Hard Times (38 page)

Some of the farmers with teams of horses, sometimes in trucks, tried to get through. He was trying to feed his family, trying to trade a few dozen eggs and a few pounds of cream for some groceries to feed his babies. He was desperate, too. One group tried to sell so they could live and the other group tried to keep you from selling so they could live.

The farmer is a pretty independent individual. He wants to be a conservative individual. He wants to be an honorable individual. He wants to pay his debts. But it was hard. The rank-and-file people of this state—who
were brought up as conservatives, which most of us were—would never act like this. Except in desperation.

There were a few who had a little more credit than the others. They were willing to go on as usual. They were mostly the ones who tried to break the picket lines. They were the ones who gained at the expense of the poor. They had the money to buy when things were cheap. There are always a few who make money out of other people’s poverty. This was a struggle between the haves and the have-nots.

The original bankers who came to this state, for instance. When my father would borrow $100, he’d get $80. And when it was due, he’d pay back the $100 and a premium besides that. Most of his early borrowings were on this basis. That’s where we made some wealthy families in this country.

We did pass some legislation. The first thing we did was stop the power of the judges to issue deficiency judgments. The theory was: the property would come back to you someday.

The next law we passed provided for committees in every county: adjudication committees. They’d get the person’s debts all together and sit down with his creditors. They gave people a chance. People got time. The land banks and insurance companies started out hard-boiled. They got the farm, they got the judgment and then found out it didn’t do them any good. They had to have somebody to run it. So they’d turn around and rent it to the fella who lost it. He wasn’t a good renter. The poor fella lost all his capacity for fairness, because he couldn’t be fair. He had to live. All the renters would go in cahoots. So the banks and companies got smart and stopped foreclosing.

Through a federal program we got a farm loan. A committee of twenty-five of us drafted the first farm legislation of this kind thirty-five years ago. We drew it up with Henry Wallace. New money was put in the farmers’ hands. The Federal Government changed the whole marketing program from burning 10-cent corn to 45-cent corn. People could now see daylight and hope. It was a whole transformation of attitude. You can just imagine … (He weeps.)

It was Wallace who saved us, put us back on our feet. He understood our problems. When we went to visit him, after he was appointed Secretary, he made it clear to us he didn’t want to write the law. He wanted the farmers themselves to write it. “I will work with you,” he said, “but you’re the people who are suffering. It must be your program.” He would always give his counsel, but he never directed us. The program came from the farmers themselves, you betcha.

Another thing happened: we had twice too many hogs because corn’d been so cheap. And we set up what people called Wallace’s Folly: killing the little pigs. Another farmer and I helped develop this. We couldn’t
afford to feed 45-cents corn to a $3 hog. So we had to figure a way of getting rid of the surplus pigs. We went out and bought ‘em and killed ’em. This is how desperate it was. It was the only way to raise the price of pigs. Most of ’em were dumped down the river.

The hard times put farmers’ families closer together. My wife was working for the county Farm Bureau. We had lessons in home economics, how to make underwear out of gunny sacks, out of flour sacks. It was cooperative labor. So some good things came out of this. Sympathy toward one another was manifest. There were personal values as well as terrible hardships.

 

 

 

 

The real boost came when we got into the Second World War. Everybody was paying on old debts and mortgages, but the land values were going down. It’s gone up now more than ever in the history of the country. The war…. (A long pause.)

It does something to your country. It’s what’s making employment. It does something to the individual. I had a neighbor just as the war was beginning. We had a boy ready to go to service. This neighbor one day told me what we needed was a damn good war, and we’d solve our agricultural problems. And I said, “Yes, but I’d hate to pay with the price of my son.” Which we did. (He weeps.) It’s too much of a price to pay….

In ’28 I was chairman of the farm delegation which met with Hoover. My family had always been Republican, and I supported him. To my disappointment. I don’t think the Depression was all his fault. He tried. But all his plans failed, because he didn’t have the Government involved. He depended on individual organizations.

It’s a strange thing. This is only thirty-five years ago—Roosevelt, Wallace. We have a new generation in business today. Successful. It’s surprising how quickly they forget the assistance their fathers got from the Government. The Farm Bureau, which I helped organize in this state, didn’t help us in ’35. They take the same position today: we don’t need the Government. I’m just as sure as I’m sitting here, we can’t do it ourselves. Individuals have too many different interests. Who baled out the land banks when they were busted in the Thirties? It was the Federal Government.

 

What I remember most of those times is that poverty creates desperation, and desperation creates violence. In Plymouth County—Le Mars—
just west of us, a group met one morning and decided they were going to stop the judge from issuing any more deficiency judgments. This judge had a habit of very quickly O.K.’ing foreclosure sales. These farmers couldn’t stand it any more. They’d see their neighbors sold out.

There were a few judges who would refuse to take the cases. They’d postpone it or turn it over to somebody else. But this one was pretty gruff and arrogant: “You do this, you do that, it’s my court.” When a bunch of farmers are going broke every day and the judge sits there very proudly and says: “This is my court …”; they say: “Who the hell are you?” He was just a fellow human being, same as they were.

These farmers gathered this one particular day. I suppose some of ’em decided to have a little drink, and so they developed a little courage. They decided: we’ll go down and teach that judge a lesson. They marched into the courtroom, hats on, demanded to visit with him. He decided he would teach
them
a lesson. So he says: “Gentlemen, this is my court. Remove your hats and address the court properly.”

They just laughed at him. They said, “We’re not concerned whose court this is. We came here to get redress from your actions. The things you’re doing, we can’t stand to have done to us any more.” The argument kept on, and got rougher. He wouldn’t listen. He threatened them. So they drug him from his chair, pulled him down the steps of the courthouse, and shook a rope in front of his face. Then, tarred and feathered him.

The Governor called out the National Guard. And put these farmers behind barbed wire. Just imagine … (he weeps) … in this state. You don’t forget these things.

 

FRANK: (Laughs.) Oh, gee whiz. The Great American Depression.

ROME: The Holidays here.

FRANK: Farmer’s Holidays, yeah. They marched up to the courthouse, where Judge Bradley was sitting on the bench. The farmers objected to, oh, let’s say, the losing of the farm. I think they were right. They had a just cause.

ROME: That farm was probably worth seventy or eighty thousand dollars, and they’d foreclose on a $15,000 mortgage. That wasn’t fair.

FRANK: That certainly wasn’t.

ROME: I don’t blame ’em for taking the stand they did.

FRANK: They took the judge off his seat and put a rope around his neck. ROME: They were gonna hang him.

FRANK: Yeah, they took him out.

ROME: He was frightened.

FRANK: He was scared to death. Bradley was a very good friend of ours. We knew him very well. He later went to Des Moines.

 

 

FRANK: No, not here.

ROME: There was some of that, but not around here. But they had the tope around his neck, and he was pretty well frightened.

FRANK: He was scared to death, because he couldn’t do anything. All he could do was carry out the law. Whatever the law was. And I don’t know….

 

 

FRANK: I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it.

ROME: They didn’t hang him. But it really ruined his life. He was never all right after that. I think he retired. He was not well at all. That’s quite a shock for an older man.

FRANK: Oh yeah, when you’re within an inch of having your life took by the mob.

ROME: This group of farmers—there were hundreds of them, I guess. And he was at their mercy. I don’t know how they finally decided not to do it. Just after this judge deal, they were all arrested, and the country club was on the south edge of town. That’s where they kept them, fenced in, in an enclosure there. There were hundreds of ’em.

 

 

ROME: It was rough on us.

FRANK: Those that had the money lost the money.

ROME : Yeah, all those banks closed, you know.

FRANK: I guess we’re about the only family left that lived here, aren’t we?

ROME: We had several stores around in different towns. In Yankton and Watertown, South Dakota. And Mason City, Iowa. Carroll, Iowa. We just closed up the stores. About ’33.

FRANK: We had about the best trade in the city.

 

 

ROME: We never did reopen any of ’em.

ROME: Sit around. (Laughs.)

 

IF THEY WAS GONNA CALL a farm sale, we would send a group there to stop the sale. There wasn’t any rioting like there is now. We would just go there, and they would see maybe several hundred of us. And they would just call the sale off. There wouldn’t be no demonstration. We’d just go there.

The Judge Bradley deal came on quite unexpectedly. I wasn’t here at the time. I was in Des Moines the day it happened. They went up in Sioux City and stopped a farm sale up there. And the group came down to Le Mars, maybe a hundred or more farmers. They heard about this sale here. So they went up to the courthouse and tried to interview Judge Bradley. He was belligerent and defiant. And they took him out, not intending any more than just talk to him. But as things went on, they took him out in the country and threatened to lynch him, which they wouldn’t have done, of course.

Of course, that brought in the militia. That was on a Thursday. Saturday morning, the militia came to Le Mars. I came home Saturday midnight. Sunday morning, the militia picked me up because I was chairman of the Council for Defense. I was in jail for lacking-two-days-of-being two weeks.

I had been to church and walked downtown. The editor of the
Globe-Post
, he came running out and said: “You’d better get out of town, Orrin. The militia’s looking for you, in connection with the Judge Bradley deal.” I said, “I have nothing to run for. I’m not going.” He said, “I’ll call a lawyer and have him defend you.” So I walked up the street where the lawyer’s office was. As I went up the stairs, the National Guard followed me. They said, “We’re taking Kelly out of here.” He tried to defend me: “You have to have a warrant. You can’t pick Mr. Kelly up just like that.” But they said, “We’re taking him with us.” So they took me down and put me in a patrol wagon and took me to a camp, the south part of town. And kept me there that afternoon.

I asked them if I could call my wife. They said, “You can’t call your wife.” Someone did call her. They allowed her to come in. Searched her.

That night, about six o’clock, a patrol wagon came around and took me to Sioux City. I was in the police station there till Wednesday evening. There weren’t any seats in the wagon, and I had to kind of stoop down all the way to Sioux City. This was the thing that brought on this back ailment. A colored boy came into the cell. He looked at me and said, “What’s the matter, boy? You’re in pain. We better get you out of here.” So he went out and started hollering at the top of his voice: “There’s a man here dying.”

So they put me in an ambulance and took me up to St. Vincent’s Hospital. I had three men guarding me all the time. Two policemen from ten at night until seven the next morning. Then the National Guard came in. There was one man there all the time.

A funny incident took place, one of the first days I was there. There were two beds in the room. Two guards slept and one was awake all the time. This nurse said, “I want to take care of Mr. Kelly. Will you leave the room?” They said, “We can’t leave the room.” She said, “I don’t want you here.” So they had a little conference and finally went out.

The next day, my wife came down. We were expecting a baby at that time. That was 1932. When she got ready to go, she put her arms around me and cried a little bit. She had a package which was a prayer book and a rosary. As she stepped over to the door, she kind of tossed it over on the bed. I just kind of shoved it under the pillow. The three guards were talking outside.