Rev. Edward Morgan III, 83
Williamsburg, VA
My family settled in Richmond, Virginia in 1928 and when the crash came a year later it wiped out pretty much all of the investments my father had. My father was totally deaf as a result of having diphtheria when he was a boy, and was unequipped to hold the average kind of job. I remember that in the summer of 1932 when my father was really strapped for money, he decided he needed a trade to practice and somehow learned to make sweeping brooms, figuring that people use them everywhere and they wear out. I remember walking from my home with my brother about a mile up the street to where my father had rented a small, square concrete building that was totally bare except he had managed to put a broom-making machine in it. He had stacks of broom straw, wire, wood, and the machine.
My father said he was gonna take us two boys out to try to sell some brooms. We piled into the car and drove from country store to country store, watching as my father peddled brooms at some places and got turned away at others. I remember he told my mother one time if he could make 50 cents a day he would be OK. He helped establish a social agency in Richmond, called Citizens Service Exchange, to help transient men who were out of work. He taught people who came from North Carolina and Virginia how to make brooms and set up a business. My brother and I didn't know much, we thought everything was pretty good. We ate three meals a day and had nice clothes. It wasn't until later that I found a letter he had written to his mother detailing the dire financial straits he was in. His income was about a third short of his expenses.