75 Years Ago
Late Late Winter/Early Spring 1928
by Maurice Telleen
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Spring 2003

(From the Breeders Gazette and general news sources of the period.)

Early 1928 was filled with remarkable events, as befits a new year in what was called the “roaring ‘20s.” Several of them bear resemblance to the high flying ‘90s of our own time–such as new technology.

On the 4th day of this brand new year the National Broadcasting Company lived up to its name by hooking up all 48 states (that is all there were in 1928) to produce a radio hour featuring top entertainers from shore to shore. It enthralled an audience of millions. The show started with humorist Will Rogers from his home in Beverly Hills, California, who told some jokes before introducing Al Jolson down in New Orleans, Louisiana, who sang a few songs, before he handed the mike off to Paul Whiteman and his famous orchestra in New York. Then it was back to Chicago where a couple of fine singers sang a duet before scooting it on to Detroit where the sponsors of this latest marvel, the Dodge Brothers (you know, the ones with a garage) where their company president described their new Victory Six automobile and thanked Mother Nature for the clear skies that made for crisp transmission of the message. Dodge was entitled to some time…they paid for the whole thing.

It had only been about three months since talking films had made their public debu t– but you had to go to a theatre to see and hear them. With national radio you could sit in your easy chair at home…actually millions of homes. The age of endless entertainment and nonstop product promotion was upon us.

Now that was 75 years ago and was every bit as big a deal as today’s internet. It was getting harder and harder to escape the cutting edge. It also spawned whole new industries and transformed old ones which tended to make a giddy stock market even more giddy.

Speaking of swinging new businesses, a man named William Fox bought controlling interest in 250 movie theatres that seated 350,000 people. Most of them were in the West. It was a hundred million dollar deal. Picture shows, folks. That’s where the action is going to be in the future. And radio. And they were correct. For decades small town theatres were good properties. Small radio stations too.

The older, slower mode of communication wasn’t about to disappear but it would sure be impacted by its brash young cousins, talking films and radio.

Over in England, Thomas Hardy, one of the great practitioners of print, died at the age of 87. He died in his home just three miles from the thatched cottage where he was born. That man knew his own neck of the woods and his own people about as well as any one that ever lived. He produced 27 novels and I’ve read several of them. There is a sheep dog in his “Far From the Madding Crowd” that was so undistinguished (and witless) that he was simply known as “George’s Son.” Apparently his sire was George… but the dog didn’t even merit having his own name. I’ll probably tell you more about George’s Son some day because I’ve never gotten him out of my head. But some other time, I can’t be bothered by that dog right now. I have an appointment to keep… namely “finish this column.”

The Ku Klux Klan was pretty brazen 75 years ago. It even announced in February 1928 that they had plans to establish their national headquarters near a Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. Probably right close to the Lincoln Memorial, too. I don’t know if anything ever came of it.

But it wasn’t all movie shows and radio…not by a long shot. Isolationist and self absorbed as the country wished to be, it was impossible to ignore earthshaking events elsewhere.

Over in Russia the Bolsheviks (later called Communists) were about ten years into their successful revolution which had turned the Czars out. Victors they might have been but they were a quarrelsome bunch within themselves. In early 1928, Joseph Stalin figured he was holding enough of the good cards so that he could banish, exile, imprison or murder his political enemies. So he purged and then kept right on with periodic purges as only a psychopath can.

His chief political enemy, Leon Trotsky, was exiled to remote Kazakstan in the East. Trotsky probably had too many supporters. He was too dangerous to just up and kill. Trotsky later tried Turkey for political asylum and that didn’t work. France gave him political asylum in 1933…the very same year Adolf Hitler felt secure enough to outlaw all political parties on his side of the Rhine. Three years later Trotsky shows up in Norway but apparently didn’t have the makings of a good Viking either so he went to Mexico in 1937. He was murdered in his home there on April 21, 1940. He had been bludgeoned to death with an ax. The presumption was that Joseph Stalin in far-off Moscow had something to do with it.

It wouldn’t be long at all before events would conspire to make us Stalin’s allies in the face of another psychopath named Adolf Hitler. History (and politics) makes some very strange bedfellows.

Back to 1928. Some young lady was running around this country passing herself off as Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the late Czar in Russia. Her story was that one of the soldiers in the assassination detail (their job…kill them all) had somehow run away with her and they were later married in Romania. There was no mention of him. I suppose he had been conveniently ditched…if he existed, which is doubtful. It was said that she had been entertained in a couple of palaces and some palatial homes. Was she a fraud? I reckon she was. I’d say she was making out in fair fashion. Today, she would be on TV talk shows, radio talk shows and on the cover of all those really awful tabloids they sell at the checkout counters of grocery stores.

Calvin Coolidge was in the last year of his presidency and probably hoping to coast out with as little fuss as possible–but some things you just can’t ignore. Such as an ambush in Nicaragua where five of our marines were killed. The ambushers were guerrillas led by General Sandino, known as the “Pancho Villa of Nicaragua” who, in his eyes and mind, was the liberator of his country. Coolidge saw it differently and ordered another 1,000 marines sent to that country. That was in January. In March he had to send 1,000 more. This was not the sort of coast-out he had in mind.

There was one of those periodic Pan American Conferences in session during this time. It was held in Havana and Charles Evans Hughes (former Supreme Court Justice and defeated Republican candidate for president in 1916) was chairing the thing. He rebuked some of those Latin American delegates when they wanted some sort of proviso on the “right to revolt.” Some of them pointed out that we had staged a fairly successful revolution ourselves against the British. Then, to make himself even more popular with some of those people, he later blocked a resolution barring intervention in the internal affairs of Latin American states. Ain’t that something? It was okay for us to revolt, but not you. And, by the way, we do reserve the right to intervene if you folks can’t quite get the hang of it. Such as Nicaragua right now. That is too cut and dried, maybe the conference accomplished a good bit in other areas…but it scarcely sounds like it was worth having.

The advertising in the GAZETTE was a far cry from previous decades. Then, the majority of it was for livestock. But the ‘20s saw farmers buying water systems, trucks and automobiles, radios and telephones about as fast as they could come up with the money.

It wasn’t a one day bust…and it wasn’t a boom. There were big losers and big winners. Mostly it was hyperactive. Not a good sign. Nervous people are panic prone. Somehow I suspect Calvin Coolidge, who wasn’t noticeably nervous, was counting the days till his “discharge.” Vermont was never like this.

For those who read this column regularly you might recall that the ownership of that great old paper, The Breeders Gazette, had passed from Alvin Sanders to his hand picked successors, Sam Guard and Charles Burlingham in mid-1927.

It must have been a pretty smooth transition and by the first three issues of 1928 the new regime had hit its stride with more color, more liveliness, and it appeared to be more open and readable. The new editors were as filled with evangelism for the cause as their predecessors had been, but of a slightly different sort. Like their predecessor, they were first rate at speaking their minds and “giving ‘em hell” when they were of a mind to. Had Sam Guard been a tent preacher, he could have held his own with Billy Sunday. Or Billy Graham. But Sam did it with a little more of a smile on his face than either Sanders or those preachers.

They had even moved the office from downtown Chicago out to the Union Stock Yards, taking some rooms on the second floor of the Purebred Live Stock Record Building. So they worked right at the gateway to the largest stock yards in the world, and the home of the International. It was the Animal Husbandry capital of America–at least for the meat animal breeds.

Mr. Sanders stayed down in his old quarters to finish his book on the Aberdeen Angus in America, thus completing his trilogy of beef breeds in America. Now there appear to be about fifteen. So why had we overlooked all the continental breeds in the early days? The English Channel isn’t that wide. It certainly didn’t slow down the horse importers who proceeded on to France and Belgium and made the Percheron and Belgian the first and second choice of American farmers.

I suspect the main reason was that when that great movement into the upper Midwest and the high plains took place in the mid-1800s there were tremendous amounts of British money invested in American ranches and cattle–and it wasn’t limited to the ranches. John Clay, from the great commission house at the Chicago Stock Yards, was a native Scot. Strange to see ourselves in this light but we were an “undeveloped country” and Great Britain was probably the venture money capital of the world. So we had Angus, Herefords, and Shorthorns for about the first hundred years–and spoke English.

Market editor Jim Poole’s monthly analysis of the livestock markets were pure jewels. Like the Gazette, he had his office right out at the yards and probably even got his boots a little dirty now and then. He was good at taking a very complicated situation and making some sense out of it. His language was down to earth understandable.

Seventy-five years ago he said hogs were in trouble and destined to stay that way for a while. Virtually all the European nations and Canada had increased their swine populations considerably…especially Germany, whose hog slaughter in 1927 was a hefty 34% over 1925. They had been excellent customers…now self sufficient. In February, Poole said “just when the swine trade will wriggle out of the rut in which it has been travelling for several months is anyone’s guess.” Top hogs were selling for around $8 cwt or some $3 less than a year before. Cattle supplies on the other hand were in short supply and the price of good steers was $15.40 against $10.21 from the year before.

As for the woolies he said, “live mutton trade is an invalid branch of the industry. Lamb feeders congratulate themselves when they can cash in without a loss.” Too many big overfinished lambs had created a huge problem to a market that had been fairly good. “Wool, on the other hand, was working higher, and is in an unquestionably strong position.” Plain talk…that was Poole.

Today you are lucky if you can find a wool buyer and will take whatever pittance is offered…8 to 10 cents-a-pound has been the going rate on this farm the last year or so. Great for warmth and durability but it seems most people live inside anymore…from heated houses to heated cars. Then there is Gore-Tex.

Nash automobiles, Atwater-Kent radios, and Graham trucks. Bet most of you hadn’t heard of any of them. But 75 years ago they were mainline brands. Chances are none of the above died…they were simply gobbled up by bigger fish. Now carriage and wagon companies, that may be a different matter. Several of them tried to make the transition from carriage to car. The only one that succeeded (that I know of) was Studebaker.

All the by-products were doing okay in early 1928; hides, wool, and bones. Of course, as with the wool clothing, a lot of today’s shoes aren’t made out of leather and the harness trade isn’t exactly using hides up in shipload lots either. As for bone meal…with one Mad Cow type scare after another, that may have become more of a problem than a sales opportunity too.

Their January number carried a beautiful 16 page midsection on sort of a peach colored paper that was devoted entirely to the recent International Livestock Show. It contained a lot of livestock ads. It appeared that their new office location was coming in handy, in more ways than one. The January issue wouldn’t hold it all. February was also filled with articles concerning the recent International.

This pair (Guard and Burlingham) were selling ads that had never appeared in the Gazette before. Full page ads for automobiles, life insurance, radios, washing machines for mom, and on and on. Those early 1928 GAZETTES were pitching to both mom and dad out on that farm.

In the farm machinery business it was a time of mergers as mechanization inched ahead. The Rock IslandPlowCompany would become a part of J.I. Case Company in 1937. The surviving giants such as John Deere, International Harvester, Case and Minneapolis-Moline were all the result of acquisitions and mergers. C.H. Wendel’s book, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN FARM IMPLEMENTS & ANTIQUES (available through Mischka Books) is well worth the price. The author is the son of the well known and highly regarded Belgian breeder, the late Harry Wendel from Atkins, Iowa.

Telephones were the internet of the day. Ma Bell was also putting her family together. Local phone companies were stringing wire into farm homes everywhere.TheBREEDER’S GAZETTE even used the fact that you could get up-to-the-minute market news by radio as one of the reasons (or excuses) for dropping back to monthly.