Russell, Anthony OH7_036

Abstract

The Great Depression in Weber County, Utah, is an Oral History Project by Mack S. Taft for completion of his Master's Thesis at Utah State University during the summer of 1969. The interviews address the Great Depression through the eyes of individuals in several different occupations including: Bankers, Laborers, Railroad Workers, Attorneys, Farmers, Educators, Businessmen, Community and Church Leaders, Housewives, Children and Physicians. All of these individuals lived in Weber County from 1929 to 1941. The interviews were based on what they remembered about the depression, how they felt about those events and how it affected their life then and now. ; This is an oral history interview with Anthony Russell. Mr. Russell describes teaching at Weber High School during the Depression and continuing his education at the Agricultural College in Logan. He recalls working for the California Packing Company during summers, federal programs improving the watershed, the impact of the Depression on the LDS Church, educating his children, and so on. ; 14p.; 29cm.; 2 bound transcripts; 4 file folders. 1 sound disc: digital; 4 3/4 in. ; Oral History Program Anthony Russell Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Anthony Russell Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Copyright © 2016 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Great Depression in Weber County, Utah, is an Oral History Project by Mack S. Taft for completion of his Master's Thesis at Utah State University during the summer of 1969. The forty-five interviews address the Great Depression through the eyes of individuals in several different occupations including: Bankers, Laborers, Railroad Workers, Attorneys, Farmers, Educators, Businessmen, Community and Church Leaders, Housewives, Children and Physicians. All of these individuals lived in Weber County from 1929 to 1941. The interviews were based on what they remembered about the depression, how they felt about those events and how it affected their life then and now. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Russell, Anthony, an oral history by Mack S. Taft, circa 1960s, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Anthony Russell. Mr. Russell describes teaching at Weber High School during the Depression and continuing his education at the Agricultural College in Logan. He recalls working for the California Packing Company during summers, federal programs improving the watershed, the impact of the Depression on the LDS Church, educating his children, and so on. The interviewer is Mack Taft. MT: Is it correct that you were teaching at Weber High School during the Depression years? AR: Yes, I was there during the entire Depression. MT: Before we turned the recording on, you mentioned something about the teachers sponsoring students at the high school. Would you explain that a bit, please? AR: Well, that was quite a serious affair with the students at Weber there during the Depression. Some of the students came from homes here in the county that were hard-hit by the Depression, and the teachers at Weber – I really don't recall the exact year, but it was during those times when money was hard to come by because a good pickup load of potatoes would buy one World History book or a United States history book. Things were so rough financially that the small wage that the history teachers themselves were getting – each teacher at Weber High sponsored a student and bought their books for them, free, gratis. The students ofttimes spoke about the produce they had at home. For instance, some of the homes had eggs, and we set up a little exchange room out there and the students would bring several dozen eggs, and the teachers needing to have eggs in their homes would go and buy the eggs and also butter. 2 Butter was also bought from the students. I remember that Grade A butter was sold for 19 cents a pound, and eggs were between 12 and 15 cents a dozen for large ranch eggs. So that's how the students and teachers cooperated there for a year or two, at any rate, before things got better. MT: How much was a teacher earning at that time? AR: There were two or three of us that were on a wage salary of $1,100 for the entire year. We held degrees from licensed educational institutions, the University of Utah and the old Agricultural College in Logan. That was as much as the Board of Education felt that they could pay. That wasn't just to one; it was to a goodly number of the teachers employed there – $1,100 was the wage for the entire year. MT: Now, what about women teachers at that time. Would you explore that just a little bit? AR: There were several lady teachers there, and there were a few of them that were single. It wasn't too popular at that time, I recall, for the Board to hire married [female] teachers. The feeling was in those days that a married woman shouldn't take a job that a man would fill, so as a result of that, there weren't too many married women on the faculty. Most of them were authorized teachers who held degrees or else they wouldn't be accredited schools. They have to be very careful about that. MT: You were employed during the entire Depression? AR: Yes, I was employed the whole entire period of the Depression. Then, of course, I left Ogden in September 1929, to go to school in Logan to advance my 3 scholastic standing. That was the year that the Depression broke, and I had mortgaged my home here in Ogden to go to school up there. I got a $10 deposit on a home that I had over on Grant Avenue between 17th and 16th Streets, and that was all the money that I would receive for that home for that entire year, was $10. They just couldn't pay it. I had figured on taking money from the home that I had here in Ogden, and paying my rent in Logan, but that didn't work out when that Depression hit. So I had to take a $500 loan from a man here in Ogden who had some money to loan, and he was willing to loan it to me. I had had some business relationships with him before, and he felt very confident that all would work out. So I borrowed $500 from him. But before spring came, I was crawling along on my hands and knees on the agricultural experimental farm in Logan to earn a few dollars to be able to remain in school and finish the year's work. Then I came down to Ogden and got employment from California Pack. I remember going out there to work, and how tough it really was. I daresay some mornings there would be close to 300, 400, 500 people coming there wanting to get jobs, but the wage was hardly a subsistence wage when you're working for 32 ½ cents an hour, and it was adverse conditions. It wasn't very much of a wage, but yet there were so many people that came who would have been glad to have worked for 24 cents an hour, if they could have got on the job. I well remember leaving the plant one day and coming over to town, and a man wanted to know if he could ride across to Ogden City from West Ogden, over the viaduct. He addressed me as "partner." I didn't know his name, and he didn't know mine. He had been out there, he said, for two or three weeks after a 4 job, and just couldn't get on. There was just no chance anywhere, and he had raised a good family. There was just he and his wife at home. They had gone out of provisions, and one morning his wife told him that she was hungry and there wasn't a thing in the house that she could prepare for a meal. She said, "Why don't you go down to the welfare and see if they won't give us a few commodities." He told her, he said, "Partner, I have always paid my way in life, and I don't want to go down and ask for welfare. So," he said, "I was too proud, and I went back and told my wife that they wouldn't give me any commodities. The next day she said, "You'd better go back and try again because we've just got to have something, or the both of us will have to starve to death." So he came down again, and put some pride in his pocket, and went up to the window and got a few groceries and went back home. Then he got rather militant in his talking. He said, "If worse comes to worse, I'll break a glass window to get some commodities for her before I'll let her starve." Then, as I neared Grant Avenue at 24th Street, he took his index finger and poked me on the shoulder and said, "Partner, I've got a damn good rod up home, and if I have to use it, I'll use it, because," he said, "we're not going to starve." And he got out of my car and shut the door, and he said, "So long." MT: What do you remember about the [LDS] Church and its part in the early Depression years? AR: Well, the church was getting to be quite hard-pressed itself. I remember talking with our own ward executives, and they had complained that the ward members were low on tithes and offerings. They were falling off. I remember talking 5 specifically to the bishop's counselor about this problem of tithing, and he said it was a matter of how faithful they felt they could be to the church when they had children that had to be fed and clothed. Somebody made the remark that people aren't going to pay their tithing and see their children starve or go without clothes. And it was not easy to get the people, even though they were very dedicated members, and thought a lot of their membership in the church, to pay a full tithe when conditions were so hard financially. So I would say very definitely that it had its impact upon the church. It's like the old saying; it separated the sheep from the goats because those that weren't dedicated members didn't feel like they could pay a full tithe. So the church was definitely affected by it. MT: One of the ward bishops that I interviewed mentioned organizing groups to go out into the fields and pick up crops. Did your ward do anything of that nature? AR: Well, we had a little spot that we always used to put into some kind of a crop for donation to welfare on a ward basis. Yes, we used to grow corn and beans for processing and canning, and all the work on the farm was done by voluntary donation among the ward members. MT: Did you have any close association with any contractors or anyone in this area of work during the Depression times? AR: No, I can't truthfully say that I had anything very much to do with contract work. As a matter of fact, it would be my candid opinion through observation, that a minimum amount of contracting was done because there wasn't any money to support contract work. However going back to the summer work that I spoke about a few moments ago out at California Packing Corporation, top wages for 6 carpenters and skilled laborers felt that they were doing real well if they got 75 cents to $1 an hour. I remember that very definitely. MT: What do you remember about Hoover and FDR, and how would you evaluate the two of them? AR: Well, I don't remember that there was very much that they did as key executives of the nation that had very much of an economic impact upon the locality here. It's true that there has been a lot of political controversy in the years since regarding the action that they took on this matter. I do remember a few examples of the work that the nation's chief executives sponsored by WPA work and so forth. Our football field out at Weber High was put in position to play football on. It was a weed patch before the WPA workmen came on the job. And they, with rather antiquated tools such as shovels, rakes, and hoes, hoed the field and then raked it and tried to level it. Then I remember, too, that they redecorated the auditorium, and this was done on a WPA basis in order to give people a little employment that just couldn't get a job anywhere else. The school got some work accomplished in that means, which did provide some work for some that were really hard hit. MT: What do you remember about the CCC in this area? AR: I remember the CC Camps were located here in the area, and there is evidence of some of the things that they did under the direction of the technicians. I remember that some of the CC boys worked in watersheds of our water system here. Some of this work that was sponsored by the CC boys under the direction of Dr. Reed Bailey, who was the man that terraced the watershed of the creek 7 above Willard – Willard Creek there, and terraced it. Then back of some of the communities here in Davis County, I don't remember the exact year that the floods came down in both Bountiful and in Willard, and down here at Farmington, and did a tremendous amount of damage. Those boys were quite a menace, though. I would be inclined to say because some of them were from out of state, and some of them began to be rather unmanageable. They were natural human beings, of course, and when they came to town, infatuations began to develop between the CC boys and the girls of the community. To my way of thinking, it is quite risky for the teenage girls to be very close to the CC Camps. I used to not like the environment and conditions that were there. MT: Mr. Russell, how many children did you have during the Depression? AR: We had three children here in the home the year that I decided to go to the college in Logan to get my Bachelor's degree, preparatory to teaching at the high school. Our fourth child, the second girl in the family, was born the year that we were in Logan, along with this drawback of having the Depression hitting us. There was no means of getting any money, but we weathered that, too. But there is another angle to that, which might be interesting. I had made the statement earlier that I had borrowed money from a man here in Ogden to finish my work at the AC for a Bachelor's degree. It went a little further than that. The children, even though they were young, I had a burning desire in my heart to achieve in life and be worth something to society. It was agreed that after I came back from Logan and achieved employment at the high school (this was before the Depression hit that all these plans were made, prior to the breaking in the fall 8 of 1929), I was going to get my Bachelor's degree here in Logan. This gentleman that loaned me the $500 that I mentioned here a little earlier said that he would sponsor me while I went on to school and got my Master's and Ph.D. So we had all this planned out. I had figured that if I took my Master's at Berkeley, which I had in mind, I would go east and take out my Ph.D. But with the family and the Depression, that was a dream that we had to forget about. After I got my Bachelor's degree and the Depression hit, we weathered through that with many others. I was fortunate in that I did have this employment in the summer months with the California Packing Corporation. It was a very low wage and hard work, but they gave me work every summer that I wanted to work. My Master's degree was in my plan, and my two older children in the family were nearing the age when they needed some help in high school. So I forgot about the Master's degree for myself for a while, and concentrated on helping them get through high school. As a result of that, when times got better, and it was beginning to get a little more able to finance a family and a home, each of the four children received their Bachelor's degrees. One of the boys has his Master's too. So there were four children and myself, making the five of us in the family that hold their degrees. In 1954, I went back and got my Master's degree, which I had in mind since before the Depression laid me low. I just couldn't finance it at that time. But by a reasonable layoff on my part, we have the four children with their degrees, and they are in good financial condition today as a result of that. MT: Are there other areas that you think of, the change in your way of living, or 9 anything else that would be of interest? AR: Yes, I think that there is. I came from a very fine family. I will always think of the wonderful training that I received from my parents, and that had an impact upon me and always will have. That is the spiritual side of life. No matter what the conditions of the society, this spiritual side of life is the important thing. I think the religious phase of life is one of the important parts of any family. If they neglect that phase of life, it seems to me that there can be some rather dire results come to the family as a result of neglecting the spiritual side of life.