Sunday, April 25, 2021

Working at the Bean Factory

Working at the Bean Factory 

Summers 1945-1948

Sugar Beet Factory in Logan, Utah

Dictated to Elizabeth E.


Summer 1945:

The bean factory was on the east side of Hyrum and it was hiring, but only if you were eighteen years old. I had just barely turned 17, but my neighbor heard I was interested, whether it was my mother that told him, or his wife, but he found out.  So he told me to come on down to the factory and ask for him.  “Just talk to me and don’t say anything to anyone else.”  

So she went over to the bean factory and there were a few questions from him about if she was able to work, etc.  Then someone else came in and asked “Is she old enough?”  The neighbor answered “Yeah.”

I was glad to get the job, as everyone was anxious to get money and to work.  My starting wage was 50 cents an hour [Ed note: that works out to $7.35 in 2021 dollars].  They loaned me a uniform that was just a sack.  It was a plain short-sleeved blue dress with buttons up the front, a white collar and a hat that had a hairnet attached.  I would return it at the end of the summer’s work. I had to buy my own gloves to use.

My first job at the factory was to check the beans as they came down the conveyer belt: discard the damaged or dead beans, cut off parts that weren’t okay.  I was so bored.  Every hour we would get a five minute break, when we could move off the line, go to the bathroom, etc.  The neighbor’s wife worked there, and nearly every housewife that could get a position worked there too. [She mentioned Mrs. Cook and Mrs. Mable Miles.]  


Mountains dryland farm, 1940. Cache County, Utah (from here)


We worked in shifts.  I would call the night before to find out how many beans they had and they’d tell me my shift.  Mostly I went in at 5 a.m., but occasionally there would be a four a.m. call.  I’d get up early, make a sandwich and go outside to wait for my ride.  A neighbor would come down the street, picking people up and if you weren’t out there, she’d go right by. We’d work for a few hours, then the factory horn would sound for our lunch break.  We’d grab our sandwich and head outside to the tables.  I’d buy a drink, and my first best friend Maxine and I (she also worked at the bean factory) would eat lunch together.  If I was really feeling flush, I’d stop at the little hamburger stand a woman ran, and purchase a hamburger.  I felt really lucky to have a job.

After a while, I was moved to be a checker which included a 5-cent raise.  In that position, I’d be able to walk all the way up and down the line on the other side of where I’d been sitting culling beans.  When the women who stuffed beans in the cans would get a dozen cans, I’d come over and attach a tag, punch a hole in the tag, and then take that over to another conveyer belt.  It would then go down the line to where they added the broth to the cans (which is where my neighbor’s wife worked). Those women who put the beans in the cans worked so hard.  At one point they all went on strike for higher pay, and they got it.

When my Senior Year at high school started, I turned in my uniform and went back to classes.


from here  Cache County bean crop, 1940

Summer 1946

I went back to working at the bean factory with Maxine, my first best friend.  My second best friend, Darlene Hatch, went up to work in Ogden.  That summer she stole my boyfriend from me.  His name was Reece Richmond and he took me nice places and we had been dating for a while.  I didn’t mind much as I had several boys waiting in the wings.  I always felt sorry for Darlene because of their family tragedy.

A few years earlier their large family [the Hatch family] had moved into Paradise, and were just getting started on getting their farm up and running.  That winter the family was coming home and were in a terrible car accident.  The father was killed and the mother was severely injured.  She was in the hospital for weeks, and it took her a long time to recover—they had to keep pulling glass out of her face and she was in bad shape.  The married daughter helped and some of the children were older, but no one told the mother that her husband had died.

Finally Mrs. Hatch came home to recover.  She took off her wedding ring, saying that she didn’t want to be married to anyone who wouldn’t come and visit her in the hospital.  They finally told her then.

[back to the bean factory

So one day in the middle of August, Maxine and I went out to eat our sandwiches, and the factory horns started tooting.  And tooting and tooting—they never stopped.  We realized then that it was VJ day—August 14th — and the war was over. 

I went off to BYU at the end of that summer.


A FARM GIRL PUTS AWAY DISHES IN THE KITCHEN CABINET. BOX ELDER COUNTY, AUGUST 1940. RUSSELL LEE, COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS •  FROM HERE


Summer 1947

I worked at the bean factory again, but had decided to myself that this was the end…that I could do better than this.  At the end of the summer, I turned in my uniform and went back to BYU.





Some of the reasons for the demise of the factories appear to be pollution-related (effluence in Bear River).  Others are outlined in these excerpts (from here):


and



excerpts are screenshots from above link, a History of Cache County

Donald Gill, Cache County, Utah beekeeper needed bees, sugar and equipment to weather a series of bad seasons caused by weather conditions. A Farm Security Administration rehabilitation loan put him on his feet again.  from here

Grandmother Bickmore raised bees on the farm in Cache County, too.


Mormon children at Church in Mendon, Utah 1940.(from here)  Mendon was a small town about 15 miles from Paradise.  Granny Sessions would have been about 12 years old at this time, maybe even looking like some of those older girls at the back of the room.


1 comment:

  1. This is so great! Thanks for the story and the photos. Cynthia

    ReplyDelete