Oral History Program George Maw Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah George Maw 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: Maw, George, 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 George Maw. Mr. Maw discusses working on his father’s farm in Plain City, cost of living and the real estate business during the Depression years. The interviewer is Mack Taft. MT: Where did you live between the years 1929 and 1939? GM: I got married, and we lived in three back rooms of a store. It had an outside pump and an outside hootenanny [sic]. Then we rented a place in Park City for $12 a month. It also had outside facilities. MT: What type of work were you doing during those years? GM: I worked on a farm, and my dad had a business. Later I went to the business end, about 1934. I went to the business end of the situation. MT: How much money did you earn when you were working on the farm? GM: Well, I earned $90 a month in 1931 and then in the Depression, even though it hit in October 1929, it was about 1929 – the later part of 1931 before it really got out here bad. I got knocked to 15 cents an hour. I worked for 15 cents an hour for three years, hard work. MT: What type of farm work were you doing? GM: I was doing any kind of farm work. My dad had a big farm. He used to cut hay with three mowers all the time. We had four mowers, and he used to spend most of his time keeping the fourth one in repair all the time. Then we had 13 acres of asparagus. It was the biggest producing patch in the state of Utah. We also had a couple of acres of rhubarb, so it was coming to the field at six and working the asparagus and rhubarb until dark, and then do the chores and back to bunching asparagus. 2 MT: Now, I know that you’re a successful real estate man now. When did you get into the real estate business? GM: Oh, my dad had three brothers joined partnership in 1926. I was the younger, and the only one unmarried, and I wasn’t with them, but I was supposed to be with them. I worked for them for a number of years, and in 1941 I said I was leaving. I was not making any headway. They were just letting me work for them for practically nothing. So then they made me a partner for four years. But then in 1946, they claimed it all, so I came to Roy. MT: And you’ve been here since that time? GM: No, our main business, though it was a country business and we had all the country lines, our big business was shipping potatoes and onions. I made quite a lot of money through those days. It was up in the five figures, and so when I left Plain City, I had a pretty good pocketful. I got interested in stocks and securities, and in 1950 I didn’t have them fully paid for, and the broker embezzled them and squandered the money and committed suicide. So I had to start over. That’s when I got into the real estate business. MT: Did you have any stock when the stock market crashed? GM: No sir. My dad had expanded, and he went up to Mackie and paid $100 a head for 450 head of cattle. I believe that he would have lost it through work if he hadn’t had four strong boys to weather him through. He would never have held up. MT: You mentioned that your wife had some money there when you were first married. Could you elaborate a little on that? 3 GM: My wife started teaching school. Well, she had taught five years when we got married in 1936. So her first contract was $600 for teaching, but then she got up a little. When we got married, she had $600 saved up, and with that we bought a refrigerator, and a davenport, and a chair, and a bed, and a kitchen set. We bought enough furniture to get along with. I guess it also included a washing machine. MT: Do you think of any interesting incidents that happened to you or anyone close to you during that period as a result of the Depression? GM: My dad was a large land owner in Plain City and Weber County. I suppose he was by far the largest here in the valley. There may have been some larger in the mountains, that owned more, but he also owned 7,000 acres on the mountain between Ogden and North Ogden Canyon. He ran up to 1,000 head of branded cattle. In those days you didn’t brand the cattle – they were born in February or March, and they were never branded until the fall. As I remember, he paid $5 an acre. In the early 1940s, the Forest Service took it, and he had to jangle with them to get $6 an acre from them. It may have only been $5.50 at that time. Dad, in the winter, of course, did a lot of hiring. And during the Depression, he had the store out there, and he had men lined up wanting to work for $1 a day. They only got $1.20 in the summer, and in the winter they would line up wanting a few days work at $1 a day. The thought was not “How much can I get ahead?” They simply wanted something to buy something to eat with. It was mighty, mighty hard times. I remember one woman who married a 4 fellow from Plain City later, and she said, “There was four of us girls, and my dad was on WPA, and I have eaten too good in Plain City on the farm to ever want to move back to Ogden.” She was scared. MT: Out in the rural area, I don’t suppose food ever became a real serious problem? GM: Most people had a few chickens and a cow, and they got along. I don’t know the status of some people because I was different. My dad had a lot of land. We had a barn with 12 horses and then always some out in the corral. We worked awful, awful hard, but we always had plenty to eat. So I don’t know how some people lived. I imagine they all got their tummies full, but it wasn’t the best choices at all times. MT: What about clothes? Was that a problem in the Plain City area? GM: Most everybody wore overalls, and we sold a few overalls and shirts and socks at the store. Of course in those days, we lived in quite a big house. It had a closet, but in most of the houses, when they went home, they just hung their clothes on the hook by the back door. When they got ready to go, they put them on again. As I recall, of all clothes, very little was hung up at that time. Everything was folded and put in the dresser drawers. MT: Can you think of anything now that guides you that you developed during those years? GM: I suppose that those who went through the Depression, it taught them one lesson: to appreciate later in life because times were just so darn hard then. Even though a lot now think that they get more money, but it would buy just as much back in those days. But that is not true. Too many people could not find 5 any work, and no money will buy nothing at no time. Of course there was no Social Security and no welfare, and around where I lived, the old folks simply lived with a son or a daughter in later life. Things have just changed. It’s just so different. We all walked to school, where kids drive cars now. I’m old enough that I went to see a girl occasionally on a bicycle, and we’d go up to the picture show, and we’d never take a girl because we didn’t have the extra dime. But I would buy her a bottle of pop, and a nickel’s worth of popcorn after, and then take her home on a horse. MT: When did you get married? GM: 1936. MT: Of course we still had the Depression at that time. GM: I would say that in 1936 the signs were getting better, but I was sort of a young man still. Well, I was 29. But in those days, it [economic improvement] started out in the East and took a year or two to come out West, and that makes a difference. Even in 1940, why things were pretty, pretty slow around here. I remember in 1944 my neighbor got on at Hill Field for fifty cents an hour, and he was very, very thrilled.