Stock Market Crash, Motley County, 1929
From Motley County Roundup, pg. 117-118
By Marisue Potts Powell
The Stock Market crashed in 1929, and farm prices fell. Farmers compensated by planting more crops, but the oversupply pushed prices even lower.
The State established the Board of Education. The county line school district on the boundaries of Motley and Hall formed Bridle Bit. Fairview, a merger of Ballard and Clements schools, voted bonds and built a brick school. The county’s school enrollment was at an all time high of 1,821.
For $12,000 The Matador Ranch built a concrete olympic-sized swimming pool at Tongue River’s Roaring Springs for use by the public in an effort to prevent possible appropriation by government water source authorities.
1930
The Federal government voted drought relief to county farmers in 1930. Matador built a grade school and gymnasium to join the high school plant. TeePee Flat School closed, its students transferred to Roaring Springs. The Northfield Nazarenes constructed a church. Barton community built a two-room red brick school.
By 1931 the Great Depression was in full swing with over four million citizens jobless. After 800 banks failed, President Hoover acted to end the run on the nation’s banks by infusing private and government money into the banking industry.
County school enrollment began its decline with a loss of almost a hundred students. “Due to the depleted condition of county funds,” commissioners reduced the salaries of officials, eliminated the county agent, and, except for the sheriff’s, cut off the courthouse phones.
1932 housewives glued to their radios listened to Soap Operas, melodramas sponsored primarily by soap companies. Miriam “Ma” Ferguson was re-elected as governor. Kaffir Corn, cotton, and corn were so cheap that farmers burned the produce for fuel. Cotton sold for only 5 cents a pound. Commissioners appointed Dr. A.C. Traweek as County Health Officer.
Roaring Springs School, dismissed for harvest work, reopened despite the mounting number of unpaid and delinquent taxes. The cheap transportation of wagons and horses replaced automobiles on many county roads.
One out of four Americans were out of work by 1933, but Texans fared better than most. Oil jobs continued until an oversupply forced prices to drop from $1 to 22 cents a barrel.
Farmers could usually feed their own. In fact, some in Motley County recall that their families, though without money for luxuries, ate very well since they had their own milk cows, chickens, and gardens. County officials ordered wheat to be ground into flour for stockpiling and sought Civil Works Administration funds to provide jobs, such as building roads and pit toilets.
Reduced state funding cut down public school budgets, providing fewer books and supplies. Teachers received payment in Scrip, a promissory note that pay would be forthcoming at a later date. Roaring Springs school teachers faced a short year, a loss of affiliation, and no cashable checks. Federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation workers grubbed mesquites, dug ditches, and built a tennis court at the Roaring Springs school.
With 5/6 of the local taxes unpaid, The First State Bank of Roaring Springs reflected the hard times of its customers. The failing bank was taken over by the First State Bank of Matador which then honored all claims against it.
The last senior class to graduate from Whiteflat reverted to horses and teams, except during planting and harvest times, to get to school. Many kids walked to school. County school enrollment dropped by another hundred.
Prohibition ended after fourteen embattled years. Roaring Springs elected to make beer legal by eighteen votes, while Matador voted yes by a margin of thirty-one.
President Roosevelt’s New Deal assisted banks in reopening, states in feeding and helping the poor, the unemployed with jobs, and farmers by paying them not to grow crops. The federal band-aid promoted soil conservation with contour farming, furrows and terraces, shelter belt plantings of grass and trees shelter, and damming of reservoirs for irrigation.
Lawlessness escalated and spawned a federal gun law in 1934 which prohibited the use of sawed-off shotguns. Meanwhile law officers ambushed Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow; federal G-men gunned down an unarmed John Dillinger, Public Enemy No. 1. Also bush-whacked before the year-end were Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson.
Revenuer S.A. Tibbets and Cattle Inspector Ed Russell led a bust on a Caprock bootleg operation near Flomot, confiscating 1,482 half gallons of Christmas whiskey. Rounded up were two women and a man, a cache of dynamite, and whiskey runners, a 1934 V-8 Ford and a 1934 Oldsmobile coupe.
About 150 families in the county remained homeless or without work. In order to receive relief, those who were able had to work.
The county was declared in the Emergency Drought Area, making it eligible for feed imports and a government buyout of starving animals. Condemned and killed on county farms and ranches were 2,458 head of cattle. The government bought a total of 10,648 county cattle to be shipped out or slaughtered at a price ranging from $4 to $14 a head.
Newspaper editor Douglas (Ben) Meador merged the Roaring Springs News with the Motley County News to create the Matador Tribune.
The First National Bank of Matador transferred its assets to the First State Bank of Matador, the only remaining bank in the county.
At Flomot 200 school students registered. Four hundred registered at Matador where business men reached down into their own pockets to finance the football program. The old red brick school building on the east side of town was re-cycled as a meeting place for the Assembly of God Church.
Northfield voted the bonds to build a cream-colored brick school and gym for their four teachers and eleven grades. A CWA (Civil Works Administration) loan of $16,776 provided funds for the school, teacherage, and playground.
With a WPA (Works Progress Administration) loan of $46,000, Roaring Springs embarked on a program to build a brick high school, a gym-auditorium, a home economics department, and classrooms. Workmen removed the top floor of the old red brick school house and remodeled the first and second floors for grade school. Sixteen students enrolled in the Roaring Springs Colored School.
Folley high school students split up, attending schools either at Flomot, Quitaque, or Turkey.
The Social Security Act passed in 1935, setting up pensions for older citizens which was financed partly by workers, partly by employers.
Students who graduated from a fully accredited high school did not have to take college entrance tests. Many smaller schools were unable to meet the criteria required, so Barton School and Fairview School transferred their high school students to Matador. Fairmont students joined Flomot, bringing the enrollment there to more than 100 for the Class A approved, four-year
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high school.
Despite the drought and the depression, Texans celebrated the state centennial with an exposition, the building of the San Jacinto monument, and placement of historical markers such as the ones placed at TeePee City and the Roaring Springs falls. Though Motley County counted over 1/3 of its farms lost to the drought, once the rains returned, farmers planted day and night. A heat wave scorched the promising crops, then floods followed to finish them off.
The last train rumbled out of Matador, as the QA&P silenced the shortline railroad connection to Roaring Springs.
Harvey Stanford, Matador’s “winningest” coach, received a new car from appreciative business men. When he resigned for a position at Las Vegas, the Flomot football team followed him there to train for two weeks.
Flomot added a gym. The three-room school at Folley closed with students split between Flomot and Turkey. Montgomery students transfered to Turkey. White Star School house was offered at public sale. School enrollment counted 1,556 students.
In 1937 a diphtheria scare prompted parents to vaccinate their children. The “worst yet” sandstorm hit the county. Hail, floods, a grasshopper plague, and dust pneumonia tested the mettle of residents.
Optimistically Whiteflat residents voted bonds to build a new grade school and gym though it was never started. Their 10th and 11th grades transferred to Matador. White Star students transferred to Whiteflat.
W. Lee O’Daniel campaigned for governor in 1938 and won with the slogan, “Go ahead and try me, you can’t do no worse.” As nations geared up for war, the depression waned.
John Steinbeck’s novel about the Dust Bowl, The Grapes of Wrath, was published in 1939, the year Germany invaded Poland.
Shannon Davidson Day celebrated the cowboy’s winning Pony Express ride from Nocona, Texas, to Oakland, California, as thousands thronged into Matador for a mile long parade and rodeo at the football field.
Some county boys left for CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camps while women worked for WPA wages by sewing clothing for needy.
Darden Canyon and Flag Springs schools transferred to Roaring Springs.
