Elizebeth Cofell Holding a baby.
_{Date unknown}

There is a series of interesting items in the Stutsman County Record during 1931. There were items dealing with bank failure, bank robberies and bank embezzlement. The following reported items are examples: Bank at Kindred, embezzlement, $32,000, suicide, (July 30,1931.); Bank at Oberon, $10,000 short, (Sept. 3, 1931); Bank Robbery at Bowbells, (Aug. 6, 1931); Three banks close in Morton County, one in Mandan, two in New Salem. Notices published during November 1931. In addition, there were notices of foreclosures and farm sales and items on tightening of the economy.

In the fall of 1932, Dad harvested one of the best crops he ever had. Our oats, barley and wheat all yielded very well. This year also meant other changes. During the summer Mr. Stott who had been handling the renting of the farm became very ill and was in the hospital at Jamestown for some time. He had a partner in the store, a Mr. Hughes, who came up from Aberdeen, South Dakota to run the store during the illness. Theo Cumber was co-owner of the farm we rented. He may have become the sole owner by 1932. The following was published in the Stutsman County Record: “W.D. (Warranty Deed) Frank E. Stott, et ux. to Theo Cumber pt SW 1/4. SW. 1/4,8-137-63.” (SCR., Vol. 28, No.11, Thurs. October 29, 1931.) It might be that Theo Cumber was the sole owner of the above described parcel land. If this was the case I do not believe that Dad had any idea of this transaction. Until the fall of 1931 he continued to deal with Frank Stott. Anyway Mr. Cumber was managing the rental of the farm during Mr. Stott's illness.

Mr. Cumber also owned a threshing rig and wanted to thresh Dad's crop. I do not know all that went on but Dad was threshed by David and Joe Naze. The result of all of this was that we were ordered to move from the farm. So we moved in the fall of 1932 from the farm that had been our home since 1923.

I was in the seventh grade and I stayed home from school to do chores on days when Dad was trying to find another farm to rent. He finally did manage to rent a farm in our community. It was rented from Central Insurance Company, an entity that was having difficulty getting "suitable" renters. The farm was not a very good one in my opinion. The man who was manager of Central Life Farms had his office in Havana, North Dakota.

The farm was known as the Woodbury farm named after the family that had once owned it. It was located about 4 1/2 miles from the farm where we had lived for nine years. I missed more school. We had to move a lot of hay, I helped my father load and unload a lot of grain. It was very hard work for a twelve year old. If prices had been decent, some of that grain would have been hauled to the elevator and. sold. The crop had been good but the prices of everything were very low. The prices reached the low point in December of 1932 and January and February 1933. The Record reported: "Several changes have been made recently. The Stott farm rented by Floyd Cofell the past few years, next year will be rented by Domek, and Cofell will rent the one where Joe Lester is this year. Lester will move to town and live in the John Moore residence and Lew Cumber will move on the Richard place east of town, better known as the Pat Quinlan Place." (SCR., Vol. 39, No.9, Thursday October 13, 1932.) Not all the information in the above item is correct, my recall is that Lester's did not move to town.

There were or are difficulties in moving from one farm to another and we experienced some of them in 1932. The family on the farm to which we were moving also had difficulty finding a farm. They could not move right away. This was not an unusual situation for some land owners could be very demanding that a renter be off by a certain date. We were one of those that had to get off the farm. We moved into the house with part of the previous renter's family still occupying it. The house was small and there were nine of us and two members of the other family. It was a condition of overcrowded housing. I now realize that our situation was not too much different from those of multi-family tenements in the large cities.

There were also two sets of livestock that required housing in the barn. Milking arrangements had to be done on schedule and there was some question as to who should clean the barns. When we moved on the farm part of the barn had not been cleaned. It had been raining very hard and there was a soggy, mired, dirty mess in the barn and the farm yard. We had to wade through that to care for the livestock. After the previous renters moved the first thing we did was to haul manure and clean the barn. It was hard work.

That fall I stayed out of school for about two months. I attended school just often enough to get the lessons which I would do after a day's work hauling grain, hay and cleaning barn. Fortunately this barn had a hay carrier and we did not have to pitch the hay. We found it most convenient to let the horses pull it into the barn. The granary had a drive through alley which made it easier to shovel grain from the wagon into the bins. It was still hard work for a twelve or thirteen year old boy. I was often exhausted after a day's work. Brother Eugene may have been pretty tired too as he was involved in helping with some of this work and chores.

One year later, in the Fall of 1933 the Charley Finnegan and Bert Carley families moved into Montpelier from farms. Other moves were also being made, I think largely because of the low prices for farm products. Farmers who rented land could not pay the rent and make a living. Farmers who owned land could not pay taxes and make a living and if they had a mortgage, many of them could not pay on principal or interest. Absentee owners were not receiving an expected return on their investment. On December 29, 1932, Dark, Northern wheat was 27 cents a bushel and red durum wheat was 19 cents and oats was 7 cents a bushel if they would buy it, while barley was selling at 10 cents a bushel.

There were quite a number of items regarding people shutting down their farm operations and moving back to Iowa or Minnesota and some others were moving out to Washington and Oregon becoming part of the Northern migration to the west. Dad did not want to quit farming at that time. We had good livestock and he had hopes that the prices would rise. Instead we were to have a major change in the weather that would severely diminish those hopes.

During the fall of 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected the President of the United States defeating Herbert Hoover by 472 to 59 electoral votes. Roosevelt did some things immediately upon assuming office. The first was the bank holiday which didn't affect us because we didn't have any money in banks. The bank holiday was followed by other measures to stabilize the country. There were some emergency measures taken but for people at the bottom things moved rather slowly at first. Township, municipal, and county governments were still attempting to take care of people in need. By October 1933 the CW A begin to put men to work through the Civil Works Administration. There were 150 men working on county road projects. (Reported in SCR. Vol. 30, No.8, October 5, 1933.)

We remember the inauguration day, March 4, 1933. Mr. Gunther, our teacher, invited all the pupils who did not have radio to come to school on inauguration day which was on a Saturday as I recall. Lois, Eugene, Gordon and I had talked about this at home but perhaps had not really informed our parents what we were going to do. At least our father wasn't informed. In the morning after chores, I hitched the horses to the trailer and we drove to the school house to listen to the inaugural ceremonies and the inaugural address. The teacher gave us noon lunch. Even though we were young, I doubt that anyone who heard that speech will forget it. It was eloquent and full of hope for those who were struggling to survive very tough times.

This was a memorable event because when the inauguration was over and we returned home we found our father very upset. He had planned to use that team and vehicle to drive to town so he could listen to the inaugural address. We got a scolding at least severe enough that it is remembered. I was and am sorry our father did not get to hear that speech. However, the offer by Mr. Gunther and the opportunity to hear that inaugural speech was probably contributed to a life long interest in the political process and public service even if we did get a scolding.

It was during the winter of 1932-33 that we burned barley in our heating stove. Dad took a double wagon box of barley to the elevator to sell with the intention of buying coal. I believe that would be about forty bushels. He returned home with the wagon half loaded with coal. It just about figures out. Forty bushels of barley at ten cents a bushel equals four dollars. One ton of Lignite coal was selling for about four dollars a ton.

After that experience Dad fitted a pipe from the top lid of the stove fixed so that it could be filled with grain and allow the grain to flow slowly into the fire box. We then burned barley for the rest of the winter. We did not realize at the time that we were using a renewable resource. It was dangerous practice and one had to. be careful. Grain burns very hot and sometimes the stove would blow up when gases would accumulate. We were not the only ones burning grain that winter. There were accounts that in other places people were burning corn.

I did return to school full time in the seventh grade and probably the work experiences were not totally bad for me. I managed to make up what had been missed and was soon on par with other students and probably ahead of some of them. I would rather have been in school than working so hard at shoveling grain, chasing cattle, pitching hay and cleaning barn. Even though the hard labor had lessened, I still had to get up early and help feed the cows and milk them by hand morning and evening. After the fall rain, it was a relatively dry winter in our part of the country.

In the spring of 1933 conditions did not look too good. There were indications that something was in the wind or weather.

"WEATHER MAN HANDS OUT DUST STORM"

"March came in like a nice little lamb but Tuesday night gave Jamestown and vicinity a taste of a real dust storm which prevailed thru most of Wednesday, with a little snow mixed in for good measure. The wind reached a velocity of 40 miles an hour, while at Bismarck it was reported to have been as high as 70 miles an hour for a short spell.

A cold northwestern wind prevails today. The first "below weather" in a number of days was recorded this morning at the state hospital where it was 8 below.

The readings for the week:

After arriving home from school, I helped by disking some fields with a four horse team preparing the ground for planting. My father was seeding grain. That spring he planted wheat, oats, barley and flax. The previous tenant had sown about forty acres of sweet clover and that grew very well in 1933. The only crop we took from that farm in 1933 was flax and sweet clover. We mowed most of what we had planted in the spring as hay. We harvested the sweet clover and it was threshed for seed. There was at least three hundred bushels of sweet clover seed most of which was claimed by the Insurance company that owned the land. I do not remember what the flax yield was. We did, however, have straw piles in our field one of flax straw and the other clover straw. We used both as feed and as bedding for the animals. We did have a small yield of com. It supplemented the scanty supply of hay we were able to cut. It was a scant year, a dry year and perhaps the real beginning of the drought.

The garden did not yield very well either. I did attempt an irrigation project by diverting overflow water from the livestock tank to the garden. It was down hill and a rather simple but lengthy task of making a ditch to carry the water. It was a minor trickle by the time it reached the garden and the windmill could not pump enough to really make it worthwhile. It was going to be a difficult winter.

We hauled in a lot of dead wood from the gulleys and ravines, about the only places that trees grew. We cleared the dead wood out of several plum thickets, which is hard and painful work because of the thorns on plum trees. There was also a windbreak consisting of box elder trees with a lot of dead wood. We did not have barley to burn---either we had burned it the previous winter or we had fed it to the livestock.

It was sometime during this period between 1933-1935 that Dad had a very bad toothache. The side of his face was swollen and he resisted going to a dentist. Mother finally convinced him he had to go rather than get an infection or continue one that might kill him. She convinced him to go the day before a very cold morning. I stayed home from school to do chores and help. I had to harness a team of horses to pull and start the Model T Ford. The Model T finally started and warmed up and we put in water and then Dad took off for Jamestown about 25 miles away. The badly abscessed tooth was pulled and Dad managed to get back home but he was in bad condition for several days afterwards. If he had gone to the dentist with the first pain he might not have suffered so much.

During the winter of 1934-1935 on the Woodbury farm there were several ice covered ponds the result of late fall rains. We used one of them for skating but it was also dangerous because of reeds and grass coming up through the ice. We had several pairs of skates that someone had given us. They were the old fashioned skates that had to be attached with keyed clamps and then with leather straps. My brother Eugene and I were playing tag on the pond and we were having a lot of fun. In one of those games I raced down the ice and he was attempting to tag me and my skate hit one of the reeds.

I landed on my chin and have about an inch and half scar hardly noticeable now. We removed our skates and headed for home as quickly as we could. I was bloody all down my front and my mother thought my throat was cut. Mother taped the wound together saying "You should have stitches." The cut on the chin and subsequent scar was not the worst. I had also spit out teeth or parts of teeth onto the ice. Four or five of my teeth were badly damaged as a result of hitting the ice. They were later either pulled or allowed to decay further but none of them were repaired. A good deal of work was done on my teeth while I was in the army. Today there are more crowns and bridges and plates than there should be if there had been the money to have done the dental and medical work. If you are poor you have to be doubly careful and we hadn't learned that lesson.

In 1932 and through 1933 items regarding welfare began to appear with great frequency in the paper. In October of 1933 150 men began work on the public roads of the county. In January of 1934 the Stutsman County Reemployment office registered 4000 men in search of work. This figure very likely did not include the largely no-income people on farms. It represents about 15% of a population in which many others were also in precarious circumstances. This gives us some idea of the insecure condition of the country. Stutsman County had a total population of 26, 100 according the 1930 census.(US Census of Population Vol. Ill, page 417.) In Montpelier in January there was a crew of9 men involved in graveling the streets of the village of Montpelier. There was also some kind of work done on the town school house that had been completed during Christmas vacation. In February it was reported that the graveling of the streets had been completed. The Civil Works Administration was one of the earliest public works program initiated by the New Deal in its effort to put people to work.

Among the country people during these years there were the sheriff sales of land and property taken in mortgage foreclosures and tax forfeitures. Federal aid was critically needed if any improvement was to be made to help people out of the conditions of poverty and distress. The states, at least the state of North Dakota, were losing a tax base and had no ready resources to meet the need. The cities and urban areas could not have dealt with a mass invasion of people from the farms and villages. The three federal works programs, CWA, PWA and WPA and a relief program FERA were the sustainers of lives and economy in during those times. (CWA= Civil Works Administration; PWA= Public Works Administration; WPA= Works Progress Administration; FERA= Federal Emergency Relief Administration.) These programs sustained the lives of about 100,000 men and women and their families in North Dakota.

I do not remember all that went into getting on welfare, I do remember some of it. Our family had to go on public assistance. In some cases, a family might be reported by someone in a community. Others made personal applications for help. This entailed an investigation by the County Welfare Department. In those days these departments employed people with good intentions about helping others but not necessarily with very much training. Some of the those hired to investigate welfare were rather self-righteous and judgmental in their attitude. Charity, relief and welfare did not have a good name among the recipients either. I can remember very clearly my embarrassment while listening to the case worker interrogating my father. Not only did she ask questions which were legitimate but these were intermingled with judgments about my father's lack of concern for the comfort of his family, his inadequacy as a provider and implied the economic condition of the family was his fault. There were several other kinds of put down statements. I'm certain my father must have squirmed and felt demeaned. I felt myself curling and hurting inside along with my father because I felt the untruth of her assertions. I had worked hard along with my father when he was working hard. I was fourteen or fifteen years old.

I do not mean to say that social workers were all treating clients and applicants as my father was treated. However, social workers in those days were pretty good at making people aware that they were on or about to go on welfare and they were at fault. The experiences of those years have been positive for me. It has helped me listen to people who speak of their experiences with social workers and I could believe they have a point. I was at a meeting with about 200 college professors in the 1970's. One of the topics was the treatment of children whose families were receiving welfare. Anyway a question was asked which was most significant. How many of you in this room come from a family that was visited by a social worker? There were two hands that went up. Mine and another professor, were the only ones raised. Some of those professors were training teachers, social workers and sociologist. Those experiences in a farmhouse living room in 1933 or 1934 have helped me understand just how hard it is for people who have not experienced real down and out poverty to understand. It is no wonder this society finds it so easy to act the way it does on welfare stereotypes.

In our community there were the CWA, PWA and the WPA. I am not certain which or what public works they each accomplished. There were more than poor farmers who were engaged on the projects. In our community there were also the ex-cream buyer, ex-service station operator, ex-banker, ex-teacher. On projects in other areas, there were a whole! array of workers from a number of occupational areas.

It became quickly obvious in 1932, 1933 and 1934 that the Red Cross, Salvation Army, the churches or local units of government could not accumulate adequate resources to sustain the human need problem at least not in North Dakota. Neither did the state have the resources or structures to care for the poor. There were local efforts in North Dakota by counties and municipalities and private business groups to put people to work. The need was so great. they could not sustain the projects for a very long period of time. They ran out of funds and there was no source great enough to continue the effort. They could have raised taxes but most taxpayers were also in critical condition. They could have raised the tax base to restore the treasury no one had money to pay taxes even. There were no reliable financial resources and this in case of local government depressed any inclination-to even make the attempt.

The depression crisis complicated by drought had terrible local effects but the cause of the problem was only partly local. It was caused by factors that were nation wide and even world wide. They were partly environmental. There were those persons who were declaring that if one wanted to work they would find it. They said nothing about work that paid so one could live. There may have been jobs available but to work without pay does not feed a family.

In one of these programs, I think it was the CWA the federal government paid for the employment of men but the local government units were asked to furnish equipment and materials. This was probably the reason for a change from CWA to PWA and WPA because the local townships, school districts or other divisions did not have funds even for minor repairs in some cases. In our township the requirement was to pay for wagon and teams. Some people who had horses and the wagons that could be used for dump boxes put them on the project so people could work. The federal funds would not pay for this but the township was to pay so much per day to those who furnished a team and wagon. For some time and some reason Montpelier township board refused to do this and even argued that those who got work on the projects should be willing to furnish the wagon's and teams free. There was a feeling of rancor in the township.

The issue was argued out at a Farmers Union Meeting in school Number 2. John Clancy who was not on the township board was not on CWA and did not have a team working argued eloquently that the township should pay the cost. He exposed the township board to critical inspection that it changed its position on the issue. I have always admired John Clancy for the position he took on that issue that evening. I do not know whether he recognized the impact he had on one of the young persons present at that meeting. While we had those who thought shooting people was the answer to problems we were also exposed to those who would make a stand for justice and do it with eloquence and decency.

It must have been in 1934 that Dad was made foreman of the (WPA-PWA) project in our township. The project consisted of improving the roads and putting a gravel surface on them. Previous to these federal projects our country roads and the streets in small towns consisted largely of dirt surface. They drained water rather poorly and became mudholes during the spring thaw and whenever it rained. Almost everyone I am sure has seen a picture of a Model T or other vehicle stuck in a mud hole with ruts all around. Those pictures record a reality.

The WPA changed that in our area. Road banks were rip rapped, sloped and covered with rock in such a way as to reduce erosion. It would have been interesting to know the number of loads of gravel placed on the roads. It must have been several thousand loaded by shovel but dumped by simply pulling the planks apart. A small crew of men stayed at the road to spread the gravel after it was unloaded from the wagons.

Among the things that Dad had to do was to oversee the work project. He also kept the work records. These had to be sent to WP A headquarters. Checks would then be mailed out to those working on the project. The basic wage was $44.00 a month and Dad received $6.00 a month more for his overseer work. After supper Dad would sit at the dining table and work on those forms. One evening, when Mr. Gunther, the school teacher, visited our home I listened as Dad showed Mr. Gunther the forms and explained the method of keeping the records.

Some of the men died from the hard work and exposure to the elements. One man died of pneumonia or a coronary attack while working on one of the projects. Another was badly injured by a gravel slide in the pit as they were loading wagons and later died as a result of injuries. My father felt very badly as he was foreman at the time. There was probably no way the accident could have been anticipated or prevented but my father suffered the pangs of that death for quite some time. There were a couple of other men on the projects whose lives were probably shortened as the result of hard work they were required to do at their age.

The experiences related in the previous paragraph are recalled to my consciousness each time I hear someone criticizing welfare, food stamps or people receiving commodities. They always know someone who should not be receiving commodities, or food stamps, or going to the food shelf. We just don't know and they don't know all the circumstances of a person's life or condition. If they are so envious that some one may receive something they do not deserve why not try it themselves. I certainly do not condone fraudulent receipt of welfare or misuse of funds by persons who do not need it.

Recently a very dear friend related that she had given something to a food shelf and someone asked her how she could do that, "because people who don't need it use the food shelf." Her beautiful answer was, "when I give it is to help the poor and suffering. That is a good intention and my mind is clear. If on the other hand someone who is not in difficulty uses the food shelf it is on their conscience."

It should be related that one of the most cruel and brutal incidents I have observed against the poor occurred in the check-out-line of a Red Owl Store in Minneapolis in 1970. Ahead of me in line was a rather tall heavy set man who must have been very angry at someone. In front of him was a woman about 80 years of age wearing black clothing. She presented a book of food stamps to the clerk. This man grabbed the food stamps from her and began making remarks about people living off the government. The clerk responded quickly with "You hand those over to me right now or I am calling the police." This did not stop the embarrassing remarks by the man. I am not certain that man was any more rude or insensitive than the ones mentioned in the following paragraph.

Whether it was sheer cruelty or ignorance or jealousy, I do not know, maybe all three in the 1930's. I still feel resentment about some of the cartoons, jokes and remarks about men collecting pay for leaning on shovels. These poor and distressed people were portrayed as chiselers. There were angry people going around the countryside actively opposing these programs. It created a very negative image and was demeaning to those who were doing something to improve the countryside and the public buildings. These people were so in need and it outweighed the negative image. I do not of course know anything about how men and women worked on projects elsewhere. I am very aware and conscious of the crew of men in Montpelier and Manns townships and that they worked very hard. They also accomplished a great deal for their families. They at least survived. They also rendered a public service that improved the public facilities some of which survive to this day. Many of those projects, road building or road improvement, building the dams, planting new forests and conservation work were essentially human hand labor. They were projects done by flesh and blood men and women who needed work. The gravel was shoveled onto the wagons by hand. In buildings, the sand, gravel, cement, mortar and water were shoveled by hand into a mixer run by a water cooled gasoline engine. The mix was carried to the form in man driven wheel barrows. The shovel work was hard but it was work.

Women, many widows, or wives of husbands with handicaps of illness or injury worked on other kinds of projects. They made mattresses, clothing and household items. They canned surplus food, meats and vegetables that were later distributed by FERA as surplus commodities.

There was the time that Dad came home with a large gunny sack pretty well filled with canned meats, some canned vegetables, rice, dried beans and peas and a whole lot of grapefruit. We children had never tasted grapefruit --- but r-\ for some reason we liked it probably because at the time we received it we might have had a vitamin C deficiency. I remember especially that our Mother was most grateful that the grapefruit was among the commodities.

I find it somewhat ironic that description of roads, public buildings, dams, forestry and other conservation projects done by labor of men on WPA, CCC, and those done by women described in the previous paragraph and other government programs are now pointed to with pride. I also feel proud when viewing a project of those years. I also think of those cruel negative images portrayed by people who didn't have calloused hands but did have minds lacking compassion.

There were times in those years when we would run short on potatoes and vegetables. Since we were unable to raise a garden because of the drought mother improvised. The drought years made us realize how much we had depended upon the garden for much of our food. Probably the depression by itself would not have been so bad. During the drought years, I remember my mother cooking flour with water or milk and making a kind of pudding. Sprinkled with a little cinnamon and sugar it was sometimes all we had for an evening meal. While we were still on the farm Dad, would butcher a pig or a cow (something not exactly legal in view of the mortgaged condition of the animals.)

Even milk came in short supply in 1934. The dust storms came in early spring. The cattle ate weeds which did not improve the taste of milk or cream.

It was in May tenth, eleventh, or twelfth of the month of May that a terrible dust storm came from the west. There were banks of great gray cloud of dust backed by strong winds. It was also unseasonably hot. I think many in the area knew a drought was upon us. We had heard accounts about how dry it was in other parts of the country. The early May storm was a prelude to what was to come during the summer. I was in the eighth grade at the time and as we drove back and forth to school that spring, dust was flying through the air diminishing visibility and comfort. Mother packed our lunches in waxed paper and in lunch buckets. When we would eat sandwiches at noon we would get grit along with other nourishment. We also often had to clean the dust from our seats, desks, window sills and floors before we could begin classes.

It was in May of 1934 that we were coming home from school and the dust was heavy in the air. Lois, Eugene, Gordon and Marvin and myself were coming from school riding in the buggy. Just a bit over a mile from school and perhaps a mile and a half from home we encountered our youngest brother Arthur walking down a hill. We asked him where he was going and he said he was going to Grandpa's and Grandma's house. Grandpa and Grandma were more than twenty miles away and Arthur was just past six years of age. We had to pick him up forcibly and take him back home. He was just about to turn south on another road and had we been a few minutes later we would have missed him. He would have been out of our sight both a result of distance and dust. We have no idea what might have happened if we had not come along.

At home mother stuffed rags and paper in all openings and window and other cracks and still the dust managed to sift through and settle on everything. I remember a small drift of dirt in our enclosed entry way where there was a hole for the exhaust pipe of the washing machine. Outside anyplace where machinery stood there were dirt drifts much like snow drifts in the winter time. Dirt piled up along fence rows and anywhere between fields where weeds and grasses had slowed the wind. Dad along with other farmers in the area who had planted their grain watched the field turn green as it sprouted. They went out after a dust storm and the seedlings had been cut off next to the ground. We hardly had anything that could be called a crop in 1934.

The dust covered everything and in North Dakota where the wind almost always blows it was interminable dust. At night we would go to sleep with the moan of the wind in our ears. Outside the wind and sandblasted the paint from the west and south side of the buildings. It was a difficult summer.

That summer Dad and we boys cut and stacked Russian thistle (Salsola kali) while it was green for hay. It was almost everywhere. It is a plant that will grow up to foot and one half in height and three or four feet across and forms a rather large globe. In the fall the plant breaks loose and is one of the tumbleweeds that move across the prairie scattering seeds in its wake. If it (is) allowed to mature it dries and the plant has thousands of sharp prickles. It still grows rather abundantly in waste places such as along a railroad right of way. It is green in summer and if no other food is available will be eaten by livestock. In 1934 we cut and stacked Salsola kali on our farm as feed for our livestock. It does not handle nor stack like prairie hay or alfalfa. It is hard to handle. It was dirty miserable work no matter what one does winter or summer. During the winter we hauled in that stacked forage for our cattle. They ate it with great gusto since there was not much else we had to feed them. We did supplement with some imported feed that was probably not much better than what we had. The imported stuff was obtained through the federal feed and seed loan program. I don't know about the seed but some of the feed was not very good.

However in feeding Russian thistle and what ever else we had one had to be very careful walking and working behind those cows. I think there is some kind of oil in Salsola kali and it has a marked laxative effect. In consequence of the lack of feed we also lost number of cows that winter. They were in such weakened condition they could not deliver their calves. We would go to the barn in the morning and find the calf dead and half out of the cow and she being unable to stand both cow and calf dying as the result. They probably could have been saved with proper veterinary care. It cost money to bring out a veterinarian and we didn't have any. Our cattle did not need a veterinarian they needed feed. The cattle were selling at pitifully low prices if one could find someone to buy them. It was shortly after this time that a large number of cattle were purchased by the federal government and slaughtered for the meat that was canned by the WPA projects.

The cattle appraisers for Montpelier township were A.C. Gehlhar and John J. Clancy (SCR., Vol. 33, No. 44, June 14, 1934.) I do not remember how many of our cattle went under this program but as I recall 1/2 of the income went to the person holding the mortgage and one half to the farmer. This was part of the agreement to reduce the herds. All parties thought it was best to take whatever they could get. It is my recollection that dad received something like one hundred and twenty dollars and I think he was allowed to sell about ten or twelve head under the program.

Later that same year another item appears: "M.M. Cone shipped two carloads of cattle to St. Paul and the shipping association shipped one car." (SCR, Vol. 31, No.1, August 16, 1934.) I suspect those shipped by Cone were prime stock and all the animals shipped because of the anticipated lack of feed.

It was during the summer of 1934 that E.W. Hunt and family left for Washington state. Mr. Hunt had been our bus driver to both schools we attended. It seems as if he drove the bus for such a long time, yet when I add up the years it was probably about five in all.