Oral History Program Stanley Robbins Interviewed by Mack S. Taft circa 1960s Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Stanley Robbins 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: Robbins, Stanley, 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 Stanley Robbins. Mr. Robbins discusses the management of the Peery Estate, including operation of the White City and Virginia Ballrooms, as well as the Egyptian and Ogden Theaters. He also talks about conditions in Ogden during the Depression, including bootlegging and problems along 25th Street. The interviewer is Mack Taft. MT: Where did you live during the Depression years, from 1929-39? SR: In Ogden, Utah. MT: And what was your profession at that time? SR: I was manager of the D. H. Peery Estate. MT: In that capacity, what were some of the businesses that you operated for them? SR: The Peery Estate owned large holdings. They owned the Egyptian Theatre, and the Ogden Theater in Ogden, the White City Ballroom, many business houses which were rented to tenants in the operation of business, as well as farm lands in Utah and Canada MT: In 1921 a large, frame dance hall existed on the east part of the Peery Estate property, of the old Ogden Theater. During October of that year, the large frame ballroom was burned to the ground. Do you recall anything of this? SR: A large fire took place and, as a result of this, there wasn’t anything left. After the cleanup of all debris, we started to build a new ballroom 150 feet wide by 250 long in an oval position. This was conceived in early spring of 1922. We had a very beautiful ballroom, with the pathway leading from 25th Street back to the center of the block. This ballroom was very attractive, and we decided to utilize the “Virginia,” which was the home of Mr. and Mrs. D. H. Peery. However they 2 had passed on, and we remodeled this beautiful old mansion, using it as a dining and club area adjoining the White City, facing 24th Street and Adams Avenue. This, however, after five years, did not fulfill the merits of the dancing unit. Therefore we had decided to discard it. Mr. Harmon W. Peery, the manager of the Peery Estate, issued the order to tear it down, and it was then taken off the property. We built a large, open-air cement dance floor, 100 by 150 feet, on the north side of the White City Ballroom, which we utilized during the summer months, opening the doors to the outside ballroom and using both places. During the years 1923-38, we utilized various methods to establish our business firm and make it a very profitable business. In connection with the Ogden Theater and the Egyptian Theatre, which we built, we worked out a proposition to give away two-door Chevrolet automobiles to the lucky number drawn at the dance hall on a certain date, usually allowing three months between periods in which we gave the car away. On the fourth Saturday night, we gave the Chevrolet away, and usually the attendance at the ballroom outside and in was somewhere around 4,800 to 5,000. This was one of our methods during the Depression time to increase the business and keep the profits coming to the Peery Estate. The theaters did good business, and the dance hall did good business while this method was being used (of giving a new car to the winning number). MT: Do you have any idea how far your clientele came from into the White City? SR: We had people come from as far south as Salt Lake City, as far east as Evanston, Wyoming, as far north as Idaho Falls, and as far west as the lake in 3 Weber County. MT: What was the cost for the dance at that time? SR: Fifty cents for the dance ticket on the night of the drawing, 35 cents each on the nights when the attendance was accumulating toward the giving away of the car. MT: What was the cost of a show ticket at this time? SR: At this Depression time, Mr. Glassman, the owner and manager of the Paramount Theater, the Orpheum Theater, the Rex Theater, and the Utah Theater had decided that to meet this competition they would try to obtain the largest productions from the main makers in the film industry. He obtained United Artists, Paramount Pictures, Metro Golden Pictures, and ArKo. That would give him a sufficient number of first-run pictures to make it so that the Peery Estate holdings would not be able to utilize all first-run pictures. In order that we might meet this competition, we decided that we would buy the major film producing company’s films as “second runs.” By that we mean 30-day showing after the first run. Then I placed a lesser film company’s production, such as Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures, and the smaller producers, utilizing their pictures as first-run, and then placing the products of Mr. Glassman as second runs. At this time, by doing so, we made a reduction in the prices in the Ogden and Egyptian Theaters. This did prove to be a definite step toward increasing the business. As a result, we had very good business in both theaters. MT: What do you remember about the Depression personally? I would assume that you were fully employed during the Depression. What do you remember about the people around you and how they got along? 4 SR: These times were very difficult. There were many of the people who were unemployed, and the conditions were such that there just wasn’t enough work in this territory to supply the numbers who wanted to work. As a result, many were without funds. However, the period that I remember the most was from 1936-38. The conditions didn’t seem to get very much better, and as there were a number of younger people growing up, and I had managed the properties from 1923-38, I asked Mr. Peery if I could not be released from my management responsibilities because I had a better offer with more money if I would go to the Kiesel Estate and become the manager of their estate. This estate was larger than the Peery Estate, having properties in nearly all the western states – that is Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and California, and parts of Wyoming. Their property was extensive, and I found that during the Depression many of these properties had closed their doors. After I had been employed for a year, my job was to make the properties of the Kiesel Estate become paying properties in order that they might be able to solve their problems. I immediately set to work, and I sold all of the properties in all the states which were secondary properties and had been lying idle for a number of years with taxes being paid on them. These properties were obtained many times when Mr. Kiesel, who had in his warehouse at Corinne – he was a merchant, he had a liquor store and a business institution whereby he supplied all the needs of the community right from this great warehouse of his. He would use his horses and wagons in what he termed a freight train, taking the merchandise to the various outlets. When 5 they couldn’t pay for the merchandise, they usually had a property which they deeded to Mr. Kiesel. As a result of this particular condition, Mr. Kiesel had in nearly every state an abundance of property. As an example of this, in Ontario, Oregon, on the other side of the Snake River, between Idaho and Oregon, he owned nearly all of this city. It had a railroad running through there eventually, but he owned nearly all of this city. He took 2,500 acres of ground between the Snake River and the highway leading from Parma, Idaho, to Ontario, Oregon. He also donated enough ground for a schoolhouse on the west side of the highway for the students at Nessa, Oregon. MT: Do you recall any people who were destitute and would ask you for a handout on the street, or anything like that? SR: In 1936, I can’t determine whether that was the right year or not, but anyway Mr. Peery became mayor during that particular period of time. He asked me because of the conditions in the city at that time – many of our poor people didn’t have sufficient food or clothing or fuel to meet their conditions of existing. In the winter months and in the fall months, the city commission had established a relief fund, and that relief fund extends over into Mayor Bundy’s region. They asked me to come over and set up a condition where those who would come over and need it could receive proper amounts for their sustenance. As a result of that, this was done. But we found that the welfare program, in its initiatory state, took place during that particular period of time, even not only in the city, but in our church. I was, at this particular time, the first counselor in the bishopric of the [LDS] 17th 6 Ward. During this Depression, we found the widows of our ward – there were 32 in our ward – they were in need of food, clothing, and fuel, among other things. As an example of this, in connection with the city, this took quite a load off the city in supplying the needs and wants within the church realm to the widows of this particular ward. We recommended the condition to the various wards of the stake. An example, Thomas Young, president of the Thomas Young Sign Company, who was getting started in this great business of his, was the president of the elder's quorum in our ward. He and Patterson, under our supervision, went up into the Cottonwood Canyon in Morgan County, and [found] all these cottonwood trees lying in this canyon, and loaded load after load of wood. They brought it down to the vacant lot on the west side of the 17th Ward, and there we got a saw and the president of the elders quorum sawed many, many cords, which lasted all during the particular winter from the wood obtained in the Cottonwood Canyon. MT: What do you remember about the meeting of the unemployed in your ward there? SR: Unfortunately I wasn’t there at that meeting. I was detained away in Oregon in the supervision of the leveling of ground for farming, preparing the ground for farming – 2,500 acres had never been drained and was alkali soil. I had to level this ground, and I’m injecting this phase of it to show that it was a project, all this 2,500 acres. I could have purchased it had I money for $12.50 an acre, and that included the water rights on the Ouiau Ditch Company coming out at the reservoir. However it wasn’t sufficient to handle this 2,500 acres. We leveled it, 7 making drains, and I went to the State of Oregon and obtained permits for the pumping plants off the Snake River and approved the water rights for them, and they are in operation today. We leveled this ground and flushed the alkali off, and after it had been prepared taking the drains, we ran it right back into the Snake River. After we planted barley, white sweet clover, and allowing it to get up so high and then plowing it under, we did this for two years, adding the dynaclover [sic] in the planting. On the third year after this was plowed under and the soil was properly fixed, we placed beets in this land, and watered those beets very thoroughly from the pumping plants on the Snake River. We grew 30 tons of beets per acre on this ground from preparing and making it. The cost, however, of doing this was great, and the Kiesel Estate had money to authorize such work, which proved very successful. Today that land is worth $1,000 an acre. It’s between the Nessa Sugar Factory and owned by the Amalgamated Sugar Factory, and Ontario, about in the center between the two cities and east of the highway line. MT: Do you think of anything else now that might be of interest to people concerning the Depression years? SR: We were in the Depression longer than I feel was necessary because of the lack of foresight and cooperation between the city and county governments and the officers of the United States government, who were trying to assist and bring the Depression to a halt. However much good resulted from the Depression, as to our seeing what might happen to the people if another Depression came, and preparation in all phases of life in the education of people, in the knowing where 8 to go, and the kind of work, and ability to supervise, organize, and carry forth in such work whenever a Depression came. This would benefit any people in the country in the future. MT: Who would have been responsible for providing the money or the food and clothing and so forth that you mentioned as being distributed by the city administration? SR: At this time, the need was from the poor class of people living in Ogden City. So many of them had come to the City Commission Office. Mayor Bundy and the Commission decided that this great need out-balanced the other needs for the funds which had been allocated in the budget. Therefore they voted to use a surplus taken from other funds to help and assist the needy of our city. MT: About what year would that have been? SR: It was during the Depression, which was very, very acute here in Ogden City at that time. It was the latter part of 1930. MT: Do you have any recollection of when other funds became available, and in what proportions? Were there federal funds that came through there? SR: Not at that particular time. The matter was discussed in meetings between city and county officials, and the decision was to take the matter up with the government and see if funds could be appropriated for this cause within the city realm. The matter had not been settled when I was called to another field of labor. MT: Do you remember anything later on, which the state did in helping the poor? SR: No, I do not because I went into this field of labor and was not connected closely 9 after that with the affairs of the city and county. MT: What do you remember about the Ogden State Bank closing? SR: I remember that very well because I was one of the depositors in the Ogden State Bank. When the bank was in the condition with the government feeling insecure, the officers of the Ogden State Bank notified all the depositors. As a result of that, the bank was closed. Of course there was quite a furor pertaining to it – the misuse of funds and such as that, not knowing the conditions actually existed. Then the officials of the bank notified the stockholders of the bank that they would receive certain percentages as time went on. The monies came in to the depository of the Ogden State Bank, and the officials lived up to what they stated in their letter. Before the final settlement was made, the depositors received around 80 percent of the money they had deposited in the bank. That was the amount that I received, and I remember that very well. I had the savings account and the checking account. The officials of the bank decided to sell the assets and placed them up for bid. Mr. George Eccles and P. E. Thomas, who was the owner of the P. E. Thomas Plumbing Company, and he had quite a sum of money in this bank, the assets were sold to these two. This P. E. Thomas was awarded referee in bankruptcy, and he then received these funds. The final settlement was made from the funds after the sale was made. MT: What about the bootlegging and 25th Street and that type of thing? During those years, was it stimulated by the Depression? Was it cut back? What’s your opinion on it? SR: As a result of many of the lower classes – that is, they were not lower classes, 10 only from the point that they were out of work and did not have employment, thus they had more time on their hands and accumulated on 25th Street – the activity there as far as drunkenness and like that became greater and needed more strict supervision. The officers of the law had received their instructions. Many, many times people were taken to the courts, and as a result of this unemployment condition.