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ELLIOTT: Now, Miss Castle, you were Mr. Griffith's secretary for many years; would you like to tell me a little bit about him, what he did, and what he accomplished here in the state?
CASTLE: He came here in 1903 under the then existing forestry law, but he felt he must have a board that wouldn't be 00:01:00changing from one election to another, and his first work was to get the kind of a law that would give security to the work. This he did, and instead of having the state treasurer, the secretary of state and the attorney general as a forestry board, they had the president of the university, the director of the geological survey, the dean of agricultural college and the attorney general and one member to be appointed by the governor. That gave continuity to the board and it was made up of men who were prominent in their spheres and it was thought 00:02:00to be a good board to work with.
ELLIOTT: Did he have much trouble getting that board?
CASTLE: Not that I know of; that was in effect when I came in and for a great length of time it worked very well, but near the end of the work, after forestry work had been declared unconstitutional, a slight weakness developed. It didn't make much difference in the long run.
ELLIOTT: What were some of the outstanding accomplishments during his term in office?
CASTLE: He got this law established which was one of the main things; and the law provided for all the state park lands, the state lands 00:03:00north of township 33, to constitute a forest preserve. That amounted to, well, I think about 40,000 acres then; no, it was more than that, There had been a law passed in 1878 for setting aside 40,000 acres in two of the northern counties as state park lands; they were held for 19 years. Did I give you that date as 1878? I should change that, the date was earlier than that, No, it was in '78. Now in 00:04:00the same year that private operators wanted to get those lands--I'm getting all mixed up here. In 1878, 50,000 acres of state park lands in Iron and Vilas counties were set aside and were held intact for 19 years with no timber cutting at all. But in 1897, the same year that the legislature passed a law, they 00:05:00also yielded to private demands for those lands. And so when Mr. Griffith took over, there was just the fragments left and they were scattered. And of course he took only the most northern of the lands and his immediate work was to protect them from fire and to block up the reserve by selling the scattered lands or those that were good for agriculture and buying others. Then the federal department gave the state 40,000 acres, 20,000 acres I should say. And 00:06:00Mr. Griffith was acquainted with the son of the big lumberman Weyerhauser, Frederick Weyerhauser, and through that friendship he persuaded them to give their lands in Douglas County on the Brule River and he got 4,000 acres through that. And as time went on, through sale and purchase, the reserves had 425,000 acres when the work was moving along nicely. Well, there came again private demand and some hostility. As fast as a large tract was purchased, it was taken off the tax rolls up north. The town officers objected strenuously to that. 00:07:00There was an inequitable method of taxation; that is, where the farmer paid one tax on his field crop, the lumberman paid a tax every year on his timber crop and, of course, that was an incentive to him to cut and sell. Then the town officers, of course, wanted to hold those lands and get the income and that resulted, to some extent, in their juggling their boundaries of the towns and getting lands that were far distant from the center of the town. Well, of 00:08:00course, where there was a good stand of timber, they liked to get that in their boundaries. And the land salesman and the local man objected to this loss of taxes, and of course, the more land the forestry board had, the more it shut out their purchasers. Well, the forestry board did pay the expense of making roads; they hadn't gotten far enough to contribute to the government or the schools at that time, but it was admitted that it was the just thing to do. But they finally, when the work was well off in progress and a great deal had been 00:09:00accomplished, some of the men organized and attacked … They brought a lot of men down with them, were said to have held a rehearsal at one of the hotels, and then came over to the Capitol for a hearing. It was a little amusing when they started questioning some of these men. They didn't know quite what to say when they were questioned about the character of soil. I cannot see where the character of the soil had a great deal to do with the reserve because there were likely to be killing frosts every month of the year and the potato crop is a short term crop--They do raise potatoes in the more northerly regions and there 00:10:00were some cranberry marshes which could be protected from frost by flooding--But for general crops it was again. In fact, when one legislative committee went up to investigate conditions, they found immature grain, corn or something, in the silo. Well, of course, that didn't deter the opposition, I was myself at the headquarters camp of the forestry region one time, when a man who had apparently tried to make a home up there and had been employed to some extent by the 00:11:00forestry board gave up. He had planted, I heard, five bushels of potatoes and had harvested seven; and I saw them, this man and his wife and a young child in a stroller, another I believe in prospect, start off through the woods by foot, probably to the railroad, and they were going back to Racine. I do not doubt that there were other instances similar for people who tried to make homes up there. The lands had been exploited. Dean Russell, who was one member of the board, thought all lands should be utilized to the best of their ability, but it 00:12:00seemed to me it was a mistake to decide anything on soil alone when you had to consider temperature and the length of the growing season. Well a map of that, and there is one I think in one of the federal bulletins that showed the length of the growing season in every county, is very revealing. That bulletin was made by Fillebrit Rowe, He was dean of forestry at the University of Michigan and he was called in to make a preliminary survey which was entitled "Forestry 00:13:00Conditions and Interests in Wisconsin." Two of the state boards contributed a little money; I'm not sure just which ones, but I think it might have been the soil survey and the geological survey, but he secured the cooperation of the railroads and of prominent men in the area, and they were interested, Of course, it meant a great deal for the railroads to have traffic up there and the lumbermen had cut their lands and they were ready to give them up. In fact, in many cases there were large firms, non-residents, and when they were through lumbering there were slashings left, the land had been cut over and a good deal 00:14:00burned over, and the state could buy it very cheaply in large tracts. Mr. Griffith had really great progress in every line of forestry work. They had erected steel watch towers at several points, 40 to 60 feet they were planned, and they were erected on high ground. Telephone lines had been established to connect the towers with each other and with other points where they could summon help. And, of course, during the dry season they would keep a man on the tower 00:15:00watching, and by communicating with the other towers, they could spot where there was smoke. The main idea being, really, to head off a fire before it got really started. There was a system of fire wardens--, in the beginning this was a town officer. Well, there again, the election at regular intervals would change the town officers and it was expensive and difficult to keep up even with their names and addresses. But there was that system and it was planned to change that so as to get again a more stationary officer. The nurseries, forest 00:16:00nurseries, had been established at the headquarters camp and a great deal of work had been done in cleaning out old logging roads and other roads perhaps some of the rights of way of logging railways, and trying to make separate districts and make it easier to get back and forth in case of fire or other work. Well, as soon as the fires were under control, the young growth started very quickly, even on the cut over lands, and of course there were some plantings besides, and it was thought that that would benefit the resort area. 00:17:00There were a good many resorts up there. But, of course, one of the main problems was to reforest the headwaters of the large rivers. The first work on that was done on the Chippewa River and later on the Wisconsin. There was a natural reservoir region up there, many lakes, many marshes, and it so happened that about a third of the territory was a natural reservoir region. The next third of the rivers had the maximum fall which produced water power. The water power was of very great use in this state because there was no coal. And then 00:18:00the lower third of the rivers, approximately a third, furnished the navigation. And in time the establishment of the reservoirs was brought under control to some extent by law so that the forestry board or conservation commission had some say in where they should be established and how they should be conducted. Then there was also a plan to establish cabins for T.B. patients. And every line of forestry work--the instruction of people interesting them in woodlot 00:19:00establishment had been undertaken; and there was instruction at the University for forest rangers--a good many were employed, especially during the season--and ultimately I think there would have been a forestry course. They succeeded, Mr. Griffith with the aid of our member of congress-Senator LaFollette was at that time in congress and Congressman Morse helped very much--and they procured the Forest Products Laboratory for this region. Well, that gave us trained men who could be used. Mr. Griffith was at the University and there was no forestry 00:20:00school at that time, so he left and went to study his chosen profession where he best could. That took him to Germany and Austria where he worked or studied in the forests. He went to India and had some very interesting experiences to tell there. There was a region where they practiced polyandry and when he needed men, he went to the wife and she hired out her crew to him. He also told about seeing the elephants who were employed there in the lumbering and it seems almost incredible--we've seen them in pictures dragging the logs--but he spoke of an 00:21:00elephant piling them and straightening up one that wasn't level. And his work carried him also into the Philippines and the… I'm told he was twice in Germany and Austria. Then he worked for a while under a Doctor Schenk at the Biltmore Forest on the Vanderbilt estate near Ashville. Dr. Schenk later started a forestry school. In the Black Hills, he was in the work of planning forestry 00:22:00work. There was something that the federal service gave; it was free planning to people that were interested, I suppose, in large forestry work and he was there two seasons--I think first on the planning, and I just don't know what he did the second season; but his work brought him into contact with many prominent men and especially in the forestry service.
ELLIOTT: He set up a school in later years where the old meister school techniques, wasn't it?
CASTLE: Do you mean Mr. Griffith?
ELLIOTT: Yes.
CASTLE: I hadn't heard 00:23:00of that. I heard that he undertook someone proceeding when he went back east, but he was a man of independent means and excellent background in every way, rigidly honest and very devoted to his work and to the success of it. When finally succeeded in bringing the matter before the courts and having it tested for constitutionality, it was largely on the grounds of what constituted internal improvements. One of the judges considered the forestry work a matter 00:24:00of internal improvement, It seemed to me that that was wrong, Internal improvements have to do with communications in the legal sense: docks, forests, forts, railroads and canals, telephone lines, telegraph lines--I never could see that the forestry work had anything to do with internal improvements, It was internal and it was an improvement. In a legal sense, it didn't seem to me it 00:25:00came under ... there were some other complications, The reserve was kept intact but Mr. Griffith didn't care to continue in a restricted position, I don't think it's generally known, but the governor called him in and offered him the position of remaining in charge of what was left, but he didn't care to stay.
ELLIOTT: What was his reason for wanting to leave then?
CASTLE: Well, of course the land no longer belonged strictly to the reserve. That is, 00:26:00they were called state lands; they could be administered to some extent; but the money wouldn't be under the control of the forestry board. They reconstituted the work under a conservation commission. That was made up of the fish and game commission, the forestry board, and the parks. That really was intended to subordinate the forestry work. They called back the old assistant state forester 00:27:00to take over this department and he came here not knowing that the effort was to subordinate the work and that he wouldn't have the privileges the other forester had. He would have to submit to the general board, and the head of the fish commission was one of the strong men on that board. Moody, the assistant state forester who headed it, I'm pretty sure would not have come--he talked to me about it--if he had known what he was coming into, But you can see that this hostility that had developed had made a difference; and unfortunately individual 00:28:00demands had much more weight with legislators than the general welfare. That you could see when after holding the state park lands for 19 years they gave up and let them be purchased. At that time, my father was in the state land office, He was there for many years and headed it in the later years that he was there. I think he was the one referred to in one of the publications who obtained a request from one of the senators detailing the sales of lands, and it was astonishing what large areas were being sold to a few purchasers, But they could 00:29:00buy them, strip them; then later the time came when they could be sold back.
ELLIOTT: Was the forestry board able to, or did they try to counsel the Weyerhausers and the other lumbermen on how to cut the timber lands that they had?
CASTLE: That came a little later. There had been a lot of cutting done when they came. In fact, those lands had been pretty well cut over, I think, and some of them burned over. Weyerhauser was really a man and his interests had been transferred, to the west coast largely I think; but the sons, maybe the family, I believe had a cottage on Buck Island where Mr. Griffith went for his summer vacations and it was through that that they obtained the Brule 00:30:00River lands… came later. Of course, they put students out to make measurements and determine the rate of growth on different varieties of the trees and they found that they could get merchantable timber in 30 years from some kinds of pine. But they did advocate woodlots and county lots where the land came in through their not paying taxes on it. That proceeded for a long time under 00:31:00Frederick Wilson who not long ago retired from the conservation commission; and a great deal of progress had been made on that. In fact, he told me about telling a dean of the agricultural college how large amounts of county lands had been put under forests. The dean said, "Shocking!" He had advocated agricultural development and that's being carried on today a good deal.
ELLIOTT: What were the major problems that the forestry board faced here aside from this 00:32:00opposition on the part of the county boards? Did they have any other particular problems that they had to face, education problems or whatever?
CASTLE: I wouldn't say that they had education problems. You mean educating the public?
ELLIOTT: Yes.
CASTLE: Oh, Mr. Griffith made many addresses and the office put out articles, publicity and all that; and I think that there was a strong sentiment for forestry even before he came. He was brought here after the first law was passed, two years before he got the law he wanted. But there's always hostility between these different interests, just as the cow man and 00:33:00the sheep man in the west have their feuds, so the real estate dealers and local politicians can't see the general welfare. And that was very important in Wisconsin. There were many wood-working industries and they were already shipping in material for their factories and it was better to get the material on the ground.
ELLIOTT: You worked for him for many years. How long did you work for him by the way?
CASTLE: I worked for him about 10-11 years.
ELLIOTT: So what years were they now?
CASTLE: I came in June, 1905. Well, I continued a little after he had gone, under the conservation 00:34:00commission.
ELLIOTT: Now, what kind of a person was he to work for?
CASTLE: The most wonderful man that I can imagine. He would let anyone do anything they would undertake, and he was in the field 6 months out of the first year that I was with him. There was a good deal of responsibility that devolved on the office because the forestry men were in the field. The assistant forester was in the field, and the forester was in the field a great deal. In buying these large tracts of land, the abstracts of title had to be examined very carefully. That was done in the attorney general's office. And if they 00:35:00cleared it, then the large checks should be paid. Well, men would want their pay in a hurry. They'd go to the state treasurer and he'd want the things to come through and that put a good deal of responsibility on the office force. So that had to be taken care of and the correspondence all carried through and we were in touch a good deal with the national forestry department. Then this may be typical but unusual-Mr. Griffith was to write a series of articles, can't 00:36:00remember now just what it was for. He wrote several of them; one day he wanted to do something else and he handed me an outline and asked me to write the article. I wasn't so surprised at that; I did it. I've done other publicity work for the department. But next time it came time for an article, he said, "I have to write an article on such and such a subject. Will you make me an outline?" I really was amazed. I made the outline and he wrote the article. But he trusted anyone to do whatever he gave them and it was a very pleasant way to work.
00:37:00
ELLIOTT: …when they had the hearing there.
CASTLE: At that hearing I sat there; and they were complaining; they were hostile, very hostile. There had been a hearing up north; I wasn't there of course. Dean Russell said that the board of forestry never approved that report. The board of forestry never approved any report that I know of. Mr. Griffith made the report as state forester to the state board of forestry. It was stated so in the front of the report. I don 't think they ever approved or disapproved. And I felt that was 00:38:00one of the weakest things I ever saw. He simply couldn't stand up... from them all. He should have supported his board. Well, Mr. Griffith, working under them, couldn't becomingly. He made no comment; he made no defense. He just sat there and let them talk. I was furious.
ELLIOTT: Do you think if he was a little more of a fighter, he might have been able to put his program across?
CASTLE: No, I wouldn't say that; it might have made no difference. He was just too much of a gentlemen to like that sort of thing. He was a hard worker and he stood well and had good members of legislatures backing him. So I never had any use for Dean Russell after that, and I had a prejudice against the 00:39:00soil surveys. They were mentioned here somewhere. There were soil reports and there is something here contained in this material I have about them--They were to state what crops could be raised on certain kinds of soil. You can't do it when it's frozen, no matter what the soil is; and it seemed to me that in making a soil report they hadn't told the whole truth unless they brought in the temperature in the growing season.
ELLIOTT: Now you were telling me about your father; how did he happen to become interested in Mr. LaFollette in 00:40:00the first place. How was that again?
CASTLE: Well, of course I was pretty young I guess, when LaFollette began. Of course, LaFollette seemed to take up for the common people as against the railroads. The railroads didn't have many votes. Another thing he never was for was woman's suffrage. His wife was. But he was strong and cultivated, I think, the Germans over on the east shore; and when woman's suffrage finally became a fact, he said he was always for it. He… to… about it. The Germans over there had that old country idea 00:41:00you know, I wasn't for him at all. After a while I just saw through him.
ELLIOTT: How did your father happen to get it in the first place?
CASTLE: You mean to support it?
ELLIOTT: Yes, to support it.
CASTLE: Well, we were living at Black River Falls, Father had for many years, he was in the land office here in Madison, and he had his newspaper up there, and he'd come up for the weekend, back and forth, and this incident occurred, Father felt that his local interests were at Black River Falls, He couldn't mix into things here. Oh, I guess he helped out at the church some. He was on a committee or something even though he didn't belong; we worked in a Methodist church at home. But one Sunday--that was after my mother had come here 00:42:00too--LaFollette asked my father to come to the Capitol. Father went down and there was one of the brewers here--What are their names? Fauerbach I guess.
ELLIOTT: Fauerbach.
CASTLE: Fauerbach was in LaFollette ' s office. Mr. LaFollette asked my father, in the presence of Fauerbach, if he had taken part in any--I don't know what they called it, whether it was called the anti-saloon league or what it was--and father said no, he hadn't. Father was then--that LaFollette was able to demonstrate he hadn't done anything to hurt Fauerbach, I think my father was for temperance, but his work was at Black 00:43:00River, not here, Father puzzled over that, But there was an Austrian in the office who was a progressive too, and Father remembered that onetime he got some circular notice or something from some temperance business here in his mail, He opened it and dropped it in the wastebasket and he decided that this Austrian had gone through his wastebasket and told LaFollette.
ELLIOTT: Well now, you told me about some of LaFollette's speaking techniques, Ofcourse he was famous for that. You want to tell that again?
CASTLE: He was always 00:44:00taking off his coat and that sort of thing, I hate to say things that some people may be hurt by.
ELLIOTT: I don't think he could be badly hurt.
CASTLE: Later on maybe--of course most of the LaFollette's are gone now except Phil. And I think Phil is an improvement on the old man.
ELLIOTT: Now how's that; how do you think that?
CASTLE: Of course he wanted to run for office but he got beaten out, That was one thing you can thank Joe McCarthy for; he did beat young Robert LaFollette, I forgot what you asked me, something about--well, he was district attorney here and there was a scandal at the French House, I can't remember whether he was on the French 00:45:00faculty or what there was, but I--perhaps he was married, but anyway, he had a case on some girl at the French House. I'm not very clear on all the details. It seems to me the girl was shot. But there was some correspondence, private correspondence, and Phil LaFollette would not release that to the public and I thought it was mighty white of him. It was a sad tragedy and what's the use? Course that's a little thing. They had the whole state you might say pretty nearly card-indexed. It was a profession with them, and I remember when I was in 00:46:00the forestry office, a town officer came in from one of the little west counties one day and he certainly was a joke. He showed us a postal picture I think he was going to send to his girl and giggled; he just had no dignity or anything. But that day Mr. Griffith wanted a session with the governor on some really important matter; he didn't get in, but this fellow got in. That's typical. Politics.
ELLIOTT: Well now, let's go back to that business 00:47:00you were telling me about his speech. I think that was interesting. People would be interested in that.
CASTLE: Well, it is interesting and it is typical. Did you ever see his statue in Washington or is it a portrait sitting in a chair, oh, looking so fierce. It's repulsive to me but there again, it's a pose. I had a room-mate in college here; her mother came from this district and her father was a LaFollette supporter. And her father, it seems to me, got up a 00:48:00dinner for LaFollette out in Charles City one time when he was there, but LaFollette was on a diet. I believe he ate nuts. I say they're awfully hard to digest. I don't know, but some remark was made, I think LaFollette said or some people thought he lived on lion steaks or something. Well, he put on that pose, you know.
ELLIOTT: Something of an actor all the time.
CASTLE: Oh, he was an actor and his daughter tried to be one. She did moderately well, but she married a literary man or a play writer and kept her own name. LaFollette, while this man's name I think was just as honorable. And she didn't 00:49:00get very far later in life, but she wasn't attractive. I was shocked when I saw her picture in the paper. He was such a…
ELLIOTT: Well, now, your father finally split with him on that sort of basis. Now he was very active in politics himself. How did that affect him when he did split with LaFollette?
CASTLE: Well, I don't know, but it affected him. Another thing my father didn't like when he was in the land office--of course these appointments were from term to term, and LaFollette would want him to get letters of recommendation from his own locality. You see, that would put those people under 00:50:00obligation to LaFollette then when he appointed my father to another. When father finally left, he was going out to fight John Nelson who was running for Congress here. In fact Father thought for a while that he would run against him. But anyway, he was going out on some political business such as he had done all the time; I mean all his life he had been supporting certain people. Well, the land office, the land commissioners were the secretary of state, the state treasurer and the attorney general, and Frear was the secretary of state at that 00:51:00time and he put his foot down on my father going out to support the man he wanted to support and Father resigned. That ended it.
ELLIOTT: So that was pretty much a matter of continuing the rebellion against bossism that LaFollette claimed that he had started.
CASTLE: Father wouldn't stand for it, Frear was another man that could well have been thrown out. We had a mailing clerk in our department, good natured old soul too. But I think Frear had made him work around his home, up in the attic where it was very hot or something. You know some of those men did that, Frear--I think his son was later 00:52:00in some scandal, some financial scandal out east--But my whole experience in the Capitol, and I was there for many years, didn't give me a very high regard for a lot of politicians. There were some very good governors, Nick Kohler was a very good governor and there was that other man from Milwaukee. They were weal thy men. They didn't have a lot of cheap "hangers on" to give jobs to, and they could be more independent. I'm for wealthy men being in politics. Nobody owns them. And I think they do just as well by the under man as their labor union 00:53:00leaders and a lot of people like that. Zimmerman, I don't think he ever had much to offer. He had worked in a canning factory; I think he drove a milk wagon for a while; somehow or other he got hold of the people, And when he was out for a while, somebody told me that one of the girls looked up and found that he had been driving cab in Milwaukee. He was rather shabby for a while, the way his clothing and--I had a funny experience with him. He had a man with him who was 00:54:00kind of an arch-conspirator I thought, Willy Nagler; he had been a newspaper man up north. Well, they had two funds; they had their regular fund for the year, but their fund for the operation of the auto licensing business was limited; that depended upon how much they had to have. They had to have a lot of workers, I might add incidently that one… Zimmerman--two or three of the regular employees walked out and went to the movies during working hours, when they were employing, I think it was a hundred extra people up in the Assembly chambers. 00:55:00Well, anyway, Zimmerman didn't size people up very well. And then the man at the head--one of our bookkeepers really, from… out here--he got himself transferred to the automobile license fund. And the minute I saw that, I knew what it meant, He could get his salary pushed up. Then there was Alec Cobbin, head of the license bureau, a hard worker and a very popular man; he's Catholic. And I think… and Willy Nagler thought Cobbin was getting too much. Anyway, 00:56:00Zimmerman fired him, and Cobbin appealed to the Civil Service Board; and my father was on that board. They had a hearing and they exonerated Cobbin. In the meantime, Willy Nagler said to me, he said, we're thinking-oh this was before they kicked Cobbin out--He said there might be some changes in the department and if there were, he would like to have me take full charge of the correspondence for the auto license division, I believe he said at a salary… 00:57:00Well, I wasn't especially surprised, When I had a lot of responsibility in Forestry, he used to come down and visit some, and he knew what was going on, and I had to go up to their department on financial matters. When I heard Cobbin was out, I knew just what it all meant. They were trying to make an object to my father to me to throw Cobbin down. I went home and I said, "Father, you do what you think is right and I'll take what comes." He said, "That's all I can do." 00:58:00From that time on, not one salary raise for me, In fact, I was lucky to stay. My department head told me Zimmerman would have liked to have gotten rid of me, but he told him it would take years to train anybody else for what I did. Well, Willy had quite a history way back. I don't think to this day Zimmerman knows. But anyway, I went through that. Cobbin--the bureau of personnel, the civil service commission didn't have the power to reinstate him, but they exonerated him. But in that the… testimony was brought out, claimed that Zimmerman was 00:59:00a member of the Beaumont Club, Bow Tie Club, which is affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, Well, then it was up to Willy Nagler to get him fixed up with the Catholics, And I remember one day how a Catholic priest and a boy came into the department. Willy Nagler came into the room and said, "I want you and you and you." He took them in the vault I think. They were Catholic girls all of them. He introduced them to the priest to prove that they were real Catholics I guess, right? They… to do with that.
ELLIOTT: Sure.
CASTLE: After all the years that I was with Zimmerman, he probably in time forgot all the 01:00:00trouble. When the first employees were to retire--there were three of us-they gave a luncheon for us. And after we sat down at the table, Zimmerman said to us… , then he called on George Brown--he was a minister too, and he gave a talk. Cornell wasn't able to be there. He was crippled... He later suicided; he hadn't money to go on. And I just had lots of fun; I just kidded a lot of them 01:01:00you know and made it just as humorous as I could. Zimmerman sat there goggle-eyed. When I got through he said, "Well, I should have Miss Castle out campaigning for me." I think I can see myself campaigning for him.
ELLIOTT: Well, you didn't think too much of him. What kind of secretary of state was he?
CASTLE: Zimmerman?
ELLIOTT: Yes.
CASTLE: Well.
ELLIOTT: He certainly is a vote-getter today; that's the reason I wonder.
CASTLE: I can't understand that. I think it's… and yet he is a German from, I think his people came from Alsace-Lorraine. I can't understand that. I think the LaFollettes were in the saddle when he first went in, and I heard that he was to be a one-term officer. But the name would 01:02:00count then, a German name. He's a good handshaker and politician in a way, but I think there was quite a scandal; it didn't get public. He was not what I would call a lady's man, but there was one girl that had quite a little influence with him and--but anyway he went over to Milwaukee, there was some entertainment on, and some of the women at the department went along and he didn't go home that night. They live out in the Town of Lake. And I wouldn't think anything wrong of 01:03:00him from what I knew of him, but his wife was quite incensed I guess and threatened divorce; but I think they managed to cool her down. But I got that, came to me from my father; it got to Civil Service some way. And later he took in a man, August Smith, who had been an old school teacher, and you know what they are on discipline.
ELLIOTT: Oh, yes.
CASTLE: Well, this Gladys seemed to have a stand-in with quite a number of the fellows. She did pretty much as she pleased. And August Smith couldn't stand for that. And Zimmerman wouldn't back him up. You know if you see the funny side of things, 01:04:00you get a lot more out of it.
ELLIOTT: Right. He certainly did.
CASTLE: And I didn't have enough personal interest in the office so that anything didn't bother me much.
EILLIOTT: Sure. Did you think he was a very efficient secretary of state?
CASTLE: Well, of course I wasn't in on any of their meetings, I don't think he does anything now. He hasn't been able to be there. A great deal of the time, his son carries on and his son is a little bit arrogant at times though I like Bob and… hostile you know.
ELLIOTT: Yes.
CASTLE: There may not be anything to it.
ELLIOTT: This is Frank Elliott at the home of Miss Mildred Castle, 1014
Seminole Highway, Madison, Wis. We're making this recording on September 16, at her home, and we're discussing primarily the life and career of Edward Merriam Griffith, the State Forester, and also to a certain extent about her father, Brian Castle, who was very prominent here at the turn of the century.ELLIOTT: Now, Miss Castle, you were Mr. Griffith's secretary for many years; would you like to tell me a little bit about him, what he did, and what he accomplished here in the state?
CASTLE: He came here in 1903 under the then existing forestry law, but he felt he must have a board that wouldn't be 00:01:00changing from one election to another, and his first work was to get the kind of a law that would give security to the work. This he did, and instead of having the state treasurer, the secretary of state and the attorney general as a forestry board, they had the president of the university, the director of the geological survey, the dean of agricultural college and the attorney general and one member to be appointed by the governor. That gave continuity to the board and it was made up of men who were prominent in their spheres and it was thought 00:02:00to be a good board to work with.
ELLIOTT: Did he have much trouble getting that board?
CASTLE: Not that I know of; that was in effect when I came in and for a great length of time it worked very well, but near the end of the work, after forestry work had been declared unconstitutional, a slight weakness developed. It didn't make much difference in the long run.
ELLIOTT: What were some of the outstanding accomplishments during his term in office?
CASTLE: He got this law established which was one of the main things; and the law provided for all the state park lands, the state lands 00:03:00north of township 33, to constitute a forest preserve. That amounted to, well, I think about 40,000 acres then; no, it was more than that, There had been a law passed in 1878 for setting aside 40,000 acres in two of the northern counties as state park lands; they were held for 19 years. Did I give you that date as 1878? I should change that, the date was earlier than that, No, it was in '78. Now in 00:04:00the same year that private operators wanted to get those lands--I'm getting all mixed up here. In 1878, 50,000 acres of state park lands in Iron and Vilas counties were set aside and were held intact for 19 years with no timber cutting at all. But in 1897, the same year that the legislature passed a law, they 00:05:00also yielded to private demands for those lands. And so when Mr. Griffith took over, there was just the fragments left and they were scattered. And of course he took only the most northern of the lands and his immediate work was to protect them from fire and to block up the reserve by selling the scattered lands or those that were good for agriculture and buying others. Then the federal department gave the state 40,000 acres, 20,000 acres I should say. And 00:06:00Mr. Griffith was acquainted with the son of the big lumberman Weyerhauser, Frederick Weyerhauser, and through that friendship he persuaded them to give their lands in Douglas County on the Brule River and he got 4,000 acres through that. And as time went on, through sale and purchase, the reserves had 425,000 acres when the work was moving along nicely. Well, there came again private demand and some hostility. As fast as a large tract was purchased, it was taken off the tax rolls up north. The town officers objected strenuously to that. 00:07:00There was an inequitable method of taxation; that is, where the farmer paid one tax on his field crop, the lumberman paid a tax every year on his timber crop and, of course, that was an incentive to him to cut and sell. Then the town officers, of course, wanted to hold those lands and get the income and that resulted, to some extent, in their juggling their boundaries of the towns and getting lands that were far distant from the center of the town. Well, of 00:08:00course, where there was a good stand of timber, they liked to get that in their boundaries. And the land salesman and the local man objected to this loss of taxes, and of course, the more land the forestry board had, the more it shut out their purchasers. Well, the forestry board did pay the expense of making roads; they hadn't gotten far enough to contribute to the government or the schools at that time, but it was admitted that it was the just thing to do. But they finally, when the work was well off in progress and a great deal had been 00:09:00accomplished, some of the men organized and attacked … They brought a lot of men down with them, were said to have held a rehearsal at one of the hotels, and then came over to the Capitol for a hearing. It was a little amusing when they started questioning some of these men. They didn't know quite what to say when they were questioned about the character of soil. I cannot see where the character of the soil had a great deal to do with the reserve because there were likely to be killing frosts every month of the year and the potato crop is a short term crop--They do raise potatoes in the more northerly regions and there 00:10:00were some cranberry marshes which could be protected from frost by flooding--But for general crops it was again. In fact, when one legislative committee went up to investigate conditions, they found immature grain, corn or something, in the silo. Well, of course, that didn't deter the opposition, I was myself at the headquarters camp of the forestry region one time, when a man who had apparently tried to make a home up there and had been employed to some extent by the 00:11:00forestry board gave up. He had planted, I heard, five bushels of potatoes and had harvested seven; and I saw them, this man and his wife and a young child in a stroller, another I believe in prospect, start off through the woods by foot, probably to the railroad, and they were going back to Racine. I do not doubt that there were other instances similar for people who tried to make homes up there. The lands had been exploited. Dean Russell, who was one member of the board, thought all lands should be utilized to the best of their ability, but it 00:12:00seemed to me it was a mistake to decide anything on soil alone when you had to consider temperature and the length of the growing season. Well a map of that, and there is one I think in one of the federal bulletins that showed the length of the growing season in every county, is very revealing. That bulletin was made by Fillebrit Rowe, He was dean of forestry at the University of Michigan and he was called in to make a preliminary survey which was entitled "Forestry 00:13:00Conditions and Interests in Wisconsin." Two of the state boards contributed a little money; I'm not sure just which ones, but I think it might have been the soil survey and the geological survey, but he secured the cooperation of the railroads and of prominent men in the area, and they were interested, Of course, it meant a great deal for the railroads to have traffic up there and the lumbermen had cut their lands and they were ready to give them up. In fact, in many cases there were large firms, non-residents, and when they were through lumbering there were slashings left, the land had been cut over and a good deal 00:14:00burned over, and the state could buy it very cheaply in large tracts. Mr. Griffith had really great progress in every line of forestry work. They had erected steel watch towers at several points, 40 to 60 feet they were planned, and they were erected on high ground. Telephone lines had been established to connect the towers with each other and with other points where they could summon help. And, of course, during the dry season they would keep a man on the tower 00:15:00watching, and by communicating with the other towers, they could spot where there was smoke. The main idea being, really, to head off a fire before it got really started. There was a system of fire wardens--, in the beginning this was a town officer. Well, there again, the election at regular intervals would change the town officers and it was expensive and difficult to keep up even with their names and addresses. But there was that system and it was planned to change that so as to get again a more stationary officer. The nurseries, forest 00:16:00nurseries, had been established at the headquarters camp and a great deal of work had been done in cleaning out old logging roads and other roads perhaps some of the rights of way of logging railways, and trying to make separate districts and make it easier to get back and forth in case of fire or other work. Well, as soon as the fires were under control, the young growth started very quickly, even on the cut over lands, and of course there were some plantings besides, and it was thought that that would benefit the resort area. 00:17:00There were a good many resorts up there. But, of course, one of the main problems was to reforest the headwaters of the large rivers. The first work on that was done on the Chippewa River and later on the Wisconsin. There was a natural reservoir region up there, many lakes, many marshes, and it so happened that about a third of the territory was a natural reservoir region. The next third of the rivers had the maximum fall which produced water power. The water power was of very great use in this state because there was no coal. And then 00:18:00the lower third of the rivers, approximately a third, furnished the navigation. And in time the establishment of the reservoirs was brought under control to some extent by law so that the forestry board or conservation commission had some say in where they should be established and how they should be conducted. Then there was also a plan to establish cabins for T.B. patients. And every line of forestry work--the instruction of people interesting them in woodlot 00:19:00establishment had been undertaken; and there was instruction at the University for forest rangers--a good many were employed, especially during the season--and ultimately I think there would have been a forestry course. They succeeded, Mr. Griffith with the aid of our member of congress-Senator LaFollette was at that time in congress and Congressman Morse helped very much--and they procured the Forest Products Laboratory for this region. Well, that gave us trained men who could be used. Mr. Griffith was at the University and there was no forestry 00:20:00school at that time, so he left and went to study his chosen profession where he best could. That took him to Germany and Austria where he worked or studied in the forests. He went to India and had some very interesting experiences to tell there. There was a region where they practiced polyandry and when he needed men, he went to the wife and she hired out her crew to him. He also told about seeing the elephants who were employed there in the lumbering and it seems almost incredible--we've seen them in pictures dragging the logs--but he spoke of an 00:21:00elephant piling them and straightening up one that wasn't level. And his work carried him also into the Philippines and the… I'm told he was twice in Germany and Austria. Then he worked for a while under a Doctor Schenk at the Biltmore Forest on the Vanderbilt estate near Ashville. Dr. Schenk later started a forestry school. In the Black Hills, he was in the work of planning forestry 00:22:00work. There was something that the federal service gave; it was free planning to people that were interested, I suppose, in large forestry work and he was there two seasons--I think first on the planning, and I just don't know what he did the second season; but his work brought him into contact with many prominent men and especially in the forestry service.
ELLIOTT: He set up a school in later years where the old meister school techniques, wasn't it?
CASTLE: Do you mean Mr. Griffith?
ELLIOTT: Yes.
CASTLE: I hadn't heard 00:23:00of that. I heard that he undertook someone proceeding when he went back east, but he was a man of independent means and excellent background in every way, rigidly honest and very devoted to his work and to the success of it. When finally succeeded in bringing the matter before the courts and having it tested for constitutionality, it was largely on the grounds of what constituted internal improvements. One of the judges considered the forestry work a matter 00:24:00of internal improvement, It seemed to me that that was wrong, Internal improvements have to do with communications in the legal sense: docks, forests, forts, railroads and canals, telephone lines, telegraph lines--I never could see that the forestry work had anything to do with internal improvements, It was internal and it was an improvement. In a legal sense, it didn't seem to me it 00:25:00came under ... there were some other complications, The reserve was kept intact but Mr. Griffith didn't care to continue in a restricted position, I don't think it's generally known, but the governor called him in and offered him the position of remaining in charge of what was left, but he didn't care to stay.
ELLIOTT: What was his reason for wanting to leave then?
CASTLE: Well, of course the land no longer belonged strictly to the reserve. That is, 00:26:00they were called state lands; they could be administered to some extent; but the money wouldn't be under the control of the forestry board. They reconstituted the work under a conservation commission. That was made up of the fish and game commission, the forestry board, and the parks. That really was intended to subordinate the forestry work. They called back the old assistant state forester 00:27:00to take over this department and he came here not knowing that the effort was to subordinate the work and that he wouldn't have the privileges the other forester had. He would have to submit to the general board, and the head of the fish commission was one of the strong men on that board. Moody, the assistant state forester who headed it, I'm pretty sure would not have come--he talked to me about it--if he had known what he was coming into, But you can see that this hostility that had developed had made a difference; and unfortunately individual 00:28:00demands had much more weight with legislators than the general welfare. That you could see when after holding the state park lands for 19 years they gave up and let them be purchased. At that time, my father was in the state land office, He was there for many years and headed it in the later years that he was there. I think he was the one referred to in one of the publications who obtained a request from one of the senators detailing the sales of lands, and it was astonishing what large areas were being sold to a few purchasers, But they could 00:29:00buy them, strip them; then later the time came when they could be sold back.
ELLIOTT: Was the forestry board able to, or did they try to counsel the Weyerhausers and the other lumbermen on how to cut the timber lands that they had?
CASTLE: That came a little later. There had been a lot of cutting done when they came. In fact, those lands had been pretty well cut over, I think, and some of them burned over. Weyerhauser was really a man and his interests had been transferred, to the west coast largely I think; but the sons, maybe the family, I believe had a cottage on Buck Island where Mr. Griffith went for his summer vacations and it was through that that they obtained the Brule 00:30:00River lands… came later. Of course, they put students out to make measurements and determine the rate of growth on different varieties of the trees and they found that they could get merchantable timber in 30 years from some kinds of pine. But they did advocate woodlots and county lots where the land came in through their not paying taxes on it. That proceeded for a long time under 00:31:00Frederick Wilson who not long ago retired from the conservation commission; and a great deal of progress had been made on that. In fact, he told me about telling a dean of the agricultural college how large amounts of county lands had been put under forests. The dean said, "Shocking!" He had advocated agricultural development and that's being carried on today a good deal.
ELLIOTT: What were the major problems that the forestry board faced here aside from this 00:32:00opposition on the part of the county boards? Did they have any other particular problems that they had to face, education problems or whatever?
CASTLE: I wouldn't say that they had education problems. You mean educating the public?
ELLIOTT: Yes.
CASTLE: Oh, Mr. Griffith made many addresses and the office put out articles, publicity and all that; and I think that there was a strong sentiment for forestry even before he came. He was brought here after the first law was passed, two years before he got the law he wanted. But there's always hostility between these different interests, just as the cow man and 00:33:00the sheep man in the west have their feuds, so the real estate dealers and local politicians can't see the general welfare. And that was very important in Wisconsin. There were many wood-working industries and they were already shipping in material for their factories and it was better to get the material on the ground.
ELLIOTT: You worked for him for many years. How long did you work for him by the way?
CASTLE: I worked for him about 10-11 years.
ELLIOTT: So what years were they now?
CASTLE: I came in June, 1905. Well, I continued a little after he had gone, under the conservation 00:34:00commission.
ELLIOTT: Now, what kind of a person was he to work for?
CASTLE: The most wonderful man that I can imagine. He would let anyone do anything they would undertake, and he was in the field 6 months out of the first year that I was with him. There was a good deal of responsibility that devolved on the office because the forestry men were in the field. The assistant forester was in the field, and the forester was in the field a great deal. In buying these large tracts of land, the abstracts of title had to be examined very carefully. That was done in the attorney general's office. And if they 00:35:00cleared it, then the large checks should be paid. Well, men would want their pay in a hurry. They'd go to the state treasurer and he'd want the things to come through and that put a good deal of responsibility on the office force. So that had to be taken care of and the correspondence all carried through and we were in touch a good deal with the national forestry department. Then this may be typical but unusual-Mr. Griffith was to write a series of articles, can't 00:36:00remember now just what it was for. He wrote several of them; one day he wanted to do something else and he handed me an outline and asked me to write the article. I wasn't so surprised at that; I did it. I've done other publicity work for the department. But next time it came time for an article, he said, "I have to write an article on such and such a subject. Will you make me an outline?" I really was amazed. I made the outline and he wrote the article. But he trusted anyone to do whatever he gave them and it was a very pleasant way to work.
00:37:00
ELLIOTT: …when they had the hearing there.
CASTLE: At that hearing I sat there; and they were complaining; they were hostile, very hostile. There had been a hearing up north; I wasn't there of course. Dean Russell said that the board of forestry never approved that report. The board of forestry never approved any report that I know of. Mr. Griffith made the report as state forester to the state board of forestry. It was stated so in the front of the report. I don 't think they ever approved or disapproved. And I felt that was 00:38:00one of the weakest things I ever saw. He simply couldn't stand up... from them all. He should have supported his board. Well, Mr. Griffith, working under them, couldn't becomingly. He made no comment; he made no defense. He just sat there and let them talk. I was furious.
ELLIOTT: Do you think if he was a little more of a fighter, he might have been able to put his program across?
CASTLE: No, I wouldn't say that; it might have made no difference. He was just too much of a gentlemen to like that sort of thing. He was a hard worker and he stood well and had good members of legislatures backing him. So I never had any use for Dean Russell after that, and I had a prejudice against the 00:39:00soil surveys. They were mentioned here somewhere. There were soil reports and there is something here contained in this material I have about them--They were to state what crops could be raised on certain kinds of soil. You can't do it when it's frozen, no matter what the soil is; and it seemed to me that in making a soil report they hadn't told the whole truth unless they brought in the temperature in the growing season.
ELLIOTT: Now you were telling me about your father; how did he happen to become interested in Mr. LaFollette in 00:40:00the first place. How was that again?
CASTLE: Well, of course I was pretty young I guess, when LaFollette began. Of course, LaFollette seemed to take up for the common people as against the railroads. The railroads didn't have many votes. Another thing he never was for was woman's suffrage. His wife was. But he was strong and cultivated, I think, the Germans over on the east shore; and when woman's suffrage finally became a fact, he said he was always for it. He… to… about it. The Germans over there had that old country idea 00:41:00you know, I wasn't for him at all. After a while I just saw through him.
ELLIOTT: How did your father happen to get it in the first place?
CASTLE: You mean to support it?
ELLIOTT: Yes, to support it.
CASTLE: Well, we were living at Black River Falls, Father had for many years, he was in the land office here in Madison, and he had his newspaper up there, and he'd come up for the weekend, back and forth, and this incident occurred, Father felt that his local interests were at Black River Falls, He couldn't mix into things here. Oh, I guess he helped out at the church some. He was on a committee or something even though he didn't belong; we worked in a Methodist church at home. But one Sunday--that was after my mother had come here 00:42:00too--LaFollette asked my father to come to the Capitol. Father went down and there was one of the brewers here--What are their names? Fauerbach I guess.
ELLIOTT: Fauerbach.
CASTLE: Fauerbach was in LaFollette ' s office. Mr. LaFollette asked my father, in the presence of Fauerbach, if he had taken part in any--I don't know what they called it, whether it was called the anti-saloon league or what it was--and father said no, he hadn't. Father was then--that LaFollette was able to demonstrate he hadn't done anything to hurt Fauerbach, I think my father was for temperance, but his work was at Black 00:43:00River, not here, Father puzzled over that, But there was an Austrian in the office who was a progressive too, and Father remembered that onetime he got some circular notice or something from some temperance business here in his mail, He opened it and dropped it in the wastebasket and he decided that this Austrian had gone through his wastebasket and told LaFollette.
ELLIOTT: Well now, you told me about some of LaFollette's speaking techniques, Ofcourse he was famous for that. You want to tell that again?
CASTLE: He was always 00:44:00taking off his coat and that sort of thing, I hate to say things that some people may be hurt by.
ELLIOTT: I don't think he could be badly hurt.
CASTLE: Later on maybe--of course most of the LaFollette's are gone now except Phil. And I think Phil is an improvement on the old man.
ELLIOTT: Now how's that; how do you think that?
CASTLE: Of course he wanted to run for office but he got beaten out, That was one thing you can thank Joe McCarthy for; he did beat young Robert LaFollette, I forgot what you asked me, something about--well, he was district attorney here and there was a scandal at the French House, I can't remember whether he was on the French 00:45:00faculty or what there was, but I--perhaps he was married, but anyway, he had a case on some girl at the French House. I'm not very clear on all the details. It seems to me the girl was shot. But there was some correspondence, private correspondence, and Phil LaFollette would not release that to the public and I thought it was mighty white of him. It was a sad tragedy and what's the use? Course that's a little thing. They had the whole state you might say pretty nearly card-indexed. It was a profession with them, and I remember when I was in 00:46:00the forestry office, a town officer came in from one of the little west counties one day and he certainly was a joke. He showed us a postal picture I think he was going to send to his girl and giggled; he just had no dignity or anything. But that day Mr. Griffith wanted a session with the governor on some really important matter; he didn't get in, but this fellow got in. That's typical. Politics.
ELLIOTT: Well now, let's go back to that business 00:47:00you were telling me about his speech. I think that was interesting. People would be interested in that.
CASTLE: Well, it is interesting and it is typical. Did you ever see his statue in Washington or is it a portrait sitting in a chair, oh, looking so fierce. It's repulsive to me but there again, it's a pose. I had a room-mate in college here; her mother came from this district and her father was a LaFollette supporter. And her father, it seems to me, got up a 00:48:00dinner for LaFollette out in Charles City one time when he was there, but LaFollette was on a diet. I believe he ate nuts. I say they're awfully hard to digest. I don't know, but some remark was made, I think LaFollette said or some people thought he lived on lion steaks or something. Well, he put on that pose, you know.
ELLIOTT: Something of an actor all the time.
CASTLE: Oh, he was an actor and his daughter tried to be one. She did moderately well, but she married a literary man or a play writer and kept her own name. LaFollette, while this man's name I think was just as honorable. And she didn't 00:49:00get very far later in life, but she wasn't attractive. I was shocked when I saw her picture in the paper. He was such a…
ELLIOTT: Well, now, your father finally split with him on that sort of basis. Now he was very active in politics himself. How did that affect him when he did split with LaFollette?
CASTLE: Well, I don't know, but it affected him. Another thing my father didn't like when he was in the land office--of course these appointments were from term to term, and LaFollette would want him to get letters of recommendation from his own locality. You see, that would put those people under 00:50:00obligation to LaFollette then when he appointed my father to another. When father finally left, he was going out to fight John Nelson who was running for Congress here. In fact Father thought for a while that he would run against him. But anyway, he was going out on some political business such as he had done all the time; I mean all his life he had been supporting certain people. Well, the land office, the land commissioners were the secretary of state, the state treasurer and the attorney general, and Frear was the secretary of state at that 00:51:00time and he put his foot down on my father going out to support the man he wanted to support and Father resigned. That ended it.
ELLIOTT: So that was pretty much a matter of continuing the rebellion against bossism that LaFollette claimed that he had started.
CASTLE: Father wouldn't stand for it, Frear was another man that could well have been thrown out. We had a mailing clerk in our department, good natured old soul too. But I think Frear had made him work around his home, up in the attic where it was very hot or something. You know some of those men did that, Frear--I think his son was later 00:52:00in some scandal, some financial scandal out east--But my whole experience in the Capitol, and I was there for many years, didn't give me a very high regard for a lot of politicians. There were some very good governors, Nick Kohler was a very good governor and there was that other man from Milwaukee. They were weal thy men. They didn't have a lot of cheap "hangers on" to give jobs to, and they could be more independent. I'm for wealthy men being in politics. Nobody owns them. And I think they do just as well by the under man as their labor union 00:53:00leaders and a lot of people like that. Zimmerman, I don't think he ever had much to offer. He had worked in a canning factory; I think he drove a milk wagon for a while; somehow or other he got hold of the people, And when he was out for a while, somebody told me that one of the girls looked up and found that he had been driving cab in Milwaukee. He was rather shabby for a while, the way his clothing and--I had a funny experience with him. He had a man with him who was 00:54:00kind of an arch-conspirator I thought, Willy Nagler; he had been a newspaper man up north. Well, they had two funds; they had their regular fund for the year, but their fund for the operation of the auto licensing business was limited; that depended upon how much they had to have. They had to have a lot of workers, I might add incidently that one… Zimmerman--two or three of the regular employees walked out and went to the movies during working hours, when they were employing, I think it was a hundred extra people up in the Assembly chambers. 00:55:00Well, anyway, Zimmerman didn't size people up very well. And then the man at the head--one of our bookkeepers really, from… out here--he got himself transferred to the automobile license fund. And the minute I saw that, I knew what it meant, He could get his salary pushed up. Then there was Alec Cobbin, head of the license bureau, a hard worker and a very popular man; he's Catholic. And I think… and Willy Nagler thought Cobbin was getting too much. Anyway, 00:56:00Zimmerman fired him, and Cobbin appealed to the Civil Service Board; and my father was on that board. They had a hearing and they exonerated Cobbin. In the meantime, Willy Nagler said to me, he said, we're thinking-oh this was before they kicked Cobbin out--He said there might be some changes in the department and if there were, he would like to have me take full charge of the correspondence for the auto license division, I believe he said at a salary… 00:57:00Well, I wasn't especially surprised, When I had a lot of responsibility in Forestry, he used to come down and visit some, and he knew what was going on, and I had to go up to their department on financial matters. When I heard Cobbin was out, I knew just what it all meant. They were trying to make an object to my father to me to throw Cobbin down. I went home and I said, "Father, you do what you think is right and I'll take what comes." He said, "That's all I can do." 00:58:00From that time on, not one salary raise for me, In fact, I was lucky to stay. My department head told me Zimmerman would have liked to have gotten rid of me, but he told him it would take years to train anybody else for what I did. Well, Willy had quite a history way back. I don't think to this day Zimmerman knows. But anyway, I went through that. Cobbin--the bureau of personnel, the civil service commission didn't have the power to reinstate him, but they exonerated him. But in that the… testimony was brought out, claimed that Zimmerman was 00:59:00a member of the Beaumont Club, Bow Tie Club, which is affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, Well, then it was up to Willy Nagler to get him fixed up with the Catholics, And I remember one day how a Catholic priest and a boy came into the department. Willy Nagler came into the room and said, "I want you and you and you." He took them in the vault I think. They were Catholic girls all of them. He introduced them to the priest to prove that they were real Catholics I guess, right? They… to do with that.
ELLIOTT: Sure.
CASTLE: After all the years that I was with Zimmerman, he probably in time forgot all the 01:00:00trouble. When the first employees were to retire--there were three of us-they gave a luncheon for us. And after we sat down at the table, Zimmerman said to us… , then he called on George Brown--he was a minister too, and he gave a talk. Cornell wasn't able to be there. He was crippled... He later suicided; he hadn't money to go on. And I just had lots of fun; I just kidded a lot of them 01:01:00you know and made it just as humorous as I could. Zimmerman sat there goggle-eyed. When I got through he said, "Well, I should have Miss Castle out campaigning for me." I think I can see myself campaigning for him.
ELLIOTT: Well, you didn't think too much of him. What kind of secretary of state was he?
CASTLE: Zimmerman?
ELLIOTT: Yes.
CASTLE: Well.
ELLIOTT: He certainly is a vote-getter today; that's the reason I wonder.
CASTLE: I can't understand that. I think it's… and yet he is a German from, I think his people came from Alsace-Lorraine. I can't understand that. I think the LaFollettes were in the saddle when he first went in, and I heard that he was to be a one-term officer. But the name would 01:02:00count then, a German name. He's a good handshaker and politician in a way, but I think there was quite a scandal; it didn't get public. He was not what I would call a lady's man, but there was one girl that had quite a little influence with him and--but anyway he went over to Milwaukee, there was some entertainment on, and some of the women at the department went along and he didn't go home that night. They live out in the Town of Lake. And I wouldn't think anything wrong of 01:03:00him from what I knew of him, but his wife was quite incensed I guess and threatened divorce; but I think they managed to cool her down. But I got that, came to me from my father; it got to Civil Service some way. And later he took in a man, August Smith, who had been an old school teacher, and you know what they are on discipline.
ELLIOTT: Oh, yes.
CASTLE: Well, this Gladys seemed to have a stand-in with quite a number of the fellows. She did pretty much as she pleased. And August Smith couldn't stand for that. And Zimmerman wouldn't back him up. You know if you see the funny side of things, 01:04:00you get a lot more out of it.
ELLIOTT: Right. He certainly did.
CASTLE: And I didn't have enough personal interest in the office so that anything didn't bother me much.
EILLIOTT: Sure. Did you think he was a very efficient secretary of state?
CASTLE: Well, of course I wasn't in on any of their meetings, I don't think he does anything now. He hasn't been able to be there. A great deal of the time, his son carries on and his son is a little bit arrogant at times though I like Bob and… hostile you know.
ELLIOTT: Yes.
CASTLE: There may not be anything to it.