Barbara Egger Lennon by Tina Stewart Brakebill

Author:Tina Stewart Brakebill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Westview Press
Published: 2014-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Union Organizing and Local Politics, 1929–1937

The October 1929 stock market crash did not cause the economic descent into the Great Depression, but it did accelerate the fall. In the wake of the crash, business and consumer confidence dived, investments dropped, businesses downsized or shut their doors completely, and banks failed. Things worsened over the next two years, and by 1932 the economy had reached rock bottom. The unemployment rate hit 25 percent, and the nation’s gross national product was cut in half. The economic free fall affected everyone to some degree. Yet Great Depression hardships hit some harder than others, in part, because the prosperity of the 1920s had also been unevenly distributed. One year before the crash, an estimated 40 percent of Americans already lived in poverty, while the wealth of the top 5 percent exceeded that of the bottom 60 percent. The crash left those already at the bottom with nowhere to turn. As conditions worsened, hundreds of thousands of desperate, unemployed, and often homeless people populated breadlines and lived in temporary shanty towns in parks and vacant lots. Meanwhile, the top 5 percent lost investments and stocks and businesses and, no doubt, also suffered some emotional despair, but rarely did they have to resort to breadlines. Barbe’s Great Depression experience fell between those two extremes. Like many middle-class families, she avoided the desperation of the breadline, but she would struggle to make ends meet. In 1928, however, she and Duncan returned from her celebratory graduation trip looking toward a bright future.

They both started back to school in September 1928, and life took on a busy but consistent rhythm. Over the next year, she balanced motherhood, teaching, corset sales, housework, renters, and social commitments while enjoying the first sense of financial stability in nearly five years. Regrettably, that feeling was short-lived. Only one day after the October 1929 crash, she received a telegram announcing a bond company’s default. At least eight more default notices followed in the next fifteen months as well as disappointing news regarding drastically reduced or eliminated dividends and payouts on investments not in default. Clearly, her future safety net was shrinking, but its very existence separated her from those on the bottom with no savings or equity. Still other economic blows followed. In November 1931, Berger Brothers stopped taking corset orders, and although Spencer was still in operation, clients were slow to purchase and even slower to pay. She lowered the apartment’s rent to twelve dollars per month (from the previous high of forty), but she still struggled to find renters, and more than once tenants disappeared while owing money. Nevertheless, she had a home, and unlike a growing number of people she retained her job. Plus, rapidly dropping prices meant her salary, albeit still low, actually offered more buying power in 1931 than it had in 1929.

This enabled her to lend money to her brother as well as several, already desperate, friends. But she also used her extra funds to have the house

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