protest against farm prices. When something like
that happens it is pertinent to recall the troubles of
the 1930s when the milk strikes reflected the desper-
ation of farm families. Milk was lowest at sixty-five
cents per hundredweight. A two-hundred-pound hog
brought two dollars. A carload of sheep didn't net
enough to pay their freight to Chicago.
    Low prices were not enough; drought and
swarms of grasshoppers added to farm misery. The
hoppers could devour a ten-acre field of corn in a
day. Railroad crews could not propel their handcars
over the greasy, hopper-covered rails. Farmers
couldn't meet their debts; banks and other mortgage
holders foreclosed on many.
    The government was confused. The National
Recovery Act was launched to regulate prices. Presi-
dent Hoover, whose slogan was "Prosperity is just
around the corner," supported a $500 million loan to
help start farm cooperatives. Much of this money
was never spent. Under the clouds of the early de-
pression, the country was on the brink of an agri-
cultural revolution.
    Practically all of Wisconsin was involved in the
strike. Roads were blocked with spiked planks, and
strikers guarded the roads and railroads to prevent
delivery and shipping of milk. They would not mar-
ket milk at the low prices. Farmers who tried to get
their milk through the lines were stopped; strikers
dumped milk from the trucks. There was mass sabo-
tage in milkhouses. Heads were cracked with clubs.
Sometimes truckers carrying guns ran the blockade.
There were stories about rural school children being
stopped for inspection of their lunch boxes and for
confiscation of their lunch milk. Near Madison a
man was shot.
    Henry Acten said that he guessed he was a
damn fool in 1934 when the milk strike was on:
    "I stuck my neck out. I stuck up for them farm-
ers. My customers in town started to quit me be-
cause I was going with the farmers. There was this
guy name of Walter Singler. Boy, when Walter
stood up to talk you had to listen. He got the farm-
ers all going on this Farmers' Holiday. Them trucks
stopped, milk dumped out all over. Farmers mad and
burnin' angry. Why not? Milk seventy cents per
hundred. I was a leader in that and just about lost
out."
    The tendency to use the past to interpret the
present is a favorite pastime for many rural Wiscon-
sin folks. The women can recall hard times, too, as
did Minna Breitsmann, retired homemaker. "I had
a little doll, one of these with a china head, you
know, and pink cheeks. Well, that was my Christ-
mas present in 1900. And the next year mother'd go


and put a new dress on it and just keep on handing
it down to the next girl in line. There were fourteen
children in our farm family. We had wonderful
times-on just nothin'."
    Or Elizabeth McCoy, of Dane County, who be.
lieves that the trees planted by the early settlers
symbolize much about the past:
    "At one time the whole frontage of the farm
was a line of elms and maples, planted alternately,
The Dutch elm disease began in the area about fouz
years ago, and it took the elms along the road one
right after the other. At the same time they said
that the silver maples were about through, and were
about to fall across the highway. They took them all
out then. I have a few elms and maples in the yard,
but the great line of trees is all gone. In the begin.
ning there were some Douglas firs that the early
settlers had planted. They were along the drive ai
you came up to the house. There is a unique thing


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