  Economic and Social Tendencies Growth of the Farm Bureau No greater laboratory exists for scientific farming than in this western country. A Farm Bureau, popularized through county agents, is an asset of prime significance to a region that will endow the rest of the country with the fruits of its development. Hughes, in 1915, was the first of the four counties to organize a Farm Bureau. Sheridan and Union followed in 1919. Beaverhead County has no Farm Bureau. A County Farm Agent was employed for eight months in 1918, but did not have the support of the ranchers. They felt that an agent, in a stock raising county like Beaverhead where hay flourished without cultivation, was a needless expense. As one rancher remarked, “We did not want some one who knew less about our business than we did.” As an index to the success attending expert farm advice, one entire community in Beaverhead attempted and abandoned dry farming, whereas in other counties where Farm Bureaus and agents have given service and advice no entire community has failed so completely. The Farm Bureaus not only improve agricultural methods, but are creating local leaders and a community spirit. The Farm Bureau offers a definite program that is rewarding if adopted. It develops in the individual community a spirit of independence and self-respect which must precede coÖperation. The Sheridan Farm Bureau records a typical objective: “to promote the development of the most profitable and permanent system of agriculture; the most wholesome and satisfactory living conditions; the highest ideals in home and community life, and a genuine interest in the farm business and rural life on the part of the boys and girls and young people.... There shall be a definite program of work ... based on the results of a careful study of the problems of the county. It shall be formulated and carried out by the members of the organization, with the assistance of their agents and specialists as may be available from the State Agricultural College.” A FARM BUREAU DEMONSTRATION The County Agent for Sheridan is making grasshopper poison. Each community also adopts a program of work of its own under the leadership of the community committee. A community program for Union County, which is inaccessible to the railroad, is as follows:
A HOME DEMONSTRATION AGENT Here is a Woman’s Club at an all-day meeting in Union County receiving instructions in the workings of an iceless refrigerator. The Farm Bureau works with the County Agents, the Home Demonstration Agents, and the Boys’ and Girls’ Club leaders, wherever such agents exist. The County Agents are giving themselves whole-heartedly to their jobs, and the demands for their services keep them busy driving through counties for purposes of demonstration or organization. The Hughes County agent reports the following schedule: fifty days on animal disease, thirty-seven and one-half days on boys’ and girls’ club work, thirty-seven days on organization, twenty-three days on marketing and 116 days on miscellaneous work. Sheridan and Union have Home Demonstration agents, energetic women, who go out over the county organizing groups of women and giving demonstrations and talks. Some of their achievements Boys’ and girls’ club work is carried on in every county except Beaverhead. The boys and girls all over the county are organized into clubs and work on various kinds of projects. Union County’s record for 1920 is notable:
Pure-bred hogs and cattle owned by boys and girls are sold under the auspices of the Farm Bureau. Prizes are offered. In Sheridan County, the county club champions are sent to the “Annual Round-up” at the State University. In Hughes, three teams of three members each were given a free trip to the State Fair as a reward for their efforts and achievements. One member of the Cow-Calf Club won a free trip to the International Live Stock Show in Chicago as a prize for his exhibit at the State Fair. Development of CoÖperation Irrigation means coÖperation, but coÖperation in buying and marketing is comparatively a new development. CoÖperation, however, is a necessity because so many farmers are distant from the trade centers and shipping points. CoÖperation is the prime interest of the Farm Bureaus which, in some counties, undertake coÖperative buying and selling. The Hughes County Farm Bureau has been especially effective in promoting coÖperative enterprise. Says the County Agent: A TRUCK FARM IN HUGHES COUNTY Beaverhead County has three active stock-growers’ associations, the most active of which is the Big Hole Stockmen’s Association which established stock yards at Wisdom and at Divide, their shipping point. They finally induced the railroad to help pay for the yards. This association was founded chiefly to work for a road from the Big Hole over into the Bitter Root Valley. The Forest Service was willing to help build the road if Beaverhead FRUITS OF THE EARTH The Community spirit expresses itself in friendly rivalry at Union County Fair. Largely through the influence of the Farm Bureau, two coÖperative organizations were recently started in Union County, the Union County Farmers’ Mutual Hail Insurance Association and the Registered Live Stock and Pure Bred Poultry Association. There is only one other active coÖperative at present, a Telephone Company at Mount Dora, capitalized at $3,000. A state-wide marketing association has 280 Union County members who produced in 1920 one-third of all the products marketed through the All these counties have coÖperative stores. A coÖperative store at Wisdom in Beaverhead County has fifty stockholders. Lima had a coÖperative store in 1919-1920 which failed through poor management. Two Rochdale CoÖperative stores were started three years ago in Ulm and Clearmont in Sheridan County. When the central organization took the surplus earnings of the branch stores to make up failures in other stores in the chain instead of declaring dividends, both the Sheridan County stores withdrew and organized coÖperatives of their own in March, 1921. Sheridan City for the past eight years has had a coÖperative store in which ranchers and farmers from nearby communities have most of the shares. There is also a Miners’ Store in Sheridan City. Hughes County has one coÖperative store with 150 stockholders. Urban and Rural Rivalry All the centers are service stations for the farmers. In some places the old, deep-seated antagonism between town and country is noticeable. There is the feeling that the merchants overcharge, that big business sets the prices, that capital is to be distrusted. Most of the merchants have been of the old individualistic type which places the dollar higher than the community, an idea which the Commercial Clubs are altering. This is especially noticeable in Union County, where the feeling between country and town has been very bitter. The farmers unfortunately are unfriendly to and distrustful of the merchants and business men. Each group is really interdependent, but ‘such’ a feeling retards progress and development. As one leading farmer put it, “The prejudice between the farmer and business man must be overcome. There is no limit to the results if we can just get together.” The farmers feel that the average merchant in buying farm products has not discriminated between a good and a bad product so far as price goes. In short, the honest farmer does not want to sell bad eggs or sandy maize, but he doesn’t like to get a poor price for a good product. Farmers feel that the merchants have overcharged them for goods and obtained high profits and they are undoubtedly right to some extent. The farmers believe that the fact of their charging goods on credit with the merchant gives the latter an unfair advantage over them, that the merchant thinks he can pay any price he wants when purchasing from the farmer. UP-TO-DATE REAPING ON THE PLAINS Answering the World’s Prayer for Daily Bread. Hard Times In the history of this Range area the last three years have been the most difficult for farmers and ranchers. They have suffered acutely from the sharp drop in prices of stock and farm products. Part of the Range section has had a severe drouth. Beaverhead has had several dry years. Last year (1921), thousands of dollars’ worth of hay had to be shipped into the county as feed, and much livestock had to be sent out of the county to graze. In addition to drouth, grasshoppers, fairly plentiful before, became a scourge in part of Sheridan the summer of 1921. The farmers, helped by the Farm Bureau, worked hard to exterminate them with poisoned oats. Simultaneously with the drouth and grasshopper scourge in certain sections, the decrease in prices has E. T. Devine, writing on “Montana Farmers” in The Survey Magazine, gives the farmers’ position: Montana farmers are much like other American producers, urban and rural, but they are even harder hit than most of their fellow countrymen, except, of course, unemployed town workers. They share in the general calamity of relatively low prices for agricultural products and they have also just passed through several years of unprecedented drouth. Freight rates are high and burdensome, and the things the farmers have to buy are still high in proportion to the prices which they get for their grain and stock. These farmers are therefore in debt, and are borrowing more than they can. They are actually and not merely in a chronically distorted imagination, having difficulty in paying their interest and taxes; and if their equity is small they are losing it.... The farmers are not seeking fundamental or permanent solutions. What concerns them is to get immediate and appreciable relief from taxes. Hard times, as in Union County, usually strike our best assets. The county first had a County Agent in 1915, a Home Demonstration Agent in 1917, and Assistant County Agent in 1918 and a Club Leader in 1918. Unfortunately, the hard times forced upon the country a program of retrenchment. In 1920 the Assistant County Agent and, early in 1921, the Club Leader were removed. At present, there is a determined effort in some quarters to dispense with the other two workers. Social Agencies Country folk keep track of things. County papers as well as outside newspapers are read in all communities. These outside newspapers come from Denver, Kansas City, Butte or Omaha, depending upon location. Four newspapers are published in Beaverhead, two in the county seat, and one in each of the two villages. Rural Sheridan prints but one newspaper, The Tongue River News, at Ranchester. Two dailies are published in Sheridan City. Three communities in Union, and three in Hughes County, publish their own papers. The town of Clayton has the Examiner and the Tribune, as well as a paper printed in Spanish. Grenville and More and better libraries are an urgent need of all these counties. Sheridan, Pierre and Dillon all have splendid Carnegie libraries. The majority of the schools have small school libraries. But there is only one public library in Beaverhead County, besides that in Dillon, in the community house of Wisdom village. Sheridan has no other library in the whole county. The only libraries in Union County are a collection of books for public use in the office of a village lumber yard and a small travelling library. Hughes County has a town library and three circulating libraries. WISDOM IS JUSTIFIED The Community House at Wisdom, Beaverhead County. Good leadership is always essential to progress. Every one of these counties is fortunate in having some splendid county-wide leaders who are devoting themselves to their county’s progress. Wherever a county has a Farm Bureau, leadership is developed by that organization. But in rural sections where distances prevent people from coming together, leadership is wanting. Each ranch is a small isolated world and by the very nature of things there are few community undertakings. The development of local leadership, especially in remote sections, should become the concern of this country. As Hart says in his book, “Community Organization,” “the destiny of civilization is wrapped up in the future of Community Spirit Red Cross work, during the war, did a great deal toward bringing about a unified spirit. The Farm Bureau is working in this direction. When real needs arise, a community spirit is born, and unsuspected qualities of loyalty, coÖperation and leadership develop, as happened in one community in Sheridan County, when that community wanted the State highway: they canvassed every load of wheat that went to Sheridan City from their community to show how much their road was used. Another splendid example of community spirit was the pageant staged by Armstead Community, in Beaverhead County, to celebrate the anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Every one in the community, even the babies as Indian papooses, took part. About half of all the communities have a real community spirit, i.e., a willingness on the part of the people to work unselfishly, coÖperatively, for the best interests of the community. This spirit, fostered by the Farm Bureau or by war work, has directed communities to concern themselves with their roads, schools, methods of farming and the creation and strengthening of all community bonds and interests. The results of this spirit are shown in social and educative agencies like Lodges and the local branches of the Farm Bureau. Of the sixty-eight Lodges only seventeen are for women, and their total enrollment is about 7,000 members. While women have fewer Lodges their attendance is more enthusiastic and regular than in the case of the men. There are Commercial Clubs in the city and towns, and in a number of the villages. The American Legion has five branches in the four counties. Eight communities have Literary Societies meeting regularly. Then there are the many clubs and societies which are purely social. These include sewing clubs, card clubs, athletic clubs and similar organizations which are found in the city and towns, and in about one-third of the other communities. There are musical organizations in seven communities, and four communities have community singing. These organizations, together with the schools and churches, give the inspiration for most of the social life. CAMPING IN SHERIDAN COUNTY The colored cook, at least, seems to delight in her surroundings. “Movies,” Motors and the Dance All the larger centers have moving-picture theatres. With the coming of the “movie,” and the general ownership of cars, there is a growing tendency to go into the centers for amusement. Dancing is the most popular recreation. If an event is really a success, it ends with a dance. In many communities a dance is the only thing that will “go.” One reason for this is the lack of leadership; a dance needs no planning to speak of, which is not the case with other forms of indoor recreation. Dances attract people from great distances and are generally held on Saturday night, lasting until Sunday morning, with a feast at midnight. Perhaps the Farm Bureau has an exhibition during the day, and there is a community dance in the evening. It is held in the hall over the poolroom. An orchestra of three army veterans plays good lively jazz. The latest tunes and dances of the city are as familiar in these remote communities as are the latest modes and fashions. No country square dances here; nothing older than the very latest dancing, and the most modern of ear-capped coiffures! Whole families attend, and parents take the floor along with the young folks. There is a great friendliness. The young men are well set-up, muscular and tanned, and some of them even wear spurs which clink together as they dance. Feminine noses are not as white as they might be, though powder puffs are here, very properly concealed. Most of these girls ride horseback as well as their brothers, and both young women and men, with their athletic supple figures, their innate sense of grace and rhythm, might put to shame our tired, anÆmic city dancers. At midnight, there is a supper of fried chicken, sandwiches and real cake brought a few dozen miles more or less by team or car. Everything tastes good because it is made at home. Afterwards, the tireless feet continue the intricate, graceful measures. But outside the brightly lighted hall, and beyond the sound of laughter and music broods the silent, mysterious night of a spacious country. How many city dancers know the homeward drive through a big country, the moon perhaps lighting the river, the contours of plain and butte, and the sleeping hamlets? The most popular forms of outdoor recreation are the community barbecues, frontier days and pow-wows. Only those who live this free, healthy life in the heart of nature have appetites worthy of a barbecue. At noon the delicious beef, roasted all night over a deep trough of coals, and basted with real butter, is a social meal that many of us envy. There are frontier field A FRONTIER CELEBRATION The Barbecue is an institution typical of the Range Country and is attended by settlers from far and near. CHURCH AND COMMUNITY MAP OF HUGHES COUNTY, SOUTH DAKOTA |
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