Small Town America in World War II: War Stories from Wrightsville, Pennsylvania

Chapter 1: Donald “Red” Smith

Chapter 1 Donald “Red” Smith Riverside Foundry Executive Born on 28 September 1912, Donald “Red” Smith was the son of the founder of Riverside Foundry, Harry K. Smith. After a very short collegiate career, Donald returned to the foundry and never left. In his interview he sheds light on the attitude of his father and other small businessmen toward Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, the effects of the Great Depression on the foundry business, organized labor, and the return to prosperity as the country entered World War II. Federal spending for the war effort, not the New Deal programs, lifted the economy from the depths of economic hard times during the 1930s. During the war, Riverside prospered due to government subcontracts for the production of cast iron hand grenade and rifle grenade casings, fuse wells for bombs, and cast iron collars for parachute flares. The contracts meant steady wages for foundry workers while labor shortages due to men going into the military services led to the employment of women in the foundry for the first time, a trend that continued during the postwar years. Profits resulting from the government contracts enabled Riverside Foundry to modernize and expand. Because of wartime shortages and rationing, workers who now had income had nowhere to spend it. As a result of this pent-up demand, Riverside was able to make a smooth tran- 20 SMALL TOWN AMERICA IN WORLD WAR II sition from military to civilian production after the war. Donald Smith raised his family in Wrightsville, and he continued to play an active role in the management of Riverside Foundry right up to his death on 7 October 2004.1 Never a very serious college student, Donald Smith left the University of Delaware in 1933 after attending for two years and went to work in his father’s foundry. He remained active in the operations of Riverside Foundry for the rest of his life: “I didn’t like school, and I was not a very good student. So, I think my father was glad that I dropped out. There were three of us going to college at that time, so my father said it was getting to be too much of a financial load for him to send my sister, brother, and me to college. It was right at the depth of the Depression, so I came home and worked at the foundry, the days that the foundry worked. At that time we were working two, maybe three, days a week. I helped out wherever they needed someone to fill in. I really did a little bit of everything. I did some drilling and tapping; I shifted weights in the afternoons; and I helped with the cupola. I even tried my hand at molding a little bit. That way I got a pretty well-rounded experience after learning all facets of foundry work. I never left the foundry again. Then, for some reason or another, foundry work just got into my blood, and I liked it. “My father never encouraged me to get interested because he thought the foundry business was not going to be a good business. A lot of foundries closed altogether during the Depression. In fact, the Wrightsville Hardware Company temporarily closed down altogether, and Susquehanna Casting just limped along. Our workforce went from thirty down to twenty-two or twenty-three men. If we got two or three days a week, it was good. Our old ledger book from which I’m reading indicates that in 1934 we worked a total of 104 days. The total wages paid to molders was $6,843, while day laborers received $4,003. Including salaried employees and the office force, we paid out a total of $13,707 in 1934. Sales in that year amounted to $22,641, and we shipped just 345,343 Donald “Red” Smith 21 pounds of castings. But the men seemed to survive because everybody had their own gardens, or they’d go out and help farmers and get things. When we had work, we worked full days. There’s one thing about a foundry that’s different from other industries—you needed a full day to perform all the processes. The molders started at 7:00 in the morning and molded until 2:00 in the afternoon. Then at 2:00 they would ‘pour off’ for about an hour-and-a-half. Then everybody...