The Great Depression; Interview with Oscar Fendler. Part 1

Take one marker. Okay. This interview has been suggested to me, it would cover a period from 1933, maybe in 1936, which is probably the most miserable years ever spent in eastern Arkansas. We're in Mississippi County where you are right now, in Blytheville. Money, nobody had any money in 1933. That was just before President Roosevelt took office in March 4, 1933. And then while he was in there, they had the bank holiday and they closed all the banks. It's hardly even to say they were plural because there were only two banks in the whole county and both of them are owned by R.E. Lee Wilson. He owned control of both of them, one in Blytheville, one in Wilson. The plantation people, and principally I'm thinking now of the Wilson Company, they

just didn't have any currency to speak of, didn't have any silver. So they used substitute money. Maybe now they would say that money was violating the Acts of Congress on counterfeiting and stuff and they'd have coupon books, a dollar, five dollars, ten dollars, and they'd give it to the employees that worked there instead of giving them money. And if they didn't use those, they used bronze coins, which they called brozines, and that was a substitute for money. And those people could go in, it was not negotiable, so they'd have to spend it at the company store. They called it commissary, the main store there at Wilson. And at the other places where they had stores, they could use it just like cash. At the end of the year, of course, they'd settle up with them as to how much they had earned and give them, charge them with, using those coupons. Now what could you get at a commissary? Oh, at a commissary you could get everything.

At Lee Wilson. Now, I'm concentrating more on Lee Wilson and company, which was a little town in the south part of this county, about 25, 30 miles from Blytheville. They had a company store there and they handled everything. You could start in and go in and get all your groceries. You could go in the drugs section and buy your drugs. You could go to the dry goods section and buy dry goods, you know, because the women would buy so many yards of calico or gingham or something like that and make their own, or underwear or suits or trousers, mostly overalls, of course. Like now they've become fashionable, you know, wearing denims. Of course then that's all they had, the denim stuff, and you name it and you could get it there. In fact, if you died, they'd lay you out. They had a casket there and sell you the casket and the whole dang, everything. It was just, you had a one store place there. Very, it kept in real nice shape and very attractive displays at the Wilson.

That wasn't true maybe, and the other maybe 13, 14 plantations in the county, they'd have it on a lesser scale, but to a lesser bit they all followed the same procedure that I'm talking about here. You have to make a distinction as we've discussed about tenants and sharecroppers. And they, let's just say they provided them with 100% of what they deemed to be necessities. That didn't only include the right to go to the commissary or the company store and buy things, but everything you could think of. Suppose you were sick, they provided you with a doctor. Suppose you had to go to a dentist, there weren't any dentists around that vicinity, they'd take you to Memphis. Or if you had to have a surgeon, they'd take you to the hospital in Memphis.

I'm trying to think of, they not only, in Lee Wilson for instance, let's say in the town, proper, they had about 500 houses that were owned. And those houses, they provided them with water, provided them with electricity, provided them with sewage. That was for the tenants or for the employees that there in Wilson worked for the store or worked in the factories. Out on the farms, it was a narrow, more narrow list. They hadn't gotten electricity there in 1933. That didn't come until they created the rural electrification group. That's under Roosevelt. Later, they all got them there. But they, substantially the same things were provided. Now go to the sharecropper. The sharecropper was a different, you know, species. Sharecropper didn't have anything.

The tenant owned his mules, he owned his farm equipment, everything. He was ready to work, he and his family, for, you know produce the crops. The tenant then was hired by -- I mean, the sharecropper was hired by the tenant. He was actually an employer, or employee relationship, so that's really what he was. They didn't own anything except themselves maybe and what clothes they had on or little food in the house. And it was up to the tenant to provide the sharecropper with his necessities of life. He did that for them. They worked and they got a share of the crop they produced. Kelly: You also said that on the Wilson farm they had recreational facilities, like it was this really self-contained community. John: The Lee Wilson establishment was unbelievable. It was just something different from anything else maybe in the United States. It's one of the largest plantations. The only other plantation compared with it was one English owned down in Mississippi,

Delta Pine down there. They provided everything in the way of entertainment for 'em. For instance, mostly entertainment I'd say for either one, the tenant or the sharecropper, were religion. They'd have a number of churches that they saw that were built and they did for them. The churches were, just, that's where the women would get together and they'd talk and sew and maybe cook and all that sort of stuff. Then they'd have picnics and they'd sponsored these picnics. This was before the time of the movie theater. Later on of course they had movies down there they go to. But otherwise for the men for instance, they knew that they needed to keep their labor on the plantation on weekends, today's Sunday. So they'd provide a place where they could gamble and they'd have all, shoot craps. You know what shoot craps is?

It's dice, rolling dice, like poker, whatever. Provided them with alcohol, liquors if they needed it down there. They didn't mind how drunk they got as long as they stayed there. Once they went into one of the towns, Osceola or Blytheville, and got drunk they'd be picked up and put in jail. Then Mr. Wilson or some of the farm overseers had, it cost them fifty, sixty dollars just to get them out of jail. That was expensive. Other things they would do for them was for instance when it came to, let's say taking part in governmental activities, Lee Wilson at Wilson did not have a city, it wasn't incorporated but it was just about like a city and Mr. Wilson was the boss and he ran it after him and Mr. Crane. Mr. Wilson died in 1933. He was Robert E. Lee Wilson, he was born in 19-, I mean, 1865 and of course very pro-Confederacy, everything was directed to that.

One distinction I haven't mentioned here is, is the racial distinction. In Wilson for instance all of the whites lived on, west of the railroad track. That was the St. Louis, San Francisco railroad that came from St. Louis to Memphis. And the blacks lived on the east side. Their houses were good, they could live in and be comfortable and everything but they didn't compare what the ones with whites were living in. And for all of this Mr. Wilson charged them a nominal rent which included electricity and water, utilities like that. Kelly: How were they different, how was the housing different between black and white? John: Well for instance in a white house over there on the, what do you call it, on the west side there, it started with either a three bedroom house or a four bedroom house or a five bedroom house that was very well constructed. It wasn't elaborate but very well constructed. When you go over across the track where the blacks were, they were maybe a two bedroom, what

we call a shotgun house, just two bedrooms right together. The bedroom was the kitchen, it was also the living room and everything. They'd provide screens for them but the difficulty was to get them to know that they ought to keep the screens good. They did not give them any sewers over there. We're talking about about 33, 34, 35. I don't know that you'd say that he was trying to favor one against the other but they did what was economically necessary to keep labor and they could keep labor without spending a lot of money on 'em and that's what they did. Kelly: So it was different to keep labor, black labor versus white labor? John: Well really, he really wanted to treat them both, that same old stuff of equal but, you know, equal facilities. You remember in schools, we haven't mentioned the schools, we segregated the schools down there, Lee Wilson did, had a beautiful school for the whites, about a three story building,

just very modern and everything. You go from the first grade to the twelfth grade, just had excellent gymnastic facilities, everything you wanted, all sorts of stuff in your laboratories, you know? He also then built a real fine school for the blacks. Can you stop? Roll out. Okay. John: Is this getting what you want? Kelly: Yep. Cameraman: Okay that's the end of camera roll, 315-86 and take one, take two is next. Take two, Marker. John: The treatment of the labor down there, and I'm now concentrating on Lee Wilson Company, was very favorable to looking after the labor.

They tried to do everything they could to see that they were happy and, you know, and they were getting along and they were satisfied staying around there with Lee Wilson either on the place down at Wilson or at one of their very satellite places that they had. Now when it came to treatment between the whites and the blacks, there's definitely this feeling of segregation in 1933, no question about it. I don't believe you could say that Boss Lee, who was R.E.L. Wilson who was the founder of that, or Mr. Crane would make a real distinction. Just necessarily when you had overseers of the farms, all white, of course, there wasn't any doubt about it that they were favored, that the whites' tenants, maybe even the sharecroppers, I don't know what would you say about sharecroppers, but certainly the white tenants as opposed to the blacks were favored.

To my recollection, I can't remember very many black tenants down on the Wilson place. I remember some black tenants at other plantations, but the blacks didn't expect as much. They never had received as much. Remember, we're talking about 1933. The war was just over in 1865. So there wasn't a long distance between the Civil War. Blacks got their freedom and everything, but for the most part the blacks would stay and did stay in this county on the same plantations where they'd been slaves before. And there wasn't a lot of movement. In fact, neither whites nor blacks tenants could move freely. Arkansas had a law that said before they could leave, they had to pay the boss man whatever they owed 'em. And most every year they wound up in debt. They did come out with a surplus, you know, and they always carried them over on their books. And if you left, you violated Arkansas law. And if some other competing landlord wanted to take them and knew that Joe was a good

tenant, white or black, he'd have to go into the office at Wilson and pay whatever they owed before he could move 'em. If he didn't, he'd be violating the law. He could be prosecuted and pay a fine, and then the tenant would have to come back until he paid him out. I need to tell you, though, I thought of it, I had been talking about education, about the comparative schools. Well, they, Mr. Wilson built in his time a real good black school back in the thirties. And after it got all built and everything, it burned down within two or three days. He immediately turned around and rebuilt it to be sure that those black children had schools. And their schools, for instance, as contrasted to the white school was, I think the biggest difference was maybe teachers. The white teachers were so much better than the black teachers, you know. And there weren't any white teachers that I can ever remember down in the black schools.

And there weren't any black teachers in the white schools, separate but equal. But the Wilson system for blacks had a very good system and did a good job. That can't be said for a lot of the other plantations or parts of our county. It wasn't true otherwise. Kelly: Now, can you tell me about Mr. Crane and how he ran the Wilson farm? You know, the warts as well as the good parts of how he ran that farm. John: When Mr. Wilson died in 1933 and we probated his will, in his will he provided for the continuation of a Massachusetts trust organization. It wasn't a corporation, it was something created for tax purposes. And he named Mr. Crane, J.H. Crane, known as Jim Crane, and his son to manage it. Mr. Crane took over because Mr. Wilson's son was not, he didn't particularly, wasn't too interested in, you know, in the farm and the operation. That's

R.E. Lee Wilson, Jr. And so Mr. Crane had free range. He was a boss just like Mr. Wilson, R.E.L., Lee Wilson died. Whatever he said was the law and nobody ever challenged him. It didn't make a difference what it was. We were his attorneys and by "we" I mean Cecil Shane was their lawyer when I got back from law school and we continued to represent him. And Mr. Crane actually managed it as well or even better maybe than Mr. Wilson had done if he could manage it any better. He had, for all practical purposes, the company was broke. So we, Mr. Shane, helped him get an R.E.F.C. loan when the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which was created just before, you know, Mr. Roosevelt went in and got a substantial loan and long time to pay it out.

Then he started managing all of the farms down there. He would, previously had been the farm manager. He managed all the farm activities, land, people, mules, every damn thing. Kelly: How did the sharecroppers and tenants feel about Mr. Crane as a boss? What was he like as a boss? John: My observation was that they respected him very much. I'm sure that a number of them felt they were mistreated and had a deep-seated hatred for him. They couldn't show it because the minute they showed it they were out. They'd be moved off and do something else. Mr. Crane was an excellent manager and he didn't let anything stand in his way to see those crops were produced. He was inclined to want to experiment with other types like breeding cows, for instance, or breeding pigs and stuff like that. He encouraged them to plant new crops, different types of crops. He recognized their ability, particularly the farm managers.

They were his elite group that were having the responsibility. Kelly: You were saying he was sort of like a dictator the way he ran the farm. What did you mean by that? John: Whenever decisions were made down there on business affairs or social affairs, whatever it was, he made the decision. That's where he was a dictator. He was a benevolent dictator, but a dictator nevertheless. Kelly: Let me ask you about the agricultural adjustment. You said you had some friends who didn't like it. Can you tell me why people didn't like the AAA? John: You had two groups of people in this county with, in regard to the AAA system. That law was passed on Mr. Roosevelt in the 100-day period there in 1934. It was absolutely slanted for the protection and encouragement of the tenants, or really I would say of the landowners, more than the tenants even.

Kelly: Can you start that over? It was actually the 100 days in 1933. In '33, did I say '34? '33. And it was adopted, the act was adopted in '33, the AAA was. It was slanted towards the landowners, not the tenants, and certainly not the sharecroppers. The reason it was slanted that way, when you read the act itself, all the settlements would be made when they would give them money for not planting crops for 1934, '35, and '36. They give them certain benefits, government benefits, cash benefits. It went to the landlord, and then it was up to the landlord to distribute it down to his tenants. They felt like maybe they had some hold over the landlords about doing it, but the provisions in the act were awful lax. As a result, any number of tenants resented it. They'd get the government payments, and they wouldn't get anything, or get very little, and so

they would feel that either Mr. Crane with Lee Wilson or these other plantation owners were getting the money and leaving them out. Kelly: Would you say then that the landlords generally did split the parity payments, or what would you say? John: My observation was, by the time the landlord took his part of it, there wasn't much to split with the tenants. That was my observation, and the tenants were not in a position to argue with them. They took what was there. And as far as the sharecroppers were concerned, they weren't even considered at all. They were non-entities. They were just hired hands to work on the farm. Kelly: How did your friends feel about the plow up program? John: When I look back at, back there, you know, sixty years ago, and, with friends, I'm confined, let's say, to legal, by legal problems.

You know, Lee Wilson got me into places. My observation was, of course, that the landowners were pleased. They thought it was—well, without it, they'd have gone broke. They were very pleased with it, and it worked fine with them. The observation, or recollection of what tenants would say if they ever talked to men, or visited with them and stuff, was that they were unhappy. They didn't think that they were getting their fair share. Of course, those a little lower-down, the sharecroppers, thought they just were gouged. They didn't get anything. Kelly: Last time when we talked, you said you had some friends who didn't like the AAA because they thought, what was Washington telling them how to farm in Mississippi? John: It's the same thing that when, I suppose, a person's out in the ocean, in the Navy, and the ship's sunk on him, and you rescue him and get him back on your ship, you know, save his life and everything. He's very grateful, maybe, for a week or so, but

after that, he begins wanting. Oh, we rolled out. That was too bad. Kelly: Too bad. We can do that again. Cameramen: That's the end of camera roll 87 and the end of the sound roll. That was take number two. Three will be next. Base change.