September 24, 2001
Addendum because of reader question posted on Decmber 21, 2001.
| JOBS | What jobs? |
| WORKING CONDITIONS | Horrible; in detail! |
| SOCIAL BENEFITS | What were they? |
The unemployment rate during the 1930's peaked out at about 35 percent (one in three). That is what the U.S. Labor Department recorded and reported but I don't believe it. It probably got as high as 50 percent since there were so many homeless there was no way to count them.
There were the vagabonds, the wanderers, the evicted, the okies, the "bums",the hobo's, the homeless, the suicidal, the paupers and the forgotten.
Every once in a while some big corporation would put an advertisement in the paper indicating they were going to hire 5 or 10 workers. The jobs were always menial and low paid but thousands upon thousands would show up and invariably a riot would ensue. People were ready to kill for a job, no matter how menial it might be.
The employer set the rules, all the rules, for anyone and everyone who was employed.
There was no such thing as workers or employee rights. The Unions were both powerless and worthless.
I worked on Wall Street in 1939-1941. The Company I worked for was named "Foster, Brown & Co.". We would put in a 40 hour week (Saturdays were 9 to 12:30) and if overtime was necessary you stayed and worked. You never dared to say "no" since you would be fired on the spot!
When I joined Foster Brown & Co. in 1939 there were 3 runners.Within several weeks the two other runners were let go and I did the work of all three! I did not get one additional penny for the fact that I was now, literally, doing the work of three! I, quite literally, broke my a--!
You never got overtime pay but you got $1.00 for dinner. I remember working until midnight, night after night and I got $1.00 for dinner each night. Some weeks we would put in 60 hours with no extra pay!
Of course you showed up at work the next morning promptly on time or you would get fired!
The jobs were equivalent to slavery and complete servitude. You never but never questioned your boss, you did everything you were told to do, no matter what it might entail. You had no personal life, you worked.
If you stayed out sick the days pay was deducted from your pay check. There were no vacation rights. Sometime you got paid for a national holiday and sometime you did not. Frequently you worked on a national holiday.
ASIDE:My brother Alan worked for Foster, Brown & Co. and he got me the job in the runners department (I was the department). He was a chalk marker (marked the stock tape prices up on the black board). He left Foster Brown to go to war. A month or so after he left I left Foster Brown for the same reason.
Alan was killed in combat on March 25, 1944. I had been wounded some time in late December of 1944 and was in the Army hospital at that time. Margaret H. Faircloth, the lovely secretary to H. Elbert Foster called on my mother and told her that anything they could do to help would be done. My mother, as proud as she was, thanked them for their kind offer but asked for nothing.
In 1950 Ida and I returned from France where I had been on a Fulbright scholarship. From France I had applied to the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in order to take a Ph.D. in economics. I wanted to study under Joseph Shumpeter, a master in busines cycle theory and economic history. He died of a cerebral hamorrage just before we returned home.
Neverthless when we got home Ida and I went to Harvard to see if I could financially swing it. They offered Ida a job as a secretary and offered me a $500 scholarship for my degree. After we went through all the financial calcualtions we came up with the fact that we would be about $500 short. I called H. Elbert Foster and he invited me to lunch at the Wall Street club. I then asked him if I could borrow the $500 I estimated we would be short. He said (as if I will ever forget), "Pete, I think it is about time for you to get a job." That was that, he wouldn't lend me $500 (he was then a multimillionaire) and I didn't go to Harvard .
About 7 years later my mentor, Lionel D. Edie told H. Elbert Foster I was his new financial consultant and H. Elbert puked! Such are the ironies of life!"
There were hundreds upon hundreds always waiting to take your place!
I had it easy since I worked in an office. The worker who was skilled or semi-skilled in manufacturing had absolutely nothing he or she could do. There were no jobs at all and manufacturing was flat on its back, their operations were running about a third of their capacity!
Nobody ever considered changing jobs since you were lucky to have one to begin with!
My wife went down to Wall Street in 1942 and she was interviewed for a job with Westinghouse.
My wife was told by the personnel director that:
Six months after my wife was hired she was the secretary to the Head of the New York operation of Westinghouse!
So much for stupid prejudice!
I got my job through family links. My wife got hers the same way. That was the only way you would find a job. If you did not have a relative working some place then TS!
My first job (I was totally unskilled) paid 25 cents an hour. My wifes first job paid the same. It was in a Channel factory and she filled bottles with Chanel Number 5 by using an eyedropper! She got paid by the number of bottles she filled. To this day she cannot stand the odor of Chanel!
I left GE for a job on Wall street that paid an additional $2.50 a week. Don't laugh since $2.50 was the equivalent of one weeks lunches! Lunch for 25 cents consisted of 2 eggs, French fried potatoes, 2 slices of toast with jam, coffee and apple pie for desert.
GE told me when I left that I would be blackballed for life with GE since I only gave them one weeks notice! Twenty five years later I was the economic consultant to the Board of Dirctors of General Electric!
My brother Bill was a highly trained mathematician. He worked for the U.S. Life insurance Company in the Actuarial Department. He was paid $18.00 a week.
My sister, Cora, worked for a casualty insurance company. She was a file clerk and got $15.00 a week and put in enormous overtime, all without any additional pay.
This is exactly what I remember as the mural paintings of painters on relief employed with the WPA! Our landlord, Abe Harriton, specialized in these kinds of paintings! He was on relief and was also a communist. See my article on the communists I knew as a child!
In the 1930's there were no laws governing employment that I can remember.
Until 1935 there was no such thing as Social Security. Unemployment insurance did not exist. Disability insurance did not exist. Child labor laws did not exist!
Until FDR and the Democrats got in power in 1932 an employer could quite literally do any damn thing he pleased, set any conditions he pleased and treat you like dirt if that pleased him (which it did most employers).
There were no child labor laws (my wife went to work for Chanel when she was 15, I started work full time when I was 12).
The working conditions were the conditions set by the employers and most of them totally and completely EXPLOITED the workers. There was no disability insurance. If you lost an arm or a leg too bad. If you got sick from inhaling poisonous fumes too bad.
Since the country was down and out the employers took complete and total advantage of the employees and milked them for everything.
You could be fired summarily without any compensation of any kind for any reason at all. The employers answered to no one, no one at all.
The employers were tyrants, absolute tyrants, They had all the rights, the employees had none!
BENEFITS.I DO NOT REMEMBER A SINGLE SOCIAL BENEFIT WE GOT AND NEITHER DOES MY WIFE. ON THE CONTRARY, RIP-OFFS WERE THE NORM.
MY WONDERFUL FATHER-IN-LAW MANAGED TO WORK THROUGH THE ENTIRE DEPRESSION BUT, OF COURSE, JUST BARELY MADE ENDS MEET. HE BELONGED TO THE CARPENTERS UNION AND PAID HIS DUES FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS FROM 1931 UNTIL HE DIED IN 1966.
His wife (my wonderful mother-in-law) applied in 1967 for the pension promised by the Union. They told her there was no pension because he had not paid his dues for one quarter in 1933! She got zilch from the Union!
She did collect on his Social Security.
I am not about to
swear to the statistical accuracy of anything I say here BUT
it is an honest portrayal of my memory which was burned into my soul and
my brain by all the agony, the pain, sorrow, FEAR and the despair I experienced
and felt at the time. All my life I have been an observer, as you might
have noticed.
"(Okie (?ke)
noun
Offensive Slang.Used as a disparaging term for a migrant farm worker, especially
one from Oklahoma during the 1930's. [Ok(lahoma) + -ie.]"Excerpted
from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition
Copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed
from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V., further reproduction and
distribution restricted in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United
States. All rights reserved., )"
Now you may understand why there are laws governing industry. Given the opportunity they will exploit the working people every chance they get.
And so will the government!
And so will the labor unions!
And so will almost every branch of society and I leave out no one!
Bad times tend to bring out more evil than good but good times bring out other evils, such as greed (get it while you can)!
Thank you for visiting me and come back soon!
My very best wishes and regards.