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Briegel, Jake (audio interview #2 of 3)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - Briegel was interviewed in his home by his daughter. 2/28/1978
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- 2020-10-02
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- *** File: lhowjbriegel3.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-2:56)... Introduction. He describes a photograph of an oil well maintenance crew that he worked on for the Sunray Oil Company in the Wilmington field. It was called a well pulling crew and 4 men worked on it. These jobs did not pay as much as working on a drilling crew, but they were steadier and less dangerous. (2:56-7:04)... William Keck, head of Superior Oil Company, sometimes visited drilling rigs with his two sons. The kids ran around and the crew had to stop drilling so the kids "wouldn't get killed." Keck never talked to the crew, only to the bosses. There was no union at the time, so workers could be fired for talking back to the boss. He "broke in" with the Superior Oil Company on Signal Hill. Later he was sent to a new field in Lomita. The bosses there laid him off because they thought he was too skinny. He went back to Signal Hill and was rehired because people there knew him. He worked for different contractors and sometimes lived in oil field camps that seemed to be out in the desert outside Bakersfield. (7:04-14:45)... Once he went to work on a "wild cat" well between Fellows and Elk Hills. There he lived in an oil field camp that was owned by the United Oil Company, which was later bought out by the Richfield Oil Company. He worked there about 6 months. This "wild cat" well was being drilled to test the limits of a proven oil field. Forty or 50 workers lived in the camp and a woman was hired to cook and serve food. The company furnished food and housing and paid the workers $6.50 to $7 a day. He decided to work there because it was different. (14:45-20:20)... He worked on Signal Hill, in Bakersfield and other places but the jobs were always temporary. Jobs were hard to find during the Depression. He worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. In oil camps, he lived in shacks and in the winter it was very cold although the company provided them with extra blankets. He earned $3 a day in Long Beach, $5 a day in Bakersfield. When he had been married for only 5 days, he left for Bakersfield. He had no choice because there were few jobs. Sometimes "wild cat" wells never struck oil. About this same time, Freeman Fairfield started the Buffalo Oil Company. He was so poor, he slept under boilers but later became "the richest man in California." (20:20-25:32)... He first joined the Oil Worker's Union (OWIU) when he was working in Long Beach. He also worked in the Huntington Beach oil field during the winter, right on the ocean. Sometime it was so cold he couldn't work. It was a steam rig so the crew could warm up by the steam coils. At that time, workers could be fired for anything and conditions were tough. People only talked quietly about a union. If the boss caught you talking about a union, you could get fired. He was working for the Dunlap Oil Company when the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was being organized. He helped put pamphlets on worker's cars until someone snitched on him and he got fired. Once the union began organizing refinery workers, it was on a more stable footing. (25:32-31:27)... He first joined the union when he was working for Sunray Oil Company in a production gang. They did not have contracts. Sunray would not allow the local superintendent to negotiate or sign contracts with workers. Around 1937 he attended his first union meeting at a former American Legion hall that the oil workers union had taken over. He had joined an AFL oil workers union but he never got benefits from it; he dropped out when the Depression hit because he couldn't pay dues or attend meetings. Sometimes, especially on Signal Hill during the Depression, oil workers used casinghead gas, right out of the oil well, in their cars. In fields such as Santa Fe Springs, crude oil had to be refined before it could be used in a car. The crew was later caught using casinghead gas and forced to stop. (31:27-35:11)... Men who did maintenance work in oil fields worked in production gangs or well pulling gangs. Sometimes they are also known as "bullshit gangs". The work they did was dirty so sometimes they used the steam that powered drilling rigs to clean their clothes. When he first joined the oil workers union, Jim Coulter was the secretary and it didn't amount to much. The leaders tried to get more people to join, but most workers weren't interested. During the Depression, conditions were bad everywhere and some people just accepted it. But this is also when the union really started to grow. (35:11-39:16)... He worked for both oil companies and drilling contractors. During the 1920s, he worked for a company on Long Beach Boulevard that was selling shares in the oil wells they were drilling. The salesman kept interrupting the work of the drilling crew to the show potential investors how the work was progressing. Some salesmen, who wanted to get investors interested, misrepresent a wells' potential. In some cases, the salesmen sold more than 100 percent of a well and then made sure it never produced any oil; that way they kept anyone from discovering what they were doing. Sometimes oil wells weren't drilled straight down; sometimes they ended up under property that the well's owner didn't control. Once he worked on a well that ended up under the Long Beach Cemetery. It produced oil for a while, but the crew was told to take it off production and fill it in before anyone found out where the bottom of the hole really was. (39:16-43:48)... Primarily he worked in the oil fields from 1922 until WWII. In the summer of 1926, however, he and a friend drove across the country to Michigan and worked in a Buick factory where his friend's uncle was a foreman. The working conditions there were terrible. He worked in a gang doing piecework. He didn't like working inside; he had more freedom working in the oil fields. He came back to California and to work in the oil fields. Then he worked in a shipyard for 2 or 3 years after WWII began. Then he worked in a drilling crew for Long Beach Oil Development in the harbor. But he quit after about a week because he didn't like the superintendent. After that, he worked in the Wilmington refinery of the Texas Company (Texaco) until he retired in 1964. (43:48-44:58)... He did other kinds of work through the years to earn money. He bought houses and helped build, rent and fix them up. When his parents left for McCloud, he rented out their house and looked after it. End of tape *** File: lhowjbriegel4.mp3 (0:00-3:58)... Introduction During the Depression work was scarce. Workers went from company to company looking for work. When there were jobs, workers shared them so that everyone had a chance to work and earn money. (3:58-10:49)... The CIO began organizing oil workers around 1935 or 1936. Oil field workers were hard to organize since they didn't have a single work place. The first CIO meeting he remembers was held at the Labor Temple in Long Beach. Jack Knight was an organizer. The refinery workers were organized first. Once that organizing was secure, the union moved on to organize production workers as well. During the Depression, he worked for $3 a day. Then he went to Bakersfield, where he worked a 12 hour shift, 7 days a week, for $5 a day and room and board. When he came back to Long Beach, things were picking up. He found a job that lasted for 3 months where he earned $7.50 a day. He was so happy to have that job, he never missed a day and worked extra hours if someone wanted to take the day off. Once WWII started, he went to work in a shipyard. (10:49-15:06)... He still has a little book in which in recorded all of the jobs he had. At first, when he heard about the union, he was not enthusiastic about joining. The first job he had where he was represented by the union was with the Sunray Oil Company. The crew drilled a well near Rosecrans. In the 1920s, only one or two people per crew belonged to the union. None of the oil company drilling departments or drilling contractors had union contracts. Some employers routinely fired union members. People thought differently about unions in the 1920s than they did in the 1930s. (15:06-23:38)... When his parents moved to McCloud, he lived on his own in a court apartment; he didn't like boarding houses. He met Burt Smith at a pool hall in east Long Beach. Smith worked in a lumber yard and lived with his parents in Cypress. Briegel moved in with the Smith family. He joined the Elks Lodge in Long Beach but dropped out during the Depression when he couldn't afford to pay the dues. He bought a half acre for $300 near the Smith's home while he was living with them. He also bought an old California style house for $25, tore it down and moved the lumber to his half acre. Smith's father was a carpenter and showed him how to build a house with his lumber. Together they laid the foundation and built a one bedroom house. (23:38-28:19)... He was living with the Smith family when the 1933 Long Beach earthquake hit. He was waiting for dinner to be set on the table when "everything went to pieces." Everything fell on the floor. There were aftershocks all night. They listened to the radio to see where the damage was centered. Later they went into Long Beach to check on people they knew and to survey the damage. People were leaving the city. They couldn't see much. He checked on one of the oil drilling rigs where he worked to see if he still had a place to work; he went to work the next night. Many buildings were damaged. (28:19-38:00)... He quit working in the oil fields during WWII; there was little work available there. He found a job in at the California Shipbuilding Company on Terminal Island through the Marine Pipefitters Union local 250 and stayed at that job from November, 1941 until May, 1944; he first worked as a helper and eventually became a pipefitter. Employers at the shipyard said they were looking for oil workers to hire. There was a shortage of skilled workers. Working in the shipyard kept him out of the armed services. When he received a draft notice, he told the superintendent of the shipyard and that man got him a deferment; the shipyard managers said they needed someone with his skills. They were building Liberty Ships The union he joined was an AFL union and it didn't seem very effective in representing the workers. He was able to take an exam to become a journeyman. (38:00-40:47)... He took a class to learn how to layout pipe. Then he signed up for another class whose prerequisite was a high school education, which he didn't have. He had a very hard time but he studied and struggled thorough it. He worked with a classmate and they helped each other. Both of them passed the final exam. He got his job in the shipyard because of his experience in the oil fields. (40:47-44:56)... When he was a child he lived about 2 miles from a school which was held in one room. One teacher taught grades 1 through 8. When his family lived in Trenton, he went to school in the basement of a Baptist church. He quit school when he was in the sixth grade to go to work. In school, he learned to read and write but he learned how to do many other things through experience. He did not learn math formally but learned it by himself while he worked in the oil fields. End of tape
- SUBJECT BIO - Jake Briegel started working in the oil fields in the 1920s and, after World War II, worked in an oil refinery as a pipefitter. He first joined the oil workers union while he was working in the fields and then rejoined when he went to work in the refinery. He strongly supported the union during strikes and turned down opportunities to become a foreman or move into other management jobs. In this three part interview, Briegel talks about his early life in Missouri and his migration to California. He came to visit his sister and found he could earn more here than back home, so he decided to stay. His brother-in-law helped him find a job in the oil fields where he worked until World War II when he went to work in a shipyard. After the war, he found a job in a Texaco oil refinery where he stayed until he retired. These three interviews were conducted by his daughter and they were among her earliest interviews. At the time, she was working on a project to study the impact of the discovery of oil on the development of Long Beach. TOPICS - working in oil well drilling crews in greater Los Angeles and the Central Valley; and working on oil well maintenance crewsunion organizing in the oil fields; 1933 Long Beach earthquake; and working in a shipyard during WWII;
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