Ernest Eberhard Jr.

              Crowder, Dr. David L. Oral History Project
Ernest Eberhard Jr.- Experiences of the
Depression
By Ernest Eberhard Jr.
December 2, 1974
Box 1 Folder 34
Oral Interview conducted by Ric Sterzer
Transcribed by Sarah McCoristin February 2005
Brigham Young University- Idaho
RS: This is an oral history. I am Ric Sterzer. Today, December 2, 1974. I am going to
interview President Ernest Eberhard Jr., president of the new Idaho Mission. The general topic
will be the effects of the Depression in the Idaho region. President Eberhard, where were you
born?
EE.: I was born in Stuttgart, Germany.
RS: How long have you lived in Idaho?
EE: Since 1912.
RS: Where were your parents born?
EE: They were also born in Germany.
RS: In Stuttgart, Germany?
EE: Yes, Stuttgart. My father was born a little bit south of Stuttgart, Germany, but for all
general purposes Stuttgart could be called the place.
RS: What was your occupation prior to being called as a Mission President?
EE: I was an educator. I worked for the department of Seminaries and institutes of religious
education for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints. I, however, was coordinator over
the Aaronic Priesthood in the office of the Presiding Bishop immediately before my call.
RS: President, I would like to talk just a little about your youth and background. When was it
that your family immigrated over to the United States?
EE: In 1912.
RS: This is when they moved to Idaho?
EE: They moved to Idaho. They homesteaded twenty miles south of Nampa, Idaho, and they
never moved from that area. They never moved from that farm. That’s where I grew up. When
I left the farm to go to school, I left from that place.
RS: This was around the area of Melba, Idaho?
EE: It’s Melba, Idaho. It’s a little town about five miles north of the place where we lived down
in the valley.
RS: This is where you received your schooling?
EE: Yes. I attended high school and graduated from the Melba High School.
RS: President, I understand that you fulfilled an LDS mission
EE: Yes. In Switzerland and in Germany. I spent 24 months in Germany, in Stuttgart and in
Hamburg and then I spent six months in Boswil, Switzerland.
RS: This was during the years of…
EE: 1928 to 1931
RS: President, today I would like to talk about the depression and the effects it had upon the
people and upon the agriculture here in the state of Idaho. Now speaking of agriculture, your
father then owned a farm in Melba?
EE: Yes. Eighty acres.
RS: Did he raise crops that he sold to the market?
EE: Well, yes, to some extent. Agriculture was quite primitive in Idaho at that time compared to
what it is today. We, for example, had very poor outlets for our agricultural products. The
income was not very high. It was during the latter part of my youth that they formed milk co- ops
in Caldwell and Meridian, and this gave us our first real substantial and reliable outlets for farm
products.
RS: Milk coop’s. I’m not sure what that is?
EE: Well, the farmers got together and built a milk processing plant. Mostly it was butter and
things of that nature. Some of the ways of processing milk and that they have today, of course
they didn’t have in that time.
There were no cheese plants in that area. It was a matter mostly of butter they
manufactured. The Challenge Butter Organization got its start there, and they sent most of it to
California. Of course, they sold some beef cattle but most of the cattle were dairy cattle there so
the beef cattle industry wasn’t very well developed at that time. We also sold potatoes. Idaho
potatoes have always been famous ever since they’ve been put on the market. It was a very
fluctuating market. I’ve seen many sacks of potatoes go out of our farm at 45 cents a hundred.
RS: That’s what I would like to talk about, just for a moment, are the potatoes. Prior to the
crash of 1929, I was reading an article written by Leonard Arrington where he was talking about
the depression, and he mentioned where agriculture was in a depression in 1921. He gave an
example that in 1919 potatoes cost $ 1.51 a bushel and sank down to 31 cents a bushel in 1922.
How long did this last where the potatoes were this low?
EE: It lasted a number of years. I’m not too sure, but it lasted a number of years and the market
was very depressed. Every one in a while though the main potato crop would fail or some other
state that was growing potatoes, and the price would go up, but in the main most years it was a
depressed situation.
RS: When the crash of 1929 hit, do you know what the price of potatoes were at that time a
bushel?
EE: Well, I was in Europe when the crash hit in 1929, and I don’t know accurately what the
price was. But I know that it wasn’t very substantial because I know my folks were in very
difficult financial straits.
RS: Speaking of your mission during your mission when the crash hit, I was wondering were the
effects the same over there as what your parents wrote and told you they were here?
EE: Yes, they were more severe, for example, I was in Hamburg and 25 percent of all the
workers in Hamburg were out of work at that time. Of course, the effects in Germany were more
severe than they were any other place because of the effects of the Owens- Young Reparation
Agreement. But I’m sure that the depression was so severe in Germany at that time that it
contributed a great deal to the rise of Adolph Hitler, who was the only hope that they had. And I
would say that the depression was more severe in Germany than it was over in America, at least
in Germany where I was.
RS: Now after your mission you came back and shortly afterwards you were married. Is this
correct?
EE: No, I came back and went to the Brigham Young University. I was married in the last half
of my senior year.
RS: What were the effects of your going to Brigham Young University? Was it hard to meet the
tuition?
EE: Well, it was very difficult. I remember there were four of us in one room. We paid four
and half dollars a month rent. We had no heat. We couldn’t afford coal. We had a little monkey
stove. Sometimes we couldn’t afford gas and so we ate our food, so to speak, raw. At that time
we got milk for five cents a gallon. Everything else was cheap in the same way. The food that
we ate most was oatmeal. Oatmeal and milk and a little pork liver. Sometimes we got the
vegetables and so forth that couldn’t be sold in the markets at a very reasonable price. We lived
on ten dollars a month. That included everything. We did everything to make a dollar. We got
shoes and took them into the shoe shops on a percentage basis and suits well, we just did
anything we could. It was very little work- regular work. I was very fortunate. I taught German
and was given my tuition and enough money every month that we lived on.
I say 10 dollars a month, if that was enough. It was so difficult that in 1934 when I
graduated, we were told that in the fall, of the 325 graduates of Brigham Young University, 275
were without employment of any kind. And of the fifty who were working, some were shining
shoes on the streets of Salt Lake. It was very, very difficult time.
RS: Ten dollars a month! Today that would only go maybe a week.
EE: That’s right! But we bought a big 25 lbs. sack of oatmeal and our milk at a nickel a gallon.
Sometimes we ate nothing, but oatmeal every meal for a whole week.
RS: Upon graduating President, is this when you came back to Idaho to live?
EE: Yes. I was going to return to Brigham Young University and continue teaching German,
but I was offered a position in Preston, Idaho in the seminary system, and I took it. I went to
Preston in 1934.
RS: Were you in Preston teaching seminary until…?
EE: 1959
RS: 1959?
EE: Yes.
RS: During the duration of the depression you taught there?
EE: Yes. I taught during the depression that is if you think the depression has ever been cured
or has ever been righted why yes, but I think myself, that the depression problems never been
solved. All we did was go into deficit spending.
RS: President, let’s get over to the depression. What do you think were the causes of the great
depression?
EE: Well, I think that, just about the same as it is now, the stock market was unrealistically
driven up. People bought stocks on margin, 10 percent margin, and the performance just didn’t
match up to what the promises of the performance. There are probably world wide reasons too.
But mainly we went into a time what we thought was extreme affluence and success. We carried
out fiscal policies and so forth. Although the government at that time was not in deficit spending
business, I think people were trying to get something for nothing and not pay for what they were
getting for just like they are today. At that time it was certainly one of the important factors was
the stock market, which crashed in October of 1929 and from then on it was downhill. Then, of
course, the world wide situation was not good either.
RS: When the stock market did crash this is when businesses started going out of business and
laying people off?
EE: Right. It’s a spiral. A downward spiral that just kept going and kept going. Investment
capital dried up, people were afraid to reach out and create new products, expand their plants,
everybody became very discouraged. I think one thing that characterized it was a great feeling
of fear which Roosevelt combated by saying, “ All we have to fear is fear.” He came in and gave
a kind of shot in- the- arm so to speak to the confidence and courage of people.
RS: President, speaking of President Roosevelt I’ve read, not too many, but a few articles where
they seem to downgrade some of the things President Roosevelt did. What is your opinion on
the things Roosevelt did?
EE: Frankly, I think history will record that President Roosevelt was probably one of the poorest
presidents we’ve ever had. He did start certain policies. In- other- words, he gave a tremendous
impetus to deficit financing which has grown and grown and grown until today we have a debt of
400 billion dollars. We have today a debt service that is an interest payment. Every year this
government has an interest payment which is four times as high as the total government budget
was back in the days when he became president. He, in my estimation, made a terrible mistake
in the settlement of the war that he made with Russia. He allowed Russians to get into Germany.
Instead of letting Eisenhower and Patton go on through, who were already in Czechoslovakia,
letting Eisenhower and Patton go on through, who were already in Czechoslovakia, and occupy
and Balkans which could have become a buffer. He sat back and waited until the Russians came
in. Then, of course, when he made settlement with them the time he met with Stalin at Tyeran. I
believe that he was already so far advanced in a state of health that Stalin’s doctor indicated to
him that Roosevelt probably couldn’t stand up to Stalin, who was a very strong individual. I
have great misgivings about Roosevelt. I think he started things that just weakened America and
are still with us today. Something we haven’t licked.
RS: What would be an example of one thing that weakened the United States?
EE: Well I think we never did, for example, tell people that things had to be paid for eventually,
and that inflation was just a cruel tax that people have to pay. In other words whenever you issue
money in that way it was issued there in deficit financing the generations unborn will yet have to
pay for it. Because it reduces the value of the dollar, it reduces the value of savings. It
discourages savings and so forth. For awhile it looked like, because of the war, that we had the
depression solved but we never really did.
RS: Getting over to the Idaho country, what were some of the things President Roosevelt did to
help or attempt to help things here in the state?
EE: Of course, they didn’t have much machinery back in those days to handle the problems of
the depression. They had the WPA, the so called Alphabet Agencies, and they made work.
People raked leaves. The CCC did a good work out in the forest, but they didn’t have the strong
fiscal policies like the federal reserves and so forth to work with.
They didn’t try to manipulate money in that respect. So they really didn’t have any out
have any outstanding agencies. They made work, but it was really make work. It wasn’t like it
is today where we have highway programs well planned and other things that they could move
into. They just weren’t prepared for it, that’s all. The depression just hit them cold and they had
no organizational capability to taking care of it.
RS: Around Preston, were there any of these groups?
EE: There was the CC camp up there and they had WPA projects. They had everything in
Preston they had in any other place. However, things were not as acute in Preston because it was
almost a 100 percent farming community. They had a sugar factory there and they had a milk
condensation plant there. People always had something to eat. They generally had a place there.
People had a place to live, and they could get wood to burn. I don’t think we saw the effect of
the depression there nearly as much. The effects were more or less on the upper levels. People
couldn’t buy the cars they wanted and things of that nature.
RS: So the people around Preston were farmers?
EE: Yes, they really had the essentials of life. They just didn’t have the luxuries that is all. It
was a very stable community. We really didn’t feel it too badly. It was always there, of course.
RS: I would like to talk just a moment about the manufacturing in the state of Idaho. I was
reading where lumber was at one time, before the depression, a major asset to the state income,
where during the depression it declined by 75 percent.
EE: Yes, house building and all types of construction, of course, dropped down. That is a part
of Idaho in which I was not very well acquainted with at that time. It is Northern Idaho,
Potlatch, and up there where the great white pine stands are. So it really didn’t affect us much in
Southern Idaho, which even today doesn’t have a very substantial lumbering industry. Idaho is
divided into the north which is mining, silver mining especially. And lumber and, of course,
their great grain fields and the dry grain fields of Northern Idaho, and the Palouse country in
Washington. But Southern Idaho is irrigated by the life blood of Idaho, the Snake River. It has
irrigated agriculture. It has been a pretty stable place, not a well to do place, but really quite
stable. We always got by somehow.
RS: Were there factories though in the Preston area that did close down?
EE: No factories closed down in Preston because they processed agricultural products and food
is something that people always need and the result was that they really never stopped producing
it. It may not have been very profitable, but they always produced it. They sold sugar and milk
products and cattle and things of that nature. Preston is quite high altitude. It is a cool place, and
it raises very good canning products such as peas. They canned a lot of peas there and they were
always in demand.
RS: Well President, why do you think the price of food dropped as much as it did during the
depression?
EE: Well, there was an abundance of it. Of course, we had just opened up the mid- west and
there was a great abundance of food and there was no demand in the world for food. There was
no over seas market so to speak of. Backward countries hadn’t opened up yet and the demand
wasn’t there and the population wasn’t there to demand the food. Then another thing,
transportation for food to the market was a difficult situation. It was expensive and by the time
the food got to the eastern countries it was too expensive. So about our only outlet was
California and the coast and that, of course, is a great agricultural state. There just wasn’t any
way of promoting its consumption.
RS: Speaking of transportation, what was transportation like during the depression?
EE: Of course, we had cars. The Model A came out during the depression and they were in light
of today’s standards, very insophisticated. Our transportation was railroad. We had very good
trains at that time. I generally rode the Portland Rose from Pocatello to Nampa. Such a very fast
train and a very fine train. We relied a lot on trains around our own farming community. We all
rode horse. I had two fine horses. I rode horses to high school for five miles or drove a buggy
sometimes when my brother went. But our transportation was pretty primitive. Outside of cars,
which weren’t very good and tires weren’t very good, we didn’t travel very far before we had to
have the car overhauled. We relied on trains almost entirely. No airplane travel whatsoever. I
was in high school when I saw my first airplane fly.
RS: This [ is] kind of shifted then. Well, just thinking of today and back then when trains were
more popular than riding a bus or plane.
EE: Right. Of course, we’ve gone to cars and airplanes almost entirely. It’s turned right around.
RS: You rode horseback then when you were in Melba?
EE: Yes I rode to school.
RS: Then when you were in Preston you had your own automobile?
EE: Yes, I had an automobile.
RS: I guess there was plenty of oil?
EE: No problem, no problem.
RS: We have been talking about some of the results of the depression on the negative side.
Let’s switch it over and talk about the positive aspects. Were there any?
EE: Yes, there surely were. We learned to look over our desires very carefully, and our wants
and our desires didn’t get all mixed up. We were right down on the basic foundation of what
was necessary to maintain life. I think people didn’t develop a lot of appetite that we have today
that couldn’t be satisfied. Utility was the word then, it wasn’t luxury. Things like today are
considered signs or indications of success, which we just never thought of, that’s all. So we had
simple desires in life. We made our own recreation. We learned to work hard and enjoyed
working hard. It gave us a great deal of satisfaction to be able to work consistently and to work
hard. We developed a certain toughness. We had nobody to help us out, we— to loan us money.
No grants, no aids, no welfare, nothing. And it breed a great deal of self reliance in us, which I
think is priceless. I wouldn’t trade the adverse experience of the depression for anything that
society could offer me today!
RS: Seems like the people that went through the depressions were more humble than those who
didn’t.
EE: Much more so. Their life was simple. We helped one another, we worked with one another,
we related to one another, and we achieved in activities and in work, which built character and
built personality. We came out of it with the feeling that we could handle it, something that
young people don’t have today. Which I feel is one of their main reasons for their cop- outs, you
see. They have been taken care of, pampered, supported, and given everything they want and
then when the time comes when they have to get it themselves they don’t have the stamina to do
it.
RS: You also said that you formed your own types of recreation. I was just interested in
knowing what types of recreation you did during the depression.
EE: Well, we swam the Snake River. That’s what every boy did when he was twelve years old.
Which was quite a feat by the way, and we had some near catastrophes. We bailed some of the
boys out and we had some nice big lava rocks that we laid them on and rocked them back and
forth. It may not have been very scientific, but it was very effective. We rode horses, we fished,
we hunted. We built our own ball field, for example. Nobody built a ball field for us. We
played a lot of baseball. We had our athletics in school. We boxed and wrestled, and we just did
things of that nature. We climbed mountains and caught rattlesnakes. We did just whatever was
around and was available.
RS: Generally speaking, do you feel that people were happy with themselves during the
depression?
EE: Yes, we were happy. Everybody was in the depression. No one had any more than anyone
else. We all needed each other. I never had the feeling that we were unhappy. We were a little
insecure sometimes, but on the other hand we always had the feeling that somehow we could
make it. We never turned to anybody else for help. Yes, we were happy.
RS: Then it seems to you, President, that the community of Preston seemed to pull together then
during this trying time of the nation?
EE: Yes, very much. Of course, it was a homogeneous community. Ninety- five percent at least
were Latter- Day Saints, and of course, their church relationship promoted a lot of that. We
didn’t have a welfare program at that time. There was no bishop’s store house. People just kind
of helped each other. They just kind of gave each other things. Nobody really went without to
the point where their health and their life was in jeopardy.
RS: Basically, speaking of the church welfare, it developed am I correct, during the depression?
EE: In 1936, it really got a good start in Salt Lake, Pioneer Stake, under Harold B. Lee who was
then also commissioner of Salt Lake government.
RS: Was there at this time a state and government welfare?
EE: I can’t remember that we ever talked about the government giving anybody anything. I
suppose there was a poor house welfare over there or something like that. But for those of us
there were able to work and to struggle there was no welfare, and we never talked about it. We
never relied on it.
RS: Also, I’m sure, but there were food lines during the depression, weren’t there?
EE: Definitely! Soup lines. Soup kitchens. Yes, there were food lines. However, this was not
in Preston. I never saw one in Preston that I could remember, and I never saw one in our little
community down there. I mean people would go out and pick up potatoes in someone’s field.
Plenty of fruit out in the orchard that couldn’t be sold. Everybody could raise a calf or two and
raise some vegetables. In my life I was never acquainted with soup lines. They were something
that characterized the cities, the bigger cities and not where I lived.
RS: Do you feel that it is better living in a farming community during a depression?
EE: If I was to go through a depression, this is where I would want to be because it doesn’t have
the devastating effect that it does in the city where you’re out of work and everything stops. You
can’t eat, you can’t do anything. We always had work on the farm. We always planned for the
next years crops. We always had something to eat. Our life wasn’t disturbed. It just kind of put
us on our mettle. We just worked a little harder and that was good for us.
RS: President we could take a brief break right now perhaps and come back in a few minutes.
< Interruption>
RS: President, we were talking about living in small communities compared to the city living.
Right now I would just like to go back to the 1929 crash when the banks failed. What do you
think was the cause of the banks failing?
EE: Well, of course, there was no federal depositors insurance, at that time and many of the
banks were small institutions. They weren’t big chains like Bank of America and all the rest, the
First Security chains. When people got frightened they went to the banks and they didn’t have to
run on them only an hour or two and they were all through. Sometimes they would bring in
10,000 dollars to 20,000 dollars from another bank to try to reassure people, but as the
depression deepened people just drew their money out. The source of their funds that they had to
loan was local and when the local people drew their money out that was the end of the bank.
Now in a saving institution there is a deposit insurance up to 40,000 dollars and 10,000 dollars in
the bank. There was nothing like that at that time.
RS: Now this is money that has to be on hand, is that correct?
EE: No. They buy insurance from the federal government. In other words, if you had an
account, each account is insured up to that amount. But there was nothing like that available at
that time, and when people got frightened they just made a run on the banks, and pretty soon
they had all of the available cash out of the bank and there was no bases for the bank to go on.
RS: How many banks in the city of Preston failed during this time?
EE: One bank failed. It really didn’t fail in that sense. It failed in the sense that it was bought
out by the First Security System. It was a small bank, a local bank like most of them were.
When this hit they couldn’t maintain themselves, and they wisely sold out to the First Security
System which was a chain of banks. Not a large one at that time, but a chain of banks and they
survived.
RS: Were there other banks in Southern Idaho cities that failed?
EE: I’m not aware of that. We never got out of there. There was a bank down south of us, the
Lewiston State bank. I think there was quite a lot of stability. I say that there was more stability
in the banks of Cache Valley than in most places because people were quite stable, they knew
each other. They were a people who had gone through bad times. I mean bad weather, bad
crops, and bad prices. They didn’t panic easily. They communicated with each other. I think
that in the bigger cities there was no communication between the banks and their depositors.
The rumors spread and they just made a run on the bank and that was it. There was no way to
get the people. But there the farmers who had a little money in the bank, they talked with the
bankers, and it just kind of held together a little better that way.
RS: The people, towards the bankers, were trusting?
EE: That’s right. There was a very close relationship between people and the bankers.
RS: President, lets swing our discussion over to businesses. Why do you think a lot of these
businesses survived during the depression?
EE: Well, I think that their owners and managers were wise enough to realize that the quantities
they should have up for sale were the necessities of life. Luxuries were not sold, and they
watched their inventories pretty well and didn’t get things that on the shelves that they couldn’t
sell. It was that type of a thing that enabled a business to survive. I was just reading here the
other day that around this Christmas time people were buying luxuries to boaster their spirits.
Now that didn’t happen at all during our time. Of course, people weren’t accustomed to
luxuries. They just didn’t know anything about luxuries. They’ve always lived pretty close.
Actually, the depression wasn’t that big of a change in their lives. They’ve always lived pretty
close to the danger line, one way or another. Crop failures, price failures, this wasn’t so new to
them. The gap between them and what was happening during the depression wasn’t very great.
RS: President, I would like to look into the future, for just a moment and would like to have
your opinion. If there were to be a depression, say happen tomorrow, if the banks were to fail for
some reason, what do you think would happen to the United States? Particularly the state of
Idaho?
EE: Well, let’s say first of all, that I think we’re going to experience our first depression in
inflation. The depression back when I was a boy was a depression of deflation. In other words
there weren’t enough dollars around. What we call it now is stagflation. We’ve got enough
dollars around. There seems to be a lot of money. Many, many more dollars than what we had
back in that time. But the dollars won’t buy anything. Our big problems is that the dollar gets
cheaper all the time. Now Germany went through that type of thing and I was over in Germany,
shortly after Germany repudiated all of its currency. There is a law, I’ve forgotten what its name
is now, maybe it Gresham’s Law, I don’t know. But there is a law that says that when a thing
does not have it that money always becomes as valued as intrinsic value of the medium that is
used for the exchange. For example: if you have gold, gold has a certain value because there is
a certain amount of it. Silver has a certain value. Eventually in Germany paper money became
worth what the papers worth. You see that was the intrinsic value with gold it was one thing.
Now the Indians they had wampum and so forth. Well, there was so much of it and because
there was only so much of it, it couldn’t be expanded like paper money can. But I saw a 100,000
dollar bank notes in Germany that were stamps with 500 billion dollar. At that point you
couldn’t pay the printer to print it on, you couldn’t hardly pay for the ink to put it on. But when it
was just tied to money it was printed or with which it was created. So I think we are up against
the same type of things.
RS: So do you feel President that this type of a depressed inflation depression that we would be
worse off?
EE: Well, yes, I think so. The end result of an inflation depression like that was in Germany and
other places, is the repudiation of your currency. I mean wipe it all out and all start over again.
Well, we had a depression, a deflation depression you still had your dollars. You didn’t have
very many of them, but they were solid and when you started to go you could build on that dollar
again. I think this is one of the things that bewilders the United States at the present time is
they’ve never had an experience a national experience with a depression of inflation. Now the
Europeans countries and we could go around the world, average currencies doesn’t last much
more than 25 years. You only begin to manipulate currency when you don’t have a solid base
which cannot be tampered with. You can see that I’m a silver and gold man so to speak. But I
believe in a metallic base for our currency. I talked with many, many people in Germany about
the premises most countries in the world fighting inflation. The people over there are willing to
take measures, fighting measures, for the creation of fiat money, inflation money. Their
currency is sound. Their currency hasn’t been devalued. In fact, the word now is they’re going
valued up. They’re going to make it stronger. They had such a horrible experience with
inflation that even the children and grandchildren haven’t forgotten it. But we haven’t had one
like that. It doesn’t make any difference whether the government goes out and prints dollar bills
without anything behind it so to speak or whether you go downstairs and print counterfeit bills.
It’s the same result in the long run. The only thing is the government can do it legally, so to
speak. But speaking with the laws of economics they can’t get away with it any more than you
can. You’ve got to have value behind the money. When you’ve got more dollar bills floating
around than you have goods then you don’t have any value behind X number of dollar bills you
see that are over and beyond the goods. You just don’t have them.
RS: It seems like today that we’re going on a trust system behind our dollar bills?
EE: Entirely. Now if we had houses behind the dollar bills or factories behind the dollar bills
that would be alright. But we don’t have that. We just have a lot of money floating around. A
lot of money that’s created because of the Federal Reserve through the manipulations that they
go through can create the money through their banks. This is based almost entirely upon the
need of the federal government’s deficit spendings. Then on the other hand, something that we
have to remember also is we’ve been involved in a terribly costly situation in the Orient. In
Korea, in Vietnam, we’ve been involved in the space program that has cost around 30 billion
dollars, we’ve given away 140 billion dollars through our aid program, and none of them create
any real wealth in our own country. You see what I mean. They all disappear. Military
machinery doesn’t create wealth. And we’ve been involved in a number [ of] non- wealth creative
activities that we’ve paid for with money that we’ve printed down in Washington D. C. You can
only do that so long. The only reason that it’s gone this long is that we have our savings account,
we have our pensions, life insurances, and so forth to fall back on. The dollar is becoming
cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. We’ve started to cut those down. This is the value of our
whole thing now is the chickens are coming home to roost, that’s what it amounts to. If we’re
not going to use metal base for our money, we’ve at least got to have some type of value behind
that money besides a printing press. Otherwise, after a while the money will be worth the
medium on which it is printed, paper.
RS: President, if we do go into another depression….?
EE: I think we are in one now. I mean you call it a recession if you want to, but around the
edges it looks like a depression.
RS: Do you feel confident that we as a people in Idaho and the United States will be able to pull
ourselves up out of a depression?
EE: Well, if I was going to be any place during a depression I would want to be in Idaho. I
certainly would. I think that the people here would have a background, they have the character,
and they have the agricultural base and so forth. We would all eat, we would all live. We
wouldn’t have the luxury, but we would get along. I think Idaho would be as good a place as any
to be.
RS: Talking today, what I find out about the community of Preston where they were pulling for
each other, it seems to me that’s where I would want to be is in a farming community.
EE: That’s a very fine community, a very fine community.
RS: Well, President Eberhard I would like to thank you very much for the information which we
have received today. This tape will be placed in the library at Ricks College for use by future
researchers.
EE: Fine. Its been a pleasure to talk to you about it.