Chapter 4: The Great Depression
Colin's consciousness, enveloped by the Green Light, was constantly being pulled.
Within the light, countless figures seemed to shift and change—some laughing, some wailing, some arguing, some fighting. These images flickered in and out of view, yet were extremely unreal.
By the time Colin opened his eyes again, his surroundings had completely changed.
He went from the cold concrete ground of a New York alley to a warm room.
"Just as I thought..."
Looking at the scene before him, Colin's face showed no surprise.
In fact, he experienced this situation every day.
As soon as he closed his eyes, his consciousness would be pulled by the light into another world, where he would live a completely different life as Collin Roper.
It wasn't that Colin hadn't suspected this so-called other world was just a particularly vivid dream.
However, with his continuous attempts, he finally confirmed it.
All of this was not just a dream of his own imagining, but an actual, existing world.
"Who would have thought that even transmigration would come with a buy-one-get-one-free deal these days?"
Regarding this, Colin had grumbled to himself more than once.
This constant shuttling between two worlds, day and night, was beginning to confuse even a transmigrator like him.
Therefore, to accurately distinguish between the two worlds, he made a distinction.
He called the world before him the Main World—a normal world without superheroes.
The other world, which had superheroes but was completely different from what he remembered, he called the Anti-World.
Of course, this so-called "Main" and "Anti" was merely a definition given from his own subjective awareness; its purpose was simply to help him keep them straight.
A dull ache in his chest pulled Colin's thoughts back to reality.
He looked down; the gunshot wound, which should have been fatal, had become a lightly bleeding injury on his chest. If not for the occasional twinge of pain when he moved, who would have thought that only a few minutes ago, Colin had been shot?
"I just wonder what it will be like when I go back."
Following a familiar routine, he found some bandages in the room and quickly dressed the wound.
Colin stood before the wardrobe and skillfully tied his necktie. He then selected a dark gray overcoat and put it on. Moving his arms in front of the mirror, he made sure the bandages didn't restrict his movement before picking up the bowler hat from the desk and setting it on his head.
Rubbing his cold hands together, he walked to the door. He stopped, hesitated for a moment, then turned back to the desk and opened a drawer. From inside, he pulled out an old-fashioned revolver and slipped it into his overcoat pocket.
Considering he had just been dangerously shot, Colin felt it was necessary to take some precautions before heading out.
Even if the incident had occurred in the other world.
But who could guarantee it wouldn't happen here, too? After all...
Suppressing the thought, Colin stood at the door, took a deep breath, adjusted his hat, pulled the door open, and stepped out.
What greeted his eyes was the familiar yet unfamiliar metropolis—New York.
Or rather, New York in 1931.
...
In November, a bitter wind swept through New York.
The gloom of the Great Depression still lingered. Walking on the streets against the biting cold, one could see hurried pedestrians and numb-faced homeless people everywhere. It was hard to imagine that just a few years ago, most of these homeless people had been living respectable lives; many had been farm owners, engineers, school principals, or even bank presidents.
However, under the impact of the Great Depression, everything had turned to nothing.
Tens of thousands of Americans watched as their life savings vanished within days.
According to the latest September estimates from Fortune Magazine, over 34 million adult men, women, and children were unemployed across the United States during the Great Depression (child labor was legal during this era), accounting for approximately 28% of the total population.
And this was a conservative estimate, as it did not include the 11 million households in rural farming communities.
The unemployment of industrial workers also affected farmers, and eventually, neither side could afford the other's products.
It was as if they were caught in a vicious cycle.
Farmers' arduous labor yielded severely disproportionate returns. A cartload of oats couldn't buy a pair of low-quality shoes; planting wheat resulted in a loss of $1.50 per acre. Using corn as fuel was more cost-effective than selling corn to buy coal for burning. Farmers couldn't earn back the money spent feeding their livestock, preferring to abandon the animals rather than sell them at a loss. Milk was poured into the Mississippi River.
Tens of thousands of people were evicted from their homes, losing the very shelter they needed to survive. In the same year, a large number of people died from famine and malnutrition.
And all of this was merely the most common sight during the Great Depression.
...
In the past, Colin's understanding of the Great Depression had come mostly from books and photographs. It was difficult to feel much empathy through a few black-and-white photos or simple lines of text.
Now, experiencing all of this firsthand, he truly understood the hardship of this era, especially for the people living through it. Amidst the massive wave of unemployment, a stable job had become a luxury. The wages many people earned after a full day of back-breaking work weren't even enough to buy a loaf of bread.
Even finding such work required a great deal of luck, and it wasn't available every day.
Walking down the street, Colin had already seen more than one person begging.
He also saw raggedly dressed children, their bodies exceptionally thin from prolonged malnutrition. These children huddled beside their mothers, relying on their mothers' equally gaunt bodies to shield themselves from the biting wind. The mother herself held a hand to her mouth, her gaze fixed on the distance. Her eyes were filled with a sorrowful, deadened numbness that betrayed a loss of all hope.
Seeing this, Colin's steps involuntarily slowed.
He wanted to do something but felt deeply powerless.
Scenes like this were ubiquitous throughout the Great Depression.
This was not an isolated problem but a social crisis that had swept across the United States and the entire Western world.
It would later be regarded as the most prolonged, profound, and severe cyclical economic crisis in the history of capitalism.
Taking a deep breath, Colin pulled his gaze away from the shabbily dressed woman.
He turned and quickly left the block, passing through a deserted commercial street until he finally stopped in front of an old building on the corner.
"Messenger Newspaper"
Looking up at the sign on the building, Colin adjusted his hat and cleared his throat.
Only then did he reach out and push open the door to the newspaper agency.
(end of chapter)