Salary and Savings

When I was hired by Shell while I was still in school the salary offered was $160/month. Even before I started to work I was notified that the pay would be $170/month and at the end of the year it was increased to $185/month. I can see myself even now seated at the desk in the analytical lab after the end of the graveyard shift, getting the call from Bob Cole, who was in charge of the Wilmington group, about the increase in pay. It wasn’t too long after that that the six-day work week went into effect which meant another day’s pay each week at time and a half.

At the end of my first year of employment I was permitted to enroll in Shell’s Provident Fund. Under the plan an employee could contribute 10% of his pay and the company would match the contribution. Since I was of modest spending habits as the result of my upbringing and further because of the limited opportunities for spending money under the wartime conditions, I was soon saving $56.25 in savings bonds each month plus 20% of my salary which I suppose was upwards of 40% of my pay.

By the end of the year I had accumulated enough so that I could have purchase 40 acres of land in Iowa which I thought would be enough for me as a single person to live on. I don’t know how seriously I considered this possibility but it did cross my mind. Had I pursued this course and bought the 40 acres that Annie and Will Lines owned (a logical alternative assuming that it was available). I suppose that I would have ended up eventually taking over the Peterson farm entirely.

I kept the savings bonds for a long time — in fact some of them were included in the HH/H bonds that they were converted to and that Jean and I owned until they were redeemed by the government. What I should have done of course at the end of the war was to cash them in and invest the proceeds in common stocks. But I was ill-prepared by training and experience to have the vision and foresight that would have led to such a decision. Actually it was not until after Jean and I were married that we made our first stock purchase (long since sold). It was fittingly enough from my background — Corn Products.