from my duty toward my wife and
children.
I cleared 540 acres of heavy timber land in the State of Arkansas after several crop failures. I quit depending on my cotton to pay my debts. I began to grow cattle and hogs to have to fall back on whenever my cotton failed. Just before the Hoover depression struck, I got the word from a big saw mill to come down that they had a trade for me. I went down to see about their trade. When I arrived, they told me they wanted me to look over a lot of their cut-over land. They wanted to know what I would take to slash all of the scrub timber down for by the acre. I was shown where this timber land was. I gave it a good look over. I came back to the office and told the man what I would do the job for and that was $5.00 an acre. He had a contract all ready for me. He said that that was a trade and "Sign here". I at once went to work. By the time I had worked two weeks, he sent one of his bosses out to see me. He came out and he said to tell me we were in a depression and that I was going to have to cut my price that I was paying my men, that he could not keep men at his mill. I was paying $1.00 a day more than he could pay and that everyone was coming out to work for me. I asked this mill boss whose job was I running? Was it his slashing or was it mine? He said, "The job is yours." "Well," I said, "I can pay any price I want to pay and there is one thing, I am not going to cut my price. I am going to complete my job and you are going to pay me. This land stands good to me for my work." ANOTHER CYCLONE We had a lot of cyclones in Arkansas. I would have my wife come and take a look at a bad storm that was approaching, and if she though it was just a big rain cloud, she would say to me and the children--"There is no need to get all worked up and excited. There is no storm in this cloud." Then, we would all 52 |