158 Singing Valleys 



into the veins of a man staggering and shaken from alcoholic 

 poisoning. They rode out into their cornlands and plowed 

 more and more acres. Responding to the Food Administra- 

 tion's plea, they bred more and more pigs. In 1918, hogs sold 

 at $11.73 P er nve hundredweight, which represented a profit 

 on corn of only one cent less than four dollars. There never 

 had been anything like it in America before. 



The next year the profit on hogs was 87 cents less; but no- 

 body thought of complaining. The numbers raised were greater 

 than in any previous year, and exports of pork ran to nearly 

 two million pounds. Germany had stopped buying lard, but 

 the United Kingdom of Great Britain was taking more of this 

 by-product than ever before. Hog-raising looked like the high 

 road to prosperity. Farmers painted their barns and put elec- 

 tricity into them and into their houses. Towns in the corn belt 

 built million-dollar high schools. Farmers' wives turned the 

 pages of mail order catalogs and ordered linoleum, furniture 

 and clothes. They patronized the local beauty shoppes for per- 

 manent waves. They got new upper teeth. 



Meanwhile the manufacturers in the East took a long look 

 at the corn belt and the prosperity which shone over it, and 

 got an idea. They called in their salesmen for a pep talk. Then 

 they sent them out with orders to sell motor plows, tractors, 

 corn drillers, corn huskers and threshers to the hog raisers. 



The glib young men who drove up to the farmers' doors in 

 bright new cars that made the farmers' daughters dream 

 dreams, seemed bent on making the plow horse as extinct as 

 the little eohippus. They showed their motor farm machinery 

 in booths at the state and county fairs. 



"Look at the way the world is. All shot to pieces. The farms 

 in Europe can't grow anything for years and years. The world 

 has got to eat, though; and the way I look at it is, you farmers 

 are going to have your hands full feeding it for years and years. 

 Yes, sir, the whole world is looking to the American farmer 

 for help. 



"And you've got to have help. Real help. You can't go on 



