To this governor Uncle John always felt he owed a great deal. But then if anyone at all ever did anything for him he thought about it and could never do enough for that person. He would do things all his life for the person who was kind to him. Perhaps out of this experience he saw a chance for coupling gratitude, service, and self-help. If only he could enter a political career. He fished now by seine, shipped rough fish in refrigerator cars to New York. He stood in rubber waders in ice cold water to his waist, subjected himself to rheumatism, smelled of fish slime and invested his money in carefully considered places. But politics, politics, it hemmed him in. A career…it would not let him rest.
Fight was in the air. The governor was a fighter, all good political men were. You had to fight the big business monopolies and the poorer you were the more fight it took. You really had to find at least one financially independent friend who could furnish money for your campaigns. It was a great game. You had to know psychology…he wished he knew more, had had a full college education. His idol, in that young man's last year as a student, had been chosen, after preliminary tests, to represent his school in the state collegiate oratorical contest, and had then won the prize at Beloit with an oration on the character of Shakespeare's “Iago” and then won in the interstate meeting and all this was in the newspapers, so it was said that later when he went among the farmers he found they could place him right away. John wished he knew Shakespeare like that, culture. Throw in his lot with culture and property. He did not even know law. But if his heart was in the right place…. You had to know how to handle people who favored the “interests.” For example, you advocated railroad taxation bills, showing the “interests” and the general public at the same time hotly that railroads could increase their rates and take back the amount lost through such taxation, so that the railroads would let the tax bills go through and the people would become aroused under higher rates and there was your regulation of rates to furnish the next campaign. Because you had to keep yourself in office. A constant fight.
Yet Uncle Babe was the quietest of men, easy-going, Matty said, and I always knew him to be gentle. I was about eleven when the cat was lying helpless under the front porch, a leg broken—my mother and I lived here almost entirely now, my father had died, the doctor said at the last he should have been in a hospital, but it was an unfortunate case, we hadn't enough money—and Uncle Babe, interested in the kitty almost as much as I was, jumped into his Cross-Country Rambler, went to town and brought back a doctor friend and the cat grew well, our Josephine who played for us in the railing of the stairway. John could never see any animal, anybody, suffer. Sometimes he would forget to do the actual work of caring for them—thinking about other things. He always preferred Matty to cut the heads off the poultry. But he took advancement in the world as hard and serious, as probably most young men who have any talent and intelligence, but mainly because of the strain of their schooling however short, the constant strain of competition, always one first above all, a few up and the neighbors down, the ratings, the contests, the shame if you stopped to think and be considerate and received no high mark, the prizes that drove to the quick; the desire to get ahead was paramount, nervous, forceful. He sincerely desired to become a leading force in political reform if he could get to champion the right group.
He would start close to home, would take up the cudgels for the farmers. The farmers' taxes were too high. They had no market close by for their livestock—did, yes, but it held the prices up—most cattle and hogs were shipped way to Chicago and then the meat was shipped way back again. There seemed to be no great farmer issue before the public, though. This governor wasn't doing so much for the farmers, in a way, yes, but he had his railroads to fight. Perhaps there was no field. But they always said they couldn't sell their produce for more than it cost them to produce it and this was wrong. What was the trouble? They weren't organized. There was a field. They should be made to see what was good for them, join together under a competent head, form a small monopoly, a farmers co-operative, demand good prices. People did not always know what they could do to better themselves till someone came along and pointed it out.
The oleomargarine fight had benefited the farmers and the fight was still on. Grover Cleveland had said, “I venture to say that hardly a pound (oleomargarine) ever entered a poor man's home under its real name and in its real character.” The packers and the Presidents, Uncle John, extended their sentiments to the poor. One must be strong. As he saw it: butterfat and beef fat both, but yes, butterfat.
The people here had a former governor to thank for what the dairy industry had become. He was a poor man but he rose to be Wisconsin's principal spokesman for the dairy interests in state and congressional hearings. He started in this very section on a farm in beet raising or was it hops and that year the market was glutted and of course he'd borrowed heavily and now his character had to stand or fall by whether he could or could not pay back, and he had failed through no fault of his own except that he was a party to a blind system. If he couldn't pay back he had no honorable character. The story is told that The Honorable Mr. Y. went into a grocery store one day, lifted a sack of flour on his back, walked out. They'd have to knock him down if they wanted it, he said, he had no money and his family had to eat. In time, however, he entered the disastrous, free competition again by way of a different business and as luck would have it bettered himself—at the cost of his neighbors though he wouldn't have meant it that way—and paid back every dollar he owed. In fact no man was a man unless he struggled under a great load against odds. Life was a struggle. This man was energetic and experimentative but he could not get ahead as he liked. What could he do not always having land and cattle and other materials to carry out his ideas? Everything connected with farming was slow. An accurate test for determining the amount of butterfat in milk had to be invented so that the creamery man would not cheat himself nor the farmer. The test finally accepted came out of the Wisconsin College of Agriculture, was received into the creamery industry with very little opposition and into the entire United States and even foreign countries. The Babcock Test can beat the Bible in making a man honest, said a cream man.
Legislators fought each other in campaigns for leadership and in offices too. One said to himself: I must fight this thing through, I know it will be worthwhile and so-and-so will be true to me. Among these individuals were militant liberals on all sides. Great speechmaking and handclapping…perhaps the people would forget their troubles. Sometimes the men were lawyers, got very much interested in making intricate cases. Was it constitutional, they asked, when people organized into strikes. Uncle John, but that was later, had to pay the processing tax on a pig before such tax was declared illegal. It was important to get the labor vote, but many times a well meaning senator or governor would be told, Oh, nevermind about the labor vote, Brown will take care of that, or Payne.
The current of thought started above and came down! Spirit, mind, existed before trees and rock?
The military spirit handed down to J. J. Beefelbein—was it for him? Could he stand it? He told himself yes. He would show em he could hand back just what they gave him.
He, Beefelbein, would organize the farmers.
So he started out, sometimes with horse and buggy, sometimes with the Rambler, depending on the road, and usually carried a sack or two of Red Lime Fertilizer, the agency he'd taken as an opportunity to combine salesmanship with—salesmanship! He felt if he could get them to try what he had to offer they'd never be without it.
He followed the farmers from the barn to the house and around. Not easy to gain their attention, busy plowing, milking, making hay, feeding stock, planting, cultivating—how many hours a day did a farmer work? Only time really was the noon hour and then they wanted to rest; even J.J. liked his noontime undisturbed like his father before him. They would nod to him after their heavy meals of hot soup and heaped up plates of potatoes, almost as though the radio had come already, their heads would fall from si
de to side on their chests as they rested in their chairs. Same way the evenings and to bed early to get up early. He managed to tell them he was organizing a farmers' co-operative. The strength of other industries lay in the power of combining and what they could do the farmers could do. When he said, We will pay the capitalists in their own coin, this did fire them. Only trouble was: they couldn't pay to enter it. And they had joined such an organization sometime before and nothing happened. He pointed out this would be bigger, more powerful, like the labor unions only better because “we” could handle “our own” products. They didn't like the mention of labor unions but John pointed out that whereas labor unions were perhaps socialistic, the farmers' union would be the good American thing. Of course, he said, no one group should be allowed to gain ascendancy over others, this was democracy. He must have thought it funny that one side could never be right but he was a man who always tried to see both sides. They all probably implied: capitalism has to exist in order to have labor unions; price determines need; strikes cause confusion in industry. Price determines need! John saw through that—funny!—and he told them how they could turn it the other way around. When he had their attention—time is slower out here than in the cities, so much space, people acres apart, illusion of freedom is greater—he would put the question: would they give their support? And they would smile: there'd be big ones in it would get sumpn, not they. They seemed better informed, usually, than Uncle Babe. Asked didn't they trust anyone in the country, they said they felt the government should be the one—what's the government for. J. J.: Well, the people must see that the government…. The People: Well, they were busy getting in the hay. J.J.: If farmers can't get legislation who can, they're the mainstay. The Farmers: Our children learn that in school, lots of things, they learn wrong. Use the ballot? Yes, on election days they went to the polls and voted, yes, mainly against. In this country you have to be on your guard against the officers chosen. In the first place who chooses em? Oh yes, direct primary now. A certain governor had done sumpn for em, the prosperous ones first. Uncle John said this was a prosperous farming section, milk machines coming in for those who could afford them so join the co-op and sell your produce to us for more than you get elsewhere because we can ship it in large amounts at lower rates. He signed up some of them. Others he could believe could not pay to enter. He said to these latter that if he got enough signers he would pay their dues for them and he did that later. He could never bear misfortune and he wanted this venture to be a success. The other man who was to be associated with him was around in different nearby townships getting signers.
Uncle Babe returned home these nights, his sack of Red Lime Fertilizer gone. Matty understood he was paying his expenses each day by selling these. John hated to tell her otherwise. I had ridden along sometimes and it seemed to me he had left most of it here and there among the poorer farmers as a trial gift. Altogether, he was absorbed in his new work but he brooded over his pipe ways and means of moving on. Maybe what he really wanted was company, a close friendship, someone in prosperous circumstances perhaps—he worried over these other people. Many persons loved the poor and hard-working because it was to the interests of the former…he had to in the speeches he was going to make on Memorial Day and later on the subject of organization…he really wished they were different. To better these people, and through that make himself a place in the country, the state, the nation…if only he still had the old dog to talk to. Was seeing a great deal of Phoebe Hake, she, fifteen miles away.
Sometimes he would deliberately go out over the marsh that skirted the lake and woods, the shitepoke still as grass until John's voice rose up in behalf of the people. Determined now to prepare himself for the dynamics of platform work. No light matter for a man shy and starting to take on fat. He must have been haunted by dreams of speaking so well that cannons would greet him at the various towns and villages.
He called himself a Progressive, sure to mean militant liberal. Soon he was speaking in town halls and old opera houses. He memorized his speeches but if he forgot could always put in something else. His practice of throwing the voice at times like a hand grenade into the back seats made him a recognized orator of the day and out from the woods or gardens of the vaudeville curtains he stood against would come: The question is who shall rule, labor or the big producers who control through slavery the laborers? I tell you it is our duty to curb corporation power. We have inherited, as it were, the great idea that this country is the place for free competition and we mean to have it. I am coming, Ladies and Gentlemen, to the farmers' co-operative. (Quieter:) Such a farm movement was started a few years ago that for two years agriculture defeated the corporations. This can be done again. All we want is a fair profit. When we have established a farmers' co-operative we will rest content…. After all, however much the economic conditions of the country stare us in the face we must look to the higher things of life…(Grenade:) You do want to possess this freedom from materialism. That boy of yours must have an education.…Uncle Babe maybe wished often that he could sink back into the sky of the curtain and be a pure idealist. And all the while the military bands. He may have remembered a former militant liberal in the state who had stuck to his post, had written way back in 1858 (in a letter to his wife but now the book is out). Uncle Babe would come away very hoarse from this kind of thing and very retiring. Sometimes on days of parades, unless he had to throw grenades into the ranks, he would join and march, the badges of his party and lodge upon him—never killed a man in his life, one old friend said. The liberal military air, a system of rank. Major F. and Commander St. B. were speakers even in peace.
John was still in the fish business in fall and spring. One of the working men was put in charge of the crew when John was away, and Matty was there. She let him go—his lime fertilizer must be going good, she thought. My mother helped with the cooking and Matty had a strong hand for business. When Matty called the men to dinner: Come now! she wasn't to be trifled with. Sometimes she'd jump into the gasoline launch, speed off down to the mouth of the river, circle around, watch the fishermen. She could handle a gun too, a good marksman. In many ways she was a better executive than her brother. As the men worked nearby she'd raise the window and call out how the rope should be passed or what kind of bolt or which parts should be put together next. John could always return to the executive mansion and find everything going at high pitch.
The old folks passed on. Great Uncle Gotlieb first. A stroke while in the woods, sat by a tree all night. His insurance company, Modern Woodman, failed. John had paid the assessments toward the last as they mounted, only to lose all. Made him dammad but of course, what could he do. The men in charge of the company were out of his reach. As time went on, thinking it over, he concluded perhaps the head men were business men used to taking profits and big salaries naturally; they couldn't understand that their salaries should be held down to the decent level of men giving service. An economist in England was way later to make that same excuse for the failure of a utility company in this country.
Riecky had stayed with my mother's mother in the north of the state as she grew older and not so well, and Grandma by way of Matty bought her gold belt buckle twice to help give the poor thing a feeling of security—she was always afraid she'd have to go to the Poor House. Wasn't long and she was gone too.
John was taking on more weight, becoming known, always advancing the cause of his leader and his party, and while he waited for things to take shape—give the people time, he said, they can't be hurried—he was opening up the land along the river into lots; could sell off a lot now and then, always a little income. The people out here did not catch an idea maybe as fast as city people. But when he thought of the masses in the city he was glad he was out here. Country people had more freedom. There in the city ground down by the industrial system—their minds were faster but could they show anything more for it?—came wandering out here sometimes either very much dressed up and no money to pay for drinks and a nigh
t's lodging, or looked very poor and spent their last nickel for drink and owed you besides—that element. He always spoke of the masses and the people as two different classes. Better to be out here, respectable owners of property, he said, better anyhow, do your own work, be your own boss. Beyond that, another class of big people who were everybody's—bosses?—he owned to the quaint separatist belief that some of these could have money control without oppressing others. In his day it was considered a good thing to liberate the mind but not to change it. Never too fast. Never appear eager for a livelihood. One had to have it but it wasn't nice to seem too eager, showed you were a gentleman of good taste not to seem hungry. J.J. had a way always of covering up money transactions, they were seldom direct. If he wanted to buy or sell something it worked through a third person who absorbed the taint, the profits. Usually lawyers, but also insurance and real estate men and even garage owners accustomed to out and out deals—they “had to take” houses, plows, furniture, in payment of debts. These masses of thirds—masses, Uncle John implied, had to work so hard and shamelessly—made business go round. Every decent family had its own or hired these ministers of buying and selling, hated and revered. They would line up prospective buyers for John's lots and hunting grounds, some of them John's own friends, and then he would choose the ones he thought would be interested and give a dinner for them, rather, Matty. But it turned out that those who really bought were the thirds on the staff of life seeing John was pinched at certain times and they could get a lot for a song. Matty had a greater respect for them than for the sportsmen who wouldn't spend so someone else could play too. She saw that the former got the best of everyone, were shrewd, saving, lived below their means and that's how they had something. It often brought her a spell of neuralgia and force as she saw how her brother must have a wild duck placed on each plate at his dinners and lose out. Later, by having eaten in the company of bankers he was to be able to borrow money. He said she must realize he was ahead there because not everyone during the depression could borrow money.
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