FORTUNE Magazine, Part 1

The Main Street Front

A Report on an American Community After One Year of War

The audience for the first show drifted into the lobby of the Mattoon Theatre. Farm families parked their cars slantwise against the curb and came in along with mechanics from the Diesel-engine shop, a couple of soldiers home on leave, and a half-dozen high-school girls. A big red-faced man, a stranger in town, stared a minute at the bills announcing "Fingers at the Window" with Lew Ayres and Larraine Day. He hurried to the ticket window, and in a loud angry voice asked for the manager. Mr. Clarke was out to supper, the girl said, was anything the matter? There was plenty the matter. Didn't they know it was a national disgrace to show a picture with a conscientious objector in it? Didn't they realize this was America? The kids in the lobby giggled and the girl behind the ticket window answered the red-faced man politely. She didn't know a thing about it and she doubted Mr. Clarke did either; the pictures were just sent to them and they just put them on--they couldn't stop the show. The red-faced man stamped out to the street, stopped to call over his shoulder, "You folks don't seem to know there's a war going on." One of the kids yelled back, "And you don't seem to know Lew Ayres is in the Army now." Lew Ayres is in the Army now, and the 17,000 inhabitants of Mattoon, Illinois, do know there's a war going on. They've seen 800 of their young men go into the Army or Navy (320 of them--a high percentage--volunteered); they've met their war-bond quota; they've left peacetime jobs and started working on war-time jobs. They've seen prices go up, and wages, too. Their unemployed have found jobs, and along with increased employment, union organizers have come to town. Women and girls have quit housework and stenography and gone to work in factories, and as bartenders and filling-station operators. Troop trains and heavy-loaded freights roll through town in an almost steady stream, and retired railroad men have gone back on the payrolls of the Big Four and the Illinois Central. There's more money than ever in Mattoon--and less to spend it on. People are paying off their debts. They can't buy new cars or refrigerators or washing machines; they've had to cut down on sugar and coffee and meat and (much harder to bear) on driving fast along the straight prairie roads. The restaurants and taverns are packed. Broadway on Saturday night is crowded with soldiers from Chanute Field sixty miles away, and every couple of weeks the Illinois Central depot is crowded with a new bunch of Mattoon boys being sent up on the early morning train to the Army induction center in Chicago. A good many of the boys have gone abroad with the A.E.F. "I had to look up New Caledonia on the map when his letter came." "He says he saw Shakespeare's home and some old historic castles." "I bet he was first off the boat at Guadalcanal." Eleven Mattoon boys have been reported missing, and five have been killed since last December 7. The people of Mattoon know there is a war going on, all right. What the war is doing to them, and what they are doing about the war is the subject of this story. But Mattoon is not to be considered typical of every town in America, because economic conditions and geography affect men's lives and thoughts even more in war than in peace, and no town is typical. No town is average. Mattoon is not a war-boom town--of its five small factories, employing 2,000 men and women, only one has been converted to war production. It is not even a predominantly industrial town, for half the wealth comes from the black and fertile soil of the surrounding farms. It is a small middle western city in the Illinois corn belt, 175 miles south of Chicago, equidistant from Indianapolis and St. Louis. Except for the day in 1861 when Ulysses S. Grant took his first Civil War command here, except for the tornado in 1917 that killed sixty people, except the discovery of the southern Illinois oil fields in 1936, which gave Mattoon a vicarious boom, things have gone along pretty quietly since the town was founded in 1854. There are many well-to-do families, but no millionaires, and the poor are conveniently hidden beyond the Big Four roundhouse. Less than 2 per cent of the population is of foreign birth, and only 1 per cent is colored.

WAR TIMES ARE GOOD TIMES

The depression did not bring hardship to Mattoon as a whole, and recovery has been rapid, partly because of the nearby oil boom. In the last five years Horace Checkley, dealer in real estate and insurance, has built 500 houses in town, and this fall he completed the last of thirty workers' houses he had planned with uncommon foresight on the morning of December 8, 1941. It is hard to find a house to rent or buy in Mattoon but there are no trailer camps, no need for government housing. A few merchants (hardware men, auto and tire and electric-appliance dealers) have gone out of business--there are fifteen store vacancies now where there were none a year ago--but all the men dislocated are now either in the Army or have other jobs, and many of the stores on Broadway are glossed over with new and shiny facades. Almost everybody has a car, and half a dozen people own their own planes and fly from the municipal airport. The Kuehne Manufacturing Co. makes "more breakfast-room furniture than any other plant in the world." The U.S. Grant Hotel is "the finest little hotel this side of St. Louis." Mattoon is a prosperous small city that still looks like a country town with its long main street, its elm- and maple-shaded residential districts, its drab outskirts ending abruptly in the rich cornfields. In addition to the 800 men who have been drafted or enlisted in the services, about 300 have left town for work in big war plants. But statistically the town has suffered no loss. Farm boys and girls, and the former unemployed of rural districts and villages have come in to take the jobs the soldiers left; increased employment and increased wages and high farm prices have more than made up for the loss of the soldiers' money. There has been a 20 per cent liquidation of bank loans in the last year. Consumer credit loans (for such things as cars and houses) have been reduced 50 per cent, and the business of the savings and loan companies is almost at a standstill. Deposits in the two banks are higher than they've ever been: $6 million now, where last year they were $5 million, and in the earlier high year of 1929 only a little over $4 million. The cost of living has gone up 9.3 per cent since October 1, 1941, according to the Association of Commerce, but wages are up from 15 to 20 per cent. If things were to stay just as they are now, nearly everybody, with the exception of the families of boys missing and killed, would be better off than they were in peacetime. Last year the Association of Commerce made surveys and drew maps of industrial conditions and transportation facilities to try to lure new war industries to Mattoon, but no new industry came. Secretary Hoffman of the Association says that the lack of sufficient labor kept industry away, and he vigorously denies rumors that local manufacturers didn't want competition and deliberately kept it out. Many think that the town is getting on well enough as it is and that readjustment after the war will be easier because they haven't a big plant and a spectacular boom. Retail stores report increased sales. Henry Newgent's shoe store, for example, has more business this year than last, and Mr. Newgent figures that it would run 25 per cent over last year if he could get all the leathers and rubbers and hosiery his customers demand. "If people would buy what they need instead of what they want," he says, "there'd be plenty to go around." Mr. Sawin of the Sawin-Jones department store says his business is ahead of last year and he notices a lot of newcustomers in the store, women who used to trade at Woolworth's and Kresge's. The only lines that haven't improved are silk hose and carpets because he can't get them. The attendance at the three movie houses runs about the same as last year, around 14,000 a week. Mr. Clarke expected that the exodus of young men would hurt attendance, but it hasn't. The merchants know that the good times can't last forever, know that consumers' goods are going to get scarcer and that--if the war goes on long--their boom days will end. One of the business houses that has already been hit is the Wolfe Auto Supply Co. A year ago Benny Shoaf, manager and part owner, had nineteen employees in two stores. Each month they sold about $15,000 worth of refrigerators and washing machines and radios and auto supplies. Today Benny has only one store with six employees. The remaining stock, worth less than $6,000, is all on the floor. There are seventy-five radios (unpopular models), two washing machines, and one refrigerator, and when they are sold there won't be any more until the war is over. Business used to be 10 per cent cash and 90 per cent finance; now, when it's anything at all, it's the other way around. "I never saw so much folding money in my life," says Roe Moore, sales chief, who is still there, sitting around. He has bought a lunch counter down the street, The Theatre Grill, and his wife is making $200 month net there, enough to support her when he is drafted. Benny Shoaf expects to close up the salesroom pretty soon and just keep the service department going. Service alone won't make money, Benny and Roe say, but maybe it will keep the place in business until after the war, and after the war the boom will begin. The belief that the end of the war will bring a great boom in consumers' goods is shared by all the auto and auto-supply dealers, and by all the plumbers and builders in Mattoon. Louis Bartelsmeyer, the Chevrolet dealer, has cut out his sales force entirely and is keeping the business going on the service department. He is looking forward to a big time after the war, and, as a matter of fact, it isn't too bad right now, even if he can't sell cars, because he managed to corral the combined service businesses of the Studebaker, Cadillac, Hudson, Oldsmobile, and Chrysler dealers when they closed up shop for the duration. The company is making an $800 a month net profit from the service department. Tom Purvis, the Ford dealer, has moved from a big garage into a service station, employs four men instead of thirty-two, but he can keep going and expects a tremendous postwar business, not only in cars but in planes. He and his parts manager, Lowell Field, think it logical that auto dealers will become the plane dealers of the future. Purvis, a pilot himself, is already in the business in a small way and he has sold fourteen new and used planes this year in Mattoon and neighboring towns. There is no waiting until after the war for the boom in the business of the bars and taverns, of which there are seventeen in town--one for every thousand people. Knight's Buffet, near the I.C. and Big Four depots, has a 50 per cent increase in sales over last year. Part of it is brought by the weekend soldiers from Chanute Field, part by the increased wages and the decreased supply of consumers' goods in town. "After they've paid their debts and bought war bonds they figure they might as well have some fun. Nobody knows how long it will last." Out at Lou's Rendezvous one thousand people buy four or five thousand drinks on a Saturday night."The big two-fisted drinkers have gone into the Army," Lou says, looking around her crowded, noisy establishment. "But people have been awful nice to me. I have a hell of a lot of fun." The war hasn't hurt Lou yet. Business is wonderful, and she has a good supply of liquor and coffee on hand, and she's near enough to town so gas rationing won't keep people from coming--though it will cut the transient trade some. Lou is inclined to believe that the war was started by politicians and Wall Street, but just the same she does what she can about fighting it. She gives the boys home on leave a good time; and she sends free food to the U.S.O. rooms, buys war bonds, and contributes to the Red Cross. Whatever started the war, it's got to be won pretty quick--and it's our business, Lou says, to win it.

THIS IS OUR WAR

Mattoon subscribed $6,000 to the Red Cross War Fund, overreaching its quota by 25 per cent. The Mattoon Service Organization raised $5,000 to buy cigarettes and candy for the drafted men, and to send a three-months' subscription to the local Journal-Gazette to every boy in the service. In September the war-bond quota for Mattoon and the surrounding countryside was $126,180; the amount raised--half of it in a Salute-To-Your-Heroes street festival--was $202,232, and all but a few factory workers have put 10 per cent of their wages into bonds. (So far the post office has had to cash about 2 per cent of the bonds sold.) The first Scrap Drive wasn't very successful, but after the Journal-Gazette and the Kiwanis Club took over the campaign 75,000 pounds were collected in a week. When Pete Sutter of the Victory Cafe started out to raise $1,000 for the Greek Relief Fund he got $1,280 the first day. People give generously to the organizations and causes they believe in and make sacrifices willingly if they're sure they'll help. They're sick of hearing that they don't know there's a war on, sick of being labeled isolationists. They know that this is their war and not for a moment do they believe that they could lose it. They think it possible that New York or Washington or San Francisco will be bombed, but the idea that Mattoon might be bombed seems absurd. The commander of the Citizens Defense Corps, Carus Icenogle, has built up a skeleton defense organization and established a control center in the police station, but not enough people in town have volunteered as air-raid wardens and auxilary police. "They're patriotic, but they're too far away." Mr. Icenogle keeps a globe in his law office and points to the short northern air routes, but people can't believe that enemy planes could get this far, he says, or that they would waste bombs on Mattoon. They have no fear of invasion or defeat. They have complete faith in the power of American production and in the superiority of American fighting men. They want a second front now. They admire the Russians' courage and strength, but want to be sure that America doesn't get mixed up with Communism when the war is over. Many of them believe that the war will be over this winter, that the Germans and Japs have exhausted their forces and will be starved into surrender. FORTUNE Magazine, March 1943