1 



I. A. A. Member Chosen 



as Typical American 



Farmer 



WHEN FORTUNE, an outstanding 

 national magazine, started out to 

 find and write up a typical corn 

 belt farmer, they sent their staff writer 

 to McLean county, Illinois. George Wiss- 

 miller, vice-president of the McLean 

 County Farm Bureau and member of the 

 Illinois Agricultural Association who 

 operates a 400 acre farm near Cooks- 

 ville, was chosen as the subject of the 

 character sketch and story. 



The writer. Miss Hamill, spent two 

 weeks in the Wissmiller home to give 

 FORTUNE readers an intimate picture 

 of family life on a corn belt farm. A 

 well known English water-color artist, 

 S. E. Badmin, was sent along to make a 

 number of detailed sketches. The inter- 

 esting story and the beautiful colored 

 sketches appear in the August issue. 



Here's what the author says in part: 



"George Wissmiller is one of 961 

 farmers out of 4,224 in the county who 

 own their own farms. He inherited part 

 of it, bought part, traded other land for 

 part. He owns it clear now except for 

 that $10,000 mortgage which is on 160 

 of his 400 acres. He took out the mort- 

 gage with the Connecticut Insurance Co. 

 in 1919 when he, like every other fanner, 

 had to have more land and more ma- 

 chinery, when he knew that prices would 

 always keep on going up. But he has 

 never defaulted on paying the interest, 

 and the mortgage is more than covered: 

 his land is certainly worth $40,000, he 

 has $25,000 worth of paid up life insur- 

 ance, $1,900 worth of stock in the co- 



operative grain elevator. The mortgage 

 doesn't worry him much. 



"George Wissmiller is fifty-five years 

 old. Kind-eyed and gentle-spoken, me- 

 dium tall and slightly built, he is still, 

 by the deep-lined quiet of his face and 

 by the big-jointed squareness of his 

 hands, an impressive and forceful man. 

 His education was got in a few years 

 at the crossroads school, his reading is 

 confined to the local paper and farm 

 bulletins, he goes regularly to the Pres- 

 byterian church and Sunday school, he 

 performs his public duties seriously and 

 honestly and conscientiously. He — in 

 common with most of the farmers in the 

 district — doesn't believe in drinking and 

 smoking and gambling and dancing, and 

 his beliefs are laws in his home. ... He 

 lives the way he wants to live but he is 

 tolerant of others (if they are not of 

 his own family) who want to live dif- 

 ferently. He gives hard, long hours and 

 patience and devotion to his fields, and 

 he takes pride in his farm and in his 

 family. 



"George Wissmiller worked in the 

 corn-hog office of the AAA in Blooming- 

 ton during the slack season last winter. 

 He was paid $4 a day. That helped, and 

 then, too, he believes in farm organiza- 

 tion and co-operation. He is Vice-Presi- 

 dent of the McLean County Farm Bu- 

 reau and he thinks that farmers ought to 

 profit more than they do from the ad- 

 vice that's available to them. But as a 

 matter of fact the farmer is the most 

 advised man in the country. He gets it 

 from the government, the university, and 

 the farm organizations. 



riiuii.jjralphed li> I>ii'lv I'unta^'nipii. Bio^uiiiigron 



AERIAL VIEW OF 400 ACRE WISSMILLLER FARM 



near Cooksville in McLean county. 



"His barnyard was dune in water colors" 



GEORGE WISSMILLER 

 Snapped in fronf of the McLean County Farm 

 Bureau office in Bloomington. 



"FORTVNE smiled on Mm" 



"Most powerful and most listened-to 

 organization in McLean County is the 

 Farm Bureau. It is the largest county 

 unit of the American Farm Bureau Fed- 

 eration which was set up in 1919. The 

 McLean County Bureau maintains an of- 

 fice in Bloomington and a staff of organ- 

 izers and stenographers under the Farm 

 Adviser whose salary is paid in part by 

 the Bureau's own dues, in part by the 

 Illinois Department of Agriculture, and 

 in part by the U. S. Department of Ag- 

 riculture. The adviser, a graduate of an 

 agricultural college talks to local groups 

 in the small towns, gives them the lat- 

 est reports on chinch bugs, on fertilizers, 

 on hybrid corn, on hog-cholera control, on 

 tax valuations, etc. In most cases his ad- 

 vice is accepted without question. The 

 Farm Bureau office is also headquarters 

 for the Home Bureau (women's home- 

 economic organization), the 4-H Club, 

 the cooperative insurance company, the 

 co-operative service company, and the 

 local branch of the AAA. 



"It was there that Wissmiller met the 

 New Deal and found it good. For ten 

 years he had been saying that the gov- 

 ernment ought to do something for the 

 farmers — not give them charity but give 

 them economic equality. Coolidge had 

 vetoed the McNary-Haugen Bill which 

 Wissmiller wanted to see passed. Hoover 

 had set up the Federal Farm Board with 

 its Grain Stabilization Corporation, and 

 everybody knows that that didn't work. 

 Wissmiller had become pretty skeptical 

 about Washington and, although he is a 

 Democrat, he was afraid that Roosevelt 

 would do as little for agriculture as his 

 (Continued on page 17, Col. 2) 



SEPTEMBER, 1935 



