America 1929: John F. Kennedy, the Great Writer

Chapter 153 A Clue

As evening fell, Arthur drove the pickup truck into Mansfield.

This is a medium-sized county town with a population of 40,000, and it is also the largest distribution center for agricultural products within dozens of miles.

But now, half of the shops on both sides of the street have boarded up their windows.

Arthur parked the car near the city hall square.

As soon as he got out of the car, he saw an extremely long queue in front of St. John's Church, two blocks away from the square.

The procession began on the steps in front of the church, meandered south along the sidewalk, turned a street corner, and continued all the way to the abandoned railway bridge.

There were workers in overalls stained with machine oil, bankrupt farmers in flannel shirts, and former company employees in suits but with worn-out soles in their leather shoes.

This is the porridge distribution team at the relief station.

Arthur pulled up his coat collar, strode over, and joined the end of the line.

Ahead of him in line was a middle-aged man in a suit.

"What was that sent up earlier?" Arthur asked.

The man in the suit turned his head and sized Arthur up and down. Arthur's neat appearance clearly didn't belong in this group.

"Oatmeal. If you're lucky, you might get a piece of bread baked yesterday. You don't look like someone who needs to wait in line, sir."

"I'm here to find someone." Arthur handed him a cigarette.

The man hesitated for a moment, then reached out and took the cigarette, pulling a lighter from his vest pocket to light it.

He took a deep breath, and his tense shoulders relaxed a little.

The man introduced himself: "Wayne. Wayne Stone. I used to work as a production scheduler at the Dayton GM plant."

"Arthur. Isn't the GM factory supposed to be the most secure job in the Midwest?"

Wayne gave a wry smile and brushed the cigarette ash off his suit.

"That was before October 1929. When the stock market crash hit, Detroit ordered production cuts. The Dayton plant laid off half its workforce. By last month, it had completely shut down."

He pointed to the suit he was wearing.

"Every morning at eight o'clock sharp, I leave home, dressed neatly, and tell my wife that I'm going to the shopping district to look for a clerical job. But I actually stand in line here for four hours every day, so that I can save the food rations for her and the children."

This is the most typical "decent lie" of the middle class during the Great Depression.

They would rather stand in the cold outside relief stations than admit that they had fallen into abject poverty.

Arthur noticed that there was a very short queue on the other side of the church entrance.

The line was full of Black people. They were separated by several white police officers with batons and had to wait until the long line of white people had finished before they could get the leftovers.

Arthur kept this detail in mind.

An hour later, they lined up at the church entrance.

Two large iron pots were placed under the porch, and several nuns in burqas were ladling porridge with large spoons.

Another pastor stood to the side, handing each person a hard, dark loaf of bread.

"God bless you, brother," the pastor mechanically repeated.

Wayne received his share, walked to the stone steps on the side of the church, sat down, and carefully broke the bread into pieces, soaking them in the steaming porridge.

Arthur didn't go to get the food. He walked around the long table, using the excuse of looking for the restroom, and went into the church through a side door.

The church hall was empty. Arthur walked through the corridor and arrived at the loading and unloading area in the backyard.

Two unmarked trucks were parked there.

Several hired porters were unloading heavy bags of goods into the church's underground storage room.

Arthur stood in the shadows and observed.

The burlap sacks looked rough, but to Arthur, a writer with an extreme sensitivity to words, the black ink printed on them was exceptionally glaring.

He stepped forward and, taking advantage of the porters' break, pulled two one-dollar bills from his pocket.

"Hey bro, can I borrow a light?"

Arthur tucked the money under the cigarette pack and handed it to the driver, who was sitting on the back panel of the carriage smoking.

The driver understood perfectly, took the money, and struck a match.

"This job is pretty heavy. Which flour factory is it from?" Arthur asked casually.

"A flour mill? You must be joking, buddy. This is a bank's business."

3

"bank?"

"Yes. First Agricultural Trust Bank. These are all the collateral they seized from those bankrupt farms." The driver patted the sacks behind him.

"Then why was it delivered to the church?"

"Doing charity, huh!" the driver scoffed.

"They can't sell it, and it's taking up space in the warehouse. The bank donated this seized grain to the church, which not only exempted them from taxes but also earned them a good reputation with the mayor. The nuns used it to cook porridge and distributed it to the poor people queuing outside."

Arthur's eyes instantly turned cold.

He thanked them and turned to leave the loading and unloading area.

Back in the square in front of the church, Arthur found a step and sat down.

He took out his notebook and drew a clear flowchart on the paper with a pen.

He drew a circle: farmer.

The arrow points to: a bank (for auctioning land and grain).

Arrow points to: Church (accepts bank donations).

The arrow points back: Farmers (lining up to receive the grain they grew).

The bank used a legal process to deprive farmers of their means of production, and then used a tiny fraction of the scraps as charity to give to those they had driven to the brink of despair.

In this closed loop, capital completes mergers and gains a moral high ground; the church completes its preaching; and the poor, in gratitude, swallow the alms made from the food they themselves grew.

Arthur stared at the cyclical diagram, once again marveling at the greed and treachery of capitalists.

"You see through it all, don't you?"

A voice sounded from the side.

Arthur looked up and saw Wayne standing next to him with an empty bowl.

Wayne looked at the diagram in Arthur's notebook.

"I guessed it while we were eating. You're not here to see anyone, and you're not an ordinary person. You're a journalist or a writer."

Arthur closed the notebook and did not deny it.

Wayne sighed and sat down next to Arthur. "I understood that diagram you drew back in Dayton. Because a friend of mine was in charge of implementing that program."

Arthur's gaze sharpened immediately: "Your friend works at a bank?"

"Yes, he used to be. His name was Joseph Macaulay. A credit manager at First Trust Bank. This whole scheme was orchestrated by their headquarters. Joseph was fired as a scapegoat because he felt guilty and refused to sign a batch of forged foreclosure documents."

Where is he now?

"He ran away. When he left, he stole an internal ledger from the office filing cabinet. It contained detailed records of how the bank colluded with shell companies to acquire hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Ohio and Indiana at bargain prices."

Wayne glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention to them.

"He's currently hiding in Hoover Village, a western suburb of Dayton. The Pinkerton detectives hired by the bank are looking for him. If you want to write this down, go find him."

Arthur stood up. He took two twenty-dollar bills from his wallet and stuffed them into the breast pocket of Wayne's suit.

"I don't want charity." Wayne frowned.

Arthur looked him straight in the eye: "This isn't charity. This is a tip. The information you provided is worth far more than forty dollars. Buy your wife some good meat and don't bother queuing anymore. Soon, there will be big news in Dayton."