Oral History Program Raymond S. Wright Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Raymond S. Wright 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: Wright, Raymond S., 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 Raymond S. Wright. Mr. Wright discusses his experiences as an employee of the Southern Pacific Railroad during the Depression. He describes his time as an LDS bishop, helping needy people, and ward programs to provide employment, food, and clothing. The interviewer is Mack Taft. MT: Where did you live from the year 1929-39? RW: I lived at 362 34th Street in Ogden. MT: As I understand, you were serving as an [LDS] bishop through at least part of that time, is that right? RW: Yes, I served as bishop from 1936 to 1945. MT: As a bishop through those years, what were some of the problems that confronted you? RW: Well, mostly due to unemployment, there were many people out of work, and of course quite a number of them had to be assisted. Then one of the problems that I had, and I don’t know maybe it wasn’t peculiar to me, but quite often when I would come home from work there would be people sitting on my doorstep– people from out of town who claimed membership in the church and who were seeking assistance. Some of them [needed] a night’s lodging, some of them food. On one occasion, we had an entire family that had left their home in Pennsylvania and gone to the Northwest for employment, and they hitchhiked on the way back. They drove their car to the Northwest, and on their way back their car gave out and they didn’t have money to pay for transportation. They hitchhiked from the Northwest to Ogden, and I suppose all the way back to 2 Pennsylvania. When they got to Ogden, they were in need of lodging, they were in need of food. There was a father and mother and two children, a boy and a girl. The boy was about 14, I would say, and the girl about 12. Of course some of the neighbors sent them to me. Well, they weren’t members of the church, but we did, at our own expense, feed them that night and the next morning. Then we sent them on their way and we never heard from them anymore. Whether they got there or not, we don’t know. But that was one of the things that was quite a problem. See, we lived on the south end of town, and many of the people, men particularly, that possibly were riding the freight trains, and some of them hitchhiking, and when they got into the city, why they were usually dumped off, or they got off the train. If they were members of the church, they would inquire where the bishop lived. And so they were sent to me, and of course we took care of them, those that were worthy cases, church cases, and that I determined through my interviews. It didn’t take me very long to find out whether they were entitled to church assistance, but at any rate they were most of them hungry. So whether they were entitled to it or not... we usually put out our own food for them. If they were church assistance, then I assisted them from church funds. Some of them were not entitled to it, but they were hungry. MT: What ward were you bishop of? RW: The Ogden First Ward. MT: Would that have been in the Weber Stake? And did that include a large area at that time? 3 RW: It included, at that time, everything in Ogden from 24th Street south to the city limits, from Adams Avenue to the river on the west, and, in addition, it included Riverdale, Roy, Hooper, Kanesville, and Clinton. That was the stake, of course. MT: Who was the stake president at that time? RW: George E. Browning. MT: What type of work did you do yourself at that time? RW: I was employed by the Southern Pacific Railroad in the engineering department. MT: When did you start working with them? RW: 1913. I worked there 43 years, and retired in 1959. MT: What was your experience with the people who were employed at the railroad? Did they get along better or not so well as others? RW: Well, I could say they got along a little better. There was a great deal of unemployment. Construction work was cut off completely. Railroad transportation was reduced tremendously because people had no money to buy goods and there was no merchandise being transported. And there weren’t very many people traveling either because they didn’t have the means. And the railroad, of course, like everyone else, retrenched. I think that some of the other industries, possibly more-so than the railroad. They made some drastic reductions. MT: Did they cut back on the hours that people worked or did they lay off? RW: They laid off mostly. I would estimate that the layoffs were quite close to 50 percent. Some departments possibly not quite that much. Possibly all crafts were not that much, but I think 40 percent would be a fair estimate of all crafts. 4 MT: Was there any reduction in pay at that time that you recall? RW: No, I don’t recall a pay reduction. It was a force reduction mostly. MT: What would the average employee of the railroad have been earning at that time? RW: Oh, I would say that an average would be $300 - $350 per month during that period. And it was worth $300 then. MT: Do you remember any other incidents that happened to you as a bishop that indicate the economic conditions of the time? RW: Well, I found that in our own ward there weren’t too many people entirely unemployed, yet we were a ward of working people mostly. There were no well-to- do people in our ward. MT: You mentioned that there were some projects with the WPA that you were associated with. Could you elaborate a little on that? RW: One of the projects was a historical record that was made of some of the earlier wards of the church. Inasmuch as I was the bishop of the Ogden First Ward, [we had] many of the records, the early records of the church, even the records of the organization of the Weber Stake were there with the ward records. Of course these WPA people that were doing the researching found them and included them in their historical records and story of the organization of the ward. MT: Are there any other projects that you can recall during that time? RW: I don’t recall any other governmental projects, but we did have a project in the ward that was very productive and that was what we called gleaning. You know, the farmers, many of them couldn’t sell their produce because people didn’t have 5 the money to buy it. So we had people, some of them employed and many of them not employed, and they went out to these farms at the invitation of the farmer and gleaned the fields. That way we obtained produce – onions and potatoes and carrots and other produce that we could distribute to needy families of the ward. We also established at our ward a wood yard and some of our unemployed people rigged up a large saw and went up into the mountains and obtained wood and hauled it down. Some of our unemployed came over and spent the day sawing wood into stove lengths. Many people in our area burned coal and wood, and by reason of having this extra supply of wood, they cut down on the cost of their fuel bill. It proved to be very beneficial to us – the gleaning of the produce and the wood yard was a big help to us. MT: What about clothing at that time? Was there anything in the church program to help with clothing? RW: Yes, they made clothing and they remade clothing. Some of the wards had projects and remade clothing and many items of new clothing – shirts, pajamas, and dresses were made in the sewing rooms of the Relief Society and turned into the church welfare program. MT: Can you think of some ward projects that might show the spirit of that time? RW: Well, one thing that we did, we saw the necessity of providing employment for some of our people. So we undertook to refurbish the interior of our chapel as well as the woodwork on the inside. And we had people in the ward who were unemployed. Some were painters and some were helpers, but we undertook to repaint the interiors of our chapel and all of our classrooms, as well as the 6 woodwork on the exterior. And the church supplied us with paint and the unemployed people, many of them putting in a full day’s work for their receiving food, clothing, and fuel for their families, proved to be a big help to the ward and to the people because they were able to work for what they received. Most of them were glad to do it if they were able to work. Of course some of them were widows with little children, and of course we didn’t expect them to work. The men, many of them we sent out to the welfare center where they worked. We had a welfare project. We raised, one year, sorghum. And it was made into molasses. We went for several years. One year we raised carrots. We raised sugar beets, potatoes, corn. We had a farm project all the time that I was bishop. We used some acreage in our ward for our sorghum and our carrots. It belonged to one of our members, and he had become quite old. He had about an acre and a half close to our meeting house. Then, later on, we used land that belonged to Bishop John Stimpson out in Riverdale. We farmed that. MT: What do you think you learned during the Depression that’s been a guide to you in your life since that time? RW: Well, I always had the habit of saving a little bit of what I earn. I was telling my grandson this morning that my father taught me when I was young and first went to work that regardless of your wages or amount of income, cut it, make it a habit of saving part of it. I’ve had that habit pretty much all my life. And I think that during the Depression it helped a great deal for us. It helped us to help other people because we were fortunate. I was fortunate enough to stay in work during the Depression. I don’t know how that came about, but I did, and there were men 7 younger than me that were laid off, but I stayed to work. I did voluntarily take a day off a week. The group in my department decided when they had instructions to cut the force a certain percent, we all got together and said, “Why don’t we work five days a week, and each of us take off a day, and that way we can keep the man on. We won’t have to lay the man off.” When the men in charge found out what we were doing, they told us to work the full six days, and they didn’t make any force reduction either. But I was fortunate enough to work all during the Depression. MT: How many children did you have? RW: We had four, and five part of the Depression. MT: Do you think of anything else that might be interesting to people looking at this 10-year period? RW: Well, I think that it’s basic for people to put aside supplies and money, clothing, in a reasonable amount so that if a Depression comes, or unemployment, they’ll be able to get along for a time, at least, without any difficulty. Of course that includes some money because people are buying homes, and if they have some money laid away, they can keep up their payments on their homes. And I think that’s basic, something that everybody needs to do. That applies to retired people as well because you never know what’s going to happen. We’ve tried to follow that practice. We haven’t accumulated a lot, but we’ve had a lot of experiences, and they’re valuable. MT: Who of your associates on the railroad are still around? RW: Well, I have a brother who worked for the same company that I did, and he 8 retired a year before I did. Arthur D. Kingsford, he retired a few years before we did. A good many of the people that worked with me have passed on. MT: Are there other bishops who were serving at that time that are still around? RW: Yes, Roy Simmons. He was the bishop of the Second Ward, and Arthur Bingham, I believe, was a bishop during part of that time. He lives in the Roy area...