DAMNATION!

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!
!
!
Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions
of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and
follow them.!
— Flannery O’Connor

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* * *!
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Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief
in a devil.!
—Eric Hoffer, from THE TRUE BELIEVER!
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* * *!
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This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book
kissed here which I suppose to be the bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches
me that all thing whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to
them. It teaches me further, to “remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.”
I endeavored to act upon that instruction…I believe that to have interfered as I have
done — as I have always freely admitted I have done — in behalf of his despised poor,
was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for
the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my
children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are
disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, — I submit; so let it be done!!
!
— John Brown, abolitionist, from his last speech!
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* * *!
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The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the
majority in the middle.!
—Eric Hoffer, from THE TRUE BELIEVER!
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* * *!
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Agriculture post-WWI!
!
Farm value in 1920: $ 54,9000,000,000!
!
Farm value in 1925: $ 37,700,000,000!
!
There was a 35% decrease in farmer income from 1919 to 1929, while farmers’ tax
burdens rose. !
!
It took 4X more units of produce to pay a farm bill in 1933 than it did in 1914.!
!
* * *!
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Deputies would come along with whole fleets of trucks and guns. One lone farmer had
planks across the road. They ordered him to remove them. They came out with guns.
He said, “Go ahead and shoot, but there isn’t one of you S.O.B.s getting out of here
alive.” There were about fifteen hundred farmers there in the woods. The trucks didn’t
get through. It was close in spirit to the American Revolution.!
!
— Emil Loriks, from HARD TIMES (Studs Terkel)!
!
* * *!
!
County telephones buzzed the night before as Holiday Association members laid plans
to converge on Primghar at dawn, ready to do battle. They came from all directions in
the early morning darkness, many from Plymouth County.!
! O’Brien Sheriff Ed Leemkuil got wind of the coming onslaught. He mobilized 22
deputies in the courthouse, all armed with sawed-off pool cues. The sale was scheduled
for the balcony upstairs.!
! The farmers crowded into the courthouse. Barring the way up the stairs were the
waiting deputies, three on each step…!
! Suddenly there was a shout, “They’re selling the man’s farm from the balcony!” !
! The farmers charged the deputies, who swung their clubs with abandon. A
report said eight or ten farmers were injured. Cope, however, suffered a “battered
head.” He later described his injury this way, “A deputy hit me over the head and
fractured my skull. I bled out of my nose and ears. They carried me to the doctor’s
office. I had to have an x-ray in Hartley, Iowa.”!
! The deputies held fast until the
farm was sold for $7,400 on a bid offered
by O.H. Montzheimer, attorney for an
insurance company. The rioting evidently
had its effect, however, even though the
farmers had been repulsed. An
arrangement was reached under which
Shaffer was given the opportunity to buy
back the farm near Calumet, Iowa, for
$6,500 or $900 less than the foreclosure
minimum.!
! The farmers inflicted a bit of
strange retribution on Attorney
Montzheimer. They demanded that he come out of the courthouse, get down on his
knees and kiss an American flag.!
! “I’ll do it if it will stop this riot,” he said, and he did. Several of the deputies
kissed the flag as well. !
— George Mills, from A JUDGE AND A ROPE!
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* * *!
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…the possibility of revolution in the United States was rarely discussed before the stock
market crash of October 1929, and then only in extreme radical circles…the conditions
necessary to a revolution came into being with the Depression.!
!
—Mauritz Hallgren (1933)!
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* * *!
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Wheat prices:!
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1929: $ 1.03 per bushel!
!
1930: $ 0.67 per bushel!
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1932: $ 0.38 per bushel!
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* * *!
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Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag,
and begin to slit throats. !
—H.L. Mencken!
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* * *!
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In this country the spectacular changes since the Civil War were enacted in an
atmosphere charged with the enthusiasm born of fabulous opportunities for self-
advancement…Religious, revolutionary and nationalist movements are such generating
plants of general enthusiasm.!
! In the past, religious movements were the conspicuous vehicles of change…A
rising religious movement is all change and experiment—open to new views and
techniques from all quarters…!
! In modern times, the mass movements involved in the realization of vast and
rapid change are revolutionary and nationalist—singly or in combination…Peter the
Great was probably the equal, in dedication, power and ruthlessness, of many of the
most successful revolutionary or nationalist leaders. Yet he failed in his chief purpose,
which was to turn Russian into a Western nation. And the reason he failed was that he
did not infuse the Russian masses with some soul-stirring enthusiasm. He either did not
think it necessary or did not know how to make of his purpose a holy cause.!
!
—Eric Hoffer, from THE TRUE BELIEVER!
!
* * *!
There’s a saying: “Depressions are farm led and farm fed.” That was true in the
Thirties…!
! Five hundred farmers came marching up Capitol Hill. It thrilled me. I didn’t
know farmers were intelligent enough to organize. (Laughs.) They stayed there for two
days. It was a strength I didn’t realize we had. !
! The day after they left, a Senator got up and attacked them as anarchists and
bolsheviks. (Laughs.) They had a banner, he said, redder than anything in Moscow,
Russia. What was this banner? It was a piece of muslin, hung up in the auditorium. It
said: “We Buy Together, We Sell Together, We Vote Together.”!
! People were hanging out the windows. Our slogan was: “Neither buy nor sell
and let the taxes go to hell.”!
! At Milbank, during a farm sale, they had a sheriff and sixteen deputies. One of
them got a little trigger-happy. It was a mistake. The boys disarmed him so fast, he
didn’t know what happened. They just yanked the belts off ‘em, didn’t even unbuckle
‘em. They took their guns away from ‘em. After that, we didn’t have much trouble
stopping sales…!
! I’ll never forget a speech by a Catholic priest…It was the most fiery I ever heard.
He said, “If you men haven’t got the guts to picket the roads and stop this stuff from
going to market, put on skirts and get in the kitchen and let your wives go out and do
the job.” (Laughs.) The boys used the police stations as their headquarters. The police
couldn’t do much. The sheriffs and deputies just had to go along. !
!
— Emil Loriks, from HARD TIMES (Studs Terkel)!
!
* * *!
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If the Farmers’ Union means anything on earth, it means the right of you and me to
determine the value of the products of our labor, just as organized labor, organized
manufacturing, or organized banking….!
! If we cannot obtain justice by legislation, the time will have arrived when no
other course remains than organized refusal to deliver the products of the farm at less
than production costs…!
! Concede to the farmers production costs and he will pay his grocer, the grocer
will pay the wholesaler, the wholesaler will pay the manufacturer, and the
manufacturer will be able to meet his obligations at the bank. Restore the farmer’s
purchasing power and you have re-established an endless chain of prosperity and
happiness in this country.!
—Milo Reno, leader of the Iowa Farmers’ Union!
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* * *!
!
To have realized returns equal to cost of production in 1932 a farmer would have had to
receive:!
!
$0.92 per bushel of corn!
$0.45 per bushel of oats!
$0.11 per pound for hogs!
$0.35 per dozen eggs!
$0.62 per pound of butterfat!
!
Prevailing prices in June, 1932:!
!
$0.10 per bushel of corn!
$0.11 per bushel of oats!
$0.03 per pound for hogs!
$0.22 per dozen eggs!
$0.18 per pound of butterfat!
—John Shover, from CORNBELT REBELLION!
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* * *!
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The disaffection among the urban unemployed spread to the rural districts, partly with
the help of radical agitators, partly through the movement toward the farming areas of
large numbers of city jobless. Radical agitation in the smaller cities and towns of the
Middle West was promptly spiked by the factory-owners and bankers of those
communities. They gained control of the relief organizations and thus weeded out, or
thought they were weeding out, the Communists and other radicals. But they could
exercise no such rigid supervision over the farming communities…!
! Dairymen, especially in the Northwest, went on strike. During a five-day strike
in the Portland, Oregon territory the dairymen blockaded all highways leading to the
city. Trucks laden with milk were halted. Thousands of gallons of milk were spilled into
the ditches. The dairymen even invaded the city to drive out the few trucks that had
managed to slip by the blockade. At the end of five days the big milk-distributors of
Portland agreed to an increase in price. !
!
—Mauritz Hallgren, from SEEDS OF REVOLT!
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* * *!
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Like many Americans, Allan Pinkerton regarded union activity as not only criminal but
contrary to American values. !
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— Robert Michael Smith, from FROM BLACKJACKS TO BRIEFCASES!
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* * *!
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…many undercover operatives occupied leadership roles. Nearly 1/3 of those in
employ of the Pinkerton Agency held high positions, including one national VP,
fourteen local presidencies, eight local vice-presidencies, and numerous secretaryships.
They also controlled 43 operatives within company unions, among them one president,
three recording secretaries, and one chairman. From such lofty positions these men
created factions and disagreements.!
!
— Robert Michael Smith, from FROM BLACKJACKS TO BRIEFCASES!
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* * *!
!
I hate this damn kind of talk, but maybe I better tell you that if it were more than jail, if
it were my life, I would give it for what I think democracy is, and I don't let cops or
judges tell me what I think democracy is. !
— Dashiel Hammett, former Pinkerton!
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* * *!
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The steam engine, the multiple press, and the public school, that trio of the industrial
revolution, have taken the power away from kings and given it to the people. The
people actually gained power which the king lost.

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— Edward Bernays, from PROPAGANDA!
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* * *!
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Throughout the country, industrialists refused to recognize and deal with the unions
any longer. Many of them refused to employ union men altogether; and workers, to get
jobs, were obliged to sign the so-called ‘yellow dog’ contracts.!
! Employers resorted to all sorts of methods. They called their idea the “American
Plan”—an old phrase implying that anyone not in favor…stood for something un-
American. The word “American” as Robert W. Dunn, a radical writer, explains, “had
reached its heyday. Even the Europeans still worshipped at the throne…It was the
correct psychological moment for the enemies of trade unions to label their crusade
‘American’.” Employers spoke of Industrial Freedom—a phrase meaning that they
wanted to have a free hand in exploiting labor. Labor, of course, was to be free too—to
accept their wages or go without. Some of the fanatical open-shoppers refused to sell
their products to, or buy raw materials from, other employers of labor who would not
adopt “the American Plan.” They lowered wages to almost the pre-war scale, while the
cost of living stayed up. Strikes were broken with court injunctions and hired gunman.!
! This was part of the “back to normalcy” movement.!
!
— Louis Adamic, from DYNAMITE: !
THE STORY OF CLASS VIOLENCE IN AMERICA!
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* * *!
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This neighbor woman lost her husband, and, of course, he was owing in the bank. So
the auctioneers come out there, and she served lunch, and she stood weeping in the
windows. “There goes our last cow…” And the horses. She called ‘em by names. It just
pretty near broke our hearts.!
— Ruth Loriks, from HARD TIMES (Studs Terkel)!
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* * *!
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Those who are awed by their surroundings do not think of change, no matter how
miserable their condition…We counteract a deep feeling of insecurity by making of our
existence a fixed routine. We hereby acquire the illusion that we have tamed the
unpredictable. Fisherfolk, nomads, and farmers who have to contend with the willful
elements, the creative worker who depends on inspiration, the savage awed by his
surroundings—they all fear change. They face the world as they would an all-powerful
jury…!
! The men who rush into undertakings of vast change usually feel they are in
possession of some irresistible power.!
— Eric Hoffer, from THE TRUE BELIEVER!
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* * *!
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The unemployed will never get help until every man in Congress is shivering in his
very pants because he thinks the unemployed are going to engage in struggle if they do
not get something.!
—Herbert Benjamin, Unemployed Council of the US!
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* * *!
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A striker told the Woodbury County attorney that the farmers aimed to achieve two
things: first, to keep goods off the market until prices improved, and second, to
demonstrate that farmers could hang together. Motives for the disjointed and
impetuous action on the highways of Iowa can never be determined; perhaps the best
conclusion was that of a seasoned farm editor who noted, “After twelve years of this
legislative indifference it relieves a farmer’s feelings a good deal to throw a rock
through a windshield or to take any positive step, no matter how futile it may
ultimately prove to be, that seems to lead toward better prices.”!
!
—John Shover, from CORNBELT REBELLION!
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* * *!
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We had twice too many hogs because corn’d been so cheap. And we set up…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. !
!
— Oscar Heline, from HARD TIMES (Studs Terkel)!
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***!
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We can’t continue longer now!
Upon our weary way—!
We’re forced to halt upon life’s trail!
And call a ‘holiday.’!
!
Let’s call a Farmers’ Holiday!
A Holiday let’s hold!
We’ll eat our wheat and ham and eggs!
And let them eat their gold.!
!
—anonymous, published in Iowa Union Farmer newspaper, 1932!
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* * *!
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Modernity is primarily the era in which the increased circulation of goods and ideas,
and increased social mobility, bring into focus the value of the new and predispose the
conditions for the identification of value (the value of Being itself) with the new…!
! Progress is just that process which leads toward a state of things in which further
progress is possible, and nothing else…!
! In a consumer society continual renewal (of clothes, tools, buildings) is already
required physiologically for the system simply to survive. What is new is not in the
least ‘revolutionary’ or subversive; it is what allows things to stay the same…!
! …progress also becomes routine…the ideal of progress is finally revealed to be a
hollow one, since its ultimate value is to create conditions in which further progress is
possible in a guise that is always new.!
!
— Gianni Vattimo, from THE END OF MODERNITY!
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* * *!
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Oh, they was ready for revolution. A lot of businessmen expected it. The Government
sent out monitors. They had ‘em in these Hoovervilles, outside the town, along the
railroads, along the highways. In monitoring these places, they got a lot of information.
The information was: revolution. People were talkin’ revolution all over the place. You
met guys ridin’ the freight trains and so forth, talkin’ about what they’d like to do with
a machine gun. How they’d like to tear loose on the rich. !
!
— Joe Morrison, from HARD TIMES (Studs Terkel)!
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* * *!
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Number of striking workers: !
!
1932: 325,000!
1933: 1,000,000!
1934: 1,500,000!
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— Robert Michael Smith, from FROM BLACKJACKS TO BRIEFCASES!
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* * *!
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Jesus Christ was a man that traveled through the land!
Hard working man and brave!
He said to the rich, "Give your goods to the poor"!
So they laid Jesus Christ in His grave!
!
Yes, Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand!
His followers true and brave!
One dirty coward called Judas Iscariot!
Laid poor Jesus in His grave!
!
He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff!
Told them all the same!
"Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor"!
So they laid Jesus Christ in His grave!
!
When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around!
Believed what he did say!
The bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross!
And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave!
!
And the working people followed him around!
Singing and shouting gay!
But the cops and soldiers nailed him in the air!
And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave!
!
Well the people held their breath when they heard about his death!
Everybody wondered why!
It was the landlord and the soldiers that they hired!
To nail Jesus Christ in the sky!
!
This song was made in New York City!
Of rich man and preachers, and slaves!
If Jesus was to preach like He preached in Galillee!
They would lay Jesus Christ in His grave!
!
Yes, Jesus was a man and a carpenter by hand!
His followers true and brave!
One dirty coward called Judas Iscariot!
As laid poor Jesus in His grave!
— Woody Guthrie, “Jesus Christ”!
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* * *!
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Participants march through houses and out-buildings, pretending to be sweeping and
cleaning wherever they go, while singing a song of vengeance, often "in the voice of
God." They roar and howl at the appropriate time, stamp their feet, and shake wherever
they come on any unclean spot. Returning to the place of worship, all fall on their knees
"to scour and scrub from this floor the stains of sin.”!
!
— Shaker ritual event, described in AMERICA A PROPHECY!
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* * *!
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I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be
purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without
very much bloodshed it might be done.!
!
— John Brown, abolitionist, from note written on the day of his hanging!
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 * * *!
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Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in
ourselves…!
! The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of
attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like giving a hand is often a
holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and
meaningless…The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is
boundless.!
—Eric Hoffer, from THE TRUE BELIEVER!
!
* * *!
!
A farm mob dragged a judge off his bench.!
! The mob took District Judge Charles C. Bradley out in the country near Le Mars
in northwest Iowa, roughed him up, and started to hang him.!
! The attackers demanded Bradley agree to sign no more mortgage foreclosures on
farmland. He refused, even though he was in danger of losing his life. He had 15
foreclosure cases pending. He said He hadn’t had time to study them.!
! The mobsters forced the judge to his knees to pray; put handfuls of dirt and a
greasy truck hubcap on his head; took down his pants and filled them with mud;
threatened him with castration; tightened a rope around his neck. !
!
— George Mills, from A JUDGE AND A ROPE!
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* * *!
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In Franklin County, Illinois in 1932, Sheriff Browning Robinson declared his county a
closed territory. No one could enter the county without his permission. Gangsters were
brought in and deputized to battle striking miners.!
!
* * *!
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Pinkertons in the 1930s.!
!
General Motors + 300 more clients.!
!
1932: 27 offices and made over $ 2,000,000!
!
1933-35: employed 1,200 undercover operatives!
!
— Robert Michael Smith, from FROM BLACKJACKS TO BRIEFCASES!
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* * *!
!
The strike of 1931 revolved around readers in the factory. The workers themselves used
to pay twenty-five to fifty cents a week and would hire a man to read to them during
work…A platform would be erected so that he’d look down at the cigar makers as he
read to them some four hours a day. He would read from newspapers and magazines
and a book would be read as a serial…Consequently, many cigar makers, who were
illiterate, knew the novels of Zola and Dickens and Cervantes and Tolstoy. And the
works of the anarchist, Kropotkin. Among the newspapers read were The Daily worker
and the Socialist Call.!
! The factory owners decided to put an end to this, thought it didn’t cost them a
penny. Everyone went on strike when they arrived one morning and found the lecture
platform torn down. The strike was lost. Every strike in my home town was always lost.
The readers never came back. !
— Jose Yglesias, from HARD TIMES (Studs Terkel)!
!
* * *!
General Motors profits:!
!
1931: $97,455,00!
!
1932: $10,555,000!
!
* * *!
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Unemployment:!
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1930: 23.8 %, or approximately 8,000,000!
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* * *!
!
The religious movements of the Reformation had a revolutionary aspect which
expressed itself in peasant uprisings, and were also nationalist movements. Said Luther:
“In the eyes of the Italians we Germans are merely low Teutonic swine. They exploit us
like charlatans and suck the country to the marrow. Wake up Germany!”!
! The religious character of the Bolshevik and Nazi revolutions is generally
recognized. The hammer and sickle and the swastika are in a class with the cross. The
ceremonial of their parades is as the ceremonial of a religious procession. They have
articles of faith, saints, martyrs, and holy sepulchers.!
!
—Eric Hoffer, from THE TRUE BELIEVER!
!
* * *!
!
Was there talking of organizing? !
!
Not in Iowa, not in that east central part. The people were too conservative. I was past
forty years of age before I joined a union. I was conditioned—to join a labor union
would take away your ability to stand on your own two feet. It would mean
surrendering yourself…!
! To be a union man had some sort of shameful label to it. There was a man in our
neighborhood whose wife was a part-time prostitute. This was known. He smoked
tailor-made cigarettes, as opposed to Bull Durham roll-your-owns. The man had very
little respect. In the same way, being a union man wasn’t quite respectable. !
!
— Slim Collier, from HARD TIMES (Studs Terkel)!
!
* * *!
!
Why were groups of farmers blocking foreclosure sales and tax sales? Why were they
threatening county authorities with violence and lynchings? To pave the way for a new
social order? Not at all. The farmers were interested only in preserving and defending
the existing order. It was to protect symbols of the established order (house, equipment,
soil) that the farmers took the offensive.!
!
—Mauritz Hallgren, from SEEDS OF REVOLT!
!
* * *!
!
With the first World War a process began to become apparent which has not halted since
then. Was it not noticeable at the end of the war that men returned from the battlefield
had turned silent—not richer, but poorer in communicable experience?!
! …never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly than strategic
experience by tactical warfare, economic experience by inflation, bodily experience by
mechanical warfare, moral experience by those in power. A generation that had gone to
school on a horse-drawn streetcar now stood under the open sky in a countryside in
which nothing remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field
of force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body. !
!
—Walter Benjamin, from “The Storyteller”!
!
* * *!
!
Grain was being burned. It was cheaper than coal…in South Dakota, the county
elevator listed corn as minus three cents. Minus three cents a bushel. If you wanted to
sell ‘em a bushel of corn, you had to bring in three cents.!
!
—Oscar Heline, from HARD TIMES (Studs Terkel)!
!
* * *!
!
A complicated problem is only further complicated by being simplified. A state of
confusion is never made comprehensible by being given a plot. Appearances do not
deceive if there are enough of them. The truth is always laid out in an infinite number of
circles tending to become, but never becoming, concentric. !
!
— Laura Riding, from ANARCHISM IS NOT ENOUGH!
!
* * *!
!
The negro was born in depression. It didn’t mean too much to him. The Great American
Depression, as you call it. There was no such thing. The best he could be is a janitor or a
porter or shoeshine boy. It only became official when it hit the white man. !
!
— Clifford Burke, from HARD TIMES (Studs Terkel)!


* * *!
!
Hog prices:!
!
1931: $ 11.36 per head!
!
1932: $ 6.14 per head!
!
1933: $ 4.21 per head, the lowest price since the 1890s!
!
 * * *!
!
For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely
discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of
some potent doctrine, infallible leader, or some new technique they have access to a
source of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant conception of the
prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they must be wholly ignorant of the
difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap. The men who
started the French Revolution were wholly without political experience. The same is
true of the Bolsheviks, Nazis, and the revolutionaries in Asia. !
!
—Eric Hoffer, from THE TRUE BELIEVER!
!
* * *!
!
Freight trains were amazing in them days. When a train would stop in a small town and
the bums got off, the population tripled. So many ridin’ the freight. Women even, and
quite a few were tryin’ to disguise themselves. !
! I ran into a couple of self-styled professors, safe blowers, skilled mechanics and
all that…These people usually had money. When they finished a job, they’d get paid, go
on a bender and get rolled. They didn’t like the farmer types. And there were quite a
few farmers buried. !
! I’m talkin’ about this big dam job out west, this big Hoover Dam. There was a lot
of farmers in the concrete. They just shoved ‘em in there. They didn’t like ‘em as job
competition…! !
! Old time hoboes had a circuit, like a preacher or a salesman. The town knew ‘em.
They knew the good jails to spend the winter in…A young boy, somebody they took a
fancy to, they’d break him in. There was quite a bit of homosexual down there—wolves,
punks, and all that. I pushed one guy in the river. I don’t know if he came up or not
‘cause I ran. !
— Frank Czerwonka, from HARD TIMES (Studs Terkel)!
!
* * *!
!
I take SPACE to be the central fact of man born in America, from Folsom cave to now. I
spell it large because it comes large here. Large, and without mercy. !
! It is geography at bottom, a hell of wide land from the beginning…! !
! PLUS a harshness we still perpetuate, a sun like a tomahawk…a river north and
south in the middle of the land running out the blood.!
! The fulcrum of America is the plains, half sea half land, a high sun as metal and
obdurate as the iron horizon, and a man’s job to square the circle…!
! Whitman we have called our greatest voice because he gave us hope. Melville is
the truer man. He lived intensely his people’s wrong, their guilt. But he remembered the
first dream. The White Whale is more accurate than Leaves of Grass. Because it is
America, all of her space, the malice, the root. !
!
— Charles Olson, from CALL ME ISHMAEL!
!
* * *!
!
Mexican Expatriation Act of 1931: Herbert Hoover adds 245 agents to deport 500,000
Mexicans to rid country of agrarian protestors, subversives, communists and Mexicans
in a bid to improve his slumping popularity. !
!
* * *!
!
Iowa Car War (1931). State veterinarians were enforcing Iowa inoculation laws for
cattle. A condemned cow cost a farmer $130 per head. Farmers had no confidence in the
veterinarians or the tests. Hundreds of farmers came together to block the tests.
Machine gun toting National Guardsmen were sent in to enforce the tests.!
!
* * *!
!
Another dairy conflict developed one cold winter night when pickets stopped a
southbound truck carrying 1,000 one-pound prints of butter to Sioux City. The truck
was halted at the Highway 75 bridge over the Floyd River at James, Iowa. The driver
tried to argue. That irritated the pickets, who dumped the butter over the bridge railing.
They picked up the truck, turned it around and sent the driver back north.!
! The pickets had second thoughts about wasting all that butter. Several went
down to the river and retrieved a lot of it off the river ice. The butter was loaded onto a
truck.!
— George Mills, from A JUDGE AND A ROPE!
!
!
* * *!
!
Though in many of its aspects the world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres
were formed in fright.!
— Herman Melville !
!
* * *!
!
Two or three people, with healthy bodies and the right sort of receiving brains, could
turn the whole tide of human thought, could direct lightning flashes of electric power to
slash across and destroy the world of dead, murky thought…!
! Christ and his father, or as the Eleusinian mystic would have said, his mother,
were one.!
! Christ was the grapes that hung against the sun-lit walls of that mountain
garden, Nazareth….He was the gulls screaming at low tide and tearing the small crabs
from among the knotted weeds.!
!
— Hilda Doolittle, from NOTES ON THOUGHT & VISION!
!
* * *!
!
Organizers and agitators of the Communist party were drawn by the magnetic
attraction of social discontent to the disturbed Missouri Valley counties. Shortly after
Christmas, Mrs. Ella Reeve Bloor arrived in Sioux City. Operating on a shoestring
budget, she rented a tiny apartment, hauled from her suitcase ever-present pictures of
Eugene V. Debs and Walt Whitman, and soon was serving coffee, doughnuts, and a
homespun version of Marxist theory to all who were interested.!
!
—John Shover, from CORNBELT REBELLION!
!
* * *!
!
We owe nothing of our origins to Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Lenin…we do owe a debt to
J. Willard Gibbs, Nikola Tesla, and a thousand other American chemists, engineers,
scientists and technologists.!
—Howard Scott, founder of Technocracy movement!
!
* * *!
!
All mass movements deprecate the present, and there is no more potent dwarfing of the
present than by viewing it as a mere link between a glorious past and a glorious future.!
!
—Eric Hoffer, from THE TRUE BELIEVER!
!
* * *!
!
There was an alliance between the Klu Klux Klan and the Anti-Saloon League. Alcohol
was linked to Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants and to blacks, a shared enemy.!
!
* * *!
!
R.D. Markell, 67, of Union County, South Dakota, was headed for Sioux City in a truck
carrying 1,000 gallons of milk. With him were three sons. Two miles west of towny hey
came upon a telephone pole and a spiked plank blocking the highway. An armed force
of 75 pickets waited in the ditches.!
! Markell got out of the truck and rolled the pole off the road. Somebody fired.
That touched off a volley of shots from both sides. Markell was hit seven times in the
abdomen. Though seriously wounded, he removed the spiked plank too. One son
suffered a wound in the head and had a thumb shot also. Another son was shot in the
head.!
! Blood streaming from their faces, the two young Markells stood among milk cas
and returned the fire. Picket Nile Cochran of Moville was shot in the neck and head.
Another picket lost a thumb.!
! When it was all over, the truck was riddled with bullets. Both front tires were
punctured and the windshield and door glass shattered. The elder Markell died. His
sons and the pickets recovered.!
! Picket Cochran was arrested and convicted of manslaughter in a trial in South
Dakota. He was given three-year penitentiary sentence. Cochran said the pickets “didn’t
mean to harm anyone were only trying to protect our own interests.”…Cochran added,
“I don’t mind so much going to jail this time. I just got through butchering a cow and
two hogs so my wife and children are provided for.”!
!
— George Mills, from A JUDGE AND A ROPE!
!
* * *!
Iowa farms and banking.!
!
In 1920, the average US farm loan was $4270. In Iowa, the average farm loan was
$11,080. !
!
During the war years, the average US farm debt rose by 50%. In Iowa, it rose by 69%. !
!
Financial speculation was heavily encouraged in Iowa. One could buy a farm with just
10% down.!
!
Iowa had 1763 banks, averaging 20 per county, more than any other state in the country. !
!
* * *!
!
The sale was held on the H.A. Gilliland farm west of Lamoni. The farmer had gone
broke and so had the Lamoni State Savings Bank which financed him. The bank held a
chattel mortgage on his assets such as farm animals and equipment.!
! The bank receiver scheduled an auction. A big crowd of hostile farmers arrived.
The auctioneer wanted to postpone the sale. The crowd wouldn’t let him. The crowd
would permit only unbelievably low bids. A team of horses worth $200 sold for $4, a
wagon for 25 cents, cows for $1 each and brood sows for 75 cents each. The entire sale
brought in only $35. A number of like auctions occurred elsewhere in Iowa. In such
cases the successful bidders returned the assets to the bankrupt farmer. !
!
— George Mills, from A JUDGE AND A ROPE!
!
* * *!
!
Harry Anslinger was the head of the small Federal Bureau of Narcotics. At the close of
Prohibition, the bureau was to be abolished. Anslinger decided to target Billie Holiday
and other black jazz musicians in order to justify the Bureau’s existence, starting the
War on Drugs. !
!
* * *!
!
Amos Fries was the head of the US Army’s Chemical Warfare Service. There was public
and presidential pressure for Fries to stop building a chemical arsenal. He called this
pressure a Communist plot and began monitoring domestic subversives. He later wrote
the books Communism Unmasked and SugarCoating Communism in the 1930s.!
!
* * *!
!
Henry Wallace.!
!
* * *!
!
General Smedley Butler!
!
* * *!
!
The Black Legion and the DuPont family!
!
* * *!
!
A glorification of the past can serve as a means to belittle the present…there is no more
potent dwarfing of the present than by viewing it as a mere link between a glorious past
and a glorious future…Religious movements go back tot he day of creation; social
revolutions tell of a golden age when men were free, equal, and independent;
nationalist movements revive or invent memories of past greatness. This preoccupation
with the past stems not only from a desire to demonstrate the legitimacy of the
movement and the illegitimacy of the old order, but also to show up the present as a
mere interlude between past and future.!
—Eric Hoffer, from THE TRUE BELIEVER!
!
!