Oral History Program Burdie E. Childs Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Burdie E. Childs 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: Childs, Burdie E., 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 Burdie E. Childs. Mr. Childs describes conditions in Ogden and in Riverdale during the Depression. Mr. Childs and his wife managed an apartment building, and Mr. Childs worked as a mailman for the railroad. The interviewer is Mack Taft. MT: What is your full name, sir? BC: Burdie E. Childs. MT: Where were you working during the years 1929 to 1939? BC: The railroad. MT: What type of work did you do for them? BC: I was a mail man. I was mailman right there in the yards. MT: Were you employed during most of the Depression times? BC: Yes. MT: Did you have any times during the Depression when you were unemployed? BC: No. MT: Do you recall approximately how much money you earned during those years? BC: Well, over the period of years, about $4.50 a day, somewhat an average of the Depression years. When I started there, they made $3.92, and then it raised, and we kept getting a few raises. MT: What year did you start there? BC: 1923. MT: Did you experience any cut in pay when the Depression time came? 2 BC: No, now that's the best I can recall, it seems that they took ten cents off or ten per cent off there for a for a year or two, and then we got it back. It wasn't very long, about a year or two years, it wasn't very long. They said the railroad needed a little money so they cut us, I believe it was ten per cent. It wasn't very much I know. But outside of that I worked right through. MT: Where did you live at that time? BC: 26th Street and Washington Boulevard. MT: When did you get married? BC: 1926. MT: How many children did you have that would have been living during the Depression years? BC: One. MT: What do you remember about those years that would shed some light on the situation that existed there? BC: You've got me now. MT: Did you have much of a hobo problem through those years that you recall? BC: No, the hobo work there was through the freight yard, not through the passenger yard. There was a few hobos that came through there, but that was pretty slim. There were a lot in the freight yard, but I didn’t a lot have anything to do with the freight at all. MT: What about your home situation at that time? Did you feel any pinches during the Depression? 3 BC: I was renting at that time. I rented, my dad put me to work, and through the work, I rented. He had an apartment house in town that I went into and took care of in about 1932 or ‘33, he lost that and I had to move out. MT: Where did you go then? BC: Riverdale. We bought a place then, we bought my folks’ old home; that is, I bought part of it, and then I built me a place about 1935. MT: Do you recall anything about food or clothing being a problem to you, or anyone close to you? BC: No. ‘Course I had a little edge on most people at that time, I hung paper. Of course I didn't make a big living out of the paper, but then it helped me along to go along with what I already had. MT: What would you have charged at that time to hang paper in the average front room? BC: Well, let’s see, about ten or twelve dollars. MT: Sister Childs, what do you remember during the Depression years, from about 1929 to 1939? Mrs. Childs: Well, that's when we started to build our home, wasn't it. We were young then, but Burt always had a job, and, in fact we helped a lot of the family out, in fact, nearly all of them, didn't we. My mother and dad to boot, and his father and mother, and my brothers and sisters. We were able to. BC: When my dad lost the apartment, we lost $2,000. And we'd just got married not too long. 4 MT: What do you remember about some of the rest of the family? What kind of wages were they earning? Mrs. Childs: Most of them were farmers. My dad was a farmer, and he had the four boys home still, and my sisters, they worked, and had a little apartment in town close to us so we could keep tab on them and help them out. MT: Were their husbands employed? Mrs. Childs: Well, they weren't really married then, my oldest sister and Burt and I were the only ones married and then my sister. Sister Alberts was married later on. But the three girls lived together in an apartment quite close to us. MT: When your sister was married, was her husband employed? Mrs. Childs: Yes, but he didn't make a very big wage. His mother died when he was real young, they immigrated here from Holland, and John was the next to the youngest so he, I guess he'd been working at American Pack from the time he was about thirteen years old. MT: How much would you guess he would have made over there? Mrs. Childs: I think when they got married, he was makin' twelve dollars a week. BC: He was only a kid, about twelve or thirteen when he started down there, ‘course they don't start kids out for much. MT: For people that you were acquainted with in the city, what was their greatest problem? Food, clothing, shelter? Mr. Childs: Well, I think shelter was. Because at the time, we had people over there in the apartments where we rented that they had their kids move in on them they 5 couldn't afford any place to get into so they had to come back to Pa and Ma, and then they weren't renting they had this PWA circulating. Mrs. Childs: That was a bad deal that PWA, it made lazy people out of a lot of people. BC: But that was the living conditions over there. They didn't have any money and they always come back to the old folks to live. MT: What would you say would have been the greater problem, food or clothing? BC: Well, clothing seemed to be here, but they were on these relief deals at that time. We used to go down to one of these places down on 24th street and pick up their commodities every week. MT: It seems that in the rural areas, most people had enough to eat, but they had a problem with clothes, and I was wondering how the conditions in the city compared with that. BC: Wouldn't you say that it was eats in the city? Everyone seemed to have clothes, but a lot of them didn't have anything to eat. Mrs. Childs: Well, you can get along on clothes, you know, you might not keep up with the styles and that, but I guess food was the biggest problem. MT: Do you think of any interesting things that happened around you at that time that might show the situation that existed at that time? Mrs. Childs: We had a lot of tenants there that we couldn't get the money out of. They'd give us hard luck stories, and some are just that kind. They, the rent problem don't worry them, that comes last, and that put a hardship on us in the apartment. We always said that that's what killed his father, was losing those apartments after working as hard as they had, and then he got hurt and couldn't work which 6 was a hardship with him, and then he had Burt move over there in the apartment to kind of look after things for them. BC: The money question at that time was tough. There was more people that lost their homes then than there is now by far, although there wasn't as many people here, but there was more people that lost their homes. MT: How would they lose them, on loans that they had, or taxes? Mrs. Childs: Mostly loans. They'd get out of a job, you know, or get down, and then they couldn't pay for it, so they’d just move out, and a lot of companies, these mortgage companies took them. Mrs. Childs: It seems like the mortgage companies weren't as lenient with you at that time as they are now. BC: The difference is the mortgage company. The mortgage company now is the government. Then it was all individuals’ money, or money from the banks through individual people, was how you got your money there. MT: Do you remember anything about the Ogden State Bank? BC: Well, I don't remember too much. The only thing that I remember about it was that I had the apartment money in there. And a fellow came down the street one day and said did you know that the Ogden State's going to close? He said if you've got any money in there you'd better go down and get it just as soon as they open it. So we got all our money out of it, every dollar of it. They closed it all right, they closed it about 12:00, and I went down just as soon as the bank opened, I think it was about 10:00, and I got all mine out, of course I didn't have 7 much in it, I'd paid up all my bills up over there, and I had about $100 or some such amount, but I got it all out. Mrs. Childs: A hundred dollars in those days was a lot of money. BC: That's about the only thing that I can remember about the bank, only when they did close, the people were lined up outside to get their money, and couldn't get it, I remember that part of it, and see that was in 1931, I believe, in there somewhere. Mrs. Childs: That's when we found out my grandmother - they came here from Holland, and my grandfather was a major something in the Army there, but when they came here, he was supposed to have a pension - but you know, they couldn't talk the language and so they lost that pension, and my grandmother had to struggle for existence and that's when we found out that she saved a dollar every month and she put that in the Ogden state bank, and then after it closed, years after that why they told us that she had some money saved in there, but she hadn’t said anything to any one of us. But even with her—she depended on my folks helping and she had a son, but he couldn't, well, jobs just weren't plentiful. MT: Do you think of anything that you do now that you do from something you remember happening during those times? Mrs. Childs: We've saved more now, but like I said, we helped the others out, and we could have saved quite a little bit more but we helped the family out. BC: Well, I think those Depression years taught us a lot in regards to saving and getting along with what you have instead of going in to debt now like we do for everything you own. Of course I was a great hand all my life to try to keep my 8 bills paid up pretty close, 'cause I figured if I died today the wife would be out where she could handle it. I was always a good hand to keep up pretty close to the bridge as the fellow says. But I think it taught us a lot in that respect along with saving and keeping out for a rainy day, more so than they do now I think. Mrs. Childs: I think one thing, why the country is in the condition it is they are getting things for nothing, they think they can, pay it on installment plans, and they just get in deeper and deeper; and they just cannot pay all their bills. These cards and everything you know, that you can get now, you don't need any money, and they think as long as they can get those, they can get anything they want. BC: They fired me in 1929 and then they turned around and re-hired me again in 1930. MT: Now, when you first started to work for the railroad, how much did you say you earned? BC: $75.00 per month. MT: When did you say they fired you? BC: In '30, I was out of work for 30 days, then I went back to work, I didn't belong to the union or anything at that time, and they put me back to work I was off just 30 days exactly. Then when I went back I made $3.92 per day, exactly. I went back on an eight hour day. But when I first started working, I made $75.00 per month for one hour a day. MT: You mentioned managing some apartments over in town there, can you tell me a little about the problems of an apartment manager during the Depression years? 9 BC: Well, to start with, you had to find some renters. That was the first deal, because they were few and far between. And then you had to be a little picky for the first part, the last part we didn't, we just got them who had the money to pay their rent with. And then there were lots of fights in those places that you had. They didn't get down to really fighting, but then you had a lot of trouble, a lot of trouble with them to quiet them down and get them going, and then the rents wasn't too good. Mrs. Childs: Well, at one time we had twelve apartments, and there were eight vacant during the Depression, eight vacant apartments, and that was real rough. BC: And then in 1931, we lost them, the mortgage company took them, they wanted their interest and everything all paid up, and dad just couldn’t do it, so he went, although he turned everything over to us, we had all the management, paying the bills, and the whole thing, running them out and everything. MT: What were your problems in collecting your money at that time? BC: They didn't have any. People just didn't have the money. Mrs. Childs: Well, a lot of them… we had one or two that were drunkards, alcoholics. The husbands and the wife, and of course that came first, and if they didn't have the money for the rent, well, we had to wait. Then during the Depression that was real rough. BC: What we lost them over was that we couldn’t rent them, see, we couldn't keep them full. People just couldn't pay any rent, they didn't have any. MT: What were you charging for rent for a month at that time? BC: $40.00 a month. They had two bedrooms, five big rooms in them, they were real nice, big enough to put most any size family in them, there was two bedrooms, 10 living room, dining room, and bath. That was furnished ones, the unfurnished ones were about $35.00 a month. So when we lost it, we lost the furniture and the whole works. MT: How much money would you have been talking about that would have been owing at that time on the apartment building? BC: When dad lost it we owed $11,000 on it. And we ran that for them for about three years after they lost it, and then the mortgage company sold it to Combe, I believe it was, and he bought it for just the mortgage that was due on it, just $11,000. Then Combe sold it, not too many years ago, and he got just what my dad paid for it, when he first bought it. Combe sold it for the same amount, which was about $36,000 dollars, that's what Combe got out of it. Mrs. Childs: Sometimes Burt had to settle family quarrels too, they'd call him out there, the mother and father would get into a battle, and the kids would come down and say, come up and straighten it out. MT: Do you remember anything about the nature of the quarrels? Do you feel that the economic condition at that time- lent anything to the quarrels? BC: Most of them fellows there at that time were all working, most of them. They were all railroaders, the whole bunch. They came down from Evanston down here, fine bunch of people. But you know, sometimes when they'd get to drinking they'd get into troubles and one thing and another. Mrs. Childs: We had a fellow at one time pull a gun on Burt. He had been drinking, and him and his wife got into a argument, and Burt ordered him out because he wanted him out and he just got out of the house, and he stood behind a tree right 11 by the apartments, and Burt stepped out and that guy just leveled that gun on Burt, and I yelled at him to hide, and right then, I think we called the officer, and you know, they couldn't find that old guy, ‘course they did later on, but where he hid, we don't know. And then we had one family who tried to commit suicide, and they were a lovely family. And he got to drinking and said he was going to commit suicide, and he went to the kitchen and pulled an overcoat over his head and turned on the gas jets on the range, and they had a baby about two months old in the bedroom, and she called me because Burt had gone to work, and I don't know how I ever got so brave to go in there and turn those jets off, and tell him he'd better straighten out. And then we took the baby and took her over into our apartment, and then we called his wife, of course they separated later on, and he hung himself in a jail, but they were a lovely family, had lovely children. MT: Was he unemployed at that time? BC: No, he worked, he had a good job. Mrs. Childs: And when he was sober, he was just the finest man you could ask for, but when he would get to drinking... BC: I think that you could say that that was the greatest problem over in there. We had all classes of people in there, not all colors, but we had all classes in the nine years that we were there.