Crime in 1921, Laramie, Wyoming

Keeping the peace on the High Plains

Laramie's downtown historic district in 2004

On January 3, 1922, City Marshall J. W. Sigman reported to the city council of Laramie, Wyoming, about police activity during 1921. During the year, he stated, seventeen officers made a total of 321 arrests for offenses that included the following:

• Drunks, 84
• Breaches of the peace, 42
• Prostitution, 25
• Gambling, 35
• Burglary, 2
• Robbery, 3
• Forgery, 4
• Larceny, 2
• Rape, 2
• Assault and battery, 3
• Speeding, 62
• Bright lights, 2
• Wrongful turning of corners, 3
• Wrongful parking, 3
• Running with mufflers open, 2
• Lights out, 5
• Reckless driving, 1
• Riding on sidewalks, 4
• Running on lawns, 1
• Vagrancy, 6
• Boys frequenting pool halls, 1
• Making whisky, 4
• Trespassing, 1
• Refusing to pay occupation tax, 2
• Blocking crossing, 1
• Beating board bill, 2
• Concerning rubbish, l
• Interfering with officer, 1
• Destruction of property, 1
• Permitting unlawful cesspool, 1
• Allowing dogs to run at large, 10
• Using water unlawfully, 6
• Keeping pool hall open, 1
• Others, 2

(Source: Laramie Republican [Daily Edition] no. 123 January 04, 1922, page 5)

In 1921, traffic in Laramie would have been a mixture of horseback riders, horse-drawn vehicles, motor vehicles, and possibly bicycles. I'm guessing that the speeding violations primarily involved automobiles, but most of the riding-on-sidewalk violations involved horses.

William Conners, husband of Philena Baily (my first cousin 2x removed), was one of the policemen who kept the peace in Laramie in 1921. With 83 arrests, he was the most active officer of the Laramie law enforcement team for the year. I was a little surprised to find him on the police force, because he had been working for the Union Pacific railroad as a fireman. But maybe his wife wanted him to be at home, or maybe he was laid off as Union Pacific downsized after World War I.

Copyright 2013 by Genevieve Hill Netz. All rights reserved. Permission is granted for attaching this article to family trees, but this notice must remain with the article. Any other use requires written permission; please contact gnetz51@gmail.com. This article was published originally at http://prairiebluestem.blogspot.com/2013/04/crime-in-1921-laramie-wyoming.html.

See also:

• The 1920s in Wyoming 
• 1920s images of Laramie, Wyoming

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons by Matthew Trump

1920 Rules for Health and Beauty for Girls

Advice for girls by Maude Foote Crow

My mother was born in 1923. By the time she was a teenager in the late 1930s, some rules in this list might have already seemed a bit old-fashioned. Still, many of these rules are still sound advice today.

Bodily Carriage

• Hold the head erect.
• Keep the chest high.
• Hold the abdomen in.
• Rest the weight of the body on the balls of the feet.
• Keep this position constantly, by day and by night.
• When lying down, stretch out; do not curl up.

Old Tag Game: Three Deep

Did you play this, as a child?

Here's a game I remember playing at Vacation Bible School when I was growing up. I think we played it at VBS because that was one of the few times when we had enough kids together to make this game really fun!

In this game, the players are arranged in groups of two. All but one of the couples form a big circle facing toward the center, each couple with one player behind the other. There should be good wide spaces between the couples.

One of the two free players is chosen to chase the other. They run around outside the circle. If the one chased is tagged, he becomes the one to do the chasing. At any time, the one who is being pursued may run into the circle and take his place in front of one of the standing couples. This makes that group "three deep" and the third or outside player of the group must immediately leave it to be chased until he either is tagged or causes someone else to be chased by stopping in his turn in front of one of the couples.

If the game is played long enough and with frequent changes, everyone will have a chance to run.

It is not permitted to run across the circle, and the runner may only go into it at the point where he stops in front of a couple. Nor is it permissible for a third man to go directly to the couple immediately to the left or the right of the one he has left. He must run a bit at least. This game makes for alertness and speed in running and is good fun.

Source: Mabie, Hamilton Wright, Edward Everett Hale, and William Byron Forbush. The Young Folks Treasury Vol. X: Ideal Home Life. New York: The University Society, 1919. Print. This excerpt is from p. 159.

Spring Cleaning of the Blog

A general freshening

I installed a new blog template over the weekend. It is displaying all right with the browsers and operating system that I have on my computer, but if you have any problem with it, please let me know.

Particularly, I would like to know if anything is overlapped, oddly chopped, or not displaying. Also, I'd like to know if there are any dark lines in the header or anywhere else that seem unrelated to the design.

This design is a modification of the new "Simple" template. One advantage of the new Blogger templates is that pages can be added. I've moved a few things that used to be in the sidebar to their own pages, and I'll be evaluating how well that works.

I certainly hope the new blog design works out better than Buster Brown's housecleaning did!

"Puzzle Pages" Workbooks Remembered

Reading seatwork series illustrated by Ethel Hays

In our one-room school, our teachers taught several classes for every subject. The number of classes depended on the grade levels of the current students. Sometimes there were half a dozen grades or more for ten or twelve students.

Usually, the teacher called the classes in order from youngest to oldest. "First grade Reading," she might announce, and the first grader/s went to the bench beside the teacher's desk with appropriate books and papers. After a few minutes of oral reading, the teacher assigned some seatwork and called the next class.

In the primary grades, we always had a page or two to do in the reading workbook, a few pages of practice reading from the textbook, a page in the phonics workbook, and the next page of Puzzle Pages.

Read and write, cut and paste

Puzzle Pages was a reading seatwork series. Besides the part of every page that had to be read, the work usually required some writing and some cut-and-pasted words or pictures from the back of the book. This kept our hands busy with pencils, round-tipped scissors, and globs of white paste. We were also expected to color all the pictures on the pages.

The cover of this Puzzle Pages workbook is exactly like the ones I remember. Just look how busy those children are. And so were we! My husband remembers this workbook, also.

One day, the children in the Puzzle Pages story went to the circus, so we had pictures of circus animals to cut and paste. When the teacher checked my page, she marked the elephant wrong, even though I had pasted it in the right place. She said it was colored wrong. Not having gray in my box of 16 crayons, I had made the elephant purple. Maybe she would have preferred light black.

Ethel Hays, artist and illustrator

ThePuzzle Pages workbooks were published by McCormick-Mathers of Wichita, Kansas -- a publishing company which appears to have gone out of business. Internet searches for "McCormick-Mathers" yield used books from the 1930s through the 1980s, but no website for the company.

The illustrator of all the various Puzzle Pages editions and revised editions was Ethel Hays. Her other work included a comic strip, Flapper Fanny, during the 1920s and magazine illustrations and comic strips during the 1930s. During the 1940s, she illustrated a number of well-knownl children's books, including The Little Red Hen (1942),  Little Black Sambo (1942), The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1942), The Town and The Country Mouse (1942), and others. She also illustrated the popular Raggedy Ann books of the same era.

Radio Days

A revolutionary invention

Imagine America at the end of World War I. Brief notices of important events were still sent by telegraph, the fastest communication that existed.

People read newspapers and magazines to learn details about happenings in the world beyond their hometowns. In small towns, the news was often out-of-date before the publications arrived. For that matter, much of the news was old even when it was written.

A decade later, a surge of interest, development, and investment in commercial radio had transformed the nation.

Election results were broadcast by radio for the first time ever in 1920 (by KDKA in Pittsburg.) Owners of radio sets heard the news first. They didn't have to wait for printing presses to grind out an extra and newsboys to run it through the streets.

With that broadcast, radio gained a new measure of respectability. Its potential was examined and found promising; it was recognized as more than a curious hobby.

By 1927, radio frequencies were so crowded that Congress set up a regulatory agency, the Federal Radio Commission, to issue broadcast licenses.

The 1930 census inquired whether the household owned a radio set. Many people did. The wealthy purchased a commercial model, and the poor built their own crystal sets or vacuum tube radios using the plans published in hobby magazines.

Americans tuned in regularly for the news, farm reports, and weather reports, and for other favorite programs -- music, drama, quiz shows, humor, and more. The radio often became the family gathering place, assuming a role that the piano or the phonograph had previously enjoyed.

Franklin D. Roosevelt used radio to bring his "Fireside Chats" into American living rooms, starting in 1933. He employed the cutting edge of technology to speak directly to the people in an unprecedented way.

From that era, here are two interesting quotes:

I live in a strictly rural community, and people here speak of “The Radio” in the large sense, with an over-meaning. When they say “The Radio” they don’t mean a cabinet, an electrical phenomenon, or a man in a studio, they refer to a pervading and somewhat godlike presence which has come into their lives and homes.

—E. B. White, 1933

God Hears Prayer

If radio's slim fingers can pluck a melody
From night -- and toss it over a continent or sea;
If the petalled white notes of a violin
Are blown across the mountains or the city's din;
If songs, like crimson roses, are culled from thin blue air --
Why should mortals wonder if God hears prayer?

-Ethel Romig Fuller (from the 1937 anthology, 1000 Quotable Poems)

Related post: I Grew Up in Radio Land

Might Be a Threshing Machine?

I think this old piece of farm equipment might be a small threshing machine. If you know for sure what it is, please tell me!

One clue is the pulleys on the sides. I believe the long belts that powered the machine were attached there. Threshing machines always had very long belts between the machine and the engine. The engine was set up a safe distance away from the chaff and straw debris to reduce the danger of fire.

At first glance, it seems strange that the chute for feeding the sheaves of grain into the machine (at right) is so far from the ground. However, the grain was hauled to the machine on wagons and pitched into the threshing machine from the wagon bed -- not from the ground.

My theory is that the grain came out a spout on the opposite side of the machine (not visible in the photo) and the upward-pointing metal chute at the bottom is where the straw and chaff were blown out. I could be completely wrong!

The wheels on a threshing machine allowed it to be pulled between fields. Some threshing machines were on skids instead of wheels.

My mother had a threshing story from when she was a little girl on the farm at Gordon, Nebraska, in the 1920s. Her mother, my Grandma Violet, had to cook a big noon meal for a crew of 15 or 20 men. It was a hot day, and the house was extra hot from Grandma Violet's morning of cooking and baking.

Little Doris decided she'd be a lot cooler without her clothing. The men were due to come in for dinner at any moment, when Grandma Violet saw what my mom wasn't wearing. She was not amused. Encouraged by a swat on her backside, my mother put her clothes right back on again.

The Body as an Industrial Palace

Man's internal machinery

Several years ago, I came across an interesting old illustration on the National Institute of Health (NIH) website. It shows the human body as a factory -- literally, as an "industrial palace." I saved the image because I liked it, and then I quickly forgot about it.

Tonight, I came across the "Industrial Palace" again, and looked at it a little differently, due to my recent (small) study of the modernistic architecture of the early and middle 20th century.

Here are the details of this piece of art, according to the NIH:

Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace)by Fritz Kahn (1888-1968)Stuttgart, 1926. Chromolithograph. National Library of Medicine.Kahn’s modernist visualization of the digestive and respiratory system as "industrial palace," really a chemical plant, was conceived in a period when the German chemical industry was the world’s most advanced.

Source: Dreaming the Industrial Body

It seems that, in the 1920s and 1930s, people were extremely excited about machines. It was the Machine Age. The assembly line had been invented, enabling many people to own personal machines -- automobiles. High speed travel was possible via big ocean liners and streamlined trains. Electricity, produced by generators and turbines, was transforming everyday life. Mechanized factories were churning out many new, inexpensive consumer goods. Machines even made it possible for people to fly.

I've been reading that modernists thought of schools as machines for learning, houses as machines for living, and hospitals as machines for healing. Designed for speed and efficiency, the architecture sometimes seemed cold. Unnecessary frills were stripped away, and the design was streamlined just as a train or an airplane might have been. This was modern!

Given all that, it's not too surprising to see the human body portrayed as a factory, in a drawing from 1926. Fritz Kahn, a doctor, was just creating a bit of modernistic medical art.

Spring Break

Florida or bust!

1920s beach scene

A surprising number of swim suits and beach towels have come through my cash register at work recently. Families are traveling to Florida over spring break and they want to be ready to swim. Many are headed for Disney World (just 677 miles from Hopkinsville), and they're also hoping to go to the beach (or at least to the pool at their hotel.)

Christian County schools had several snow days this winter, and the school board recently decided to cut spring break by three days to make up the time. The public is so outraged by the decision that the board has called a special meeting tomorrow night to reconsider. I anticipate that we will revert to the original spring break schedule and make up the snow days some other way.

People are talking about taking their kids on the scheduled vacation, even if school is in session. Some families have made complex plans for the scheduled holiday. Both parents have arranged vacation time from their jobs. Reservations have been made and tickets bought. I can understand their ire.

Ever since we moved here 17 years ago, I've heard people talk about going to Florida for spring break. Some go every year. I wonder when the trip to Florida became such a revered spring-break tradition. Surely, it didn't start until after the interstate highways were built.

This will probably make me sound old. When I was a kid going to a little country school, I don't think we ever had spring break or an Easter vacation. In high school, we may have had Good Friday off from school but I'm sure it wasn't more than that. If my family traveled at all at Easter, it would have been a trip to see my Grandma. Florida sounds a lot more exciting!

Carribean Connection

Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Virgin Islands in 1920

Since Cuba has been in the news for several days, I checked my 1920 world geography book to see what insight it might provide. This interesting passage gives some background to U.S. influence in the Carribean. I studied Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders in American history class years ago, of course, but it makes much more sense now than it did then.
_________________

"The latest addition to our territory is the little group of Danish West Indies or Virgin Islands, lying just east of Porto Rico. They were bought for $25,000,000 and came into our possession in March, 1917. Our government had made previous attempts to buy the islands but was never able to make satisfactory terms. These little islands with a total area of only 142 square miles cost more than the Louisiana Purchase and Alaska together.

"Their population is small and their only industry is sugar growing. Their value to our government does not consist in their territory or their wealth. They were bought because one of them, St. Thomas, has a good harbor. This will form a good base for our fleet that guards the entrance to the Caribbean Sea. If a nation hostile to us had possession of this base, it would endanger the Panama canal.

"As a result of our war with Spain, in 1898, the United States came into the control of Cuba and Porto Rico, two of the largest islands of the West Indies. Porto Rico was ceded to the United States, and Cuba was given its independence under the general guidance of the United States...


"As in all the West Indies, the principal crop is sugar cane, and the industry is carried on much as it is in Louisiana. A second important crop is tobacco for which Cuba is especially noted. Tobacco is also raised extensively in Porto Rico. At Havana and other places, it is manufactured into cigars, which bring high prices, -- the Havana cigar being considered the best that is made.

"Our soil and climate have enabled us to raise almost all the farm products that we have needed, except such as may be produced within these islands. They can send us tea, coffee, sugar, spices, and tropical fruits. They can also send us fruits and vegetables in midwinter. Thus it is of great value to us that we have such close relations with these islands...


"During its occupation of Cuba, the United States has had one good macadam road built from the eastern to the western end of the island. Steamboat lines now run from American ports to Havana and the other West Indian ports. Thus the United States has done much to improve the conveniences for the transportation of goods; and by that means a much better market is secured for the products of these islands."

Source: World Geographies: Second Book (p. 167-170) by Ralph S. Tarr, B.S. F.G.S.A, and Frank M. McMurry, Ph. D. Copyrighted 1920. Published by the Macmillan Company, New York, 1922.

Related links:
CIA Factbook -- Cuba, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico

Montana Sheep Herder's Life in 1920

Sheep herding on the open prairie

A sheep herder, his dogs, and his sheep
on the high plains of Montana about 1920.

This photograph is from my 1922 world geography book. The man is a sheep herder in Montana. It must have been an exciting day for him when this photograph was made. He appears to be dressed in his best suit of clothing for the occasion. The two little dogs beside him don't look much like "sheep dogs", but I'm sure he had trained them to help.

Here's the description the book gives of sheep ranching and the sheep herder's life:

A good sized sheep ranch has from twenty-five thousand to forty thousand herd of sheep. These, like cattle, may feed partly upon government land, or the "range" and partly open land fenced in and owned by the ranchman. During the coldest winter weather, when the snow may be so deep that the sheep cannot obtain food, they are often driven into protected corrals and fed on alfalfa. The fierce winds of the open plains help them, however, by drifting the snow and thus leaving open patches where they can find grass.

When the sheep are feeding on the range, one man, with a dog can herd twenty-five hundred; and if he has a horse to ride, he sometimes takes care of five thousand Selecting a spot near water for a camp, the herder drives his sheep out each morning, and back at night, going each day a distance of two or three miles from camp. When the grass is eaten in one place, the camp is moved; then from the new point as a center, they wander out as before.

The life of the herder is extremely lonely, both day and night being spent with the sheep. Once a week a man brings him food; and for weeks, and even months at a time, the only company he has aside from his sheep, is his dog and possibly his horse.

Source: World Geographies: Second Book by Ralph S. Tarr, B.S. F.G.S.A, and Frank M. McMurry, Ph. D. Copyrighted in 1920 and published in New York by the Macmillan Company in 1922.

The article says that one out of twenty sheep died during the harsh Montana winter. These animals were skinned and the hides were sent to market in early spring.

About the first of June, the sheep were sheared. To avoid the expense of transporting the wool, the sheep were often driven to the railroad over a period of weeks. They grazed along the way, moving a few miles closer to their destination each day. When they arrived at the railhead, they were sheared. The wool was pressed into bales and shipped to the eastern U.S. for manufacturing.

According to the book, some 3 to 5 year-old sheep were sold for mutton starting in July. I suppose that by mid-summer, they had regained some fat.

An Evening at the Kentuckiana Digital Library

Historical documents, images, and more

A few minutes ago, I had to pull myself away from the Kentuckiana Digital Library (KDL) so I can write in my blog and go to bed!

The KDL is just one section of The Kentucky Virtual Library, an immense resource for research in and about Kentucky. I don't pretend to know everything that can be found in and through the Kentucky Virtual Library. I do know that you can search, get the name of a book and its library, and have your local library arrange an interlibrary-loan.

The KDL has a lot of old photographs, books, and newspapers online. For example, I found a little book from 1915 that gives a proud overview of Christian County, Kentucky (where I live.) The entire text of William Henry Perrin's histories of Christian and Trigg Counties is also available there.

I learned a bit about the WPA work done around here in the Depression from some of the images of Christian County. Besides building roads and bridges, they operated a stone quarry that provided the materials. The images also include views of the coal mines in the northern part of the county in the early years of the century, a few farming photos from that era, and a number of photos of the long-gone Bethel College in Hopkinsville.

Since we live on the east side of Christian County with the Jefferson Davis Monument in the greater circles of our neighborhood, I was interested in the 1929 images of the newly completed monument. The one that shows a vintage automobile approaching Fairview is my favorite.

The Todd County photos (next county to the east) raised a question in my mind that will now have to be answered. What has become of the Gray and Blue State Park that appears in over a dozen photographs?

A hotel, lodge, traveler's rest hall, and more are shown in the photos of the Gray and Blue State Park. The park was transferred in 1936 to the National Park Service according to one of the captions. The only modern-day evidence I can find of the park's existence is the address of a church: "2273 Blue and Gray Park Road." I'm planning a drive down that road to see what I can see.

If you appreciate old-time photographs, newspapers, books, etc., there are wonders to behold at this website. I hope you'll pay a visit.

Tall Corn and Steel-wheeled Tractors

Farming in the early 1920s

Avery Tractor from the early 20th century

I love the old-time photographs in my 1920 World Geographies book. Here are a couple of farming images from the 1920s or before. Today, the tractor above would be over 85 years old, but at that time, it was the cutting edge of farm technology. The text has these comments:

On these large farms [in the upper Great Plains] a particularly valuable help to the farmer is the modern farm tractor. This machine burns gasoline or other forms of petroleum, is very strongly built, and takes the place of many men and horses in hauling heavy loads and performing difficult tasks. With it a dozen plows can be pulled at once; plowing and harrowing can be performed in one operation; or the engine may be used to pump water or to saw wood. Some of them have high wheels; but many of them creep along the roughest ground with "caterpillar" tread like the mighty Army "tanks."

Source of the above quotation and the accompanying images: World Geographies: Second Book, by Ralph S. Tarr and Frank M. McMurry, copyrighted in 1920. Published in 1922 by The MacMillan Company, New York

Look how tall the corn is in the photo below from this old book. The tallest stalks must be 12 to 15 feet in height. I remember my parents talking about the tall corn they remembered from their childhood.

Notice also the variation in the size of the plants. The seed was open-pollinated in those days, and every plant was different. Today, corn seed producers tightly control the pollination of each plant to produce tons of seed that is exactly identical (or as identical as possible.) That's why every plant in a modern cornfield is pretty much the same size.

Nowadays, field corn has been hybridized and selected for size of ear, disease resistance, and days to harvest. If we start using the entire corn plant to produce biofuels, we may start seeing tall corn like this again!

A Nebraska farmer of the early 20th century
stands in a field of tall corn.

Technorati tags: old-fashioned tall corn, old time farming images, old time tractor, Avery tractor, antique tractor

Hopkinsville's Fire Station and Transportation Museum

Renovation of an old fire station is underway.

The clock tower on Hopkinsville's old fire station is looking very spiffy these days. It has fresh paint and perhaps even a new roof. It's a well-known landmark, sometimes used as a logo for Hopkinsville. I'm glad to see it looking so well.

The fire station and clock date back to 1924. The clock has been cleaned and repaired recently, and it's keeping good time on all four sides. Before its repair, it was seriously losing time.

The work on the clock tower is part of the renovation of the old fire station. It will eventually be opened as the Woody Winfree Fire and Transportation Museum.

Woody Winfree donated Hopkinsville Fire Engine No. 1, a 1928 La France to the museum several years ago, as well as other articles from his extensive collection of old fire-fighting equipment and memorabilia.

Regarding Winfree's donation:

The City of Hopkinsville originally purchased the truck in 1928 for $1 per pound. The $13,750 sticker price marked the greatest expenditure for fire equipment to that point by the city. It was the first truck in the Hopkinsville Fire Department built from the ground up solely as a fire engine. It was active for 40 years until it was declared surplus in 1968. Winfree brought it at that time.

Source: "A Herculean Task" by Matt Killebrew, Kentucky New Era, January 27, 2004 (Subscription may be required -- not sure.)

The La France had a cracked block when the article was written in 2004, but it was scheduled to undergo repair.

A Mogul Wagon will be displayed here. The museum also owns a 1926 pumper, another fire truck of unknown-to-me vintage, a 1909 Model 10 Buick, a restored Model T, a 1957 John Deere tractor, and a collection of antique gas pumps.

I walked by the fire station a few days ago and peeked inside. A couple of men were working on the lights. When one of them saw me taking photos of the old front doors, he invited me to come to the rear of the building and admire the new doors. They are replicas of the old door, and they look great.



He pointed out the openings in the ceiling where the firemen slid down poles, just like the story books always said they did. I asked about the corrugation of the concrete floor in front of the back door. He explained that when they came back from a fire run, they came through the back door, and the corrugation helped to clean the horses' feet and the wheels of the fire equipment.


The old fire station is located across the street from the Pennroyal Museum. It will be a nice addition to Hopkinsville. Mr. William Turner, our very knowledgable county historian is deeply involved in the project. Besides his natural interest and his professional duties, the renovation is taking place next door to his office.

A few weeks ago when I came out of the courthouse, I heard a loud, spluttering engine, and over the hill came Mr. Turner, driving an old fire truck down Main Street. It made me happy to see that. I'm sure it was pretty cool to be at the wheel, too.

Technorati tags: antique fire engines, fire station museum, antique town clock, historic building renovation

Tobacco Harvest Hasn't Changed Much

Tobacco harvesting, curing, stripping methods described in 1923 are essentially unchanged today.

My 1923 agriculture textbook has an entire chapter on growing tobacco. At that time, tobacco was America's eighth most valuable field crop. About 1/3 of that crop came from Kentucky. Other tobacco-growing states, in order of importance, included North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Maryland, and Connecticut.

Except for using tractors nowadays to take the wagons to the barns, tobacco harvesting procedures have changed very little in the last 80+ years. Even the scaffold wagon pictured in my old book looks very similar to that used today, except for the mule.

Kary Cadmus Davis, Ph. D. (Cornell), the author of , The New Agriculture for High Schools, wrote the following description of tobacco harvesting in the early 1920s.

HARVESTING THE WHOLE PLANTS

Most tobacco in this country is harvested by splitting the stalk from the top to within a few inches of the ground. Then the stalk is cut off near the ground and is placed on a lath or "stick," running the lath through the split. These laths, when loaded, are placed across racks made for hauling the tobacco and are taken to curing barn or scaffolds. The tobacco should be allowed to wilt somewhat before being placed on laths and loaded on the wagon as it bruises much more easily when the leaves are crisp.

Ripeness of tobacco is indicated by the feel of the leaves, by the brittlesness of the veins when folded between the fingers, and by the slight yellowing of leaves. Frost in northern states often determines the time of harvesting as the crop must be in before frost.

CURING

There are three main types of curing tobacco: air curing, open-fire curing, and flue curing. Air curing is accomplished in specially constructed tobacco barns having ventilators up and down all sides. Open-fire or open hearth curing is accomplished in barns without special ventilation and is used chiefly for dark type of tobacco. Flue curing is in barns similar to the last but with more ventilation at the top, the circulation being caused by the heat. Flues conveying the hot smoke run through the barns.

Several weeks are required to complete the curing process, by any of the methods. Much study and experience is required to conduct the work successfully. All tobacco barns are provided with timbers and supports on which tobacco laths are placed.

STRIPPING

When tobacco has been cured on the stalk, the next step is stripping, which consists in removing the leaves from the stalks. This should be done on moist days in early winter when the leaves are in proper "case." If too dry, they would be damaged by cracking and breaking. If they are becoming slightly to dry to "bulk," they are sometimes moistened a little, but it is better to have the leaves in natural condition with enough moisture present without adding any. They must be neither too wet nor too dry when in bulk.

GRADING

During the stripping and bulking of tobacco leaves, they are sorted into three, four, or five grades, depending upon the type of tobacco. Leaves of any one grade are tied into small bundles and these into larger ones, according to the type of tobacco...

Source: The New Agriculture for High Schools by Kary Cadmus Davis, Ph. D., published by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, in 1923. From the chapter titled "Tobacco Products" (p. 223-224.)

Here, I'll end the quote, because the marketing is done differently nowadays. The old book describes the large tobacco warehouses and loose-leaf auctions of times goneby. Around Hopkinsville, many of these old warehouses can still be seen, but they are no longer used and tobacco auctions are no longer held. Most tobacco leaf is bought in the field by tobacco companies.



Pictured above: a trailer loaded with pallets of laths (sticks) for spearing the cut tobacco plants. In the foreground, sticks with tobacco plants have been stood up in the sun so the tobacco can wilt before going to the barn.



Pictured above: A scaffold wagon, loaded with tobacco and ready to be pulled to the barn. The laths are laid across a framework and the plants hang down. In the barns, the laths will be laid across "tiers" of wooden framework, starting at the top of the barn and working down to the floor.

Related posts:
Major Tobacco Growing Areas, 1923
Also, check the label, "tobacco"

Technorati tags: tobacco harvest, tobacco growing, tobacco farming, tobacco crop, Kentucky tobacco farming, Christian County Kentucky

Major Tobacco Growing Areas, 1923

The world's most important tobacco producing regions in the early 1920s

Millions    Nation
of Pounds   or State
---------   ---------
     470     Kentucky
     450     British India
     320     North Carolina
     220     Austria Hungary
     140     Virginia
     130     Java
      95     Japan
      90     Tennessee
      80     South Carolina
      75     Ohio
      74     Germany
      72     Turkey (European)
      65     Philippine Islands
      60     Wisconsin
      59     Brazil
      58     Cuba
      55     Pennsylvania
      48     Sumatra
      42     Connecticut
      40     San Domingo
      35     Maryland
      25     Georgia
      22     Massachusetts
      20     Indiana
      18     West Virginia
      10     Florida

Source: The New Agriculture for High Schools by Kary Cadmus Davis, Ph. D., published by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, in 1923. From the chapter titled "Tobacco Products" (p. 218.)

Technorati tag: history of tobacco

Five Steps of Home Improvement

Ideas from 1923 for making your home place look and function better

These five steps to a convenient and attractive home place are from a 1923 Agriculture textbook, (The New Agriculture for High Schools by Kary Cadmus Davis, Ph, D.) Dr. Davis's five steps are listed below in the order that they should be undertaken:

1. Clean up the place and put it in order as much as you can.

2. Study the current situation and think how it could be improved by re-planning or by adding new features.

3. Carry out the proposed improvements.

4. Add trees, shrubs and other plants to shade, beautify, delineate, and disguise.

5. Install modern conveniences.

Dr. Davis was writing about the improvement of a farm's home place, which would include barns, barnyards, chicken house, orchard, house, etc. However, his steps could be applied to any sort or size of home, anywhere.

I like his recommendation to make the most of what is there, first. Before you start spending money, put some elbow grease into it and really clean up the place. That can be a big improvement!

The "re-planning" he mentions in step 2 might include some "re-purposing", as we say today -- that is, simply thinking about the best way to use what you have to meet your needs and to improve the appearance of the place where you live.

I've watched Mennonite families set up farming operations in old farm buildings that weren't in the best of shape. It is interesting that they proceed much as outlined above.

First, they clean up the place, get the grass mowed, take care of the fences, nail down the loose boards, etc. Then, as money permits, they add the most necessary improvements first.

In the case of one of our Mennonite neighbors, he built a big machine shed for his tractor repair business as soon as they moved in. The old house looked pretty rough for a few years, but now they have put vinyl siding on it, and are in the process of building on a few rooms.

The modern conveniences that Dr. Davis suggested for step 5 were running water, bathroom equipment, electric lights and irrigation. That was in 1923. We think of most of those as necessities 85 years later!

In 2007, the modern conveniences we'd like might be a refrigerator with ice and water in the door, a home theater, or a hot tub. They're not necessities and everyone doesn't have them, but they'd be nice. I imagine that Dr. Davis would like us pay cash for our modern conveniences rather than purchasing them on credit, too.

The benefits of home improvement? Dr. Davis lists three:

1. For the members of the family -- better satisfaction with home surroundings, improvement and conservation of health, a valuable education for its younger members.
2. For the community -- good example.
3. For the place itself -- enhanced value.

Source: The New Agriculture for High Schools, by Kary Cadmus Davis, Ph.D. (Cornell). Published in Philadelphia by the J.B. Lippincott Company, in 1923. From the chapter titled "Improvement Projects" (p. 303).

Technorati tags: home improvement tips, remodeling advice, home improvement steps, how to improve your home

Sod House Stigma

Little sod houses on the prairie

It was hard work to build a sod house. Ripping up an acre or more of sod, cutting it into large building-block chunks, and stacking it to form walls was dirty, back-breaking labor.

Then a ridgepole was laid across the top and a wooden framework was built to support the roof -- a sod roof if the builder couldn't afford lumber.

Sod roofs often leaked, and sod houses tended to be dark and dirty. It's easy to imagine why a frame house was preferred.

Sometimes the walls were plastered or stuccoed, inside and out, if suitable materials could be found. This made the house more durable, brightened the interior, helped keep out insects, and decreased the dustiness. Interior walls were often covered with newspaper, if it wasn't possible to plaster them.

A sod house in the family tree

My father was born in a sod house in Brown County, Nebraska. I didn't learn this until I was in my early 40's.

When Daddy passed away a few years later, I helped write a eulogy. I suggested that we mention his birth in a sod house. To my surprise, my mother said she didn't know if my father would want that included. She relented when I said that descendents of the family would like to know that interesting fact.

I think my parents felt that sod houses were lower-class dwellings. By the time they were born in 1923, I suppose that many of the sod houses the homesteaders built had been replaced with frame buildings. Only poor folks lived in sod houses -- like my father's young parents who were struggling to get a start.

Who knows? Maybe the kids at school teased my dad about being born in a soddy.

I don't know when my grandparents became owners of land adjoining Moon Lake (south of Johnstown, NE), but that was the setting of all the stories I know of my father's childhood. The ranch had a two-story frame house that burned to the ground when my father was 12 or so. Fortunately, they had insurance and they were able to rebuild.

A South Dakota soddy

A few sod houses were still being built when my parents were children (the 1920s and 1930s). In a book of South Dakota homesteader history, the following account is given:

Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Tuttle and family came to Mellette County from Tripp County in 1929. Upon arrival they lived for two years on what was known as the Ivan Nelson ranch, just two miles from where the Tuttles live now. Later they moved onto their own place and lived in a schoolhouse while Mr. Tuttle built a sod house.

He said it was difficult to find good sod in this territory [northwest of Valentine, Nebraska] as it washed so easily one could hardly hold a house together. Mr. Tuttle is rather an expert at building sod houses.

In 1932 the family moved into their new dwelling. It was a comfortable sixteen by thirty-six inside and the walls were two feet thick. Mrs. Tuttle recalls that they kept the house warm the first winter with just a kitchen range.

Source: Mellette County: 1911-1961 published August 15, 1961 by the Mellette County Centennial Committee, White River, South Dakota

I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. I don't remember any ruins of sod houses, though there surely had been some in that area at one time. I do remember hearing that one of our neighbors (south of Bassett, Nebraska,) had a sod house enclosed within their frame house.

Here in Kentucky, when a log house has been enclosed within a frame house, they call it a "log room." You could say our Nebraska neighbors had a "sod room."

Related websites:
Nebraska Studies: Building a Sod House
Sod House Photograph Collection

Related Prairie Bluestem article:
Sod House Construction

Technorati tags: sod house, soddies, homesteaders, prairie settlers

Declining Role of Horses and Mules in the 1920s

The horse vs. the tractor and the automobile

I have an old book,The New Agriculture For High School, that was published in 1923 (the year that my mother and father were born.)

The book is interesting because it includes the most modern information of the time, based on the best and latest scientific knowledge. One thing that has changed greatly since then is the use of horses and mules in farming.

In 1923, automobiles and gas-powered tractors were not new inventions. They had been around for at least 25 years, and farmers were beginning to rely on them for both transportation and work.

The breeding of horses and mules seems now to be less profitable than formerly. The use of automobiles for pleasure and business and the use of tractors and motors for farm work have seriously affected the horse-producing industry, in recent years.

Source: The New Agriculture for High Schools (p.385) by Kary Cadmus Davis, Ph. D., published in 1923 by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.

Draft horses of the 1920s

The author writes about four main breeds of draft horses ("work horses.") Percherons were the most popular breed. They were large, but low-set. Belgian horses were second in popularity. They were also large, compact horses and their legs were even shorter than Percherons.

Clydesdales, a larger breed than Percherons or Belgians, were mostly popular in eastern Canada. Shires were also larger horses. The author describes them as heavy-legged, big footed, and clumsy, the least popular of the main draft horse breeds.

Coach horses of the 1920s

Horse-drawn cabs and coaches were also used less, as motor vehicles became more common. According to the author, coach horses were smaller than draft horses and were capable of hauling a medium load at a moderate trot. These horses pulled stage coaches, fire engines, and delivery wagons. They were also the horses who went to war as workhorses.

I am not familiar with any of the breeds mentioned: Cleveland Bay, German Coach, French Coach, Hackney (listed from largest to smallest in size.) Several of these breeds have become so rare in 2007 that purebreeds are in danger of completely disappearing.

Light horses, ponies, and mules of the 1920s

Smaller horse breeds are mentioned (Thoroughbreds, American Saddler, Standardbred, Morgan, Arabian, Orloff Trotter), and then ponies are discussed (Welsh, Exmoor, Arabian, Hackney, Mexican, Indian). Lastly, the author turns his attention to mules.

The mule is much used in American agriculture for field work, particularly in southern states, and is used in mines everwhere. Other forms of motive power are not likely to supplant the mule.

Source: The New Agriculture for High Schools (p.392) by Kary Cadmus Davis, Ph. D., published in 1923 by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.

The author mentions several general classes of mules. Plantation mules were small fine-boned mules used for sugar and cotton. Mine mules and lumber mules were larger, heavier-boned mules obtained by breeding a draft mare and a large jack (male donkey.)

If you have a few minutes, I hope you'll take a look at some of the interesting pages I've linked, particularly of the lesser-known horse breeds. If you have just one minute, be sure to read the account of the life of the mine mule.

Technorati tags: work horses, workhorses, coach horses, draft horses, Clydesdales, Percherons, Belgians, Shires, mules, 1920s, impact of the automobile, impact of the tractor

An Ohio Farm of 1920

Farm Life in the American Midwest, Early 1900s

The following passage is excerpted from a 1922 geography textbook. I have faithfully reproduced the spelling and punctuation, but I have broken up some of the long paragraphs. The authors are describing a typical farm of the Central United States:

In the main, [farms] resemble the one in Ohio that is here described. On this Ohio farm of 160 acres, is a house in which the family lives, with a barn near by for horses, milch cows and hay, and with sheds near it for storing grain and farming implements.

A windmill at the rear of the house keeps the milk house well supplied with cold water, and also fills the water trough in the barnyard.

Near the house is an orchard of apple, peach, and pear trees, with a few rows of berry bushes in one part, and a chicken house in another. Here enough chickens are raised to supply some meat, and all the eggs that are needed, with some to sell.

On one side of the front yard are a few beehives and back of them, between the orchard and the barn, is a garden of vegetables. Still back of that are several pigpens, in which hogs are fattened for home use, and also for the market.

Farther away from the house are fields in which there are at least three or four different kinds of crops. Every farmer in that vicinity expects to raise corn, -- perhaps sixty acres of it, -- some grass for grazing and for hay, and wheat or some other kind of grain.

After these crops are harvested, they are either sold or fed to stock -- horses, cattle, hogs, or sheep-- upon the farm. The latter plan is often followed, chiefly because it pays better to fatten stock and sell it, than to sell the crops themselves.

There are generally two or three good milch cows on the farm which not only supply the family with fresh milk and butter, but furnish some cream or butter to sell.

Since there are usually only a few houses in sight of a farmhouse, and no store or post office within a number of miles, the farmer and his family may not meet with other persons for several days at a time, although they often see friends driving by.

In the busiest season from spring till fall, they make few trips to town. However, they have a telephone by which they can talk with neighbors, and with friends and merchants in town, while the postman brings the mail to their doors.

Some persons would not care for such a life as this, because it is too lonesome, and there is too much hard work connected with it. But this farmer enjoys it greatly, because he likes to take care of his stock, to work in the soil, and to watch his crops grow.

In addition, he is able to raise most of his own food, and his whole life is more independent than that of persons in a town or village.

Excerpted from World Geographies Second Book, by Ralph S. Tarr and Frank M. McMurry. Published in New York by the MacMillan Company in 1922. Copyrighted in 1912, 1913, and 1920.



You can see a 1915 panoramic photograph of a nice farm, something like the one described above, at the Library of Congress "American Memory" website: Stuart Acres at Marshall, Michigan.

Technorati tags: 1920s, rural life, farm life, 1920s farm, turn of the century