National Affairs: Tale of a City

For almost six years, nearly every man, woman & child who wanted a job had a job. Last week for the first time since the early days of the war, the U.S. had its first real unemployment problems; some 3,000,000 people were out of work. So far it was not an alarming figure. Unemployment was still more a small reminder of grim times of the past than an indication of hard times just around the corner.

But where unemployment clotted, the experience was painful. One such place was Jackson, Mich. Last week 4,500 of Jackson’s 40,000 employables were out of work. That was nearly twice as many as last year at this time.

In the Town Bar, the bartender stared ruefully at his customers and grumbled: “I haven’t sold enough whisky since the first of the year to bother taking the corks out of the bottles. Just beer—beer and more beer.” His business was off 40%. “I’m better off than some of the boys,” he added, “because I’m just around the corner from the Michigan unemployment bureau. I get a chance to cash their checks.”

Jackson (pop. 60,000) has never been a rich town. In the best times, most of its people make less than $3,500 a year. Its chief industries are automobile parts and railroading. There have been layoffs at the machine shops, some of them seasonal, some of them not. Then the New York Central laid off 450 all at one crack, part of 8,100 furloughed all along the line. Chewing on an old pipe, retired farmer “Granpa” Burkett declared: “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Up to that point, people were saying that things would straighten out. Now they sit around the union halls and wonder whether they should move to some place where there is more varied opportunity.”

Layoffs & Lectures. From the red brick railroad station to Oppenheims, Jackson’s big modernistic department store, Main Street was feeling a pinch. The stores were bustling with people, but less than one out of ten customers walked out with a package. Last week 60 clerks who had been laid off reported for unemployment compensation. At the weekly meeting, the manager of the Sears, Roebuck store lectured his employees: “This week we dropped another $11,000 from our previous week … I must ask you to watch every penny, be it in the cash register or in the electric bill. We can’t stand waste of any kind—it will mean additional layoffs.”

There were more idlers on the streets. Bowling alleys were filled nightly with spectators who came in for a free show. By day men scoured the town for work. A theater manager who was installing a septic tank at his new home outside of town said: “A couple of days ago three fellows came out and asked if they could have the job. I told them they could do the digging at a dollar an hour. They took it. Why, Jackson hasn’t seen such prices in the building business since before the war.”

It Could Be Worse. Oldsters talked darkly of “bad times ahead,” and the coming of “a real depression.” But there were no breadlines in Jackson, the banks were safe, and most people’s hardships were cushioned to some extent by the state, by union welfare funds, by stored-up savings.

Jackson, like the nation, was probably hollering more than it hurt. One cab driver wailed, “I’m slowly starving to death”—but he was making $45 a week. One shopkeeper summed it up: “Business is only fair, but it could be a lot worse.” And out on Falihee Road, a gear-cutting company was building a new $4,000,000 plant. That meant 400 new jobs, when it was completed.