In Zurich Brian and Justin, as witnesses and trustees for the Foundation, saw the shipment opened, saw it counted and weighed, and then deposited with a consortium of three banks. For the Foundation had taken very seriously Theodore's warning that Mr Roosevelt would devalue the dollar, then make it illegal for American citizens to own or possess gold.
‘Justin,' I asked, ‘what happens if Governor Roosevelt does not run for the presidency? Or does but is not elected?'
‘Nothing. The Foundation would be no worse off. But have you lost confidence in Ted? On his advice we rode the market up, and then cashed out before it crashed, and now the Foundation is about six times as wealthy as it was a year ago, all through depending on Ted's predictions.'
‘Oh, I believe in Theodore! I was just wondering.'
Mr Roosevelt was elected and he did indeed devalue the dollar and made it illegal for Americans to possess gold. But the assets of the Foundation had been placed out of reach of this confiscation. As was my own numbered bank account. I never touched it but Briney told me that it was not simply lying idle; he was using ‘my' money to make more money.
Brian was now a trustee of the Foundation, vice Mr Chapman, who had been removed from the board for having lost his own money in the stock market. A trustee of the Foundation had himself to be qualified for Howard benefits (four living grandparents at time of marriage) and a money-maker. If there were other requirements, I do not know what they were.
Justin was now chairman of the board and chief executive, vice judge Sperling, who was still a trustee but was past ninety and had elected not to work quite so hard. When we got back to Kansas City, Justin and Brian set up offices in the Scarritt Building as ‘Weatheral and Smith, Investments' while ‘Brian Smith Associates' took an office on the same floor.
We never again had money worries but the decade of the Depression was not a time when it was fine to be rich. We strove to avoid the appearance of being rich. Instead of buying a fancy house in the Country Club district we bought that farmhouse at a bargain price, then rebuilt it into a more satisfactory structure. It was a period when skilled craftsmen were eager to get work at wages they would have sneered at in 1929.
The nation's economy was stuck on dead centre and no one seemed to know why and everyone from bootblack to banker had a solution he wanted to see tried. Mr Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 and, yes, the banks did close but the Smiths and the Weatherals had cash under the mattress and groceries squirrelled away; the bank holiday did us no harm. The country seemed invigorated by the energetic actions of ‘The New Deal', the new President's name for a series of nostrums that came pouring out of Washington.
In retrospect it seems that the ‘reforms' that constituted the New Deal did nothing to correct the economy - yet it is hard to fault emergency measures that put food into the mouths of the destitute. The WPA and the MA and the CCC and the NRA and the endless make-work programmes did not cure the economy and may well have done damage... but in Kansas City in the 1930s they almost certainly served to avoid food riots by desperate people.
On 1 September 1939, ten years after Black Tuesday, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Two days later Britain and France declared war against Germany. World War Two had started.
Chapter 16 - The Frantic Forties
In the summer of 1940 Brian and I were living in Chicago at 6105 Woodlawn, an address just south of the Midway. It was a large apartment building, eighty units, owned by the Howard Foundation through a dummy. We occupied what was called ‘the Penthouse' - the west end of the top floor, a living room and balcony, a kitchen, four bedrooms, two baths.
We needed the extra bedrooms, especially in July during the Democratic National Convention. For two weeks we had from twelve to fifteen people sleeping in an apartment intended for a maximum of eight. I do not recommend this. The apartment did not have air-conditioning, it was an exceptionally hot summer, and Lake Michigan a few hundred yards away turned our flat into a Turkish bath. At home I would have coped with it by walking around in my skin. But I could not do so in the presence of strangers. One of the real benefits of Boondock is that skin is just skin - means nothing.
I had not been in Chicago, other than to change trains, since 1893. Brian had frequently visited Chicago without me, as this flat was often used for Howard Foundation board meetings, the Foundation having moved its registered address from Toledo to Winnipeg in 1929. As Justin explained to me, ‘Maureen, while we don't advertise what we're doing, we won't be breaking any laws about private ownership of gold; we are simply planning for whatever develops. The Foundation is now restructured under Canadian law, and its registered secretary is a Canadian lawyer, who is in fact a Howard client himself and a Foundation trustee. I never touch gold, even with gloves on.'
(Brian expressed it otherwise. ‘No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law. Nor does he feel guilt over breaking it. He simply follows the Eleventh Commandment.')
This time Brian was not in Chicago for a board meeting; he was there to watch the Chicago commodities market and to deal in it, because of the war in Europe - while I was in Chicago because I wanted to be. Much as I enjoyed being a brood mare, after forty years of it and seventeen babies, I relished seeing something other than wet nappies.
There was indeed much to see. The parkway a hundred yards north of us, stretching from Washington Park to Jackson Park and called the Midway Plaisance, was in fact a midway the last time I had seen it, with everything from Little Egypt's belly dance to pink cotton candy. Now it was a beautiful grassy park, with the matchless Fountain of Time by Lorado Taft at the west end and the lovely 57th Street beach at the east end. The main campus of the University of Chicago, great grey Gothic buildings, dominated its north side. The University had been founded the year before I had come here as a girl, but none of these buildings had been built by then - as near as I could recall several major exhibition halls had occupied the ground now constituting the campus. I could not be certain, as nothing looked the same.
The elevated trains were much more widespread and now they were powered by electricity instead of steam. On the surface there were no longer horse cars or even cable cars; electric trolley cars had replaced them. No more horses anywhere - autos bumper to bumper, a dubious improvement.
The Field Museum, three miles to the north and on the Lake, had been founded after my long visit in ‘93; its Malvina Hoffman exhibit, ‘The Races of Man', was in itself worth a trip to the Windy City. Near it was the Adler Planetarium, the first one I ever visited. I loved the shows at the planetarium; they let me daydream of travelling among the stars like Theodore - but I did not dream that I would ever really do so. That hope was buried, along with my heart, somewhere in France.
Chicago in ‘93 had kept eleven-year-old Maureen Johnson round-eyed; Chicago in 1940 kept Maureen Smith, now officially forty-one years old, still more round-eyed, there were so many new wonders to see.
One change I did not like; in 1893 if I happened to be out after dark, Father did not worry and neither did I. In 1940 I was careful never to be caught out after dark, other than on Brian's arm.
Just before the 1940 Democratic convention the Phoney War ended and France fell. At Dunkirk on 6 June the British evacuated what was left of their army which was followed by one of the greatest speeches in all histories: ‘- we shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them in the streets, we shall never surrender -‘