Oral Histories in the Old Dominion University Libraries

Sweeney: This is James Sweeney of the Old Dominion University Archives. Today, I'm conducting an oral history interview at the home of Mr. W. Bruce Shafer of Norfolk, who has had a long career in Norfolk politics and business. First Mr. Shafer, I'd like to ask you a question about your background. Could you tell me about your father and about your early life in the Norfolk area?

Shafer: Yes, professor. I was born in what's part of Norfolk now, which was Norfolk County then. In 1894, my father was born in Norfolk County, but his father was born in New York State at Shaferstown, New York. And he went to college at Poughkeepsie Business College and he worked in the naval yard to save money enough to go to college. And then went to Poughkeepsie Business College and had the fortune of hearing some wonderful men lecture. He said at the Eastman Poughkeepsie Business College they brought large businessmen, substantial operators from New York once a week and lectured to ‘em. He said that he got more out of the lectures than he did out of the books. And he went in the produce business when he finished it in partners with another man named Shafer, but he spelled his name different and he was from Ireland. And later on, they separated and the other man went in the book business. And he stayed in the produce and farming and operated a bunch of farms. When I was a kid, the Pythians gave a pony away and we had to get l0 cents a vote from the public. And I was fortunate enough to get this pony. And naturally, I was glad over it. And I think it gave me a lot of self-confidence that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

So my father took me into the produce business after I went to the Norfolk Academy, from 1905 and finished in 1912. That was one of the oldest schools in America and the first one to operate under what was known as the "Honor System," which was later copied by the University of Virginia. And after I was married and had a family, we got in the war, the first World War. Woodrow Wilson was President. Just before we got in the war, I was in Washington in the office of ________ congressman, which was Colonel Holland from Suffolk who was president of one of the best banks in the State of Virginia. And a general came in the office to

see the Colonel and the Colonel introduced me to him and we got to talking. And he says "I’ve been over to France, and I’m putting up enough hospitals to take care of a million soldiers. And we’re going to send a million men to Europe. We’re getting into the war.” I think they hadn't quite gotten in it, but anyway he said he’d been over there and gotten everything straight, was going to go back and operate these hospitals. He happened to be a doctor, as well as a general. And I said, “Well, why go over there and spend enough money to put up hospitals for a million people, send a million people over, when all the papers say that Germany is such a small country. They'll give out of food in a few months and they can’t carry on the war. They’ll have to give up.” He said, "I've got news for you, Mr. Shafer. They've stopped growing so much grain and grow a lot of potatoes. Then they put that grain growing in them potatoes and they can grow 300 bushels to the acre instead of 30 bushels of grain." So I being in the potato business, I was growing potatoes and also planting potatoes with farmers in Virginia and Carolina. I said, “Well, that’d be a good idea to start something to substitute.” And he said, “Yes, if you could get the American people to do it.”

So I wrote all of the produce people we were connected with and asked them to give a $100 towards starting an advertising campaign. And I started what was known as the "potato publicity and wheat saving league of America." And after I got this money, the produce men all pledged all right. After we got the money pledged, I got to thinking; we got to get somebody to run this thing. It was a big, national thing like that, and I’m just a small fry, young fellow and I don’t know anything about it. So I talked with some of the produce men. We decided we’d get Teddy Roosevelt. I was always fond of Teddy; he had plenty of guts. So, I got on the train, after we’d been working about a week on it, and went to Oyster Bay to see Teddy Roosevelt. And when I got there, his wife said, “He’s not home. He’s down to Jack Keating's health farm, the prizefighter’s [camp] in Stanford, Connecticut.”

So I went over to Stanford, Connecticut and sought to see him. And saw him and asked him to take the leadership in it. And we’d raised all the money needed to advertise. He said he was mad with Woodrow Wilson, he said, because he [Wilson] wouldn't let him get an army up and go to Europe, like he did down in the Spanish-American War. So he said “You go back and tell that Virginian to get you somebody to run it. I’m not interested in no potato business and that stuff; I'm a fighting man." So I left the prize fighting training camp. His wife said he went there every year and took 10 days training.

So, I went down to Washington to see the Food Administration, and told them what I was doing. And the man that was in charge of it was from Lou DeSweet (sp?), former governor of Carbondale (sp?), Colorado. And she, the secretary, says, “You go downstairs. They’re taking over a big department in Washington.” And it had a restaurant, and they were using the restaurant for kind of a meeting hall when they’d bring in people to discuss how to get the food situation straightened up. So she says, “you can’t talk to him today, because he’s got people here from every state in the Union having a conference,” but she says, “you wait ‘til tomorrow.” I said, “I can’t wait. I’ve got to go back. I’ve got some business engagements at Norfolk. And I have to go back tonight on the Washington boat.” She says, “Don’t.” I says, “I’ll just tell you about it, and you tell him. You seem to be a capable woman.” She was a middle-aged woman, so I started telling her about it. She says, “You’re not going back to Washington now without seeing him. You go right downstairs and have him paged off the platform”, which I did. And when he come out and I told him about what we were doing, she had told me upstairs, she said he’ll – I was kind of green, you know, a country boy. So I said, “Listen, I’m not going down there and page him off the platform and get insulted.”

She said, "He won't insult you.” She said, “He's got 200,000 barrels of seed potatoes stored today. He's the biggest potato operator in the West. And he will hug you or kiss you because he'll be so glad to know that you're working on it. And he’ll be so interested." So he came out and said, “Yes.” And he left that meeting and put somebody else in charge of it, his assistant, and went upstairs. And he called the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia. They were publishing The Saturday Evening Post, I think, and The Ladies' Home Journal. And he told them his story and they agreed to give us $2 million worth of free advertising space. So he began to write. And he said now, “Now you don’t need to be spending any more of your money. You’ve spent a few hundred dollars already. Let us go ahead and handle it. We got the facilities.” Now he said “I’ll tell you what I want to do. I’ll print enough banners to have one hung in every grocery store in America, and I’ll have men to go in to hang ‘em, doing exactly what you’ve got written out about how to substitute potatoes for wheat and other grains. Because, like you say, you can grow 10 times as much to the acre as you can grain.” And he put those banners in every grocery store in America and we doubled the production and the consumption of potatoes in America. And we never had any food shortages on account of that. So that gave me a little pep in my ego, like any young fellow.

When the war stopped, just before it stopped, my father had an open house entertaining these boys in the service. He let the _______ secretary bring out 25 every Sunday night, and have a buffet supper and introduce them to the people in the neighborhood. These boys were fighting for $1 a day. And the average men in the Navy yard, the water boys, were getting $1 a hour. So I said, “It’s a darn shame that these fellows didn't have enough money to take a girl to the moving pictures. I’m going to Washington to see Colonel Holland, he’s a fine fellow, and get him to get the pay doubled.” So I went to Washington to talk to him and, while I was there, the armistice was signed. So I said, “Listen Colonel, let’s give ‘em a year's extra pay then. They won the war so short. Everybody said it was going to take twice as long.” And he said, “Yes, that’s a good idea.”

I called Claude Swanson, the senator, who was a big politician. He’d been governor before. And one or two more boys, and we’ll talk it over with them. So he called these fellows and got them round then and talked it over. And they said, “yes it was a good idea. We’ll put that bill into effect and give every one of ‘em a year's extra pay.” So I went down to the Associated Press and gave them a story and the UP (United Press) and anybody else that I could and the press club and [told them] that the bonus was so popular. By that time, I’d begun to get some reactions of different ones in congress that he’d introduced me to. So I thought it would be put over in 90 days and Colonel Holland thought it would too, and I think he thought so because he was a very conscientious man.

So, I came on back to Norfolk. And I had a friend who had a letter-writing company and an insurance company. And he had 17 girls working in there. And I was making more money and had more money than I had brains, so I said, “Well, I’m to give this thing some national publicity.” So I put these girls to work, and they wrote a story and sent one to every newspaper in America once a week. They wrote and sent a copy – the best Republican editorial we could get and the best Democrat editorial and any speeches any of them would make, to all the newspapers in America, and at least once a week. Then I was printing 20,000 circulars a day. I got, it was a Spanish war veteran had a big printing press right near my office. And he was very sympathetic and he put this work ahead of anything. And got me out 20,000 circulars a day. And all the battle ships that came in the harbor or any other ship that carried mail. We mailed these things to these different camps in Europe and all the ships. Well, I was paying the postage on it, which was pretty high.

And one day I was in the post office, and a fellow came by in a sailor suit that I used to know or that was a friend of my uncle’s. And he says, “What are you doing around here, Mr. Shafer.” I said, “I’m getting this mail out, in fact I’ll give you a circular.” He says, “Where are you sending them to?” I says, “Anywhere that there’s uniformed men in the Army or Navy.” “Well”, he says, “you don’t have to go anywhere further.” He said, “Don’t you pay no more mail. I’m in the mail department for the government upstairs for just Army and Navy people. And you bring me those circulars every day, and I’ll put ‘em on every ship and every outfit that's carrying mail out of Norfolk.” And he pulled them out and sent them throughout the country. And I'd go down to the Naval Base every night and make a speech in the little YMCA huts to just a few people that happened to be in each one. It was about 50 of them down there.

And one day, the man in charge of the Naval Base was Commander Macalan (sp?) a Baltimore man and he happened to be a friend of my father’s, and he phoned me up. And he says, “I want to ask you some pertinent questions. Can you come down to the naval base right away?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “All right.” So I went down to the naval base, and I had these banners all on my car – I had had painted and fixed on my car. Went in the gate and went down to his office. Now he said, “Sit down here young man.” And he says, “You know I'm a friend of your father’s and I don't want to do you any harm. But I don't want to get in any government trouble with you.” He says, “A committee claimed that the representatives of the Democratic committee of Norfolk has been down here and said that the Republican Party is paying for this printing and that I'm mixing politics in patriotism." And he said, “I want you to tell me the truth now. I’m not going to do anything to you. We can’t prosecute you or nothing, but I don’t want you to get me in trouble because I’m a friend of your father’s. And I wouldn’t get you in trouble. I want you to tell me exactly where the money is coming from, and who’s paying them, and who’s doing the printing.”

I told him all the facts about it that I was paying every cent of it; a friend had promised to raise $1000 and tried to raise some. And he had a big party here, a big show called “In Everything”. And he charged the advertising to me for the show. And the night the show was pulled off, it was raining. And they didn’t have a good crowd there. And he’d hired two or three extra people. And used what money he had, the tickets he’d sold, and by the way one of them was one of the team of Amos and Andy. It was stationed at Newport News. And he’d gotten him here. Of course, I didn’t know who Amos and Andy was. Nobody knew them then. But later, they turned out to be big people. But they – I think if I remember it right, he paid them $70. This one – I think it was Andy. It was ________ of Andy. And they never made any money, and I went into the hole on the show. And he gave up the idea of raising any money. And I said, well I’m going to stop taking any money anyway because this argument’s going on at the Naval base. They’re trying to get me in trouble about it. And I was always too plain folk to get along with politicians anyway because they talk out of both sides of their mouth.

But anyway, I kept going and things were sailing fine. I was getting editorials from Democrat and Republican papers all over the United States. And he said to me, he said listen, when he got through; he said, you know I believe every word you say. They’re a bunch of liars just trying to stop this bonus. But I’ll tell you what you do. You come down here tonight and the auditorium holds several thousand sailors, and I’ll let you speak to several thousand sailors and officers tonight, And I’ll furnish you, if you need to bring anybody with you, I’ll furnish you with some sailors to pass out these circulars and to give every sailor, or every person out at the auditorium that night, three circulars--one to send to his mother, and one to send to his sweetheart, and one to send to the mayor of the city--to ask them to work for the bonus. And it took fire. When that thing hit out -- got out in the country, two or three days or a week later, I began to get telegrams and phone calls from pressmen and everybody all over the country.

Then the next thing I run up with, a friend of mine named Morris Long was a very brilliant man. And he controlled the laundry business in this section of the state and was well fixed. And he lived near me, and we were in the county then where I was living. And he was a political leader in the county and the city too. So I had been -- He wouldn’t take the war savings stamp job because he had so much business he couldn’t handle it. And they were insisting that he take it, the Congressmen. So, he said – called me up and said, “ You attend to it. All you have to do is go to the schoolhouses every night and make a talk, to each one of them and get them started to sell these war stamps to get the students to sell them to the parents. And he said, “If you’ll do that for me, I’ll appreciate it. And he had been a friend, so I was glad to do it. And we were pretty thick; I had the greatest respect for him and his ability.

He was the first man to put up a white way down in Norfolk. He got a bunch of businessmen together and got the finances and got a white way down on Main Street. He got more electric lights put up in 6 months than the city of Norfolk had put up in 60 years. So, I insisted on him running for Congress. And he said, "No, I'm a Catholic and Norfolk is an anti-Catholic town. They've got every doggone organization in the world in this city, and the Klan and everything else. I've got good business, and I'm getting along fine. All the politicians, both the Republicans and Democrats, do anything I ask them because I don't ask for any favors for myself, so I don't think I want to mess with it." He seemed to appreciate those little things that I’d do. He was a big enough man to do it, and he had the same opinion I did that gratitude is the greatest flower that grows in the heart of man. And that is certainly true, and it is still true today.

So, he called me up that night or some weeks later and he said “Come over to the house right away. I’ve got to see you. So I went up to his house and he said, "Bruce.” My middle name is Bruce – W. Bruce Shafer, Jr. – named after my father. And he says, “I’ve got something to tell you that I can't help but tell you.” But he says, “If it ever gets out, it'll ruin me because I've got the confidence of both the Republican party and Democratic party and all the business leaders here in town. I can go in any bank and borrow anything I want to put over any kind of deal I want. But I just feel like I’ve got to tell you. You’re young and don’t know anything about politics. He says, “A group of wealthy men in Norfolk that don't want the veterans to get the bonus have gotten the Virginia Delegation to agree to let the Congress adjourn and not introduce the bonus bill. And they are going to make the biggest ass of you of anybody that ever lived in this city, unless you can do something!" He says, “All these men that are writing it, can’t you get some of them to introduce a bill before Congress adjourns. Because if it adjourns, the idea will die before the next Congress.”

So, I said, “Well I’m gonna get busy right away.” So I prayed over it, and thought over it, and schemed in my mind ‘til I liked to have wore my head out -- for about 24 hours. Finally, the idea hit me from out of the clear sky -- sit down and write a letter to all of them, and tell them how popular the bonus is. And you know it’s going to pass, but you hear that some of them are going to vote against it because they want to build chains instead of paying it the way it’s been talked about, to give them pay in a different way. Maybe pay ‘em according to the rate they had in the service, or maybe the time they spent in the service, and so forth. And so I said, “Well I’m going to do this.” I wrote a letter to them and told them that they’d all discussed it and said that they had ideas and I didn’t want that delay. We knew it was going to pass. It was so popular. But I wanted them to introduce the bill; any of them that would introduce the bill send me 5,000 copies that they could have printed free there and their photographs. And I would give them national publicity and credit for what they were doing. I got 100 bills introduced. The state of Minnesota, I think, introduced 10 or 15 [bills] in one day! They introduced so many bills, so quick [that] they blocked up the printing press in Washington, printing 5,000 copies apiece for them and send them here to me. They sent them to me in those big mailbags. And then they also delayed some congressional record getting out, or some record that they had to print. So they changed the ruling in Washington that you couldn’t get but 500 free after that.

But I got enough started then, and then got enough Congressmen mixed up in it. And after a politician gets out on a limb in favor of something, don’t care who jumps on him about it, he's a dead duck if he shifts. My lawyer in Washington, was C. Bascomb Slimp (sp?), C. Bascomb Slimp practically ran the Republican Party and was a Congressman from the 9th District of Virginia. And he loaned money, which I didn’t know anything about of course, to the Vanderbilt's, the richest people in cash, supposed to be, in America. And several of the rich concerns like that who were ranked against the bonus because it increased taxes, but Bascomb stuck with me. And he was the only congressman who voted for it when it first passed the Congress.

It passed by a majority. But my backer, one of my backers in the Senate, was Warren Harding from Ohio. We got him to stop here in Norfolk, after he was nominated for president, and we give him a banquet. [We] charged $10 per plate. That was the first time anybody ever paid $10 to eat at a banquet in this part of the United States. And he was riding on a yacht. He said he was going down to the warm climate with his friend who owned a chain of newspapers, the same McLean (?) that owned the Hope Diamond. That diamond that they say caused so much trouble is the biggest in captivity or if not in the world. And McLean came with him to this banquet. And I knew nothing about McLean. I was just a greenhorn. But McLean had a weakness. Most of those wealthy people have got peculiar characteristics. And a lot of them are like spoiled children. And he [McLean] had a habit, so they told me later, as soon as he got a few drinks he wanted to get a seltzer bottle and squirt it on his friends. So the police picked him up and carried him out of the banquet hall and carried him to, I don’t know, the jail I reckon. And somebody missed him and found out he was gone, and looked him up, and they went and got him, and brought him back in.

So I went up to the Senator. He hadn’t taken his seat. He was between the election and the seat. And I went up and shook hands with him, and was talking with him [Senator Harding] and he gave me his pack of cigarettes, which I put in a bottle. __________ Cigarettes – the first time I ever saw any of them. And I put them in the bottle, a __________ bottle, put wax and put paper down inside and poured wax on the paper, then dipped it upside down and put another cap of wax over it. And I’ve got it today looking as good as it did then, and that was 1920. I’ve got it marked on them. I had forgotten the date but it’s marked on that bottle, and I can see it in there. So he said, “boy.” I said, “How are you making on the bonus? The paper said they’re going to try to get you to veto it.” He says, “I’ll never do it. If they double the size of it, I’ll never do it. Those boys fought four us and won this war quick and [they] deserve the bonus. And even if it’s doubled, I will sign the bill when it comes to me.”

And when it came to him a few months later, it was vetoed by him. But the veto writing, the story that they wrote or the answer that he had written, every Congressman, that knew him and knew me, told me that that veto was written by Andrew Mellon. And by the way, Andrew Mellon was the 5th richest man in the world. And he was president three terms and never was elected. He ran the country and put up all the money practically for the Republican party for the Harding campaign, the Coolidge campaign, and the Hoover campaign. And he was certainly a smart man and he had made fortunes. He had a distillery first, and then he organized a bank--the Mellon National Bank in Pittsburgh. And then he had the Aluminum Company. And he moved aluminum work into the county. After they got a bill through that we couldn't do business with Russia, he moved the aluminum business to Canada, which made it British aluminum, traded it for Canadian – I mean for Russian oil. And brought the oil back to this country, which bankrupted a dozen or two little companies.

SIDE 2

Shafer: The wonderful luck, I guess that attribute what I had, that gave me a little better success that I got in different things that I started, was I knew how ignorant I was and I would always seek the advice of smart men. And I was a great admirer of William Jennings Bryan. And William Jennings Bryan advised me how to work this bonus and never charged me a cent. And he explained to me how dangerous politics is and how tricky it is. And that a lot of people get mixed up in it. They are good people, but they get in the machine, and they do what the machine says to do. Now, he ran for president three times. He was known as the greatest orator in the world at that time. He didn’t have, had you had the radio at that time, he would have been elected the first time. The newspapers were owned largely by the British money. And the British didn't want America to get too big internationally because everything we did, we did it through England. So they poisoned the American public against him. And he being a Baptist preacher, by the way he was an ordained minister, I understood. In fact, I knew he was. And a lot of people -- religion is a peculiar thing. A lot of people think that nobody is going to Heaven unless they belong to "their" church. And instead of helping each other, they are against every other church. They get so much religion that it runs over on them or something, or overbalances their thinking capacity. I could always get along with all kinds. As a matter of fact, I was a Methodist and a Mason. And the Methodists have been accused of being a little narrow, yet I got practically every Catholic in Congress to vote for the bonus. And not only that, I got to make speeches.

Tom O'Malley, from out in Wisconsin, the last time I heard from him he was postmaster in Wisconsin. Tom O’Malley and his crowd, and then over in Wisconsin, I had a wonderful amount of help for the bonus. Old man, La Follette, Bob La Follette, the oldest one, the first one that was in public life. He ran for president later. He was a senator then and he organized what is known as the Nonpartisan League, in five or six western countries – western states. And he had a weekly newspaper in each one of those states, called the Nonpartisan Bugle or some such name. And he notified all the editors to publish any stuff I sent ‘em. And I covered five states. It was wonderful. Not only did I cover them, but they helped us get the bonus through nationally. They voted -- made the states vote on the bonus to find the public's feelings. And they voted from five to ten to one, in every one of the western states. Now the southern states were slow getting on the bonus, except I think it was Alabama and North Carolina, but you see they were slow because, one of the reasons the southern states were slow [was because] they had only one political party, you see. And when one crowd has got control, they've got no competition. And they don’t pay any attention to the public, a handful of them. They can hold their conventions in a phone booth and run the state like they please. But the West, they don’t care whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, or nothing. If you’re a man, and you’re on the level, they’re with you. And if you’re not, they’re against you. And I could get along with those western people. I got every vote practically in Texas and Oklahoma.

Senator Thomas, from Oklahoma, was one of the best backers we had and a wonderful speaker. He made a speech for the veterans every time it come up. And I got a friend of mine who was secretary to Roosevelt. And Steve Early, a Richmond newspaperman. So Steve got me as an advisor on Veteran legislation for the White House while Roosevelt was there. And I met that great man. I think Roosevelt was the greatest man living in my time.

Sweeney: Could we get back though to the earlier part? You mentioned about Harding – how Harding vetoed. What happened to the bonus bill after Harding vetoed it?

Shafer: It came up again. And I think it was vetoed another time. I think it was vetoed about three times before it passed.

Sweeney: Vetoed by Coolidge, wasn't it?

Shafer: I believe it was by Coolidge. And then when the fellow with the Food Administration. When you get 82 years old your memory don’t work so good.

Sweeney: Herbert Hoover?

Shafer: Herbert Hoover! Herbert Hoover was a wonderful man, but by golly he had a terrible name before he got out of that White House. I worked under him a little bit in the Food Administration, as one of the volunteers on potatoes, you see. But he’d been around with the British, you see. He was raised, was born over there in California some where’s. I think in California, one of the western states. He went to school in California and was one of these mine operators. I forget what title they’ve got. He was an engineer and something about mines, technical stuff about mines. Anyway, he got a job with the Rothschild people going all over the world. But the British Rothschild's which was the biggest bank in the world, drilling for diamonds, coal, oil, and other stuff. And the British would send him on an island. They had something to do with you, you see, on a battleship. And he’d go over there with a letter from the King of England. And they used to tell it on him that he did away with more Saint’s days, and never had no pull with the church at all in those foreign countries. But when he’d go there, those people in hot countries, or those countries where their mines were just being developed. They would rather loaf than work, as long as they could get enough to eat from the trees and the grass. But he wanted them to work so many days a week. Well, they had a saint’s day, they say, for pretty near every day of the week that they got off [work]. Because you couldn’t bother them about religion, so they got off on that saint’s day. So he’d go in there with all this glory and power behind him and make a deal with the King or whoever was there to do away with so many saints' days and consolidate them. They had three saints' celebrate the same day. And he made a barrel of money.

Now, he was a slow fellow to get along with, a peculiar fellow. He was distant, had that British way about him. And he said, "Go do something!" like the British. But the Americans plan is, "Come on boys, let's do it!" American people, why did our forefathers leave Europe? Because they didn't want to be dictated to by powers that be, or bosses, or kings and queens? And the minute you tell an American that he has got to do something, you've got trouble on your hands. Every one of us has a little bit of Bolshevik in our veins, and we're all mavericks, to a certain extent. Of course, I'm a little worse than the average because I've always had that way of trying to figure things out for myself. I guess I almost ruptured my brain, trying to give birth to new thoughts. But at the same time, it's paid off. What I did, I always had these opinions and ideas that I want to work by. I always thought you had to have some kind of a schedule, so I made up quite a schedule when I went to work.

Sweeney: Could we stay on the bonus, though?

Shafer: Now we were talking about, Hoover was against it.

Sweeney: But it passed when Coolidge was President didn’t it?

Shafer: No. No. Wait a minute. Yes. It passed then. We were trying to get it paid, you see. What they did, Andrew Mellon, now he was the smartest financier they say ever lived -- the 5th richest man in the world. When he got in there, and said it [the bonus] would bankrupt the nation if it passed. So, eighty-two millionaires committed suicide soon afterwards. You see, we have a lot of people don’t know it, but we had a depression just as the war stopped, about say six months afterwards, but we come out of that quick. That is the United States come out of it, but not down here in Norfolk. We didn’t have but one party down here and they ran all of the Yankees out that came here during the war, and all the Tarheels back to North Carolina. And we had a depression here. But the United States went into a Boom, you see, the stock market and all. And this, he [Mellon] said now, “I will not allow it to pass. Now I want you men in Congress that’s got some brains, even if you’ve got patriotism and you want to give it to the fellows, all right I can’t stop you. But I’m telling your right now, you’re going to bankrupt this nation if you pay it in cash.

Well all the big people wanted to use these veterans for strikebreakers. So he got them to make it into a "tombstone certificate" as I recall and later it was called by the papers as that. So to fool the veteran, to make him feel good, if he had $350 - $400 coming to him, they multiplied 25 years [worth of] interest on it, compounded interest, which give him instead of $350 -- he got a due bill or “tombstone certificate” for say $1,500. They looked nice, to be paid in 25 years. And I wrote a letter in order to get it through. I wrote to every congressman and senator, [saying] that Andrew Mellon was guilty of murder. But every newspaper in America said it’s been seventy-nine or eighty-nine millionaire suicides since he made that statement. And they know the bonus was going to pass, because it was due to the men. And therefore, he’s guilty of murder. Well I caught the devil about that letter. But anyway, I still believe it was so. That the people had so much confidence in him, the money people, that they thought the country was going to hell if they ever paid it [the bonus]. So he got it made into the “tombstone certificate.”

All right, so I met General McNada (?). I had gotten in with him in Mason City, Iowa; who was a very wealthy man, the president of a bank, and owned a big cement plant worth $10 million. And I had him made national commander of the American Legion. Didn’t even know him, but he passed a resolution at the state convention of Iowa, cussing out the fellows for fighting it [the bonus], the Wall Street fellows for fighting it. He was a banker and went to Harvard. He went out himself and sent a letter to every man that signed against the bonus in Wall Street that he went to school with at Harvard, and told them that they were cowards and everything else for fighting these boys. He said, "If you would've been in France with me and seen what them boys went through, you wouldn't do it." So I said, “Uh-Uh.” Some of the men in the Legion were double-crossing the veterans. They'd come to Washington while we were debating the bonus and say, “I recommend that you postpone it another year, until we can take a poll of all the states and all that stuff” -- to delay it, you see. And then the politicians would give that fellow a big job in Washington, that state commander, for helping them delay it. So McNada, I said if we could get a fellow like him, Commander of the American Legion – I had no pull with the Legion, at all. Half of the Legion was fighting it [the bonus], but the VFW was for it from the start.

Sweeney: Why were they against it?

Shafer: Well, the Legion is more for the social set and the politicians of America. And those boys would -- anybody could join the Legion even if you were just the head of a Red Cross area or something of that kind, but the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) had in their bylaws that no man could be a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars unless he had fought in foreign waters or on foreign soil. So, he had to be a seasoned soldier or sailor for his country. And that's the reason I was so happy when they made me an honorary member. I'm one of the few honorary members in America. I think it’s one more, some senator or congressman that is. And Elmer Thomas was one, and I was one. We were made about the same time -- thirty years ago, I guess. And that’s the honorary certificate they gave me. Then they stopped making honorary members, and they don’t make ‘em any more. So all of us have died off, practically. I understand from some congressman that there’s only 2 or 3 of us left. Now then, the bonus comes down. Then come the sure enough fight. Wright Patman (SP) had gotten into Congress from Texas. And Wright was a wounded veteran, and he could say anything he wanted and they’d never buck it. And he was one of the straightest men to the day he died that I ever knew. Last time I saw him just before he died, they broke his heart, they bought off some of the members of his committee.

He was the first man to investigate Watergate. And when he asked for the subpoena powers, they bought enough of his Democratic friends to kill it, so they didn’t give him that power. As luck would have it, it fell in the hands of a senator from North Carolina, a former judge. And I don't believe that any other man in that Congress or Senate could have ever done the job that North Carolina senator did because he was a seasoned judge. And when they put those millionaire lawyers one after another on that Watergate stuff. Plenty of them, I guess, got $100,000 for their work. And they used dollar and a half words, and tried to snow ‘em down. But this old boy from North Carolina would say, “I’m just a small lawyer from- judge from North Carolina and those big words you use don’t mean a thing to me. Just get to the subject, and let’s move along through this thing. What we are after is not a lot of oratory. What we want is honesty and integrity.” And that’s what makes the country gold. What made America great was the honesty and integrity.

So when the bonus was passed, now here’s the joke on Mellon, the smartest financer in the world. They paid the bonus face value and we made them pay 10 or 15 years early, and they got the interest clean up to the 25 years and never took it off the bill—paid the face value on it. So it cost the government at least $1 billion more by Andrew Mellon's smart trick to fool the veterans than if they had paid it when they started to. And they used this argument that the veterans would throw the money away on whiskey, and women, and a big time. Veterans are no different from anybody else. Just like right next to me. They cut this farm up right next to me, professor, and the year the bonus was paid in the thirties. Thirty-two houses or thirty-four, I forget which, was built on this adjoining farm that year and sold. All but two of ‘em paid the down payment with the bonus money when they got it. So that shows you where the money went. Now of those that would do it, would throw it away – they’d throw it away anyways. They were no different because they had a uniform on. They had another thing you know the race thing. It ain’t nothing new. This stuff ya’ll read about now. That’s nothing new. Why they used to say up there to me, “You go ahead and put that bonus through. You ain’t got no better sense. You’ll never get a nigger to work on a farm, he’ll have ________, the farms will go up in grass, till the money gives out on ‘em. So I suggested at the hearing up there one day that if ya’ll are worried about the black man getting his bonus and think it’s going to ruin labor, put a pair of dice in each one. You say they’re “loose headed” and “crapshooters”. Put a pair of dice in each one, but go ahead and pay the bonus anyway. And after that, they used to call me “Dice” Shafer around Washington. But the bonus it did a lot of good.

Sweeney: Now Roosevelt vetoed the bill to pay it?

Shafer: Oh yes—Now Roosevelt, his way was worth something. A lot of people say, “Why do you call Roosevelt a friend of the veterans?” Roosevelt was a friend of the veterans! Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of War - Navy during the first World War. And he told me that when he got out of that and then ran for

Vice-president, you see. He ran for Vice-president on the ticket with some other Democrat, and he got licked. So Tommy Hall came to him, he said. And he said, “Now listen Frank. You’ve got everything that goes to make a good politician. You’ve got a good gift of gab. You’ve got good looks. You’ve been all over the world and you can talk about any subject. You’ve had a lot of experience. A wonderful education. But you’ve got to cut this mess out about being for the people. We run the country – the politicians. Now I’ll tell you what you do. If you will come in with us and from now on let us call the signals, we’ll keep you in a job as long as you live.” He says, “I’ve got news for you, the Roosevelt family made enough money and put out the interest so that all of us Roosevelt's in New York can live from now on, on the interest of the money of our fore parents. So I don’t have to crawl to anybody. If I run for any other office, I’m going to do something that I think I’m doing somebody some good.

So he finally ran for governor of New York and got that. Well when he got that he set ‘em crazy. They spent millions to try to get rid of him. They black balled him, black listed him, and everything else. So when it came down to Washington, they shut the money off on him when he wanted to sell some bonds. And I was in Senator Elmer Thomas' office, Senator from Oklahoma, and I said, “Elmer, why don’t you go down and tell him about that Thomas amendment bill about cutting the value of money in half. He can print the money and you won’t have to sell any bonds if you don’t want to sell the bonds to him or buy the bonds.” And they were ticking, and there was a committee in Washington then that shut off on bonds and ___________ committee. He said, "Bruce, I wouldn't trust any son-of-a-gun from New York. The banks control that gang. They've come out and got mortgages on our farms and took them way from the people during the depression."

They didn’t like New York. Well, __________. The West had been mad with them for being through that depression and they took advantage of them. I said that they don’t control this fellow because I was in New York in the produce business, and I know they done everything in the world to get rid of him, except kill him. They spent millions to ruin him. So finally he said, “Alright I’ll call him [Roosevelt] up.” So he called him up and told him about this idea of cutting the value of money in half and what this Thomas Amendment would do or did do. He said, “Have you got any copies of it.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Bring me several of them [the copies] up to the White House right now.” So he said to me, he said, “I’m going on up there, but I know what they’re going to get the same old thing. New York will leave you when the bank phones them and they’ll do what Wall Street says.

When he come back, he was all smiles. He said, “When I got to the White House, he had the Secretary of the Treasury was sitting on one side of him and the Attorney General on the other. He said if you want to give me one of the copies of the bill to each one of them. He said, “Is this legal?” How long would it take you to print to the treasury? How long would it take you to print a billion paper dollars? He said, “I can print ‘em in a week or something like that time.” [He said,] “Alright, go back to the banks and tell them we don’t care if they buy them or not.” So the banks came back then and said they’d take half the billion, or half the money. I think it was half a billion. But they wanted to raise the interest rates _______-two percent. So he says, you go back and tell ‘em we don’t really care whether they take them or not. We won’t pay any interest. We’ll print the money. We can cut the money in half. Under this Thomas amendment, we’ll go ahead and print the money. So then they agreed to take ‘em. And then he said, “I’ll print whatever interest I want on them.” And he took him less money, when he owed 75 billion to pay the interest it did when they owed 50 or 40 billion. Because he cut it every time it come due. Every time he it come up he’d cut another half a percent off. I think he had the interest rate down from 4% to 2% before he got through giving the poor [some] food. And—

Sweeney: So anyway, why did Roosevelt veto the bonus? That was the question. [both laugh]

Shafer: Oh yes- now you don't have to see this gray hair to know that I'm getting old. All right. He originally vetoed the bonus. He made a pledge. You know they were all suspicious that that’s what he was going to do. Because he was a great friend of the veterans and had been mixed up in with military stuff all his life. So he made a pledge that he wouldn't pass – wouldn’t okay the bonus until he balanced the budget. Well the budget was unbalanced, you see, when he went in, and never did get balanced. The budget was practically exploded while Hoover was there, you see. There's another thing about Hoover--he was honest as the days are long, but he didn't know the American people. He's the man [who] busted half the banks in America. The people hadn't gotten real panicky, but they were, you know, feeling the depression. But a few wealthy people, he found out, was drawing their money

out of the banks, and getting it into currency, and putting it in safe-deposit boxes or carrying it to Europe to put in boxes. So he made a statement. I remember it as good as if it was yesterday. I read it in my morning paper. "If you wealthy people and smart people don't stop drawing your money out of the bank and putting it in your safe-deposit boxes or hiding it, I'm gonna have a law passed to handle you like you should be handled. You're unpatriotic!" Well, when I read that, the millionaires were drawing their money out, I was a little ________, but I had a few hundred [dollars] in the bank. I went down first thing in the morning and drew half of mine out and put that in a safe-deposit box.

So when I went out, we had a president of the bank. I had my box at the biggest bank in Norfolk, the National Bank of Commerce, which is now the Virginia National. And a young fellow from Suffolk that came down to run the bank, my father and I had our money in, in Berkley, named Cahoon, was so good that Mr. Beaman took him over to Norfolk to run his bank. And he became president of it when Mr. Beaman died. So I knew Dick Cahoon [the president of the bank], and I stopped there and I said, “Mr. Cahoon, did you read the morning paper?” He said, “Yes. What about it?” just the nonchalant. I said, “Did you read what Hoover said about the rich people taking their money out of the bank and putting it in boxes? Taking it out of circulation, gonna cause trouble.” [He said,] "I certainly did but I was in the hopes that nobody else had.” I said, “You go down in that basement, right and a safety deposit box. You think they’re ready.” I said, “they’re lined up down there like they’re buying newspapers.” And he said, “Well, don't worry. I've got three truckloads of money coming from the Federal Reserve to keep down there. No run will ever hurt this bank." And it didn't.

Sweeney: One other question about the bonus. Do you think that the veteran’s organizations really helped in getting the bonus put through and getting it paid? Or did they make much difference? Were the veteran’s organizations primarily responsible for getting it?

Shafer: About half of the Legion leaders, the politicians persuaded them against it. As a matter of fact, here in Norfolk where I was spending my money like water to put it over. The American Legion passed…

END OF TAPE 1

Oral History Interview
with
W. BRUCE SHAFER
Norfolk, VA
January 12, 1977
TAPE #2
by James R. Sweeney, Old Dominion University

Shafer: (continued from Tape 1, Side 2) … bankrupt the country. They believed in that mess that was put out by Andrew Mellon and the other people who wanted to use the veterans for strikebreakers. Now, the VFW stuck with it. And when Bob Woodside was national commander of the VFW, he said, "Shafer, we've got plenty of money and you've spent a bunch of money on this thing. You step out of it entirely and let us handle the whole campaign from now on, and I'll give you a check for up to $50,000 for what you've spent." And I said, "Bob, I'm making plenty of money in my business, I didn't go into it for money; I don’t want any money. But, I'm not going to get out of it as long as the politicians are trying to crook the veterans. And they may buy the next leader, in the VFW too. He said, “Well they never have sold out”, but anyway I was skeptical and then I was young. If I was as old as I am now, I’d say, "Give me the $50,000!" But, I didn't.

Now I had three land companies and 650 acres that I was developing, and [I] was getting the Pennsylvania Railroad to build a terminal to join them. And I was selling the lots at a rate of $250 a lot, and I paid $300 an acre average for the 650 acres. And I was getting $2,000 an acre for it retail. But it was on time so much down and so much per month. Well, the politicians had my loans called, and I never made a nickel. I had about $2 million worth of lots. I would say it cost you about half to sell them and collect them, and one thing or another. [I had abou] $1 million worth of property, and I only owed $160,000 or something on it. But I never got 5 cents out of it. I never got 5 cents back that I put in to start. I never got any profit out of it; they blocked it. And they fought everybody. They had a fellow [who was] the head of the Legion one time that was red hot for it before McNada. And he was in the silk business in Philadelphia, I think. They had that man’s loans called and put him in bankruptcy, and made him shut up. They cut his wind off. People who love money will do any thing for it.

Sweeney: Okay now, I guess we've covered the bonus. You ran for City Council in 1928, and you've said many times that you were counted out of that election. Could you tell me about that election and why it is that you felt that you were cheated?

2

Shafer: I ran for the city council about 19--, way back there, 1928 or twenty-something, and they refused to put my name on the ballot. They claimed, the politicians claimed, that my people hadn't paid their taxes. Well, I had 1,000 people sign the petition and I didn’t have to have but 250. But anyway, they wouldn't let my name go on the ballot. So, I made out like that I was licked, and I just shut up, but I ordered 2,000 pencils to write "W. B. Shafer, Jr." on the ballot and draw a line through every other name. And there was two men running, already in there. [One was] the mayor of Norfolk, who had married the richest woman in Norfolk. And so, I carried two memberships in the Chamber of Commerce. And that’s another thing, the Chamber of Commerce in half of the cities, does more harm to the city than they do good. A bunch of big shots get control of them and fight labor all the time; and fight the little fellow and do things to keep business away, instead of enlarging it. And when this campaign went on, they called a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, and had a big meeting, and inflated the mayor who I was running against.

Sweeney: Was that Tyler?

Shafer: Tyler-- Mayor Tyler, whose son was later a senator and his brother-in-law, ____________, was one of the richest men in Norfolk. He [the brother-in-law] owned one of the banks and half of the interest in two or three building loans. So, when this meeting come up, a friend of mine, who I had known for years and [whom] my father had saved from bankruptcy, or kept him from selling his farm; he got in debt to a boiler company [that] he was stockholders in. And my father kept him from selling the farm. That man was the chairman of the committee. And he invited Tyler to make a principal speech. And Tyler stood up there in that meeting and called us young fellows that was running my ticket, "like a bunch of feist [sic] dogs, biting at his ankle." And that kind of stuck. And I had to sit there and swallow it.

And then before I began to put the bonus over, I could walk into any bank in Norfolk and borrow any amount of money that I asked for. As a matter of fact, I loaned more money for northern commission to farmers in this part of the country--Virginia, North Carolina, and Texas -- than any bank in Norfolk ever loaned to farmers. But they put the pressure on me from every angle. I’d go out of town to borrow money, one of the officials at the Pennsylvania Railroad negotiated for me to get $1.5 million for my Pennsylvania (?) town property, the 650 acres adjoining the railroad. I helped the railroad to buy 1000 acres. And I bought 650 [acres] between them and the city. And I’d get a loan out of town. They'd get some banker in town to write ‘em that the land was no good. One time, they wrote them and told them that they would loan them money—I mean that they would sell the land for less money per acre than I was borrowing, to kill off the loan. But it cost them a plenty. They finally blocked Pennsylvania [Railroad] from building. The banks up north found out what was going on, and [then] you couldn't borrow a nickel outside of the city limits on Norfolk real estate for 5 or 10 years.

The depression started in Norfolk in 1920, not 1929 like it did in the United States. We had a legislator here named Dan Coleman, who was a great orator. And Dan had moved here from Danville, Virginia. And Dan used to make a speech, and he said, "You must remember [that] you are not in the United States now, you're in Norfolk." And he would give ‘em the devil, and said that they made the rulings here by who your grandpa was or who you were kin to, and not according to law; that men made ‘em and not the law. And they never could defeat Dan, either. He finally died in the legislature. But that condition goes on. In any city where one party gets control, they’re going to do that, they’re going to dictate to you. Now the year I ran was a funny thing.

There was a young fellow running for commonwealth attorney. And the committee, the Democrat committee, was trying to elect him. And the rich Democrats that controlled the party, or controlled the money, wanted to beat him. And they run one of the political bosses' son against him. And they tied, 3 or 4 of them, and under the Democratic rulings, you had to get a majority to be nominated. This was in the primary, and you had to pay for it. The state didn’t pay for the primary. The candidates paid for it. So these two old men on the city Democratic committee – one was secretary and I think the other one was chairman -- come to me. I was getting my picture in the paper being backwards and forwards from Washington, to the White House, every now and then. And he thought I could help them. So he asked me wouldn’t I help him raise some money? That the primary – that the money was up, and had to pay it in a day or two, and they couldn’t raise this money. I think it was about $700, or $400 or so. So I went with him and raised the money, give him, I think, about $20, and we got 5 or 10 other fellows to give him like amount. And we got the balance money in time to get the man on the ticket and he won!

So that old fellow used to pat me on the head every time he saw me and tell me what a wonderful man I was, and all that stuff. So when I ran for office soon afterward, they come to see me. [They said] “So glad you’re running and hope you get elected. We’ll never forget what you did for us. Now to show you how much we appreciate it, we are going to go fishing on election day and not gonna vote. But I can’t vote for you because your father is a known Republican. And my father,” he said, “would turn over in his grave if he knew his son voted for anybody who had Republican blood in their veins." Because in those days, they used to say [that] anytime you elected a Republican, you'd have black men as judges and in charge of the police departments, and all that kind of – well we used to lose-- I was always nonpartisan. I could never swallow this party stuff. Each party is organized to perpetuate themselves in office, and the professional politician would vote for a yellow dog once he gets on that ticket, against the other. Every election, every four years, my father he was on this Republican—in those days, he was on the Republican committee. They had trouble finding enough Republicans to make up a committee; I used to tell him that you ought to have their meetings in a phone booth. But anyway, he’d go on a committee and help get a few dollars together and to make a— try to put up the opposition; said competition was the life of trade. And another thing, being in business, in those days, the Republicans were for tariffs. And the Democrats were against it. Now it’s no different. The day they took the tariff off potatoes, we had several carloads in New York. We had been getting $2 or $3 a barrel for them every year. We got 70 cents a barrel [that day]. They dumped seven boatloads of German and Dutch potatoes in the New York market, and busted the market, from a couple of dollars down to 70 cents.

Sweeney: That was just before World War I, wasn't it?

Shafer: Yes. That was before the parties took the tariffs. Now there is no difference on the tariffs.

Sweeney: What were some of the issues in that city council election in 1928?

Shafer: Well the city, one of the issues was that [Mayor] Tyler's brother-in-law was a big stockholder, supposed to be, in the attraction company. And he was also the political go-between for two or three big corporations. What the big corporations do, they send money to a leader who is wealthy and who has cut in at a bank – they got power in a bank. Because it is against the law for corporations to give money to elections. So they send it to some rich man that they can trust and they know don’t want the money – don’t need the money. And whatever money they need. And then, he gives it to some lower man down the line, who [then] hands it out to the loaves and fishes politicians, as I call them, or the political prostitutes. I say [that] any man that sells his vote to the detriment of his country is no better than a prostitute who sells her body. And I used to say that on the air, and, of course, they didn't like it. And I don't blame them; I'm too plainspoken for politics. I didn't want to run.

I was backing two men-- one of ‘em was on the board of a bank with my father – on a board of directors, and a very wealthy man -- and the other one was the biggest contractor -- electrical contractor in the south. [They were] Burkhart and Claude Caldwell. Burkhart had given more money to charity than all of the city council put together. And they wanted to build an apartment up by City Park. And it had been two years and they couldn't – they wouldn’t give them a permit. The powers-that-be were saving apartment permits for some of their friends. They call it “we look out for our friends.” So when I got those two to agree to run, and they put their pictures in the paper, they were going to run. I just encouraged them to run and told them that the young fellows would get behind ‘em. I had what was known as the Norfolk Booster Club. Well, sir, when they did that, then they give them the permit. And those two men pulled down and didn't run.

And then the "hatchet-man," I call ‘em, Lionweaver, his name was. We used to call him "Lyingweaver". As a matter of fact, all the politicians used to call him that. Come down, he used to hang out in our real estate office. And the fellow sold my real estate, but he used to hang out in there. And I was in there talking to Stone about putting the sale on the Pennsylvania property and he come in. He said, "Well, I guess you'll keep your damn mouth out of politics now.” He says, “Your team has just pulled down.” I said, “What do you mean?” He says, “Burkhart and what you call him [Caldwell] that you boosted. They pulled down. They are not going to run." Well I said, "If they don't run and we can't get anybody to run, I'll give you all some opposition because all you're in politics for is what money you get on the side. You make more money out of politics than you do working for the newspaper. You know you offered me and stone $3,000 to help put the buses out of business – the ________, they called them, for the benefit of the attractions company."

And you said you’d split it three ways. I’ll take a third. Stone will take a third, my agent here. And you take a third. But they were giving you $3000 to put the buses out of business. Now I’m going to expose you birds, if I have to do it myself. And then I went in-- I got into it [the election] like a fool. I knew I didn't have no business in it because [when] a man is plainspoken, why they'll start all kinds of lies. Why when Curly answered the ad when I run an ad once, saying we wanted to get the best city manager in America, and Curly answered the Mayor of Boston, they would put people around town and tell them from door to door that I was a forerunner of the Al Smith campaign. And that Al Smith and myself were going to bring the Pope over here and take the community over. And I said they’d have thought any darn thing. And I said they’d even proved that I was a Catholic, when I had been a Methodist and a Mason. And I said, “I’ll tell you how they proved it. My father used to be in partners with Jake Shafer who was a Catholic and was on the building committee when the built the big church in Ghent.” And they would tell ‘em, “If you don’t believe that he’s a member of that Catholic church, you look up who was on the building committee and see if a produce man’s son wasn’t on the building committee. And sure enough, Jake, Senior had quit with my father and went into the book business with his son. And everybody knew he had been in the produce business, and they thought I was lying.

Then they turned around and I had a fellow working for me, was a liquor dealer. I never touched a drop of whisky, wine, or beer in my life. And I think a man’s a fool to fool with that stuff. I’ve seen it make dumb men out of smart men, and cripple the best man that ever lived. But they went out and told people that, in this campaign I had about a dozen people phone me about that, do you know I never knew who you were, but they told me, “You are the Shafer that comes up to the Monticello and buys bootleg whiskey from the bell hops. And if they don’t believe it, ask any bellhop in there.” And there was a fellow by the name of Shafer, he looked very much like me, [but he] didn't even live in the city of Norfolk. But he did look a little bit like me. And they went in there

and asked the bellhops, and they told them "Yes." And I went with two or three of these people to check it, and went to the bellhops that told ‘em that they sold me whisky, and they said, “That ain’t the man we sold whisky to. That fellow that we sell whisky to is older than this fellow.” But they got by with it. And they'll do anything in politics.

Now I say this about it, on this Nixon mess. I spent several thousand dollars getting rid of Nixon, and I tried to get rid of Ford. And when I couldn't get rid of him, I advised him to get out [because] he was going to get beat and when he wound up he’d be a hobo. But, he could get out and say he was getting out for the benefit of his wife, and he'd die a hero. As it is now, I doubt if he ever gets elected to anything again. But I don’t think-- I think that Nixon's gang shot Wallace to get him out of the way. Now, I don't think Nixon told them to do it. But, if you’ve got a barrel of money, like they did, look at the oil people and the big shots. Give them fellows a $100 million dollars to debauch politics, and they hired every thug they could hire and put ‘em out to do the best they could to see that nobody beat him. Well you take a man that you hire that’s the scum of the earth and turn him loose with a gun; he's liable to shoot his brother to get a hold of enough money.

Sweeney: We'd better get back to that 1928 election. Okay, so you were on the ballot? You were not on the ballot?

Shafer: Not on the ballot. So they wrote my name on there more times than they voted for the other pair. And I had a man gonna run so the ballot would have to go in the box, you see. And they went to him and promised him a job as lumber inspector, if he would pull his name down so that the ballot wouldn’t have to go in the box unless they were voting for me. Then they could see who was going to the boxes, you see. So, when they found out I was winning, they adjourned the courts and sent the bailiffs and everything out there to do [check] it. And I was endorsing organized labor. And a fellow who had been secretary of the printers' union went for them from place to place to tell them how to stuff the ballot boxes. And he told me later, he said, “Well, I didn’t think you could win no way. And they looked out for me.” He said,” I’ll keep a job as long as I live." And sure enough, they kept that man on the payroll. When he'd lose one job, all he'd do is write the head of the machine or go to see him and he was on another one. He pulled down, and if they couldn't get him a job for the state, they'd get him a job for the government.

Sweeney: Did you ever think of challenging that election result in the court?

Shafer: Oh yeah! Oh yeah! I had trouble getting lawyers. I had to get two lawyers from North Carolina. They were powerful around here, and the lawyers didn't want to go in court and fight ‘em. So got two lawyers from North Carolina, and carried it to court [and] proved that the election was stolen. I didn't know it. Funny thing, you know how ignorant you can get in trouble when you’re young and ignorant. I didn’t’ know what was going on. The next morning, two or three old rich fellows that had bought some stock in some of my land companies, to show you how powerful a dollar is, called me up and said “Ain’t you going to contest the election?” I said, "For what?" Why they said, “They stuffed the ballot boxes. They did everything in the world last night.” And they thought these old fellows were still with the ring, because the old people are usually with the machine. They don’t want to fight. But they had stock in this land company and they knew that if I got in and let the Pennsylvania Railroad build that $100 million terminal that they were blocking, they’d make a lot of money out of the land company, you see. So, they wanted me to go. Well fifty-five people signed affidavits-- [people] that paid taxes on over $1 million dollars worth of property -- that [said] I won the election, and they knew it and showed why the election should have gone to me.

When the judge read that, he says, "I will take this matter under consideration and I’ll give my decision later." We walked up to the arcade building, about two blocks, to get a Coca Cola or something at the soda fountain, and while we were in there, the boys come in selling the first edition [the newspapers] with the decision already rendered which had been written the night before. That's the kind of stuff that goes on in politics. And, so then, they were going to fire 25 or 30 firemen and policemen, see most of the firemen and policemen voted for me. When they usually have to vote for who is in power, and they saw ‘em go to the box and take the paper and write my name on it [the ballots], you see. They’d have to go in behind the booths to do it. And then drop it in the box, where other people just took the ticket and dropped it right in the box. So they had ‘em down and they were going to fire a bunch of them. And their wives thought to call me up, crying and telling me that they were going to lose this and lose the other, and [that] their husband is going to lose his job, and can’t you do something.

So I looked the charter up and I found out that we had a recall on referendums in the charter. So, I started a recall. There’s been ten recalls started and that was the only one that ever got enough names signed to it to have the election over. Well, when they had the election over, they didn't have to steal no votes. They got the elected people; they went to ‘em and told them that the young Bolshevik was taking Norfolk over and that the salaries would be raised and the taxes would be raised on them. And they sent $25,000 down here from Boston. And a man in real estate right across from our office had the dealing of it. And he was one of the appraisers for Norfolk.

So I found out about it through some of my real estate salesmen, and the election was somewheres around Thanksgiving by then, I think. It had been postponed you see after November 1, ‘til you had to have all these recalls, [that] took some time. So I used to have my meetings in the Monticello Hotel. Old Colonel Consolvo owned the Monticello Hotel. And they had raised his taxes two or three for one which was crucifying him. And so, he let me have a room [that would] hold 100 people, and I’d have my meetings in the nights – one meeting a week to get my workers together. So I got up there that night and I told them. I said, “Now listen. Different ones have called me up and told me that they offered $50 or $100. In fact, two of my real estate salesmen got $700 apiece to double-cross me and vote in the election. They said they were going to vote for me anyways, but they took their $700 anyhow. And I doubted whether they ever voted for me, because they got a lot of favors at City Hall from then on. But that is the way they do that kind of stuff, and they beat me. I told that crowd that night, “If y’all want some money, if you’re in to it for money, any of you that expect money, I’ve spent all I can spend”. I’d spent $7, $8 or $10 thousand dollars already. I said, “You all go ahead up there to such and such a number. I told them that fellow’s number. “Oh, we wouldn’t think of it. There ain’t money enough to make me go against you, the way you’ve fought for us.” The next morning, I went down early and got in this Stone’s office was right across the hall from this man and watched through the crack of the door. I saw my people coming up there so fast getting on the payroll that it wasn't funny.

Sweeney: Is this the city payroll?

Shafer: No—[they were] getting paid to work for them – paid to go work for them -- [to beat me], and they beat me. They beat us two to one. There wasn’t any doubt about that.

Sweeney: Now you’re talking about which election now? The recall?

Shafer: The recall.

Sweeney: The recall, that’s right. How soon after the other election was that? Was that the next year?

Shafer: No--it was the same year. You have to do it within so-many days [of the other one] or something. I forget what it was. But I know they tried ten of them, in all. But that was the only one that ever got enough, but I never

tried another one. That is the hardest work in the world. You've got to get people to sign these petitions, then they take ‘em from you and the court takes them and hangs ‘em up in a fire department. And then, the people have got to voluntarily go in there, without any assistance, and sign those papers. And they got the names and addresses of every one of your workers. You see. So. And they’ve got unlimited money. All they do-- I was on the board of two banks for a while there, and all they have to do is scare these big corporations that do business in the city. See now this other fellow running is going to ruin y’all if you get in. Now we’ve got a draft on you for so much money to protect your property. You see. And see that you’re not treated wrong. And they’ve got a draft on ‘em and I understand that they’ve got about a five-corporation line draft on ‘em of $5 thousand dollars a piece each year. Of course, that’s an unlimited amount in those days for the city. I don’t know how much it pays now, because I don’t pay any attention to it. I wouldn't run for office today. Why it’s almost public property that’s bought and sold. You see, look at even the Presidential election, and all. And I don't think that -- nothing will stop it; it's gotten to be so commercial. That--

Sweeney: I think we’re going to have to stop now. Thank you very much, Mr. Shafer. We will get back for a second session.