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SAMUEL PROCTOR ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM at
the University of Florida
Interviewed: Robert H. Axline
Interviewee: Samuel Proctor
May 23, 1991
FBL13
P: I am here to do an oral history interview with Robert H.
Axline. This is May 23, 1991. Bob, one of the first things
I would like to ask you, since I do not have that
information, is t4-1lm; the address here in Punta Gorda.
A: 2021 Via Seville.
P: And it is Punta Gorda, of course.
A: Punta Gorda.
P: What is the zip [code] here?
A: 33950.
P: What is your birthdate?
A: May 4, 1907.
P: And you were born where?
A: Chester, Illinois.
P: What is the H in your middle initial?
A: Henry.
P: Robert Henry Axline.
A: Right.
P: Bob, the first thing I would like to talk with you about,
because I was intrigued with the information that you
furnished me, is your family. Let us start off with your
father. Give me his name.
A: Elmer Clifton Axline.
P: And he was born where and when?
A: He was born in Lacon [Illinois on September 13, 1874].
P: What was your mother's name?
A: Minnie Margaret Quigley. [She was born March 12, 1883, near
Clinton, Illinois. She died September 16, 1965.]
P: Now, I guess yaE-- 3m y. -.-^ erO=et heOn the history of
your familygoes back -t 1 e bei e me-s ai. i -e
before the beginning of the American Revolution. Just kind
of briefly tell me a little bit about the family background.
I am very intrigued.
A: Actually, some years ago a maiden aunt in Iowa--she had been
a schooleacher--started writing a book listing all of the
ancestors of the Axline group. The name was, I believe,
Oechslen [which means young ox].
P: r Where did jm-;rz2d the family .iad.. re -da emigrate ~-fc
A: Either from Switzerland or Germany.
P: Some area, then, of western Europe.
A: Yes.
P: And they came to America--it was not yet the United States--
at the beginning of the eighteenth century [October 2,
1727]
A: That is right.
P: And settled where?
A: In [Philadelphia] Pennsylvania.
P: It seems to me that they were moving back and forth between
Pennsylvania and Virginia.
A: They were.
P: They were farmers?
A: Most of them, to my knowledge, were farmers.
P: So that would not be an unusual sort of activity.
A: No.
P: What about your mother's family, the Quigleys?
A: The Quigleys were definitely Irish. Her mother was named
Hall, [which is] English. I do not know when they came over
here. Unfortunately, we never even talked about it.
P: So perhaps that part of the family history is lost?
A: I would say so. As far as I know, all of their children are
dead.
P: Where did your mother come from? Where was she born?
A: On a farm up near Clinton, Illinois.
P: And your father was in what kind of business?
A: His father was an importer of horses.
P: N lt~lNI. our grandfather?
A: My grandfather.
P: What was his name?
A: Axline. But I do not remember his first name.
P: Where was he living at the time that your father was born?
A: Lacon, Illinois.
P: Is that in the southern part of Illinois?
A: No, north central. [Lecon is the county seat of Marshall
County north of Peoria, along the Illinois River.]
P: And he was an importer, then, of horses.
A: The big work horses.
P: So that was his major occupation.
A: It was his occupation.
P: And your father was born there when the family was living
near Lacon.
A: Yes.
P: Presumably/ere they/living on a farda Was he importing the
horses [for farm work]? L-)
A: I believe they were.
P: So your father, then, might be called a farm boy, at least
when he got started.
A: Yes.
P: What was your father's education?
A: He just finished high school. His father died before he
finished higfh=BweP~-, so waen he fri;srhed-high schOcl- had
his mother, two sisters, and a younger brother to help
support.
P: He was the oldest in the family?
A: He was the oldest.
P: So he had to help maintain the family, then, and take his
father's place as an economic provider for the family.
A: That is right.
P: So what did he do? -
A: He started on the railroad as a messenger boy and then a
telegrapher.
P: What was a messenger boy's responsibilities in those early
years?
A: In-the- eary ye-I_';- thir- he idea was to take messages
that came in by telegraph to the different people in the
office that they were addressedl-Aa
P: Where would he have been living at the time?
A: At that time in Wenona [Illinois].
P: -I=wusa.. L v11 ..i.W.e.a Was that a large enough
[town]? Was it a rail center?
A: No.
P: Wenona was a small community, then.
A: It was a small town and a station on the Illinois Central
[IC] line where he we-re4d
P: He worked for the IC, then.
A: Yes.
P: So he starts out as a messenger and then becomes a
telegrapher.
A: Yes.
P: And a telegrapher in those days [did what]? Once again,
spell out what his responsibilities were.
A: Atea44-, Le received and sent the messages by Morse code.
P: Ml de had an office in Wenona?
A: He worked in the office.
P: Now, he is still single at that point, is he not?
A: He was single.
P: Taking care of his mother and his brother and two sisters.
A: That is right.
P: What happened to the other kids in the family, your father's
siblings, the people he was taking care of before you people
arrived on the scene?
A: He had the two sisters, and they both married and lived in
Wenona.
P: So those were your two aunts.
A: -waiW aeiu. He had one younger brotherA considerably
younger, e= After he got through high school my father gave
him financial help to send him through the University of
Illinois.
P: And that is what happened? He went on and got a degree?
A: He served in World War I,-aSZ hen he came back from World
War I he worked for Gossard Corset Company, a small corset
company [in a town] north of Wenona. From there he
eventually went on to the New York office and became vice-
president in charge of sales. He lived in New York until he
died.
P: Did any of your aunts and your uncle have children -who-are
A: My uncle did not have any children. One aunt, the oldest
sister, did not have children. The younger sister did; she
had a daughter and a son.
P: So you had two first cousins, then.
A: Tw first didhe mi Ye a
P: How long did the family and your father stay 6'in Wenona?
A: Not very long/ because he had an opportunity for
advancement. He went to Freeport, Illinois.
P: Where is Freeport?
A: In the northern part of Illinois, west of Chicago.
P: Now, what job did he have there?
A: At that time, I think he was a dispatcher. [He routed the
trains over the tracks.]
P: Now, when does he meet your mother?
A: He met her in Freeport, Illinois. She was raised on a farm
south of Clinton, Illinois. She went to business college in
Clinton. She got a job working for the railroad and was
transferred to Freeport, Illinois. That is where they met.
P: And they met as a result of both being Illinois Central
employees.
A: That is right.
P: And by this time, you say he is a dispatcher?
A: Yes.
P: So he has moved up the economic ladder a little bit.
A: That is right.
P: What was her job?
A: Secretary.
P: And they were married when?
A: I am not sure.
P: Well, let's see. You were born in 1907, so presumably it
was some time before 1907. You are the oldest child, right?
A: I am the oldest.
P: OK. And you have a sister?
A: Right.
P: And her name is what?
A: Helen Elizabeth Dolan.
P: She has children?
A: She has one boy who went to Vanderbilt [University in
Nashville, Tennessee]. He is a doctor and now teaches at
the University of North Carolina in Ashville.
P: In medicine?
A:
P: And she has a daughter?
A: She has no daughter; only a son.
_i -Jucte- o-on?.
P: OK. Then you had a younger brother. What was his name?
A: Elmer Clifton Axline, a n.-
P: The same as your father. That is kind of interesting that
you would not have been the junior. I wonder why.
A: My father had a good friend that worked on the railroad, and
apparently he promised this good friend the first son he had
would be named after him. His name was Henry, so that is
where I got my middle name.
P: So where does the Robert [come from]?
A: I do not know. [laughter]
P: Maybe he was reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure
Island at the time and liked Robert. So your younger
brother, then, becomes the junior in the family.
A: Right.
P: What happens to him?
A: He became a civil engineer. He went to Purdue and then
finished at the University of Missouri [at Columbia]. About
that time, World War II had started, so my brother worked
for a construction company, Frazier Brace, building
munitions plants in the St. Louis area. Later on he had a
chance to go to an engineering company in Kansas. The man
who owned the engineering company told him he wanted him to
go to Albuquerque, New Mexico, because he thought there was
a future in engineering in New Mexico. There were large
areas, and they had no-good roads/\this was in 1941-1942/)
asF~ e felt that they would build a lot of airports in that
area because of the distances between the towns. He sent my
brother out there and gave him enough money to start an
office. He gave him a month's salary and enough money to
hire a secretary. My brother started from scratch to build
that engineering business in New Mexico. He was very
successful.
As time passed, eventually he had twenty engineers working
for him, and he built airports all over New Mexico. Also in
the [towns and small] cities they started putting in sewer
systems, etc. Finally mr. Wilson the man that owned the
company, gave my brother half interest in the [Albuquerque,
New Mexico division of the] company. Unfortunately, my
brother drank too much, primarily as a result of his work.
He liked to hunt and he liked to fish ag he fit in just
nicely with the people who ran these small towns in New
Mexico. They also were hard drinkers. He would start from
Albuquerque with a suitcase full of liquor, and every place
he stopped andmet with the city fathers and talked to them
about a contract for sewers, etc.,they would drink. Then
he would go to the next town, and it was the same way.
P: Was he a married man?
A: He married and had one son. Eventually the man who owned
the company found out that my brotherfdrank too much] In
fact, I was surprised when my sister-in-law called me and
told me that. So I arranged with the man I worked for
[Monte Shomaker] to fly to New Mexico every other week for a
period of about two or three months. I would leave at noon
on Friday and be there Friday night, stay Saturday, and fly
back Sunday afternoon.
When I first got there, I could tell my brother was
suspicious. He said, "What are you doing out here?" (We
called him Bud, although his name was Elmer. He did not
like the name Elmer) I said, "Bud, you keep writing to me
that you have these reports and you do not know what they
mean. You know, that is part of my business. I have these
factories, and it is essential that I know what these
reports mean because they indicate what direction I should
work to improve the conditions." He said, "Oh, that is
good." So that very day we went down to his office and
brought out the reports, and we went over them. I would
read the report and the figures, and I would say, "Now, this
is 4hat this means, and this is something you should give
attention to." And he liked it very much. Then we wouldgo
to his homqe 1sit down and just talk.
At first I did not approach him about drinking too much.
The second time I went out there we had a number of things
to talk about from the standpoint of how the reports were
made out, their purpose, and so on. So again we went over
the reports, and I gave him more information. Then I just
said, "Bud, are you drinking excessively?" He said: "Oh,
no. I have a few drinks, but I do not drink a lot." I
said, "Marie, your wife, is concerned." He [again] said, "I
do not drink too much." I left it at that and went back to
St. Louis.
[We went through] the same deal in about two more weeks. I
would go out there, and we would visit. We would go up in
the mountains. They had a cabin up above the timber line.
It is beautiful up there ool. There was no indication of
his drinking when I was with him. He would not even have an
occasional drink. I kept approaching him on it, not putting
on pressure, but indicating that it was serious if he did
drink too much, that things could develop that way. He
continued to deny it, so I made no progress at all. So
after about three months I said: "Well, I have given you
all the information I can on these financial reports. Do
you feel comfortable with them?" He said, "Oh, yes. Now I
know what to do." I went back and did not return. [He
retired and was given] a good pension so he would have
nothing to worry about for the rest of his life. Eventually
he died with a heart attack.
P: As a relatively young man, though.
A: He was about sixty-seven years old.
P: He has a son still living?
A: His son is still living, and [he is] a very fine man. From
the very first, the kid liked electronics. [If] you [were
to] go into their house, his wife Marie would say, "Do not
touch that door' /t might be wired." You would turn a door
handle, and bells would ring. [laughter] So I got a kick
out of him. He was in love with electronics from the time
he startedschoojl
P: Where does he live?
A: He lives in a little town on the top of a mountain near El
Paso. He works for Lockheed [Aircraft Corporation]. He
graduated from Arizona State in engineering.
P: So you have two fine nephews--one an engineer and one a
doctor.
A: Yes. My brother liked to hunt and fish, but I did not.
There is a reason for it. I told you, I think, in some of
my notes that the first thing I can remember in my life was
my mother holding me on her lap reading stories. I can
still quote some of the stories, like she would say, "'Who
killed Cock Robin?' 'I 'said the sparrow. 'I killed Cock
Robin with my bow and arrow.'" She would read that over and
over. I know I was not two years oldat that time As a
result, I liked to be in the woods. I would go out in the
woods and take our dog, but I would not even load my gun. I
would kill a rabbit and then feel sorry for the rabbit.
But my brother liked to hunt anLbecame very good. Out in
New Mexico, as I said, he fit well with those people _._
because they hunted bear, elk, deer, and the rest of the
animals.
P: At least there is one Axline that will carry on the family
name, your nephew in Texas.
A: Only for a short time. He had one daughter, and she was
studying to be a nurse. She was on a through highway, where
you have two lanes this way and two lanes the other
direction, and [there was] a girl with her. A Mexican who
was dead drunk hit her head-on in the car and killed both
her and the girl with her.
P: And this boy, then, your nephew, had no sons?
A: No sons.
P: There will go the Axline [name] that goes all the way back
to the pre-Revolutionary period.
A: That is right. There are some others that have the same
name, but our line is dead.
P: Your direct line. Now, you said you were born where, Bob?
A: Chester, Illinois.
P: How did your father get from Wenona to Chester? How did
that move take place? Whywer mairriod?
A: He had an opportunity for promotion on the railroad--I do
not even remember the name of it--in North Carolina, and he
and Mother moved there.
P: To where in North Carolina?
A: Charlotte, North Carolina.
P: And this was still with Illinois Central?
A: No, another railroad. He apparently had a friend that
contacted him [about the job].
P: still a railroad man.
A: &till a rirad his entire life.
P: Do you know what job he held in Charlotte?
A: I think dispatcher.
P: Do you know what railroad?
A: I am not sure. It might have been the Southern. Then he
was transferred to Fulton, Kentucky, a town just south of
Wickliffe.
P: Now, were you already born when they moved to Charlotte?
A: No.
P: And when they moved to Fulton?
A: No.
P: OK. So the family comes after that. Your mother and father
have lived in North Carolina and Kentucky before the family
begins to emerge.
A: And then he had a promotion as the chief dispatcher on the
Missouri-Pacific in Chester, Illinois.
P: And that is now when you come into the story.
A: That is where all three children were born.
P: Let's see. He would have moved up there prior to 1907, but
probably sometime in that area.
A: I would say probably 1906.
P: Now, this is, you say, Chester, Illinois. Tell me where it
is.
A: It is about sixty miles south of St. Louis in Illinois,
right on the Mississippi River.
P: z==ST Vhat railroad would he have been working for?
A: Missouri-Pacific.
P: 3I, T aii Where did it go? I know little about the
railroads in that area.
A: It went [north] into [St. Louis] Missouri [which was the
main terminal for passenger trains and freight trains, then
south along the Mississippi River to a] town named Thebes,
Illinois [where it crossed the river into Missouri].
P: I know that enters your story in a little bit, Thebes,
Illinois.
A: That is right. It is right on the Mississippi River, again.
It was an old town that was actually a riverboat town.
P: -ut bf e thqLt Vhen you were living in Chester, do you
have any memory of that at all?
A: Very little.
P: You were very tiny, then, when your family moved to Thebes.
P: That is right. [I was five years old.] I remember when I
was first born, my parents lived not too far from the river,
and my father had a horse and buggy. He kept the horse and
buggy in a barn out back. I liked to see the horse, so he
would carry me out to the barn,%SS-ge would give me some
hay, -=-I would hold it and the horse would eat it.
Shortly thereafter he moved up to a brick house on the hill.
P: All of this is still in Chester?
A: In Chester.
P: Now, were your sister and your brother also born in Chester?
A: Both were born in Chester.
P OI(. SOu L1iZ miians that when you movrd-to Thebes yu-ar
abe ekt, at, fivo yoroed--or-theLe ts?
A-at---Sdr.
P: Why the move to Thebes?
A: [The dispatcher office in Chester was eliminated, and] my
father was to move to a new town they were starting to build
in Missouri. There is a big bridge that crossed the
Mississippi River at Thebes, znsl while they were building
the [new] terminal a large railroad yard, he started to
build a house in this little town. There were no people
there until they started building the town. When we moved
there after the house was finished, I imagine there were two
hundred people [in the town].
P: You move from Chester to Thebes. Was Thebes the new town?
A: No. Thebes was the old town on the Mississippi River.
P: That is what I thought you were getting ready to tell me,
[that] it was a river town, a boat town.
A: And it was actually where [as a circuit rider].Abraham
Lincoln practiced law in the old stone courthouse. The old
courthouse was still there, although it was no longer used.
The jail cells were there. The iron [was rusted, and] you
could not lock the [jail] door.
P: You mentioned in your material that that is where [a(Pdso
slave] Dred Scott was held for a while.
A: That is true. Dred Scott was brought fr- Lr-H suu'r- 3r hI-VEr=
ho.was pcar ed,-enadn-stayed overnight in that jail and taken
to St. Louis for trial. He is buried now in St. Louis.
P: So the courthouse there had two celebrities. Abraham
Lincoln practiced law there for a while, [and Dred Scott was
held there as a prisoner]. Is the courthouse building still
standing, by the way?
A: Yes, the last time I was there.
P: And they obviously have it marked with both the celebrities:
Dred Scott and Abraham Lincoln.
A: I am not sure. On one occasion I was driving from St. Louis
to Tennessee. In fact, I drove down on the Illinois side
[of the river] just to stop at this little town to see what
it looked like. I had not been there for more than thirty
years. I drove into town, and I saw the house where we
lived. It is on a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi
River; you can see it a long ways in both directions.
P: Now, this is not the brick house yet. The brick house is on
the other side of the river, in the new town.
A: The brick house was in Chester, Illinois, the second house
we lived in.
P: Wait a minute. Let me go back just a little bit to make
sure that the tape has the right chronology. Chester,
Illinois, then Thebes, and then the new town.
A: Right.
P: What was the new town's name?
A: It was called Illmo, an abbreviation for Illinois and
Missouri.
P: All right. Then you were a little boy living in Chester.
You moved to Thebes when 5 i lme-you were about years
old.
A: I started school there.
P: You start school in Thebes. Then after your father finishes
the house, you move across the river to the new house and to
the new town, Illmo.
A: Right.
P: All right. Now, I want get some information about Thebes.
I would like you to tell me what you remember about the town
and your life there during the short time that you lived
there.
A: The thing I remember, of course, was .ete=a a large front
porch that ran across the front of the house and around the
side, and we would sit out there or sit out on a large
terrace and watch the steamboats go up and down the river.
Every once in a while they would have showboats come into
Thebes on Saturday and have a show. When the showboat was
getting close to town they would start playing a steam
organ--a calliope, they called it--and you could hear it up
and down the river. By the time the showboat anchored,
every kid in town and a lot of the other people would be on
the riverbank. The band--they usually had about six
pieces--would get off the boat [dressed] in red uniforms
with gold braid and march up and down the one street the.u
-is.-and play music. The actors and actresses would follow
behind them. Then in the afternoon they would have a
vaudeville show and also a short stage show, which they
repeated in the evening.
The odd part about it is that, as I told you, I decided to
stop by that town going into Tennessee one mid ernoon,
and I went over and saw the same house I had lived in. But
they had changed it. The front porch and the side porch no
longer was on it. So I went over to the old courthouse, and
there was a sign saying something about a historic
courthouse. I went in, and there was a lady9" Che-Owa-
telling us about the history of the courthouse--Abraham
Lincoln, Dred Scott, and so on~ m said, "I used to live
in that house right across the street." She said: "Oh, no,
you did not. That house belonged to my father, Dr.
McKenzie. I have a history of everybody that lived there."
I said: "I lived there, and they have changed it. The house
used to have a porch that ran along the front and around the
south side." She was startled, and she said: "You must have
lived there"because otherwise you would never have known
that. It is true. There was about a year-and-a-half period
we could never account for who lived in that home."
P: And you appeared. ,
A: And I appeared. Another unusual incident [occurred that]
indicated to me [the courage of] my father. It was near the
Fourth of July, and we thought the kids were shooting
firecrackers. We were on a road right across from the
streetlight, and we heard the loud noises--three or four of
them. We did not think anything more about it. Pretty soon
the lady who lived behind us, a lady named Mrs. Bean--by the
way, I told this same lady [at the courthouse] that Mrs.
Bean used to live behind us, and that again convinced her
that we lived there--called to my father, aS she said: "Mr.
Bean is not home. He works at night. But Mr. Axline, I
think there is a man in your yard that has been shot. I can
hear him groan." My dad said, "I will go out and see."
It was dark. We did not have flashlights. He took a
regular coal-oil lamp and started out in the dark. On the
lawn in the backyard was a man lying that he could hear
groaning [who possibly had] a loaded gun. My mother said:
"Dad, do not go out there. You have a wife and three
children." He said: "I have to. There is a man [out there
who is] hurt."
He went out there, held the light, and he knew the man and
the man knew him. He was a watchman on the bridge that my
father crossed every morning and every afternoon as he went
on a motorcar between our home in Thebes and the new town.
He handed my father his pistol and said: "Axline, kill me.
I am going to die anyhow." Of course, my dad would not.
They got a wagon, my mother got a cover off the bed, [put
the man on it,] and took him home. He died in a few hours.
P: Did you ever discover what had happened?
A: Oh, sure. He was drunk and was going home to kill his wife,
and his oldest son got the city marshal. He said, "My
father is on the way home with a gun to kill my mother," and
the marshal came and met him across from our house where the
streetlight was. The man was drunk, so the policeman killed
him easily. He put three bullets right through the middle
of him.
P: And just left him there.
A: He did not know where he had gone. All he knew wasfthatjhe
disappeared in the dark. I think he was afraid to go look
for him because he knew the man still had a gun.
P: Reach back into your memory, Bob, and recall what your
mother and father looked like. Describe them.
A: I have their pictures.
P: Just kind of describe them in your own words.
A: My father was tall, about six feet. I always wanted to be
six feet tall; I never made it. [I stand] 5'10%", I think.
[He was] not heavy [but was] thin. He weighed probably 160
pounds. As children we were all gun-shy of him secaufse f
we did not behave, my mother would say, "Now, you better
behave, or I will tell Dad when he comes home." That was
all she needed to do. Yet he never gave a spanking to any
one of us. But the concern that he might was all it took to
make us behave.
In later life I was very fortunate. After -ed he was
transferred to Herrin, in the southern part of Illinois, to
a better job. While he was working I would get letters from
him, and he [said he] had learned to play golf. As you know
~/7/ Cs t04 /IA-^ le,1
from our conversation, I like to play golf. I mother would
say, "Dad is out practicing golf/J -fe= T left-handed._ I
saidto myself Let him practice. I can still beat him. I
was playing pretty good then. I went home--I was living in
Dixon [Illinois] at the time--and we went out to play golf.
I was surprised he beat me. He could not hit the ball far,
but he hit it straight as an arrow, and he could approach
and putt. He was the best putter I ever saw. He kidded me
all the time. From then as long as he could play golf we
were more like two brothers. It was fun.
P: You were close to your father.
A: Very.
P: What about your mother? What did she look like?
A: She was heavier then my father. She had the three children,
[and] she gained weight. As I first remember, I would say
she was about 120 pounds or so, and then she got a little
plumper. [She was] probably 5'1" or 2" tall, maybe 3".
[She was] very kind and very considerate. [She was] a good
cook and worked hard. They both liked to garden. In Illmo
my father owned half of a block. We had the house on one
corner, and the rest of it was an orchard and a very large
garden. Even as children we would work in the garden. We
grew all the vegetables we used. By the time the new crop
would start to come in in the spring, we still had old
potatoes and we had green beans that were canned and all the
other things. So except for meat and things like ice cream,
we raised our own food. She was a good cook.
The thing I particularly liked about them [was their
sacrifice for us]. Writing this story, as you and I
reviewed it, made me realize how important they were. They
gave their whole life for their three kids.
P: They saw that you got an education.
A: Every cent they saved.
P: Was this a church family?
A: Yes. My father did not go to church. He did as a boy and a
young man, but as he worked for the railroad, particularly
after he was promoted, he worked seven days a week. He did
not have to, [but he did] by choice. The only time he ever
took off was Sunday afternoon. He would come home and spend
the afternoon at home. Then he would go back to the office
for about two of three hours. My mother took us to church.
In Illmo was the first time I ever remember going to church.
I was seven years old.
P: What church?
A: Methodist Episcopal Church South, which is no longer in
existence. The Methodist Church was divided by the Civil
War, and this was the southern branch of the Methodist
Church. Since that time they have joined together, and they
have one Methodist Church. My sister, my brother, and I
were all baptized at the same time, I remember. We always
attended Sunday school.
P: This was, however, something that your mother influenced you
with.
A: My father, too.
P: You indicate in your writings kind of a love/hate
relationship with the river.
A: Oh, yes.
P: I mean, you liked looking at it, but you were a little bit
afraid of it.
A: I was definitely afraid of it. That goes b'ck to the time I
was living in Chester, Illinois Aibt tW-ie we were
living in the brick house. I guess I was three or four
years old. Just two houses down the street there was a
family we knew, and I knew the children. There was a boy
and a girl; I think the boy was about six and the girl about
four. In those days there were few railroads, and there was
a lot of traffic on the Mississippi River. The steamboat
regularly ran up and down the river, and people in Chester,
Illinois, would go [on the steamboat] to St. Louis to shop
and come back to Chester in the evening. On one occasion
the water was high, at flood stage, and as trie to
embark, [tragedy struck]. There was a narrow gangplank,
probably three or four feet wide at the most [leading to the
boat, and there were] no strong rails that anybody could
grab onto but just a sort of a rope between there and the
boat. A large stump or log floating down the river in the
swift current hit what they call the gangplank and knocked
these people overboard, and all three of them drowned.
P: The mother and the two children. So that is your earliest
memory of a river tragedy, then.
A: That is right.
P: And that kind of made an impact on you for the rest of your
life.
A: It did. In Thebes we were right on the river bank. In
Chester, Illinois, the last house we moved in I would say
was probably a mile from the river. There were steep steps
we had to go down--I do not remember how many, [but there
were] over 100 steps--on a bluff to get down to the
railroad, where the railroad ran and where my father worked.
The river was just on the other side [of his office]. In
Thebes we liked it because the [we could see the] showboats
[from our porch], and we would go down and watch the
steamboats load and unload. They would haul freight, a lot
of animals like pigs, cows, and chickens. They would load
and unload and take them into the city [St. Louis].
P: I think you said you started school in Thebes.
A: [My] first year of school [was] in Thebes.
P: How long did the family live in Thebes?
A: About a year and a half.
P: And then you moved to this new house that your father had
built in Illmo. That was going to be the office for the
railroad?
A: It was a division office.
P: What job did he have there?
worked, and the river was just on the other side Buut fn
Thebes we liked it because the [we could seeJt4~ showboats
[from our porch] and we would go down and watch the
steamboats load and unload. They would bring freight, a lot
of animals like pigs, cows, and chickens. They would load
and unload and take them into the--e-i.'t-. j ",'-4
P: I think you said you started school in Thebes.
A: [My] first year of school [was] in Thebes.
P: How long did the family live in Thebes?
A: About a year and a half.
P: And then you moved to this new house that your father had
built in Illmo. That was going to be the office for the
railroad?
c!vi ; 'S
A: It was a central office.
P: What job did he have there?
A: They may have called him trainmaster then, but he was the
chief dispatcher.
P: So he has moved up; he has been promoted from one job to the
other and is building up, obviously, some seniority as far
as railroads are concerned.
A: Yes. Along-that-line- while we lived in Illmo we had a home
with a big garden, and they had over 200 rose bushes.
Beautiful. They both liked flowers. As children we were
required by our parents to take a vase of roses to any new
people that moved into town -so-we-did-that. We did not
like to do it, but we did. We had to take turns. My mother
From then on we contested as to who would get to take the
roses to Mrs. Martin. [laughter]
P: You had a good investment there.
A: That is right.
P: Now, the three of you, you and your brother and sister, then
start school in Illmo. Is that where you finished? /p X"
A: Yes, grade school [and high school], all three of us I
went to one year of school in Thebes.]
In regard to my father, you asked about promotions. I told
you about the fact that he worked such long hours by choice.
He had an offer to be superintendent of a division. The man
came down and talked to him, and he turned it down. Two or
three years later he was offered another job as division
superintendent, and he turned it down. He said: "I have a
nice home here. I have a wife and three kids. We like to
garden; we like to grow flowers. I want to stay here the
rest of my life."
Well, unfortunately, the diesel locomotive changed [that].
They brought in the diesels. A diesel engine ran twice as
far as a steam engine before they changed crews, so it
eliminated a terminal. My father, in order to continue
working for the railroad, had to move to Herrin, Illinois.
By that time he had gotten to the age where they did not
feel they wanted to promote him. One of the things he told
me was, "Bob, anytime you get a chance to be promoted, go."
During the first maybe ten years of our married life, we
never lived in one place longer than two years.
P: You followed your father's advice.
A: I did. It was worthwhilepbecause of the added experience.
P: Bob, it sounds to me as though your family was not rich but
they were not poor.
A: They were not rich.
P: But they were not poor.
A: My father had a job even through the worst Depression, in
1929, 1930, and on through there, so we always had food on
the table. But they were very saving [people]. As I said,
we grew all the food we ate. We had fresh vegetables during
the summer and spring and fall. We had berries; we had
blackberries, red raspberries, black raspberries, and a
strawberry garden that I kept. I rotated [the planting] so
we had good strawberries as long as we lived there. We grew
potatoes. We grew corn, peas, green beans, carrots,
turnips, [lettuce, radishes, tomatoes, celery]--everything
you could think of.
P: So you never went hungry.
A: We never went hungry. During the Depression we gave a lot
of extra food [from the garden] to the families that did not
have enough to eat.
P: What kinds of fun things do you remember doing as a kid?
Were you athletically inclined?
A: Oh, yes, from the very start. First, of course, was hiking.
h
When school was out we iked the woods.
P: When you say mnbs= =ad we, you are talking about your
brother and you?
A: My brother ammt later on, ah- he got so he could follow me.
But [I am specifically referring to] my neighbor boys. I
had a real good friend named Robert Pierce just my age in
the same classes in school, and he and I would just take
off. Later on, as my brother got older, he too [came with
us]. We started Saturday morning after breakfast and did
not come home until dusk. We never took lunch. I think
even today maybe I could walk up and down the bluffs--the
river banks--on the Mississippi in that area and recognize a
lot of the places. I knew where the best walnut trees where
the biggest walnuts were growing, where the hickory nut
trees were, where the persimmon trees were, [and] pawpaw
trees. Are you familiar with that? It tastes like a banana
and is shaped like a cucumber. You can find them in the
woods because they smell like bananas. You could smell
them, and say, "There are ripe pawpaws around here," and you
could go and find them. It had a large seed. Also, we just
explored. We knew where the best wild blackberries and wild
dewberries were. We would swim and fish in the streams that
flowed into the Mississippi River. We did not fish in the
Mississippi River. It was difficult.
P: You liked swimming?
A: Very much. I learned to swim in small streams where it was
not too deep. Then, as time passed, swimming pools [became
accessible]. We lived six miles from Cape Girardeau,
Missouri, a larger city. It was a French settlement right
on the Mississippi River. It had about 18,000 people then;
now I guess it has 35,000 or 40,000 at least. There is a
state college there [Southeast Missouri State University].
P: I gather that the area was much more deserted, so you as a
kid could do a lot of things that a young boy today could
not do.
A: Oh, no doubt about it.
P: You could go swimming and fishing and not worry about
anybody seeing you or interfering with what you were doing.
A: /hat is right. In one case we were swimming in a little
stream--there were four of us--and we were all without
clothes, naked. Along came a farmer driving his horse and a
wagon, and he said, "Shame to you boys, swimming naked with
that little girl." One of the boys had a shape,
particularly his buttocks, that looked like the back of a
girl, kind of heavy, so we made him turn around so the
farmer could see that he was not a girl. [laughter]
P: So you had a lot of fun growing up.
A: Oh, yes. Again, talking about exploring the bluffs, you
would learn while walking in the woods to notice the
direction of the sun so that you knew pretty well north and
south, east and west. Actually I could find my way in the
'I
woods more eai4ly than I could, for example, in St. Louis.
When I was there I got in places where the streets were
curved and I could not see the sun. 4 U .
One time we were walking up a large bluff heavily wooded
[with] old trees. You could tell because you could not
begin to reach around some of the old oak trees. Right on
the top of this bluff was an old cemetery. It still had an
iron fence around it, but the gate had been broken down. (I
always had sort of a respect for old cemeteries,
particularly the stones, because lots of times you could
almost tell the history of that part of the country. For
example, I like to go to Boston and see the Old Granary
graveyard. Benjamin Franklin is buried there, [as are] John
Hancock and other signers of the Declaration of
Independence.) So I went in this old graveyard. The stones
were still up and in good shape, although the grass had
grown up until it was about a foot tall. There buried was a
lieutenant governor of Missouri and his whole family--wife,
Szc apparently children and probably some in-laws. Nobody
even knew7it was there. PThere was] no road to it, and
there had not been for years.
P: And nobody had been there in years and years.
A: Correct.
P: What about your house in Illmo? What did it look like?
A: It was a two-story house built on the side of a hill.
P: Brick?
A: No, stucco. [It was] well insulated. [It had] two floors.
On the bottom floor was the kitchen, dining room, and living
room. There were stairs that went up to the upper floor
from the kitchen and the living room, and there was also an
entrance hall in the living room. On the upper floor were
three bedrooms and a bath. [There were] windows all the way
around the house and long eves that hung over I would say at
least four feet so the windows were shaded. We did not have
air conditioning in those days, but we could open windows
and have ventilation all through the upper floor.
P: And you lived there how long? Were you were still living
there when you went off to college?
A: Yes. One thing I omitted was that we had a basement where
my father had central heating and hot water, and there was a
crawl space where my father laid down sacks and then papers
where we kept our potatoes, turnips, and things like that
through the winter. There was enough ventilation to keep it
from freezing but yet was cool.
P: You were about seven or eight years old when you moved to
Illmo?
A: Exactly seven.
P: And you were born in 1907, so you are moving there in 1914&-A-
just at the beginning of the outbreak of war in Europe.
A: Right.
P: Do you have any impressions or memories of what life was
like in a little town during a wartime period?
I -
A: I sure do, and there is kind of an odd reason for it. It
was a [railroad] terminal. Apparently the president felt
that we would soon be in the world war, and as a training
exercise, I learned later, American troops were sent to
Mexico to capture Pancho Villa, who was a Mexican bandit.
He was raiding across the border into Texas and stealing
cows.
P: That is where [General] John J. Pershing was sent.
A: Exactly. _- T~1Xt 1-WmPr 'rmnfhe troop train stopped there and
changed engines. Of course, they had to put more coal in
the engine and put water in the engine, and they let the
troops off. By that time we had some paved roads, and they
would march up and down the streets, and every kid in town
was down there watching the soldiers march. We thought it
was great to see those soldiers.
The thing that is odd is that the railroad office had three
floors, and the second floor had a porch with steel strips
so that the snow or rain could go right on through. There
was a car parked in front of the railroad office, and there
were some young men [in it]--teenagers, maybe twenty or
something like that--and I noticed they were always looking
up. I looked up there, and all the secretaries from the
railroad office were standing out there, and you could tell
the kind ofpants they had on. [laughter] I thought,
"These crazy guys! Here are soldiers going down the street,
and they are looking at [these women]."
P: The soldiers were much more interesting to you, and they
were looking at a different kind of a view.
A: And had a different idea.
P: Well, you were a little bit too young yet to enjoy to a
different environment or a different perspective. Nobody in
your family, then, was in the war?
A: My father's brother, the one that went to [the University
of] Illinois, went in as a lieutenant and came out a
captain. The odd part about it is he replaced a captain in
Europe by the same name. He apparently had been a relative
and had been killed. My uncle finished the war in Europe
and then came back to this country.
P: You would still have been close enough to the Civil War in
the area of the country 1t-ht you were living ri that there
should have been some veterans of the war who might have
told stories,an1wf
A: Oh, there were.
P: And you went to a church that obviously was on the
Confederate side.
A: All the people were on the Confederate side, believe it or
not. Pro7t wt hyltieo onaer T .- I
think I indicated to you that southeast Missouri was swampy.
Did I tell you that story?
P: No.
A: Southeast Missouri was swampy, and the states of Illinois
(southern Illinois), Arkansas, and Tennessee would chase out
the so-called "bad man," troublemakers. They would take
them to the border of Missouri and say: "Now, go. If you
come back here again, we are going to put you in prison."
So they all came and settled in southeast Missouri because
they figured nobody would bother them there. It was swampy,
a terrible place to live. [It was infested with] mosquitoes
like early Florida used to be. So they settled there. They
had little towns and hunted, fished, cut lumber, and things
like that. [There was] hardly any industry. The men
settled these towns--Caruthersville, particularly--down at
the "boot-heel" part of Missouri. (The southeast part of
Missouri has a shape that looks like the heel of a boot.
They settled there/because it was the closest to the states
from which they left--Tennessee and Arkansas.
They were very southern in their attitude^strong southern
-eetfqs. We had a factory there, and I got to know them
very well. The businessmen would meet in the drugstore and
just shoot the breeze, tell stories and things like that.
They were the merchants and the influential men in town.
They told me, "If any black man comes in this town and tries
to do some of the things they let them [do] in other places,
we will not stand for it," and they would not.
I had an assistant--I was general superintendent at that
time--working for me who was from St. Louis, and he did not
like black people. (They did not call them black men in
those days.) He was walking down the street, and this black
man accidentally bumped into him, !.i Oe hit him and knocked
him down and thought nothing about it. He just went on. I
thought it was terrible. But that is the way they acted.
P: There were black people living in Illmo?
A: Oh, yes, a few. I will tell you something about them, too.
[First let me tell you] the rest about this. Their southern
feelings were stronger than the attitude of the people in
Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, [and] even Louisiana,
because they had collected together and felt they were
persecuted. As a result, they held very firmly to their old
customs. Definitely. The last black man lynched was
lynched in a town just north of there. I remember it. At
that time, I had charge of a factory in Charleston
[Missouri], only about fifteen miles from where the lynching
occurred.
P: You did not see the lynching? You just heard about it?
A: No, I did not want to.
P: You say there were black people living in Illmo as you were
growing up?
A: Oh, yes, and I loved them.
P: [Did] anybody work for you or for your father, in the garden
or around the house?
A: No. The only black men they had worked on the section,0,1-
because the railroad was very hot, with t;e steel rails and
the hot sun in the South. There was a group of black
families--I would say probably ten--and the railroad would
set aside old boxcars, put them on blocks, and give one to
each family that lived there. They P~4;& ik children, but
they could not go to our schools -SaAny black child that
got an education was sent away to where they had relatives
in places like St. Louis.
P: Schools in Illmo were segregated.
A: Definitely. Trains were segregated; they [blacks] could not
ride in the same coach [and] could not eat in the
restaurants.
P: As you were growing up, did you all maintain contact with
your grandparents?
A: Oh, yes.
P: They came to visit, and you went to visit them?
A: We loved my father's mother, my grandmother. Her husband
died slightly before my father graduated from high school.
She had the two married daughters and my father, and she
would spend four months with each of them. We just
worshipped her and waited for the time [she would come for a
visit]. I would go down and meet the train as I got older.
She came in on a train from St. Louis that got in about nine
o'clock in the evening. I would meet her and bring her
home. We walked home; we did not have a car at that time.
With our other two grandparents, the Quigleys, [it was] the
same way.
P: Where did they live?
A: Clinton, Illinois.
P: They had not moved from Clinton.
A: Their whole life was spent there. Their children are buried
there, and they are buried there.
P: And they came to visit also.
A: They never came to our house to visit because they always
kept a home, first on the farm [and then in Clinton]. In
the case of a farm, there are farm animals you have to feed
and cows to milk [daily]. My grandfather would never use
tractors; he always used horses. He used a horse and buggy.
So they could not get away. But we would go up there the
first of July and spend two weeks. My mother and the three
children would go out to the farm. We worshipped our
grandparents and had a wonderful time. [We especially
enjoyed] riding in the [buggy and the] wagon. My
grandfather let us take turns riding on the corn cultivator.
Of course, my grandmother said, "Now, be sure they do not
fall off," because there were plows behind us. He fixed a
seat between his knees with several gunny sacks as a
cushion, and we would sit on the front of the iron seat of
the cultivator. He would keep one arm around us and drive
the horses with the other. We could see the corn stalks go
underneath the cultivator. I would pick cherries. Wy
grandmother was a wonderful cook, and [she baked] the best
cherry pies.
P: You have a lot of happy memories growing up.
A: All happy.
P: None of the tragedies or sadness that people often run into?
A: The first death in our family was my grandmother who died
while I was away in college.
P: So you grew up with grandparents. What kind of a student
were you?
A: Good. The reason is, I think, wa9-. euv s~zsfm t A.e -that
my mother read to me. Books are still very important to me.
As I told you, she would read these stories that I can even
remember [now]. That created an interest [in books] for me,
so when I got to the place in school that I could read, I
read a lot. --m--a -'atte-,
P: What were your best subjects?
A: All good.
P: You liked both the sciences and math? Of course, you become
an engineer. I was just wondering if the science and math
courses were your strongest.
A: Actually, I had the best grades in my college class by far.
They graded with grades like H for honor, A for excellent
(that was supposed to be 90-98), and then B was less (I
think it was 80-89) and then C. Then, of course, D was
failure. I never failed a course in my life. In my senior
year I had perfect grades. All H's.
P: How about high school?
A: Good. [It was] always easy.
P: Did you play sports in high school?
A: No, I was too small. The reason is that through grade
school, as I said, school was easy. I would be in a class,
and the teacher said, "You should be in the next class," and
they would move me up a grade. About two years [later],
again, they moved me up another class. When I graduated, I
was not quite sixteen. The teachers wanted to move me up
again, but/my mother said no. The disadvantage was that
when Igraduated fromjhigh school I did not even weigh a
hundred pounds. All we had was basketball. We did not have
enough students in school for football. We did not have
tennis orother sports.
P: Was this a small country school?
A: [It was] a small town, and in the same school we had four
grades of high school and all eight grades of grammar
school.
P: But it was not a one-room schoolhouse and a one-teacher
operation.
A: No. It must have had six rooms. We had one room that
taughtctwoJclasses, and they alternated teaching [during the
day]. Then in high school we had three rooms.
P: I gather that music also played a role in your life and that
of your brother and sister.
A: It did, as a result of my father. He played the trombone.
P/Y Sq/ou isy th| your fa;r s te ieo w w sshoa4sa sumnt
'A:) He played in the band in Lacon, Illinois, and they played
for political meetings, where they get all the spirit
[built] upp V/ Bfirdti pia E He told about playing in
them frequently. /ne story/he told uswaas about a cornet
player who was on the end of the line. They were marching
down through town and the band was playinge-aa All of a
sudden they missed the cornet player. They found out the
city had been digging a ditch alongside the road and had
left it open, and by chance he fell in it. [There were no
street lights at the time.]
P: One lost musician. [laughter]
A: Right. But he was interested in music. He got the first
6;n oar a.--cQ
record played, and we had [numerous] records.
P: I think we called them Victrolas back in those days.
A: It was a Victrola, made by [RCA] Victor, with a picture of
the dog and the horn.
P: And you had to wind it up by hand.
A: Right. [We had] almost all [kinds of music]--band music and
concert music, of course, and some opera.
P: Everybody had [recordings of Italian tenor Enrico] Caruso,
A: Absolutely.
P: And [Irish tenor] John McCormick singing Irish songs.
A: That is right. Caruso was terrific. My father started us
out>, y /t ^ first my sister on the
piano. I remember my mother went to St. Louis and took her
along. They picked out a piano and had it shipped down to
Illmo. She started taking piano lessons.
P: There was a piano teacher in Illmo?
A: No. [There was a piano teacher in] Cape Girardeau,
Missouri, at the state college. They also had a symphony
orchestra. I liked the violin because my father had records
of Sviolinis' Vritz] Kreisler, and I liked it. [The
music was] beautiful. So I started out on the violin.
P: So you liked the violin inspired by Fritz Kreisler.
A: Yes.
P: You could not have done any better than that, unless you had
gotten [Italian violinist and composer Niccolo] Paganini,
maybe.
A: Paganini was one of the great ones. He wrote music that
nobody could play until [violinist Jascha] Heifetz came
along. I saw Heifetz and listened to him play many times.
P: Yes, I did too, including [at] Carnegie Hall.
A: Did you? They used to bring the symphony orchestra from St.
Louis to Cape Girardeau College, and my father always had
seats there.
P: So your sister played the piano, and you played the violin.
What about your brother?
A: My brother played the cello.
P: All of you enjoyed taking lessons and playing?
A: Oh, yes. We had a string trio, and as we progressed we
played for Rotary Club conventions all over [southeast
Missouri].
P: So you all got to be pretty good.
A: We also played for the graduation exercises at the college
in Cape Girardeau.
P: You did not mind all the time you had to spend practicing?
A: No. The odd part about it [is] I lacked talent. Izwould7
hear a tone and say, "That is right," when the tone
[actually] was sharp. If it was right, it did not sound
correct to me. I had to develop (my ear] and learn [to
discern pitch] by training myself with the notes on the
piano and with my teacher working with me on the violin so
that eventually I could hear tones correctly.
P: Now, where is it you went to take lessons?
A: Cape Girardeau, Missouri, about six miles from where we
lived.
P: How did you get there?
A: By that time my father had bought an automobile, a Ford, and
I think primarily to take us up there. He would take us up
there once a week all the time, winter and summer.
P: Your brother did not rebel?
A: No. He hadconsiderablejtalent for music. He played and
played well.
P: And your sister played the piano well?
A: She played well. She still plays. She plays an organ now.
P: And what about Bob Axline, violinist?
A: Eventually I played well. I played first violin in the
college symphony orchestra for about eight years until I
became involved with work and college. I also played in the
symphony orchestra at Purdue University u But violin- any
stringed instrument--one has to practice constantly, and I
just did not [keep it up after college].
P: Now, you graduate from high school at about sixteen.
A: Yes.
P: Then what were your plans? What were you going to do? What
did you do?
A: My father thought I was too young to go away to school.
P: Did you really want to go away to school? Was that an
overwhelming desire on your part?
A: Not at that time. I wanted to go to Purdue, primarily
because my father had a friend that was an engineer, and
this friend talked so much about Purdue I thought being an
engineer would be interesting. sell, my father found out
that the superintendent of the division where he worked, the
Illinois/Missouri division, would need a male secretary and
that the job would be open soon. So he sent me to the
college at Cape Girardeau, Missouri. I drove back and
forth. We took turns; other students from the same little
town went there. I took shorthand [and] typing and all the
math courses they had because I liked it. I took solid
geometry and two other courses in algebra. They thought it
was too much for one person to take, but it did not bother
me.
P: You said that the job was as a male secretary. Was that an
uncommon thing? We usually think of secretaries as females.
A: It was common on the railroads because the railroad
superintendent traveled over his division in a private car,
and their wives objected if they had a female secretary
along in a private car.
P: So that is why they wanted male secretaries.
A: That is the reason they wanted male secretaries. Male
secretaries often graduated from their experience working
with the superintendent into good positions on the railroad.
P: How long were you at school learning these secretarial
courses and taking math?
A: Nine months.
P: And then?
A: The job was ready, so I started working.
P: What was the man's name, the superintendent?
A: The first one was named Coyne. [He was] shaped like a
Kewpie doll--kind of short and chubby.
P: Do you remember his first name?
A: No. I called him Mr. Coyne. [laughter]
P: So as soon as you got out of school, Mr. Coyne was waiting
for you.
A: Yes.
P: All right. So what did you do as a male secretary?
A: When he was in town I handled all his correspondence and all
A /
of his reports. He had certain reports that went to his
desk.
P: You took the letters that he dictated in shorthand.
A: nd typed them. He would read them /5r sign them, and I
would send them out. f typedhhis reports. They were
A "
compiled by somebody else in the office and were given to
me. Mr. Coyne had regular meetings every montyhone meeting
for the engineers, one for the trainmen, and one group that
included the machinists and roundhouse people.
P: All of those were in Illmo?
A: The meetings normally were held in Dupo, Illinois, just
outside of St. Louis and just south of East St. Louis. Dupo
was a large assembly yard for the Missouri-Pacific and many
other railroads. All the crews would go into Dupo. The
crews that were there would lay over and would/have a return
rundown to the Missouri/Illinois division. The trainmen
and engineers knew when the meeting would be held. We would
go there and hold the meetings.
P: Did you travel with Mr. Coyne?
A: Yes.
P: Where did you go?
A: Just up to Dupo and other terminals. We never went far.
P: Those were one-day trips, it sounds like. You are still
living at home [at this point]?
A: I was still living at home [he Dupo trip took two days.]
/ il
P: Those are before the days when bachelors had apartments.
A: That is right.
P: What was your salary?
A: One hundred thirty-five dollars a month.
P: That was good pay.
A: Yes.
P: When did you go to work?
A: Let's see. I was seventeen years old when I started
[college at Cape Girardeau].
P: So that would make it 1924. You were born in 1907.
A: It was 1925 or 1926. I graduated from high school in 1924
and went to college that same year. I finished the
following spring6 when I was eighteen.
P: All right. Then you would have been eighteen years old when
you went to work for him, which was a young age to take on
that kind of an important responsibility. Now, that was a
period of great prosperity in the United States, the 1920s,
and it was the heyday of the railroads, was it not?
A: It was.
P: [There was] a lot of traffic, passenger and freight, on the
Missouri-Pacific?
A: Both.
P: A lot of good business, then.
A: Yes.
P: How long did you work for Mr. Coyne?
A: Only about a year and a half or two years.
P: And then he was succeeded by someone else?
A: Yes, and it was unfortunate the way they released him. We
had hadan arbitrationjmeeting with the railroad engineers.
One of the engineers had been caught drinking. The business
agent for the engineers union was a very nice manp/Q knew
hi. And Mr. Coyne was a kindhearted man. I heard the
business agent talking in the superintendent's office. He
said: "This engineer has a wife and four kids. This is the
first time he has been caught drinking. Are you going to
take food out of the mouths of those children?" He was very
persuasive, and he persuaded Mr. Coyne to give him another
chance, which he did.
(i~ L
\. A -'i
Unfortunately, there were a number of accidents on this
division, and the general officers in St. Louis blamedthem
on the fact that they thought Mr. Coyne was not strict in
enforcing regulations and rules. They demoted him. He
became a dispatcher and was transferred to Jefferson City,
Missouri. He lived and worked there until he retired.
The next superintendent was named Mr. Charles Chapman, who
had the reputation for being strict and a tough taskmaster,
although I found him very nice to work for. I never had any
trouble, and he and I became good friends. But the
,k0 e -1*v -
accidents stopped because he had reputation f=a-hfm a he uL-XS
strict superintendent and ,'Mon would not stand for any
violations of the rules. I worked for/r. Chapmauntil the
office closed down. My father was transferred to Herrin,
Illinois, then I was transferred with Mr. Chapman to a
division [office] in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.
What was there?
A terminal. It was probably a hundred miles from Illmo.
And this is still the Missouri-Pacific railroad?
Still Missouri-Pacific. They had a lot of passenger 1g2s s
and aS3o freight trains. I worked there for about two
years until I decided to go to college.
You lived by yourself, obviously, in Poplar Bluff.
Sh a] rooming house. There was another young man that was
not married. He was older than mw. Two of the men were
married and had not found houses to live in. We four had
P:
A:
P:
A:
P:
A:
rooms in a boarding house. Fortunately the rooms were nice
and clean, and the lady was a very good cook.
P: I wonder how much she charged you. It had to have been
inexpensive by today's prices.
A: I think it was something like $4.50 a week.
P: That included food?
A: [That] included food.
P: You had a rare bargain, particularly if she was a good cook.
A: Oh, she was excellent.
P: In this new job, what did you do?
A: The same thing. I handled all ofthe superintendent's7
correspondence and reports. We would have meetings normally
at Poplar Bluff/bbecause it was a terminal. I would write
up the minutes of the meetings. If [someone violated
a.ies] /as the engineer had done by violating drinking
rules they would have an investigation. I would take notes
in shorthand and then type them and give copies both to Mr.
Chapman and to therepresentatives of the union.
P: What made you decide at that particular moment in time to go
to college? aa6! eba-'sn-y2a~;t .
A: I think maybe the fact that I was twenty-one years old. I
thought I ought to get started.
P: You had the money now?
A: I had almost enough money to put me all the way through
Purdue. My father helped me for about the last two or three
months.
P: By "enough money," what did that mean? What was your nest
egg?
A: I am not sure. All my living expenses at Purdue for a year,
including tuition and books, were about $900. As I told
you, my grades were exceptionally good, and after the first
semester I found out that by making "distinguished student"
list my tuition was refunded. So from then on I did not pay
any tuition, and that helped. It was out-of-state tuition,
and at that time out-of-state tuition was not large--fifty
dollars a semester.
P: Purdue was noted then as one of the best engineering schools
in the country?
A: Engineering and agriculture.
P: And you took .
A: Engineering.
P: How did you do in college?
A: Very well. As I just said, I was distinguished student in
every semester, and in my senior year I had perfect grade
scores. They had grades of H for honor (98 or above), an A
was 90 to 98, B was from 80 to 89, and C was below 80.
P: So when you graduated in 1932, you graduated with honors.
A: Oh, yes.
P: I understand you were on the swim team.
A: Not the [university's] swimming team the swimming team for
the fraternity. Those days we were right in the middle of
the Depression, [and] the only teams they could afford to
pay travel expenses for were the football and basketball
teams, so all other activities were intramural.
P: What fraternity were you in?
A: Pi Kappa Alpha.
P: So you swam for the Pikes.
A: Yes.
P: When did you join the fraternity? ^qrTtr'tfle-
A: 1932.
P: What motivated you to become a fraternity man?
A: Primarily I became acquainted with a man that we liked in
school. My brother was there, too. We were taken around to
a number of fraternities, but the one we liked the best was
Pi Kappa Alpha. Also, Pi Kappa Alpha was a southern
fraternity. Being raised in southeastern Missouri, we had
strong southern ties.
P: Now, your brother was at Purdue the same time you were?
A: Yes.
P: Subsidized by your father?
A: Yes.
P: He had not worked like you had and built up a nest egg.
A: No.
P: He was also taking engineering?
A: Yes.
P: In the fraternity were you a big social man?
7
A: No. [We even went to school on Saturday. Most of my time
was spent studying.] I was [also] interesting in swimming,
and I played in the orchestra.
P: You played violin, of course, in the orchestra. [Was it]
the university orchestra?
A: Yes.
P: You did not work during the four years you were at Purdue?
A: No.
P: Either in the fraternity or on campus?
A: No.
P: Did you have a car?
A: No.
P: Cars were very scarce anyway.
A: We did not have a car until the third year we were married.
P: Where is Purdue University located?
A: Lafayette, Indiana.
P: That is the first time, now, you have moved away from
[Missouri or] Illinois in a very long time.
A: That is right.
P: Really, all of your years except your birth years were spent
in that state.
A: That is right.
P: You are moving up into big time, are you not? [laughter]
A: Yes. [laughter]
P: Although I suspect that was not a very huge community at
that time.
A: No, it was not. I think [the population was] maybe 30,000
or 40,000.
P: How large was Purdue when you were going there?
A: At that time there were, I think, 16,000 students. Today I
think it is more than 40,000. I get Purdue papers and t4eer
magazine.
P: But for those times that was a very large school. Where did
you live? ap-t eefafSer 4fy%
A: In the fraternity house, and [I] liked it very much.
P: And you lived there all four years?
A: Yes.
P: So those were good years for you?
A: Oh, yes.
P: I have not found any trouble, period, so far, and you are
now twenty-five years old.
A: I did not have any.
P: Nothing but sweet dreams all of this time. Nothing on your
conscience. Your folks are still alive and well.
A: That is right.
P: So everything is going along fine except ~rfUMk the
Depression.
A: Yes.
P: How did that impact your family?
A: My father and mother, of course, still had a good living.
P: Your father had his job.
A: Yes.
P: When did your brother graduate? Shortly after you?
A: He did not make it after the first semester at Purdue. He
was not a good student, I think probably because by the time
he came along my mother did not have time to read to him.
He also did not have the time to mature as I did after he
got out of high school. He bounced right from a small high
school--I think our graduating class had thirteen--into
Purdue. And Purdue was tough. About half or more of the
freshman class did not make it, and he was one of them. He
went from there to [a college in] Missouri. It took him a
while longer, but he finally graduated. I remember my
father said, "I thought I would never get Bud out of
school." [laughter]
P: But he did. Did your sister go to college?
A: Yes. She graduated from the college at Cape Girardeau.
P: I see. Now, what about you? You t out and gAf a job with
Arvin Industries in Indianapolis. What kind of a job was
that? What kind of a company was that?
A: It was a lousy job and a lousy company. Let me tell you
why. rNormally, after examinations were completed, th re won
.l~n.i;ris l, \two weeks to celebrate finishing college. The
A
superintendent f Arvin IndustriesTcame to Purdue,;and he
told me: "We need you very much. Won't you come down now?"
So I gave up the celebration and went down to his factory in
Greenwood, Indiana, near Indianapolis.
P: He was there interviewing?
A: Yes. He came particularly looking at Pi Kappa Alpha
[graduates] because he was a Pi Kappa Alpha graduate. I
said, "What do you pay?" and he said, "Seventy-five dollars
a month." I had interviews with many [companies]. We had
people from General Motors, Westinghouse, Ford, electric
P I ujhtzg
companies--all the big companies tc purdue [graduates
S normally went to work a matter of courtesy, awdr
:personnel managers came to Purduep tal to us. -B thi
-time thy all bai Li y wer iiun il hriing ayeei I will
never forget the man from Westinghouse that told me this
story. He said: "I am glad to talk to you, but times are
very difficult. We have the two best turbine engineers in
the world. Now, I did not say in the United States. I said
in the world. We have had to lay one of them off. So you
can see what the conditions are."
I took the job with Arvin Industries, although I was not
impressed with the superintendent. The company made auto
parts, primarily seamless tubing. One time I had charge of
the assembly of jaer parts tailpipe mufflers, and so
forth. And there were other parts, [like] the pipe that
connected the radiator to the engine. And [(i La]
dirty! I always got dirty [at work] primarily because of
the conditions. All of the parts were cut from metal and
be
were formed in dies that had to t~gF greased, so of course
there was grease on the parts one handled. When _ys went
home from work had to take two baths to get clean. And
home from work X5 had to take two baths to get clean. And
[the place was filled with] noise and all kinds of gases
from the welding and and annealing furnaces.
To make a long story short, there were five of us, and we
trained in different departments. I particularly liked the
machine shop. I worked for the [superintendent of the]
machinist [Mr. McIntyre] who had charge of the machine shop.
He had worked for Stutz, the auto company in Indianapolis.
At one time the center of the auto industry was in
Indianapolis. They made the Jordan there, one of the other
expensive cars. But Indiana was a farm community, and [the
city fathers did not want] all these dirty machine shops and
dirty factories. They gradually they got rid of them. They
could have been the center of the auto industry.
P: So that is how it shifted to Detroit?
A: That is right. y?
0o F w th rhet-rroiA.` a.
/A ^s-^rdva-pnpt-'B^n, ^gmd t^deflT
\ X /They hired Mr. McIntyre. He had charge of the machine shop.
[He was] a very nice man. [He was] gray haired. [He had
been] a flyer in World War I. In World War I [at first]
they used airplanes [only] for observation. They would up
and look around with binoculars and say, "Oh, there is a gun
right over there," or "[There is] something over there," and
send the word down to the artillery. So pretty soon the
Germans were doing the same thing. Then pretty soon--and he
i
told me about it--the aviators were taking up shotguns and
rifles and shooting at each other, and he was shot down. In
fact, he was shot down several times. They did not have
parachutes, [and when he] landed he said he broke almost
every bone in his body but lived. He was an excellent
machinist and an excellent man to work for.
The machinist had worked at the Stutz [factory]--they called
.* it the Stutz Bearcat, one of the real sports cars in those
Says. rvin Industriesfts making -s own bending dies.
They were complicated dies to make, and while they were good
machinists, they were not good at mathematics. So they
would say [to me]: "Look. Here is the thing I have. Here
is going to be the shape of the part I have to fit." They
would draw a sketch of it and ask, "Now, what angle should
this be to make the parts fit together?" That was easy for
me. I figured out the angles and the sizes and shapes of
the parts and told them how to make it. Pretty soon they
were all coming to mef they had a difficult die to make
As a result, they helped me In trainik as a machinist.
-? /-? There was another young man who was training to be a
i machinist, and he had been there over a year. He could do
little machine workbecause the machinists were not
interested in helping him. But in my case they were. So in
a short time I learned to run lathes9 milling machines
/ %shapers which were easy and
which wss the most difficult shapers which were eas and
59
precision grinders. I could do good machine work within a
matter of six to nine months.
P: This was all for Arvin Industries.
A: Yes. There was no minimum wage. They promised me seventy-
five dollars a month. The first check--they paid by the
week--[was] ten dollars. I went in and talked to the
superintendent. "Oh," he said, "I am sorry. We just
reviewed it, and we cannot pay that much. You get ten
dollars a week." I could not get another job. I worked
nine hours a day always at least half a day Saturday. On
one occasion [I worked] all day Saturday [and Saturday
night] until Sunday morning. I got angry and just walked
out. I said, "The hell with them."
P: Ten dollars a week, even in those days, hardly covered your
living expenses.
A: Correct. We lived mainly on eggs (which we should not have
done), and we would get bread for toast.
P: How long did you work for Arvin?
A: About one and a half years. Soon the NRA [National Recovery
Administration] came along.
P: The NRA came along in 1933.
A: That was it, 4aeere you had to sr a minimum wage. They were
paying girls ten cents an hour and men, depending on their
experience, from fifteen to twenty cents an hour. [A] good
foreman [could earn] eighteen to twenty dollars a week. One
foreman had five children, and he was a good foreman. I
asked him, "How can you raise five children on what you
get?" He said: "When I get paid every week, I do down to
the grocery store and buy a gunny sack full of navy beans,
and we buy bread. So we eat bread and beans the entire
week." [It was] the same way with other people; they could
hardly live.
At Arvin Industries we were working at these wages, and
[working] conditions were not good. The superintendent told
us: "We have a treat for you. The company is owned by two
men, Mr. Noblet and Mr. Sparks. I am going to take you down
to Mr. Sparks's estate in southern Indiana. It is
beautiful. You will like it." We drove to southern
Indiana. T a r-ph eh ? Up on great big beautiful
bluffs, wooded, you can look out over the flat land, and I
think it is the Ohio River running below there. We drove up
this[high bluffs, and we noticed there was a little creek
running down[ihe side of the bluffjinto a pool. We got to
the top of the bluff, and there was a big, beautiful house.
The living room was about as large as our family room and
living room combined.
P: Which would be about twenty-five or thirty feet.
A: Oh, more than that. About fifty feet [long and twenty-five
feet wide].
P: [It had a] cathedral-type ceiling?
A: Yes, and beautiful furniture. On the top [of the roof] was
an observation deck with a big telescope. Water was flowing
into one pool and then running down some rocks into another
pool. [It was] beautifully landscaped. The superintendent
told us about this. He said the owner liked streams, so he
built this stream. He said: "Down below he dug a deep well.
He pumps the water up to the top of this high bluff, and it
runs down through the surrounding rocks and trees,"
We returned home. That was supposed to be a treat for us!
There were five of us working for him. When we got together
back in the factory, out of hearing of the superintendent we
said, "Why, that lousy SOB!" We saw people working there
for money that they could not live on, [and] we knew what we
were getting, and yet this guy was spending money like that.
So when Arvin Industries found out there was going to be a
minimum wage, It was what? Fifteen cents?
P: It was a little bit more than that, I think.
A: Twenty-five cents for men.
P: Twenty-five cents an hour.
-A -WA7 4.-3q at the-o~s-f
--4---Phab-wae-fhe-1ohest .
-A --And-men-were[-w i-dJ t hir~F- iv
A: Anyhow, er started to wor -we did not know why--night and
day, all day Saturday, [even] nights Saturday. The factory
had a loft with 2 x 4-s across, open, on which they:laid
down boards. It was [soon] filled with completed machine
parts ready to ship. The aisles were filled so we could
hardly walk through them. The commissary was filled. We
had a shed where we kept steel, [and] it was filled. There
was no room for anything. And then they shut down.
P: Filled with what? What were they filled up with?
A: All the [manufactured] parts they were making for the auto
industry. The auto industry had told them what they needed
in advance.
P: I see.
A: -6ee*e shut down for more than six or nine months. I tried
[to find a job in] Indianapolis and went from one company to
another.
P: In other words, you were without a job.
A: Oh, sure. All of us.
P: You had walked off, or they had discharged you?
A: They knad u's CEwith no notice to return.
P: They shut down the plant?
A: They shut down the plant.
P: OK. So you are without a job now. Even though you were not
happy with the work that you had, you had gotten a salary,-L
A: Right. o money) /nd there was no unemployment insurance
in those days.]
|B<^\S-youares^C^
A I had just enough money to live on for about two weeks, and
I spent two weeks going from one industry to another. Same
story: not a single job. I called my father, and he said,
"Come on back home, Bob, to southern Illinois." He sent me
a pass, since I was dependent on him then, and I got on the
railroad and went back to Herrin, Illinois.
P: You packed up and went home.
A: Yes. [When I got back to Herrin] I would take the St. Louis
telephone directory and pick out a particular section of St.
Louis [to canvass]. I knewEhe city pretty welljbecause I
had gone up there as a boy o baseball ames nd shows from
Illmo on the train. My father had passes. We had shopped
up there. Anyway, I went from one section [of the city] to
the other, from one industry to the other, day after day.
Generally I would go home on the weekends because the
industries were not open. I would spend Saturday and Sunday
[at home] writing more letters to other industries. I spent
[the weekends] with my mother and father. They did not
charge me any boa or room because I did not have money.
After about five or six months, my dad said: "Bob, there is
a company in St. Louis looking for a place to start a new
factory. It is called Brown Shoe Company." I said, "Dad,
that is only two blocks from where I stay at the YMCA." I
lived at the YMCA for $3.50 a week, and they had a cafeteria
where I could eat for $2.00 a week.
P: So in other words, you left home on Monday, and you went up
there to search for a job, spending all week and living at
the YMCA.
A: And came home Friday.
P: I see. And at some of these places, in response to your
letters of application, they were at least interviewing you?
A: Oh, yes, many of them.
P: They responded, but they were not hiring.
A: They were not hiring. One of the interesting things that
happened in school that I did not tell you was that I took
mechanical engineering, primarily industrial engineering,
and heating and ventilatinglbecause air conditioning was
just coming in. I thought, Some day they are going to cool
buildings and cool houses." Freon had just been developed,
and [I believed] we could make air conditioners, small
units, much smaller than a TV. I went to Century Electric
in St. Louis, and there was a girl working there fromgllmo
the town where I was raised. There was also a man from
Purdue working there. I went all through Century Electric
with a young man who was very nice and very well educated.
One day the fellow from Purdue said, "Do you know who you
were walking around with?" I said, "No, but he is very
nice." He said, "He happens to be the son of the owner of
the company." I said, "Oh?" When I started back home that
week, he said, "Will you come back again next week?" I had
told him, "I think someday people are going to develop a
cooler, an air conditioner, that you can set in a window or
set in a room and cool the whole room." Freon had7beeon
developed by DuPont,/which made this possible and I told
him about the freon. He said, "Do you really think this can
be done?" and I said yes.
I went back the next week, and he said, "We have discussed
/the possibility of making room air coolersJwith the board of
directors, and they do not think it is possible."-o they
did not build it.
P: They missed out.
A: Yes. [Let me tell you about] another thing [that happened
when I was] at Purdue. You remember I had worked on the
railroad. The railroad cars( [in order] to handle fruit,
vegetables, and other perishables had on each end [of the
refrigerator car an area similar to] an old-time ice box,
:aEse you open each end of the refrigerator car and put in
great big blocks of ice--I think 200 pounds per block. The
whole train was delayed until [the spaces in] these cars
were filled with ice. [As a lab project] I developed a
compressor that ran off the wheel of the freight car, using
the same principle [as the room air conditioner]. That is
what they eventually developed years later.
P: Did you patent it? [laughter] Bob Axline, you should have
done that.
A: I did not think about it. I did not know anything about
patents.
P: Now, in the meantime your father tells you about this Brown
Shoe Company.
A: Yes. First thing when I got to St. Louis the next Monday
Lt-
P: As you said, it was near where you were already staying.
A: Only two blocks. (By the way, in the YMCA there was a
[large] picture of a man named George Warren Brown. I found
out later he was the founder of Brown Shoe Company and had
also built the YMCA) I walked to the Brown Shoe Company
office and went in the door. [I went up to] a man sitting
at a desk. I said: "I want a job. I hear you are going to
start a new factory." He jumped and said, "Where did you
hear that?" I told him the story, that my father worked for
Missouri-Pacific and that he told me that word had come out
from their office that they were looking for a place to
start a shoe factory. I said: "I want to go to work. I am
an engineer." He took me to the secretary of the company, a
man named C. P. Evans. I will never forget him. We became
good friends. [He was] very unusual, very intelligent. He
finally retired and died in St. Petersburg, south of Tampa
[Florida].
P: C. P. stands for what?
A: I am not sure.
t CEverybody called him C. P.
P: OK. *AX/tkepg7 f 3
A: /Mr. Evan3s rp4 a page in front of me on the des --I found
out later it was wrongside up--and he said, "Fill this out."
I saw some questions. To me it looked like an I.Q. test, so
I filled it out. He said to do both sides. I turned it
over, and there were instructions what to do. I filled out
the rest of it and handed it to him. I found out that I had
finished in about half the normal time and had an excellent
score. He said: "OK. How would you like to be an office
manager?" I said: "No. I am an engineer, and I want to go
in the factory." He was sort of startled because jobs were
so hard to find. I was foolish to say that, really. He
said: "I will make you a deal. You run an office for me for
two years, and I will see you get in the factory." I said,
"It is a deal." And he did. He trained me in a [shoe]
factory in Salem, Illinois, for about four or five weeks. I
was supposed to train for three months, but they did not
have time. They decided to open the factory sooner.
P: And where was the factory going to be located?
A: Dixon, Illinois.
P: Where in Illinois is that? ,
A: One hundred miles west of Chicago. Cold. By the way, it is
the place where my wife was born. I met her there)
P: How much were they going to pay you as office manager?
P: How much were they going to pay you as office manager?
A: To train as office manager, I got ten dollars a week and
expenses. I stayed in a rooming house [with a] very nice
family. SI was a jeweler. I could ride beck to Herrin,
Illinois, on a train(pbecause Herrin was only about sixty
miles south of there. I would see my folks on the weekend
and come back Monday.
P: So you were training, then.
A: Yes. Then the word came out that they were going to start
[a factory in] Dixon, and they wanted me to report to Dixon
right away. I got on the train the day before Christmas
from Herrin. It took me into St. Louis. This train went
right by the penitentiary in southern Illinois at Menard.
Apparently just before Christmas they paroled{ome] meng-/
because there were about six or eight obvious convicts [at
the station]. They were brought down there by guards. When
they got on the train they came in and sat down. They were
/
all dressed in the same kind of clothes you could tell
their clothes were made in prison. They were allthe same
kind of suits, the same kind of shoes, no overcoats--and it
was winter. I heard them talking. We went in to St. Louis,
and as we got into familiar. surroundings first East St.
Louis and then St. Louis one of them said, "Oh, the same
old streets," and he called the streets out by name. "And
that street and that street." They knew where they were,
and, of course, getting home after a long stay prison,
they were so happy to see something familiar]. As one of
them got up to move to a different seat, I noticed some
change laying there. I walked over and picked it up, and it
was a handful. I saw the man get up, and I said: "Here. Is
this yours? It was in the seat." He said: "Oh, yes.
Thanks." It had fallen out of his pocket.
I found out later from reading the newspapers that he was a
gangster. There were two tough gangs in St. Louis fighting
for bootlegging rights, and he had gotten about fifteen
years. [It was] the Hogans and the Egans.
Then I changed trains and went to Dixon. I got into Dixon
that night/ '
4: (Christmas eve.
P: What year was this?
A: 1934. [It was] cold! I was standing on the [station]
A
platform and did not even have an overcoat. I had a light
topcoat and was shivering. A taxi came up at 12:30, after
midnight, and I said, "Would you take me down to the hotel?",
I had the name of it because I had reservations there~ hey
had a room for me. I asked, "How cold is it?" nd they
said, "Oh, about eighteen below zero." [laughter]
P: Hardly the place to be Christmas eve.
A: I got in bed, but I could not get warm. I called down, and
they sent up more covers, and I called down again, and they
sent up more covers and more covers until I got warm. That
is how I got to Dixon.
70
P: And that is when you started working for the Brown Shoe
Company. So you start out as an office manager.
A: anage. It turned out to be a very good thinq;
Apa j&y being office manage5 I made up all the cost
reports for the factory, all the different department costs,
production, hours worked, etc. As I made up the report, I
soon learned which were goo resulted in profits and
which were ba causag losses
D 1Y f1 Ep f The general superintendent and the assistant
general superintendent came there and would talk to the
superintendent and say--I could hear them because my office
was right next to them--"This is poor performance. You have
to improve it." As a result I learned what one had to do to
make a good profit in a shoe factory. If you did a poor
job, it caused a loss. That helped me so much later on.
P: We are at that point on the tape that I want you to tell me
about the Brown Shoe Company, what it was, what it
manufactured, where it was located, and its standing in the
nation as far as other similar industries were concerned.
A: Brown Shoe Company was started in about 1858 by George
Warren Brown, the man whose picture was on the YMCA wall.
At the time I started working for Brown Shoe in 1934 they
had five shoe factories.
P: Where were corporate headquarters?
A: In St. Louis, right downtown, 1600 Washington Avenue. By
the time I finished working for Brown Shoe Company they had
forty-nine shoe factories. We had very rapid growth. I
think there were two reasons. First, they had high moral
principles. Their general executives did not stay unless
they had good moral principles. If there was a man that
traveled for Brown Shoe Company who ran around amn drank and
raised hell, the executives would find it out, and he was
through. Both the president and the vice president were
very devout Baptists. The president was named George Bush.
fa .^S-c^/la_ lfe _-- --- "'
P: That is kind of a familiar name--George Bush.
A: But not related to the brewery.
P: And not related to the president of the United States.
A: I would guess not, but I am not sure. He came from a farm
near St. Louis, and he came to St. Louis looking for a job.
^}ll4 1e had two baskets of eggs, and he hoped to sell
the eggs maake enough money to get a room and live 0for
a week, and he did. He went to Brown Shoe, and they gave
him a job running the elevator. He was a man with
tremendous personality [and] great leadership drive. He was
not the kind toabuse you0 But if things were not right,
you could hear him hout all over the office]. He had the
capacity of [encouragement]. He would come along and give
you a slap on the back--[I saw this] as we were walking to
/
lunch--and say, "There are a couple of fine young menx" You
threw your chest back 0dfheld your head high and you
wentaway feeling confident that you could do anything].
As I said before, Mr. Bush's first job7was running the
elevator. After that job,he was given a job in the cut-
sole plant, where they cut out the leather [outer] soles,
the leather inner soles, and similar shoe parts. He became
a supervisor there. Then he/was promoted to leather buyer,
which is an important job. A shoe factory makes money on
its ability to buy good-quality leather at reasonable
prices, and then, more important, use it efficiently. You
cut up every little bit of scrap, but it has to be the right
leather for that particular part of the shoe. For example,
the outsole, which took all the wear of the sole, came from
what they called kip skins, an animal halfway between a calf
and a steer, fr k~1f khe leather is better at that age
and thick enough. Jj became the leather buyer. I am not
sure where on he went [from there], but he [eventually]
became president. Ijattended the partyat whicEhhe
celebrated thirty-five years as president of Brown Shoe.
P: What kind of shoes did Brown manufacture?
A: They first started Buster Brown for children, and then they
went into women's shoes.
P: Under what name?
A: At that time I am not sure. It was the old-style, high-top
woman's shoe made out of black kidskin. Either you laced
the shoes halfway up the calf or you buttoned them with a
button hook. Then, as time passed, they started making
different styles of shoes because ladies wanted style. One
other line that is still one of the best women's shoes in
the country is Naturalizer. We have many stores that sell
only Naturalizers. Brown Shoe also made Airstep [and] Life
Stride. For men's shoes they had Roblee and Pedwin. For
children's shoes they had Robin Hood, along with Buster
Brown. Buster Brown was a high-grade shoe.
t r /- i
P: Were these medium-price shoesA expensive shoes?
A: Buster Brown wasa relatively expensive children's shoe. We
put the/best3material into it and the best workmanship.
They are still [rather] expensive. [They fit well and wear
well.]
P: That was a quality shoe, then. How about the women's shoes?
A: fP14rt Naturalizer is still considered one of the [best
woman's shoe on the market]. It does not/post as much [as
some of the eastern-made or imported shoes] that sell for
over $100 a pair.
i
r
71/7
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P: Now, your job as an office manager involved supervising how
many people?
A: About twelve girls in the office.
P: And how much were you paid?
A: To start with, $23 a week. Eventually, after four years, I
got $25.
P: So you were office manager for four years?
A: Two.
P: Because they promised to put you in as an engineer at the
end of two years.
A: the manufacturing.
P: / So you went into the Brown Shoe Company in 1934, and you
f spent the rest of your working career with the Brown Shoe
Company?
A: or one short period! thought it might be desirable to work
for a smaller shoe company, so I worked for the Freeman Shoe
Company from Beloit [Wisconsin]. The reason is this. I was
working in Dixon, Illinois, between the cutting and fitting
departments, training, having just come from the office
recently. Word came--it was published in the paper--that
Brown Shoe Company was sold to Frean. I iwent-down-and
was-
talked to-pbS superintendent. I knew him iea well he and
my father were friends though I did not know it when I
went 4)to Brown Shoe Company, i d e I said, "Are
we going to have jobs?" He said: "Bob, I do not know.
B2, p. 1
They have not even told me." So I did not do anything makti *t "
two weeks. [Then the announcement came:] "Our factory will
be closed, and Freeman will take over two weeks from today."
jer I contacted Freeman and talked to them, and they said,
"Yes, we would like to have you." Se I promised I would
stay there and run their fitting department and train all
the cutters,, ~itPad I had been a cutter I had been
hiA
trained for it.
S4 nn about two days I got a call from St. Louis saying, "We
want you to report to the Brown Shoe Company in Mattoon,
Illinois." I said: "I have just been hired by Freeman.
Why did you not tell me? I would rather have stayed with
you." But-he-re--1Tas-w T-married-now- '"T-hav-e-to-make---a-
-iv4.ngs--l reacut-to-them. OILet me talk to the4-r\vice
president, and I will see if I can arrange to break the
agreement." I talked to him, and he said, "Bob, you should
stay. We need you. You know the people here. You can help
us get started." c~ I called ~r back and told them, '!Z
I cannot leave." c- I stayed there and worked for them for
about two years.
P: What period are we talking about now?
A: I started at Brown in 1938, [siy his would have been in]
1939,-~r 1939 1/-3:-
P: You go to work for Freeman for a relatively short period of
time) 6n.
B2, p. 2
A: 9-It was i-f1T30- f" ..i a sni rt perloai Ui -i, --W hthrd
hjappened-fwa- The man that hired me was the son of the
owner. Mf> YL,^ _j
-E4 ED Freeman. M_ '.. -
. CDick Freeman. real fine young man. [He] graduated from
Williams College in the East and was doing an excellent job.
But in the past, the executive vice president was named
Cadwell, and Dick's father, Mr. R. E. Freeman, who was the
president--his brother was vice president in charge of
sales--had hired Cadwell thinking his name was Caldwell, who
was a good shoemaker. _6'Cadwell had charge of all their
shoe manufacturing--three factories (two DmoTbBi in Beloit
and one in Dixon). -ASbll at once Cadwell had to leave.
Mr. Freeman did not have anybody else, so he said, "Dick, yoDgL
get-eut-and run the factory." Dick did, A.nd he hired me and
I worked for him. He did a real good job. we-bet-h-4d".-s
goo~d jbe e got along fine.
In about four months back came Cadwell. He knew who Dick
had hired, and he fired every person Dick had hired. Hej. I.
Afed *i]E. -
P: Including youoj19-4ft= the son of the president? 4e 7aqvQ. /
A: sim-ou -aide no longer had charge or any
responsibility for manufacturing# w Vtarew"csiwTg. I felt
Mr. Freeman was wronged. He told me one time, "If my
boys"--he had two that I knew--"ever make-anythtgL here,
B2, p. 3
they will have to do it on their own. Here is a good young
man that worked hard and was capable of doing a good job."
P: But you were fired, too.
A: Oh, yes.
P: So then you had to go back to Brown.
A: I called Brown, and they said: "Come right back. We need
youbastl
P: In the meantime, you have left the office manager job, and
you are operating now as an engineer in the factor es,
A: Right,-and it was engineering that they wanted me ~e o0 do.
P: You never returned to the office management, then?
A: Nog oe4mT at--I-had-an-fficeman c ager-work-for-mwhen.
-had-oharge-of-~the-factories -
P: So you start in, then, about 1940 and go back to Brown.
A: Make it 1941.
P: And you are working in what city now?
A: St. Louis, doing industrial engineering work.
P: OK. Did you spend the rest of your working life in St.
Louis?
A:
P: I want to break at this point and ask you a little about
your personal life, td4iL~ y this time you are married.
First of all, tell me about your wife, what her name was,
birthdate, and how you two got together.
B2, p. 4
A: Her name is Kathleen Marion Cotter. 8~ tJ wie sw
P: What was her birthdate Ptn i hfv ?
A: March 17, 1915.
P: And she was born where?
A: On a farm atf ee4ee Dixon, Illinois.
P: She graduated from where?
A: High school.
P: And she got a job?
A: She had a job at the shoe factory.
P: f OK.
A: did ot know her the. She said she used to .see me,/ and
Sit was rally sa. would go down to that shoe. factory,
and, see, people could not get jobs, I had the key to he
door to op6n up the office and go t6 work,nd t was
S crowded ohat I cold [hardly open te doot] /I wold think,
"I have to get in there to open the door^ eveybody can
get into the factdoy," even the people at were working.
/' po,,at were workIng.
So wou1'd let me through, and I wou unlock the 'do0 and
go in./ And she said she used to see e there. Well,' I
Iver knew it.
I liked to swim, and there was a beach on Rock River in
well Par. I as a c-a e place to swim. Sg I would
,hewell Parr. CIt wet i0/1 y:7
go swimming and peettay- asjon I would see her. We started
talking. One time I said, "Let's swim across the river."
talking. One time I said, "Let's swim across the river."
B2, p. 5
,Oh1 .t was a pppt- good-sized river, far-ther-than-f-romn-her~-
to-over-o-to-a----house. ,So6 e swam over. There was ase ,
current in the middle, butnot a lot. We could walk up/and
then could swim back to the beach. We got dMa=e, and she
said, "Whew!" I said '8? 1Are you tired?" She said,
"That is the first time I ever swam the river." I said,
"The first time.?" So I said, "Going back, you swim in
front of me, and I will swim right behind you." -But -Tat is
how we got acquainted.
P: So'that was your first meeting.
A: Yes.
P: / Then what happened?
A: Then we went to picture shows.
P: You started dating.
A: Yes.
P: Did you meet her family?
A: Yes.
P: And you passed muster?
A: I think so. [laughter]
P: When were you all married?
A: ait just a minute. I will tell you-wh. It used to be
hat eveynce in a w il I would come home from work, and
athlen ou d say "Gues what day yes erday was I/sa d:
0/ 1
"I do t ot kn"w h.at day a /it?" She w spouti She
r / iversary." Isad w d
"Our wenniversary." I" said, "Well, why did you
B2, p. 6
not\tell me?" [She would say,] "If you cannot remember, I
will'\not tell you. So after that happened about three
/ times, ,I decided to write it someplace I could find it, so I
wrote it on the back of my Social Security card. [laughter]
You might stop this until I find it.
-OK,-you, can start it. .Thereafter that, I remembered-it. We
werd-marr-ed~-on--Sep-tember 20, 1935.
P: Where were you married?
A: Morris, Illinois.
P: At her home?
A: .There-is.kindofa.. funny story about it. Kathleen and I
were a lot alike in that we did not like big parties,
celebrations ceremonies. Shedid-not-evePn-want-to-havg-a-- -
.-funera-E-but-I- felt 'she-should--have7-although -we-practica-1-y-y
,agreed-not-to-have- [one'l--for-either-of-us-. So I called her J
one Thursday afternoon. It was during the Depression, as I
told you. At that time I was in the office, and I said:
"Kathleen, I do not have to work tomorrow. How about
getting married?" Everything was quiet. We had not even
discussed it, [although] I had been thinking about it for a
^7k/Crz W^A-S 5 ,rrl e7/JN C- a-td Atr-n_ t
good while. ~ f -F-e she came back on the phone and-be
said, "What did you say?" I told her, and she said: "I
thought that is what you said -16e I have to buy a new
/ A
dress." So she bought a new dress, and we got married the
next day.
B2, p. 7
P: Where did you go? To a courthouse?
A: No, we went to a minister in Morris, Illinois. P weite
P: nRdhen ve n qthe tar. Now, you were a
successful businessman, so I know you had a large amount of
money to launch this new project, marriage.
A: [laughter] Kathleen did not have anything.
P: Nothing?
A: She was typically Irish.
P: She had spent it on that new dress.
A: In fact, I bet she borrowed it from her mother. -As-we-
-started-going- together, either of us had a.car,-and-we-
would w k from the factory to uptown, and I would go over
to a taven where hey had good beer and good ice cream. I
would drink one /eer with a friend of mine a then eat an
ice cream cone' Kathleen would turn lef ad go across Rock
River, and her me was right there with two blocks. But
and say, "I will see ou later," an away she went. She
made payments to every pace she owed money, and by the time
d/
shegot home she had just noug to pay her mother for her
board.,_So .she-had-not-hing---7and I had, -I-thinky about $475
or something, t0/
P: You were a rich man for the Depression period. [laughter]
B2, p. 8
1
A: We paid $175 down on furniture.
P: It sounds to me like you did not go on a honeymoon.
A: We did not. We would have had to walk.
P: You rented an apartment?
A: A three-room apartment& i -gs!2 downtown Dixon, s~ bought
.the--three rooms of furniture. Fortunately, they had a stove,
so we did not have to buy one, and there was a small table
in the kitchen -sd bll we had to buy was living room and
bedroom furniture.
P: And you could do that with $175?
0n
A: Not quite, no, but I made that much payment, and we paid it
.eS-each month. If we had a dollar left over from both of
our checks, we went to the matinee, The theater,__whie was
only about two of three blocks from where we lived.
P: And you walked everywhere.
A: Yes. In the winters we wore these high-buckle overshoes,
almost up to our knees. Sometimes the snow would be aLmoslt
+4ic& dee'p
Lt anr kren-, [and the temperature would be] fifteen below
zero. It was at least two miles to the factory, and we
would walk deww there and then walk back in the evening.
P: Was Kathleen a good cook?
A: She turned out to be. The funny thing [about that was] one
of the reasons I was thinking about getting married [was
because] she would bring me these small pies6the best pi.I
ever tasted 4-b=s--apple pie, cerry pie, ndtit-
Ai
B2, p. 9
o9~fT a-. daS I would eat the pie and then give her the pan
back. Sure-enoughw in a couple weeks there would be another
C,-% A,T7U --
pie. Eh~ao fe-9 t-da we were married they moved in the
furniture, and she said, "What do you want for supper?" I
said, "Oh, some of that good apple pie." She said, "OK."
Si?4Ad be ro- S
-Se he fixed dinner withtJg ni mashed potatoes because she
liked meat and potatoes the German part of henpe) "then
(^ ^-~--s------0
out came the pie. She gave me a piece of it, and I said:
"What is wrong, Kathleen? This is not the kind of pie you
have been bringing me." She said, "Oh, my mother made
those." [laughter] But she became a good cook.
P: She got her mother's recipe.
A: And she tried hard.
P: So you begin moving up the economic ladder, then, as result
of your activity at Brown Shoe Company, and the company
itself begins to expand. Where were you during World War
II?
A: Doing engineering work.
P: Were you already too old to be involved? You are in your
thirties.
A: I was not too old to be involved/tbecause I registered. -Csr
of-the-fttnny--thlings--[-i-s-] I came home from work one day while
I was doing this engineering work, and he;re-was Kathleen yIC
crying. I-mean, the tears were just flowing. I thought,
"M somebody r)
"My-G', somebody has die probably her mother or father."
B2, p. 10
I said, "What is wrong, Kathleen?" [She said,] "Read this."
It was a statement to report for examination for induction
into the army in St. Louis. I read it and I laughed, and
that made her mad SlTe--just gt- mad-as-could-be-.- So I
actually had a physical examination' ,dr /
--
At that particular time our company was making a lot/ and-L-
wa--spend-ing-a-l-most-al-l--my-t-imeas-an--eng-ineer-.- Our
factories were-making-army shoes. They were making regular
combat boots, .
P: For the military.
A: Dress shoes for the army, dress shoes for the WACs, dress
S'shoes for the navy, Ruian army shoes--such big shoes you
-could-not-imagine-. They did not wear socks because it was
very cold over there, and they would take pieces of wool
cloth and wrap it around their feet, and then the shoes fit
over them.
P: So this went over under Lend-Lease. -, e ,
A: I would say Lend-Lease, yes. Because of the sno7they had
to have the outsole both nailed and stitched. Because I was
,I --W -: I IT -
the only one doingf~het [ was not called to active
service]. -ou--Ge d-hear _fhe unionsA "We are behind ouj
servicemen." We-are-behind-our-soldie-rs." Posters and
everything else. All I did was spend every day, sometimes
six days a week, in these factories trying to keep the f 'o/2
working. We would have meeting, with our labor relations
B2, p. 11
\ '' nt' i, ;
lawyer, ir shp steward, the jne Ia-super -A ndent, and
myself inve tigat.s. 2= a.htse complaints, alw ys for more
money. I was left hesr~eto'make an invest tion of the job.
in question, "e I could change con itions, which I
did frequently, they could make what hey considered a
normal wage. If '-i- after I changed conditions' /
still did not provi e what they thou ht was a normal wage,
our labor relations awyer, with t e vice president in
charge of manufacture g, reached an agreement as to what
rh&8 /M'/6e6 ^R C ^Shdted Ib b
e a Unfo tunatel lawyers are apt to
P / / r- e1-, Ovr
compromise, and they com romesedon/prices. Afte-r the war,
V .-'1. -
these setders were making 15,000 pairs daof combat
boots or the army, and were making. sfe- and --twenty.
doTTr-s _aTr:o- rw h-p~w a twice the going wage in
Those days. B- t
Ee-ef -Teny RIMd a-a 3o mbat-_
e---sae=-aa9~- )t ked to the union and said,
.. /. \ [ .,.<, ..
M3e. 'We can t pay these wages on these--jobs." We tried
rit-actually, making Buster Brown shoes] rnt-for children-
-but for gro ing girls and growing b s. There was nway we
could arnd-we-knew-when-we Med-thet. So they-had-
)jeM a meet g with theagent.-
standing by our guns. Either you pay th se wages, or we
wil/ not work." Thai was the f We s ut down the
factory.
B2, p. 12
P: What union were you dealing with?
A: At that time we had both the CIO [Congress of Industrial
Organizations] and the AF of L [American Federation of
Labor]y and- Ithink [this incident involved] the AFL. A.
P: During the war, did you just convert completely to military
manufacturing?
A: No.
P: You still manufactured civilian shoes.
A: We had so many civilian shoes to make. By the way, we made-
'-; 04 eerba~ boots for the air force in Vincennes, Indiana,./
-WeweZhavi.ngouhble--etting-them. out\ and Ind-one-o~f
the ass tan general sup rintendents went \ovr there and
worked out'the problem, and e made twice many boots for
HOLLER ,/ff a certain machine as any other fact in this
U-Tnited-States. -- ------ .
P: Bob, describe the Brown Shoe Company expansion during the
war and after the war.
A: During the war, of course, we were making and selling a.-ot-. -7/:
'lf-shoes for the military. We tried to contract our
civilian shoe work out to other shoe companies that did not
have enough work. The quality of the shoes was so poor that
J -tc ., "1 .".) 3 (ct-u-j JlditO. ^'f eZtt1;-'?
we just could not afford to sell them/ -We-4JBBBD-themr--Sn-
Fhey selected their best, young factory superintendent,
named Monte SHOMAKER, and he and I were given the job of
B2, p. 13
going into these small towns in western Tennessee, northern
Arkansas, southern Missouri, and finding any kind of
building we could find in which we could make shoes. At
that time the war was going on, and the shortage of steel
made it impossible to build a modern shoe factory. The
first one was built in Selmer [Tennessee].
P: So you were looking for a sizable, multi-story building.
A: Single story or anything.
P: Anything, but large enough so that it would iav hold the
kind of equipment that you needed in order to manufacture
civilian shoes.
A: Yes. And some of the factories, some of the buildings we
used, were really too small, Out still we made shoes/ a good
number of them. One was at this place I am going to tell
you about in Selmer, Tennessee. In the meantime, we knew
what kind of shoes we were going to make in this place. It
had limited factory space, so we knew we could notltoo many
styles because style changes require time. I made time and
motion studies of every job on the shoes we were gong to
make. At the same time, I had developed aptitude tests so
we could select the best people out of a group that were
looking for a job--those that would make good stitchers wid-
those that would work on the heavier machines a~nd-ttrgs
.ike-that. Part of it was a short and relatively simple
I.Q. tested ~e6fs ome of the machines were complicated,
_Z-
B2, p. 14
and you need to have intelligence to operate them properly.
P~i .'sat Ve ran tests on more than a thousand people in
this small town. They lived on small farms surrounding the
town, and they l came in applying for work. Out of that
group, we picked people with exceptional skills P-ood
dexterity they could move their hands quickly and with
accuracy and ood intelligence.
4 We first trained the operators in cutting and fittinge/
SenkVles0. Wt the same time
set up a foreman training program. Brown Shoe Company did
not have any kind of training program, either for operators
or supervisors. e started making shoes# =2-Vhen we
started, the general officers w ~=tto Monte and me-
p@QRsge "It normally takes a year and a half to show any
profit at all. If you do it in that time with the kind of
factory you are going to have, you will be doing a good
job." We made a good profit in six months, and every six
months we increased the profit. As a result, we went from
one place to the other and started factories, and 7n every
instance we made better quality shoes, we produced the shoes
they needed to sell, and we produced them at a profit We "
continued to develop new systems of machinery layout and
thgf~sf Aki-h machine parts control (inventory of the
machine parts) so that we ordered only the vZB part we
needed and not too many. They used to order -tem in bulk,
B2, p. 15
Plkt4nj pretty soon the machine would become obsolete and
we would throw thousands of dollars worth of machine parts
away. _
: To e o ee epa-r d n he amount of money we saved was
unbelievable. In one case, an unusual one, Montain
Grove, Missouri t -;had- a Masonic hal pg ~*hey said, "We
will give you the Masonic hall if you can use it." We
looked at it. It had a basement, and the first floor was an
auditorium with a stage and seats in he They said we
could take the seats out. There was a balcony where there
were also seats r the auditorium, and they said we could
take those ou There was complete upper floor where
they held the initiation Sxo we used that. Because the
cutting machines that do the cutting of leather are heavy,
rPuT 4-henTl
weept -bhosQ in the basement. We put a small lift that you ~7-tg
could pull by hand to move the cut parts up to the top floor
to be stitched p(fit together) When the pieces were VU
together, they were sent down a shoot to the balcony where
the shoes were lasted, roughed, and the bottom cement
applied. Then they went down another lift to the main floor
that had been the auditorium where we finished the shoes--
the cleaning, t~e-repai-rng, the dressing, and the packing.
: Pr H n gem n
B2, p. 16
P: When you came aboard Brown Shoe Company in the 1930s, it had
five factories. When you left, when you retired, how many
were operating?
A: Forty-nine.
P: Scattered all over the United States, or bunched together in
the Middle West?
A: Primarily in the Middle West: Illinois, Missouri,
Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, one in Indiana
(Vincennes).
P: [Are there] any in the Southeast? Florida, Georgia?
A: No, although we had a tannery in Gowanda, New York, that we
bought.
P: Corporate headquarters remained in St. Louis?
A: ThzYremained in St.i'i
P: Did you ever open any operations outside of the United
State--Canada, Mexico?
A: Oh, yes. I happened to be involved in that, too.
P: So the forty-nine factories that you are talking about
included those outside [the U.S.]?
A: No.
P: These were in addition?
A: Yes, because that was a fla subsidiary.
C ( In the meantime had finished the engineering work. They
were talking about building new factories.
B2, p. 17
aat tPn.
P: What was title?
A: At that time he was a superintendent, but then they made him
a general superintendent.
P: Where it he from?
A: Murphysboro, Illinois.
P: e s/still living?
A: No. j- -
'h: He was a year or so older than I. He had Alzheimer's. That
is the reason I was so interested in!7lzheimer's in
Gainesville.' He and I were like brothers.
P: It sounds like you had a very close business
association/working relationship.
r---------------~
(' u-ry^ a; w hg^hfd d Cd;pre ien i tl $7Br' S Sho^ Company
pcaliFd-.me-,h he-"a8idr be.yauous8 faJ-juStwhat you-said-.
: So tell me about the Canadian operations.
A: We had sold, license to a Canadian shoe company that had two
factories e ane- our shoe
P: Under the brand name of Brown?
A: Naturalizer j~gA g Mutaee Buster Brown, but-Naturar-i-ze-r-I-
,am-sure-. We started getting reports the quality was not
good, so.taja.-fiasthbj=ing-.fhathappened4.ws Monte talked to
me. He said, "Bob, can you spend some time away from your
B2, p. 18
Yf'ta '",ctory?.JL At that time I was general superintendent and had
a group of factories. I said, "Sure, I can, Monte." I had
good assistants and good superintendents. I flew upon
Sunday afternoon and flew back ~"n Friday night. The shoe
making was .loa&ys- Vgr/ fri t '.
P: Where was this in Canada?
A: In Perth, sixty miles south of Ottawa [Ontario]. Perth and
Alexandra were [where] the two factories [were located].
Alexandra was in the French-speaking part of Canada, and
Perth,
P: So the quality of work was not up to your standards.
A: It was very poor.
P: Was that a result of poor supervision, poor materials?
A: Poor supervision. One time--and this illustrates it--Monte
Shomaker attended a meeting in Washington, D.C., of all the
shoe manufacturers in the country. One of them got up and
said, "Mr. Shomaker, we owe you a lot." A' said: "You do
not owe me anything. Why do you say that?" He said* "You
set a standard of quality that we are all trying to meet.
It has improved the shoes of every one of us." I thought
that was quite a compliment.
Could
I wrote a book, and a shoe factory superintendent wpuid
take that and read the instructions of very operation in f-I
every department, he could run a shoe factory efficiently,
//)''C S.
B2, p. 19
.;; o S" -*
make a good-quality shoe, and/make money. I gave it only to
my own superintendents.
P: "EBro~nF h'ij bard? Was Brown on the [New York] Stock
Exchange? 5 a
A: Oh, yes, and I started buying -it early. They suggested it.
That-was-.good. I said, "How about five shares?" ad They
said, "Oh, why not buy at least twenty-five," so I bought
twenty-five. When I retired just my Brown stock was worth,
oh, $1.5 million.
P: Did they give stock out as part of the bonuses?
A: Options. -~ha-t helpd.
P: Did that spread all over the company? Were the ordinary
workers able to purchase stock?
A: They could purchase, but they did not get the stock options.
M~ds-oftthe top execjtives-were-the-only-_se-esable te-do-
that-r--
P: So there was no employee ownership involved in the company,
then.
A: Very little.
P: Other than Canada, did Brown go anywhere outside of the
U.S.?
A: Oh, yes* after-the-imports-sa-t&rted--Aga-in, e started
im orting sandals from Italyi beautiful, beautiful shoesA
m much less than our cost here. So Monte Shomaker said,
"Bob, we can do as good work as they can in Italy." At that
B2, p. 20
time I was general superintendent of the shoe factories in
Pocahontas, Arkansas. [He suggested that we could] actually
take the same style and [make them] at the same prices. We
I. i priced--4t- so-that-we-knew-we could .go--back"on what they sold
' us-the-shoe-for-, and-we-knew -what-the costs weere. There-was
no-way-in-the-world!-I -looked-at-,him-and said,__.Monte ,,we,
-cannot-do-it-;- Buti-l wi-1-1--try--any-thing._y-ou-say. "e -SO- e
tried it. We worked on methods and equipment and/everything
bur,
we could do, ef we lost our shirt because their wage scale
was half ours. There was no way [we could compete].
P: So you continued to import from Italy?
A: Italy first, and then it got worse and worse and worse.
P: What do you mean, "It got worse"? The quality?
A: No. The quality from Italy was good. They made probably
the best sandals in the world, and still do.
P: So what do you mean, "It got worse and worse and worse"?
A: Averagg import/ because her companies started to import //
./
sneakers and other kinds of shoes [with] rubber soles and ,
_th-inngs--1like that. They were made in Korea, Taiwan, -aed Ve
started maki~ng-alot-of shoes in South America. At first
they were rough, but we keptmen down there training them.
P: Did you work outside of the U.S.--in Asia, in the Far East,
and in South America--because the wage scale was so much
less?
A: That is right. We had no choice.
B2, p. 21
