I can’t imagine a job where you go home and maybe go by a year later and you don’t know what you’ve done. My work, I can see what I did the first day… - Studs Terkel

I’ll never forget one of the first families I visited. The father was a railroad man who had lost his job. I was told by my supervisor that I really had to see the poverty. If the family needed clothing, I was to investigate how much clothing they had at hand. So I looked into this man’s closet — (pauses, it becomes difficult) — he was a tall, gray-haired man, though not terribly old. He let me look in the closet — he was so insulted. (She weeps angrily.) He said, “Why are you doing this?” I remember his feeling of humiliation . . . this terrible humiliation. (She can’t continue. After a pause, she resumes.) He said, “I really haven’t anything to hide, but if you really must look into it. . ..” I could see he was very proud. He was so deeply humiliated. And I was, too. . ..

It was the time of the Oxford Pledge and the movement against Fascism; his temptation to go to Spain as a member of the Lincoln Brigade . . . 'I was an ideal recruit, alone, on the run, searching for something'; a serious affair with a schoolteacher, running away . . . 'This is part of the Depression. You lived in a fear of responsibility for another person. You backed off when someone got close.' . . . I was born out of the Depression. I gave up my illusions. No more Horatio Alger Jr. I had a few bad hours, a few bad years. But I found excitement. It was an awakening.

The key issue is jobs. You can't get away from it: jobs. Having a buck or two in your pocket and feeling like somebody. Mother Jones Magazine - Sep 1995