Midday; "When farmers took a holiday" documentary

We demand that Governor prep each and the men the thought of legislature support meaningful work to I am. On farm foreclosures a program of God damn operating loans and a fair. Price. With profit. For agriculture. We call for the lowering of interest rates. And the restructuring of farm debt in the continuing absence of net income. Today Minnesota faces an emergency that threatens the very survival of our family farms and rural communities. Temporary emergency measures and courageous political leadership will be required if we are to avert an irreparable disaster. All state we look back in 1933 and Governor if you would a moratorium on foreclosures and the legislature backed him

up we know what government can do because the car. No. All of the people among us a little bird found that you know their father but I'm gonna have to do all that gobs on all their gods. Everybody was in trouble. I tell you most of them were just on the verge. Everybody was hanging on farm prices were so low or so unbelievable. The losses that they took. We just couldn't raise enough to make it and so here my father went under he had to sell off all of the equipment horses go to where there are real nice tough guy no problems anybody.

Some money actually right now not found it funny. Bankers surely got none. Get your own out of the ball they caught it all they got stung I. Never had Midwestern farmers suffer darker times than those early years of the Great Depression commodity prices were at record lows. Foreclosures are at record highs throughout the Midwest. The story was the same in Iowa one of seven farms were lost to foreclosure in South Dakota. One in three. Nearly 40000 farms foreclosed as Farmer after farmer saw his farm and his way of life go at auction. They work 35 40 years to go to farms they murders to buy some of the high price and then they lost the whole works. So they were broke. They were down they were out they were frustrated people they were desperate. That frustration had been building for years in the heartland since well before the crash of

1929 and by the early 30s the desperation of financially strapped farmers burst into violent protest on a scale rarely seen in the heartland. There were strikes and riots pitched battles between farmers and sheriffs. Thousands were injured scores arrested at least three died you know. When shown what she in Justice has done. I believe a man goes a little be sure. They hate in your heart to just overpower me. Ben knew and was one of between three and 400 farmers involved in one of the most notorious incidents of the period. It happened in northwest Iowa a hotbed of depression farm protest in the spring of 933 for several months farmers there had been stopping foreclosure sales often peaceably sometimes forcibly. But something went wrong when they tried to stop a sale at the O'Brian County Courthouse in Primm Ghar Iowa. A confrontation between the farmers and

sheriff's deputies suddenly deteriorated into a fistfight. The hopelessly outnumbered deputies were quickly subdued but the sale went through none the less frustrated. A contingent of these farmers decided they'd put an end to foreclosures in the region once and for all. They piled into Model T trucks and farm wagons and drove off to the Plymouth County Courthouse in Lamar's Iowa. And there they assaulted the courtroom of chief district judge Charles Bradley. I was with them that day. We went up into the courthouse. Judge Bradley was on the bench. The man instead of walking down the aisle of the courthouse they just stepped right over the seats and walked up to the judge and took him by the shoulders and they said are you going to agree not to shine any more foreclosures. No. They lifted him up and set him down real hard on the Minch asked him again you know you know when he had done that three or

four times in discussion they grabbed him by the heels and pulled him off the bench and let them only but clear out the courthouse square out of the street. At this point Ben no one dork decided things had gotten out of hand. He and several other farmers left the mob. Longtime Iowa journalist George Mills has talked with many of those who stayed with the group. He's pieced together this account of what happened next. They took the judge out. And the country. They got a knife and said they were going to castrate him. Then they finally. Somebody come up with a half inch rope. And. They put it around his neck and still tried to get him to say that he wouldn't sign anymore mortgage foreclosures. Then they got him up and they tied the rope around his neck. They padded up over a bar on the post. And as one of them told me he said That guy had more guts than anybody I've ever seen in my life he said we had his feet

coming off the ground. And still he wouldn't give up. And then as George Mills tells it the crowd suddenly dispersed leaving Judge Bradley in a ditch a rope burn around his neck but still very much alive. In the days that followed newspaper headlines across the country blurred the news of the near lynching in Iowa look to some as though a rural revolution had begun. I was governor declared martial law dispatching the National Guard to take control of the rebellious farmers. The attack on Judge Bradley was roundly condemned by the leaders of farm groups though one Iowa leader reportedly congratulated the Iowa farmers for their courage predicting that more similar action would be needed in the future. For a long time Iowa congressman H.R. GROSS The attack was a strong indication of just how bad things had gotten in the countryside. It means there's something. Critically wrong in this country when a farmer turns to violence by nature they don't do those things. What was wrong of course was the total economic collapse of the nation the

Great Depression for farmers who are mostly self-sufficient able to grow food enough for the family with few if any purchase inputs. Those who own their land out right the depression could be weathered many made it through relatively unscathed. But for many others the depression was a financial catastrophe of unparalleled proportions. When they went after a farmer could not meet his financial obligations liquidated government took and in many instances everything but the farmer's wife and kid. That was the bitter end for firemen and for many it was a bitter end to a decade long ride on an economic roller coaster just fifteen years before. During World War One American agriculture had been riding high. These were the golden days of Agriculture domestic markets were strong and in Europe where the war had brought agricultural production nearly to a halt. Midwest grain commanded premium prices but then came the armistice. European fields return to production. The

commodity markets here at home collapsed. George mills as I remember it the value of corn in Iowa dropped about two thirds in six months from the spring of 920 until December. And that touched off. Pretty bad situation which resulted in the next starting and 21 up to 34 and about two thirds of the banks in Iowa closing are merging and with the banks went down the speculators those who gambled everything on the prospect of getting rich during the boom times for those who were left. The more conservative things began looking up in the middle of the decade prices neared pre-war levels and it began to look as though the prosperity of the rest of the country had found in the Roaring Twenties had finally come to the countryside farmers began investing modernising preparing for the future. Agricultural historian Lowell Dyson and a lot of very good farmers farmers with more than normal education.

They saw the future being in mechanizing And so the better farmers they were going to mechanization they were going to tractors and this meant a whole new set of equipment and they had to borrow the money. They saw that tractors were so efficient that they could farm bigger farms. So they gradually began increasing their holdings. They got this by mortgaging their life. Midwest farmers also invested in their communities in the 1980s. Time and time again voting to raise their taxes. The new machinery required better roads and schools needed to be built. Besides everyone agreed prosperity had finally come. Now as long as the price of corn stayed up around a dollar a bushel this is OK. But then when the price of corn and hogs and all and other things start dropping to this 10 cents or less a bushel for corn they found they could no longer pay

the interest let alone any of a percentage on their mortgage. They couldn't pay their taxes on their line and they couldn't pay off personal loans that they had made to buy fertilizer and seed. And who are the worst off the people we're the worst off were those who had been the most progressive in the sense of agronomy and practices in the 1920s. Other farmers had suffered longer and more deeply particularly the sharecroppers and subsistence farmers but they by and large weren't the ones to storm courthouses and shot down farm sales in the 1930s. Instead it was these farmers who were a decade before had been so successful who filled the ranks of the farm protest movement and the farmers. It was the most radical were more apt to resort to violence. Fred Stover was a field representative for the Agriculture Department in the 1030. She a small farmer can't lose that much.

Yes yes he got much to lose and he can rule with the with the punters but some of those big guys can't. Unable to roll with the punches. As many as a half million midwest farmers did something that farmers rarely do. They formed a group pledged to direct action. The farmers Holiday Association Ben knew and was an early convert. Milo Reno from Des Moines he started the farmer's holidays so she she and he and we all joined. There was everybody in Franklin Township join the Holiday Association. Milo Reno the national holiday president is one of those great populist characters of the American Midwest. They say of Milo Reno that he came by his hell raising naturally. He was the son of one thousandth century Granger's school is a minister Reno instead chose a career with the Iowa farmers union. Throughout the 1920s he'd preach to Iowa farmers that they had to take a holiday from marketing

their crops until prices reached acceptable levels holding action was much too radical a proposal for farmers in the 20s. But in the 30s farmers facing foreclosure were willing to consider all sorts of radical ideas. The appeal of Reno's Holiday Association well beyond the borders of Iowa spreading throughout the Midwest like wildfire across the prairie in a matter of months holiday membership rivaled that of the mainstream farm groups. The farm bureau the Farmers Union and the Grange historian Jim Young grew up in swift County Minnesota. In my own county there were I think 2000 farmers and 800 members of the Farm Holiday. Just the thing to do. Young Dale says this new holiday movement of the 1930s was very much in the tradition of Midwest populism. It was he says a very broad coalition. You had a wide wide spectrum of political outlooks among the populace. Some some of them can be very angry and very

disturbed and shouting about how terrible things are but they don't have much of a solution. And others will devise certain kinds of practical programs the practical programs of the holiday boil down to four major demands in the short term. A moratorium on farm foreclosures and a holiday on marketing in the long term cheaper credit and most important of all a government guaranteed price assuring farmers the cost of production plus a reasonable profit. Quentin Burdick worked as a lawyer for the holiday in North Dakota. Today he represents that state in the U.S. Senate. He still thinks the cost of production was a good idea. You can argue against cotton production because in the in the term gosh production you have a profit. And by that definition. And had the farmers had that it would have been in trouble. The first step towards cost of production pricing for farmers was getting attention focused on the farm problem itself and that as much as any attempt to raise prices was behind Milo Reno's call in the summer of 1030 too for a national farmers

strike. It was to be a peaceful action there were to be no pickets or road blocks. EMA Lorqess was a state holiday secretary in South Dakota. They want to put on a holding action farmers hold or grade an older livestock. We found out that you can't just have an oral agreement and the crops will be withheld. You have to pick at the roads and that's illegal. Sioux Falls Well it's a good example in this state. We blocked. 13 or 14 roads into Sioux Falls and stopped all traffic. Nice story that was very successful. Pickets appeared in market cities throughout the Midwest beginning that August in Minnesota. They tried to cut off the stockyards in South St. Paul and several smaller market cities in the southwest and west central counties. Ernest Johnson spent several days on the picket line at

a creamery in Jackson Minnesota. We were quite a crowd you know. It was rough go on them deals were we had some planks of oysters and ice spikes you know if they wouldn't stop. Why there's only low dollars I get out of the way oh yes. But on the sled the spikes are so you puncture their tires. It's got a wicked thing to do but they don't know how to do that once in a community and nobody else tried it. One of the most spectacular strike actions in Minnesota came in Marshall where the farmers pretty much took control of the town for several days. Historian Dave NASS situation Marshall was an attempt to close down the Swift plant here. Farmers organized on the outskirts of town and they marched in and the local sheriffs knew they were coming. Demonstrators were met with the sheriff and the fire engine and the fire hoses were laid out and the demonstrators then proceeded to

disarm the sheriffs to cut up the fire hoses smash up the police car. The crowd was estimated several thousand people and it was getting pretty unruly. They close the buying station for a short period of time a few days or a couple of weeks created a tremendous amount of controversy. I've talked to a couple people who said they happen to be in town that day for some reason or other. They kind of viewed it like they were under siege. The focus of strike activity was northwest Iowa near the nationally important market of Sioux City. They're a radicalized group of dairy farmers had forged a highly organized strike group that by mid month had mobilized an estimated fourteen hundred pickets and circling the city there was a big A lot of Sioux City which handled the trade Dari for property. Forty miles due east and north of there there's a big gala last one new hip before you went into Sioux City this dark orange. They parked there and turned a truck wouldn't

let him go and say there's a body of farmers they called him. They called Ala Barker Ariel. And they wouldn't let him go in there they just turned a truck around Santa back Carle Woolley ran a small Creamery in Sioux City at the time of the strike. He wasn't about to let a few pickets stand in the way of his daily milk runs. I knew I was in danger because I. For several days I can't remember now how many days. But with this revolver I meet them from our front seats. I didn't want to use it but I thought well this is these boys want to sell me the milk I have a right to take it that the highways are mine. Well they never found occasion to use his gun but others did. South Dakota Derriman R.D. Markel became the first casualty of the revolt. He was bringing a thousand gallons of milk into Sioux City. The pickets were armed and they were in the ditch. And they put the usual obstruction out in the road you know road tie

stuff like that. Planks to keep the truck I think there were two trucks as I remember it and so he got out to take them out his two sons were with him. And someplace along the line whoever fired first there was firing both ways and he was badly wounded he was hit and he still kept removing the obstruction. I think he died in about three hours and his sons were both wounded. The shooting of our D-Mark Cal of course went well beyond what holiday president Milo Reno had planned for this strike. He didn't even want the strikers to picket. The fact that things did get out of hand in Sioux City according to historian Lowell Dyson is indicative of the lack of control that the national leadership had over this movement. Reno would think that things were getting a little bit too wild out on the pick up line and he would send out an order Well don't do this or don't do that and reporters would rush out up pick up camps and ask some of the local farmers Well what do you think. Mr Marino's latest order and

like most farmers of the day they'd look the reporter in the eye and I look to one side and spit on the ground and they'd say Well Milo Reno is in the morning we're here and we're going to do what we're going to do. Reno was however a very capable national spokesman and lobbyist for the holiday and he was a great stump speaker. But there were others in the leadership Usher Burdick of North Dakota. Later he represented that state in the U.S. House and in Minnesota. John Busch The national holiday vice president. Is the two highest ranking national holiday officers. Bush and Reno were a curious pair. I think Reno and Bush needed each other and I think they both resented one another because they felt they needed each other. Historian Lowell Dyson John Bush was in his 30s he was about half the age of Milo Reno. He was a much better red man and a much more philosophical man than my Laureano Milo Reno was as one of his aides once told me. Well Reno was a man of the

barricades. He was a man for immediate action no matter what the action was. Bush was philosophical he was trying to plan out long range programs which would bring real security to American farmers. But perhaps most colorful of all the holiday leaders was William Langer the governor of North Dakota Bill Langer was and was a native of Castleton North Dakota. Big brash ambitious graduate of Columbia University North Dakota holiday historian Larry Ramli he is easily the most spectacular politician that North Dakota has ever as ever fielded. And when the holiday emerged in North Dakota says Ramli Governor Bill Langer Wild Bill they called him simply incorporated it into his already strong political organization in North Dakota it was easy to form that kind of alliance because there were this state has always been and is now an agricultural state. And when agriculture was in trouble in 103 in the early 30s the entire.

Focus of state political life was to find a solution for that for those troubles. Whereas in other states with a more diversified economies they did that the political leaders could not focus so directly upon it. That one element of the society and its problems though reasonably well organized and disciplined in a few states. The national holiday was just too diverse and decentralized to hold any sort of coordinated national action that became painfully clear in the farm strike of one thousand thirty two individual state and local holiday units decided on their own. Whether or not to withhold crops whether or not to picket one Minnesota group even jumped the gun and setting up a picket line before the strike was officially to begin. Guy Lund Holliday member and Lincoln County Minnesota found it all quite frustrating. My idea of it was it would have probably been all right if it had covered the whole country at the same time but it seemed like they started it in Iowa or at least solid. And by the time it got to been to

Minnesota and we were holding things off the market they were beginning to release some Ansel down there so it was more like a wave going north. So I didn't think much of that idea nor did Guyland think much of the blood spilled during the holiday strike. He like many holiday members especially those in Minnesota talk of a curious philosophy of nonviolence. Curious because of the amount of violence that was associated with the strike but the leadership always kept emphasizing Dondi like techniques historian Dave NASA's studied the Minnesota Holiday Association and its philosophy of active nonviolence. And I think they did a pretty good job because if you haven't been involved in anything like that you know it's hard to keep a group of people under control. Yeah it's sort of a limited use of violence that you can grab the sheriff and go lock him in the bathroom but don't beat him up well you don't want to.

Right. Yeah and I suppose you know some people consider that a terrible thing to manhandle the sheriff and I'm sure a lot of sheriffs didn't appreciate it either. But there never was any intent to hurt the sheriff. I think it was really important not to be violent holiday veteran Guyland. And you see they didn't want to have violence but they were so hard pressed and are so desperate and in some cases when you try to do things peaceably the people that you want to impress don't seem to want to listen to you. They listen better when people begin to get violent. Iowa holiday veteran Lester Mullen book explains it this way. The conditions got so bad. Good Reason and rationalism cast the door when doors and windows it means nothing to be you know to live for losing. Compounding that sense of desperation and 1032 was President Herbert Hoover's response to the farmer's plight. Many farmers like EMA Lorex simply gave

up on the president. He was inactive he thought the thing would remedy itself. He says prosperity just around the corner. That was his faith favorite expression prosperity is around the corner. So we went to the ballot box and farmers went to the ballot box that fall to elect a new president. For many it was the first Democratic ballot they'd ever marked but desperate times called for dramatic action. And Mr. Hoover they believed they had made clear his sympathies weren't with the downtrodden and distressed the worst of all was when the veterans came in there the veterans through one World War One and I was one of them. They went to Washington and several quite a few thousand of them to ask for the payment of the bonus. And they said if they could get that bonus which would be around $500 they could weather the storm. Maybe Hoover refused to be two of them. So he finally called.

General. MacArthur to call up the army. They were driven out like a beaten for in the field of battle. I think that was the darkest period. To me it was. This is Robert Trout at our election headquarters in the newsroom in New York. The result of the 1932 election now appear to be certain the ticket of Roosevelt and Garner has won a clear cut majority over the Republican ticket of Hoover and Curtis. And so the United States has a new President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. With the election of Franklin Roosevelt that fall. The holidays on the horizon. The chance that the government would indeed respond to its demands. But the new president wouldn't be sworn in until March of the following year. Help was still a long ways off. Soon after the election national holiday president Milo Reno called off the national holding action. In reality it had pretty much run its course

anyway. Reno told the membership to focus its energy in another direction keeping busted farmers on their farms. It was Quentin Burdick a different kind of holiday. There was a stop gap thing taking a holiday from foreclosures. And at that time if you recall the Roosevelt had been likened 1932 and hoping he'd bring some legislation some relief to these people. And so the Holiday Association designed to hold off foreclosures until the federal government could enact some legislation that had been up and help them out. Milo Reno called on holiday members to take this holiday from foreclosures any way possible throughout much of the Midwest it was accomplished through mediation in the winter of 30 to 33 the Farm Holiday organized committees or councils they were called by different names different places and when a farmer had a problem with his bank or other lenders if a renter had problems with them and he was renting

from. They'd go to this council of defense and they'd say OK help us work this out. Let's arbitrate something. And a great deal of this really peaceful activity which was completely outside the wall. If you if you know this took place during the winter and an awful lot of foreclosures were stopped. Not surprisingly though mediation alone didn't always do the trick. So the holiday developed an even more innovative technique. The penny auction. I want you to listen. I was I would want to hit any of those photos but I'm the landlord and a lawyer shows up you circle them and say Boys we don't need you and just keep walking till I get out the road and leave. Attorney Henry warmly was one of the first to organize a penny sale. Then you have the sheriff start the sale. And one of the first fellow bit nine cents an X-File attempts I went next. I go ahead and center you've got three beds and the fella got his property back to farmers took up a

collection and paid it. The penny sale was so successful a tool that the idea quickly spread throughout the Midwest today holiday veterans still talk with pride about the hundreds sometimes thousands of members they could mobilize to stop a sale and indeed they could fill a farmyard with impressive numbers of protesters. Ernest Johnson helped organize one of the better remembered sales in Minnesota on a farm just outside the town of Truman yard was packed it was just time to go. It was people from northern Minnesota believe me she hitched hiked for more seek a clear over there. I get such a bearing out that circuit set up his machine gun course and what do you want to that's doing well you know you said it was necessary so that you got the guts. So we had and he actually wrote a very favorable to the moment and he had sold about a dozen items when the landlord finally came for census and sale. So you know I was you mean to say he said you're selling that stuff he said. We advertised as a legal sale

a somewhat better version I think you could do say on a dime size anybody is allowed to go or how to be a dime or undersea one co-op and get 20 cents or so much slap his face for that's the only incident that happened. See. We thought it was a terrific success is what it was. Set an example. But not every holiday penny sale went so smoothly. Many creditors and more than a few counties sure resisted the holidays extralegal penny sales confrontations between farmers and deputies became almost commonplace. Once again northwest Iowa was a major center of activity then new and well remembers the scene at the O'Brian County Courthouse in Primm Ghar Iowa one morning in April of 1033. There was a farmer south of Broome Gar. And he was losing his farm. He called out the crowd to apply a moral suasion. We were out of the which door of the courthouse. In the crowd

greenmail group came running in the East Orange says they're selling the farm from upstairs from the balcony and we can get our bit in. Like a pair of chumps. Jim Sears and I ran Burke back into the courthouse and at the second landing stood Levon my Legion buddies restored all facts and all. And when I saw all those fellas standing at that landing and holding me back in made me so angry that I lost my temper. And instead of ducking in the corner and playing it safe and let the crowd bulge up there I like a darned fool rushed up there myself and I saw one of the Legionnaires feet leave the floor and I something told me he was aiming for me and I don't like this but I didn't get quite far enough away and I was knocked unconscious when somebody was standing on my foot when I was rolling down the

stairway. So that brought me to I never sure we're going home alive. It was a contingent of these farmers from Prim Gar who later that same day assaulted the courtroom of Judge Charles C. Bradley in Lamar's. What happened in Prem Gar and Lamar's that April were all of the most spectacular examples of what Midwestern farmers had been doing for months that winter through negotiation through intimidation and through violence they stopped mortgage foreclosures keeping farmers on their land until the new administration and Washington took office. Probably the worst period of time that the United States has ever gone through were the months of the winter of 32 33. You see there was a several months there where the country was simply drifting and people. In the countryside in many cases we weren't willing to go along with the draft and they began taking the law into their own home and in a

sense the holiday became the law in parts of the Midwest that when are replacing the courts the sheriffs the legally constituted authorities in matters of foreclosure. It's a fact that doesn't bother us Senator Quentin Burdick. True it's true what they did was illegal. The sheriff had the right to proceed with the sale. I was the law of the land but the farmer that there felt they had to hire a lawyer right. It was our preservation. Unlike most other states that went or the North Dakota government threw its weight behind the anti dispossession efforts with Governor Bill Langer in the forefront and you can imagine a governor getting on the stump and saying to a crowd if one of those deputy sheriffs comes in your farm or anybody come to try to foreclose by you should look. Like you would a chicken thief. Now of course he didn't mean it but that's what he said. Actually the North Dakota holiday relied on more mundane methods to keep

farmers on their land. And as the son of the state holiday president and a recent law school graduate Quentin Burdick provided legal help to many farmers facing foreclosure. I had just graduated from the University of Minnesota and thirty two at the very depths of everything my father would go out of its stump and make the speech to the farmers. And you say no then you finally get some of the yellow papers or foreclosure papers sentiment oh my kid. You take care of them Korea and the principal thing is that nobody said any filing fee. Nobody said any money. I have more law business just out of law school than a lawyer nor to court and less money with farmers throughout the Midwest showing they could stop farm sales on their own and in anticipation that long term farm relief would soon come from Washington states throughout the Midwest. Past foreclosure moratoria Iowa Minnesota Nebraska each had a moratorium in place by March and in North Dakota Governor Bill Langer added his own twist to the moratorium. He called out the National

Guard to enforce it. Well it's very simple. A sale would be advertised and the guard would show up and the captain or a lieutenant or the sergeant or whoever is in charge of that small force would simply say they would read languorous proclamation sale and say There shall be no sale. And there was no sale. And then on March 4th 1033 the day the nation had awaited the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt president well thus. The chief justice. My friend. This is a day not consecration. And I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans back that on my induction into the president. I want to dress them with a candle and a just Station which the present situation of people in. This great nation will end

up and will cross. So first let me say that the only thing we have to fear President rules well right after he was inaugurated he key moment here by special train came right to peer email Lorex of South Dakota President Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt. I could believe that. And of course I go to visit with him. He listened to us we told the story. He said he came up to investigate to see what the situation was. And he said I will promise you right here you're going to shoot him. And indeed it looked as though the federal help would be coming soon from credit chief Henry Morgenthau provided the first really good news for farmers higher than just you ship right.

Consolidating into one organization. These different. Credit will be here to issue to the bottom of this. It is up. To the consolidation of these functions. That we will be ready by. The side of this conflict. You're much better in the future. But other measures that farmers have demanded the federal moratorium and a better price didn't come so quickly. The new president and this Congress instead turn their attention to the banks and to businesses real farm relief seemed far from assured a national holiday president Milo Reno called for a national farmers strike to put pressure on the administration. And finally the day before that the strike was to be called. Congress passed the agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 which is one of the most revolutionary pieces of

agricultural legislation in the history. The nation of the agricultural adjustment act committed the government to pay farmers to set acreage aside from production. It was followed later that year by the corn long program that western farmers who'd burned their 10 cent a bushel corn for heat the preceding winter were ecstatic. And we were still take a good 45 Shinjuku and when we got to forty five cents of corn we could pay our taxes. Cost of Production pricing the federal program was not relief it was the first checks came through from the agricultural adjustment ministration just in time for farmers to buy their kids presents for Christmas of 1933. If you don't think that meant a lot to those people whose kids hadn't seen a real Christmas for two or three years then you're wrong. It really was tremendously effective. In raising farmers in in in in

regenerating a belief in the future in a very real way that legislation and other measures that followed soon spelled the beginning of the end for the holiday movement. The holiday leadership though found the New Deal programs lacking. National president Milo Reno would settle for nothing less than true cost of production pricing in the fall of 1033. Reno called another national farmers strike to put pressure on Mr. Roosevelt. The strike was a dismal failure. Just one more indication that Midwestern farmers were ready to give the administration's farm policies a chance Milo Reno died in the fall of 1036 bitter over the decline of his movement and its failure to secure cost of production. The holiday officially disbanded a little more than a year later though a few local units did persist well into the 1040s. But the militants simply couldn't compete with the optimism the promise of Mr. Roosevelt and his new deal.

This reminds my friends that I have to go. People of this country about on national front. During this period many things have happened. I'm glad to say that the major part of that might greatly help the well-being of the average citizen we have a long way to go. But we are on the way. We come to the relief for a moment of those who was in danger of losing that far although home. I have publicly asked the foreclosure chattels homes be delayed until every mortgage or in the country had full opportunity to take advantage of federal credit and I make the further request. That if there is any family in the United States about the home origin that family should telegraph the one I do not hesitate to say that all of the prices of many products of the fall of going up. Although many font families are better. Often they were last year. I am not

satisfied. It is definitely a part of the policy that we preach the right and to extend it for those products that have as yet no benefit. If we cannot do this one way we will do it but do it. We will. Not surprisingly Franklin Roosevelt in his groundbreaking 1933 farm program are fondly remembered by veterans of the farmer's holiday movement. Uma Lorqess of South Dakota and the rules of the world program doubled the farm income been seven years. Course it cost the government a few million to. But that was peanuts compared to the magnitude of the accomplishment. You know he saved the day for us. And if DDR we were on the point of revolution and that was a disease the greatest economic disaster that's ever before when our economy was

in those early 30s we never had anything like it. 40000 farmers see they didn't foreclosed and this possessed driven out. You know what countries today they pick up guns and start insurrections to change the government. Given that American farmers did take up guns in the early thirties that they defied legally constituted authorities that they shouted down farm sales and occupied state capitals. Just how close was rural America in those years from outright revolution. It's a hard question for a historian to answer because it's one of those what ifs you know. Historian Dave Nasser I think if the situation had been handled much differently there could have been a I think the Floyd Olsen approach and the Franklin Roosevelt approach

of showing some concern for the problem of trying to deal with it was enough to show the. Middle of the road farmer that OK they're trying to help us. But yeah I think in some ways we were pretty close that the revolution didn't come was a great disappointment to one small depression era farm group an outfit called the United Farmers League. The league had been active in the Midwest since the mid 20s well before the holiday movement emerged often battling with the holiday for farmers support in a few areas working with the holiday. The United Farmers League was about as close to a truly revolutionary farm group America has ever come. I was the secretary of the Communist Party of South Dakota at that time and Clarence Sharpe was an organizer for the United Farmers League in South Dakota. It was primarily concerned with organizing

relief for farmers at that particular time. And of course they also. Calling for public ownership of the meetings the production number would be a leftist program that that they sought to win the farm with support for. This was an odd sort of organization for the American Communist Party. The party had always maintained that the revolution would be led by the urban proletariat but in the 1920s the American party leadership received a communique from Moscow the party had been asked by the Russians why aren't you doing anything amongst farmers. And since the Communist Party in those days was was basically a very urban organization with urban leadership who didn't know a damn thing about farmers. And I can imagine the scene at party headquarters when they got this letter have you know farmers and they

started saying themselves well you know what does a great man. What are we going to do about this. Giving further impetus to this movement was the presence of several well-qualified committed and practical communist agrarian leaders. That was Len Harris Harvard educated son of a Wall Street banker and how aware a student of American and Soviet agriculture but perhaps most important of all was a radical newspaper publisher named Charlie Taylor from Little Falls Minnesota. They called him Red Flag Charlie. He was a big man he weighed three hundred twenty pounds in his prime he could beat up any bully in the place. He ran what was probably I think the most interesting week to week weekly newspaper in the whole United States. But. Taylor was more than that. He was also an awfully good organizer and he could go out and speak to farmers and he could just hold them in in the palm of his hand.

Red Flag Charlie and his newspaper arrived in the Midwest just as things had turned sour for American farmers at a time when farmers were open to all sorts of radical solutions for their problems. United farmers league organizers like Clarence Sharpe had just the right techniques for the times in order to win the support of the farmers at all. We had to become experts on how to deal with media problems. You see there was a drought. And in many instances the farmers had had real problems of how they were going to save the livestock and they discovered that that the league hadn't had a means by which they got action from relief agencies and so they would call up the united climate league to get this help. The United farmers league's appeal was especially strong in the Finnish settlements scattered throughout the upper Midwest Minnesota Wisconsin Michigan and the Dakotas were home to dozens of Finnish communities where left wing politics was a

tradition. James flower was once national secretary for the United Farmers League he came from New York Mills Minnesota. We had some radicals for neighbors you know Finnish people most of them were black they stood off to the Iron Range in 1916 couldn't get a job to start farming. True the background was there it was in the New York Mills area in 1030 to the James flower organized one of the first demonstrations in the country to stop a farm sale and stopping of yours. Feel it to be a pretty national personal Mr. PRICE. People wish for wisdom as your rule book I'm a not going to fight you know how the hell did your stuff yours or yours you know what you think should be done. And of course I was a dyed in the communists. And all I could ever ever tell him was joined Prime Minister but how do you fight back.

The United Farmers League and Midwestern farmers did join the league though and nowhere near the numbers that were attracted to the holiday. Actual card carrying members probably never numbered more than five or six thousand but they did make their presence known. Much of the credit goes to a grandmotherly woman named Ella Reeve Blore mother Bloor as they called her she was the Grand Old Lady of American communism. And the last man she married was a farmer from western North Dakota so she could travel around all through the Midwest and she could say well I'm the wife of a busted farmer and this is the way things really are and this is what we need to do. And she did get crowds all fired up when northwest Iowa farmers battled in the Sioux City area mother Blore was there making speeches to a very receptive audiences of militant farmers motherboard made radio broadcasts. She ran for

Congress from North Dakota in an agrarian movement dominated by men. She was a driving force and as the United farmers Lee grew she and other leaders became more open about the league's ties to the Communist Party. It was a policy that Jim flower remembers became increasingly dangerous to follow and went out on the highway of the moat looking for a ride and she just big Black Dan coming to me. First guy I know for sure there's a stick sticking out of the window. Wouldn't yours you know. No it was sudden it dawned on me what it was. Three guys are God guns they're going to kill you. You're out here on the highway. You have nothing. You're just they're just coming up to me I dove into the ditch. And I did it right on my belly and I was up and running.

For his part National Farm Holiday president Milo Reno would have nothing to do with the communists often engaged in a war of words with the league. The party was mostly ambivalent toward its more moderate potential ally. I suggested right from the beginning to try to work with people who wish to my party that we don't have a new truck whities Social Democrats. So I do not agree with that frankly and honestly. Do you national united firm from the beginning or board tried to maintain contact with the Holiday Association the Farmers Union. There are those who say that the league's presence in the Midwest actually worked in favor of the more moderate reformers of the period forcing a strong anticommunist yet militant coalition in the Farm Holiday while at the same time pushing that movement in a more and more activist direction. The analysis though

is not universally accepted. But either way the league did have its impact in some areas. It eclipse the holiday as the major farm protest group. But like the holiday the league's days were numbered with the New Deal farm programs came hope for the future. The feeling among farmers that the government was doing what it could. Farmer radicalism declined rapidly in the end says historian LOL Dyson. The United Farmers League was the one and only serious communist foray into the countryside and it was at best a limited success. I think it's significant that even in the years of greatest trauma for the United States in one thousand thirty two thousand nine hundred thirty three The United Farmers League could get more than five or 6000 members throughout the nation. It's an interesting group. It did get a certain amount of national publicity. It did do a certain amount.

Of preventing of foreclosures but that says LOL Dyson was about all the United farmers late was able to accomplish. The farmers Holiday Association on the other hand claims an impressive legacy scores of Midwestern politicians from state legislators to U.S. senators can trace their careers to the movement in some states. Principal in North Dakota farm relief legislation passed by the holiday in the 30s remains on the books today and the effect of the holiday on the New Deal farm legislation is undeniable and that legislation today still guides the direction of farm policy. But perhaps most important of all untold numbers of Midwestern farm families over their tenure on the land to the Farm Holiday to its pony auctions and negotiating councils that during that long cold winter of 1933 kept farmers on their farms until the relief finally came from Washington. When farmers took a holiday has written and produced by Mark heis dead and is a production of the

Minnesota Public Radio history project. Technical production by Fred Wasser and Joe Juncus editorial assistance from rich when. The producer wishes to thank the North Dakota Historical Society for Southwest Minnesota History Center the National Archives of the United States and the Minnesota Historical Society for their assistance. It's meant. There's a bird and. Fish

such a it is a. Man. And man again. Eh eh.

Eh eh.