• I Unemployed purchasing power means unemployed labor and unemployed labor means human want in the midst of plenty. This is the most challenging paradox of modern times. HENRY A. WALLACE Secretary of Agriculture 1934 1 2 [3.81.72.247] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 09:40 GMT) Friday, February 17, 1933 FOR NINE YEARS George Custer had picked rocks out of the three hundred and twenty acres he rented from James T. Viele, but still the wheat fields were not clear enough to suit him. Nothing made him madder than to hook into a big rock with a freshly sharpened plowshare or mower sickle. This late in the winter he had finished all the odd jobs that he saved for cold weather, and on a morning like this, with no special chores at hand, he hitched the team to the stoneboat and hauled rocks down the hill to the pile he was accumulating at the edge of the south grove. Every rock he took out of the best soil in the world made that soil even better. If it weren't for drought and rust, this half section would be producing sixteen bushels to the acre. He was only a year older than the century, but he could remember when North Dakota soil yielded twenty or more. An early thaw the first of the week had finished most of the snow, but a hard freeze last night had turned the earth back into iron. He had to use a crowbar to get the big ones loose. With rocks, a man couldn't win for losing. During the times of the year when the ground wasn't frozen, he was too busy doing other things with it to be taking rocks out of it. He intended to make something with the rocks - a cool little well house, maybe, or a creamery. A man could build almost anything with rocks if he had the time. George had always wanted a house of stone, He wouldn't build it, though, till he could buy the farm from Vick. He had already sunk so much cash and labor in this place that if Vick ever tried to push him off without making a decent settlement with him, he would be obliged to take a few thousand dollars out of the old man's hide. 3 Crossing the field toward the small gray building that Vick called a house, he could see how it would look if it was his own house of stone, with the smoke from the two stoves drifting up from the broad stone chimney, and the white of fresh paint gleaming from the deepset window casings. He halted the team in front of the house and went in. "Man! It's colder than a banker's eye out there," he told his wife. He scooped half a dipperful from the pail of drinking water and poured it into a cup. "That ground is so hard you couldn't drive a spike into it with a sledge hammer. One of these days we're gonna have enough rocks to build a house with, though. Warm in winter, cool in summer. How'd you like that?" "I'd like it if we could just get the money to make a down payment on this place," said Rachel. "Well so would I! But just because we haven't is no reason why we shouldn't think ahead a little, is it?" He shut the door harder than he really meant to and stomped back to the team. They were matched sorrels, a gelding and a mare, both young horses. The mare would drop her first foal in another three months, and he was working her this morning instead of one of his other two geldings because the weather had kept her from getting sufficient exercise lately. In spite of the outrageous fee, George had bred her to Otto Wilkes's champion Percheron stallion, because with a dam like Kate it was silly not to use the best sire around. Besides, he wanted a colt that would grow to be considerably bigger than Kate, but still be possesed of her intelligence and fine disposition. Between the horses he could glimpse the distant rock pile, and his eyes focused themselves on the spot, seeing how solid and eternal a stone house would look there, set beneath the thin black crisscrossing limbs of the grove. He was barely conscious of the four peaked ears dutifully bobbing...