FARMERS: Biography of a Blister

One day last week Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace was at Hyde Park, Undersecretary Rexford Guy Tugwell was in Nebraska and Assistant Secretary Milburn Lincoln Wilson on his way to Europe. In this unusual situation Willis R. Gregg, chief of the U. S. Weather Bureau, became acting head of the Department of Agriculture for a day. It was poetic justice. On occasions when the hand of God is laid heavily upon U. S. agronomy the weather man becomes the controlling influence in U. S. farm policy.

Last week a caravan of seven dusty Army automobiles drew up before the courthouse in Springfield, Baca County, Colo., cradle of the Dust Bowl. Out of the cars clambered the President’s special Drought Commission chairmanned by Rural Electrification Administrator Morris Llewellyn Cooke. His chief coadjutor was Resettlement Administrator Rexford Guy Tugwell. Under the cottonwood trees on the courthouse lawn they listened for an hour to the tales of some 50 farm folk who knew Drought by bitter experience.

“Not So Bad.” Typical was the story of Widow Anna Eickleberry who had lived in Baca County 26 years. She voiced the perennial complaint of the Drought belt: shiftless farmers who have long since lost everything get Federal relief, but hard-working farmers can get no aid to keep them from destitution.

Said Mrs. Eickleberry, blinking up into the face of Mr. Cooke: “Everything we have is mortgaged. Every day I see ‘rehabis’ [recipients of rehabilitation relief] going by to work, but my two sons can’t get relief jobs. I don’t see why farmers who have been here for years can’t get relief before they lose everything.”

In spite of such complaints, a hopeful member of the Commission said afterwards: “Things do not appear so bad as we had expected.”

Baca County was, however, only one stop on a 2,000-mile itinerary, the interviews at Springfield only one incident in the Commission’s attempt to learn about the Drought firsthand. Last week there were other incidents and other scenes:

¶ At Amarillo, in the Texas Panhandle, where the survey began, Dr. Tugwell reassured a gathering of farm experts by declaring: “All this talk about depopulating the Great Plains is foolish. We don’t want to depopulate the country. We want to fortify it to withstand drought.”

¶ At Dalhart, Tex., the Commission visited a farm where green crops were growing on land that was near-desert two years ago, the result of Government experiments in soil conservation. Between Dalhart and Guymon, in the Oklahoma Panhandle, Dr. Tugwell and Mr. Cooke climbed dust hills 40 feet high to look out on a landscape of shifting dunes that once was fertile farm land. Mr. Cooke admitted: “This is about what we expected.”

¶ At Scott City, Kans., the Commission saw the Kansas half of the Dust Bowl.

¶ In McCook, Neb. the Commission rang the door bell of Republican Senator George Norris, found he was vacationing in Wisconsin, telegraphed him their “appreciation of the standard of public service which you have set and of the idealism which has been your guiding star.”

¶ General showers greeted the Commission in South Dakota. But Chicago’s weather forecaster reported the rain of “little benefit.”

¶ In Rapid City, S. Dak. Chairman Cooke indulged in some self-satisfying hindsight: “If a program had been placed in effect 25 years ago this present drought would have been felt much less. . . .”

This week the rest of the Commission’s trip (see map) takes it north to view regions even more desolate than the Southwest’s Dust Bowl, the blister that covers parts of the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming. Later they will meet the President in South Dakota, make a preliminary report.

Drought 1936. Unique is the Drought of 1936. Early this month the Weather Bureau found that less rain fell and higher temperatures were registered than ever before in the upper tier of Plains States. But, largely because the Drought came later in the season, crop prospects as a whole are brighter than in 1934. Pastures are in worse condition in many sections, but the livestock situation is not nearly so desperate,as two years ago, because there are fewer beasts to feed and water. Spot corn last week sold at $1.37 a bushel in Chicago, a 16-year high, and was actually above the price of wheat (see p. 42). Over 1,000 of the 3,000 counties in the U. S. were now listed as drought emergency areas, including every county in the Dakotas, Kansas and Oklahoma. The Relief Administration figured it would have to take care of 120,000 to 150,000 farm families. The Resettlement Administration estimated it would have to aid 400,000 other farm families.

Alphabet Aid. To help farmers in this crisis nearly the whole alphabet of the New Deal will go into the field. WPA will pay an average of $40 to over 100,000 relief workers to build roads, construct dams to save water and through the Bureau of Biological Survey to restore refuges for wild fowl. With $20 a month grants and loans to buy forage, RA will help others to rehabilitate themselves. AAA will help them with $10,000.000 worth of seed loans, with some $30,000.000 to buy livestock. And NYA will provide financial aid so that their children will not have to leave school.

Farmers in the Drought area last week could be thankful that this is a campaign year. Next week both Democratic and Republican Presidential nominees will join to give the farmers’ plight their best attention when they meet at Des Moines.