The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-09-21
Real Life Parade Seen
by Home Loan Workers
Humor and Grim Tragedy
Team in Office OF
Corporation.
BY GILBERT LOVE
Times Special Writer

PITTSBURGH, Sept. Zl.-SM
men sit behind a long counter in a
Fourth avenue office while life in all
its phases stalks before them.
They have no need Of books or
plays to bring them melodrama,
humor, pathos, despair. All are
before them constantly in the
anxious-eyed crowds that have filed
the office since the Home owners
Loan Corporation first opened its
doors to harassed property holders
here six weeks ago.
Humor? Listen to the militant
looking woman talking to an Of
fetal.
You're here to relieve home
owners, aren't you? Well, there's
been a dead skunk in my cistern for
weeks, simply weeks. I can't get it
out. If you can't recommend some
one who can take that skunk out of
that well you'll have to come out to
my place yourself. If a dead skunk
in well isn't cause for relief, I
don't know what is"
Sweetened Diplomacy
And there's a man who has tried
every logical argument to induce
the woman who holds his mortgage
to exchange it for bonds of the loan
corporation. Now he's going to try
taking her a box of candy.
Pathos? Look at the small boy
over there displaying a letter he
received from the White House. He
had written about his father, who
loaned all his money to a man on
a mortgage and now has to keep his
family in a cellar because he can't
collect. The corporation will see
what it can do.
Melodrama? Listen to this dia-
log between mortgage holder and
little, foreign-locking home owner.
Mortgage Holder: I'D be a fool
to trade my mortgage for these
bonds. That's a good property.
Better than the ore I'm living in.
I'm going to foTeclose and move
into it."
Home Owner (aside): I'll kill
him if he does"
Old Couple Loses All
Despair? There's a very old cou-
pie, the man emaciated and scarcely
able to walk, telling the sympa-
thetic man behind the counter that
they're about to lose the last thing
they have in the world, their dilapi-
dated home. Nothing can be done
for them since the mortgage on the
house calls for more money than the
place could possibly be worth.
Tragedy? Over near the door,
with a handkerchief to her eyes, is
a woman who didn't even know her
home had been sold by the sheriff.
1t was willed to her. She did not
understand terms of the mortgage
and can not yet see how it could
have been sold.
Villainy? A demonstrated Italian
is explaining in broken English, with
his student son supplying words
here and there, how he paid his
mortgage holder 81 800 over a pc
Rod of years and was only credited
with $780, The clerk is trying to de-
termine whether the old fellow was
really cheated or is merely confused.
Arrogance? In strides a man who
slapS down the deed to his house
and demands 81 500 "at once"
One Woman's Problem
Difficulties? A huge square-f faced
woman is explaining to the clerk
that she'll have trouble getting the
application for loan filled out be-
cause she doesn't know any one who
can write.
Then, for a change, look at some
joy. There goes a man who had
come in the door burdened with
worry. His mortgage payments we're
long overdue, his roof was leaking,
his furnace needed mending for
winter and the city was pressing him
for back taxes.
He has just found out that the
Home Owners Loan Corporation
will pay the holder of his mortgage
in bonds and that he need not pay
the corporation anything until he
gets on his feet, even if that takes
three years. The corporation will
hire a contractor to fix the roof and
another to mend the furnace and
pay the city the back taxes.