Blog #2

While I was reading the story of Arthur A. Robertson, I found myself thinking back to the story about the janitor that lost all his money and took his own life. The reason is, they both took place during the Great Depression, and they both found themselves in situations with banks that were loaning more money than people had, and people couldn't pay them back. For all of this, and other various reasons, everybody's savings accounts had been completely diminished. The only people who didn't lose money were the stockbrokers, and they didn't lose money because all of their customers bought stocks and they were the ones losing all their money! Arthur Robertson was a loan shark, where, of course, people borrowed more money than they had. He didn't necessarily lose too much money though because of the money he recceived from bankers that would borrow from him, and he recognized that the crash was coming, and saved himself some money. "I reconized it in May and saved myself a lot of money. I sold a reat deal of my stocks in May. It was a case of becomming frightened" (104). The point here is, when you have a job as a banker, it is a bit easier to be aware of something like the crash coming in the near future, just like Mr. Robertson did and saved himself a lot of money. Those surrounding him, though, were not doing well at all, because they had no foreshadowing of the crash, and he felt horrible for him. He tried to help out everyone he could, and I think he is a very honorable man for doing so.  Ed Paulson was less fortunate than Arthur Robertson. I found it easier to connect with Ed, because he just seemed more like the majority of America at the time of the Depression, whereas Mr. Robertson got it a little better than most. Ed talked about his stories of riding the freight train, and not being able to find a job anywhere, because the market was terrible at the time. He admitted to him being a criminal, and stealing food, though almost everyone had to be a criminal in order to survive. I never felt so lucky to be alive in a time where even in this recession, most of us still have our household necessities.