Alas, I Must Leave You, You Lousy Ingrates

It seems that Virgil Mood didn't last long after S.J. Craig's departure. The Gazette published his open farewell letter, which seemed divided between regret at leaving those who had welcomed him, and a desire to tell the rest what jerks they were.


(Click on image to enlarge)
From the Hobart Gazette of May 17, 1918.

(The "Garage Building Condemned" story on the page deals with the building where John Chester had his garage. If I find out what went up in its place, perhaps I can locate it. Or maybe somebody can just tell me where the Sela A. Smith building on Main Street was.)

It wasn't until the following July that Lake County got a new agricultural agent, this time some guy named V.A. Place,* "a young man of pleasing personality" who had just finished a three-year term as county agent in Wabash County. He had a great deal of work before him if he wanted to make the office of county agent as interesting as his predecessors had. [Source: "County Agent Appointed," Hobart Gazette 19 July 1918.]

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*I believe he shows up in the 1920 Census as Virgil Place, then 31 years old.

Goodbye, S.J.!

I'm afraid our man of mystery will have to remain a mystery, for in the spring of 1918 S.J. Craig made plans to take his agricultural expertise to greener pastures.

In March, he sold the farm along the Lincoln Highway that he had bought from May Blachly just the previous September. Emil Wojahn of Chicago was the buyer. (I don't know what, if any, relation this Emil was to all the other Wojahns around Ainsworth.)

In April came the announcement that S.J. was leaving altogether — and in triumph, for he had landed a job as agricultural agent for Whiteside County, Illinois, at a salary of $4,000 per year, $1,000 higher than Lake County had paid him. The Crown Point Star alleged that Whiteside County farmers had been "pulling the wires to secure the services of Mr. Craig" because the quality of his work in Lake County had earned him a reputation that reached even to the far side of Illinois. The "great majority" of Lake County farmers, according to the Star, were "sorry to hear of his departure."

S.J. would leave Indiana at the beginning of May (perhaps thumbing his nose in the direction of Purdue University on his way out).

I suppose the news came as a relief to Virgil Mood. His status had been uncertain for the past couple of months, since apparently he had been anointed county agent by Purdue but moved about in the guise of "Emergency Demonstration Agent" while S.J. continued to play the role of county agent by popular demand. The Lake County Times was less than effusive in welcoming its new agricultural overlord:

The agricultural interest in the county deeply deplore the recent unpleasantness which Mr. Craig's removal has caused and they hope under the efficient dictatorship of Virgil Mood Lake county farming industries will go over the top as usual.

Sources:
♦ "County Agent Craig Leaves May 1st." Crown Point News (reprinted in Hobart Gazette 26 Apr. 1918).
♦ "Crown Point News." The Lake County Times 4 Apr. 1918.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 28 Mar. 1918.

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.