Chapter 1: Beginnings and Antecedents

Edward Eugene Tolliver, Gene, to his friends, graduated from the College of the City of New York with a BA in American History and a Minor in English in June, 1929.

That same month and year, Miss Cora Crown, of the Westhampton, Long Island Crowns, graduated from Swarthmore with a BA in English Literature. That was her third institution of higher education in five years. The fact that she graduated, and with a surprisingly high GPA, was a triumph of the persuasive power of her father's money and a belated dedication on her part to slack off on the partying and to actually buckle down to her studies. When properly motivated, Cora was smart enough and dogged enough to accomplish whatever she set her mind to.

More about Cora later.

For Gene, the circumstances of his arrival among the ranks of those seeking employment continued an unfortunate family tradition.

At the time of Gene Tolliver's graduation, his father Marcus Tolliver, was a coverall- wearing railroad worker,

His daily lot for 16 of the past 22 years was to walk the trackside in a New York Central Railroad classification freight yard armed with a large, heavy oilcan with a three-foot- long spout. He was an oiler, and he team-worked with another oiler on the opposite side of the track.

Some background:

At each end of each axle of a freight car is a journal box, a cast iron structure filled with oil-soaked cotton waste. The cotton wicks the oil to the axle bearing surfaces to keep them cool and lubricated during the long runs across country.

As each railroad freight car slowly trundled by, Marcus would put his gloved hand against each of the wheel axle journal boxes that rolled slowly by his station in the freight yard. When one felt warmer than normal through the thick cotton material of his glove, he'd open the journal box lid and squirt in several generous dollops of lubricating oil.

Excessive warmth meant that the cotton waste that filled the journal boxes was dry and that the bearing surfaces of the axles in the journal boxes were heating up and wearing down. Adding more oil lubricated the bearing surfaces and cooled them back down.

A burning journal box might ignite the structure of the freight car, which might ignite its cargo, which might spread to other cars in the consist. In railroad parlance, a consist is the makeup of a train by classes, types, grades, and arrangement of the cars. It was every engineer's nightmare to look back and see one of his consist on fire.

The other job that Marcus did in the early part of those first 16 years was that of rider. Once a freight car has been uncoupled and pushed over the hump, gravity takes it down toward the switches that will sort it onto the correct track. The key concern is speed. One of the simplest ways to slow down a loose rolling freight car is to have a yard worker ride it and apply the mechanical brakes as needed.

Marcus did that when required, but he opted out of doing it as a regular thing when given the choice. He had seen too many accidents as the rider tried to hang on to a rocking car while working the brake wheel. Sometimes a man would fall off. The railroad was a dangerous place.

Marcus opted for the oil can. It was less exciting, but more likely to let him keep his limbs and his life.

The railroads were generally not the highest paying employers in the working economy, but were traditionally among the most secure. Once you passed your apprenticeship, and as long as you did your job and kept your nose clean, you had a job for life.

Twenty-two years before, Marcus had been a valued employee of the Knickerbocker Trust Company of New York, one of the largest banks in the United States. His Economics degree from CCNY had given him the necessary credentials to be entrusted in 1904 with an entry level position within such a prestigious institution.

By October, 1907, Marcus had become an associate investment counselor. He also had become a husband to a pretty wife and a father to a lusty bawling five-month old infant boy. They lived in a slightly run-down apartment building at the corner of Second Avenue and East 33rd street. It was clean, and relatively cheap, for Manhattan. On a nice day, Marcus could walk to work at the Knickerbocker Trust, which occupied much of the block at the corner of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street.

Marcus Tolliver was proud to be working for Knickerbocker Trust, considering it to be one of the finest, most ethical banking institutions in the nation. He had a position of considerable responsibility, and was considered a rising employee, due to his hard work and intelligence.

What Marcus could not know by October, 1907, was that during the past year, Knickerbocker Trust's funds had been diverted and illegally used by its then-president Charles T. Barney in a plan to drive up the cost of copper and corner the copper market.

What Mr. Barney could not know in October 1907, was that his unwise and illegal gamble was becoming undone. Across the continent, there was an attempt to stop a hostile takeover of an unrelated organization, which resulted in the dumping of millions of pounds of copper on the market. The cost of copper plummeted, and Mr. Barney's gamble had failed. He had planned to reimburse the Knickerbocker from his enormous profits; that plan was dead, too.

The substance of the Barney gamble and its unraveling was ferreted out by certain crusading newspaper financial reporters. They did what reporters do, made it public.

On Monday, October 21, 1907, the National Bank of Commerce announced that it would stop accepting cheques drawn on the Knickerbocker Trust Company, which triggered a run on the Knickerbocker; a deluge of depositors demanding their funds back.

They lined up in front of the Knickerbocker's headquarters demanding what no bank can ever give, even under the best of circumstances: a complete refund of all their deposits. The Bank officers closed and bolted the doors. An auditor was brought in to document what was obvious: there were no funds; Mr. Barney had embezzled them for his schemes. Mr. Barney shot himself to avoid criminal prosecution.

At 10 AM on that Monday, Marcus was told to stop his work and go home, along with all the other employees.

When he walked up to the building the next day, Tuesday, October 22, 1907, the big main doors were still locked and barred. He walked all around the building, looking for entry and for information. He did not find the former. He found the latter in the form of a brief notice nailed to a rear door.

"All employees of the Knickerbocker Trust company are terminated as of this date. It was dated the 21st."

Marcus walked up Fifth Avenue to the offices of the closest competitor bank. He had to push his way through a long line of frightened depositors to gain entrance. When he told the people on the door that he wanted to apply for a position, a harried-looking bank officer told him that they did not know if they would survive the week themselves.

Much the same was happening at every other financial institution that he trudged to, making his way all over the financial district, and he got similar responses. Although not too many ordinary citizens were aware of it at the time, the failure of the Knickerbocker was a tipping point for the Panic of 1907. The financial institutions were all beginning to be squeezed.

His trudging travels had taken him up Park Avenue to 42nd street, where Grand Central Terminal squatted athwart the intersection. It was noon, but Marcus had no appetite. He thought of his wife and baby, whom he was honor bound to support. Their family savings had been on deposit with the Knickerbocker. Their next rental payment was due at the end of the month, nine days away. Marcus had eight dollars in his wallet.

Marcus had read the Times carefully every day. He knew that unemployment had been rising as firms with idle inventory laid off production and sales personnel. People were not buying goods if they had any choice.

He walked up into the Terminal's Main Concourse and walked around, uncertain what to do, or even whether there was anything that he could do. Where else could he find work? He barely noted the travelers scurrying by, all blissfully unaware of the destruction of his own personal piece of the financial world and the National economy.

He came to a stairwell with a sign: New York Central Railroad Offices. Marcus went down, to find himself in a dimly lit lower corridor.

A roughly dressed laboring man brushed past him with a mumbled "Excuse me, Sir."

He followed the man, eventually coming to a doorway with ten or twelve laboring men lined up. There was a handwritten sign there: Hiring Today — One Job - Trackman. He watched. At intervals, the door would open and a doorkeeper would usher out a man with a glum look. Then the doorkeeper would hold the door open and the next in line would enter, only to come out looking unhappy himself a few minutes later.

Apparently the men were not passing some interview or test. Marcus got on the line.

The doorkeeper noticed him next time out, and sauntered over. He was a big brawny man with a kind map-of-Ireland face. "Sorry, Governor, this is a hiring line for New York Central Railroad trackworkers," he said. "It's laboring work; hard outdoor work. Not for the likes of educated men like you who wear suits. Sorry."

"Would you mind telling me what you are doing inside there?" Marcus asked. "Is there an interview? Is there a test?"

The doorkeeper laughed. "If you must know, they read each man a couple of sentences and he has to write them down. Then he has to read a few lines from a book. You have to be able to read and write to work for New York Central. Then finally there is a strength test. You have to be able to lift a hundred-pound sack of sand onto your shoulder and walk the length of the room.

"The strong guys, the goons, mostly can't read and write well enough, and the literate guys, the featherweights, can't heft the weight.

"A hundred pounds isn't that much when it's weights on a bar or your pretty bride as you carry her across a threshold, but as a dead weight in a sack, well, that's hard to heft. Most men could carry it if it's loaded onto their shoulder for them. It's the getting it up there that's hard.

"Now, excuse me, but I gotta get back to the door."

Marcus shrugged and went back down the hallway. At the stairwell at the end, he started up and then stopped. He took out his wallet and looked at what was left of his cash. And thought.

And waited.

When the next failed candidate came up, Marcus eyed his general size and build and let him pass.

He let the next man pass, too.

The third man was about Marcus' height and weight, and Marcus offered him a dollar if he would talk to him. It was not charity, he emphasized, he was paying for information. The man shrugged. His name was Joseph Torino, he said. At Marcus' request, Joe Torino told him about the reading and writing test, and then the weight lift. It squared well with what the doorkeeper had said.

"Well, I'm not much with the writing," Joe said, "so I never got to the lifting part, but I watched the man ahead of me try it. He couldn't get it up to his shoulder. There's a trick to it. I used to unload concrete bags for my uncle's construction business, and I learned how."

Marcus handed him the dollar and asked for a demonstration. The man chuckled and showed him how to heft the sack. "You have to heave it up and then shift your body to get under the weight and get your legs into the lift." he said. Marcus, who was no weakling, and who had played football and boxed at CCNY, took careful note of the demonstration.

"What are you going to do now?" Marcus asked. "Are there any other places around here that are hiring?"

Joe didn't know of any. He said that this had been his last possibility for the day. He told Marcus of a couple of charitable missions that posted job openings for employers, and Marcus noted their locations in his notebook.

Joe said he could get room and board and a little pocket money by working for his uncle. "He's a stingy old tightfist, but at least I can have a roof over my head and a couple squares a day. I know some that are sleeping on the ground in the parks."

Marcus had a vision of Molly and baby Eugene shivering on the greensward.

He offered Joe another five dollars if he would exchange clothes. Six dollars was what the statistical average worker made in a day. But common laborers like Joe were fortumate to make three dollars in a day. Joe realized what Marcus was trying to do. He looked at Marcus' expensive shoes. "What about those?" he said, pointing at the Cordovan wingtips.

"Everything you can see," Marcus said.

A few minutes later, a shabbily dressed and shod Marcus got onto the end of the line. When his turn came at the door, the doorkeeper's eyes widened. "Someone steal your suit, Governor?"

Marcus nodded. "Something like that. You have a job here, and it's not for the likes of educated men who wear suits, you said. I can't uneducate myself, but I need a job. So, no suit."

The doorkeeper grinned and let him enter. They watched a man struggle with the reading and writing test, and get a marginal pass. Then the man, who looked big and strong enough, failed to get the heavy sack up and over his shoulder. Marcus could see what mistakes the man had made and how the demonstration by Joe had been right on.

The big doorkeeper showed the failed candidate out and shut the door. "No one left on line," he said. He watched Marcus sign in and write the dictated sentences, and then read the test sentences from the book.

"No surprises there. Ok, Mister Tolliver, heft the bag."

It had been some time since Marcus had done much heavy lifting, so he took his time. He thought of what he had seen the previous candidate do wrong. Then he thought of what Joe had shown him.

And then he pictured the faces of his sweet wife, Molly and little Gene.

Marcus took a deep breath, and grunted as he heaved the hundred pounds of dead weight sand up and stepped under it to bring it to his shoulder. He plodded the length of the room and back. The weight made his feet feel leaden, but doing it made him hopeful.

The doorkeeper laughed and helped him ease the bag down, then clapped Marcus on the shoulder. "Damned well done, Tolliver. In or out of a suit, you'll do. You'll be working for me, mind, and I'll work your educated ass off. If I had an office job, you'd have it, but all I can hire these days are the trackwalkers."

He fished a grubby card out of his vest.

"Well, you'll have to figure out how to get up to the White Plains Freightyard. Once you get past probation you'll have a pass that you can use to ride any Central train from the Terminal. There are trains that will let you off right at the freightyard. But for now, you'll have to hitch. Ever hitch-hiked?"

Marcus had hitched through high school and college. It was a common thing in those easier days. Most wagon drivers would give a lift to someone who looked all right. He nodded.

"All right, Tolliver, I expect you to report at 7AM tomorrow at the Main Gate. Stick around for a minute while I close up."

He told the elderly clerk who had administered the test to go on back up to the yard.

The big doorkeeper sat down and eyed his new hire. "My name is Dolan, and I'm the foreman of the trackmen. Welcome aboard the New York Central railroad, Tolliver. One big happy family." There was a trace of sarcasm in that last.

He asked about how Marcus came to be looking for work and about his family, then where they were living.

Marcus told him everything, and Dolan whistled. "Tough about the job. I don't think you'll ever see a red cent from them. When them white collar thieves get done they'll have sucked away all of the money.

"How long are you paid up through on the rent?" he asked. "I ask because you get paid on the first and the fifteen of the month. You won't get a New York Central paycheck until November 15th, and that'll be a half of a normal pay, about $20, because you're starting in the middle of the pay period: the 23rd to the 31st. So you'll be broke for a while. I'l bet you havn't but a couple of simoleons left in your wallet to get through til the fifteenth.

"So how long are you paid up through on the rent?"

"November's rent is due the thirty-first of this month," Marcus said. "They're holding a month's rent security deposit."

"Ok. That's pretty standard. You go tell them you're moving out. Because you are. You can't afford that rent on starting wages and you need to live closer to the yards. You'll have to kiss that security deposit goodbye."

He explained how New York Central had bought up the mortgage paper on a block of small single-family homes that went into default on the mortgages. That was when a local White Plains plant closed late in 1905. The houses were within walking distance of the White Plains freightyard ... if you didn't mind walking a couple of miles. Now, the big railroad was offering the houses to their employees at a discount price.

The Central used a sliding scale of payments to match the wages of the worker. And in consideration of the tough times, they waived the first month's mortgage payment and any closing fees. Even at his low starting wages, Marcus would be able to afford the modest mortgage, and his family would be secure.

Dolan pulled out his wallet and took out two ten dollar bills. "You owe me twenty-two dollars, with the extra two dollars being interest on this loan I'm making you. Pay me eleven on December 15th and eleven more more on January 15th. That'll get us all square. Go on, take it, man. You need food for you and your family. Like I said before, I'll work your ass off as sweat interest." That last was said with a wink.

"Well, trackman Tolliver, here's where we'll be going our separate ways. I'm catching a train up to White Plains."

Marcus walked home and told Molly what had happened, and they started packing little used things. The next morning, Marcus got up at 3:30AM and hitch-hiked north up the quiet predawn streets of Manhattan and into the Bronx and beyond. It wasn't as hard as he had anticipated, because there were a number of delivery vehicles out after 4AM.

Milk wagons, bread delivery wagons, and fruit and vegetable wagons were on the go to get their goods to the stores and markets before normal people got up.

In those hard times, the working people tried to help each other out. In his workman's clothes, Marcus found that delivery vans were always willing to give him a lift. And between rides, he would jog toward his destination, a habit he had maintained since his college boxing training days. He jogged up to the freightyard gate by 6AM.

A watchman let him in when he said that Dolan had hired him. By the time Dolan came in at 7AM, Marcus had been talking to some of the veterans and was learning the lingo. There was a little hazing, too, and Marcus went along, good naturedly. Dolan gave him some heavy lifting and cleaning up tasks, and watched Marcus tackle the unaccustomed manual jobs.

He also saw one of the freightyard bullies try to cow the greenhorn. Marcus tried to ignore the man, until he got insulting. He'd asked if Marcus was married and then started making remarks about how pretty his wife must be and how maybe she'd like to try a real man some time.

With that, Marcus stood up and punched the man with no warning or ceremony; a straight hard left jab to the nose that splattered the bully's blood all over. He followed it up with a powerful right to the breadbasket.

The bully was a big tough man and a bruiser, and game enough, but he was no match for Marcus' controlled fury and skill. It turned out that college-level boxing tactics trumped bull rushes and wild swings.

In the tough working world a man had to stand up for himself. By the end of the fray, Marcus was bleeding but still standing and the tough was being helped away by his friends. The other men decided to make friends with this compact, sturdy battler with the soft voice, classy way of speech, and precise punishing fists.

Dolan had seen it all and smiled to himself. He had a good feeling about Tolliver, had it from the start. There were not many white-coller workers who would have done what Marcus had done to support his family. Dolan didn't think there was a man in the New York Central hierarchy above him that could heft that bag of sand.

Marcus hitch-hiked successfully for the remaining four days, showing up early each day and getting an early jump on the crap jobs that, as a new man, were his lot. Dolan warned him that he had to clock in at 7 and out at the end of the the regular shift and he wouldn't get paid for the extra time he worked.

Marcus said he'd rather be busy than just sit around. Dolan grunted, but had a grin on his face when he walked away. He saw Marcus lend a hand here and there when another trackman was having a problem.

After his half-day of work on the following Saturday, a couple of his new friends among the trackmen helped the Tollivers move. Dolan donated his presence, his largely unneeded oversight and moving advice, and the use of a big New York Central stake- sided wagon with a two-horse hitch.

Once moved in, Molly began to make a host of new friends from amongst the trackmen's wives and Marcus found that his new friends appreciated his advice with their financial and banking problems.

After a couple of years, the elderly clerk took his pension and retired, moving back over to Ireland. Dolan offered the office job to Marcus, but the pay was less and there was no advancement. He recommended a friend of his who had worked at the Knickerbocker, and Dolan hired him on Marcus' say-so.

So that was how Marcus, with his college degree, took a low-paying job with the railroad so he could support his wife and child and weather the Panic of 1907.

As he worked, he gained seniority and higher wages, and his family's standard of living improved. But Marcus never got over the shock of losing almost everything while holding a cushy upscale job, and he never looked to get out of the blue-collar railroad job.

He read the financial pages almost every day and noted how the most secure of institutions continued to sometimes go belly up, throwing the white-collar employees out on the street...

After 16 years, Dolan was killed in a freightyard incident. A rolling freight car's rider had fallen off. The New York Central letter of condolence stated that Foreman Dolan, at hazard of his own life, had leaped aboard the train and slowed it down enough that a switch could be thrown to divert it from crashing into a consist of explosive chemicals.

Unfortunately, the errant freightcar then barreled into a steel and concrete stop barrier on the side track and Foreman Dolan was killed in the crash.

His widow, Amy Dolan was granted a condolence award of 50 percent on top of Dolan's normal pension had he retired after 20 years. The New York Central valued its best employees and took care of them and their families.

Marcus was awarded the Foreman's job.

That small house in White Plains was the only home that Gene remembered. Marcus often told his story to young Gene, so that his son could understand how life could derail a person's optimistic plans.

Young Gene listened, and pondered, and came to his own quiet conclusions. He loved his father, and realized that he had done an honorable thing at a critical point in his life.

But Gene also drew a different lesson from the experience. Marcus had been quite comfortable in his position with Knockerbocker Trust. He had never been placed in a position where he had to take a risk. Events had forced him to take one.

Gene drew from it that there was little virtue or security in merely being careful and conforming.

As noted, like his father before him, new graduate Gene Tolliver had unfortunate timing as he faced an uncertain work prospect.

When Gene had begun his undergraduate studies in 1925, the Nation was fairly prosperous and jobs were plentiful.

That was just about when Miss Cora Crown had flunked out of Sweetbriar and had provisionally been accepted at Bryn Mawr.

The economic climate by midsummer 1929 was growing bleak. Unsold inventories had begun to pile up in warehouses. Recessions were already under way in Great Britain and Germany. In August 1929, the United States was sliding into the recession that would ultimately become the Great Depression.

Jobs for History majors were nonexistent. Marcus said that he might be able to get him an interview for a clerking position with New York Central, and Gene was grateful to have the option. But they agreed that that would be a fallback position.

In his other possible career choice, Gene was more fortunate. The great trade slump had not yet hit the book publishing industry. During economic hard times, people had always turned to means of temporary escape. Films were one way, books were another.

Gene had literate parents who had encouraged his reading and writing pursuits from his first days of formal schooling on. He had taken a minor in English, and all of the papers he had researched and written in pursuit of both his major and minor had developed good writing and editing skills.

Around that time, a publishing rival had conducted a talent raid on the prestigious Crown Books Publishers that had stripped them of many middle rank Editors and Senior Editor/Readers. The junior people were being promoted to fill those positions and there were openings for manuscript readers, also called First Readers. In the publishing world, manuscripts were MSs, for short. Technically, First Readers actually bore the title of Junior Editors.

Gene passed the interviews and the editing tests. He was hired in late August. As a First Reader, he was assigned to reading the slushpile.

The twenties had brought a new generation of writers, and it seemed as if just about everyone with a typewriter or a pencil and some foolscap thought he or she could write a novel; something at least as good as what Hemingway and Faulkner and Glasgow and Fitzgerald were getting published.

So every publishing house received mailbags full of MSs daily, unsolicited, and unagented, and by complete unknowns. Most of the submissions were accompanied by self-addressed stamped return envelopes, known familiarly as SASEs.

These MSs constituted the slushpile, also known as over-the transom submissions. They were 99.99% dreadful, and a great waste of time. But every publisher knew that at least some of the current and former great writers' first published books had been discovered in a slushpile by a lowly First Reader.

It was every publisher's dream to find the next Hemingway or Faulkner or Glasgow or Fitzgerald. It was every publisher's nightmare that a rival would find the next Hemingway or Faulkner or Glasgow or Fitzgerald.

So there were always a number of low-paid people reading through the dreck, looking for the next great hot writer.

And Edward Eugene Tolliver was one of them. He quickly picked up the tricks of the trade. If a handwritten MS was illegible, and had a SASE, back it went to the author with a preprinted note advising that it be typed and resubmitted. (The E in SASE was generic; most novel length submissions came in a thick shipping package or a stationery box. In practice, most submitting authors would simply enclose sufficient return postage stamps and a self-addressed label to affix to the package.)

Typically, the reader would skim the first few pages, which would usually show whether the author had any hint of a style, or semblance of writing ability, or even any sign of a plot. If the MS had none of the above, back it went into its SASE with another preprinted note: "We regret that your MS does not meet our current needs." If the rejected submission lacked an SASE, it went in the trash.

The more conscientious readers, like Gene, might jump ahead some fifty or so pages to see if there was any improvement. Since the beginning was usually a fair sample of the overall quality, to read further was considered even a greater waste of time by many, but Gene and a few others knew that some beginning writers, ironically, had a problem with beginnings.

Gene averaged about 25 to 30 MSs per day, well above average for a First Reader. He could usually spot the dreck within three paragraphs.

If a First Reader thought that there was some merit to anything encountered, it would be sent upstairs to one of five Senior Reader/Editors. Anything that caught THAT Demigod's eye would be flagged for review and further consideration.

Anything thus flagged would generate a short form letter to the author asking him or her to call or make an appointment to stop by the offices to discuss possible editorial revision to make their work more publishable. The name to contact was that of the First Reader.

It was not a commitment to publish; merely an expression of cautious interest. Out of every 2,000 slushpile submissions, possibly one or two might get to that point.