I quoted my father's autobiography in Pieces of a Life. John Kellogg said, "In October of 1929 a serious depression started. Mail order houses (branches) quickly reflect any change in orders for houses they operate on a percentage of sales. In 1930 the Chicago House [of Montgomery Ward] sold about 10% of what it had sold in 1928. This meant that the House Manager had 2 million dollars in 1930 to do what he had done with 20 million dollars in 1928. This called for the most vigilant curbing of all expense.
We liked our little flat building, but with things so shaky we traded the 3-flat for vacant lots west of Wilmette; the payments on the lots were so low I was reasonably sure I could carry them. I was not sure I could carry the 3-flat;suppose that some of the tenants lost their job or we did?"
This didn't work out as John had hoped. The land ended up being taken for part of an expressway and, from what I heard, John didn't get all of his money out of it. Yet no one could have predicted the terrible financial hurricane that was coming.
The picture shows John and Ruth in Ann Arbor just weeks after their wedding in 1929.
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