Oral History Program Dr. Frank K. Bartlett Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dr. Frank K. Bartlett 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: Bartlett, Dr. Frank K., 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 Dr. Frank K. Bartlett. Dr. Bartlett discusses 50 years of medical practice in Ogden, including practice during the Depression and starting the first laboratory in the basement of the Dee Hospital. He also talks about the stock market before, during, and after the Depression, and building a house during those years. The interviewer is Mack Taft. MT: Where did you live during the Depression years? FB: In Ogden. MT: And what was your profession? FB: I was a physician. I was a physician here for fifty years, from 1915 until I quit. I'm now eighty-four. MT: What do you remember about the Depression years that might set them apart from other years? FB: Well, I was a comparatively young man. I had been in practice for fifteen or eighteen years. I had been in the war, the First World War, in France for a year and a half and come back. I didn't have any money to speak of. What money we had in those days, we didn't invest in the stocks because the stock market wasn't very popular with people at all. But we almost invariably invested in bonds, 3 percent or 3½ percent bonds, buying them at $100. When they'd go up to $102, we'd sell them. There was no income tax to pay, and so we just kept that $200 or $300 we made as pure gold. But then along in the early 1920s, people began to invest in the stock market. I remember that distinctly, and I would put some money in Continental Oil, or New Jersey, or something like that. The oils were just coming into their own and they were doing well. Westinghouse, I remember, 2 it was selling around $100. It went down to $17. Gosh, we were just about broke. Everybody's investments in the stock market went down to just about nothing. You know, it hit us in two big waves, if you remember. It piled down, and they said, "Well, it won't go any further." And then it was down again as far. And so people were very, very skeptical about stocks. There were some good buys if you had the money, but you couldn't get the money. Even government bonds were way down under $65. I remember Gus Becker over here, who was a beer maker. He was buying government bonds at $65, 3 percent bonds, or 4 percent bonds, and they would come back if anything would. I had a little money in the bank that I had saved. There wasn't a house being built in Ogden at that time, not one house. The architects were starving, the contractors, bricklayers, plasterers, carpenters. There wasn't a house going up. I bought this lot up here from Kelly Goddard for $2,500. It was paved. It had the sewer into it, and water into it, and I bought it from him for $2,500 and built this nice home here for practically nothing. In fact, I think I paid for this home - McClanahan was the architect - and this was the only house going up in Ogden. I think he was glad to get it and a chance to make a little money. He charged me $1,000, and you see that it's a nice home. You know what it cost me to build it? You couldn't build it for $75,000 or much under $100,000 today. It cost me $17,000 to build this home. Everybody wanted to dig the basement. Everybody wanted to plaster. I carpeted the whole house - and here's the same carpet that I put in over 40 years ago - for $1,000, the whole house. I showed you how things had depreciated in 3 value. Nobody was selling anything. Nobody was doing any business at all because, as I say, all the value of your equities in business and industry just simply dropped to nothing. I'm not sure, but during the Hoover administration, or following the Hoover administration, when we hit bottom - and there was no better president, no more honest president than he was that ever lived - but it wasn't that. The opposite party, the Democrats, blamed it onto Hoover. But it was a worldwide Depression, not only here, and I think I have a book on the stocks that I had at that time just to show you how things dropped down. Anaconda Copper dropped from the $50's down to $3, and Westinghouse from $100 down to $17. You can see [how] a man's worth was sliced to practically nothing. We were even afraid to keep our money in the banks. And you couldn't borrow money; you couldn't get it. The banks wouldn't loan it. People were taking their money out of the banks for fear that they would go broke. As far as industry was concerned in this town, this was the only house being built in Ogden in 1931 - the only one. Now look at them, hundreds and hundreds of them because Ogden is just beginning to expand. The railroads at that time carried passengers more than they do now, and passengers were a big part of their revenue. Trains were elaborate. People who were traveling wore great big diamonds, and the service on the trains was immaculate and luxurious just as it is in Africa today on the train that goes from Kimberly to Cape Town... I was on that a few years ago, and that train reminded me of the trains that we had here a few years ago. It was just beautiful and elaborate, with every convenience that you wanted and the finest food and 4 waiters and all the rest. But now you go in the depot, and it's flea-bitten, dirty, unoccupied, and all business is in freight. And they're getting rid of a lot of their tracks to sell them into iron mills, steel mills. But there was a time when Ogden's depot was a bustling place, and people were going in and out, and that was during that time. Red-caps by the dozen. Now, as far as the medical business was concerned, people were sick then just like they are now, and we had to take care of them. And I did. I was a young man, anxious to build up my business. And if anyone called me at three in the morning, if he lived across the tracks, I went. Whether I got my money or not. A lot of people I didn't get anything from because they didn't have it, but that didn't make a difference. But you won't get a doctor now to go out at three in the morning. He'd say, "Get him to the hospital. I'll see him in the morning." It's a different attitude entirely. Since the government has interfered so much in the practice of medicine, we have had a great change in the attitude of the doctors toward their practice. It was a doctor-patient relationship all up until the last ten years. Since then it's gradually been a function of the government to take care of everybody's illness almost. If you don't have any money, you don't have to pay anything. But not then. MT: What were some of the major problems that you had in your business at that time, Doctor? FB: Well, medicine is always the same. I had an office in the old First National Bank, where the ZCMI building is at present. It was an awful, old, rundown building when I was in it. But I went into practice with our old family doctor, who was a 5 homeopath. They believed in practicing medicine by giving little tiny pills about as big as a pinhead. If you had a fever, you got achinaide [sic]. It helped to knock the fever down. It didn't have any effect on the illness itself. In fact, in the days when I came to Ogden, there were no antibiotics at all. I discovered an epidemic of typhoid in Ogden, in about 1917, before I went into the First World War. I think that was the year I went to France. I found a case in west Ogden, and it looked to me like it was typhoid. He had rose spots on the belly and a big spleen, and the fellow was running a fever and diarrhea. He had all the symptoms of typhoid although I had never seen one before. It was following the severe rain that we had, and people were going up into the Coldwater Canyon - we got some of our city water from Coldwater Canyon - and it wasn't protected against people defecating around the streams, you know the watershed. It got in our watershed. Before we got through, there were seventeen cases of typhoid in Ogden after I had reported this to the Health Department. Well, we had to take care of people then just like we do now except that there was a more personal relationship between the patient and the doctor. You went out to his home. Babies we delivered for $25, and we included the pre-birth care and usually two or three house calls after. But now it's $200 for a woman to have the baby, and then she usually has to be in the hospital. So the practice of medicine was very primitive. As I say, we had no antibiotics. I remember so many cases of healthy men, as healthy as you are sitting right there. A pain in their sides come on, which meant, of course, the pneumonia extending out into their pleura. And in two days, they would be dead. And so medicine was tough, and 6 you had to pay pretty good attention to your early colds. Now, it doesn't make any difference. Mastoids were plentiful. Many people were operated on for mastoids on the face and middle ear. You very seldom ever see a mastoid any more. The drugs kill the bug. But the new things, you have the viruses now prevailing, and there is nothing known right now to stop a virus infection so far, no medicine at all. MT: Did you have more difficulty collecting your fees during the Depression than other times? FB: Oh, sure. There were so many people out of work. As I say, when I was building this house, I was met on every corner by some fellow - contractor wanted to shingle the house, another wanted to dig the basement, and another one wanted to lay the brick. They were all out of work, and had been out of work for a couple of years. This Depression didn't cease for two years, didn't begin to recover, and... MT: What was your reaction during the stock crash? Did you hang on tight to what you had, or what did you do? FB: You couldn't sell them because you'd practically give them away if you did. I say I paid $20 something for Anaconda, and when it got down to the bottom, it was $3, and you couldn't sell it for that loss. Westinghouse was $100 down to $17. I just happen to remember those two, but I didn't have very much in the stock market. I was soon back from the World War, and when I was over there, I didn't think for a minute that the franc - which was equivalent to our dollar - would ever be down. It was silver, but before long, the francs were selling down for three or four 7 pennies. And the marc, the German marc, we thought surely if you bought them for practically nothing, you could put them on your wall for wallpaper, it was that cheap. I bought quite a few of those. I was young and inexperienced, of course, and foolish. Before long, I had a lot of worthless marcs on my hands. I didn't keep them. It would have been interesting to have kept them just to look at them. But I think I have a book of the stocks that I had at that time, but I have most of these even now. MT: Then you had your stock outright, rather than having bought it on the margin? FB: That's right. I wouldn't buy anything on the margin. If I had the money, I bought it. That's why I built this house. I had the $12,000 in the bank, cash, and with it, along with what I could earn in the next year or two, I paid for it, the whole thing. But just the carpets alone, which you couldn't replace today for $5,000, I bought for $1,000 over the whole house. It goes to show you the difference in the price, that the dollar has slipped. MT: It also shows me what you can do when you are prepared. If you have the money and things are down, then you can take advantage of the situation. FB: You would take advantage of the situation, you would, anybody would. I know of patients that stayed with me all my life. I didn't charge them anything; they didn't have it. I carried them, or I put it down so low that they could just sneeze at it. We had to do that. Every doctor had to do that. And the rooms in the hospital at the Dee, which was built about 1910, I think, when I started practicing medicine, you could get a good, private room for $3.50 a day. Now look at it. Now, I don't know what more I can tell you. 8 MT: Were there any special things that you did at that time either to build your practice or to help your patients out in paying their bills? FB: Well, I was a young, enthusiastic doctor just coming in, like they are today, except that we did a lot more sacrificing. We had an old Ford with the flaps on it. That was my first car. I built my own shanty on the back of a house that I paid $3,000 for when we first moved here. It was an old, sand-rolled brick house, and I thought that we had a mansion when we had it stuccoed, put in a fireplace, and built a tin garage for it. In those days automobiles weren't very good, and you had to drain them at night because you either used kerosene in them as an antifreeze, or you drained them out and brought out two kettles of warm water in the morning to put in before you could get it started. The roads were terrible. The people wore dusters when I started to practice here. If you went out of the city, you had to put on your duster because the dust was so thick. By the time you got out a few miles, you didn't know who you were. I remember crossing - going fishing up on the Lost Creek out of Blackfoot - and I remember getting on that dirt road and going a little ways, and you'd hit a hole and broke a spring or two. We always carried extra springs. I met a farmer coming this way, and I said, "How's the road from here on over to Lost Creek?" "Oh," he says, "this is good road that you're on here." That's the way things were. You had to put up with a lot of inconveniences. I remember the first operation I performed was out on the hillside going up from Pleasant View in a little, old, unpainted two-room house. The farmer had a daughter. I went in with an old family doctor here, and this old doctor had 9 misdiagnosed this case. They didn't know anything about surgery anyway in those days, to speak of. Surgery was just being developed, as you well know. There were a few good surgeons in the big cities but out in the country ... Dr. Rich himself told me that for a pain in the belly, put chicken entrails on the belly and fresh manure, hoping that some miracle would occur. You can't believe that, can you? And they didn't believe in vaccination when I first came to Ogden very much. It was against the religion - let God take care of things, just like they do in Central Africa. There's been more changes in medicine, more advancement in medicine than ever in the world before, and so much so that there's a prevention for almost any disease except the virus. They still haven't come up with anything for the virus. But everything else... But you asked me what we would do with these poor patients. We'd just let them alone. We just went to take care of them. Sometimes I was paid in chickens. I had chickens in the kitchen, which my wife objected to. One fellow gave me a goat to pay for what we had. But as far as homes were concerned, in 1914 and 1915 I bought a home for $3,000. You can't even get through the front gate for that. It was an old house in the bottoms, and I had it stuccoed and had a fireplace put in, and I built a shanty behind. The fellow who left it had left a garden of frozen parsnips, which we lived off practically. So we were all poor when we started out. Now, I didn't know any rich people in those days, when I was a boy. In fact, I didn't get acquainted with them. We had a family of five, my father did, and when we didn't have work here in Ogden on the railroad, he was a cabinetmaker, 10 and a very good one. He went to Heber City and built a Mormon church there, and a school, and he came back after two or three weeks with a sack with flour, or five pounds of butter that he had been paid by, and a wagon. So those days, they were kind of rough, and they were kind of tough, just like they were in medicine. But things kept improving, and one of the first antibiotics we used - I can't remember the name of it. It wasn't an antibiotic, really; it was a medicine which you took, and it turned you pink all over. I can't remember what it was called now, it slips my mind. I remember Jack Goodly, here in Ogden, was on the police force, and he had an abscess on his face. I gave him this medicine, and he was as pink as a painting. He got over it anyway, and whether he ascribed his getting better to the medicine or me was immaterial because I don't think either of us had much to do with it, really. It was just an act of God. But I will tell you that during those early days, and it was near the time of the Depression, we had nothing for acute infection to help them out, not any more than they did ten years before. We knew appendicitis and how to diagnose better, but our x-ray machines were very poor. I started the first laboratory in Dee Hospital. They had no microscope, no nothing, no Petri dishes, no nothing. I brought them up from my office because I was primarily trained as a pathologist in Rush Medical, and I started the first laboratory up there in the basement. That was in 1915. Today, if a man has a slight pain today, they go through all sorts of expensive maneuvers to find out what it is. People died like flies of acute infection. I remember one fellow in particular that I was very fond of. He was tall, 11 slightly ruddy-faced, red-haired druggist. He worked in what was then called Ballkins Drugstore, fine, big strong fellow. He got a little cold and had a pleural pain, and old Dr. Camahan, who took care of him and who liked to discuss the Japanese-Russian War...gave him a bottle of medicine or something, and he was dead in two days. You think a young man with a family, a pain in his side, we watched very closely because we knew that meant the beginning of a lobar pneumonia, and we didn't have a darn thing for it. Don't think that the practice of medicine and the people who have gone before, don't think they haven't gone through an awful lot of tough sicknesses without anything to do. Do you know that during the plague in the twelfth century, there were over 25 million people that died in Europe? And we have had a little of that lately. We have a vaccine for it. We give it to them, and they don't get it. The medical schools, when I went to study medicine in 1906, I went to the University of Caldwell. We had a combined course of six years to get our bachelor's degree and our medical degree, and on top of that, I took a master's degree. You could work. I worked waiting tables, cutting meat, in the library, and our tuition was $45 a quarter, which I usually paid for by working for it. Now you can't get into medical school today unless you can prove to them that you have adequate funds of at least $1,000 a year to pay for your upkeep. Because you cannot work and go to medical school, so tough are they, and so tense are the requirements on studying. That's the difference.