Seed Corn and City Boys

The approach of the 1918 planting season brought to light the shortage of two important agricultural commodities — seed corn and labor. At a time when the country needed its farms to produce to the utmost, the men who might work them were being drawn away, into the military and into industries that manufactured the stuff of war.

This episode gives us a glimpse of a man who until now had only been lurking in the shadows as S.J. Craig and his farming supporters were duking it out with Purdue University; a man so unknown that even the Gazette couldn't get his name right the first time — Virgil Mood.

Although S.J.'s term of office had lapsed with no word of his being re-appointed, he was still acting in the capacity of county agent. But now Mr. Mood was on the job — some sort of official job, apparently, as he was variously referred to as "Federal Agent" and "Emergency Demonstration Agent." He first popped up in mid-March to project a shortage of 1,300 bushels of seed corn in the five Lake County townships he had thus far surveyed. (Hobart Township alone expected to run short by 114 bushels.)

To help relieve the shortage, Mood* ordered a railcar-load of seed corn — 700 bushels — which would be made available for purchase at cost (plus transportation) by farmers who had filled out a government-issued card saying how much corn they needed. At Mood's request, the County Council of Defense and the Crown Point Chamber of Commerce agreed to handle the receipt of payments and distribution of the corn.

Fred W. Frank, Chairman of the Township Farmers' Institute, placed a notice in the newspapers urging local farmers to come to a meeting on April 5 in Hobart Public Library. Mood was to address the meeting, and the farmers were promised a chance to discuss their problems with him. Frank mentioned that Mood was "co-operating with Purdue University, to look after the seed corn and farm labor shortage" and that he would also speak on "rural social conditions." (I wish I knew what he said about that last topic.)

Anyway, the meeting went off with no reported controversy.

Mood mentioned a possible solution to the labor shortage: the Chicago School Board had undertaken a program of recruiting and training Chicago schoolboys for farm work in the coming season, even using vacant lots in the city to set up facilities where boys could learn to drive horses and use farm equipment.

The Gazette of April 19 carried an amusing juxtaposition of two notices. One, signed by "Virgil Mood, Emergency Demonstration Agent," apologized for a problem with the carload of seed corn recently received, and promised that another carload of 640 bushels was on its way from Pennsylvania. Right below it was a notice that the Lake County Farmers' Association was expecting to receive within the next three days a carload of about 1,000 bushels of seed corn; that notice was signed by "S.J. Craig, County Agent."

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*I don't know him well enough yet to call him "Virgil."


Sources:
♦ "Community Farmers' Meeting." Hobart Gazette 29 Mar. 1918; 5 Apr. 1918.
♦ "Community Farmers' Meeting." Hobart News 4 Apr. 1918.
♦ "County Agent Craig Re-Elected." Hobart Gazette 11 Jan. 1918.
♦ "Federal Seed and Labor Survey." Hobart Gazette 5 Apr. 1918.
♦ "Notice to Farmers." Hobart Gazette 19 Apr. 1918.
♦ "Notice to Farmers." Hobart Gazette 22 Mar. 1918.
♦ "Seed Corn Reported to Be Short in This Territory." Hobart News 15 Mar. 1918.
♦ "Seed Corn." Hobart Gazette 19 Apr. 1918.
♦ "To Lake County Farmers." Hobart Gazette 15 Mar. 1918.