Locust
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The initial provision allowed homesteaders in parts of Minnesota and Iowa to vacate their homesteads until May 1, 1875. As the scope of the locust outbreak became apparent, Congress extended the amendment to exempt all farmers “whose crops were destroyed or seriously injured by grasshoppers” from the strict residency requirements. This broader provision was enacted from 1876 to 1878 and set July 1 as the mandatory date by which a homesteader had to return to his or her claim for the year in order to meet the residency requirement. In the mind of Congress, this provision allowed farmers to seek work outside the locust-ravaged districts for six months.
Critics pointed out that a midwinter deadline would have made more sense, allowing the afflicted people to farm elsewhere and then return to their own land. Others sniped that this provision resulted in a cruel cycle that turned settlers into itinerants who were dragged back and forth between wage labor and farming. The result was simply a prolongation of the suffering before the inevitable failure to eke out a living as a human yo-yo. A quick and definitive failure, rather than a lingering struggle, would have allowed families to move on to other opportunities. Despite these criticisms, the amendments were a political success and allowed at least some homesteaders to qualify for final patent after the locusts subsided. The public response was favorable enough that Congress extended this strategy to a lesser-known Act.
The Timber Culture Act allowed farmers to acquire a standard homestead of 160 acres by planting and cultivating trees on 40 acres of land for ten years. On much of the western prairies, creating forests was an ecological impossibility. However, significant tracts of the Midwest could support the growth of trees. The challenge of sustaining 40 acres of new timber for a decade and the consequent loss of this land to more profitable agricultural production led to the Act’s being amended to require that there be just ten acres of healthy and growing trees after eight years. But even these lowered standards became impossible to meet after a locust swarm arrived. And so Congress allowed farmers an extra year of residency on homesteads filed under the Timber Culture Act for each year of locust infestation.
These hands-off, legalistic tactics were sensible approaches for senators and representatives living and working at a geographic and emotional distance from the front lines. Amended laws provided broad solutions to a large-scale crisis, but a hungry farmer can’t eat the Congressional Record. The pressure for direct federal assistance came from a most unexpected quarter: the U.S. Army.
CALLING OUT THE ARMY
He was surely responsible for the deaths of more Indians—and American citizens—than most of his fellow officers, but Brigadier General E. O. C. Ord might also be credited with saving the lives of more western settlers than any other figure in American history. After graduating from West Point, Ord fought against the Seminole Indians in Florida, the Rogue River Indians in Oregon, and the Spokane Indians in Washington. In the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant reported that Ord’s “forces advanced with unsurpassed gallantry, driving the enemy back across the Hatchie, over ground where it is almost incredible that a superior force should be driven by an inferior, capturing two of the batteries, many hundred small arms, and several hundred prisoners.” He was given command of the right wing of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s army in the capture of Jackson, Mississippi. Eighteen months later, he led the Army of the James during the assault on Richmond, and General Sherman maintained, “[Ord’s] hard march the night before was one of the chief causes of Lee’s surrender.” Ord’s life as a warrior wound down after the Civil War, creating an opportunity for his humanitarian work.
Through a brilliant political maneuver at the state level, General Ord, commanding officer of the U.S. Army Department of the Platte, was named vice chairman of the Nebraska Relief and Aid Association. This appointment placed the general—and thus the federal government—smack in the middle of the human suffering wrought by the locusts. What emerged from this juxtaposition of power and poverty was an intriguing battle of principles and politics. The General’s greatest battle began in the fall of 1874.
On October 24, Ord sent a message to Lieutenant General Phillip H. Sheridan, commander of the Military Division of the Missouri, asking permission to distribute surplus army rations and clothing on the locust-ravaged frontier. Although no law permitted such a provision of supplies, Ord knew that the homesteaders decimated by the previous summer’s swarms would be in dire straits with the onset of winter. And without his impassioned—and unprecedented—plea to use military stores to alleviate a natural disaster, a horrific famine was looming. Ord’s argument was simple and straightforward:The report and the inclosed [sic] report of Major Dudley show that unless relieved soon many poor frontier people will certainly starve to death, while the Army store-houses within 100 miles are filled with provisions. Though the laws may prohibit the use of soldiers rations for other purposes than that for which they are purchased, yet I do not believe that Congress would hesitate to approve any issue of supplies necessary to save lives of our own people, and recommend that authority to make such issues only be at once granted, until Congress can be applied to provide for them.
Major N. A. M. Dudley, one of Ord’s trusted officers, had conducted extensive reconnaissance and reported detailed information on what he had discovered. For example, the Major found that of the 800 residents of Red Willow County, Nebraska, more than two-thirds would require help in the coming winter, and “of these 544 needy people, it was found that 100 had either no food or less than a five day supply.” Such details gave credence to Ord’s overall assertion:There is a famine prevailing in Western Nebraska and Kansas, and . . . probably thirty thousand persons and their animals are in danger of starving unless food be sent them speedily . . . nearly three hundred thousand acres of land are plowed in the district which has been devastated. . . . These people have been largely induced by donations of Government lands to settle where they now are, and have also been promised assistance in their distress if they would remain. With the mercury ranging below zero and their stock in a state of starvation, it is now impossible for them to leave, even were they so inclined. But their lands are valuable, the country healthy and productive, and with a little aid from the Government in their hour of need they will gladly remain and become useful citizens.
Sheridan’s response to Ord’s request was immediate but evasive. His letter would warm the cockles of any modern-day, risk-averse administrator with a penchant for ambiguity. He took the bureaucratic tack of acknowledging that Ord’s proposal might be appropriate in particular cases but could be risky as a general approach—and completed the obfuscation by throwing in a non sequitur warning that aid would compound suffering:It is a little unwise to compromise the Government by the action of its military officers in regard to any general distribution of supplies to the people residing in the section devastated. Existing orders provide for relief of distressed persons in individual cases. There may be a good deal of suffering in portions of Nebraska, but if the Government takes any advanced steps to relieve it, the suffering will be magnified a hundred times more than it really is. While I recommend the approval of what has already been done, I would advise a good deal of caution to be exercised in any issues that may be made in the future.
Ord interpreted Sheridan’s reply to be an official, if somewhat cryptic, rejection of his proposal. Undeterred, he pressed his case with the Secretary of War, William W. Belknap. The secretary was sympathetic to the settlers’ plight and Ord’s logic, but he wasn’t about to put his neck on the political chopping block by authorizing the distribution of military property to a civilian relief program. So Belknap passed the buck, suggesting that President Ulysses S. Grant authorize the allocation of clothing and blankets in light of both the crisis and the likelihood, or at least the hope, of subsequent congressional approval. Permission was granted the next day, and the following message was sent by the president to the Senate and House of Representatives in order to affirm his decision: “I have the honor to lay bef
ore Congress a communication of the Secretary of War relative to the action taken in issuing certain supplies to the suffering people of Kansas and Nebraska, in consequence of the drought and grasshopper-plague, and to respectfully request that such action be approved.”
And so, just a month after Ord’s initial request, he and General John Pope at Leavenworth were overseeing the distribution of military supplies throughout Nebraska and Kansas. The army distributed 10,004 heavy infantry coats, 16,184 pairs of shoes, and 8,454 woolen blankets in a desperate effort to relieve the suffering of the blighted homesteaders. But as the winter dragged on, the settlers were forced to consume their scant supplies, including seed that they would need for next year’s crop—if they lived until spring. It seemed certain that widespread starvation would arrive before the thaw. Ord knew that handing out surplus clothing was a less delicate matter than passing out stores of perfectly good food that were needed to feed the troops. Reallocating military rations to the locust victims required that Congress be authentically engaged in the matter, rather than being treated as a political afterthought. So, Ord advanced this second prong of his offensive, convincing Nebraska’s Senator Phineas W. Hitchcock to propose an allocation of $100,000 worth of army provisions for the besieged settlers. The bill failed in the early winter of 1874.
As temperatures dropped and suffering mounted in early 1875, Congress took up the matter of the pioneers’ plight in the bitterly cold days of winter. The previous year’s Mississippi flood relief efforts provided something of a precedent, as the federal government had given food and clothing (including some from military stores) to the victims. The flood of locusts pouring out of the Rocky Mountains arguably warranted a commensurate response. Lawmakers appropriated $150,000 in food and clothing, “to prevent starvation and suffering . . . to any and all destitute and helpless persons living on the western frontier who have been rendered so destitute and helpless by ravages of grasshoppers.” They also took a somewhat longer view of the crisis, earmarking another $30,000 for wheat and vegetable seed distribution in the spring. The president signed the bills into law on February 10, and a massive relief effort was under way.
The Dakota, Missouri, and Platte Departments of the Army shared the appropriation. According to the Commissary-General of Subsistence, 1,957,108 food rations were distributed that winter. The recipients amounted to 107,535 people, including nearly 44,000 children, in Colorado, Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska. Given the army’s standard food ration and the number of beneficiaries, we can calculate that the federal program distributed over 700 tons of salted or fresh pork, nearly 1,000 tons of cornmeal, 150 tons of beans and sugar, 100 tons of coffee and tea, and almost 40 tons of salt. Kansas and Nebraska received extensive aid, whereas the Dakota Territory saw the least assistance, not for want of need but because General Alfred Terry considered the crisis exaggerated. In March and April, the worst months of the year because winter larders were at their lowest, 750,000 rations were distributed in Nebraska. How many graves were filled with emaciated victims of the locusts in the winter of 1874-1875 is not known, but perhaps hundreds succumbed to hunger. The number would likely have been in the thousands if the country had not rallied to save the starving settlers.
In March, Ord was transferred to Texas, a move that put an end to the West’s most sympathetic and effective spokesman—and the hungry farmer’s most powerful political ally. The federal program of seed distribution to beleaguered farmers would continue for another two years, but the outpouring of food and clothing would not be repeated. Other proposals for federal support failed to garner support, such as this recommendation in a report commissioned by Congress: “To many, the idea of employing soldiers to assist the agriculturist in battling with this pest, may seem farcical enough, but though the men might not find glory in the fight, the war—unlike most other wars—would be fraught only with good consequences to mankind.” Despite this morally persuasive argument, lawmakers did not mobilize the nation’s troops to directly combat the locusts. The federal government would continue to provide logistical support in the war against the locusts, but the farmers were left to do the actual fighting.
THE STAGE IS SET
The federal programs associated with the Rocky Mountain locust and its victims in the 1870s set the stage for the next 125 years of agricultural policies in the United States. In late October 1876, Minnesota’s Governor Pillsbury organized a meeting of the leaders from other locust-afflicted states. The governors of Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, and Nebraska met in Omaha to devise a comprehensive plan for dealing with the crisis. This distinguished group was joined by a panel of experts consisting of university professors and the state entomologists from Illinois and Missouri.
The convention yielded three substantial, interrelated outcomes. First, the governors unanimously concluded that the locust problem was too sweeping in its scale and complexity for any state to solve. Federal assistance was desperately needed, although the form that aid should take was not immediately evident. However, the second outcome of the convention helped to crystallize the form of assistance that the state leaders would demand from Washington. The governors provided the funds to publish 10,000 copies of a pamphlet outlining methods for controlling the locust. In the course of preparing this document it became evident how little was objectively known about control methods. Between their conviction that the locusts were a national disaster and their realization that they lacked vital scientific knowledge, the third outcome of the convention was formulated.
The governors called on the federal government to form and fund an entomological commission, a group of skilled scientists to address this critical knowledge gap. For the first time in the young nation’s history the people were turning to science as a means of solving a national problem. A sense of urgency, even desperation, flowed from the public through the states, to the capital—and then beyond the mechanisms of politics and the machinations of economics to the hallowed halls of science. Perhaps science hadn’t been the country’s first answer to the crisis, but there was a growing sense that it might be the nation’s last hope. Without too much historical hyperbole, this venture can be understood as defining how American society would perceive the value of scientific research. In a very real sense, this was the Manhattan Project of the nineteenth century—the cultural precedent for the value of publicly funded science to the people of the United States.
Those politicians gathered at the convention drafted a charge for the proposed commission that reflected the need for practical science. The commission was to be charged with “reporting on the depredations of the Rocky Mountain locust and practical means of preventing its recurrence or guarding against invasions.” The responsibility to assess and report damage ensured that the states would have reliable surveys of locust populations, both to warn of upsurges and to prove the extent and severity of the problem to Congress. The charge to develop and evaluate control methods meant that scientists might find a way of quashing outbreaks before they started. Or, failing this, qualified experts would provide farmers with the most effective methods possible for suppressing the locusts.
The only question was: Who should comprise the commission? The answer was a turning point in the history of American agriculture and politics. The enormous growth of the U.S. Department of Agriculture—perhaps its very existence—can be linked to the personalities selected for this high-profile mission. The man named to head the U.S. Entomological Commission was present at the Omaha meeting. His scientific acumen permitted him to cleverly direct the course of deliberations toward the formation of the commission, and his political savvy allowed him to be perfectly positioned when discussions turned to the nuts and bolts of appointments to the body. The Missouri state entomologist was a man with a love of power and a romantic name to match—Charles Valentine Riley.
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Lord of the Locusts
CHARLES VALENTINE RILEY IMPRESSED THE POWER brokers at the governors’ convention with
his flamboyant confidence, artistic temperament, and captivating presence. As the state entomologist for Missouri, he was an undisputed expert on the Rocky Mountain locust, but his capacity for persuasion went far beyond his formal office. Riley’s elegant bearing made him appear much larger than his slender, five-foot ten-inch carriage would have suggested. With his luxuriant wavy hair, prominent eyebrows, and extravagant handlebar mustache, Riley, a colleague once said, looked “much more like an Italian artist than like an American economic entomologist.” But Riley might never have pulled off what became the greatest political coup in entomological history without the alliance of Cyrus Thomas, a man whose ambitions were more modest and whose appearance could not have been more different. The heavy-set Illinois state entomologist peered sternly over a beaklike nose—playing the role of wizened owl to Riley’s swarthy peacock. The two scientists made an intellectually and politically formidable duo.