Esther's Town

Eleven-Cent Corn, 108-Degree Heat, and a Twister

Eleven-Cent Corn, lOB-Degree Heat, and a Twister LITTLE wond" that Emmet County vote" d"med thei, Republican ways in November 1932 to help put Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House, hoping he might straighten out the economics that plagued the country. Even so, the Roosevelt margin in Emmet was only 297 votes. The weather was unfriendly as the year opened. Heavy snows snarled highway traffic and tied up railroad trains when high winds whipped through the county. A rash of break-ins, shoplifting, daylight robberies and nighttime safecrackings, petty thievery, even purse snatching set new police records as men lost employment and incomes dropped. After state agents made a haul of 189 gallons of bootleg liquor, 187 gallons of it quickly disappeared from a courthouse basement vault where officers stored it. Thieves were stealing everything: potatoes, chickens, cigarettes, coal off railroad cars, harness, gold from dental offices, liquor-everything. Hard times were upon the whole community. Unemployed and underemployed families lacked the money to buy food, even at ridiculous prices. Howard's Cut-Rate was selling five pounds of cornmeal for 12¢, salted mackerel at 22¢ a pound, bacon at 17¢, and veal steak for 8¢ a pound. The K & K Hardware sold barn paint for 85¢ a gallon, a wash tub for 63¢. At any price, merchandise clung to the shelves. George W. Shadle had closed his store in the autumn of 1931, and another established women's wear store, Herman Oransky's, soon folded. Farmers and their wives could spend little money when local grain elevators offered only 10¢ a bushel for oats and 11 ¢ to 14¢ for corn (depending upon grade). Average prices at Iowa elevators De175 176 ESTHER'S TOWN cember 1, 1929, were 70¢ a bushel for corn, but the price dropped to 58¢ in 1930, then to 35¢ in 1931, and hit bottom at 12¢ a bushel in 1932. Oats prices followed the same pattern: 39¢, to 28¢, to 21¢ and finally down to 10¢ a bushel in 1932.' The farmwife who depended on chicken-and-egg money for her immediate cash needs found that she could sell her chickens for only 6¢ to 9¢ a pound and her eggs for only 14¢ to 23¢, depending on grade. Buyers paid 18¢ for cream. Poultry, egg, and dairy checks didn't go far at those prices. Bill Foshier and Ben Burns busied themselves crying sales of farmers who were no longer solvent and able to continue farming and were forced to auction off their equipment and livestock. When Foshier died in 1961 at ninety-three years of age, he had cried 6,000 sales over a sixty-year period. Most of these occurred during hard times. The board of supervisors reduced the salaries of courthouse deputies, and the city hall followed suit by cutting the rates for electricity by 10 percent. Councilmen noted that Estherville was spending an alarming $26 a day just to keep the city hall open, so they found a way to reduce those expenses 22~ percent. The home economists urged housewives to use more cereal to make food pennies go further. The Red Cross brought in 150 barrels of flour. Welfare workers distributed 190 food baskets to needy families. The Daily News employed numerous columns of front-page space soliciting cash donations for Christmastime, when Mack Groves invariably sent over a check to cover whatever the goal deficit turned out to be. "Make it anonymous," he always scribbled on the face ofthe check. Farmers of the community encountered adversities other than the grain and produce markets. Winter's cruel cold was followed by sweltering heat that registered temperatures during one week that ranged from 97° to 100°. Some farmers suffered severe hail damage . They were invaded by army worms. Supporters of the Farmers Holiday Moven;tent tried to blockade roads in an effort to bolster prices by withholding supply, but that didn't help. The only good news in the town newspaper in the election year of 1932 was that a new Thorpe Brothers well could pump 1,400 gallons of pure water per minute. But of course water isn't nutritious. At Graettinger Jake Spies, who owned several thousand acres Eleven-Cent Corn, lOS-Degree Heat, and a Twister 177 of land, took credit on share rent payments due from his tenants, allowing them 50~ a bushel for their corn. That was better than 11 ~ or...