SECURITY VERSUS INSECURITY 115 



financial responsibilities involved, had increased the 

 fear with which they had contemplated the possibility 

 of unemployment at a time when millions were un- 

 employed. Now the blow had fallen. With only three 

 weeks' pay in his pocket, he and his wife, neither of 

 them over twenty-five years of age, were simply ter- 

 ror-stricken. The landlord, the milkman, the butcher, 

 the grocer those upon whom they were immediately 

 dependent for food and shelter were suddenly trans- 

 formed into menaces. Some idea of what this terror 

 meant to this couple, as in one degree or another it has 

 meant to millions of others in these troublous times, 

 can be gathered from the fact that when my wife 

 called the young mother on the phone, shortly after 

 the husband left for work the morning following his 

 discharge, to ask her not to remain alone if she was 

 worrying, the hysterical answer received was that she 

 couldn't come over just then that she had suffered 

 some kind of hysterical spell after her husband left 

 her, had become nauseated, and vomited, but that 

 after she straightened herself out, she would come 

 right over. 



Then there is the Segerstrom family. This is not 

 their name but it suggests their real name. Seger- 

 strom is a carpenter. He has recently worked for me a 

 little at odd jobs, so that I know him to be a hard- 

 working, conscientious workman. He has an equally 

 hard-working wife, and five children. Up to the col- 

 lapse of the building boom in the fall of 1929, as far 



