Struggling to Cope with These Trying Times

The pervasive economic malaise is certainly democratic in its sweep. Almost everybody--whether affluent or poor, young or old, urban or rural, white, black or brown--rightly feels a little or a lot less well off than several years ago. Some examples:

BELEAGUERED BOUTIQUE. When Barbara Edlund opened her bath-accessories boutique The Royal Flush on San Francisco's Union Street 16 months ago, a two-roll package of campy printed toilet paper sold for $1.25. Today the same package sells for $2--a price that Mrs. Edlund concedes is "ridiculous." She is merely passing along to customers astronomical wholesale price increases on a wide variety of items; for example, an importer of bamboo magazine racks has recently doubled the price to $8. The prices are discouraging many potential buyers and Mrs. Edlund has fired her only salesgirl. Though her husband, a lawyer, "suggests every morning that I sell the store," she has no plans for throwing in the towel. "People say that if you leave your heart in San Francisco, you leave it on Union Street," she says wistfully. "Maybe they leave their hearts, but not cold cash."

CRUMBLING COOKIE BAKER. A year ago, Baker Louis Calabrese, 45, of Carnegie, Pa., had plenty of competitors in the business of baking cookie-like miniature waffles that are known as pizzeles. Now he thinks that he has a monopoly. All of his rivals, he believes, have been shut down by the vicious cost squeeze that threatens to close Calabrese's Caroline Baking Co. (1973 sales, $200,000). In the past eight months, oil of anise has risen from $3 per lb. to $40. Because the high price of chickenfeed is forcing many farmers to slaughter their hens, eggs are both scarce and more expensive. Says he: "If prices keep rising like this I could go out of business in a few months." Calabrese has reduced the number of pizzelles in a package from seven to six, foregoing a price increase because "I had to raise the price from 33-c- to 39-c- just six months ago."

SOCIAL INSECURITY. David Seidman, 68, once looked forward to a comfortable retirement. He had worked 20 years as a cloth cutter in Los Angeles, earning $160 a week when he left and had invested $8,000 in a savings and loan. But inflation has robbed Seidman of his dreams. "I am now living on social insecurity and a little interest from my savings," he says bitterly. "If I had not had that I would have died."

A rent increase from $84 to $92 on Seidman's one-room apartment in sunny but seedy East Hollywood almost totally negated the latest increase in his $230-a-month Social Security check. Climbing costs have purged cottage cheese from his meatless diet (he suffers from a cardiovascular disorder and subsists on nuts, grains, fruits and beans). Despite Medicare, Seidman has had to dip into his savings to cover medical bills. He recently paid $700 for dental work and $140 for a pair of special orthopedic shoes, and fears that he will have to make another withdrawal to cover some of the cost of an operation later this year. "I'm mad about inflation," says Seid man, "and I know I must fight back." He has joined an organization called Fight Inflation Together, which has sponsored boycotts of meat and milk and picketed super markets to protest high prices.

WALL STREET REFUGEE. "You knew that there was a Depression in the distant past, and you had it in your mind that this could happen again. But you never thought it would. Expense accounts were liberal, lunches were given, drinks flowed." That was the way it was for William Hannafin, 44, of Manhattan, before hard times hit the securities business.

When Blyth & Co. Inc., the brokerage firm for which he worked as a $25,000-a-year portfolio manager and drug-industry analyst, was merged in 1972 with Eastman Dillon Union Securities Inc., Hannafin lost his job. Like thousands of other Wall Street refugees, he is seeking work and failing to find it as more securities firms cut their staffs, merge or fold.

Five months ago, Hannafin, a bachelor with a law degree from Colum bia University, joined the Forty-Plus Club of New York, a nonprofit cooperative for executives and professionals who are seeking jobs. Each week four or five of the club's 130 members resign to take new jobs--but Hannafin does not know when he will become one of the lucky leavers. "My chances are considerably dimmer than other members of the club, the financial business being what it is," he says. "It's difficult to apply for a job in a totally unrelated field. The only other thing is to go into business, and I wouldn't try that now." With so many options foreclosed, Hannafin is resigned to a long wait for the right job. "I'm beating my head against a stone wall," he sighs. "I'm getting nowhere."

PREACHING ECONOMY. "Theology books used to be about $4.95," says the Rev. James Butler, 59, of the First Presbyterian Church in Bismarck, N. Dak. "Now they are $7, $8 or $10. You have to gulp before you buy." Because collections have not kept pace with inflation, Butler has been forced to cut the church's projects and staff to a minimum. When the parsonage fell into disrepair, the Butlers themselves repainted it and pasted up new wallpaper. "The estimates from contractors were just too high," recalls Mrs. Butler. "We didn't want the church to have to do so much for us."

The Butlers, who are putting two of their children through college, have made thrift the corner stone of their lives. "I'm always looking to use something in a creative way," says Mrs. Butler, 57, who works as a school teacher's aide. "I never buy anything that I can make for myself." She has recycled melted wax into candles, wraps gifts in old newspapers and never buys on credit. Still, the Butlers have been unable to set aside funds for retirement. "We had hoped that we would travel after we retired," says Mrs. Butler, "but now I'm not so sure that we are going to be able to."

BITTER HARVEST. On Peggy and Byron Jones' 1,600-acre farm in McLean County, Ill., the only thing that is as high as an elephant's eye is the cost of raising the corn crop. In 1974, says Jones, 35, "the cost of fertilizer tripled. We were paying $79 a ton last year, we paid $241 a ton this year, and we've been told that soon we're going to be paying $350 a ton." The fertilizer increases, added to a big jump in fuel prices and the cost of farm machinery, have ballooned the cost of planting and harvesting an acre of corn from $109 to more than $200. To make matters worse, this summer's drought wiped out much of the corn. Because of the soaring cost of feed, Jones stands to lose $10 a head on the 5,000 hogs he is fattening for market. Adding up the losses, Jones expects that his 1974 income will be only one-fourth what it was in 1973.

Jones has put off $20,000 worth of capital expenditures and increased his operating loans by 30%. But there will be little change in the family's lifestyle. "We butcher our own meat," says Mrs. Jones, 35. "I have a huge garden and make all our bread and most of our clothes." Recently she went into nearby Bloomington to stock up on turkey that was selling on special for 39-c- per lb. When another shopper asked, "Why are you doing that? I got them cheaper last year," Mrs. Jones curtly replied: "Because I know for a fact that it costs 69-c- per lb. to produce these turkeys."

DOWN THE LADDER. More than anything else, George and Anita Fernandez of Los Angeles wanted to become solidly established members of the middle class. Two years ago, they seemed well on the way. They had a comfortable home and three carefully spaced children; every year they vacationed in San Francisco or Albuquerque. Mrs. Fernandez had even quit her job as a medical assistant after the third child was born. Now the Fernandezes face the prospect of being knocked a few rungs down the ladder. "In the past two years we have just been trying to hold on to what we have," says Mrs. Fernandez, 37. "And we are not able to do even that."

The collapse of the construction industry is the cause of the Fernandezes' plight. The city government has halted almost all municipal construction, and Fernandez, a draftsman, spends part of his day at make-work, redoing plans that were only recently completed. His cherished dream of an engineering training job has faded; some engineers in his office have been demoted to draftsmen. Mrs. Fernandez, who longs to be just a housewife, will return to work when the youngest child enters school. Meanwhile the family is fighting a losing battle with inflation. "This is a chauvinist household," she says. "The only one who gets meat is my husband. And he only gets it twice a week."

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