Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Fall/Section018/Don Washburn

Overview

Don Washburn was interviewed for the Federal Writers’ Project in 1939. He was a veteran of World War One before owning a tire shop in Asheville, North Carolina. At the time of his interview, he was married with three children.

Childhood and Early Adulthood

Don Washburn was born on July 29, 1893 in North Carolina. Most of his ancestors were farmers from England and Scotland. He grew up on a small farm while attending a country school. Later he would attend a denominational junior college in the mountains. Around 1912, he left school and moved to Colorado to “seek his fortune.” He lived with his aunt and tried various occupations including mining, ranching, and clerking. For ten years he traveled from state to state in search of work.

World War One

Camp McClellan

On July 5, 1918 he was drafted into World War One. He was sent to Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia before being placed in a medical unit, which caused him to be transferred to Camp McClellan (now called Fort McClellan) in Anniston Alabama. He served there for three months before his unit was sent to New York in preparation to go to France.

The Spanish Flu

While Don Washburn was at McClellan, the Spanish Flu was causing much difficulty for the American army. “It was a 1200 bed hospital, but during the flu epidemic, we had more than 4,000 patients on average,” Washburn said. He witnessed men dying in massive numbers, though he never got the flu because he was sanitized frequently. The crowded military camps were a cause of the spread of the Spanish Flu.

“The virus traveled with military personnel from camp to camp and across the Atlantic, and at the height of the American military involvement in the war, September through November 1918, influenza and pneumonia sickened 20% to 40% of U.S. Army and Navy personnel.”

The End of the War

Washburn’s unit was sent to New York and slept at a camp near Birmingham with no beds to sleep on. This occurred after the false armistice, where an incorrect message about the war being over was broadcasted and spread across America. Because of the false armistice, Washburn was skeptical when the actual armistice was announced. When it was revealed that the armistice was real, Washburn was hopeful that he would be able to go home. However, his unit was sent to France anyway, despite the war being over. This caused Washburn much lament.

“The blasted war was over, and had been for two weeks. We should have been in the States!”

Afterwards, they arrived in Le Havre, France. They spent four days traveling by train until they were quartered in a barn with hay to sleep on. Washburn notes that “[They] were fairly comfortable there, although [they] had no stove.” They remained quartered for several weeks, passing the time by playing cards, with few drills. Later they marched to Base Hospital No. 13 where they replaced an army unit that headed back to the United States. Things were more comfortable then. Washburn’s unit returned to New York in the summer of 1919. Washburn received his honorable discharge at Camp Lee, Virginia on July 26, 1919.

Career

Tire Business

After his discharge, Washburn returned to North Carolina. He worked for a short period at a tannery near his home. Unable to find a business he could own, he headed west once again. In Kansas, he worked on a corn farm and saved $5 a day. After hearing about the rubber business in Akron, Ohio, he moved there and worked for a large rubber factory. He worked for $1 an hour, 10 hours a day. He upgraded his job to $1.50 an hour, and worked 8 hours a day. While working, he saved as much as he could and learned about the tire business. He attended night classes at the plantation to learn even more about rubber and tires. He met a man named Myers from Pennsylvania and the two of them started a business together. In 1921, they decided to start a business in North Carolina, in Stoup St. Myers left the business after a year and Washburn took over completely.

To own a tire shop during the Great Depression, Washburn faced difficulties.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the rubber tire industry faced debilitating challenges, mostly brought about by changes in the industry's retail structure and exacerbated by the Great Depression. Segments of the industry attempted to use the New Deal's NRA codes to solve these new problems and stabilize the tire market, but the tire manufacturing and tire retailing codes were patent failures. Instead of leading to cartelization and higher prices, which is what most scholars assume the NRA codes did, the tire industry codes actually led to even more fragmentation and price-cutting.

Beliefs

Isolationism

Having served during the war and seeing several deaths at Fort McClellan, Don Washburn took the position of many Americans at the time, becoming more isolationist.

“In 1920, in a solemn referendum, the American people rejected Wilson’s League of Nations in favor of something popularly known as isolationism.”

When asked what he thought about war, Washburn referenced the failure of the League of Nations, and said that there should be no war unless someone invades one's country.

"They're fools for letting Hitler and Mussolini and the Russians ruin their country. I'll bet most of them have forgotten what they started fighting for. China and Ethiopia are different, and there ought to be some way to keep strong nations from invading weak nations, but not by war, except I don't blame the weak nation for fighting. The League of Nations was supposed to handle things like that, I thought, but it turned out to be a flop. Let 'em fight, though, if they have to, so long as we can keep out of it. I didn't even get to the World War until after it was over, but there wasn't anything about it I enjoyed, except getting back home."

Bibliography

1. Byerly, Carol R. “The U.S. military and the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919.” Public health reports (US National Library of Medicine: 1974) vol. 125 Suppl 3, Suppl 3 (2010): 82-91. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862337/.
2. Douglas, Carter. “Ex-Soldier.” Federal Writers' Project papers #3709, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/03709/id/775/rec/1.
3. Fensterwald, Bernard. “The Anatomy of American ‘Isolationism’ and Expansionism. Part I.” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 2, no. 2 (1958): 111–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/172971.
4. Klein, Christopher. “The False WWI Armistice Report That Fooled America.” History.com (2018). https://www.history.com/news/false-armistice-report-world-war-i-early-celebration.
5. Pennock, Pamela. “The National Recovery Administration and the Rubber Tire Industry, 1933-1935.” The Business History Review 71, no. 4 (1997): 543–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/3116306.
6. “Why Did the League of Nations Fail?” History on the Net 2000-2021, Salem Media. October 3, 2021, https://www.historyonthenet.com/roman-food.