Amanuensis Monday - Howard Matthews' Story #16 - Post-Wesleyan

In the 16th installment of my grandfather's story he is deciding what to do after Wesleyan, working and studying in New York City and getting married.

By the time I reached my Senior year at Wesleyan, I decided that Business would be my career field. I was accepted at Harvard Business School and was assured of financial help by Mrs. Manville, but the burden of debt I had already incurred and the fear of adding to it influenced me in a decision to embark at once in business. At that time the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants was appealing to liberal arts college seniors to consider going into Public Accounting under a program whereby they would place graduates with CPA firms regardless of whether they had any knowledge of accounting. Their program was based on the expectation  that men with a liberal arts background supplemented by the CPA staff on-the-job training would up-grade the accounting profession.

I applied and was sent by the Institute to be interviewed by a New York City firm. I was received by the top partner of the firm who engaged my in an hour-long conversation of Plato! However when I learned that this firm, although highly regarded, was not national in scope, I decided to talk it over with Mike (Cornelius) Berrien, a Vice President of the Hanover Bank (now Manufacturers Hanover) in New York, who graduation from Wesleyan in 1896, was a member of my fraternity and had told me that if I ever needed a recommendation he would give it. He agreed that a connection with a large national and international firm would be preferable. He then scribbled a note to Andrew Stuart, a partner in Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., 40 Exchange Place, N. Y. City and told me to deliver it. I did and was hired effective the following September, 1928.

Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co was, still is, large, with offices all over the USA and the world. The New York City office was a staff of 400. They gave a series of training classes for their junior staff members but, in addition, I enrolled in the School of Business at Colombia University, attended evening classes there for three years, 1928-1931, and lived in John Jay Hall on its campus. the classes met from 6 to 10 pm which meant that frequently I had my evening meal at 10:30. At the end of my three years, the Dean of the school urged my to give up my job and take a year of day-time classes in order to qualify for an MBA degree. I could not afford it, wanted to get married and anyway my goal was a CPA degree, which is a State-granted degree and, at that time, required 5 years experience in accounting and auditing in addition to passing State examinations. Perhaps this was a mistake in my part, as ears later, the top partner in PMM & Co told me they no longer hired anyone without an MBA degree. However, by this time, I was beginning to think I did not wish to stay in accounting all my life, but I continued to study on my own after we were married and at the completion of 5 years in public accounting took the State exams. On January 30, 1934 I was notified that I had passed all of the exams in Auditing, in Theory and Practice, in Accounting and in Law. (Of the 1,500 who sat for these exams 4 ½% passed them). I was granted my degree (CPA) by the University of the State of New York as of March 16, 1934 and a short time later was admitted to membership in the American institute of Certified Public Accountants and have remained a member in good standing for 48 years as of 1983.

My work as a member of the NYC staff of PMM & Co was enjoyable, tedious, demanding, tiring and exciting. It was varied: Cartiers and American Cynamid on 5th Avenue; banks and brokerage houses on Wall Street and in Newark; manufacturers in Rome and Rochester, NY; the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, etc, etc. The Cartiers assignment was an interesting one. It involved determining, in the place of the management, the amount of commission to be paid each salesman, each month. This may sound simple but it was not. It involved reviewing all of the charges to customers accounts (none of their customers every paid cash) and all of the credits for payments and items returned. And if a salesman had received a commission for an item later returned, it was deducted from his future earnings. And there were other complicated rules that had to be observed; the rate of commission, was it to be shared with another salesman, etc. so that the work of an independent auditor was desired. And the amounts involved were fabulous.

The hours in public accounting were horrendous, especially in the first 3 months of the year when, for weeks on end, we worked every night until midnight. And at other times, bank audits and brokerage house audits, which always were "surprise" audits, required that we stay on the job the first day until all the cash was accounted for and all vaults secured. I arrived home many nights at 1:00 am and had to be up and off again at 7 the next morning.

These were not easy times. The great depression brought bank closings, stock market failures and many people out of work. The size of PMMs staff was reduced 50% but fortunately I was retained although at a 10% reduction in salary the first year of our marriage. But with Dagmar's good management we lived through it, budgeted entertainment at 50¢ per week, dabbled in a few investments and even bought a second-hand Chevy.

The happy couple with Dean Chanter

Dagmar and I were married on September 19, 1931 by Dean William George Chanter of Wesleyan University (an ordained Methodist Episcopal minister) at Dagmar's brother's home in Manchester, CT. The pastor of her own Lutheran Church had refused use of her church by a non-Lutheran minister. The reception was held at the home of her parents. We set up housekeeping in East Orange, New Jersey, from whence I commuted to New York via the Lackawanna railroad. My brother Charles and his wife Nellie also lived in East Orange and he commuted to his job as Assistant Treasurer of the Pittston Company in the Empire State Building in New York.

Next week, in my grandfather's words, fortuitous happening #3.

Amanuensis Monday - An Ouside Job, Losing Mother and Higher Education?

Pittston Methodist Church, Pittston, PA - 2013

This is the 11th installment of the autobiography of my paternal grandfather, Howard B Matthews.  This part starts from the time he decided a job with the mine company but outside the mine itself would be safer.  At 18, already without a father, he loses his mother as well and has to start living with siblings.  Then he decides that there may be a better life for him if he can find a way to get back to school, but not just any school.

Because World War I was in process, it was easy to find jobs.  So I became shipper at the Exeter mine of the L.V. Coal Co. located just south of West Pittston. As the 3-ton cars of coal came up from the mine, they were hoisted to the top of a 5-story building called a Breaker.  There the contents were dumped into revolving crushers which reduced the larger mined pieces to the various smaller sizes which were needed in the commercial markets. Then the coal went through large tanks of water which removed, by a flotation process, the chucks of rock or slate. Finally, the now almost pure coal was run across a series of punched hole plates which sorted the coal into various sizes, - egg, chestnut, pea, buckwheat, etc. Each size was then loaded into 40 or 60 ton railroad hopper cars, for shipment via railroad to customers.

As Shipper, I sat in a glass enclosed office at a desk in front of which, within my reach, was the arm of a balance scale (similar to the small one on bathroom scales, with a sliding weight to move the balance). Outside, 6 feet below, was the scale platform crossed by railroad tracks which ran from above the Breaker to the RR classification yard beyond the scale. The loaded railroad cars moved by gravity and it was my job to read the name and number of the car (like C&O 13400) and its empty weight (printed on the car) and then weigh it as it passed slowly over the platform scale. Sometimes I missed, if the car happened to be going too fast, and this enraged the railroad conductor because he then had to have that car snaked out of those already in the yard and rerun over the scale.

During pauses in the line of cars coming from the Breaker, I phoned the sales office of the LV Coal Co in Wilkes-Barre and told them what I had already, -- so many cars of Pea, so many Chestnut, etc. soon they would phone back to give me instructions as to whom and where each car was to be shipped. Then to guarantee correct information I had to spell back to them the names and destinations, numerically. For example, Joe Jones, Port Jervis, NY would be J the 10th (letter of the alphabet), O the 15th, E the 5th and so forth.  With practice this became easy and I could spout it back to them fast. Following this I would record the complete information in the log book, with a carbon to Wilkes-Barre, and prepare a Way-Bill for each car and hand them to the RR Conductor.

I don't remember exactly how long I held that job but when the position of Supply Clerk became vacated by an older man who left for war, I was offered the promotion and accepted it. Thus I became the youngest Supply Clerk in the whole Lehigh Valley Coal Co. This involved ordering, receiving and disbursing all kinds of materials needed by the miners and other workers and it included dynamite, blasting powder, and percussion caps.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law Will Ahlers and my brother Charles left the Lehigh Valley Coal Co to accept similar positions with the Racket Brook Coal Co in Carbondale at the northern end of the anthracite region. Soon thereafter my mother passed away and I was left alone at age 18 and wen to live with brother Fred and later my sister Lillian's family, both in West Pittston. Then I too was offered and accepted a position at Racket Brook and moved to Carbondale to live with the Ahlers. Following the annual coal miners' strike (John L. Lewis called a strike every Labor Day) during which I was told I could either go on leave without pay or become a night watchman with pay, I accepted the latter, was handed a 45 revolver and was told to do night guard duty, 7 pm to 7 am. But I soon tired of this, resigned and took a position as a cost accountant with The Cross Engineering Co in Carbondale.

During this time, I continued to be active in the Methodist Church, especially among the young people in the Epworth League and had frequent contact with the pastor's family, especially his son, Charles Olmstead, who was then a Sophomore at Wyoming Seminary, a preparatory school in Kingston, Pa. founded in 1844. This opened my eyes to the desirability and possibility of more formal education although my  total assets at that time were $90 invested in Southern Pacific stock and a cut-down Ford with no windshield or mudguards.  Nevertheless, I went down to Wyoming in the summer of 1922 and was interviewed by President Levi Sprague. When I disclosed my assets Dr. Sprague said that the $90 would not be sufficient for the tuition, room and board bills and that all jobs available to students had already been spoken for for the coming year.

What happens next?  Come back next week to find out more.

Amanuensis Monday - Life in the Mines

This is the 10th installment of my grandfather, Howard B Matthews', story.  In the last installment, his father, Arthur William Matthews, passed away at the age of 71, when my grandfather was only 14.  The following year, after the family moved out of Pittston, it was decided that my grandfather should leave school and contribute to the income of the family so that his brother Charles could be married.




After his father's death, my grandfather's family had to sell everything and move out of Pittston. 

The mechanic to whom I was assigned was named Jerry, an Englishman.  His shop, equipped with benches and tools, was located in a whitewashed and well lighted area near the foot of the shaft.  It was his job to maintain and sometimes replace the steam operated pumps which controlled the level of constantly dripping water in the mine, and various other machinery throughout the mine.  He took me on his rounds of many areas and levels of the mine, packing valves, tightening pipe joints, replacing clutch facings, etc., warning me to watch out for bare overhead wires, teaching me not to panic if my light blew out.  When later he trusted me to make a miles long trip alone, getting there, making a minor repair, getting back, -- a walk of several miles without meeting a soul, it was for me a major victory.  But Jerry could be tough; he chewed tobacco, began and ended every sentence with a curse and vowed that he would kill me if I ever missed the cutting tool that he was holding and I was supposed to hit with a sledge hammer. I never missed.  It took me years to get over thinking sentences without cuss words in them.

Soon it became apparent that what the Super really hired me for was to be the keeper of the Yardage Books.  In these were kept a record of the length and thickness of the rock a miner had to blast down and load in order to get the number of loaded cars he and his helpers produced and he was paid additionally for the aforesaid hindering rock.  He was an independent contractor and could hire as many helpers as he wished.  The payment for rock made up for any slowing down in his coal production.

In every two-week pay period I had to accompany the Assistant Superintendent, Malachi Glennon, on a tour of the entire mine, right up to the “face” of each of the scores of chambers (tunnels) where the actual  mining, the blasting and loading of coal was going on.  As we came to each area we were met by its foreman who accompanied us over his “workings”.  His primary responsibility was to push for loaded cars to meet the daily goals set by the Super but he of course knew of the problems encountered by his miners and he guided us in the allowances I entered in the yardage book.

These journeys were very interesting and I was either too young or too dumb to recognize the dangers although they did expose me to many of the dangers associated with underground mining.  Certainly, as I recognized later, I was safer just being with Malachi Glennon, a wonderful man then in his 50’s, huge but not fat, red-faced, redolent of last night’s liquor, but a kindly family man, father of a young man who was a stationary engineer at the head of one of the slopes I have described.

Malachi and I together were involved in two of the kind accidents typical of mining,  - a gas explosion and a fall-of-rock, otherwise known as a roof cave in.

Mines are ventilated by a forced air system which brings fresh air from outside, through the long tunnels and then by a series of doors and temporary movable ducts, called brattice-work, right up to where the miners are working at the face of the chambers.  The force of a sudden release of a pocket of gas, ignited either by blasting powder or any source of sparks or flame, reverses the flow of air, blasts open the control doors and scatters particles of coal and rocks. It was the air reversal and flying specks hitting us in the face that told Malachi what was happening. He immediately threw me to the ground and covered me with his own body.  We lay there while the burning gas, rolling along about 2 feet below the ceiling, burned itself out without harm to us.  Had there been enough gas to fill the entire tunnel we would have been burned to a crisp.

Again in the roof cave-in, because of his many years of experience, Malachi understood the implications of the sounds he heard, - the cracking of roof rock and the groaning of support timbers.  He pushed me ahead and we ran as tons of rock and timbers crashed behind.

It was some time after these events that Malachi asked me what I intended to do with my life and what were my ambitions.  I replied that I would like a job like his.  Malachi stared at me a while and then said: “Howard, get the hell out of here before you get kilt”. Probably after saving me twice he didn’t want to stretch our luck. Because of his concern and the knowledge that my working underground was worrying my mother sick, I decided to give it up despite the fact that inside jobs paid much better than outside jobs.  Besides, it was hurting my social life for, scrub as I did every day, it was difficult to get that coal dust out of my pores.  When I perspired it oozed out of my pores.  I remember one Sunday when I walked Miss Celeste Bonti home after Epworth League and her mother met us at the door and said, “Howard Matthews, don’t let me catch you kissing my daughter”.  (Actually, I had a find social life, unhindered by my job.)  I have wondered since why the family permitted me, at age 16, to go into the mines in the first place.  Around Pittston it might have been considered a natural thing to do, but we were living in Forty Fort, a rather affluent suburb.

In the next installment, my grandfather sees what can come from a good education and is determined not only to go back to school, but a very good school.

Transcription of above article: Mrs. Arthur Matthews and family, including Mr. & Mrs. William Ahlers, who have lived for many years on Nafus Street, have moved to Forty Fort, which will be more convenient for Mr. Ahlers, who is Chief Clerk for the Lackawanna division of the Lehigh Valley Coal Co. at the Wilkesbarre [sic] office, and also for Chas. Matthews, who is employed as colliery clerk at the Maltby colliery, of the Lehigh Valley.  The Matthews property, on Nafus street, consisting of the homestead and a single dwelling on the rear of the lot, has been sold to the Gaughan family, of Port Griffith, who have already moved to their new home.