INTERVIEWEE: Ruth Hansen

Sevier County Oral History Project

INTERVIEWEE: Ruth Hansen
INTERVIEWER: Kami Christensen
DATE: December 6, 1997
PLACE: Richfield, Utah
SUBJECT: The Great Depression

Kami Christensen: This is Kami Christensen and I am interviewing Ruth Hansen on her remembrances of the Great Depression. The date is December 6, and the place is her home in Richfield, Utah. Some background information I would like to know is where and when were you born?

Ruth Hansen: I was born January of 1919 in Rexburg, Idaho.

Kami Christensen: Could you tell a little about your family and some of the circumstances of your early life?

Ruth Hansen: Well, I was raised on a farm, I had three brothers and one sister, and my mother and dad worked really hard, because times were tough and we were one of the few families that didn't have a mortgage on our home and the things on our farm.

Kami Christensen: What did your parents do for a living?

Ruth Hansen: They farmed. We were farmers all our lives.

Kami Christensen: So did you help out?

Ruth Hansen: Oh yes, we all did.

Kami Christensen: What were some of the things that you heard when the Depression started?

Ruth Hansen: Well, we did have radios in those days, so you had the newspaper and it didn't come everyday, but we heard it on the news, and the paper, but it took a year or two for it to really get to where it affected us a great deal. The banks closed, of course, and people had money in the banks; some of 'em lost their money and never did get it. Others had their farms mortgaged and the family had to move off their means. We happened to be fortunate in that we had enough food and our farm pretty well kept us. We had all the vegetables and fruit and potatoes and milk and eggs and most everything we needed.

Kami Christensen: Did your parents tell you about it when it happened, did they come and tell you?

Ruth Hansen: Oh yes, we talked about it and discussed it at the family supper table every night.

Kami Christensen: How old were you when this began?

Ruth Hansen: Well, I was probably about eleven or twelve and by the time it really affected us in a year or two I was big enough to remember pretty much what went on.

Kami Christensen: Do you remember if it was hard on you and if you took it pretty hard or if it just seemed normal?

Ruth Hansen: My folks were optimists, we could make it, we don't need to worry, we'll just work a little harder and do a little more and manage and we were good managers. We didn't really go without anything; we didn't have electricity at that time. We didn't have running water and all those things we have now days. There were three telephones on the street and we had one of them. And the kids took messages to the neighbors and they used our telephone, a lot of them.

Kami Christensen: Were you affected when the stock market crashed, and if so how?

Ruth Hansen: I wouldn't say we were effected that much, we didn't have money in the stock market; ours was all in land and animals and so on.

Kami Christensen: Do you remember when that happened and your parents telling you?

Ruth Hansen: Oh yes!

Kami Christensen: What were some of your parents' reactions to the events of the depression, did they take it hard?

Ruth Hansen: No, farmers are not people who take things hard; they just bow their back and work a little harder and help their neighbor a little more. I think of all aspects of life, farming industry probably was hit one of the hardest, because of what it did to prices. But they weren't people that just gave up and said "Oh, we'll have to go on welfare." We're just not that type of people. We just helped one another.

Kami Christensen: Did the depression effect your parents' income and how would you describe your families economic situation?

Ruth Hansen: I guess we were better off than a lot of them because we had enough to get by. Some people just gave up. But we didn't have everything. I can remember some of the prices and you kids now would think we were out of our minds to even talk about, thirty-two cents for a bushel for wheat, and maybe fifty cents a hundred for spuds, and a loaf of bread, ten to twelve cents, and gasoline twelve cents, but the time that I got a little older when the depression was really bad we were paying about twenty-five cents for gasoline. But most people didn't have cars—a lot of them didn't, we did.

Kami Christensen: Did you just only have one car?

Ruth Hansen: We had a car and we had a truck. Well, I guess we didn't have a tractor till it was nearly almost over. I remember when we bought our first tractor.

Kami Christensen: Did you ever have to go to bed hungry, do you ever remember?

Ruth Hansen: No! I should say not! Our parents were just good managers, we always had eggs and we had milk and mother baked bread two or three times a week, six or eight loafs. We never knew what it was to go hungry. We didn't have lots of fancy foods, I guess you could say, but she did lots of canning so we always had fruits and vegetables. We churned our own butter. We weren't really affected that way. It was more in having fancy things that people do now, eating out and I think a lot of things like that, we didn't do that. But then we were far enough from town, fifteen miles or so, that we didn't go to town that often.

Kami Christensen: Did you or any of your brothers or sisters have to drop out of school to help support your family?

Ruth Hansen: No.

Kami Christensen: So everything was just normal for your family?

Ruth Hansen: No, you tightened your belt. You didn't have as many clothes as you might have had. But we weren't hurt in any way.

Kami Christensen: How were the people in your area affected, like your neighbors?

Ruth Hansen: Well, there were some of the people that were, I guess, like a lot of them today, they were a bit greedy. And so they held onto their spuds that year because they were going to procrastinate where they got their crops from. And they held them and when the stock market crashed, the bottom dropped out of spuds and they hauled them out and dumped them.

Kami Christensen: (Laughs)

Ruth Hansen: And didn't get anything for their crops, and so the next year when they needed to put in the crop, they had to borrow money from the bank, or wherever they could get money. The banks wouldn't loan a lot of money, so they had a rough time, and they hadn't had a mortgage on their place, a lot of them eventually, in oh, four or five years time, walked off and left their farm, and started over again.

Kami Christensen: Did you ever hear about suicides and things?

Ruth Hansen: Oh yes!

Kami Christensen: Did you know of anyone who committed suicide?

Ruth Hansen: Not among our neighbors, no. We were a close knit neighborhood and everybody tried to help their neighbor if they had problems. The thing that I noticed most, that I remember most, was how many people needed jobs. They call them bums that came on the railroad, and they bring what they had on their backs, and come and ask for a day's work; and if you fed them, they'd work for nothing, so you'd just feed them. You could hire all kinds of men for a dollar a day. And some of them would say, "If you keep me, I'll stay for the winter." If you just give them a bed and food. And if you had a job, and you didn't take care of it, there was a half a dozen waiting for your job. If you had a job you was mighty happy. . . to keep it.

Kami Christensen: Did the Depression affect your schooling, like going to college and your marriage?

Ruth Hansen: (Pauses.) Didn't affect our school. I boarded in town when I went to high school. When we got married, things were tough then. I was married in 1938. My husband had a job in a sugar factory, and he was making thirty-seven cents an hour. And things got better at Christmas time. He got a raise of ten cents an hour. So he was making forty-seven cents, and we felt like we were really blessed . . . and we were! We didn't have a lot, but we were thrifty enough that we didn't go into debt. In fact that was one of the things we discussed before we were married, that we wouldn't go into debt. And we never did.

Kami Christensen: So did you go to college, or your husband?

Ruth Hansen: He went to college a while, I didn't.

Kami Christensen: What were some of your feelings towards these events?

Ruth Hansen: I guess that I feel like that it was probably a blessing in disguise. Because we learned to appreciate what we had and we learned to work. We learned the value of things far more than we do now. I think that we were hardier, stronger people because of it. Because we had to work and to accomplish and yet we had wonderful lives, I think we had a lot more fun than the kids do now.

Kami Christensen: Probably so. (Pauses.) Do you think that there might ever be another Depression.

Ruth Hansen: Yes. . . I think what comes up goes down, in some respect there will be a Depression. It may be entirely different than what we saw. I think because of the fact that most people won't work. It has gotten to where on the farms, you can't hire local people to work. That's why they bring in so many foreigners, because they will work. And our own people would rather sit around and let you give it to 'em.

Kami Christensen: Is there anything you would like to add that I haven't asked that you remember about the Depression?

Ruth Hansen: I think that people are more frightened of the Depression than what we were, because we hadn't had the level of having everything you want every day. We didn't do as much traveling and all these things you do now, because you traveled with horses most of the time. In the winter time you had to put your cars away, you couldn't use them 'cause the roads were so snowy. And I think we just learned to make the best of things, and appreciate what we had a lot more than you people today. So, I look at it a lot different than what you young people would now. You feel frightened that that day may come, and to us it just came and we just did the best we could and went on.

Kami Christensen: So do you think you could handle another one?

Ruth Hansen: You bet! Without a bit of trouble.

Kami Christensen: What impact has living through the Great Depression had on you in terms of your attitude and the way that you live?

Ruth Hansen: I think that the thing it has done for me is to feel bad for the young people now. That they don't know how to appreciate what they have, and to get along. I think they're not disciplined enough so that they don't have their own way so much that it's sad. And people just I'm gonna have it or else, and you can't tell me no because I won't take no, you know, its just a different . . . attitude. And in that day and age you were just supposed to help your neighbor. If he was having problems, you were supposed to be over there helping, take their horses and machinery and go and help them put in their crops or whatever needed to be done they did. You were neighbors; and if you went to town, you yelled at your neighbor or stopped and asked them if there was anything they needed and you would get it while you were over there or whatever you could do to help them, much more than we are now. We are too self-centered now days.

Kami Christensen: Do you remember always helping your neighbors and having to suffer your time and your money to help your neighbors, and some had harder times than others?

Ruth Hansen: Oh sure! You didn't ask for money, I mean you just helped each other. You didn't baby-sit in our day. You just helped and you took care of the kids if they were having problems. You'd just do whatever you could to help. You weren't paid for everything you did like they are now.

Kami Christensen: What were some of your neighbors' parents' jobs? Do you remember some of your best friends and how their parents didn't have good jobs that could help them through it?

Ruth Hansen: Well no, most of the ones that we knew were all farmers because we lived in a farming community and everybody was farmers. They didn't work often in town like they do now. Everybody just worked at home. When they crashed the men helped each other and traded work, and the women got together and cooked for the twenty or thirty men, and they'd go from one field to the next and just go up and down the street and everybody got their crops in. There wasn't the monetary value on things that there is now. I don't ever remember baby-sitting, earning any money that way. You watched your neighbor because they needed it.

Kami Christensen: What advice would you give to young people if they were to face a serious economic depression?

Ruth Hansen: Well, the advice I would give them before they get to that point is don't go into debt because it's too hard. Credit cards are too easy to use, and too hard to pay off, and I think there's a way to live without doing that if you are willing to sacrifice having all these new things at the same time; and if you don't go into debt, you can withstand mostly anything. If you're willing to work.

Kami Christensen: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Ruth Hansen: No.

Kami Christensen: That's it?

Ruth Hansen: I don't think I need to . . . I think that we lived in the best times that I can remember. Because we had to make sacrifices and we had to make do and yet I think we had far more fun. The dances and things. We had one in the community, in the which time we danced two nights a week, Friday and Saturday night, because the neighbors wanted to have one one night and we'd have one the other night. And we were all good kids, you just went for fun. You didn't go out to eat and lots of things. You might have a pop, during the evening. You didn't have a new dress for every dance, but it was fun. And you had lots of friends and you might all get together after the dance at one of your homes and have pie. My mom was good at baking pies and we all brought our friends home, and we spent a lot of time in the home.

Kami Christensen: How old were you when the Depression ended?

Ruth Hansen: Well, it was still on when I was married, and I was twenty. I was probably about twenty-two when things started to end, because there were still people without work when we were married, a lot of them.

Kami Christensen: Did it affect your children?

Ruth Hansen: No, I think the only way it affected them is that we had had to work hard and we taught them all to work hard, and to be thrifty. And maybe we taught them too much of the work ethic, to live in this day and age, because they all feel they have to accomplish so much. But we lived a good life, and had a good family, they all went through school and graduated, and they all have good jobs, and I think we are quite successful. Or they were successful with us, one of the two. We've been a real close family. And I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned by the obstacles that we have to overcome and that's what a Depression amounts to.

Kami Christensen: Is there anything else?

Ruth Hansen: No, unless there is something you need to know.

Kami Christensen: Just if there is anything else that you can remember that might have hurt you or made you feel better about living in that time.

Ruth Hansen: Well, I think that the only way it hurts me is that when I see the price of things . . . compared to what we knew... I just can't believe, its hard. And then I've sewn clothes all our lives and that, it's hard for me to realize what they charge for things. I think it has affected me more that way than any way, the price of things. I was looking on some material that I've got written down and I noticed I bought a package of raisins the other day, two pounds of raisins for three dollars and twenty-nine cents, I think it was. And I used to buy four pounds for thirty-nine cents all the time (laughs). So I think of all the things that would be difficult for me would be the price of things, the change in prices.

Kami Christensen: OK. Thank you.

Ruth Hansen: It probably made me really thrifty! (Laughs.)

Kami Christensen: Yeah. (Laughs.) That's a good thing I think.

Ruth Hansen: Well, I think that it sure has a lot of advantages because we're more content with things.

Kami Christensen: Thank you very much.

Ruth Hansen: Well, I hope you got what you need for it.

Kami Christensen: I think I did.

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