Oral History Program John Ashworth Interviewed by Bruce Dalley 22 July 1972 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah John Ashworth Interviewed by Bruce Dalley 22 July 1972 Copyright © 2012 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 Special Collections. 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: Ashworth, John, an oral history by Bruce Dalley, 22 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 John Ashworth. The interview was conducted on July 22, 1972, by Bruce Dalley, in Ashworth’s home in Beaver, Utah. Ashworth discusses his life, especially through the years 1930-1950. BD: I was wondering if we could get a little background information about yourself. JA: Well, I'm John Ashworth and they call me Jack part of the time; some people call me Jack as much as they do John, I was raised on a farm, my father was a farmer, I've come up through the years on a farm. I've learned practically all my farming from my father and ones that I've worked for in the county here. I've started out as a young boy when I was bier enough to tromp hay. We used to pitch it on with a pitchfork and pitch it off. Then they had the derricks that took the hay off and stacked it in the barn. We have had a lot of experience in one thing and another. We didn't have the modern equipment that they have nowadays to farm with, we did it all with teams. We didn't have no tractors or anything in them days, and what we started out with we could run quite a big farm. We had sulky plows and hand plows; and my brother and myself used to do quite a lot of plowing and we would change off with one another. One would drive the sulky plow for a while and the other would use the hand plow, that’s the way we started our farming when I was a young boy. We would farm for different people besides my father’s farm, and we broke up a lot of brush ground and put it in. We had one piece I can remember that we had sixty acres of oats in one piece and that’s a pretty good size of ground to plow by hand® We famed that for several years then we started to work out on farms for different people, helped them quite a bit. Then I got married and I farmed my father-in-laws farm, started on it. That’s the first time that I had any farming going 1 south. But I run his farm for quite a number of years, four or five years, then when I decided to farm for myself so I rented a farm and what farm I had was literally south. We milked a few cows; I milked twelve to fifteen cows by hand and then farmed. I run about 140 acres of ground myself, I done that with teams. Then we started to raise our family. We had one girl and four boys. The boys were quite a bit of help to me when they got big enough so they could help me, but I used to hire quite a bit of help to start out with, I used to water at night on horseback; we didn't have cars in them days to run back and forth and sometimes never got home at night and had to stay out all night, sometimes night and day; but nowadays they don't do that. They have different things to do. BD: Now can I ask you a question? You mentioned a hand plow and a sulky plow, could you explain the difference? JA: The sulky plow generally had three horses on it and run on wheels. It had two wheels and then it had a wheel that ran in the furrow. A small wheel that ran in the furrow and the plow in front of it. I would turn it over. The hand plow was just a plow with a beam in it and it had two handles in the back that was held with your hand and you put the reins, the lines to the horsey over the back of your neck and that is the way you would go. On the sulky plow we had lines that you drove by hand. We had levers on the sulky plow that would raise and lower the depth that you wanted to plow. On the hand plow on the front of the beam they had a travis that you could raise it up or down. If you wanted to go in deep, you would raise it up and if you wanted to go down, you would put it way down. Put it down to raise it up. That’s the way you regulated the depth of it, what you wanted to plow. BD: Now like with the sulky plow, how many acres a day could you plow? 2 JA: Well, if you got two acres a day, you did well with a sulky plow; and about an acre and a half with a regular plow and they would be long hours, you would work about ten hours to do it. BD: You mentioned that you irrigated. Was it when you wanted the water you took it? JA: No, you had regular turns; we had turns on the ditches. Some ditches had fourteen, some sixteen days, some fifteen days and a half or something like that. We would have to take the water. We would ride the saddle horse, and we never had any bed, when we come in deep we just came in deep and come right back. We had quite a lot of water in them days, more than we got this year a whole lot. BD: I've heard that it’s pretty shallow this year. Now, you said before that you raised oats and barley, is that the only crops you raised? JA: No, we used to raise alfalfa, and grass hay, and wheat, corn. BD: Have you found it always, well I shouldn't say profitable, but I guess that’s about the word for raising that kind of crops. JA: Well, yes I think we made a little money. For a while it was hard going, we didn't have a lot of money, but we made a living. We raised our family, took care of them, sent them through school, and I bought ground from my sister-in-law. She wanted the cash money for it and I didn't have that much money but I went to the bank and borrowed it. I borrowed the money on the cattle mortgage, on my cattle. My two oldest boys did the farming that year, put up the hay, and watered and I went to Topaz and worked over there in a Jap Camp when there was World War II. Then I worked over as a carpenter and I paid for the ground that summer. BD: Where was Topaz located? 3 JA: Topaz is located about six to eight miles west of Delta, West and North. It was a concentration camp where they put all the Japs and we worked there from about the middle of June to about Thanksgiving time when we got through. BD: And you did what there sir, help build the buildings? JA: Yes, I put plasterboard on most of the time. We done that all summer and that winter I worked out to the Tannagraving on the gang to find the rodents that robbed the mines. Prospects, we worked there all winter long, until the next fall, and the boy did the milking and I gave him half of the cream. We had about fifteen cows. They was playing basketball and would have to do that after six o'clock at night, so they had quite a job to take care of their cows and they had about thirty-five head of range cattle and they fed them. We had one boy that stayed with us and went to school, a boy by the name of Dick Gillis, his mother went down to Las Vegas to work and he wanted to graduate here with our oldest boy and they all three played on the ball team. So after they got through practicing at night, that’s when they done their chores. They done a pretty good job for boys their age and we got along alright. BD: You mentioned that you used horses. When did you switch over to tractors? JA: Well, I never have, I never used a tractor. When I retired from my farming days, I had two teams and I sold one of them and kept the other and when I let my boy take over my farm, he is the one running it now, he switched over to the tractors. But we used to do most of the haying with the pitchfork hauling on wagons and trucks, I got a truck and we used to bale it the last two or three years I farmed. We had someone come and bale it for us. I never ever baled it myself. We hauled it as baled hay. 4 BD: Back during the Depression, did you notice that there was any difference in the way farmers were treated by commercials or anything like this? JA: Yes, I think there was a little difference. Farmers had to just about make a go of it their own selves. The government helped them a little on some things. On some things they didn't, I remember that one time when we had quite a spare drought back in 1931; I remember that cattle, I sold milk cows with five hundred pounds fat for sixteen dollars a head. They just took them out and shot them. But drive anything, no good from them at all. BD: A cow like that, one you sold to the government would be worth about what, several hundred dollars now? JA: Now, she would be worth about three hundred and fifty dollars. BD: They really were giving you a fair price for it even for them, then? JA: No, that was just to get rid of them. We didn't have hay to save them, couldn't buy it, and that’s the way we got rid of them and just kept what we could. BD: You mentioned that you had range cattle. Did you run these on help with plant? JA: No, we had some Taylor Grazing, and private land too. We had all ranch stock and run them all on the ranch or Taylor Grazing. BD: Could you explain a little bit about this Taylor Grazing? JA: Well, Taylor Grazing was and is run by the government, and they allow you so many cattle according to the amount of acres of ground you have. Then you have to pay for your fees to go on the Taylor Grazing to operate it. They reseed the ground sometimes and brake up patches of grass and trees and reseed it, make it a little better and fence it. You still love it. It is quite a little bit better. 5 BD: You mentioned you have to pay fees; do you have to buy a permit or anything to start with? JA: We have to make application to start with. Then they give you so many cattle according to your holding feed and ground, with what you're able to produce, the feed. BD: They are pretty fair about this though. JA: Yeah, I think so. BD: I guess during the Depression the farm land banks came into being. Do you think these were a help? JA: Well, I think they helped some people. I never had to go into any land banks or anything but I've been careful about it. The only time I borrowed money to buy land was through the local bank and I borrowed money and bought cattle, then in the fall when I sold them I turned the payment back. I think that helped us quite a bit too. It made a little extra money for us. BD: Do you think the price freezes that were in effect during the Depression were effective? Do you think they hindered the farmer more than anything? JA: No, I don't think so, hardly. We didn't get too big a price during the Depression. Seems like the guys had money took advantages of you and you had to sell lard to make things go. I think a lot of them would make money during the Depression; of course it takes money to make money too. BD: Do you think that the economy now with President Nixon's price freezes and that, is about like the Depression or are conditions better? JA: Well on a similar scale, but it’s about the same. They tried to help the farmers out that needed it. Take a year like this, they would give them a chance to borrow money for a 6 little of nothing, but they still have to pay it back. There is nothing right out give to them. It is a pretty hard thing to say but if you want their help, they will let you do it. BD: About these subsidies that the government gives people for not raising crops, do you agree or disagree? JA: Well, I don't think it is too good a policy myself because there is too much crooked work that goes on. I know people around here within a hundred mile radius that plowed up ground, a lot of grass, and put it into this land bank and drawed money off it, just as much money as if you had raised a good crop on it. And where you know the ground, you know the people that raised it; I think they get more than what is coming to them. BD: The government has helped the big farmer and the man that says nuts to everyone else. JA: The government helps the bigger farmer more than he helps the little one, in my opinion. BD: What do you think we could change to help the smaller farmer? JA: Well, I really don't know. It is a really hard question for me to answer. BD: You were running dairy cattle. Did you have to have a federal permit or a state permit or anything to do this? JA: No, no, we just milked the cows and sent the milk to the local creamery. Of course, we had to have the milk stand a pretty good test. It couldn't be sour or tainted. We had to take care of it and cool it as quick as we could. We ran it to the local creamery and they made cheese and butter out of it. We had two or three creameries here at that time. Nearly everybody milked a few cows. Everybody had a little bit of a farm. But nowadays since the tractor days, they have to have a pretty big farm to make it pay. 7 BD: What would you say is about the smallest farm a person could buy now and make it pay? JA: Well, to make a living for a family, I think you would have to have about 150 acres anyway. BD: How much would that involve in money? JA: It depends upon where you bought the ground. I imagine the ground would run from $125 to as high as $600 an acre. Some ground would go more than that, of course. There has been ground around here sold for a thousand dollars an acre, so I don't know it’s a hard question to answer. It depends on your locality, your water situation. BD: The water now, is it ran the same way it was when you were talking about so many to a ditch? JA: When we have water. BD: When you have water! I realize, well, this is really a bad year. JA: Yeah, it’s really a bad year. It is the worst year I've really seen it in 75 years. BD: With all these fires and that going on, when we come down on the freeway, you could see some of the flames jumping up on that one fire. It kind of scared me a little bit, to think how dry it was. JA: Yes, it’s been really dry. I don't believe it will be the force of the ground here this year in productive crops. It’s the worst year I've ever seen. I've seen three or four droughts but I've never seen one like this. BD: Do you think it will be better next year? JA: Well, I hope. If it ain't, we will have to move out. BD: It can't get much dryer, can it? Or... 8 JA: No, it can't get much dryer, or we won't have any water to drink. BD: Now, could I ask you about your political feel in from say 1930 to 1950 or so? JA: Well, ever since I've been old enough to vote I've been a Democrat. I think the Democrats have done more good for the people than the Republicans; of course I'm just one. BD: Your opinion is what you have. JA: Well, that's the way you base your feelings. BD: You’re a fan of Franklin D. Roosevelt. JA: Yeah. BD: Okay, I want to ask that of everybody I talk to, to see whether or not, as you get told that most people in Utah are Conservative and that the Republican Party is the party and all this, I just kind of wanted to find out everybody’s feelings about that. JA: Ah-Ah, I lean towards the Democrats, I think that the labor man, the man who uses his hand a lot gets more out of a Democrats Party than he does out of a Republicans. BD: About the Democratic people, none are in this county, county commissioners and that are— JA: Yes, I think so. I think they are really good. We have had some good men. BD: I'd like to talk to you a minute, or ask you about what kind of houses you have lived in throughout your life? JA: Well, I've lived in this house right here for fifty three years. It was built when I was married. Most of them have fairly good houses. Some of them didn't have water in them, some of them did. Electric lights have all come about the time I was born or shortly after, when I first went to school, I used to have to get my lessons with a coal oil lamp, 9 but after a few years they were working on the light plant. We had electricity and water in the house and we didn't have to carry it from the ditch like we did do at first. BD: You always had a house and it has pretty well always been in town? JA: Yeah, I have always lived in town. I used to milk my cows there in town, right across the road, across the street there. BD: That is pretty well in houses. How far away was your land, or was it close to town? JA: Oh, we were about a mile and a half or two miles; about a mile and a half. BD: How did you—you were born here in Beaver— how did your parents come to be in Beaver? JA: Well, my grandfather was one of the early settlers, until they used to come here just after Beaver was settled, just a few weeks after it was settled. And he used to run the wool mills, the Beaver Wool Mills, and he was one of the first, the first mayor of Beaver then. Done a lot of the abstracts of these Beaver City properties, has his signatures on when you go to get an abstract title, it has his signature on it. He come here for religion, started out to go to Delta, him and a fellow named Greenwood. That would be—maybe you would know them—that would be Joe Greenwood and Susie Beason, you know Susie Beason, don't you? Frank Beason's wife? BD: I'm trying to think, maybe I've met them but— JA: They came together and they got out here in the wild cat and run into a big snow storm and couldn't go any farther, and they turned around and came back here. There was four or five families here then and they joined and stayed here. That's the way my father come from a pretty good size family, there was about seven boys, weren't there seven 10 boys and about three girls. They are scattered around now until they are all over the country. BD: Now I'll ask you this—were there any Indians or Indian trouble you heard of while you were growing up? JA: Well, not in my life but just before my life, my span of life, I can remember that the Indians used to come here but there wasn't any trouble, they would always come in and get the deer hides and tan them and make gloves and they would go around from house to house and people would give them flour, sugar, and meat or something like that to help them out. They just done it to help them out and then the Indians would go back to camp. BD: Where did the Indians camp around here? JA: Well, we didn't have any just close here; we had some just up South Creek there just before my time. But they had camps over in Parowan and over to Cedar, and they still got some over to Cedar, to the north. They used to have quite a few Indians here though; sometimes they would stay for two or three weeks at a time. The squaws would go around and ask the people for help and would get fruit and bread and potatoes and meat and flour and stuff like that. They could survive on. BD: This was mainly to try to keep the Indians out of here? JA: Well kind of helped them survive and make them friendly, sometimes they come to the horses and turned them in the pasture and feed them, but they didn't do much about it then just let them go, to get along with them. BD: During the life of your father and grandfather, you probably fought Indians at one time or another? 11 JA: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, my grandfather on my mother’s side was in an Indian War. BD: Indians every time? JA: No they weren’t quite as bad with the Mormons as some of the rest of them. The Mormons gave them things to get along with, where the others didn't. The others would crowd them and try to get them away. That was the plan of the Mormons to treat them good and not have any trouble with them. They put their selves out to do it. BD: You're LDS religion, aren't you? JA: Yeah, I have served in two bishoprics. BD: Did the growth of the church around here fall off? JA: No, I think its growed a little bit. I still think it is growing a little bit. We still have quite a few members coming in being baptized, mainly from California. Coming in here buying homes, seeing the ways the Mormons do and join us. We have had several here just lately. BD: Do you think this is good to have people from California and alike come in here? JA: Well, some of them are alright, and others I don't think we get much out of them. They just come here to get out of California and the smog and stuff like that. BD: Did you ever hunt deer or anything like this? JA: Oh yes, a lot of times. BD: Is the natural resources like hunting and fishing, has it gone downhill since? JA: Well, I think so. I think the deer hunting is a lot worse now than it was twenty years ago. Twenty years ago, you could go out and get you a buck and be back in a half a day easy. Now you have to be there when the deer is there, or you don't get them. BD: Do you think the moving in or out of state people has hurt this? 12 JA: Oh yes, it’s hurt us a lot. There has been California people coming in and they kill a lot of deer that they don't take out. Just kill them, they don't come up to what they expect, they just leave them. I think the deer has gone way down. Fishing I don't think is near as good now. Lot’s more fishers, though, than there used to be forty years ago. Forty years ago, you didn't have too many people that didn't fish. But now everybody and everybody’s kids fish. BD: Yeah, if you were going to change anything in your life, like how the government has treated you or the farmer, or you could make a major contribution to the state, what would you do here? I realize that it is kind of a farfetched question. JA: I don't know, it would be pretty hard to do alone. You kind of have to go along with the way the government has run things. First you have your senators that are supposed to know your wants and that, needs, sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't. I think they have done fairly well, you can't expect to get everything for nothing. If you did, you would be on relief all the time. That’s all we would have. BD: Do you think the government has run things fairly well, or as well as could be expected then? JA: Well, pretty well, I think there could be a few changes that could make a lot of difference, I think that on this welfare program, there could be a lot of change. There is a lot of this welfare work that is all give me, they don't try to make anyone work for it. There are a lot of people on welfare that could work if they want to. BD: So what you're saying there is that a lot of them that could earn their own money? JA: That's right. I think that it don't hurt anybody to earn their own money—all of it if they can. 13 BD: This is kind of the old Mormon tradition, the wall around temple square and this kind of thing. JA: Yah, that's right. BD: Do you have anything you would like to say? JA: No, I don't know much more I could tell you. BD: I think I have about run out of questions. I appreciate your time and that. Thank you very much. JA: It’s OK. I'm glad to help you if I can. 14