42 Community and Business Interests

Irrigation and Reclamation

After Andrew’s one term in the legislature several governors and various organizations asked him to represent them at state, national, or international conferences and commissions on food production, irrigation, drainage, reclamation, Liberty Loan drives, agriculture, dry land farming, good roads, YMCA war work, plant inspection and quarantine, forestry, home improvement, swine growing, state taxation, the League of Nations, railroad agricultural agents, soldiers’ settlements on reclaimed land, water distribution, prohibition of alcohol, alcoholism, railroad development, and mining. One time he attended three such congresses on a single trip. He often found himself on the resolutions committee, which formulated the congress’s recommendations, a position of consequence without acclaim. One of his recurrent themes was that the many overlapping farm-oriented organizations should combine.

Because of the desert location of his stake, Andrew involved himself particularly with questions of irrigation, reclamation, and flood control. In 1902 four men, including Andrew and county surveyor John Nash, went up river in search of possible reservoir sites.⁶⁷⁷

The Gila Valley needed flood control badly. A 1905 flood had destroyed three thousand acres in the valley. In 1906 huge swathes of acreages also disappeared. Andrew and others asked for federal assistance.⁶⁷⁸ An important study, “The Olmstead Report on Flood Control of the Gila River,” became available in 1919 that recommended construction of storage dams and many small check dams to retard runoff and thus reduce rampant erosion. Andrew worked closely with George H. Maxwell, head of the National Reclamation Association. The association used the Church’s organization to contact every farmer in the valley to attend a series of meetings on the report.⁶⁷⁹ A dam finally built on the river downstream from the Gila Valley did them no good. Coolidge Dam, then the largest concrete dome irrigation dam in the world, supplied water for the San Carlos irrigation project in the Florence-Casa Grande Valley. Completed in 1928 the dam irrigated a hundred thousand acres of desert lands, half being Indian lands. This water might have been available in the Gila Valley.⁶⁸⁰

Agriculture and Horticulture

In 1909, Governor George W. P. Hunt named Andrew to the Agriculture and Horticulture Commission for a three-year term. His tenure lasted through several gubernatorial terms. At first the appointment was uncompensated, public service, and he even paid for his own travel; later he received $300 per year and expenses. Among other things the commission oversaw the quarantine of suspect plants. For example, in 1916 Arizona prevented importation of hay from Utah because of the prevalence of alfalfa weevil there.⁶⁸¹ The commission also concerned itself with the wooly aphis that destroyed apple trees.

In 1917 when Hunt became governor again after a disputed election, Andrew resigned as a member of the commission after eight years, three terms as chairman. In 1919 he was reappointed.

Andrew was chair of the Arizona Territorial Agricultural and Horticultural Commission.

Business

By the time the Kimballs came to Thatcher in 1898, the town was undergoing rapid development. There then were or soon would be a printing press, blacksmith shop, drugstore, confectionary, motion-picture theater, shoe shop, ice factory, creamery, and flour mill. Stores in Thatcher included Phillips and Kimball (selling farm machinery, buggies, windmills, stoves); Layton and Allred (groceries, dry goods and hardware); Claridge and Hunt (post office, groceries, dry goods); Zundel and Fuller (groceries and dry goods); and J. P. Lee (groceries). Moody and Damron was the largest store, lighted after dark by kerosene lamps. It carried pretty much everything the other stores did except farm machinery. There was also a saloon, school, and a dance hall that served as a church building (Robinson Hall).

Andrew managed twenty acres of farm and orchard, consisting of the original ten-acre homestead and another ten acres he had bought to raise alfalfa and sometimes grain.

Cash was always scarce, so a lot of business took place by barter. For example, in 1904, “I traded my surry for a light buggy and a water tank to Sam Echols, then sold the buggy to Bro. Isom for a Jersy Durham calf and other considerations, a debt of $13.00 which I owed him for work and he owes me 10.00.”

Andrew and Ed Phillips established a farm-implement business in September 1898, just a few months after the Kimballs came to Thatcher. The business sold machinery on commission for the Salt Lake City firm of Co-op Wagon and Machinery Company. Andrew worked personally in the business, doing everything from accounting to unloading boxcars of machines.

In July 1901 Andrew joined with five other men (Bishop I. E. D. Zundel, Frank Tyler, John Hoopes Jr., Ed C. Phillips, and W. W. Pace) to buy out the Phillips and Kimball implement store and the Moody and Damron general merchandise store. They incorporated as the Thatcher Implement and Mercantile Company, but it came to be called “The Big Six.” Tom Naylor is said to have looked across the street from his barbershop to see the six partners in front of the store and commented, “There is the big six.” The name stuck.

The men shifted around in the formal positions.⁶⁸² At first Andrew was treasurer and received a small salary for keeping the store’s books.⁶⁸³ Andrew resigned his offices in 1909, but continued to be involved until 1913. Much of the time one or more of the six partners (usually W. W. Pace) leased the business, paying each partner a percentage on his investment and keeping any excess as personal profit. Finally in 1918 Pace bought the store’s assets and enlarged it to the biggest store in Gila Valley. When the Big Six established the Citizens’ Bank, Andrew became involved in banking, too.⁶⁸⁴

Andrew was a partner in the Big Six store in Thatcher.

In 1900, Andrew took on a contract to build several miles of Morenci Southern Railroad track bed. This project, however, left him with a net loss. He also worked as a supervisor of construction of the Enterprise Canal, although that project also left him with net loss.

He sold varied merchandise and performed a variety of services, always an entrepreneur. In 1906, Andrew paid $10 a year for a town business license to broker real estate, insurance, and loans. He also qualified as a notary public.⁶⁸⁵

He wrote all kinds of insurance and surety bonds.⁶⁸⁶ Andrew served as a loan officer for several financial institutions,⁶⁸⁷ both arranging loans and collecting payments.

He sold Brown Herb Tablets, a patent medicine advertised as a blood and nerve tonic and good for stomach, liver, and kidneys.⁶⁸⁸ For a time he held territory-wide representation for the “Royal Scroll,” a teaching aid consisting of a scroll in a display box with pictures and text about the Bible.⁶⁸⁹ He sold silk goods as an agent for the Salt Lake Silk Factory⁶⁹⁰ and Prince Albert missionary suits for Utah Woolen Mills.⁶⁹¹ To round out his offerings, he ordered Church-related books from Salt Lake booksellers.

He also invested a few times in “sure things,” including stock in Celery-Vig. Corporation⁶⁹² and twenty shares of Bear Springs Oil, Gas and Water Company.

To keep money coming in, Andrew sometimes hired out as a professional painter and carpenter.

Regardless of what he was involved in, Andrew always concerned himself with the economic welfare of others. He taught improved farming techniques and promoted the development of new crops. For example, he persuaded the University of Arizona to put in a sugar beet test plot in the valley to see if sugar beets would grow well there.⁶⁹³

For a time he received $1,800 a year from Arizona Eastern Railroad to serve as a spokesman for railroad interests, a cause in which he believed, thinking that railroads helped the economy grow faster. This income ended after 1920 when other railroads refused to share in the cost of his advocacy.⁶⁹⁴

Railroad Agent

Andrew had strong relations with the railroads in southern Arizona. The Mormon community benefitted from healthy carriers, and the railroads benefitted from a flourishing Mormon settlement. Andrew met often with the president of the Eastern Arizona Railroad and, in consequence of his promotion of railroad interests, he became a member of the board of Arizona Eastern for 1913 and was named the railroad’s Commissioner of Emigration.⁶⁹⁵ When after World War I the federal government took over the function of encouraging settlement of unoccupied land, particularly by veterans, Andrew received a federal appointment to do what he was already doing on behalf of the railroad. He was a member of the state Soldier Settlement Committee and chair of the county organization.

Because of his connections, Andrew was able to negotiate special train rates for Church members going to Salt Lake for general conference and for himself as a territorial or state representative to various railroad and farming conferences. However, the First Presidency advised Andrew not to accept a position as agent for Southern Pacific Railway in exchange for a free pass, because that would put him under obligation to favor the SP over other railroads.⁶⁹⁶ Later, the First Presidency advised him that he should not apply for a railroad pass as clergy, because under a new law that would be illegal unless the ministry was his only employment.⁶⁹⁷

At the time the Kimballs moved to Arizona, the Gila Valley and Globe Railroad running through the valley connected with the Southern Pacific main line at Bowie junction and came to a dead end at Geronimo, without connecting with the mines at Globe as intended, because the railroad had failed to get permission from the Apaches on the San Carlos reservation to cross forty miles of their territory to get to Globe. In February 1898 the railroad and the Apaches agreed that the railroad could cross the reservation in exchange for $10 for each male over fourteen ($8,000) and thirty years of free travel on the railroad, inside or on top of the freight cars. The Apaches often came to Safford, the center of Gila Valley, on the morning train to shop and then returned to the reservation on the evening train coming back from Bowie. People called the wood-burning locomotive “The Gila Monster.”⁶⁹⁸

Andrew supported the railroads’ opposition to legislative efforts to limit freight rates.⁶⁹⁹ In 1922 the Santa Fe Railroad appointed him “Special Representative” so that he could travel free around the state for his public-interest work in colonization, tax reduction, reclamation, and so on.

Correspondence

In connection with church or personal business Andrew carried on a voluminous correspondence, as he had from his missionary days. When his sister chided him once about not writing her more often, he retorted, “I am neglecting myself and overdoing my capacity. . . . I presume I have written over 2,000 letters in the past year.”⁷⁰⁰ In addition to personal letters, he wrote frequently to the First Presidency and the Presiding Bishopric about Church business. As a community leader Andrew wrote to others concerning political, economic, and community affairs. In addition, he frequently wrote newspaper stories as a self-appointed public-relations agent for Arizona and particularly for the Gila Valley.⁷⁰¹ He often wrote for the Deseret News or the Arizona newspapers about what he had observed as he traveled or occasional feature articles (such as one on the value of a high school education).⁷⁰²

Although he wrote many letters himself, Andrew increasingly used the services of his son Spencer as a scribe. Spencer had developed a homemade shorthand and had taken lessons from a Miss Freestone on how to use the typewriter.⁷⁰³ Then in 1920 Andrew called newly married Spencer to be his stake clerk, taking a substantial load off his father’s shoulders.

Andrew