Locust (16 page)

With the impetus of the governors’ conference for a locust commission, Riley had a fresh piece of bait for his hook. But there were two problems. First, Congress would have to be convinced to fund this
venture. And second, the political drive necessary to sell the idea to Washington would need to be cleverly linked to Hayden’s agency within the U.S. Department of Interior, rather than the most obviously relevant federal agency: the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA had been established in 1862, so it had no substantive track record and little grassroots support. The department provided very limited service to agriculture other than distributing seed in a largely unappreciated program that was unrelated to locust depredations. If farmers saw nominal value in this agency, Riley and his colleagues viewed it with nothing short of antipathy.

These entomologists favored practical fieldwork and applied studies rather than book knowledge and pure science. But the entomological division of the Department of Agriculture had, since its inception in 1863, emphasized the discovery and naming of new insect species. The division’s first and only chief, Townsend Glover, worked with a single assistant in the most humble of programs, aspiring to little and achieving less in the minds of the state entomologists. Glover was a genteel naturalist who accumulated files of interesting facts (but never published because of his insecurity) and masses of poorly preserved insects, believing that well-rendered drawings were as useful as the actual specimens. This approach to taxonomy irritated Riley, who was meticulous in the curation of his collections. Even worse, while Glover was diddling with new species and other dandy curiosities, farmers were facing an ancient plague.

Thomas, however, was perhaps even more annoyed by Glover, whose puttering never took him out of his Washington office and into the fields where farmers were battling insect pests. Thomas expressed his frustration to Hayden and laid the groundwork for allying economic entomology with the Department of Interior’s Geological and Geographic Survey rather than the Department of Agriculture’s Division of Entomology: “You might as well try to get a prairie dog out of his hole as to get Glover out of his nest. . . . I had to get appointed to the Conference of Governors so as to bring up the matter.” And so Thomas had also seen the meeting in Omaha as an opportunity to turn the political tide in favor of applied entomology, rather than ivory-tower diversions of taxonomy.

Thomas took the lead in working to secure congressional support, with Riley lobbying behind the scene. Two bills were introduced in the winter, one proposing to put the commission under the Department of Agriculture and the other to place it within the auspices of the Department of Interior. To the mixed relief and disappointment of the entomologists, neither bill passed. But with some political wrangling the initiative reemerged the following spring, as a single proposal coming from the Senate to provide $25,000 for a five-person entomological commission within the Department of Interior. Political pundits were aghast at the notion of federal support for entomologists to assist farmers. Two weeks after the bill was introduced an editorial in
The Nation
described the legislation in wickedly sarcastic terms:

Perhaps embarrassed by such snide analysis but still aware of the political dimensions of the locusts and the human suffering they wrought, the legislators pared down the proposal to a commission of three people and funds of $18,000. In passing the bill, Congress charged the U.S. Entomological Commission with the tasks specified at the governors’ conference. In short order, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed the appropriation. Two weeks later the Secretary of Interior appointed Riley, Thomas, and Packard to the commission and deemed that it would operate within Hayden’s U.S. Geological and Geographic Survey. Riley was appointed as the chair of the commission, with Thomas as treasurer and Packard as secretary. They set up
their headquarters in St. Louis, on Locust Street—named for the tree rather than the insect, but wonderfully apropos nonetheless.

In 1876, this team may have represented the most capable group of scientists ever assembled in the United States. Within three years, the commission would assemble a series of reports on the biology, ecology, and management of the Rocky Mountain locust unrivaled in their depth and extent. Virtually everything known about this species came through the reports of the commission, and well into the twentieth century we had more information about this creature than about any other insect on earth. Riley would compose and edit more than a million words in formulating this insect’s biography in a monumental series of works. In complementary fashion, the most extensive biography in
Founders and Leaders of Entomological Science
and in
American Entomologists
belongs to this founding father of economic entomology (the science of managing harmful and beneficial insects for human benefit). And so to fully appreciate the locust’s story and how it changed America requires understanding the cornerstone of the commission, the Lord of the Locusts.

 

Charles Valentine Riley began life in a rather unusual manner, being given a surname that he shared with neither his mother nor his father. Born in 1843 to a beautiful, young Londoner, the infant was intentionally given an obscure name. The deception was necessary because his vivacious mother, Mary Cannon, was not married to his pious father, Charles Edward Fewtrell Wylde—an Anglican clergyman. A year and a half later the couple bore a second son, George, and the family with three different surnames was complete, if somewhat unstable.

When he was three years old, Riley and his brother moved to the English countryside to live with a great aunt. This family stalwart might have provided some grounding for the young lads, but the arrangement lasted only a couple of years. In the meantime, their mother had become occupied with social matters and sufficiently affluent to have the brothers taken in as “nurse children” with a laboring-class family in a semirural district on the outskirts of London. Relegating their children to the care of others was common for the English middle class, and this arrangement turned out to be idyllic for Charles and George.

The boys had the run of the family’s gardens and the surrounding fields. During the next eight years, Riley fell in love with the natural world. His insect-collecting romps coincided with the Victorian passion for natural history. Entomology was considered a virtuous, even spiritually uplifting, diversion, as it was a disciplined object lesson in the refulgence and splendor of Creation. The young Riley won the favor of distinguished residents in his district, who admired his “cabinets”—elegantly arranged collections of natural specimens that graced affluent homes. Perhaps more important, during his mother’s regular, clandestine visits she shared her own passion for nature with Charles. But these periods of a mother’s love were fleeting, as she could not tarry long before returning to her other life as a married woman (with a man other than her boys’ wayward father) back in London.

Riley would never outgrow his dual passions for beauty and nature, but his Elysian fields were rudely converted into a typical English boarding school when he turned twelve. Riley was moved back to London and subjected to British discipline, athletics, and scholarship. Two years later, he transferred to Collège Saint Paul in Dieppe. The move may have reflected the incompatibility of the adolescent’s élan and the British institution’s expectations, although it was not uncommon for the middle class to attend French schools for culture and language. Riley’s artistic talent was increasingly evident, so after a couple years in Dieppe, he moved to Bonn, where he was accepted as a student by Christian Hohe, a renowned painter in the realist tradition. Riley settled into his studies in Bonn and impressed his mentor. Hohe urged his student to make Paris the next stop on his artistic journey, but at seventeen Riley moved about as far as possible from the City of Lights. After a seven-week voyage across the Atlantic and into the wilds of America, Riley arrived in Kankakee County, Illinois.

What motivated Riley to select America’s agricultural frontier over Europe’s cultural capital is not entirely clear. There are some indications of a sudden crisis in family finances (his father died in debtor’s prison some years later), but it seemed that the young man was increasingly dissatisfied with the impracticality of a classical education in art. He longed for the insect-filled fields of his past, rather than the people-filled streets of his future. If Riley truly craved earthy realism
over the Realism of oils on canvas, then his first days in the New World certainly made sense—the young man became a farmhand.

Riley sought out a family friend, George Edwards, who introduced the frail immigrant to the rigors of agricultural life. What Riley lacked in experience and strength he made up for in tenacity and passion, impressing not only the Edwards family but their friends and neighbors as well. Soon, the perpetually hardworking and trilingually articulate young man emerged as a spokesman and became accepted as a leader within the immigrant community. Amid his farm labors and service, Riley found time to continue his dual passions for science and art, making careful studies and beautiful sketches of the insects he encountered in the fields. A farming life might have been the final chapter in Riley’s story, except that his body could not keep pace with his heart. The continual toil of a farmhand wore down his delicate physique.

In the winter of 1863, Riley moved fifty miles north to Chicago. He was possessed by the soul of a romantic—and the commensurate lack of plans or money. Riley took an array of odd jobs: cigar making, pork packing, and portrait painting. But within three months his meager savings and prodigious spirits were depleted. If lives have true turning points, then Riley’s came when he managed to land a job with the
Prairie Farmer,
the foremost farm journal in the West. This position allowed him to exploit his experience and talents—who could better express the farming life and insect biology in captivating prose and elegant drawings? Seeing his proficiency, the magazine made him the editor of their entomology department. Over the next five years Riley became immersed in the cultural, social, and intellectual life of the city. His path very nearly crossed those of the entomologists who would one day join him on the Entomological Commission. Thomas published his first article about insects in the
Prairie Farmer
not long before Riley joined the staff. And Riley was well enough respected to be invited to a dinner in honor of the great Louis Agassiz, arguably Harvard’s most famous professor of the nineteenth century and Packard’s mentor at the time.

Riley had settled into his plum position when disturbing news drew him from the relative comfort of the city. Between learning of friends from Kankakee who were dying on the battlefields of the Civil War
and his abhorrence of slavery, Riley felt compelled to join the Union forces. He enlisted with the 134th Regiment of Illinois and was discharged six months later without having seen combat. The time was not wasted, however, as he returned to his post with the
Prairie Farmer
with a rich collection of insects gathered during his otherwise futile hours of guard duty. Before he joined the army, Riley had made the acquaintance of one of the regular contributors to the magazine, Benjamin Dann Walsh, the Illinois state entomologist. Now that he was back on the job, Riley sought out this enchanting figure, whose age and country of birth matched those of the younger man’s absent father.

 

Riley idolized his mentor, who provided his protégé with critical elements of a scientific education that he’d never formally received. The young pupil even aligned with the venerated master’s worldviews—and it was not difficult to discern his views. Walsh had been a class-mate of Charles Darwin at Trinity College in England, and the entomologist was a loyal friend and staunch advocate of the evolutionist. Like Darwin’s, Walsh’s parents had planned for his becoming a minister, but he found the extent of religious hypocrisy to be unpalatable. Moreover, the Church’s positions did not mesh with Walsh’s radical liberalism. Having earned his Master’s degree, Walsh married a “woman of his choice, if not that of his people” and emigrated to America in search of a new life. Like Riley, Walsh was classically educated, having authored a pamphlet on university reform and a translation of the comedies of Aristophanes. Walsh intended to settle in Chicago but found the city too swampy and disagreeable, so he moved into the countryside—precisely the opposite path of his disciple.

Walsh was a successful farmer but left his land when the area became malarial because of damming by a nearby Swedish colony. He then moved to Rock Island and started a profitable lumber business, from which he retired at the age of fifty. Walsh constructed a set of well-built tenements that he leased “at a fair price,” in accord with his socioeconomic views. This investment gave him the income and time to pursue his first love, entomology. He flung himself into studying and collecting insects, eventually publishing more than 800 articles and amassing a collection of 30,000 specimens. Walsh’s passion left
little room for social amenities but plenty of time for collaborating with Riley on projects. Together, they coauthored nearly 500 articles and cofounded the
American Entomologist
. In recognition of his growing reputation, Walsh was named an associate editor of the
Practical Entomologist
. In 1866, he published a description of a new species in this journal, a simple taxonomic work that would solidify his place in entomological history—for, in this article, Walsh named the Rocky Mountain locust.