How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the FarmAfter They've Seen Gary?

At a meeting of the Lake County Farmers' Association on October 25, 1918, the members adopted a resolution addressed to the Board of Industrial Advisers for District No. 1, at Laporte, Indiana, begging the Board to grant all draft deferments requested by agricultural workers. The farmers of lower Lake County were losing their workers, not just to the draft, but to industries of upper Lake County.

And all those former farmhands and other factory workers swelling the populations of the northward towns had to be fed. Lake County farmers shipped their produce to all the nearby industrialized areas: Chicago, Gary, Indiana Harbor, Whiting and Hammond, to name a few. The area's farming leaned heavily toward dairy (over 60%) — a specialty that, according to the Farmers' Association, required workers of "exceptional ability," as did the increasingly complex machinery in use on farms of all types. A good worker who left the farm could not be replaced with just anybody. But farmers simply could not offer working conditions competitive with those found in the factories. Farm work was as dirty, dangerous and hard as factory work, but industrial workers had steady, year-round employment, comparatively high wages, six-day weeks — and some even had eight-hour days! Small wonder that men and boys were leaving the fields and barns and heading toward the smokestacks. No one could stop them; all the farmers were asking was that the military not take those who were willing to stay.

As the corn harvest began, the labor shortage was acute. The new county agricultural agent, Virgil Place, offered his help to farmers who found themselves without sufficient manpower for the corn husking.


Sources:
♦ "Farmers' Organization Takes Action." Hobart Gazette 1 Nov. 1918.
♦ "Farmers' Organization Takes Action." Hobart News 31 Oct. 1918.
♦ "Free Farm Building Plans." Hobart Gazette 15 Nov. 1918.


(You can find a 1919 recording of "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree)" here.)