Locust (12 page)

Although Aughey’s science was shaky—if not fictionalized or even falsified—his politics were robust. He was an ardent booster for the state, claiming that Nebraska soil could miraculously regenerate its own fertility and that “rain follows the plow.” And in the end, Aughey’s downfall was not scientific malfeasance but administrative misjudgment. The Board of Regents was not pleased with the time Aughey was spending in Wyoming investigating coal deposits, in which officials suspected he had a financial stake. The tensions came to a head in 1883 when Aughey became embroiled in a scandal involving forged endorsements. With four court judgments against him, Aughey resigned while continuing to maintain that he was “innocent as an angel” and that he was being persecuted for his support of Darwin’s evolutionary theory.

The minister-turned-scientist became territorial geologist for Wyoming, but four years later tragedy struck again. On a visit to a smelter in Kentucky, Aughey was poisoned by chemical fumes. After five years of convalescence in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Aughey returned to the ministry. The scientist-turned-minister became a pastor in Abner, Alabama, but his multifarious passions were undiminished. This time, his biological urges became his downfall. Aughey had continued to keep in touch with friends in Nebraska, including a married woman. Alas, he was as careless with his love letters as he’d been with his scientific data. Mrs. Aughey discovered his romantic indiscretion
and mailed one of her husband’s more steamy notes to the Lincoln
Weekly News
.

The editor apparently didn’t find the disgraceful conduct of the city’s former resident worthy of the front page. But it did rate a big headline on page 3: “Loved Each Other: And Both Are Married but Not to Each Other.” The accompanying story began:

The paper followed with what were apparently juicy snippets from the intercepted letter, although modern prurient interests would find little titillating in the excerpts.

Apparently shamed by these public revelations, Aughey returned to academics, teaching at a small college in Alabama. Although he died in 1912, scandal lived on. When his daughter offered to endow a scholarship at the University of Nebraska in her father’s name seven years after his death, the chancellor politely declined. He suggested, “I am inclined to think that under the circumstances perhaps you would prefer to have the memorial in some other institution where there is no forgotten record that might possibly be brought to light.”

 

The settlers had learned that Christian faith and Yankee ingenuity were not surefire solutions to the locust invasions. And now, if the beleaguered farmers could not count on Aves or academicians, where could they turn for help? There remained one last hope. Even in the nineteenth century, there was one creature that was seemingly more plentiful than birds and surely more powerful than professors: the politician.

The federal government had lured the homesteaders to the West, and the state and territorial governments stood to benefit handsomely from land taxes and commerce if the settlers stayed. Even the railroads, and by association the eastern industrialists, profited from a vibrant agricultural economy on the frontier—every trainload of wheat heading east and every freight car of manufactured goods heading west meant revenue. So, with everyone benefiting from the success of the farmers, how could the government possibly fail in its obligation to them? How, indeed.

T
HE ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOCUST PRESENTED THE NATION with a set of problems that forced a radical reconsideration of our assumptions regarding natural disasters, agrarian values, and needy people. Perhaps most dramatically, the locusts catalyzed the great social transformation in which the virtue of hard, honest work was supplanted by a new standard of worth. With the decline of agrarianism and the commensurate rise of industrialism, the country began to equate success with money. As wealth became the measure of virtue, poverty became not simply a material failing but evidence of moral turpitude. In short, people who lacked money lacked social worth.

Contrary to the Jeffersonian ideal of self-sufficiency and independence, the needy pioneers were weak in spirit. According to this view, what the impoverished locust victims needed was a strengthening of moral character—with just enough assistance to keep them from starving. These spiritually and materially poor folks would have to
learn the harsh lessons of their failed lives. And providing them with excessive handouts would only enable them to become permanently dependent on the virtuous and wealthy.

Today we still struggle with the ethical response to poverty as we debate how to allocate resources to alleviate human suffering. We continue to argue whether the poor are lazy or unfortunate, whether public assistance is a handout or a hand up, and whether welfare deepens the rut of dependence or provides a road to autonomy. Compassionate conservatism is a nineteenth-century notion dressed up in twenty-first-century jargon. But, we might object, at least modern society doesn’t blame the victims of natural disasters for their condition. We might question how many times we should pay to rebuild beach houses along hurricane alley, farmhouses in flood plains, or log cabins in fire-climax forests, but we would never suggest that people bring tornadoes or earthquakes on themselves by leading immoral lives—right? Except, in the eyes of at least some segments of contemporary society, the natural disaster of AIDS is viewed as the punishment of sinners by an angry God.

And so it was that the Rocky Mountain locust forced the nation into its earliest confrontation with three of the great issues in American culture. First, this insect brought into sharp relief the conflicting ideals of agrarianism and industrialism, of work and wealth. The existence of the working poor and the lazy rich had to be understood. Next, these creatures compelled us to confront the nature of poverty. As the cities were struggling with the economic depression of the 1870s, the countryside was fighting hunger. Finally, the locusts forced every level of government to come to terms with its obligations to the people in times of suffering and need. The conservatives, liberals, and libertarians had very different notions about the propriety of public assistance. These fundamental questions continue to lie at the center of our society in the twenty-first century: Should we value work and effort or wealth and success? Are poor people indolent beggars or unfortunate victims? And what are the ethical duties of society, community, and family during times of adversity? Perhaps the story of the Rocky Mountain locust holds more lessons for our modern culture than we might initially attribute to the tale of a lowly insect.

The country found its private and public services woefully unprepared for the locust’s ravages. According to the American historian Gilbert C. Fite, “Want and privation were more widespread on the upper Midwest and central prairie frontier in 1874 and 1875 than at any other time during the settlement of that region.” However, most social services were based in the cities, where poverty and joblessness had become a serious problem. In urban settings, poverty was generally an acute condition, with only a small portion of families needing help at any time. But the locusts were generating prolonged destitution across entire regions. By all accounts, the rural settings should have been free of such troubles. After all, the people had the raw materials for self-sufficiency. With soil, seed, and labor, the settlers ought to have had everything they needed. Dry years, wet years, hail, frost, and insects were part of farming on the frontier. What destitute homesteaders needed was a stronger moral fiber, not a handout.

In light of sociological conditions, it is not surprising that private charities were the first organizations to provide assistance to families left destitute by the Rocky Mountain locust. The nation was facing hard times, and ironically the scale of the locust infestations was so great that the only conceivable response was homegrown intervention. Local, grassroots aid societies were not logistically or financially well prepared for the disasters, but they were more nimble and empathetic than government agencies. Even so, judgmentalism often trumped compassion.

Parochialism and paternalism undermined an otherwise altruistic effort. Perhaps F. W. Giles spoke for many of his neighbors in complaining, “Even in these frontier counties, the lack of supplies exists chiefly among the immigrants who have come in the State within the last year or so, and who had no dependence for living but the sod crops which the grasshoppers destroyed. Strictly speaking, a large number of the destitute are hardly citizens of Kansas at all.” An editorial in the
St. Paul Pioneer Press
expressed anti-immigrant sentiments in even more explicit terms, claiming that providing aid was tantamount to teaching the settlers, “especially those from foreign
countries,” to be permanent mendicants. Hearing widespread rumors of destitution, a righteous Kansan paternalistically warned, “It was apparent that an indiscriminate and desultory system of begging would be resorted to, and as a consequence an irreparable injury to the moral sentiment of our people, as well as disgrace to the State, would ensue.”

Soon, the aid organizations themselves came under fire. People levied strident accusations of favoritism, wastage, stealing, and corruption among the private charities. These unsubstantiated charges led to calls for county-level control over the funds. Integrity aside, charities were completely overwhelmed in locust-afflicted areas, and local governments were soon dragged into the crisis.

 

The western counties were a vital source of pride, identity, and community as evidenced by an 1875 newspaper editorial that proclaimed, “The counties of the Territory of Dakota are neither bankrupt nor helpless and the publication of such a bill [for state assistance] to the world is a libel and we enter our solemn protest against it. Does anyone pretend that Clay County is unable to care for its poor? Such an idea is simply ludicrous.” But throughout the West, counties lacked the finances to meaningfully assist their desperate citizens. Although the states encouraged county commissioners to redirect funds from their treasuries, few had the wherewithal to provide direct aid. The locust-ravaged case of Martin County, Minnesota, serves as an apt example. Officials estimated that 450 families needed help, or about 60 percent of the population. These people required $90,000 for bare-bones subsistence, but the total county revenue in 1874 was $2,488.

State legislatures were fighting a losing battle in trying to keep the counties on the front line. Unfunded legislative mandates for the counties to provide hopperdozers and to coordinate the burning of infested prairies fell on deaf ears and empty palms. Some states granted local governments the ability to levy taxes to offset the costs of digging ditches to trap the locusts, but this power was of little help when the damage done by the swarms had left the residents too impoverished to pay their taxes in the first place—you can’t squeeze blood
from a turnip. As the situation continued to deteriorate for the desperate settlers, state officials had no choice but to respond.

The states had no way of objectively assessing the extent of human misery caused by the locusts, but the governors and legislators had hard, cold data unambiguously showing that a serious political problem was developing. The number of land claims in Dakota, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska had fallen by more than 50 percent during the locust invasions of the 1870s. Retaining settlers and attracting immigrants were vital to economic growth, but pumping resources into the homesteaders was equivalent to admitting that a major disaster was unfolding—and the national press adored disasters. If a legislature provided aid to retain the populace, the state would be portrayed as a locust-blighted wasteland, and potential immigrants would go elsewhere. Speculators and land boomers pressured the government to keep a low profile, fearing adverse publicity nearly as much as the farmers feared the locusts. But if the states did nothing they’d continue to hemorrhage their economic lifeblood, creating the short-term impression of fine health while succumbing to demographic anemia.

State governments also had to deal with the dueling interpretations of poverty’s causes: moral weakness and blameless misfortune. In a classic fence-sitting performance, Minnesota’s Governor Cushman K. Davis maintained that humanitarian concern compelled the state to assist the farmers who were beset by circumstances beyond their control. But he balanced this dangerously liberal position with suspicions that the poor were lacking in moral character and might be tempted to exploit public benevolence. To ensure the neediness of recipients, his state-funded assistance programs were intensively overseen by investigatory committees in rather absurd disproportion to the meager funds that were distributed.