CAST:
ANNOUNCER
EILEEN
JIM
MISS EMMETT, head social worker at the Neighborhood Center
CHAIRMAN
GRIMES, director of the State Employment Service
DOLAN, machinist at the plough works
MORTON, president of the plough works
DR. MAYNARD
LUBIN, youthful communist with a slightly foreign accent
WARDEN DAWES
SCOUT-LEADER MORROW
VOCATIONAL COUNSELOR
NOTE: This script aired Friday, October 16, 1936, from 2:30 to 2:45 p.m. Eastern
ANNOUNCER: Our story takes us back to 1934; it begins in a shabby little furnished room occupied by Jim and Eileen Purdy. Our hero and heroine are having their troubles with unemployment. Jim and Eileen were married in their early twenties, just before the big crash, when Jim had a fine job in the plough works at Plains City, a middle-sized, middle-western town. Eileen was working as a saleswoman in the leading department store. She decided to keep on with her job after the wedding ... just for a while, until she and Jim could save up enough to start buying their own home. And it was certainly lucky she did because within the year Jim was laid off, and he hasn't worked regularly since. For four years now Eileen's slender salary is practically all they have had to live on. The play begins as Eileen opens the door of their room at the end of her long day at the store. (Sound of a key turned in the lock and a door opening) EILEEN: (in a tone of startled astonishment mingled with reproach) Jim? JIM: (with attempted bravado) Himself. In Person. Who'd you think it was? J. Pierpont Morgan? EILEEN: But you said you were going to... JIM: (irritably) Well, why was I out of here by seven o'clock this morning? EILEEN: Then there wasn't... JIM: A chance for me? Huh! When I gets there the guy at the desk looks up and says, "Sorry. The position's filled. Nothing more today." And it was all over. EILEEN: But there are other plants in this town. JIM: (sardonically) You're telling me! Me that's warmed the benches of their employment offices for the last four years! EILEEN: Did you try for your old job at the plough works again? JIM: What's the use? If I show up there once more I'll be thrown out on my ear. EILEEN: The want ads in the evening paper... have you... JIM: (with growing impatience) Aw Eileen, quit riding me. You act as if I wasn't trying. Can't you see I'm fit to crack up as it is? EILEEN: (beginning to cry) Oh Jim, darling, I'm sorry. I don't mean to ride you. But I'm so worried. What are you going to do? JIM: Go on relief, I guess ... like all the rest of the bums. EILEEN: (indignantly) Jim Purdy, don't you dare say such a thing. Besides, you know, you're not eligible as long as I've got my job. JIM: (recklessly) Okay! There's nothing left but take to the road. That would get me off your neck anyway. EILEEN: (beginning to cry again) Jim, how can you talk like that? I... (a knock at the door) JIM: (in a whisper) If that's the landlady again...(mockingly) Mr. Purdy is not at home. EILEEN: I'll settle her. (Sound of door opening. Miss Emmett, head [social] worker at the Neighborhood Center, comes in) EILEEN: (in a tone of pleased surprise) Why Miss Emmett! Come in. This is my husband. Jim, this is Miss Emmett. You know, the lady at the Neighborhood Center I told you about. JIM: (shortly) Pleased to meet you. MISS E.: I'm pleased to meet you, too, Mr. Purdy. We at the Center feel we know your wife very well, and we'd like to know you, also. EILEEN: Won't you sit down? MISS E.: I mustn't, thank you. I just ran in to make sure that you had heard of the community forum on unemployment we're holding at the Center this evening. I thought you might be interested. EILEEN: Oh we would, wouldn't we, Jim? JIM: (bitterly) I ought to. I know enough about it. MISS E.: Perhaps you will contribute to the discussion by telling us your experience. JIM: I could tell you plenty, all right. MISS E.: We want to bring out the point that unemployment is unnecessary in a community that has the sense to handle its affairs properly. And we want to show that it is quite possible for everybody to have a job all the time. Now I must run along. Come early. We expect a big crowd. Good-bye. JIM: (sourly) Good afternoon. EILEEN: (wistfully) Good-bye, Miss Emmett. (Sound of door closing) JIM: (laughing hysterically) Ha! Ha! Ha! A job for everybody all the time. That's great. EILEEN: Jim! Stop, stop laughing like that! JIM: Why? It's the best joke I've heard since I lost my job. EILEEN: It's not a joke. It's a wonderful idea. You'll see when we go to the meeting. JIM: Me go to that meeting? Not me! EILEEN: (with passionate intensity) You are going to that meeting. JIM: (truculently) Who says I am? EILEEN: (defiantly) I say you are. JIM: I'll be... (he breaks off and suddenly changes his tone to one of sly malice) Okay, I'll go. And I will (mockingly) "contribute to the discussion." I'll tell 'em. I'll give that bunch of up-lifters some fine points about how easy it is for everybody to have a job all the time. You wait. I'll... EILEEN: Oh, Jim! You wouldn't... (fading) ANNOUNCER: And now, the forum. My! What a hubbub! There must be a crowd at the Neighborhood Center this evening. And here are Eileen and Jim just coming in. (The sound of a crowd. Above the confused babble of many voices is heard the voice of Miss Emmett) MISS E.: (calling) Oh Mr. and Mrs. Purdy! This way, please. I've saved a couple of seats for you. EILEEN: Thank you so much, Miss Emmett. MISS E.: The meeting is just about to begin. That's Mr. Porter, superintendent of schools, presiding. Ah, there goes his gavel! (Sound of gavel. Crowd noises subside) CHAIRMAN: As our speakers this evening, we have on the platform Mrs. Tate, president of the Plains City Woman's Club and Mr. Williams, president of the Chamber of Commerce. As most of you know, the Woman's Club and the Chamber of Commerce have been making a joint survey of unemployment in our community. We shall now hear the results of their investigation. It gives me great pleasure to introduce... (fading) ANNOUNCER: It was a heartbreakingly familiar story that the audience heard from the two speakers, but a story that ended on an encouraging and hopeful note. And then... (Sound of applause comes up. Rap of gavel. Applause stops) CHAIRMAN: And now our meeting is open for discussion. We are here to put all our heads together to see if we cannot work out a plan to end unemployment in Plains City forever. I hope you will all speak up and give us the benefit of your ideas. GRIMES: Mr. Chairman! CHAIRMAN: Mr. Grimes, director of the State Employment Service. GRIMES: I should like to ask this audience if they are not all agreed on the fundamental proposition that there is enough work crying to be done to keep us all busy all the time? (Chorus of "sures" and "yeses." One loud and emphatic "no") CHAIRMAN: Who's that says "no"? DOLAN: Pete Dolan, machinist at the plough works. I want to ask, what about these machines that can do the work of a hundred -- maybe a thousand -- men? Won't they soon be able to do the work of all of us? MORTON: I'd like to answer that, Mr. Chairman. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morton, president of the plough works. MORTON: First I want to say that I'm astonished at you, Pete Dolan, a lad who has been around machinery all his life, not to know that machines can never entirely replace men. Can a machine tend itself? Or check up on itself? Or repair itself? But that's not the real point. The real point is that if the machine does take jobs away from men with one hand, it gives them back better jobs with the other. Why do you suppose we won't hire a youngster at the plough works unless he has finished high school? Because modern machines call for men with intelligence and education. Machines may take the hard, dirty, brutalizing jobs away from men, but they give men back jobs on which they can use the best they've got. GRIMES: Mr. Chairman! CHAIRMAN: Mr. Grimes. GRIMES: I'd like to put a few questions. I'd like to ask if you folks are getting all the treatment from doctors and dentists and oculists that you need? I'll answer that myself. You are not. There is hardly one person in a thousand who is. Isn't that so, Dr. Maynard? DR. MAYNARD: It certainly is. No question about it. GRIMES: Are your houses the kind of dwellings you would choose to live in? Are they modern and in perfect repair? I'll answer that, too. And again the answer is "NO." Do you see what I'm getting at? Take this town of ours. We love it, and we're 100 per cent loyal to it. And because of that, we want it to be the best town in the country to live in. Yet we've got to admit it was built in the horse and buggy era, while we're living in the motor age. We ought to put hundreds of men to work rebuilding our schools, public buildings, dwellings, streets, highways. We ought to have more teachers, and to keep our schools running day and night so that we could all ... children and grown-ups alike ... get the kind of educations that are required by modern life. We ought to have enough doctors and dentists and other specialists working all the time to keep us all in the perfect health that modern medicine makes possible. If we did only a small part of what we ought to do, there would be a labor shortage instead of unemployment. (Cheers and applause. Alexis Lubin, a youthful communist with a slightly foreign accent, rises to his feet) LUBIN: (jeeringly) Yeah, and if we struck gold on Main Street we'd all be millionaires! (Catcalls, boos and hisses. The gavel raps for order) CHAIRMAN: Order please! This is an open forum, remember. Everybody is privileged to speak his mind. You have the floor, Mr.... LUBIN: Lubin's the name. What's the use of telling us all this tripe about how much work there is that needs to be done? What does that get us guys who need jobs? How is the work going to be handed round? GRIMES: May I answer that, Mr. Chairman? CHAIRMAN: Mr. Grimes of the State Employment Service has the floor. GRIMES: The answer is, by occupational planning. Each community should have a department of occupations ... just as it has a fire department, a police department, a department of sanitation. This department of occupations would find out what work needs to be done in the community, and what people need jobs, and then bring the job and the worker together. MORTON: Mr. Chairman! CHAIRMAN: Mr. Morton of the plough works has the floor again. MORTON: I don't know that I quite hold with this idea. It looks to me like government interference. And what we need now is less, rather than more, of that. The way to end unemployment is to give industry a free rein and a clear road ahead. Then business will boom, and everybody will have a job as in the old days before the depression. MISS EMMETT: Mr. Chairman! CHAIRMAN: Miss Emmett, head social worker at the Neighborhood Center. MISS EMMETT: I am afraid I must take issue with Mr. Morton there. If he had been with us here at the Center he would have seen that even in the boom times he speaks about we had plenty of people out of work. WARDEN DAWES: Miss Emmett has you there, Morton. In all the years I've been warden of the state's prison there has never been a time when we haven't had under our charge just so many people who had been driven to crime because they couldn't find jobs. SCOUT-LEADER MORROW: As scout-leader, I come into contact with many boys who are willing and eager to work, and who could do good work once they were placed, but who do not seem able to get out and hustle jobs for themselves or sell themselves to an employer. They are a serious problem to me. But if we had some vocational guidance and four years at the works today, and placement as Mr. Grimes has outlined, I'd know better what to do with them. VOCATIONAL COUNSELOR: As vocational counselor at the high school, the chief need I see is for reliable up-to-date facts about the exact job situation in any given line at any given moment. LUBIN: (with a snarl) Yeah. And who's going to pay for all that? The capitalists? Like fun they are. The only way we'll ever get rid of unemployment is by first getting rid of the capitalists and setting up a new social order controlled by the workers. (Another outbreak of boos, catcalls, and hisses. Gavel raps for order) CHAIRMAN: (shouting over the uproar) The Chair recognizes Mr. Grimes. (The uproar subsides) GRIMES: Whether we need a new social order or not is entirely beside the point. Under any social order, we should still need a definite service that would bring the job and the worker together. JIM: (clearing his throat as if for a great oratorical effort) A-hem! Mr. Chairman! EILEEN: (in a panicky whisper) Shh! Jim! Please! JIM: (in an undertone to Eileen) Don't worry. I'm not going to spill any beans. (then aloud) What I want to know is, when are you people going to get started on this? Because if you don't get going pretty quick, it's going to be too late for some of us. MORTON: Who's that speaking? JIM: Jim Purdy's my name. And I'm one of the best iron moulders you ever had at your plough works. And I've been out of a job now for four years. SEVERAL VOICES: That's so. Jim's the tops Jim's good, all right. MORTON: Mr. Chairman, I move we start our vocational service for Plains City right here and now. And I'll set the ball rolling. Jim Purdy, how would you like to have back your old job? We got our first big order in four years at the works today, and I've given the order to start hiring tomorrow. (Outburst of cheers and applause. Gavel raps for order) GRIMES: There, folks, you see how it works. It's largely just a matter of getting together on our common problems. WARDEN DAWES: Mr. Chairman, I move we appoint a committee to draw up a plan for the organization of a department of occupations for Plains City. (Applause, cheers, cries of "I second the motion." Above the hubbub is heard Eileen's voice saying tearfully, "Oh Jim!")