Saturday, September 29, 2007

"The Drought of the thirties"

Memoirs of Arthur Newkirk, born 1893 in Geneseo, Kansas.



Arthur attended Kansas State Agricultural College from fall 1913 until the spring of 1917 when K-State offered to give him his diploma early if he would go home and plant a large corn crop to aid in the war effort. He worked with the AAA- Agricultural Adjustment Administration from it's beginning in 1934, which paid farmers to reduce crop area to increase the value of crops. He also was a soil conservationist in Wakeeney, Kansas and New Mexico in the 30's and 40's



Writing in 1987 regarding the dust bowl years-

"Now we are in the time of the great depression, and the drought of the thirties. It is hard for some of the young folks of today to realize what people went through at that time. I want to mention a few things...We sold wheat one year for 26 cents per bushel. I got 4 cents a pound for a bunch of fat hogs. Several times we put three or four nice big Buff Orpington hens in a peach basket and took them to Little River and sold them to buy groceries. We were milking several cows and selling cream, shipping it from Galt, a railroad station about three miles from our farm. In order to save a little money, the cream buyers typed their checks on the back of a postal card in order to save postage. They could be sent for one cent. We had two quarter sections of land. We sold one in order to save the other one and have a place to live on. But we farmers didn't go on a strike, and things worked out eventually.