In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

151 “Dear mr. Hoover: the president of the united states is the most powerful man in the world. every ounce of that power, and every bit of courage which you possess, is needed now.” —Prairie Farmer (may 1932) “surrounded by infinite beauties of nature and dwelling upon a soil of marvelous fertility, is it unreasonable to think that resourceful farm people can solve their problems?” —Successful Farmer (october 1932) he great Depression did not start on wall street,” editor Deemer lee firmly believed, but rather “it spawned in emmet County, for one place, as farm deflation spread to the equipment industry, to the financial centers, and finally general business.” the Depression had struck not only wall street but also iowa’s small towns and family farms of the greatest agricultural state within the united states, and the business of farming had been suffering since the end of the great war because of overwhelming crop production and plummeting land values unlike the urban prosperity of what was labeled the roaring twenties. and so the farms, unlike the cities of the twenties, did not shriek with prosperity but did roar with the sound of productive tractors and contented , prolific animals along with the disgruntled and muffled murmurs but increasingly louder frustrations of the average farmer who simply could not make ends meet despite all the hard work, who absolutely could not pay the mortgage or the interest or the property taxes or the grocery account or even the annual five-dollar farm Bureau dues.1 C H A P T E R E I G H T november 1932: the Presidential Farm campaigns Dealing Anew or Same Stacked Deck? t the depression dilemmas of rural Iowa, 1929–1933 152 as Herbert Hoover’s presidency had advanced from 1929 through 1932, the “farm situation,” as it was often called, had also progressively and dramatically worsened. rural people’s ethical values certainly disdained the “money-grubbing ” of urban interests, as writer geoffrey perret terms the city’s seeming preoccupation, yet farmers simply and earnestly yearned for adequate prosperity and perhaps ample respect. How were they, then, to strike that modern balance within a capitalistic society between profit and spirit?2 the issues, causes, and solutions of this extended agricultural crisis remained complex and varied. the dilemmas stubbornly persisted. when Congress met in the spring of 1931, the farm problems had ranged from an elementary taxing of yellow-colored butter substitutes to a complicated goal of limiting corporate agriculture. Wallaces’ Farmer noted its legion’s tenacity when, for example, ten thousand subscribers responded to its deflationary agricultural proposal by sending in their Honest Dollar ballots.3 as a leading farm economist and editor of the respected Wallaces’ Farmer, Henry a. wallace certainly understood the present dilemmas of agricultural profit and community spirit as he tried to capture that political desperation and dramatic emotion of his readers amid an almost idyllic natural world. “perhaps i am suggesting this merely because i have heard so many hard luck stories during the past year,” began wallace. “the strange thing is that as i write the skies are blue, the air is soft and the flowers are blooming. nature is pleasant and i can not see with my physical eyes any deep pall of gloom hanging over the country.” although wallace was not overly romantic , he could realistically imagine a violent near-future: “Just the same it is there and it is going to take the combined, resolute, common-sense efforts of us all to push it away. we don’t want the revolution and bloodshed which the peoples of some nations use to answer a situation of this kind.4 tensions were rising during this tough time in american politics. when the president of the iowa farm Bureau federation, Charles Hearst, spoke at the 15th annual picnic of the Boone County farm Bureau during that rocky summer of 1932, Hearst had just returned from the national republican convention where he became “disappointed and disgusted with the way the farm problem was shoved to one side for the prohibition question” although iowa’s senator lester Dickinson—“Hell raising Dick”—had delivered the convention’s keynote address. Hearst now questioned what the Democrats would do at their own political convention when he openly stated his reinforced belief that farmers should “act in behalf of that path which promises them aid.” “unless the dollar is stabilized,” Hearst predicted , “all of us will go broke.”5 still, Hearst urged farmers to keep...

Share