National Affairs: Middletown Revisited

Unemployment in the midst of prosperity has become the most paradoxical and most talked-about aspect of the U.S. economy. Unemployment lingered even after the economy pulled out of the 1957-58 recession, and in the current mild recession, with employment and total personal income at cheeringly high levels, the unemployment total has reached 5,700,000, highest since mid-1941. From Muncie, Ind. (pop. 68,600), the "typical" U.S. community that was the subject of 1929''s pioneering sociological study Middletown, TIME Correspondent Dudley Doust last week went beyond statistics to report the new unemployment in human terms:

Two contrasting establishments in Muncie are doing a brisk business. One is Muncie's top department store, Ball Stores, Inc. "We had the best December in our 50-year history," glows General Merchandise Manager Ralph Chase. "We don't seem to be following the trend." The other is the Delaware County surplus food distribution center, where needy families collect their monthly rations of federal handouts — dried eggs, dried milk, flour, corn meal, lard, butter. This month the distribution center will stay open twice as many days as it usually does in order to handle the demands of some 3,000 Delaware County families — largest number "on commodities" in the center's three-year history.

The cheerfulness at the Ball cash registers is symbolic of one face of Muncie. Other department stores are also doing a pretty good business. J. C. Penney, the Industrial Trust & Savings Bank, and the Muncie Federal Savings & Loan have put up new buildings within the past two years. A full work force comes and goes from the Chevrolet transmission plant and the Delco-Remy battery plant. But Warner Gear, maker of auto transmissions and normally Muncie's No. 1 employer, has laid off one-third of its boom-time payroll of 4,500. Many of the city's foundries and tool and die shops that supply the automakers are at least partly shut down. Merchants dependent on blue-collar trade are faring badly; a credit jeweler complains that he marked $30 watches down to $14.95 and still nobody buys. A low-price furniture dealer groans that he is averaging one customer a day.

About 12.5% of Muncie's labor force is out of work, as against a national average of 6.8%. For every seven people who are working in Muncie. one is looking — and looking.

Checks from Montana. In the atmosphere of sharp contrast there is a despondency among the unemployed that arises from insecurity, boredom, a sense of failure and futility, rather than from physical hardship. Compared to the unemployed in other days or other countries, Muncie's jobless are pretty well off, cushioned from dire want by unemployment checks and other forms of social generosity.