couldn’t understand why, and that annoyed her. On the ranch, she’d always been intrepid, even nervy, as quick to chastise faintheartedness during a flash flood as she was fearless in facing down a drunken cowhand.
This anxious new sense of unease was so unfamiliar that Lucy decided it couldn’t possibly be a true part of her. She sternly admonished herself to stop being foolish and weak and decided that she would act like the Lucy of old—the Lucy of Johnson County—and thereby hasten her return. She was determined to stay away as much as possible from the strangely intimidating menace of the central city.
Both she and Albert were coming to terms with Chicago, in their own distinctive ways.
One morning in late September, as Albert was at his typesetting station laboring to master the “shooting stick”—a tool for unlocking pages of type from the metal frame that held them together—an employee from another department burst into the room shouting the news that “the financial house of Jay Cooke and Company in Philadelphia has suspended operations!” Everyone realized at once that the economic disaster long feared had come to pass. All work in the typesetting room stopped as the men huddled together, speculating in hushed tones about the likely firings soon to follow, how extensive they would be, and who would be left standing when the smoke cleared.
Within a few weeks, it became apparent that the devastation wouldbe widespread. The collapse of Cooke and Company precipitated a stock market panic that radiated out into a rash of brokerage, insurance, and bank failures. A full-scale crash was at hand. Seemingly overnight, an army of the unemployed, many evicted for nonpayment of rent, was wandering the streets of Chicago, and every other major metropolis, in search of work, food, and shelter.
Albert and Lucy considered themselves fortunate in comparison with their neighbors. Within a few weeks of the economic collapse, all the families in their tenement were to varying degrees in straitened circumstances. Lucy managed to hold on to some of the piecework she’d been doing for a nearby textile mill, though at reduced rates. And Albert, too, was able to continue working. The
Times
did fire a fifth of its employees, but Albert, known for his speed and dexterity in composition, was among those kept on, though with a cut in pay from sixty to forty-two dollars a month.
Of all the families, the worst off were Joe and Margaret Hennessey, devout Catholics with five children, who lived in the cramped basement quarters. Joe was a stonecutter, Margaret a pieceworker. Both lost their jobs within a week of each other. Having no savings, having barely managed the rent each month, the Hennesseys were terrified of actual starvation. They immediately pawned their only two items of value: Joe’s silver belt buckle, bought with money he’d earned as a young man working in the Butte, Montana, mines; and Margaret’s cherished enamel brooch, her mother’s parting gift when, at age fifteen, she had emigrated from Ireland.
The Hennesseys’ three eldest children contributed a modicum of money from part-time work. Their nine-year-old peddled wooden matchboxes on the street and their eleven-year-old worked as a newsboy. Sheila, fourteen, belonged to a posse of teenagers who picked rags after school, collecting bits of cloth from factory discards and reselling them for conversion into paper or for use as upholstery stuffing. The three children’s combined pennies and nickels were enough to put eggs, thin slices of cheap meat, crackers, and black coffee on the table in the morning.
Providing food for the rest of the day was problematic. Margaret sought help from the Chicago Relief Society, but it initially turned her away; on the basis of its “scientific” formula for determining who was or was not worthy of aid, the society adjudged the Hennesseys capable of being self-supporting—if the family mended its “irregular habits
This anxious new sense of unease was so unfamiliar that Lucy decided it couldn’t possibly be a true part of her. She sternly admonished herself to stop being foolish and weak and decided that she would act like the Lucy of old—the Lucy of Johnson County—and thereby hasten her return. She was determined to stay away as much as possible from the strangely intimidating menace of the central city.
Both she and Albert were coming to terms with Chicago, in their own distinctive ways.
One morning in late September, as Albert was at his typesetting station laboring to master the “shooting stick”—a tool for unlocking pages of type from the metal frame that held them together—an employee from another department burst into the room shouting the news that “the financial house of Jay Cooke and Company in Philadelphia has suspended operations!” Everyone realized at once that the economic disaster long feared had come to pass. All work in the typesetting room stopped as the men huddled together, speculating in hushed tones about the likely firings soon to follow, how extensive they would be, and who would be left standing when the smoke cleared.
Within a few weeks, it became apparent that the devastation wouldbe widespread. The collapse of Cooke and Company precipitated a stock market panic that radiated out into a rash of brokerage, insurance, and bank failures. A full-scale crash was at hand. Seemingly overnight, an army of the unemployed, many evicted for nonpayment of rent, was wandering the streets of Chicago, and every other major metropolis, in search of work, food, and shelter.
Albert and Lucy considered themselves fortunate in comparison with their neighbors. Within a few weeks of the economic collapse, all the families in their tenement were to varying degrees in straitened circumstances. Lucy managed to hold on to some of the piecework she’d been doing for a nearby textile mill, though at reduced rates. And Albert, too, was able to continue working. The
Times
did fire a fifth of its employees, but Albert, known for his speed and dexterity in composition, was among those kept on, though with a cut in pay from sixty to forty-two dollars a month.
Of all the families, the worst off were Joe and Margaret Hennessey, devout Catholics with five children, who lived in the cramped basement quarters. Joe was a stonecutter, Margaret a pieceworker. Both lost their jobs within a week of each other. Having no savings, having barely managed the rent each month, the Hennesseys were terrified of actual starvation. They immediately pawned their only two items of value: Joe’s silver belt buckle, bought with money he’d earned as a young man working in the Butte, Montana, mines; and Margaret’s cherished enamel brooch, her mother’s parting gift when, at age fifteen, she had emigrated from Ireland.
The Hennesseys’ three eldest children contributed a modicum of money from part-time work. Their nine-year-old peddled wooden matchboxes on the street and their eleven-year-old worked as a newsboy. Sheila, fourteen, belonged to a posse of teenagers who picked rags after school, collecting bits of cloth from factory discards and reselling them for conversion into paper or for use as upholstery stuffing. The three children’s combined pennies and nickels were enough to put eggs, thin slices of cheap meat, crackers, and black coffee on the table in the morning.
Providing food for the rest of the day was problematic. Margaret sought help from the Chicago Relief Society, but it initially turned her away; on the basis of its “scientific” formula for determining who was or was not worthy of aid, the society adjudged the Hennesseys capable of being self-supporting—if the family mended its “irregular habits
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