Prairie Fires
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176. RWL, “Long Skirts,” in Old Home Town, p. 139. The version of the story that appears in the book was heavily revised; the magazine version does not include this phrase.
177. The three stories were “Vengeance,” Liberty, February 17, 1934; “Object Matrimony,” Saturday Evening Post, September 1, 1934; and “Pie Supper,” American Magazine, October 1934.
178. RWL to Virginia Brastow, December 16, 1933.
179. See Stephen Cox, Introduction to the Transaction Edition, The God of the Machine, by Isabel Paterson (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993), p. x.
180. Stephen Cox, The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2004), p. 18.
181. Ibid., p. 216.
182. Cox, Introduction, The God of the Machine, p. xix. Cox cites Barbara Branden, The Passion of Ayn Rand (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1986), p. 133.
183. Lane mentions receiving a gift subscription to the Herald Tribune Books section in RWL to Virginia Brastow, February 13, 1935; she also thanks Brastow for sending her copies of the review.
184. Isabel M. Paterson, “Turns with a Bookworm,” New York Herald Tribune Books, December 23, 1934, p. 7. Except for the first, ellipses appear as in the original column; the letter itself may not survive. Paterson’s original reference to the Benders, which inspired Lane’s retort, appeared in “Turns with a Bookworm,” New York Herald Tribune Books, September 30, 1934, p. 26. HHPL, Isabel M. Paterson Papers, 1857–1998, “Turns with a Bookworm,” September 1932–August 1939.
185. Paterson, “Turns with a Bookworm,” December 23, 1934. Ellipsis mine.
11. DUSTY OLD DUST
1. “NASA Study Finds 1934 Had Worst Drought of Last Thousand Years,” NASA press release, October 14, 2014; Benjamin I. Cook, Richard Seager, and Jason E. Smerdon, “The Worst North American Drought Year of the Last Millennium: 1934,” Geophysical Research Letters, 41 (2014), pp. 7298–7305.
2. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Palmer Drought Severity Index map, August 1934.
3. Worster, Dust Bowl, p. 16.
4. “Reaping the Whirlwind,” part 2, The Dust Bowl, PBS documentary, directed by Ken Burns, November 18–19, 2012.
5. Christopher Lowe, “Farming in the Great Depression,” Chariton Collector, Spring 1986.
6. “The Great Plow-Up,” part 1, The Dust Bowl, PBS documentary, directed by Ken Burns, November 18–19, 2012.
7. “Interview: Donald Worster, On Dust Bowl Roots,” American Experience website: http://amextbg2.wgbhdigital.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/interview/dustbowl-worster//?flavour=mobile.
8. Worster, Dust Bowl, p. 28.
9. Ibid., p. 17.
10. “Reaping the Whirlwind,” part 2, The Dust Bowl, PBS documentary.
11. Zeynep K. Hansen and Gary D. Libecap, “Small Farms, Externalities, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 112, no. 3 (June 2004), p. 667.
12. Worster, Dust Bowl, p. 4.
13. Ibid., p. 29.
14. Vance Johnson, Heaven’s Tableland: The Dust Bowl Story (New York: Da Capo Press, 1974), pp. 194–95.
15. RWL to Bye, March 6, 1935.
16. LIW, Little House on the Prairie in LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 1, p. 316; Hansen and Libecap, “Small Farms, Externalities, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s,” p. 668.
17. For an extended discussion of farmers’ reaction to reduced productivity, see Worster, Dust Bowl, pp. 182–97.
18. See Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), p. 163.
19. The pigs slaughtered due to this policy appear in the paragraph that gives Steinbeck’s novel its title; see John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Penguin, 1976), p. 385.
20. See Michael Hiltzik, The New Deal: A Modern History (New York: Free Press, 2011), pp. 108–10.
21. Henry A. Wallace, “Pigs and Pig Iron,” delivered November 12, 1935. From Henry A. Wallace, Democracy Reborn (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1944), ed. Russell Lord, p. 103.
22. Ibid.
23. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Radio Address to the Young Democratic Clubs of America, August 24, 1935. Reprinted in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 4, 1935 (New York: Random House, 1938), p. 336.
24. See “Resettlement Administration” at the Living New Deal: https://livingnewdeal.org/glossary/resettlement-administration-ra-1935/.
25. LIW to RWL, undated (in a group of letters, probably 1935 or 1936).
26. LIW, PC.
27. LIW to RWL, undated.
28. RWL Diary, 1931–35, entry for February 26, 1935. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #37.
29. Kathy Short, interview with the author, October 28, 2015.
30. Garet Garrett, “Plowing Up Freedom,” Saturday Evening Post, vol. 208, no. 20 (November 16, 1935), p. 69.
31. Ramsey, Unsanctioned Voice, pp. 139–42.
32. “Writer for Saturday Evening Post Here,” Mansfield Mirror, August 1, 1935.
33. RWL to Virginia Brastow, July 5, 1935.
34. See RWL to Mark Sullivan, October 11, 1938.
35. Perhaps in homage to the exaggeration of Mark Twain’s early travelogues, Lane included an introductory note in The Peaks of Shala hinting at liberties she may have taken, saying, “I would not have this book considered too seriously.” See RWL, The Peaks of Shala (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1923), frontispiece. In another note, opposite the title page, she wrote that photographer Annette Marquis had “accompanied the author on her trip through Albania”; in fact, Marquis had retraced Lane’s initial journey, unaccompanied by her, a year later. See Holtz, Ghost, pp. 121–23.
36. “Ab” and “Minty,” for example, appear in RWL, “The Name Is Mizzoury,” version 2, p. 342; “Ab Whitty” is a character in Old Home Town’s “Country Jake” and “Minty Bates” appears in “Long Skirts.”
37. RWL to Virginia Brastow, July 5, 1935.
38. RWL’s letter to Brastow of June 16, 1935, for example, is eleven single-spaced pages. As a postscript she writes, “How about writing me as much as I write you?!?”
39. See Arthur Krock, “Hoover Excoriates New Deal as Fascism, Demanding a ‘Holy Crusade for Freedom’; Currency Plank Pledges Stabilization,” New York Times, June 11, 1936.
40. See, for example, “Political Observations,” Republican Tribune (Union, Missouri), March 9, 1934, p. 6.
41. See “The Modern ‘Liberal,’” cartoon, Mansfield Mirror, November 4, 1937, p. 6.
42. RWL to Virginia Brastow, July 5, 1935.
43. Ibid.
44. RWL to Virginia Brastow, June 16, 1935.
45. Ibid., July 5, 1935.
46. See Garrett, “Plowing Up Freedom,” p. 69. William Holtz, together with his copy of Garrett’s article, preserved a letter from Harold Breimyer, a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri–Columbia’s College of Agriculture, consulted for his expertise on the New Deal. Breimyer also categorized Lane’s later recollection of the trip, sent to Jasper Crane, as “what we used to call yellow journalism.” See RWL to Jasper Crane, January 30, 1957, in The Lady and the Tycoon, pp. 168–70; Harold F. Breimyer to William Holtz, April 24, 1991, in HHPL, WHC.
48. See RWL to Jasper Crane, January 30, 1957, in The Lady and the Tycoon, pp. 169–170; Lane tells Crane that Post editor George Horace Lorimer refused to print the story of a “Communist Terror in Illinois” because the manager of the resettlement project was a Communist. She was probably referring to Rexford Tugwell, one of FDR’s “Brain Trust,” an economist at Columbia University, and head of the short-lived Resettlement Administration; he was commonly denounced as a Communist.
49. RWL to Virginia Brastow, March 8, 1936.
50. Ibid., April 16, 1936.
51. Norma Lee Browning, “Laura and Rose,” draft of a memoir written for Waldenbooks Kids Club Magazine (De Smet Collection); see also Browning to William Holtz, undated postscript beginning “PS—later—Bill, I’ve decided to send you…” HHPL.
52. RWL to Virginia Brastow, April 16, 1935.
53. Ibid., March 8, 1936.
54. See Wilder’s holograph manuscript version of PC, chapters 6 and 7, “Grasshoppers” and “Pa Goes Away.”
55. See RWL to LIW, undated 1936 letter beginning “Look Mama Bess”; Laura Ingalls Wilder Papers, 1894–1943, Correspondence 1933–1936, microfilm image 20, SHSM.
56. See unpaginated insertion in Wilder’s handwriting, PC, Draft A typescript, following page 49.
57. RWL to LIW, June 13, 1936.
58. LIW to RWL, undated letter ca. 1936, beginning “School began in the spring”; LIW Papers, 1894–1943, Correspondence 1933–1936, microfilm image 26, SHSM. Wilder’s resistance is expressed earlier in the same letter: “I do think the picture of two little girls doing what they did while Ma was sick and the fact that it was nothing for a Dr to be 40 miles away and no auto, would make a great impression on children who are so carefully doctored in schools and all. I think if you can better leave it.”
59. Ibid.
60. LIW to RWL, undated letter beginning “Potatoes, carrots, onions, etc.,” and LIW to RWL, undated letter beginning “School began in the spring”; Correspondence 1933–1936, microfilm images 23, 31, SHSM.
61. Compare, for example, the chapter titled “The Glittering Cloud” in the “Draft B typescript” to the published book: clearly additions, deletions, and editorial changes have been made in the interim. Note as well that Wilder’s original holograph manuscript is tidy, with few revisions or deletions; this may indicate that it was not her first draft.
62. Fragmentary draft of LHOP, p. 124.
63. See LIW’s holograph manuscript, p. 136 (her page number).
64. LIW to RWL, undated letter beginning “School began in the spring”; Correspondence 1933–1936, microfilm image 28, SHSM.
65. See, for example, LIW, “Speech at the Book Fair, Detroit, Michigan, October 16, 1937,” LIW: The Little House Books, vol. 1, p. 588.
66. LIW to RWL, undated, probably June 1936, Correspondence 1933–1936, microfilm images 33–34, SHSM.
67. See RWL Diary, 1936–38, entry for January 15, 1936. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #59.
68. Wilder’s attitude toward the Murrays can be gleaned in a couple of letters; see LIW to RWL, March 12, 1937, and June 3, 1939, to which she added a postscript pleading with her daughter, should something happen to her, never to let the Murrays, “either one or both, back on the place. Do whatever else you please with it but not that.”
69. LIW to RWL, June 25, 1936; Correspondence 1933–1936, microfilm images 38–39.
70. Ibid., images 41, 43.
71. RWL Journal, 1933–34, entry for August 10, 1940. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #47, p. 151.
72. “‘Licencing’ of Dogs Planned: City Council Discusses High Costs of Riddance of Strays,” Mansfield Mirror, April 15, 1937, p. 1.
73. RWL Diary, 1931–35, entries for July 15 and 16, 1936. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #37.
74. LIW to RWL, July 2, 1936.
75. See, for example, LIW to RWL, July 2, 1936, and undated 1937 letter beginning “Tuesday Morning.”
76. RWL Diary, 1931–35, entries for April 10 and 19, 1936. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #37.
77. RWL Diary, 1942–43, entry for April 10, 1942. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #68. Lane note, “Wrote in reply to fathers offer to pay R.R. fare that I do not want to go to Mansfield.”
78. RWL, “Credo,” p. 31.
79. Ibid., p. 5.
80. RWL to Berta and Elmer Hader, undated; Holtz believes it was 1919 based on internal evidence. See Holtz, Ghost, p. 90n15.
81. Ibid., p. 261.
82. RWL, “Credo,” p. 30.
83. See Jan Cohn, Creating America: George Horace Lorimer and The Saturday Evening Post (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), pp. 195–96.
84. Ibid., p. 169.
85. See RWL, “Credo: Condensed from the Saturday Evening Post,” Reader’s Digest, vol. 28, no. 169 (May 1936), pp. 1–6; Herbert Hoover to RWL, April 16, 1936.
86. “Give Me Liberty” was first printed and distributed by Longmans, Green, then by the Patriot’s Bookshop and Liberty Library.
87. See, for example, LIW to Hon. Clarence E. Kilburn, March 9, 1945. Kilburn was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, born in Malone, NY.
88. Kirkendall, p. 165.
89. William V. Turner, interview with the author, July 23, 2015.
90. “New 23rd Psalm,” Mansfield Mirror, October 1, 1936. A typographical error in the fifth line of the poem has been corrected.
91. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1937.
92. José A. Tapia Granados and Ana V. Diez Roux, “Life and Death During the Great Depression,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 106, no. 41 (2009), pp. 17290–95.
93. Dewey Short, U.S. Congress, January 23, 1935; admiring citations of this example of Short’s oratory are many, including “Long and Short,” Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1935, p. 28.
94. AJW to RWL, May 12, 1937.
95. The Wilders eventually rented out the Rock House, but it remained empty for a time; see Miller, Becoming LIW, p. 213.
96. LIW to RWL, March 12, 1937; see also Wilder’s reference to taxes the following year, in LIW to RWL, February 15, 1938. At that time, “Head of Household” appeared under “Personal Exemption” on both federal and state tax returns. Those claiming the credit for care of elderly parents were required to live in the same household as those they were supporting. On her 1936 federal return, despite having spent most of the year living off the farm, Lane claimed a personal exemption as head of family of $2,500, and credit for dependents of $1,400, listing four, the Turner boys and “Mother and Father, who are incapable of self-support.” Of herself, she noted, “Provides a home for aged parents who are totally dependent.” At the end of 1936, Wilder would negotiate the contract for PC, receiving an advance of $500 in early 1937. See “Explanation of Personal Exemption and Credit for Dependents” in “Schedules for 1936 Return of Rose Wilder Lane,” attached to Individual Income Tax Return, Calendar Year 1936, for Rose Wilder Lane. HHPL.
97. LIW to RWL, March 12, 1937.
98. Ibid.
99. Ibid.
100. See LIW to RWL, undated fragment, 1937, numbered page 5, beginning “to her husband to shoot.” In the letter, just before divulging the details about Nate and Grace accepting �
�relief,” she writes, “Oh yes! There are skeletons in our family closet, but I never felt disgraced by them until lately and this is it.”
101. Ibid.
102. Carrie Ingalls Swanzey to LIW, undated letter of 1939, perhaps included in LIW to RWL, May 24, 1939.
103. “Little House on the Prairie,” Mansfield Mirror, October 3, 1935.
104. LIW to Miss Crawford, September 16, 1940, in SL LIW, p. 225.