Manitowoc, Wisconsin: Board of Supervisors of Manitowoc County
Summary
In his 1944 annual report to the Manitowoc County Board of Supervisors, Manitowoc County Agricultural Agent Truman Torgerson briefly describes a wartime program under which 4-H club members and other Manitowoc county youth collected over five thousand bags of milkweed pods. (A similar report in the 1944-45 Manitowoc County School Annual stated that children enrolled in the county’s rural schools collected 5,280 bags of milkweed pods.) During World War II, milkweed floss was used as a substitute for kapok in life vests, because kapok could no longer be imported. In 1943 the War Production Board had set up a pod separation plant in Petosky, Michigan, and children from around the Midwest, including Manitowoc County, collected milkweed pods in open mesh bags that were turned in at local buying stations for transport to the Michigan plant. It took about eight hundred pods to fill a bag; two bags were needed to fill one life vest. Manitowoc County’s contribution of some five thousand bags was part of a total 283,000 bags collected by Wisconsin children in the fall of 1944. As Torgerson notes, picking milkweed pods was “about the most thankless job anyone can imagine,” but the youth had responded “magnificently” to the slogan “Pick Milkweed Floss For Our Boys Across.” This report was published in the 1944-1945 Proceedings of the Board of Supervisors of Manitowoc County.