Oral History Program Calvin J. Mason Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Calvin J. Mason 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: Mason, Calvin J., 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 Calvin J. Mason. Mr. Mason describes his years in the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression, working in Milford, Utah, in Salt Lake City, at the Bird Refuge, for the Forest Service, and so on. The interviewer is Mack Taft. MT: Where were you from originally, before you came to Weber County? CM: I came from southern Arkansas. MT: What were the circumstances that brought you here to Weber County, and when did you come? CM: I was an enrollee in the CCC and was transferred here from Southern Utah to the regional grazing office in Salt Lake City for about eight months. When our camp was transferred, I came to Weber County with the Bureau of Reclamation Camp at Hooper, Utah, and the Ogden Bay Bird Refuge. MT: Did you work right on the Refuge there, and what type of work did you do there? CM: Well, I didn’t work on birding the refuge. I was in charge of the office, maintaining a record of the work projects, the money that was expended on each work project. I also did the buying and using federal monies and also state monies – the federal monies that were given to the State of Utah, and we used part of it. MT: What type of projects were carried out down at the Bird Refuge? CM: There were some 30 different projects, or work projects, I should say, because each specific job had a project number. One of them was the building of the dike and the road around two of the units, I believe, out there. It’s been so many years, I’ve forgotten exactly. Each one of these had a project number to identify it in the commission. We also had a project for building a small maintenance shop 2 and a service station for our trucks and equipment. We had several spearways with rock rip wrapping around them. We did this. We also built several bridges, and each one of them was an individual project; 30 or 40 were completed in a year, or a year and a half. MT: What type of projects did you do down in Millard? CM: That was Milford. Down in Milford, I was only there for a short time. This was grazing service. Our camp was working for and under the jurisdiction of the grazing service. I was only there about three weeks. I’d been transferred in from a Bureau of Reclamation camp in Yuma, Arizona. After being there for about three weeks, I came to Salt Lake to go to school. Primarily it was well drilling. They drilled some wells. They planted feed in recovery of grazing lands that had been depleting. They planted many of the wild plants that had been depleted through grazing. There was some road building, a slight amount of road building, but not appreciable. MT: What about water conservation? CM: I was there such a short time, I don’t remember. But I believe there were some small ponds or lakes that they maintained for the grazing service. Primarily this is what they were doing – land re-seeding and water. MT: Are you acquainted with the Bountiful Peak area up here, and the work that was done up on there? CM: No, I was in a camp in Bountiful, but I worked in Salt Lake. I was just attached there for food and lodging actually. My work was in the grading service in Salt Lake, and this was in the Forest Service, a Forest Service camp, I believe. I was 3 familiar with what the CC Camp in Huntsville was doing. It was another Forest Service camp. They were actually building a lot of road and improving and maintaining parks, small parks and camping areas throughout the Huntsville Valley and on into the Monte Cristo area. I’ve seen much of their work in there, and it was still evident during World War II and after World War II. Even yet some of it is very evident, and it was very beneficial. It was beneficial in more ways than just sustaining a natural habitat and resources. It also benefitted a lot of young men. MT: Could you give me a little description of the circumstances that caused you to sign up with the CC Camp? CM: Well, anyone who remembers the late 1920s, and early 1930s, would easily recognize that a young man, many young men, didn’t have an opportunity. Of course I was able to continue my education, and jobs were rather scarce. In fact, much of the time it was a virtual impossibility to get a job. You would see a man with a Master’s degree in Engineering selling papers on the street at that time, and I had been a farm boy all my life. It had reached rock bottom, and so I did it for two reasons. One, I had no job, and second, I wanted to see some of the world and some other part of the country. This resulted in my coming in. I, of course, went to Yuma, Arizona, for six months and transferred to Milford to work in the Regional Mapping Office. We did map work of all types, and I got a lot of good training there. Then into Weber County, over into the Bureau of Fish and Wild Services. So this is what brought me into the camps and into the West. MT: Do you remember enough to compare the conditions in southern Arkansas to 4 what you found here in Utah at the time that you arrived here? CM: There wasn’t an appreciable amount of difference. It could be that a few things were different. There was probably a little more industry here in Utah at that time than there was in southern Arkansas. But there was not an appreciable difference in the economic conditions. It was rough in both places. MT: How were you received as a man in the CC Camp with all these Mormons? CM: In Southern Utah, I wasn’t too well received by the miners and sheep herders, but the main populace received me very well. MT: Well, Cal, you’re one of our leading citizens here now, and have certainly done a tremendous job with yourself, your family, and everything. This is interesting to me, to find out how a person coming into a strange community would be received in these little communities. How much did you get paid in the CC Camp? CM: When I was first in the camp, the pay was $30 a month. We were furnished three uniforms, somewhat of an army uniform, and three sets of fatigues or blue denim work clothing, the necessary underwear, towels, bed clothing, and of course a barracks for sleeping, and very good food – the food was very good. It was just like the army actually, amazingly, I think. There was an allowance of 38 or 40 cents a day to feed each man, which would hardly buy your bread today; but it was a very good diet, well prepared. The cooks were well-trained, and it was similar to army life. The camp was commanded by an army officer. The personnel was turned over to work service, with the exception of the people that ran the camp, and they stayed in camp all the time. The others of us went out on 5 the job. This was basically the nuclei for an army, a quickly assembled army at the beginning of World War II. I think some six million young men in the nation had been enrolled in the CCC, and the camps were being disbanded at the time, on December 7, 1941. So these men were readily adaptable and readily trainable, and many of them had learned counterpart actions to an army base. They had been on an army base and could adapt with no problems. This was indeed a welcome thing to have available at that time, even though they had no military training. MT: How long were you in the Civilian Conservation Camps? CM: Approximately three months in total, in Arizona, Milford, Salt Lake City, and Weber County. MT: Did you get married during that time? CM: I did not get married until after World War II had started. MT: Who else do you know in the area who came into the county, that is still around here, that came in through the CCC? CM: I know there are two people who were in the camp with me. I don’t know if they are still in Weber County or not, but there was a man named Charles Eppley, and a man named Leland Tutter. They were in Ogden here a few years ago. There’s an additional man named James Crook, who is still in this Ogden area. He works for the railroad, I think. I haven’t seen him for about five years. MT: Was there money sent home to your parents, in addition to what you received, Cal? CM: Yes. Incidentally, I did not finish telling you about this $30 a month. Eight dollars 6 was being paid to the enrollee, and $22 going home. Some of this came back, but $8 was hardly enough for a man to provide the toilet articles. Generally some of this, or most of this, came back. Then there was a leader position that paid $36 a month, with still $22 of it going home, and then there was another leader where the pay was $45 a month. I quickly attained the higher rate and was getting $45 a month for at least three-fourths of the time that I was in. But this money, $22 of the check of each enrollee, did go to his parents. MT: Then you were single all during the Depression years? CM: Yes, I was single, and I didn’t earn enough financially to sustain a home. MT: Do you think of anything else now that might be of interest concerning the Corps, or any other part of your life during the Depression years? CM: Well, I’m not liberal. I feel that the programs that they instituted were better, rather than taking all the tax money away from the working people to give to the young people today to get an education. But we need to reduce the permissiveness and force these young people into accepting a responsibility in learning how to work until this could be more appropriately spent. But to just give it to them and permit them to wreck, tear up and tear down, the basic foundation of our nation, this is what’s happening. They have nothing to offer but the instability. If these young people had to live and work as I did, today they wouldn’t have time to march and shout down the establishment. There are things about the establishment that everyone doesn’t like, but there’s ways and means to correct the situation, and fighting against things and having nothing to replace it is strictly no good. It leads to anarchy. 7 MT: How would you evaluate the programs of the CCC, looking back on it now after this many years? CM: Well, I feel it probably taught many young men, 17 to 22 years old, how to work. Many of them didn’t know how to work. This is one thing that is sadly lacking in our nation today, and this is the fact that the young people don’t know how to work, and they don’t want to work. They expect something for nothing. Now, I feel that this organization probably, within the time that it was organized into being, it probably did more to help the youth of the nation of that time than any other thing that could have been done except for one thing. There was no means whereby young men of ability and capability had way to get a higher education, which was sorely needed. It was recognized immediately after World War II that we had a nation of men who were not educated to the degree that would have been desirable at the time. But I feel that, overall, it was one of the best programs that the government has ever established. There were many things done. It was equally evident in the benefit to the nation in the Bureau of Reclamation camps, your Fish and Wildlife Service, in the conservation of fish and wildlife, and other areas where they did, particularly the Forest Service. They did much work all over the nation in all your forested areas, even fighting forest fires. In fact, we assisted the Forest Service in fighting forest fires when I was in the Camps. But this was a beneficial program. It was not an expensive program. It would have been better if it had had a little more educational facilities there. Both vocational and academic, it would have been a much better program, and it could have been very easily – establishing in an 8 area, or arranging with colleges for classes and this type of thing, but this was not done. It should have been done. MT: You are aware that there are proposals to set up programs like this to help with the youth problems that we have today? CM: Yes, I’ve read a little about this. I don’t feel that the Job Corps is successful because it’s too expensive, especially these contract jobs, such as Thiokol. Of course it costs more to keep one of those kids down there and to prepare them vocationally than it costs me to buy a home and maintain it and send four kids to college. And they use the tax money that I earn for one kid in a year, and this denotes to me gross inefficiency. That is, inefficiency on the part of the contractor. So I feel that a program such as this, re-instituted, would be very effective with some means of establishing vocational and academic work at higher levels. Some youngsters have never even finished high school, of course. But this could be remedied. Some youngsters who have finished, and some even with college who are financially unable to complete their college academic work. It could be arranged and then with the youngster, you wouldn’t be giving it to him, or loaning it to him, and making it so easy that he isn’t really benefitting....