Oral History Program Wilford G. Fowers Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Wilford G. Fowers 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: Fowers, Wilford G., 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 Wilford G. Fowers. Mr. Fowers discusses his education at the Weber College, working for Cal Pack, and later for the Tanner Clothing Company. He talks about the low wages and hardships of the Depression, entering the military, and so on. The interviewer is Mack Taft. WF: I’m Wilford G. Fowers, manager of the Tanner Clothing Company here in Ogden. MT: What were you doing during the years from 1929 to 1939? WF: Well, for most of those years, I was in school. In 1929, I was in junior high. In 1936 I graduated from Weber College with a scholarship to the Utah State University. But because of the Depression times, I was unable to use that scholarship. I never got back to finish my education. Things were pretty rough. I remember all during my high school days and during the times when I was at Weber College, there just wasn’t much money floating around. I worked in the summertime, mostly for my board and a little extra that I used to buy what few clothes I had. When I see how the young fellows dress these days, going even to junior high and elementary and high school, let alone college, it amazes me. Because in those days we felt lucky if we had one or two pair of overalls or trousers, or what have you, and maybe a little sweater to wear, and maybe a shirt or two, and that was it. MT: What work did you go into after Weber College? WF: I worked during the summer that year for the California Pack Corporation, and then I worked during the Christmas rush down at the Shupe Williams candy company to get some extra money during their Christmas rush. Then, following that, I think I worked for one week with the Kress Company, and at that time, I 2 think I was getting $15 a week. At the end of the week I decided I didn’t want to work for the Kress Company, and they probably decided that they didn’t want me to work for them, I don’t know. Maybe it was mutual. But we parted ways, and right after that, in February 1937, I commenced working for the Tanner Clothing Company, and I’ve been here ever since. MT: What part of the community did you live in? WF: Well, up until the years of about 1931, along there, I lived in Hooper. And then the family moved to Ogden, and we have lived in Ogden ever since. I’m living now, of course, in a suburb of Ogden, Riverdale, serving on the city council there. MT: How many children were there in your father’s family? WF: There were the four of us. MT: Do you remember anything particularly about what your problems were? Did you have more difficulty securing food or clothing, or what would have been your major problems? WF: Well, of course while we lived on the farm we had a garden and we lived reasonably good, not fancy by any means. But we did manage to eat reasonably well. But I remember recreation was something that you didn’t have too much of. An automobile – we had one in the family. As far as clothing went, as I mentioned earlier, you just didn’t have many clothes in those days. It was rough. I remember after my father moved to Ogden here, and was working for wages, that the paycheck just barely paid the rent and bought some food, and that was about it. Clothes had to come as you got them. You had just a little extra and 3 bought some clothes, and maybe you went without – just did with what you had... MT: Who did your father work for when you moved here to town? WF: For a while he worked for the Jewel Tea Company as a salesman on the road with his truck. Then later he commenced working for the sanitary laundry. He worked for them pretty much until he died. MT: What can you think of as lasting impressions or attitudes or values that you... attribute to your experiences during the Depression? WF: Well, I think those of us who really went through the Depression learned to appreciate a dollar more. We probably are a little more conservative on spending money than maybe some of the people who haven’t been. And [we] appreciate more some of the things we do have now in the way of finer automobiles and a nicer home, and being able to buy what food you’d like to have, and the clothes, and so on. I’m certain that all this present generation dresses much better than I did as a boy. And I know that I dress and have nicer things now than I ever had when I was younger. I think probably it does temper your outlook on life a little bit. You maybe appreciate what you have more and you certainly don’t waste as much as a lot of people who don’t have to go through this. MT: Do you notice any difference in the employer/employee relationship now to what you remember as a young man? WF: I think possibly so. When jobs are real scarce, you don’t maybe take advantage of your employer as much. You appreciate your job, you’re more anxious to hold it, you’re more anxious to put in a good day’s work and do the things you’re asked to do. Your attitude, I think, is a little different because you need the job 4 badly and you know you can’t get another one so easy. So you take a little more interest in holding on to it, for that reason. Of course right now, some people say jobs are hard to find, and I guess maybe they are, but they’re not nearly so hard as they were when I was a boy. MT: Do you remember anything particularly amusing, which would have been related closely to the Depression? WF: Oh I can probably think of more serious ones than humorous ones. But I always remember when I was going to Weber College, my father couldn’t afford to dig up the money for the tuition, really. So I worked my way through Weber College, washing windows and sweeping floors, mopping floors. One quarter I remember I was able to do some extra work over at the Forest Service building. I was interested in going out in forestry at that time. But I worked my way through, and I remember one quarter that the treasurer had asked me for my tuition and I didn’t have it all. Dad didn’t have it to give to me, and I remember I was lacking about $10 of having all my tuition. I was really worried because I didn’t know where I was going to get that because I had tried in every way possible... And the treasurer had told me that I had to have it by the next day. I remember I was walking up the sidewalk there by the old Weber Gym at the top of 25th Street, and as I walked along, I glanced down. There was a $10 bill lying there on the sidewalk. That seemed almost like more than a coincidence because that was just the amount I needed. MT: How much would you have to see on the sidewalk today to be equivalent to that? WF: It would be worth a whole lot more than $10, I would say. 5 MT: What were some of the more serious things that you recall happening during that time, either in your family or job or anywhere that would give something of a feeling of the time? WF: Oh, I remember another thing that really kind of hit me when I was in high school. I was a sophomore, and with things as tight as they were, we didn’t have any extra money to spend and no money to buy clothes much, or anything like that. I remember sitting behind a fellow in one of my classes, and without thinking, I just kind of took my pen and scribbled a little design on the back of his shirt. When he found out what I had done, he told me I had to pay for his shirt, and boy, that was serious in those days. I didn’t know where I was going to get the money to pay for a shirt. I couldn’t even afford to buy one myself. But little things like that you remember. I remember when I started working here at Tanners that the wages were so low and the jobs were all scarce. The boss said, “Well, we need somebody but we can’t afford to pay you very much.” I remember that when I started, I worked for $45 a month. And when I got married, I was making $65 a month. We got married in 1938, so things were pretty tight up until then. I remember we didn’t have a car after we were married for about three years. MT: When did you have a feeling in your mind that we had finally ended the Depression? WF: Well, along about 1943, I went into the service, and of course when I went into the service, we had the OPS fixed on us then. And prices were fixed, and we had to comply with our prices here in the store. When I left to go in the service from 6 the store here, things were pretty tight that way and prices were held down. Merchandise was scarce, and got even scarcer while I was in the service. When I came back and went to work for the store again in 1945, it was almost impossible to furnish suits for the customers. Sometimes a customer would come in, and you’d just have to tell him that you didn’t have a suit in the house that would fit him, and that was kind of hard to live with. But then production increased and we got merchandise back on the market, and of course prices began to climb. Then there were a series of raises and where prices had been held down, they started to climb, and you felt that the Depression was really lifting. Of course during the war and right after that, a lot of people found money becoming a lot more plentiful, and some people made pretty good money during the war. But it was during the war and right after that we began to feel that the ceiling was lifting, and it was pretty well over. Wages are up; of course prices reflect the difference, but when I was working out at old Cal Pack, I worked for 32 ½ cents an hour. I finally got up to 35 cents an hour and I thought I was doing pretty good. MT: What type of work did you do out there? WF: I shot cans for several summers, and then the last summer I was out there, I got a job as a tester. I used to take cans and run them through the cappers empty and cut them apart, and measure them with a micrometer and make sure that they were all right. I ran a capper there one year, too. MT: Do you think back on anything you feel was an advantage to you over what you have now? 7 WF: Oh, I’m sure there are. I think to be raised in a rural community like Hooper, and to not have transportation such so that you could just take off for long distances any time you pleased, or come to town even for entertainment any time you pleased had some advantages. I remember when I was a boy we used to thoroughly enjoy going up to the old recreation hall there and seeing plays that they put on. That was one of the big events, when the ward used to put on a play and so on. And your ward reunions and so on, you just felt that those were very important in your life in those days. I think it kind of kept families a little closer together maybe, a little more family unity in a sense, and community spirit. MT: Do you remember the old Hooper Band? WF: Yes, I remember the Fourth of July, early in the morning. Old George Parker used to go up to the park and shoot off some dynamite and wake the town up, and then the old band would get on the bandwagon and go around the town serenading the people, reminding them that there was going to be a big celebration up at the park. Certainly those Fourth of July celebrations were something that the kids never forgot in those days. Of course, money not being very plentiful then either, if we had a dollar or a dollar and a half, we thought we had the world by the tail. If I had it to do over again, I don’t believe I’d want to trade it too much. I kind of value those experiences I had during my boyhood, and the Depression days, and so on. I think it was good for me. MT: Do you know of anyone who you feel had maybe a rougher time than you and your family? 8 WF: Oh nothing comes to mind particularly, but I’m sure there were some who were worse off than we were. MT: Would you say that those in the rural areas had an easier time than those in the city? WF: I was trying to contrast the times when we lived there on the farm with when we lived in Ogden here. I think that we probably ate a little better while we were on the farm, but we didn’t have any more money to spend to buy extras like clothes or entertainment or nice things that you wanted. It wasn’t much different that way, as I see it. I think the main difference was where you had some of your own meat and vegetables and produce on the farm, why it did help out a bit that way. MT: What about your mother’s life as compared to your wife’s life now, by way of modern conveniences and so forth? When did your mother first get her refrigerator and washer and so forth? WF: Well, of course I never knew my mother. My own mother died when I was just six weeks old. But the one I called mother, she never ever did. The last few years of her life, she may have had an electric refrigerator. I remember we used to have the old coal stove, and to heat water, we had a reservoir on the side of it, and you just put water in that and that heated the water for you. And on Saturday night, we used to put the old wash tub in the middle of the kitchen floor, take water out of this wet reservoir on the stove, and put the water in the tub and take a bath. It was kind of primitive, not too convenient. As far as an electric stove and so on, I don’t know – again, maybe the last few years of her life she may have had some of that, but certainly not much. I remember one of the things I missed 9 most, of course after you’ve experienced it, and that’s having an inside bathroom. We didn’t have an inside bathroom for years, and I think that was the thing I hated the worst. MT: What year did you graduate from high school? WF: 1934. Weber College, 1936.