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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780826272010 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Missouri Press |
| Publication date: | 10/16/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 264 |
| File size: | 614 KB |
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CHAPTER 1
Soldiers of the Soil ~ The Farm Front
Bacon is a bullet against Hitler. Lard is a bomb against Japan.
— Wallaces' Farmer (July 11, 1942)
Food is an important weapon of war. During World War I, Food Administrator Herbert Hoover had stressed that food would win the war. Before the United States entered World War II, Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard declared in his Indiana twang that again food would "win the war and write the peace." The farmer would be the soldier of the soil, fighting on the farm front, producing the food needed to nourish the ravenous, greedy monster that was modern, total war. As Wickard warned, "War is a hearty eater."
Food for Freedom became the urgent, patriotic agricultural campaign to develop and maintain all-out production, and Iowa's farmers, representing a leading agricultural state, played a significant role in this national battle. The Food for Freedom campaign urged all farmers to grow less of the five basic crops of wheat, corn, cotton, rice, and tobacco, and instead to concentrate their efforts on producing more pork, beef, eggs, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables. These agricultural products could then be canned or preserved to fill the dietary needs of the armed services and of America's allies, creating the best-fed army and alliance in the world. On December 9, 1941, the American Farm Bureau pledged its dedication to the federal Food for Freedom campaign: "Agriculture's part in this war is to supply food for victory — food for victorious armies — our own and those of our allies."
Throughout the war, the motivation for Iowa farm families' participation in this campaign remained "the boys." The 1943 Iowa Year Book of Agriculture actually introduced its detailed but dull reports with this rather emotional message: "Boys, who be-grimed and hungry after a long day at hay-making or other field work, and often let the screen door slam as they called out, 'Hey, Mom, what do we have to eat,' were now among the islands of the South Pacific, or were in Africa, Sicily, Italy, Alaska, and in all parts of the world; but the old call of 'what do we have to eat' echoed back to the Iowa farm." This was the motivation: feeding "the boys." Iowa's Year Book of Agriculture concluded, "Though it was but an echo, 'Mom and Pop' saw to producing enough food that not one of those boys would go hungry."
The farm front started preparing itself very early in the war. Life magazine informed the nation, even before Pearl Harbor, that ten million American workers had begun "quietly laboring to produce the munitions which might have more to do with winning the war than any bomb or shell." The war workers were farmers; the munitions, food. Farm families would be contributing an added wartime effort as agriculture would need to break all previous production records for this war. Because of predicted labor and machinery shortages, farmers would work longer hours, farm women would play an even more significant role, and boys and girls would attempt to accomplish "the work of grown men," especially in the midwestern production of soybeans, hogs, corn, and milk. American farmers planned to support the best-fed army in the world along with the added industrial war workers. As Prairie Farmer proclaimed, "Food means victory. And victory means freedom."
The first Iowa farmer to file his Food for Freedom goals was Clarence Howell, owner and operator of a 129-acre farm in northwest Madison County. He would not stand alone; Wallaces' Farmer described the future work demanded of each farmer by the federal government: "The Food-for-Freedom program called for every farmer to put every acre of land, every hour of labor, every bit of farm machinery, fertilizer, and other supplies to the use that would best serve the nation's wartime needs." Since less than 15 percent of the nation's men were farmers in the early 1940s, Food for Freedom became "a job for Atlas himself."
From Pearl Harbor on, war and only war would be everyone's focus, and agricultural production seemed to have no bounds. Even the weather cooperated. Although Depression-era farmers had eagerly awaited the opportunity to produce and perhaps prosper, all-out production under wartime conditions came with the risks of surpluses, inflation, and waste. The Food for Freedom farm-front fight needed to coordinate its battles. Some government regulation would be needed to coordinate agricultural production goals by determining the number of increased acres to be put into production and the proportion of newly introduced crops to old ones, and farmers as soldiers of the soil needed to follow these orders for a victorious farm front. But all-out production and profit were weighted with a concern that this profit would come at someone else's expense.
Writer David Hinshaw in his 1943 book, The Home Front, drew a farm analogy to illustrate the deliberate, all-out efforts needed after Pearl Harbor despite previous midwestern isolationist politics. He explained the new focus, "Men brought up on farms know how to make a balking horse pull his load without beating or cursing him. The simple, never-failing way is to spread a handful of dirt over his tongue, get back in the wagon while the horse is indignantly trying to spit the dirt out, and tell him to 'get-up.' He does. And in a hurry." Hinshaw believed in this elemental approach because a horse can think of only one thing at a time, just like most people, farmers included. The attack on Pearl Harbor had simply and dramatically provided the much-needed dirt in the mouth. Hinshaw concluded, "Dirt in his mouth, an unexpected attack from an unsuspected source, switches his mind from balking to his new troubles." The only focus now for American farmers was Food for Freedom.
Tractors as Tanks
The farm-front effort officially began in the spring of 1942, and Life dedicated a late May issue to "spring planting" with the comment that "this year must bear the richest harvest in the world's troubled history." The magazine offered descriptions of Iowa's beauty and strength, which would be needed in this production effort: "At the beginning of May, in Iowa, the world's most bountiful soil was rolled over in long black ribbons by tractors that throbbed against its weight, then harrowed smooth for planting by countermarching teams of horses." Iowa's agricultural prosperity rested on its history of "a stabilizing diversity": general farming or a combination of animals and plants set on rich land. "The Iowa landscape has always reflected prosperity," the Life article continued. "An airplane view shows long, straight roads following the section lines, punctuated at neat intervals by the windbreak of trees that shelters the white farmhouse, the capacious red barn and tall silo."
Iowa's rural landscape began to change, however, with the loss of its horses and silos and the corresponding addition of more tractors and steel machine sheds. The key element of wartime farm production would be increased mechanization, as advertisers continually tried to point out. And Prairie Farmer warned its readers of the increasing government demands upon farmers: "Farmers must do a better job of farming than ever before — and that means they must make full use of every bit of labor-saving machinery at their command." To fuel this drive for greater production, farmers increasingly turned to "power farming" — the use of gas-engine tractors and implements.
Horses still plodded and plowed with a rather constant presence on Iowa farms, especially on smaller units, which could not risk the considerable financial commitment for new equipment along with the constant energy and maintenance bills that went with it. With horses, farmers could literally grow the fuel they needed. Horses and mules labored importantly on Iowa's farms during the wartime emergency, with its gas rationing and machinery shortages, but horses started dying in increasing numbers from what was commonly known as sleeping sickness; Iowa veterinarians initiated a vaccination campaign in 1942 and 1943 against this disease, equine encephalitis. In 1944, Iowa still claimed the title of leading horse state, with 612,000 head, and 45 percent of Iowa farms remained entirely dependent on animal power.
Many farmers did not want to give up their horses for emotional reasons. One Iowa Veterinarian editor noted the sentiment farmers still felt for the horse despite "the efforts of certain machinery manufacturers and star-gazing editors who seem intent to eliminate all horses from the work and recreation of our country." This editor was referring to such industrialists as Henry Ford, whose tractor advertisements depicted a matched pair of workhorses labeled as "14,000,000 Beloved Culprits." Ford emphatically called the horse "a waster of land and time, the primary wealth of the farmer." Other tractor ads continued to attack the use of horses throughout the war as misguided, unprofitable, and simply romantic.
By the middle of World War II, despite a steel shortage and rationing of machinery, farmers adopted mechanization to the point where Iowa farmers averaged one tractor for every 218 acres. All-out production demanded a faster pace than any horse could ever provide. Three distinct advertising messages about agricultural mechanization explained this need for power during the war: tractors ranked as a necessary weapon for total warfare, Americans had developed a long and successful history of using machines, and machines provided a better quality of life on the farm, along with a promised future of freedom.
The slogans proclaimed by tractor advertisements undeniably made the connection between the war and the farm, the soldier and the farmer, the battle and the harvest, as the following lines from advertisements suggest:
"1942/The Year of the Tractor as well as the Tank — PRODUCE and WIN!" "This, too, is mechanized warfare!"
"He drives a Weapon ... and the FARMALL fights for food!"
"The Man Behind the Plow Backs the Man Behind the Gun!"
"Battle Lines of the Food Front"
"Plowshares are Swords"
"Farm Commando — Ready to Roll!"
The design of the military tank used in the Great War had replicated an early tractor model with crawler wheels, and images showing comparisons of tanks and tractors, synthesized as symbols of American defense, continued to be used throughout the Second World War. The farmer may not literally have been on the fighting front, but at home he was fighting to produce with a much-needed weapon. When Iowa farmer Robert Leichliter of Ogden fell ill, his neighbors lined up all their tractors across his cornfield in what the Des Moines Register called "Zero Hour for Attack on Homefront, not Battlefront." The reporter described the zealous lineup as if it were an actual battlefront: "The roar of the 34 tractors as they charged across the fields might be compared with a string of army tanks charging across the countryside."
The second message from popular farm journals compared the strength and imagination of early Americans to present-day farmers with historic symbols of men fighting against the odds. Symbols such as Paul Revere, westering pioneers, or citizens fighting in the Revolutionary War developed this theme of American ingenuity and technological competence. Albert Loveland, chairman of the Iowa Agricultural Adjustment Act Committee, enhanced the image of the founding fathers when he compared the battle on the farm front to the Minute Men of the American Revolution. The Iowa Agriculturist issued a similar message to its readers (mostly young male agricultural students at Iowa State College): "The whole life and training of generations of Americans fit us to excel in mechanized warfare," the Iowa State College article began. "From pioneer days we have been an ingenious people. Starting in a vast, undeveloped country, we have had the inventive skill and the resolution to shorten distances and lighten toil with machinery." The tractor as tank seemed no exception, but rather was a further elaboration of a long and proud tradition of American ingenuity.
The third message, especially from tractor advertisements, was often delivered with very emotional promises along with sharply contrasting military messages because the war was proving to be a war of engines with an optimistic belief in their strength. Power farming meant freedom and better living not only for one's family but for the world, and many ads claimed that mechanization would create a farm to which sons and daughters would enthusiastically return after war's end, increasing the longevity of the family farm. In a study of wartime advertising, Frank Fox called this Madison Avenue message "the illusion of omnipotence: an abiding faith that the world's problems could be solved by machines." The government and corporations were telling Iowa farmers that tractors could potentially solve their two largest problems — the overwhelming physical demands of all-out production and the difficulty of maintaining the family farm. In 1946, 40 percent of the state's farmers, according to an Iowa Poll (conducted by the Des Moines Register), felt "handicapped" by not being able to buy sufficient farm equipment. Tractors topped the list for necessary mechanical purchases.
A British traveler writing after the war noted of the midwestern mechanical speed-up that "the most mechanized agriculture in the world has been mechanized more rapidly than ever before." Later, many agriculturalists concluded positively that a mechanized farm offered a better lifestyle, while others, especially smaller-scale farmers, perceived the changes negatively, believing that using machinery rather than horses separated farmers from the earth they worked. But during the Second World War, no choice could be considered — mechanization must be adopted. All-out production mattered desperately, and machines just might fulfill their advertised promises.
The promise also brought peril. The physical dangers of mutilation or even death from accidents involving farm machinery posed a severe drawback to mechanized agriculture, which became the most dangerous industry in America during the war years. In 1945, President Harry Truman declared a National Farm Safety Week, July 22 through 28, because more than 20,000 people on farms had died in accidents, including fires, in 1943 alone.
Iowa farmers were utilizing a large number of the three machines that caused the greatest number of farm accidents — tractors, combines, and corn pickers. One out of every ten agricultural accidents in Iowa resulted from corn pickers, including the following two incidents involving Kossuth County farmers during November harvests. George Wempen mangled his leg in a new corn picker when his new Unionall pants became caught in a power take-off with no safety cover. And Milton Bebo had been working alone when his belt caught in the machine — neighbors found him over an hour later, pinned to the machine. Both men survived their accidents, but others were not so lucky.
Accidents multiplied not only from mechanization, but from wartime conditions as well. Iowa State College Extension underlined the safety point that most farmers knew the necessary precautions but hurried and ignored safety measures, whereas farmers should be remembering to exercise extreme caution, care, and responsibility — always. Prairie Farmer best summarized the cautionary tale: "With inexperience and insufficient help, longer hours with accompanying fatigue, and use of patched up machinery, American farmers have greater need than ever before to adopt safe practices."
When farmers neglected safety precautions, accidents resulted, such as the particularly tragic one that Wallaces' Farmer described like this: "No telegram to announce the death of her son came to Mrs. Arthur Ovren, Buena Vista county, Iowa. She stood at her kitchen window and saw her son thrown to the ground and killed instantly. ... Russell's clothing caught on a lever on the spreader, he lost his balance, was thrown to the ground, run over, and dragged for some distance. When they reached him, he was dead."
The National Safety Council reported that farm accidents killed almost as many as war in the twenty-eight months after the Pearl Harbor attack: 40,000 farm-accident fatalities to 42,081 war deaths. In 1945, accidental deaths of America's farm residents totaled 16,000 — an increase of 8 percent from 1944.
Fearing Outsiders
"The United States is going to be in a hell of a shape for food if manpower is pulled from the farms at the rate now demanded," Edward O'Neal, American Farm Bureau president, told a Des Moines audience in October 1942. "They say food is as important for victory as ammunition," he continued. "If they really mean that they have got to give recognition to the man who serves on the farm, the same as in the army." This central concern — deferment of their sons from military service — grew for many Iowa farm families who remained dependent upon the agricultural labor of the young men. Brigadier General Charles Grahl, Iowa's director of selective service, had tried to assist by notifying all draft boards to reclassify farm work into one of two deferred classifications, especially that on livestock, dairy, and poultry farms. According to a 1943 Gallup Poll, 77 percent of American farmers considered the shortage of labor to be their biggest problem.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Home Fronts of Iowa, 1939-1945"
by .
Copyright © 2009 The Curators of the University of Missouri.
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