NAWSA                     SUBJECT FILE               Smith, Lillian

WHY I JOINED THE P. A. C.
Lillian Smith

I was living in Macon, Georgia on that March day of 1933 
when President Roosevelt closed the banks of our country to save them 
from their own self-destruction.  I remember the despair and fear the 
weeks preceding, the increasing dread in the southern voice, the reluctance 
to look and plan; the inability to buy or to pay for what had 
been bought, the complete collapse of confidence in one's own initiative. 
I do not think that ever in our American history have men
believed less in themselves than on that day.  They knew, whether they 
said it aloud or not, that private enterprise in a panic has the dignity 
of a straw tossed about in a hurricane.
I remember the bleak surprise on faces when they heard the 
President's proclamation, the slow-growing relief that eased up the 
tensions.  I shall never forget the sudden burst of hope in the eyes 
of the business men on Cherry Street.
A few weeks later I returned to my home in the mountains of 
North Goergia.  The benches on Main Street were full of men sitting 
there, whittling the days away and the months.  No work.  Half the men 
of our county had no work at all and those that had work made so little 
that there was not enough on Saturday " to bread the old woman and the 
children".   My brother made a survey of the county and found two-thirds 
of our people without enough food to eat - some without any.  No food, 
no work, no hope.   Business men in Main Street sat in their empty stores 
and watched the folks outside whittling.  After a time, one of the men 
on the benches would ease up to his feet, stand there a moment, turn 
away, turn back, go inside the store and ask for a little more credit. Storekeeper would wait a long time before he answered but a last he'd 
likely give a little more  - for how in the world could you sit there and 
say "no" to a man who had no meal or fat back in his house and you knew 
it.   You gave that credit, though your note at 8 percent was due at the 
bank next week and not one penny on hand to pay it.
Cotton was 6 cents, 5 1/2, 5, 4 1/2....and bales of the stuff were 
everywhere.  Nobody wanted to buy it or sell it. Nobody wanted to 
think of cotton.  And out on the farms, on little farms and big farms, 
were the field hands - men and their wives and children in little 
shacks, waiting. Waiting for somebody to do something. 
Hoping to God that they would not have to wait much longer. And in the mill towns, men sat on the doorsteps of mill houses, and waited. 
Everybody waiting for somebody to do something. No one said 
the words private enterprise, rugged individualism, in those days. No 
one remembered. All any of us wanted was for somebody to do something. And President Roosevelt did it. You know what he did a nd I know and 
millions of Americans know, though some have tried to forget it. 


It was a curious time of fact-finding and plain direct 
acting, of looking at stars and wiping mud off of feet, of dreams and 
visions and shrewd common sense. But he did it. Laugh if you want 
to at WPA, laugh if you dare at CCC and NYA, and FSA, and PWA. Laugh 
if it doesn't choke you at the memory of migrant camps, at the memory 
of men taken from street benches and put back to work, of children 
who had food, of boys who learned for the first time in their lives 
how to use their hands, of children who had their first glass of milk. 
Maybe Republicans think that is funny; maybe the Democrats think it is 
a big joke, those who want to forget how the New Deal wiped the despair 
off their own faces as they sat there in their banks and textile mills 
and big homes on farms, helpless as the men whittling on street benches 
to do anything. 
But President Roosevelt did it. He and the Americans who 
were willing to lift their eyes from their own helpless feet and look 
down new roads, didi it. He did it, and more and more of our citizens 
did it with him, and soon there were no more bread lines, and men who 
never had pay checks had them, and mills were making money again 
and banks were lending, knowing the loans could be paid, and men on Cherry Street and Peachtree Street and Wall Street went back to their golf 
and their clubs and tried to forget how weak and sick they had felt on 
that day in March, how poor a thing is private enterprise in a panic. 
But some did not forget. Those who learned to work for 
the first time have not forgotten. The kids in the CCC caps and NYA 
have not forgotten. Men who were skilled with their hands and for 
months had no work to use their skill on have not forgotten. But too 
many of us forgot. And as the years passed, it became harder to 
remember that thought the President did it, he did it because we stood 
by. We stood by democracy, and gave the heave and the push that has 
to be given to move 120 million people out of the deep rut of poverty 
and fear and unemployment and panic on to the highway of full-time 
work and full-time pay and faith again in democracy.
I joined the PAC because I think the time has again come 
for men and women to stand by democracy.  think the time has come, 
again to give the heave and the push that will make those words 
equality and freedom start men's hearts beating fast and keep them 
beating. There are hard days ahead of us. This time we cannot sit 
and wait for somebody to do something. We cannot wait for President Roosevelt to do it. He is ready but this time it's a bigger job and 
a different job and it will take more help.  It will take all the 
help we can give it. I joined the PAC because in it are the people 
who remember.  In it are the men and women who know how to work and who are willing to work, not only for themselves, but for all of us, 
and who are not ashamed to say words like equality and freedom and 
world cooperation, and to mean them. They are the people who will 
stand by and I want to stand by with them.

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.