Oral History Program Morrell Warr Interviewed by Bruce Dalley 23 July 1972 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Morrell Warr Interviewed by Bruce Dalley 23 July 1972 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii 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. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ 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 All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Warr, Morrell, an oral history by Bruce Dalley, 23 July 1972, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Morrell Warr. The interview was conducted on July 23, 1972, by Bruce Dalley, in the home of the interviewee located in Beaver. Mr. Warr discusses his memories and personal experiences during the First World War, as well as his career in the dairy sector during the Depression. He also offers his opinion of welfare and the tax system in Utah. BD: This is Bruce Dalley and I am interviewing Mr. Morrell Warr at his home in Beaver, Utah, 23 July 1972.To start, I would like you to give a little of your background, your life’s history, and maybe why your parents came to this part of the country. Maybe why you stayed here, and this kind of thing. MW: Well, the reason my parents came to this country, my father came from England and he was eighteen years of age, the people heard the gospel. And his father, his grandfather and his father was a minister back there and he heard the gospel and accepted the gospel and gave up his church and the family joined the church, all of them except one. And father, he got a chance to come to the United States when he was eighteen years of age. He was the first one to come to America and he come across the ocean on a sailing vessel. I remember him telling me that it was thirty days; the sail across the ocean. They landed in New York and then they took a stage coach from there to Kansas City, Missouri. From Kansas City, Missouri, they drove an ox team across the plains to Salt Lake. Then afterwards being he was young and they went back for immigrants, they was sent back to help the men, so he drove an ox team back and brought immigrants in from Salt Lake. He lived in Tooele for a short time, then he worked on the railroad. He worked on the railroad in Ogden when the gold spike was 1 driven at that time. And after that he, Brigham Young sent some of the people into Summit County. It is known as Summit County, now. Then it was known as Rhodes Valley, then. It’s Kamas, Summit County now. He sent them out there. And they built a fort at Peora to keep the Indians away and they planted some grain up to Kamas where there was water up there. Now, Kamas was six miles from Peora. And so when they got the grain planted, somebody had to water the grain and look after it. They had a cabin or two up there built and the Indians were very bad so they couldn't stay up there. They had to stay down by the fort. So they ask for volunteers to go up and take care of the water. And father went up as a volunteer to take care of the water. And he would build a fire in one of the caverns and then he would take one of his blankets and got out and slept in the fields, to fool the Indians. He was there for two weeks, as I remember the story was. Some of the people came up to Peora with horses. Father didn't have any horses himself, he was just up there by himself, and he told them you better watch the horses and put the horses where they are safe because the Indians might take them and they said, “You seen any Indians?” And he said, “No, I haven't seen any Indians since I've been here,” but he said that “They have been around because I see their tracks and I've seen where they have camped.” And they didn’t pay attention to him but in the morning when they woke up, their horses were gone. The Indians had taken the horses. Well, he met my mother later on in Kamas. Her folks came from France and her name was Mary Ann Marriott. They were married in deleted text . They finally settled in Kamas, and had a farm there, and reared a family there. We had a large family, we had a family of 14 children. I happened to be the thirteenth child. My sister younger than me, she died at nineteen. At the present time there is only two left in our family. I have a 2 sister left in Boise, Idaho. There is only us two left at the present time. Well, I grew up in Kamas and went to school there and they didn't have a high school when I first got out of the grades. They didn't have a high school, and for two or three years we were not able to go to school and then finally they started a high school there and they started it in the church there at Kamas. We had the high school building, was under construction but it wasn't finished. So they held it in the church and finally they got the building finished and then they dedicated the high school. They held the high school and that next spring was the time World War I came out and they all registered. In April they all had to register for the draft. I registered. I was just 21. I was just the right age. I was 21 at the time and I registered for the draft, but in June there was a bunch of us one day together talking and we said, “Let’s go and enlist.” And so we said, “Alright,” and in the meantime we found out our mother had gone out to Nevada to visit a sister I had out there and they were not home. When we went down to Salt Lake and enlisted, there was six of us that went down to enlist and I was the sixth. There was four of us that passed the physical examination. The other two didn't. They turned them down. They turned one boy down on account of he had flat feet. They turned another one down, said curvature of the spine. Afterwards they drafted both of these boys. Well, we went into the Army. Father and mother got word of it and they came back and I had a sister living in Park City. She ran the hospital there. She was a nurse and ran the hospital. And I came back up from Fort Douglas to Park City one day. I got permission to come up to see my father and mother before I left. I went up to see them and then I went back and we were in Fort Douglas for a short time and then they sent back. I enlisted, however, in the engineer part. They recruited a bunch up from the west who had had 3 experience in handling horses, and experience in the timber and work of that time, and they recruited us up to go to France immediately to set up and take care of the soldiers so the other soldiers could come over. So we recruited up some from Washington and Idaho, and I think that they got about eighteen of us there and they shipped us back to Washington DC and we were stationed at the American University in a basic training and engineering work and also military drill. We were there about three months. Then they finished filling up the battalion and they took two of them and over across. Maybe I'm taking up too much time. BD: No this is fine. MW: They sent them two across and I can remember that the other four was left there with me, of course, we wasn't in the same outfit but we got together and we felt pretty bad that we were going to be split up. But that is the Army. You go where you are sent. So we went up to tell them goodbye before we left, I'll never forget that. But we went to see these boys and we had been such friendly buddies and everything and thought so much of each other leaving home and that we went to tell them goodbye and there wasn't one of us that could say a word. We was overcome, we just walked right off. We just couldn't say anything. They sent them over across, and they were in the forest service. They ran sawmills and sawed lumber over there. To make barracks and build buildings for hospitals. And there after we were in Washington to see, this was quite an opportunity to be stationed in Washington DC because on weekends and on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, we could go and see the points of interest. We had a chance to see all the government buildings and went out to Mount Vernon and to the Capitol of the White House. Of course, I didn't get into the White House, but I have a pretty good picture of 4 the White House today that I took although I knew that it was against the rules. I had a little Westblock Kodak and I took a dandy picture of the White House, BD: It probably means more to you now than about anything else. That's great. MW: We were there, then they sent us up to New Jersey. They gave us a lot of extra military training. They sent us up to New Jersey and Camp Marriott and we were recruiting the people from the first draft at that time. They was coming in from the first draft. They made non-commissioned officers out of us and put us in charge of some of those boys from New York and New Jersey, They were some of them quite tough characters. There were some of them that were nice fellows and we had all the way from Wall Street to the Sticks, up in the Sticks in New York State. The real farmers up there. They was real hickeys, those farmers, from New York State. I was surprised in the country like that, they was real hippies. And a lot of those fellows in New York, it was quite an eye opener to me, they lived within thirty miles from New York City, thirty five miles and they had never been in New York. They thought if you came from out in the west, you were out in wild and new country, and there was nothing out here at all. I remember one Sunday, the other fellow and I went down into a town called Inglewood, and a ways from our camp and we met some ladies coming along the sidewalk. They was just coming from church. They stopped us and said they told them to ask some of the soldiers to come to their place for dinner if they like. So we went, he went with one lady and I went with the other, and we went to this place and had a very nice dinner. She had a daughter there that had got the dinner ready and we had a nice visit there together. She started to talking about that part of the country and I wasn't acquainted with it. I said that “I'm not from around here.” I was a little bit backward telling people that I was from Utah, 5 because when you said you were from Utah they wanted to know about the Mormons and I wasn't so well posted about the Mormon religion at that time. I had been a little backward in bringing me into an argument. I said, “I'm not from this part.” She said, “Where from?” and I said, “From out west.” “Where bouts out west?” Then I said, “I came from the State of Utah.” “Oh, back there where all those awful Mormons are.” And I said “That’s where I come from.” I didn't say awful Mormons. She said that “They tell me they have horns out there.” I said, “Well I've never seen any of them with horns.” I said, “Just look at me, do I look like I got horns?” She said “No,” and I said “I'm a Mormon.” She said “No you're not either,” and I said “Yes I am.” She said “If I thought you was a Mormon, I would never had you in the house here to eat a bite with me.” “Well,” I said, “I'm sorry, but I surely enjoyed it.” I told her I was sorry that she felt that way but I sure enjoyed the meal and then I thanked her and went on my way. Well I went across to France and my job over there was, as I said, was on the engineering corps. And we had the job of building hospitals. And this lumber that the other outfit had gone to was sawed and put into sections to build portable berries. And we built a fifty thousand bed hospital in the eight months I was there. We built a fifty thousand bed hospital. Now we don't realize how big that World War I was, and what it cost our government, but there is just one hospital that we built. And that was built into units so that a doctor had charge of so many patients, see. And we had an operating room built in that and nurse’s room and doctor’s room and all that. And after eight months we were shipped up towards the front and we built another hospital called the Evacuation Hospital. This hospital was built to take care of the soldiers that were wounded as they were wounded and taken from the front. It was about twenty-five or thirty miles from the 6 front line. And they would bring them in there and as quick as they got well, why, they would ship them out to these base hospitals like the first one we built. Then, if they were not fit for service anymore they would sometimes send them home or whatever they might do or keep them there until they was able to go back to the front again. And we was building this hospital when the Armistice was signed. We had quite a lot of it built and when the Armistice was signed, why, then they sent us back. We were split up over there though, and we was about fifty of us was on detached service with another outfit. They sent us back to our headquarters and this headquarters was in a very interesting place too. It was located where the Joan of Arc was born, and we were stationed there and that was of interest to see the place where she had her vision and I have been in her home. And then they built a church out on the hill where she had her vision and I remember that I read the life of Joan of Arc while I was there, which was quite interesting. And that give us a privilege that there was quite a lot of soldiers over there of course, and they couldn't send them all back at once, so they sent some of them up into the Army of occupation in Germany and others, of course, they would send home and others they had doing work to repairing the roads and different work there. And they give each soldier a chance to go on a leave while they were there for two weeks. So I put in, and if you had relatives in England you could get a letter through England, through headquarters and get permission and you could get a pass to go out of France and go to another country. So I put in for a pass to England. I wrote to my uncle over there and my uncle wrote a letter and said that he would like me come and I turned that in and it went on and I never got any reply and finally our commanding officer said it looks like you're not going to get your pass for England. And I said “It surely doesn't look 7 like I'm going to.” But he said “There is some boys going down to Southern France in the morning,” he says, “We got room,” he says, “If you want to go you are welcome to go.” I said “Alright, I believe I'll go.” So I went down to Southern France for two weeks and we had quite a sightseeing tour down there. We went over into Italy and up into the Alps and out on the Mediterranean and visited some of the old prison islands, the Island of Great St. Marguerite, and we had a nice little experience. Am I taking too much time? BD: No that is fine. MW: We had a nice little experience there. This Island of St. Marguerite was out from the City of Cantaway, it was out in the ocean. There was a place where they had an old prison and there is a Catholic monastery out there and they had an old prison where they had the man— maybe you have heard of him in history or read of it— the man with the iron mask where they put an iron mask on it and they covered it on him until he died. Well, we visited that prison, and in that prison they had cells where some of them had spikes sticking out from the walls about four or five inches and sharp and all around the walls and in the floor. They would put a man in there and he couldn't lean against the wall and the spikes would run into his feet when he was standing and they would just put him in there until he died. We visited these cells, these places where that was. It was quite interesting. When we got ready to come back, when we went over we hired a Frenchman to take us over in a little bit of a sailboat and we went over very fine. But when we come back the wind had come up and it was blowing against us. The little old Frenchman could pack those sails, so he packed them back and forth. Sometimes he wouldn't gain at all, and others he would gain a little. We were out there for a long time, and the waves would dash over our little boat and we would have to dip water to keep it 8 from sinking. We finally reached shore, which I was mighty glad of. There was quite a little experience in that little sailboat that I had at that time. Well, we went back, and on our way back we went through Paris. We wasn't supposed to, but we stayed on the Paris Express. We was on the Paris Express, and we should have got off at a certain station and some way we missed it and we went right on to Paris, BD: You weren’t sorry there, were you? MW: They gave you a twenty-four hour pass. That is, the troops that came through there, so you could go in Paris and look around. So we went there and had this twenty-four hour pass. Then we came back to our company and when we come back to our company our commanding officer reported in. He said “Well, it's too bad that you took that pass down there, I guess you would have rather went to England.” And I said “I surely would.” Then he said, “Your pass came in for you to go to England.” I said, “Oh, I can’t go there, can I?” Then he said “No, the soldier is only supposed to have one pass over here.” And I said, “Well, I'm not depriving anyone else of that pass. Nobody else can use it, can they?” He said “No. I'll think about it. You come over after a while to my office.” So I went on and towards evening I went on over and he said that there is a fellow from the medical corps that is going to Ireland in the morning. He says, “Don't say nothing to anybody, don't say anything to any of the soldiers. You just find this man Barlow, he is in the medical corps and you leave in the morning.” The fellows in the company all thought I had gone AWOL, you see. I went, and we had to go through Paris. We stayed all night in Paris and we had another sightseeing around Paris. Then we took to a harbor and got on a ship to take us across to South Hampton. They was shifting British soldiers back to England at that time and we was on this troop ship. They had us 9 crammed in there fairly tight. We got on at four o'clock in the afternoon and that night, why, we tried to crump up any old place we could, but you couldn't stretch out or anything. Some of the British soldiers got up on some pipes up overhead and put their coats down and they laid down on these pipes, and this thing happened that was quite funny. There was this fellow up on top there, he got seasick and he was way up there and couldn't get down. So, of course, he just had to let it go. That was all, he was sick to his stomach, and it come down and went right into an Englishman’s face, a soldier that was there, and it went right all over him. I sure did look doing then, but he just wiped it off his face and he looked up at this fellow and he says, “Hey there Tom, can't you wobble your head a bit so I won't get it all?” That was just a funny little incident that happened. And when we went back we was able to go into Paris again and sightsee around for another twenty-four hours. We went on back to the company and then after quite a little while we sailed back to the United States. I was over there for about two years. We landed down to South Hampton, New Jersey, or no, Norfolk, Virginia. They demobilized us there and sent some of us up to Fort Russells, Wyoming, to be discharged. So I went up to Fort Russells, Wyoming and was discharged there. We got out of the Army and I had a sister that was quite sick and they had gone to California for her health, and so I went down there to be with her. She wasn't married. I stayed there that winter. I came back and I wanted to go to school. That is what I wanted to do. Before I came back I had written to the University of Nevada and they offered me a job there and I could enter the school of the University of Nevada. I didn't have all my high school but they would let me go in as a vocational student. So I decided I would go, but I decided before I went to the University of Nevada that I'll go home and see my father. 10 My father was still living. However, my mother had died while I was over there. It was quite a shock to me. But Father, he was living with my sister in Park City, so I went back to see my father. When I was back there I met one of my old friends and he was going up to the Utah Agriculture College. He said “Why don't you come and go up there?” I told him what the offer that the University of Nevada had gave us, and he said “You can get the same thing at the AC. They are taking them in there, they are taking all the Federal boys.” That’s the boys that were given federal training and were wounded in the war. He says “A lot of them have not got high school standing, so you take them as vocational students.” Well I went up to Logan and went to school. The first year there I didn't know what I wanted, I just jumped around and got work on the side doing janitor work and any work that I could get to do. We worked for twenty-five cents an hour there at the college. The next year we went back and I went into Idaho that summer and worked all summer. When I came back the next fall to the school they was advertising for a man to work in the dairy at the college, and they wanted somebody with the experience if they had it. I had worked in the creamery down in Los Angeles and so I had got a little experience making butter down there. So I went and talked to the professor and he gave me a job. Then I got a little more per hour, I think I got about thirty cents per hour then. I worked in this dairy and I started taking dairy courses, so I took all the dairy courses that they gave at that time. I was there that year and the next year I went back and I was there until Christmas. After Christmas I had taken all the dairy courses that they had there. Reed Stevens that sold to the Brook Log Creamery down here, that used to— he has passed away now— but he was sent in for a man to come cut and make cheese. He had heard, of course, I was from Kamas, and of course 11 Brook Log Creamery had originated in Oakley, which was only six miles from Kamas. He asked for me if I was available. So I talked to the professor about it and he says, “Why don't you go out and take that job?” He offered a hundred and fifty a month and that was pretty good wages in those days. He says, “You get that hundred and fifty a month and you can save some money and come back to school. Then you won't have to spend so much time working.” And so I went and I never got back to school, I just kept working. I worked for him for several years and then finally there was a dairy that started up down in Provo and some people down there wanted somebody that understood the manufacturing to go in as partners with them. So I went down there and went in as partners with them, but it didn't pan out too well and they folded up. Their manager was not a businessman and he just run them in until they had to close up or sell out so I left there went up to Salt Lake. I went to talk to Reed Stevens again and he said, “We will have an opening for you after a while, but we haven’t got it now.” In the meantime I kept in touch with the dairy supply people and one of them told me that there was a man who is a doctor there and he wants a man to go to Beaver. He said, “He gave me his address.” And I went up to Dr. Sheppard’s office in Salt Lake and talked to him and he wanted me to come to Beaver. When I came down here they had a little old paper cut-out building for the cheese factory with a little curing room on one side and it was shut down because he couldn't sell his cheese. The fellow that was here, I don't know if he got in some bind with the bank or something, but he couldn't sell their cheese, so they just shut the creamery down. This fellow they did have here, he left. So I started the creamery up, that was in 1924. I started this creamery up and made cheese. Our business increased to the point where we couldn't take care of it in this 12 small building, so we built an addition onto the creamery. We made butter, and we made cheese, and made a product called cassing. This was what they made artificial buttons out of, artificial ivory and stuff like that. We made that. I was with them for ten years, with Dr. Sheppard, and finally business expanded quite a bit and he expanded over into Delta and Filmore. We had a little plant the miners had built where we made the curt and then drawed it to Beaver to dry it. We had another one in Filmore, and we made the curt and brought it to Beaver to dry it, and so he had this place in Delta and he wanted a businessman to take a hold of it. I was there, I had run it so far, but when he expanded like he did he thought he needed another man and he would get a businessman and let me look after the manufacturing end of it here. So he got this man and he and I didn't get along too well. He got to drinking and he bought some trucks and was shifting butter and cheese to California and would bring back groceries. It was mixed up. Finally the banker told the doctor he would have to see about his business because this fellow was running him in the rocks. He was chasing women and drinking. So he came down and fired him. He hired another man and this man— he came from Afton, Wyoming—had been with the creameries up there. His name was Black. He said that he wanted to work with me on the thing and he was really sent to see over me and he said that I didn't get as much over-run on our butter as I should. Now the over-run is the difference between the fat and what the butter actually contains. The butter has $80 fat in it and the balance is moisture and salt and curd that is in the butter. That is all you can possibly get without any losses in it at all is $25 over-run. We usually run about $22. He said, “You are not getting enough overrun,” and I said, “How can you get any more?” “Well,” he said, “you can get more, you test so that you can get it.” The thing he wanted 13 me to do is to cut the farmer’s test down a little bit and might say in other words, take butter fat from the farmer that they are not paying for and then it makes it look like you have a good over-run. You would make more profit. I said, “No, Mr. Black, I don’t do things like that. I never did and I'm not a going to. You and I just as well understand each other.” I said “I am through working here, in that case”. I quit that and went away from that. There was another creamery here in Beaver at that time and it was run by Carl Colton and Victor Price. They wanted to sell out and I went to Reed Stevens and ask him what he thought about me wanting to buy them out and he said, “Unless you got a little backing, a little money back of you, he might raise the price on you, Sheppard might raise the price on you. It would put you out of business in a short time.” I said, “Well, I couldn't do that.” Well he said, “Why don't you, if it is what you say it is down there and the prospects if you think you can get the business, I'll come down and look it over.” He says, “When I come down and look it over we will see.” Then he come down and he decided to buy them out. So he bought them out and we started the creamery up here where the tennis court is in an old school building. That is where they are built and that is where the creamery was. BD: What year was this now? MW: This was in '32, and we got so much business from the other creamery that we didn't have room to manufacture it so we had to have a larger building so at that time Brook Log Creamery bought Sheppard out. Went down here and put in the powder milk plant which is operating today down there, and made butter and powder milk, and that is what they are doing there today. Well, I met my wife here and she was a local girl, Phillis Swindlehurst was her name. We were married and have three children. Two of them, 14 two boys and a girl. The girl and one boy is living in Salt Lake and he is the dentist there and my daughter married a dentist and he is there in Salt Lake. The other boy is out in Casper, Wyoming, and he just happens to be here with me today. He come in today, and so was my daughter. Do you want to stop now? BD: Yah, maybe stop now and talk about the… Tape interrupted BD: This is tape two on the interview with Mr. Warr on the 23rd of July, 1972. MW: Well, the dairy business has changed considerable since I first came to Beaver in 1924. At that time most of the people had a few cows. All the way from one to maybe fifteen or twenty head, was the biggest herd you would find, but not very many of them. Only one or two had herds of twenty. But most of them milked only a few cows. We hauled milk on wagons at first, just wagons and team. Then we would go around and gather the milk. And we had at this factory here in Beaver, which was Brook Log Creamery. We had at that time over five hundred patrons. People sent in milk. That consisted of— of course this was later on when they got trucks going— they was able to expand and go out into these other towns. We hauled as far north as Cipial, this way and all the milk in Millard County, all of Eastern Millard County was hauled here and today there is not very many of those small herds left. There is a few, but very few. In fact, they buy two grades of milk, it's a B-grade and an A-grade. The B-grade they have to have the milking boiled and have to come to a certain standard, and a cooling-tank and go to a little expense. But, we pay them a little more for the butter fat in order to do that than they did on the C-grade where they took the milk in tin cans. But they don't use any cans today, they use those tankers to go around to the place and pick the milk up. 15 There is only a few small dairymen. They are larger dairymen that milk here around Beaver and they milk up some of them up to two hundred twenty or two hundred fifty cows. Some of them do. There are several herds like that here, Minersville down there, we received all the milk from Minersville at that time and now Minersville, they are milking in one barn over seven hundred cows. The other barn, I think they are milking about the same. Besides, there are several areas of private dairies down there of Agrade. And this A-grade milk mostly goes to Las Vegas. Now when they first started to shipping milk to Las Vegas, we shipped it on the train, and we picked the best milk we had. It wasn't pasteurized, it wasn't cooled, it wasn't A-grade milk, but it was all Las Vegas could feet. So we supplied Las Vegas with all the milk. We would take the milk down to Milford and put it on the train in a refrigerated car first and ship it to Las Vegas and that continued until later on when they got these A-grade dairies going and they bought A-grade milk and now the milk is shipped in tankers, picked up in tankers, and shipped in these. This plant down here, they buy milk as far as California in these tanks. They buy the surplus milk from these big dairies. Whenever they have a surplus they take it in from the farmers and then they got theirs. What they can't put in bottles, they have got to get rid of it. They got no way of manufacturing it. So that is it, they ship it in to this factory. That is the way that this factory now operates and gets most of its milk. Now there is a Hyland Dairy that makes most of its cheese around here, and Hyland Dairy ships most of their surplus from way up into Cash Valley, some of it way down here, I understand, and all over the country to make cheese out of it. They’re surplus. So the dairy business has surely changed. It has improved the product and it is a much better product than it used to be. 16 BD: Now may I ask you, you mentioned A-grade, B-grade, and C-grade. Who determined the grading or how was it determined? MW: The State Board of Health, in each state. Nevada had their State Board of Health and Utah has their State Board of Health. BD: Then the A-grade of milk would be cleaner and better than the B-grade? MW: Well, yes. And it has to be handled under certain requirements. They have to have certain kinds of equipment and they have to have their barns built to certain specifications for A-grade. Now B-grade, they don't have to have their barn built to any particular specification as all they have to have is a cement floor and a clean place to milk on. They have to have a milk house with a milk tank— a refrigerated milk tank— in so that it can be cooled as soon as it comes from the cow. That is B-grade. C-grade, I don't think there is any C-grade bought anymore anywhere that I know of. BD: The C-grade would be just where the farmer goes out and milks the cow and put it in a tin can? MW: Puts it in the tin can. BD: When did this grading start or has it always been in effect? MW: Well, yes, to a certain extent it has only that they didn't have the demand for A-grade. It was in fact in Salt Lake, those dairies that put milk out in the market, up in and around Salt Lake and up there. They didn't have any other. They used to pasteurize this milk and you know it would be cheaper quite well, but as far as flavor was concerned and all that it wasn't up to standard. Then as they expanded more A-grade milk. Salt Lake City and Ogden, as you know, have grown. The whole west has grown. Las Vegas, when we 17 were first shipping into Las Vegas there, why, I tried to get our manager up here, he passed away, Reed Stevens, but I tried to get him. Well, before Reed died, we decided to put an A-grade plant in down here and bought the milk from the farmer and the surplus we would manufacture. Then we would let these dairies in Las Vegas buy what milk they wanted. He said, oh, after he got a hold of it I said I would talk to some of the people around here to get them to build A-grade dairies, and they had A-grade barns. And then I said, “What about this A-grade plant?” Me and another fellow had drawn up the plans for it that was just tentative plans of what we needed and had sent them to the architect. He said “Oh!” I asked him what was the matter, and he said “Oh, Las Vegas, I decided to give that up.” He says, “Las Vegas, it’s just a gambling town and it may fold up any day.” BD: People have lost millions of dollars there. MW: So that could have been one of the biggest plants in the southern part of this state, today, if they had just listened to what I wanted them to do. They didn't. BD: Was the creamery always self-efficient during the Depression or did they get any help from the government? MW: No, there was no help from the government. No the Depression, the price of butter-fat went down real low. The lowest price that we paid for milk was seventeen cents per pound of butter-fat and of course, you hear some people say, “Well we sold butter fat for twelve cents per pound, ten cents a pound.” But that was in cream where they separated it at home and that was what they got. But the lowest price that we ever did pay was seventeen cents per pound which was mighty low. But everything was low at that time. 18 BD: What would butter fat go for per pound today? MW: Oh, I think it is running about a dollar and a half. BD: So it is almost ten times as much? MW: I'm not sure, that is in A-grade. They buy on a different base today than they did then. BD: During World War II did your plant have to manufacture anything different for the war effort, or were you pretty well left alone? MW: Did we manufacture for the government? BD: Yeah. MW: Yes, we manufactured powder milk for the government, and they shipped it to the islands and places like that, you know. And we shipped different kinds, we made a product we called Prolack, we put stuff in it and we used that for making ice cream. And we used to ship a lot of that to Honolulu, off through there in that country. And we shipped a lot of powder milk for the war and made it, and our butter went to the government too, a lot of it. The butter went to the government. BD: Could private people buy these, or were you limited to how much you could sell to private people? MW: No. Private people could buy what they wanted to. There were no restrictions. BD: I just wondered. You know you hear sometimes that there was a real shortage in dairy products during the War and I was just wondering how limited you were in what you could do. MW: No. There wasn't anything on dairy products. 19 BD: Back during the Depression and the price freezes, that didn't really effect you did it? MW: No. No, we had no such thing as that. BD: I would kind of like to ask you again, a little bit more about your childhood and maybe you could tell me a little bit more if you would, about the kind of house you lived in. MW: Well as I told you before, I was born and raised in Kamas and we had a farm and we had the home right on the farm. It was not in town and the farm out somewhere else. We lived right on the farm. We had a nice home and a good seed house and we had lovely buildings and we had a lovely barn. We used to milk about fourteen to fifteen cows and we tied them all up in the barn. It was cold in that country and we would tie them in the barn and keep them there all night. It used to be my job to come home from school and we would feed the cows in the manger. They were tied up with a chain, and it would be my job to come home and fill these mangers for these cows after school. I had neighbors there, boys that they had a big family and they didn't have too many cows, their father did other work, I think he was a carpenter or something like that. They didn't seem to have very much to do; and I used to think it was pretty tough that I had to work. They could fool around after school, play around, and sometimes I would get those kids to come and help me do my work. I'm glad my folks taught me to work. We had these milk cows, and we had range cows, we had horses on the farm. I used to like to ride horses. I had several good horses, a saddle horse we used to ride and we'd turn different cattle on the range and turn the horses up on the range and these cows, of course, they had to be tended here at home. We had to be home night and morning to take care of the cows. BD: The house you lived in, was it a log house? 20 MW: Yes it was a sawed logs, sawed logs with weather boarding on the outside. As it got rustic on the outside, the inside walls were lath and plastic. Part of the house was built of California redwood. I remember that my father, he bought some California redwood in Salt Lake, they hauled it out and they built it with that. That house burnt up. That house would have been worth quite a bit of money just to dismantle when you got that redwood out of it. It was very good. My father, he used to run an exchange place out of our home. He would take in butter, eggs, cheese, and vegetables of all sorts. He made a trip into Salt Lake once a week. He made it with ox teams at first, then afterwards, he got horses to drive into Salt Lake. It used to take two days to go into Salt Lake one way. He would leave home and camp about where Kimball’s Junction is now, then they would go on into Salt Lake the next day, BD: That is ordinarily fifty miles isn't it? MW: That is fifty miles from Kamas to Salt Lake. He did that for thirty-five years. One time Father was coming from Salt Lake and there was another man with him and they had the ox team. The snow was real deep over there by Kimball’s Junction and they got snowed in and finally they had to leave their loads and they drove the oxen for a ways without anything. He had them missing for quite a little while and then some rescue crew went from Kamas and tried to rescue. And when they found them, they found Father dragging his partner. He had given up. He had froze, it got so cold, that he give up and Father was dragging him. They put Father on a sled and they took him home and they didn't have the medical facilities at that time to take care of people. They put him in a barrel, a fifty pound barrel, of ice cold water to thaw the frost out. Father didn't lose any of his limbs, but the other fellow lost both of his legs. He made this trip once a 21 week. One time I remember I went into Salt Lake with him and I was about four or five years of age, I went into Salt Lake with him. We came along Main Street with our wagon and we went up to the Co-op Store, that is where he used to exchange his vegetables and produce was at Co-op Store, and they would give him groceries to take them back out to the farmers there in Kamas. We was going along there and an automobile come along and boy there was a lot of horses in Salt Lake at that time and the horses were scared of this automobile because it made a lot of noise. There was horses a-rearing and running in every direction and ours— we had a hard time hanging onto ours. And that was the first automobile that was in Salt Lake City. I think sometimes that I must have lived in the wrong time when I go up there and see that mess that is up there now. I was there when there was only one. BD: I want to ask you, can you remember when the electricity first went to Kamas? MW: Oh yes, very well. We had coal oil lamps when I was a youngster. We used to have these lamps and lanterns when I was a little boy. In a few years they had a man come in there and started the power plant up and we got electric lights. BD: About what year was that in, can you remember? MW: Well, It would be about 1918. Right around there, BD: Right before World War I? MW: Right before World War I. BD: You had a telegraph up there at Kamas about that time? MW: Oh yes. We had telephones. They didn't have phones in the home like they do here, they had telephone offices and you could go there and phone if you wanted to. 22 BD: Then of course, you had running water in the house didn't you, or what? MW: Well, not at first. We used to, when I was a youngster, haul water from the creek. In the wintertime, why, I would take my hand sleigh out and a couple of milk cans and put it on the hand sleigh and then I would dip the water and bring it to the house and they would use it out of these cans. Then later on they finally did get the water piped into the house before I left there. BD: I would like to ask you a little bit about your political background if I may, if you don’t mind. Were you ever affiliated with a public office or anything? MW: Oh yes. You mean hold office? BD: Yeah, or run. MW: Oh yes, I've served on the city council for six years, I think it was, I served on the school board for I believe about six years, maybe it was eight years that I served on the school board. As far as political concerns, I think that is all the political offices I've had. BD: I'll ask you about Franklin Roosevelt. Did you agree with what he was doing when he was president? MW: No, we didn't feel that way about it. In the PWA days, I know that this year, they did some good. That is true, they did some good. But it seems like there was a lot of money wasted and I never approved of it. I was never sold on it no more than I am today. Today, I think that there is too much of this here give me stuff. This welfare deal, I think just encourages people to be lazy and lean on the government. They want the government to hand me out this and that. You get hundreds of men that have large families and, we have some here in Beaver, and they have pulled out and left them. 23 Their wives have gone on welfare and their children on welfare, and they came back and see them once in a while, they are not really separated in a way, but yet they are just on there to get the welfare. BD: So you really think that the government has been kind of handing out and not helping the people that really need help? MW: I think that anybody should work for what they get, I don't care what it is. Our church welfare program, when that came out first, the state was going to have everybody work for what they get in the church welfare, but they let down on that. The bishops went the easy way. When somebody is in need it is alright, it is easy to hand it out. But as far as having projects, what the welfare recommended in the first place, and let people work for what they get, people would be a lot more happier and more independent if they had carried that out. But I don't think that there is too much of that done. We have got projects here. We have beef projects here in Beaver. We help put up the hay and then we contribute money towards the irrigating and the cutting of the hay and the baling of the hay and those things. But as for the man that is actually on welfare, he don't contribute anything to it. If you ask him to go and work on the farm, it is hard to get him to work on that farm, to do anything. We that contribute towards it have to go if the fence needs fixing. They have got that place down in Minersville Canyon, that pasture down there. I lived down there year after year and helped fix the fence in the spring and I never did see a man that was on welfare yet. On church welfare, I'm talking about. BD: We will dig a little bit back into the 1930's, do you think the taxes have been fair to the business man in Utah? I know that that is kind of a loaded question, but.... 24 MW: I think in this way they are not fair now, I don't think that, because there is no encouragement for a man to make his business to thrive and progress because the government steps in and takes it away from him anyway. Of course, that is alright for those people that they are handing it out to, but I'm not in favor of the deal we got the way it is. BD: Ok then. Is there anything you would like to say? MW: No, I think I have filled you with a lot. BD: Ok then, well, thank you very much. MW: You’re welcome. 25