Colorado Women: A History

9. The Great Depression

215 As the nation reeled during the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected the thirty-second president of the United States. The voters’ displeasure with Herbert Hoover was as much a factor in Roosevelt’s election as were his campaign promises to do whatever was necessary to move the nation forward. Once in office, Roosevelt and the US Congress passed a litany of bills and created dozens of agencies aimed at “relief, recovery, and reform.” Not everyone was pleased with the results, in theory or in practice. One disgruntled woman was Gertrude Rader of Loma, Colorado.1 Although a variety of programs were created to aid American farmers and ranchers, the Raders found the government “helpers” a “nuisance.” A young male helper would arrive at any time of day, first wasting Gertrude’s time by trying to make a believer out of her by giving her a summary of his college education. Then he wanted to see the livestock, the irrigation canal, or the fields. Whatever it was, it kept her from her chores for much too long. N i n e the Great Depression (1930–1939) DOI: 10.5876/9781607322078.c09 216 t h e G r e a t D e p r e s s i o n The practice of a helper coming unannounced, disrupting chores or meals, wasting time building up his ego, and wanting to see various areas of the ranch was repeated each time a new government “character” showed up at the doorstep. Making matters even worse were the decisions the young men made regarding the Raders’ livestock and crops. Two officials decided that the Raders had too many “bovine critters” and pigs, so they selected and killed a yearling heifer and two runt pigs and told the Raders to bury them. The Raders, with no electricity or icebox, refused to let meat go to waste, so they bought chemicals and Morton’s pork cure salt in Fruita. They cut the beef into small pieces to fit into fruit canning jars, covered the pieces with corned beef solution, and sealed the jars. They rubbed the forty-pound pigs with pork cure and rolled them in flour sacks. Only after these steps had been taken did the Raders follow the government helpers’ instructions— they buried all the meat under the vegetables in their root storage cellar. The next government official who visited the ranch decided they had too many acres of wheat and ordered the Raders to plow them under. Once again, the couple followed the order but only after they ran the wheat through their cattle’s digestive systems.2 The land of western Colorado has its own beauty. There are red canyon walls, shrubby mesas, and winding rivers and streams. It is a land—like much of Colorado—dependent upon irrigation. For over thirty years, Rader served as secretary-treasurer of the Loma Ditch and Lateral Company and its spur ditches. One government helper managed to rile Rader as both the water expert and a woman in one ill-advised tirade. When he wanted to see the irrigation ditch, she led him to a headgate and demonstrated how it worked. This stole two precious hours from her day. Back at the house, she tried to explain how to figure irrigation water for each of the farms. He refused to listen and declared that he was “angry, frustrated, and embarrassed at having a woman show him how to figure water needs.” Infuriated by his contemptuous tone of voice, she threw her figures into the fire and left him standing there.3 The Raders were not the only ones in the Loma area to experience the ignorance of government helpers. Their neighboring ranchers and farmers could have regaled each other with stories about the helpers. One evening a visitor to the Raders thought he heard sheep bleating, which surprised them because they didn’t own any sheep. It was simply a croaking frog. Another official couldn’t distinguish yellow clover seeds from oat seeds, which prompted the owner of Knowles’ Feed and Seed to declare, “Even a jackass knows the difference between oats and clover seeds.” Rader could 217 t h e G r e a t D e p r e s s i o n have told them about the young man who did not know how to step off property and accurately figure square footage. One of her...