Oral History Program Curtis Marshall Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Curtis Marshall 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: Marshall, Curtis, 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 Curtis Marshall. Mr. and Mrs. Marshall discuss his experiences working for the American Pack and Provision Company, and his time as an LDS bishop during the Depression. They also discuss the importance of saving, avoiding debt, and entertainment during the Depression. The interviewer is Mack Taft. MT: Well, Bishop Marshall, where did you live during the time of the Depression, between 1929-39? CM: Well, I lived out in Pleasant View until 1930. Then in 1930 the wife and I got married, and we moved into West 24th Street in Ogden. I previously had started working, in 1929, for the American Pack and Provision Company. I worked there for about 15 years, and in 1930 we moved into that area. We lived there for about 40 years. All five of our children were born there – two boys and three girls. MT: Where did you work during those years? CM: Well, I worked for the American Pack and Provision, a meat-packing plant there on West 24th Street during all that period of time. During that ten years, which isn’t a very long period of time really, I worked several jobs there. I started to work there in what they called the pork pack. That was where the small orders went for packing and preparation for delivery. I worked in there for about three years, and then I took a sales – what they called a sausage wagon and delivered through Honeyville, Deweyville, Fielding, and that area about twice a week, and up Weber Canyon through Morgan, Devil’s Slide, Henefer, clear up on into Kamas. And I did that twice a week. But I worked on the sausage wagon which, 2 of course, was delivery work. Most of the grocery stores that had the smaller meat counters, some of the larger ones in Ogden, and I did that for about five years. Then I worked there cutting wholesale meat for delivery mostly through the Ogden area. We used to deliver some quite large pieces of meat, a quarter of beef and so on while I was on the sausage wagon to various grocery stores that cut out quite a little meat. MT: Did you notice any special problems that the grocer had during those years? Was there credit available for him, or how did have to proceed there? CM: Well, about 75 percent of them could just sign the ticket and receive the goods, but the other 25 percent had somehow lost their credit and had to pay cash. I don’t really know what made the difference, how some of them had lost their credit, but most of them were able to sign the ticket and receive the goods. MT: Were you fully employed during the Depression? Were you ever out of work? CM: Yes, I was employed all during the Depression. Sometimes we only got four days a week during the Depression, as I recall. We always got four days a week work, sometimes five. But I recall the government having these projects here for the unemployed and so on, but we were fortunate. This might be interesting to note that when I started working for the American Pack and Provision, I had previously sold out on the road, going up through Montana and Idaho, selling for a woolen mill. I only sold the one year, and then I started working for the American Pack and Provision. I started working there for 40 cents an hour. I think after I had been working there for about three months, I got raised to 43 ½ cents an hour... I was on the sausage wagon when I got raised to $28 a week, 3 and I thought that was quite a raise at that time. Quite a bit of difference between those wages and what they receive nowadays. MT: To what do you attribute the fact that you were able to have a job during those years when there was so much unemployment? CM: I would say that there are certain commodities that are a must to people and whether we are able to buy them or not, we usually get them. If the government has to buy them for us. And the meat business probably would fall in that area where everybody needed a certain amount of meat. You can get along without dress goods and some equipment, automobiles, and so on. But it’s pretty hard to get along without meat of various types. So I remember talking about that, that we were fortunate to be in the meat industry. Since people had to eat, that made a job while other places that weren’t so vital to the living standards of the average individual were out of work. I would attribute that as the main reason that we kept going. We did cut down to probably 75 percent of our usual volume, which showed that people cut down a lot of their meat consumption. That proved that we’re still eating meat, though not so much as sometimes, and that kept us reasonably busy. MT: Did you have any special problems keeping the household over those years? Was food more difficult to come by, or clothes? What would be the most difficult problem along that line? CM: Well, I can’t say that we had too difficult a time. I guess all my life I’ve been quite conservative, and I’ve learned that it’s easier to have a few dollars on hand than it is to be a few dollars in the hole. So it’s been my policy all my life that even 4 though I’ve made a little, that I saved a little. As I recall, we bought a small home at $15 a month, and food – some food items were rather hard to get, as I recall. Wasn’t that the time it was pretty hard to get sugar and flour – I believe, somewhere close to that time. But it really didn’t get us down. We thought many times how fortunate we were to be able to get by, though we went without a lot of items that were needed, and we ate well, and dressed fairly good. Let me put it this way – we weren’t bothered near as much as some of the people that were around that we knew of. MT: Did you have your own garden, or things along this line? CM: No, we didn’t. We had just – Oh, I tried once or twice to raise a little garden, but we lived on a hill that was a little too sandy to be profitable. Not only that, we were on city water. But there is one thing that we did do. We had a large chicken coop, and I raised chickens for a number of years both for eggs and meat. I had the battery system, and I raised chickens for a couple of years, but I can’t say it was very profitable because it didn’t last long. I was bothered quite a lot with colds and pneumonia in the chickens, so I gave that up. We had our own cow. I’ve always felt that that probably contributed much to our food. That’s one thing I can think of. We had a lovely Jersey cow that gave a lot of milk, and I got her for a two-fold purpose. One was work for my boys while they were growing up, and the other, of course, for the milk, which is a big item for a family of five children and the two of us. We didn’t raise much garden; the soil wasn’t favored for that program very well. MT: What were you doing in the church at that time? When were you first made 5 bishop? CM: I was made bishop of the [LDS] 16th Ward there in 1940, and served for four years. Of course I had previously served prior to that. I had been in the presidency of the seventies quorum in our stake, and I served as superintendent of the Mutual, and been in the Sunday school. Actually in 1944 when I was released, I served for about three years as the advisor to the Senior Aaronic program. Then I went into the stake mission, and I served two years as a regular stake missionary. Then I served as the stake mission president of the North Weber Stake. Then we moved up here. MT: Was the church welfare by 1940 pretty well able to take care of the major needs of the people then, or what was the situation? CM: Well, I served as the bishop the once that I mentioned there in the North Weber Stake. Of course the welfare program came in along in that time. We had quite a few members in our ward that we assisted in the welfare program... I recall issuing welfare orders and going to the home and to the Bishop’s Storehouse. We had improved it considerably from that time to the second time that I was bishop, but it functioned quite well. I don’t recall any commodities that you weren’t able to get while I was bishop in 1940-44, both in clothing and food items. MT: What’s the most amusing circumstance that took place during those years, either in your family or with your children? CM: Well, I think back on a few things that were quite faith-promoting. One item I always felt came through desire to keep the commandments of the Lord, and 6 attend the meetings that I was supposed to attend as a bishop. I recall while working at the packing house breaking the bone in my right foot just shortly before working hours were over. I had to limp my way home. I didn’t take my shoe off, but when it happened I was pulling a flat truck loaded with about a ton of meat to take it into one of the freezers. I let my foot fall back far enough that the truck ran over it and broke the bone in my right foot. As I stated, I made it home, which was about 2 ½, three blocks from the packing plant. This was a Saturday night, and I had always been able to make it to all my meetings. I had, you might call it a hobby, of attending all my meetings. I had never missed a priesthood meeting, or Sunday school, or sacrament meeting, or stake meeting. I never missed any of those meetings. So on Saturday night, I said to my wife, as I took my shoe off, my foot puffed all up. So I said, “The doctors will all be out of town.” So I soaked my foot for a long time in hot water, which may not have been the best thing for it as it turned out. Still it could have been. Anyhow, I had great desire to go to my meetings as usual. As usual, of course, my wife and I had our evening prayer that night, and I asked for the blessing of the Lord. I said to my wife, “If I go to my priesthood meeting in the morning, it will be some greater power than anything here on earth.” And we went to bed, and my foot was paining very bad and was extremely swollen. It pained me very much until about one in the morning, and then I suddenly went to sleep and didn’t wake up until six the next morning. When I did, my wife asked about my foot. When she did, we took the covers off my foot. I was going to say, “To my surprise,” but I wasn’t surprised because I 7 had great faith I was going to go to the meeting. So I rolled over and sat on the side of the bed, and the swelling was almost entirely gone from my foot, and most of the pain. I was able to put on my shoe and go to my priesthood and all my other meetings that day. It was a great testimony of the blessings that come if we try to do what we’re supposed to do as priesthood bearers, we receive the blessings that come through obeying the commandments of the Lord. MT: That is a great testimony, Bishop. Do you think of any characteristics or habits that you do now that you attribute back to having lived through the Great Depression? Are you more conservative now than you were before? Or what would you relate to this? CM: As our children are grown up and all married and we have eighteen grandchildren now, I see every one of them living in considerably more convenient conditions and with many more of the modern conveniences than we were able to purchase at the time of our married life. I’m concerned that we hear so much about taxes and everything being expensive. And the thing that strikes me is how, in spite of that, we enjoy, as I see it, four times the modern conveniences that we could ever enjoy in our young married life. It seems to me that the young people have missed that period of time which was quite vital and left a deep impression upon me and my wife for the need of being a little more conservative as we try to caution our children and sons-in-law and daughters-in-law about going into debt pretty heavily. It seems that the loan business, credit, has become such a part that makes it so easy for young people to buy what they want. They say, “Why not have it here?” That, to me, probably stands out more 8 than anything else that I know of. We now have a son and daughter-in-law that pay about $4,500 for a new car that, in spite of the caution, and we also had another one that bought a Cadillac a couple of years ago, a brand new one. And they’re already in debt. It just seems like this debt business is part of living to the young people. I would venture that 80 percent of all the young people have $5,000 to $40,000 worth of debt on their heads. If they should slip or stub their toe, I wonder where they would be. All they can do is just hope that help comes their way and they don’t have sickness or too much trouble. MT: I don’t think there were any other questions that I have now that you haven’t answered. Was there something else that you can think of that’s interesting, or a story you might tell? CM: Well, one more thought that I might add is that my mind runs back to the time that I was a young boy in my father’s field at the age of four. I think about the conditions that Mother was confronted with, having my brother and my sister born five months after my father was killed, and she had to travel some nine miles on a coal-burning dummy. It was later replaced by an old streetcar that ran out north of Utah Hot Springs. She used to come in and work 10 hours a day scrubbing clothes for $1.25 a day. Then I think possibly if some of the young people today could know and witness some of those situations today, how all these modern conveniences that they have today were unknown, even a lot of electric lights and gas and electric stoves that we have. We had to cut wood and get kindling, and start the fire. I think that if it were possible to revert back 65 years and let them have a few months of living as we did in those days, with the 9 horse and buggy and the old muddy roads and so on, that we’d appreciate more fully, probably, the wonderful conveniences that we have and be more willing to pay some of the taxes that we have to pay to enjoy these great luxuries and things that we enjoy today. MT: Sister Marshall, what do you remember about the Depression? Mrs. Marshall: Well, about the only thing I remember is making over clothes. Lots of times we’d go to the Deseret Industries and get old clothes, even other people’s old clothes, and take them home and make them into clothes for our children. And then I think we didn’t do like we do now. We’d make a big pot of soup, or a big pot of beans, and we could feed them a lot cheaper than feeding them on beefsteak, that’s for sure, like most people think they have to have today. But that’s about the only thing I think I can say, working in the church, and keeping active and healthy. MT: Now, Bishop, I think of another question that I should have asked you. What things do you remember back that you think might be good for the young people now? What things in the community, or wards, or so forth, that you feel were better than we have now? CM: I think that is a good question. I see on every hand that people, even in our church, they say, “My, if I could just find a job for our boy or our girl.” I do recall that back 50 or 60 years ago, when I was a small boy, one of the chief duties of the deacons and teachers was to help the widows, and cut kindling, and do the chores for the various needy families. Today there is so little of that done, yet the need is almost as great as it was 50 or 60 years ago. Some way or another, we 10 have forgotten that there are a lot of these jobs. I think that, as parents, we could do a whole lot more to encourage our children to go out to the needy, especially the widows and those who are financially up against it, and helping there. I think one of the prime obligations that the parents have, probably, is to see that their children have an obligation and responsibility and that they do it. Too many of them are so used to have the money doled out to them with no particular responsibility on their part. I see that as a problem more than anything else. Lack of a job for these young people, yet many jobs available. They’re apparently blind to them and don’t see them. For one thing, they don’t want to do anything if it’s babysitting jobs for the girls. It’s almost exorbitant for the young people who need to pay the price of a babysitter. Some of them are asking as high as $1.50 an hour, I guess. So I think possibly parents need to encourage their children to do the jobs that need doing. Certainly there’s a lot of joy and satisfaction comes from doing the job whether we get anything financially from it, but just doing it for the sheer joy of being of service to your neighbors and the members of your ward, and things. MT: What about entertainment in the ‘30s and so forth, in the ward and community, as compared to now? CM: I see a great change in the entertainment. When I was a young fellow, we used to go to dances. All over in nearly every ward, they had regular dances. Some had them even every week. North Ogden, Plain City, Hooper, at least twice a month, it seems to me. They used to have a dance or a nice little home orchestra or sometimes they were in from another ward. We’d have some 11 wonderful times dancing the square dances and the shaubushes [sic], and the different dances there. We used to come to White City here in Ogden. They had a great group of people, old and young, used to go there. I would assume a good many of those times we’d run near five, six, or seven hundred people through there every night. They had them about every week. Nowadays, other than a few of the stakes in our communities, there are hardly any dances. Some of the stakes – which is a wonderful thing – do have them, probably every other week with a nice orchestra, which is commendable. I think the television and all these modern conveniences, seems like it works two ways. It’s wonderful to be able to enjoy these wonderful programs that come, and if we use them the right way, they’ll be a great help to us. On the other hand, why it’s taking the initiative away from the people in the homes and communities to develop their own natural talents and do their own entertaining. They leave it to somebody else to do it. MT: Sister Marshall, what is your recollection of these things that we’ve been talking about? Mrs. Marshall: I was thinking that there’s more money made now by the parents. Usually both parents are working, and I think that’s where a lot of our trouble comes with our children right today. They’re not made to get out and make their own money. Now when our boys bought a car, they had to make the money to buy the car and put the gas in it. But not many children have to do that today. Their parents buy them the car and give them the money, and then they go and get into trouble. But our boys, they worked hard enough during the day so that they were tired enough at night to go to bed. And I think that’s a lot of our trouble 12 with the children because there’s nothing for them to do to get tired. Well, just not too long ago, they got the High Priests to go do this lawn work, when there’s so many young people that could do the same thing. CM: Yes, we have a lot of that going on here in our ward. The High Priests and elders occasionally, but true, we’ve had six or eight of our High Priests that have been sick lately. But there are many other jobs you know, bathing the high priests, and driving them to Salt Lake, and other things. These kinds of jobs, true there aren’t as many as there used to be. But as I think my wife has mentioned, we should try and get these young people out to do some of these jobs because they can do just as good and sometimes better than some of the older of us. But there they are, and I’m sure I would be safe in saying that there are around 50 to 60 young fellows in our ward here that are Aaronic priesthood age that could do a lot of this work. They’ve gotten to the point where, if the job don’t suit them, and when I say this I’m talking about my own grandchildren because they’re just like the rest of them – but if the job don’t suit them, they say, “I don’t like it.” See, both the girls and the boys. And the parents instead of encouraging them and saying, “Well, here, you’ve got this to buy and that to buy. You’d better go to work.” They go along with them and say, “Well, here, okay.” And dig down in their pockets and buy it for them without them putting forth any effort. Things come too easy that way.