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Sanpete County between the Wars: An Overview of a Rural Economy in Transition
Utah Historical Quarterly
Vol. 46, 1978, No. 4
Sanpete County between the Wars: An Overview of a Rural Economy in Transition
BY JOHN S. H. SMITH
BLACK THURSDAY, THE COLLAPSE of the stock market in October 1929, did not initiate economic decline in Utah. Because of sharply increased demands for agricultural products and nonferrous metals during World War I, the Utah economy had expanded in those areas and had begun to develop a moderate industry based on the processing of primary products. But the recession that followed in the early twenties dealt harshly with Utah, since raw material economies are particularly sensitive to what are technically known as "inventory" depressions.
The main problem lay in the fact that the expansion of mining in Utah had, with its fluctuating prices and production cycles, wedded Utah to the inherent instability of eastern competitive capitalism. In agriculture, the local-market economy that had enabled Utah to survive previous depressions had been unwisely expanded in 1918 and 1919 in precisely those areas of crop agriculture where Utah products would be least competitive in the years of low demand and overproduction that lay ahead. This exploitation of expensively developed marginal lands was a fatal commitment to export agriculture. Similarly, wool and sugar exports, profitable in the twenties owing to high tariff protection, were significantly reduced by the effect of the Great Depression on living standards in America's urban markets for those commodities.
Utah mining did experience some growth but never enough to make up for the general distress in agriculture or to absorb the increasing numbers of people on the job market. Economist Leonard J. Arrington attributes this failure to match employment opportunities with population increase and relocation to the distinterest of the eastern financiers who had assumed control of Utah's economy through their predominant position in the mining industry. As a result of this outside decision-making, Utah's economy became "peripheral to the core economy of the nation rather than being the core of its own regional economy.
Utah's unhealthy dependence on these two sectors of the economy, agriculture and mining, and the failure to provide for an increased manufacturing activity, would be the factors most responsible for the extent of the economic collapse during the depression.
The signs of disaster in the field of agriculture were apparent before 1929. Banks that had fueled war-profit expansion, by making loans based on inflated land and commodity prices, found that the 1921 recession created a situation in which they were unable to recoup interest or principal or even to realize a portion of the original loan through foreclosure and forced sales. Even before the 1929 crash some 46 Utah banks were forced to close their doors, most of them in rural areas. Another 63 would be closed between 1929 and 1933.
Statistics demonstrate Utah's plight in agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. Farms throughout the Beehive State declined from a product figure of $70,813,192 in the boom year of 1919 5 to a mere $29,541,000 in 1932.° Mining in Utah was valued at $41,510,802 in 1919, rose to twice that in mid-decade, then slumped to $22,820,230 gross product in 1933. In 1919 some 1,160 Utah manufacturing firms employed 18,868 people and disbursed $27,135,482 in wages against a gross product of $156,933,071. In the year of the crash Utah had only 651 firms employing 15,601 wage earners receiving a total of $19,689,684 and produced goods with a gross value of $241,628,855. By 1933 the number of industrial employers had dropped to 440, employees to 10,213, wages to $9,298,801, and gross product value had fallen to $80,967,695.
The full impact of the depression can be gauged by the drop in total personal income in the state from $270,000,000 in 1929 to $143,- 000,000 in 1932. Farm income dropped from $69,000,000 in 1929 to $40,000,000 in 1932. In that same year at the height of the depression some 36 percent of the state's labor force was out of work.
In summary, prior to the crash, Utah as a whole experienced difficulties as a result of poor farm profitability, although the sugar and wool sectors of the agricultural economy actually grew in importance. The mining industry rapidly succumbed to the national economic situation in the early thirties and further aggravated the internal agricultural economics of Utah. Failure to create employment opportunities to satisfy the needs of an increasing population, especially in economy-broadening manufacturing industries, resulted in chronic unemployment and underemployment and eventually produced a net migration from the state. Expensively educated young people left to secure work and thus were unable to make a compensatory return to the state through taxable income.
In the period between the two world wars, Utah endured what was, in total, a lull in her economic development. The groundwork was being laid for striking changes in her agricultural economy together with an explosive growth in service and manufacturing industries under the stimulus of World War II. But the between-wars preparatory period was painful. Statistics suggest that Utah suffered more intensely during the Great Depression that most of the other states of the Union. The extent and severity of the economic and social disruption was surpassed only in Oklahoma and Colorado.
The task of this paper is to examine Sanpete County's experience relative to that of the state and the nation, to survey its reaction to the challenges of the period, and to provide an overview of the nature of the changes in the economic and social life of the county.
The agricultural boom at the end of World War I spurred farming activities in Sanpete County. According to one observer:
As this quotation suggests, high prices for farm products prompted farmers to acquire new and often marginal lands to extend their operations. The actual number of farms in Sanpete County, according to available figures, did not change significantly over the decades of the twenties and thirties, but the land area under cultivation or devoted to nontrans- humance livestock operations increased dramatically by 59 percent during this period.
At the same time, farm ownership patterns changed from holdings relatively free of encumbrance to a fairly widespread debt situation. In 1910 an estimated 256 farms accounted for a total mortgage debt of $237,972, but in 1930 some 466 farms reported a mortgage debt of $1,557,673. This twenty-year period, therefore, saw a climb in the ratio of debt to farm value from 20.2 percent to 38.8 percent. The assessed valuation of lands used for agricultural purposes decreased from $7,574,- 285 in 1920 to $2,972,370 in 1938. Farms operated by tenants leapt from 151 in 1920 to 260 in 1935. The value of all farm lands and buildings declined from $16,493,284 in 1920 to $8,683,693 in 1935.
Undoubtedly, the change from a local market economy to export agriculture accounts for the instability of crop and livestock farming in Sanpete County during the twenties. But the changing style of life in America suggests other reasons for the continually resurfacing inventory depressions. Some of these factors leading to the decline in farm prosperity were the changing dietary habits of the nation and the rapid disappearance of draft animals, which reduced wheat and cereal consumption and caused a lessening of demand for fodder crops. Women's clothes required substantially less cotton, wool, and other natural animal fibers, while newly developed synthetics, like rayon, compounded the problem by widening the choice of available fabrics. Finally, although large numbers of rural people migrated to the cities, improved farming techniques and mechanization took place at a faster rate. The inevitable result was too many people on the land working to raise bumper, yet essentially unsalable, crops.
Sanpete County was certainly affected by some of these conditions and was additionally subject to the fact that the marginal nature of crop cultivation in the area was uncompetitive in the national and international market. Wheat and other cereals rapidly dropped from favor in the valley, and the farmers began to look around for more marketable items. In 1926 many in the Manti-Ephraim area joined in a pea-growing venture. This potential cash crop was greeted locally as an important step in diversification and hailed as a sign of the return of good times. The plan was to reclaim some swampland in the vicinity, as bottomlands were favored for that type of crop at that time. The project was never a great success, and the drained swampy area was eventually turned over to an equally disappointing celery and melon scheme. A pea cannery in Ephraim changed hands several times before it was finally closed by its last owners, the Hunt Food Company.
The search for new crops was still going on as the depression was tightening its grip on the county. An editorial in Ephraim's local weekly newspaper suggested that farmers might investigate the possibilities of "succulent" watercress as a year-round crop that would find ready markets throughout the West. In the letters printed on the subject during the following month, reaction was mixed. Most seemed to find it incredible that anyone would wish to actually buy watercress.
The importance of patronizing home industry and of finding new sources of agricultural revenue was a theme played on by all Sanpete County newspapers in the between-the-war decades. Turkeys would become one such success, but there were many other schemes that fell by the wayside. The level of misunderstanding of Sanpete's economic problems is best exemplified by an item in the Ephraim Enterprise:
In that bag of atrocious metaphors was one significant idea that was being put into operation, for one of the most striking features of the economic scene in the county was the number of cooperative producers' associations. Wool, poultry, dairy, and grain organizations claimed extensive membership. The communitarian tradition of Mormonism was undoubtedly responsible for the high level of acceptance. These controlling agencies helped eliminate a great deal of profitless overproduction in the Sanpete Valley.
The county fared better with its livestock and wool. Throughout the decade wool was the mainstay of the local economy, and Sanpete flocks were the largest in the state. Not only the size of the flocks but the quality was significant. In 1918, at the National Ram Sale in Salt Lake City, John Seeley of Mount Pleasant sold a two-year-old ram for the stillstanding record price of $6,200." This ram was one of a breed that Sanpete sheepmen had been instrumental in building up in the United States —the famous French Merino type known as Rambouillet. In 1920 Utah had the largest number of this breed in the United States and was a leader in supplying rams for flock improvement. The huge Rambouillets were not particularly good meat or good wool sheep; their value lay in the large frames they could impart to the smaller specialized breeds. Fleece yields from their progeny, for example, grew from six to about ten pounds on the average. The importance of the Rambouillet to Sanpete, and to the United States' sheep business, is clearly evident in the estimate made in 1948 that "98% of the ewes west of the Mississippi River contain from 50 to 100 per cent Rambouillet blood."
Sheep were the foundation of county prosperity, injecting fairly large amounts of cash into community circulation. Although a few breeders numbered their flocks in the thousands, the problems of obtaining grazing permits from the Forest Service encouraged many families to invest in small flocks of around twenty sheep that were then managed on a cooperative basis. Sociologist Lowry Nelson estimates that the two thousand people of Ephraim had an income, in 1925, of $125,000 from the sale of wool and breeding stock. Had other sectors of the local economy shared the fortunate conditions of the sheepmen, Sanpete would have never known recession in the twenties, although the sheep industry was to prove quite vulnerable to the economic disruption of the thirties. The wool prices of the period demonstrate the decline in local finances; in 1925 wool brought around 30 cents a pound, in 1930 it dropped to 14 cents, and in 1932 it was down to a mere 8 cents a pound. In 1930 Utah reached its peak in terms of the number of sheep within its borders —almost three million head"—and also the last year of relative prosperity for the sheepmen of Utah and of Sanpete County.
The economic dislocations of the thirties had a dramatic effect on sheep ownership in Sanpete County. Large operators suffered severe financial reverses. When prosperity returned to the sheep business the ranks of the sheep magnates had been thinned considerably, and a new class of owners emerged that was drawn principally from among those who had formerly been in a small way of business as sheep operators. This financial upset is clearly related to the observation made about the way in which Sanpete banks had fueled speculation in sheep by being eager to make loans to sheepmen. It was said that to get a loan on sheep all you had to do was walk into a bank and say BAAA. . . .
Actually, the banks of Sanpete County had been more fortunate than those in other areas of Utah. As severely strained by the 1921 recession as were most banks, the stability of the income from wool managed to keep them in business. Once the depression set in fully, however, wool prices slumped and the banks found the situation out of their control. On April 22, 1931, the Bank of Moroni closed its doors. Three months later, in July, two other county banks ceased doing business—the Mount Pleasant Commercial & Savings Bank and the North Sanpete Bank of Mount Pleasant. One other bank closed for a brief period, the Gunnison Valley Bank, but took advantage of the national bank holiday to set its affairs in order. It was also one of the first to reopen its doors for business, drawing favorable comment for its initiative from the Nation's Digest of New York, a prominent banking trade publication.
Manufacturing establishments in the county tended to be supportive of agriculture; creameries, ice-making plants, saddleries, and packing and processing ventures of various types predominated. In 1919 there were 41 plants of this nature, but by 1937 the number had fallen to only 11. In 1919 a maximum of 201 persons were engaged in manufacturing, falling to a low of 121 in 1931, and slowly rising to 185 in 1937. The average wage paid these workers declined from $767 annually in 1919 to $645 in 1937. One inexplicable growth was that of wholesale establishments, which grew from 9 in 1929 to 31 in 1935, with a corresponding growth in the number of employees but a decrease in total payroll. These puzzling statistics are explainable only in terms of individuals attempting to increase family income by engaging in product distributorship.
Retail distribution in the county increased during the twenties, largely as a result of the growing local desire for some of the conveniences of urban living. Plumbing supply establishments, radio and electrical appliance stores, restaurants, commercial bakeries, furniture, ready-made clothing to replace home dressmaking, automobiles, farm machinery sales and repair, and gas stations—all spoke of Sanpete's acceptance of technological and social changes. But retailing proved to be particularly sensitive to the financial situation. In the early years of the depression the number of employees involved in retailing decreased from 181 in 1929 to 124 in 1933, and sales slumped by 46.5 percent in the same period. The average annual wage was 28 percent less in 1935 than in 1929.
Among the new services offered to Sanpete County in this decade, those of the funeral directors were typical. They signaled not only a new type of enterprise but also a change in local folkways—in this case a radical departure from Latter-day Saint funerary customs. Where previously neighbors had washed and prepared bodies for burial, and the undertaker had been strictly a purveyor of coffins and hearses, now progress had brought the costly and up-to-date ministrations of mortuary science. A large advertisement in the Manti Messenger in 1930 heralded the imminent availability of "one of the finest funeral homes in the state," complete with "chapel, beautiful rest rooms, office, strictly modern preparation room, slumber rooms, display rooms"—everything a corpse could want. The advertisement went on to say that the home would be "furnished in a cheerful, colorful manner," and that "all slumber rooms would be furnished as modern bedrooms ... of the latest design." There were other more sensible examples of progress during the period, however; power generation capacity increased and culinary water was available even to fairly isolated farms.
Public welfare in Utah before 1932 was purely local in character, and there was no state welfare organization until 1935. Before the Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932, public charity in the counties was the responsibility of one of the county commissioners. A very small portion of the county budget was usually sufficient to deal with the needy in rural areas like Sanpete, for charity was not much in demand. The records show that there were rarely more than fifty people receiving some form of aid at any one time during the twenties. Most of the people helped in this fashion were old, widowed, dependent, or physically handicapped persons. The help they received never amounted to more than ten dollars a month.
The initial confusion in the operation of state and federal welfare and relief projects, and the reluctance of local individuals to partake of them, cause difficulties in reducing the Sanpete experience to statistics that accurately reflect events. For example, statistics relating to full and partial employment are quite unreliable without some mechanism to separate property-owning farmers attempting to supplement their farm income and workers with no resources beyond their labor for hire. The welfare assistance to Sanpete County, through various state and federal agencies, during the period 1931-35 was almost certainly greater than in the succeeding five years of the decade. Yet, the only reliable statistics cover this latter period and show a rise in welfare cases from 372 in 1936 to 779 in 1938, which, it should be recalled, was a recession year within the overall depression decade.
The 779 county residents receiving welfare assistance, out of a total population of just over 16,000, amply reveals Sanpete's economic problem. Even among professions the money-tight situation provoked cuts in salary. South Sanpete district schoolteachers, distressed over reductions in income and dismissals of staff, met with school board officials to, as the Manti Messenger put it, "attempt to graft on parts of the heavy branches lopped off the Tree of Education," but to no avail.
Occasionally, the distress in the county required fairly drastic relief efforts, as, for example, when 2,700,000 pounds of relief wheat and 600 bushels of flour were distributed by the Red Cross in Sanpete County in the spring of 1932. Mrs. Spencer Moffitt, chairman of the county committee distributing the relief, announced that the committee had underestimated the need in the county and that another fifty-four railroad cars of relief wheat were being requested from the Red Cross.
Taxation provides a mechanism for the quick evaluation of a region's economic health through a survey of the statistics of assessed valuations. Real estate valuations in 1938 were only 40.9 percent of 1920. The valuation of livestock increased from $905,865 in 1910 to a high point of $1,400,000 in 1920, remained fairly stable at around $1,000,000 yearly until 1930, and then fell precipitously to approximately $400,000 in 1938. Valuation of all property in Sanpete peaked in 1920 at $17,336,861; but in 1938 after the shock of the depression years it was, at $9,137,616, only 53 percent of that 1920 peak.
That the drought and depression period of the early thirties gravely affected income in Sanpete County is effectively demonstrated by the publication of page after page of tax delinquents in county newspapers— a grand total of 5,129 delinquents in 1932. This left the county in the desperate situation of being short $134,148.91 in tax collections, further limiting the county's ability to deal with local problems created by the national crisis.
Chilling as these figures are, and with all the sad experiences endured by so many people during this depression decade, two events have been singled out to demonstrate that the spirit of directed group activity, of the special communitarian impulse that has always marked Mormon settlements, was alive and well.
One of the many programs of the U.S. Department of Labor was the encouragement of self-help cooperatives. Utah was the first state to create the legislative machinery to supervise self-help cooperatives and Sanpete County among the first to avail itself of state matching funds to create such enterprises. The Sanpete Self-Help Cooperative in Spring City— composed of units in Ephraim, Fairview, Moroni—operated a sawmill in Spring City employing, part-time, 65 people. The other two cooperatives were the Manti Self-Help Cooperative with 84 members that operated a lime kiln and a buying club, and the Mount Pleasant Cooperative Farm with 18 members. None of these enterprises was very long-lived or totally successful, but the self-help impulse remains as a noteworthy comment on the people involved.
Equally interesting is the Manti gardens program. Stimulated by an LDS seventies quorum project, the idea was to encourage Manti residents to grow vegetables and provisions in home gardens to help out family finances and to keep food on the table. The project was a resounding success, for with the establishment of a seventies model garden, the whole city became involved in vegetable-growing in the summer of 1932. The Manti Messenger noted that "more and larger gardens have been planted this year than ever before" and that "gardening in Manti and elsewhere has become a community project." Manti city officials went so far as to appoint a garden inspector, W. Lee Hall, who reported 458 gardens in Manti, giving grades A through D but reporting no failures. The garden inspector found but one lot in the city not under cultivation. As a response to the realities of hard times, Manti's garden project was a sensible and productive expression of self-help and community effort.
However, the massively destructive forces of the depression were quite beyond any puny efforts, no matter how energetically pursued, of local people. In attempting to inject life into the Sanpete economy and to preserve some decent standard of life, the federal government spent $4,420,754 in relief and related activities in Sanpete County between March 4, 1933, and June 30, 1939. This included such payments as $200,- 506 in old age assistance and $32,554 in aid to dependent children. It does not include projects like CCC camps and work in the national forests that indirectly contributed to the Sanpete economy.
In summary, Sanpete County, in comparison with the state as a whole, enjoyed better than average economic health during the twenties but statistically appeared in worse than average shape during the thirties. Against the statistics, however, must be measured the fact that most Sanpete residents had some access to food and family support generally not available to dwellers in urban areas. However, although survival through the depression years may not have been as grim an experience in Sanpete County as in some of the nation's cities, even someone whose knowledge of the decade is second-hand can only hope that nothing like it is ever experienced again.
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