Authors: Lorine Niedecker
He became interested in the fyke net fishing, got together a small outfit with Gotlieb's help. When John had saved $250 he put it into a cheese factory. The man who came around had been a good talker. Wisconsin was a great dairy state, cheese factories were doing a big business. John's education cut off in his freshman year of Normal School he realized he must depend now on working with his hands and then invest his savings, depend on what money could bring as to further education and leisure. He must be able to stand up against any man. A decent supply of money was good. A decent business, a fair profit—as he looked about him he couldn't quite help coming to that conclusion so early…he came to it helplessly. But it may be said to his credit that he was never against most of the things money can buy. He was a man who wanted to spend money and have nice things. When a chair was without a pillow or an upholstered seat he would reach over to the sofa and get hold of one of Matty's dark red plush cushions. She would indicate he should take the little old pad that the cat used but he would wink and say, This plush is just as good. Or at table he'd butter a piece of kuchen in place of his mother's or Matty's bread maybe getting dry and hard, and with Uncle Gotlieb's smiling wrinkles acclaim buttered kuchen just as good. Riecky and Matty always held the hard view.
The way the cheese industry developed—a factory sprang up here or there in this country by itself for itself but somehow supposedly for the common good, entering the free competition against others that sprang into individual profits if lucky. Some got themselves joined to a big chain controlled possibly in New York. “Filled cheese” was produced by mixing foreign fats, animal or vegetable, with skim milk. The original butterfat extracted, a cheaper substitute used. In some cheese was found the best cottonseed oil. Much of the full cream cheese was excellent for people who could afford it. John's factory springing up north of Milwaukee was going to produce good cheese. He hit upon putting his money into this concern and letting it work for him. It failed. A big monopoly forced out, sprung, the little one. Uncle Babe went to Milwaukee to the old cheesemaker friends to try through them to bring pressure to bear—he was always to say: find the right people and through them bring pressure to bear—but they were in the business themselves. He didn't think the men in charge of the factory were really dishonest—they had to suffer with the rest—they were making a cheese that was not “filled.” New York Cream Cheese it was called. Showed they believed in honest food products.
The Beefelbeins were great cheese people, always had it in some form or other. In the years Riecky was making it at home the state was producing many thousands of pounds and always doubling the amount annually. Hers was good, they knew what went into it, they were used to it. They might have bought some that was better. And again, her sausage meat—to this day Uncle John can find no sausage meat like the old people made it in their homes—he can't think what it's made of now. And shoes—paper!
Matty, dully, when she heard of John's failure: Cheese kriste. And then went about her housework with force. The way she looked at it, it was just whether you were lucky or not. Baking, weather, business, all depended on luck.
John, well, he felt—poorer. His mind went back to the Indians, he could only believe their life was best, they had no financial troubles and they had been happy with what they had. At times during his life his mind went back like this. Isolated country living: each family attending at home to its own needs, what a man could do alone was best. Still, he couldn't worry too much now, he was young and everything was possible. You had to go through hard experiences, he guessed, before the good things of life would come. Life is a struggle. The fittest survive…. etc…. He went at it harder, fishing, always the desire to make something of himself, become a director himself. Gradually he went in deeper and hired a crew of five men. Hard work but making money.
One morning he went out to raise his nets. The game warden who had to supervise for the state, see that only carp and buffalo were taken to be sold, told Uncle John he couldn't raise nets, orders from Madison. At the same time John happened to know the permission to raise nets was given as usual to a man engaged in fishing farther down the river. Immediately he got himself a letter of introduction to the governor of the state, Uncle John, went and explained his cause: he'd paid license and was law abiding, now for no apparent reason the state would do this to him. He hinted that the other man down the river had paid more to gain favors? In ten minutes the governor cleaned out the conservation department, fired everyone who had anything to do with it and thanked Uncle John for coming—just like that.
To this governor Uncle John always felt he owed a great deal. But then if anyone at all ever did anything for him he thought about it and could never do enough for that person. He would do things all his life for the person who was kind to him. Perhaps out of this experience he saw a chance for coupling gratitude, service, and self-help. If only he could enter a political career. He fished now by seine, shipped rough fish in refrigerator cars to New York. He stood in rubber waders in ice cold water to his waist, subjected himself to rheumatism, smelled of fish slime and invested his money in carefully considered places. But politics, politics, it hemmed him in. A career…it would not let him rest.
Fight was in the air. The governor was a fighter, all good political men were. You had to fight the big business monopolies and the poorer you were the more fight it took. You really had to find at least one financially independent friend who could furnish money for your campaigns. It was a great game. You had to know psychology…he wished he knew more, had had a full college education. His idol, in that young man's last year as a student, had been chosen, after preliminary tests, to represent his school in the state collegiate oratorical contest, and had then won the prize at Beloit with an oration on the character of Shakespeare's “Iago” and then won in the interstate meeting and all this was in the newspapers, so it was said that later when he went among the farmers he found they could place him right away. John wished he knew Shakespeare like that, culture. Throw in his lot with culture and property. He did not even know law. But if his heart was in the right place…. You had to know how to handle people who favored the “interests.” For example, you advocated railroad taxation bills, showing the “interests” and the general public at the same time hotly that railroads could increase their rates and take back the amount lost through such taxation, so that the railroads would let the tax bills go through and the people would become aroused under higher rates and there was your regulation of rates to furnish the next campaign. Because you had to keep yourself in office. A constant fight.
Yet Uncle Babe was the quietest of men, easy-going, Matty said, and I always knew him to be gentle. I was about eleven when the cat was lying helpless under the front porch, a leg broken—my mother and I lived here almost entirely now, my father had died, the doctor said at the last he should have been in a hospital, but it was an unfortunate case, we hadn't enough money—and Uncle Babe, interested in the kitty almost as much as I was, jumped into his Cross-Country Rambler, went to town and brought back a doctor friend and the cat grew well, our Josephine who played for us in the railing of the stairway. John could never see any animal, anybody, suffer. Sometimes he would forget to do the actual work of caring for them—thinking about other things. He always preferred Matty to cut the heads off the poultry. But he took advancement in the world as hard and serious, as probably most young men who have any talent and intelligence, but mainly because of the strain of their schooling however short, the constant strain of competition, always one first above all, a few up and the neighbors down, the ratings, the contests, the shame if you stopped to think and be considerate and received no high mark, the prizes that drove to the quick; the desire to get ahead was paramount, nervous, forceful. He sincerely desired to become a leading force in political reform if he could get to champion the right group.
He would start close to home, would take up the cudgels for the farmers. The farmers' taxes were too high. They had no market close by for their livestock—did, yes, but it held the prices up—most cattle and hogs were shipped way to Chicago and then the meat was shipped way back again. There seemed to be no great farmer issue before the public, though. This governor wasn't doing so much for the farmers, in a way, yes, but he had his railroads to fight. Perhaps there was no field. But they always said they couldn't sell their produce for more than it cost them to produce it and this was wrong. What was the trouble? They weren't organized. There was a field. They should be made to see what was good for them, join together under a competent head, form a small monopoly, a farmers co-operative, demand good prices. People did not always know what they could do to better themselves till someone came along and pointed it out.
The oleomargarine fight had benefited the farmers and the fight was still on. Grover Cleveland had said, “I venture to say that hardly a pound (oleomargarine) ever entered a poor man's home under its real name and in its real character.” The packers and the Presidents, Uncle John, extended their sentiments to the poor. One must be strong. As he saw it: butterfat and beef fat both, but yes, butterfat.
The people here had a former governor to thank for what the dairy industry had become. He was a poor man but he rose to be Wisconsin's principal spokesman for the dairy interests in state and congressional hearings. He started in this very section on a farm in beet raising or was it hops and that year the market was glutted and of course he'd borrowed heavily and now his character had to stand or fall by whether he could or could not pay back, and he had failed through no fault of his own except that he was a party to a blind system. If he couldn't pay back he had no honorable character. The story is told that The Honorable Mr. Y. went into a grocery store one day, lifted a sack of flour on his back, walked out. They'd have to knock him down if they wanted it, he said, he had no money and his family had to eat. In time, however, he entered the disastrous, free competition again by way of a different business and as luck would have it bettered himself—at the cost of his neighbors though he wouldn't have meant it that way—and paid back every dollar he owed. In fact no man was a man unless he struggled under a great load against odds. Life was a struggle. This man was energetic and experimentative but he could not get ahead as he liked. What could he do not always having land and cattle and other materials to carry out his ideas? Everything connected with farming was slow. An accurate test for determining the amount of butterfat in milk had to be invented so that the creamery man would not cheat himself nor the farmer. The test finally accepted came out of the Wisconsin College of Agriculture, was received into the creamery industry with very little opposition and into the entire United States and even foreign countries. The Babcock Test can beat the Bible in making a man honest, said a cream man.
Legislators fought each other in campaigns for leadership and in offices too. One said to himself: I must fight this thing through, I know it will be worthwhile and so-and-so will be true to me. Among these individuals were militant liberals on all sides. Great speechmaking and handclapping…perhaps the people would forget their troubles. Sometimes the men were lawyers, got very much interested in making intricate cases. Was it constitutional, they asked, when people organized into strikes. Uncle John, but that was later, had to pay the processing tax on a pig before such tax was declared illegal. It was important to get the labor vote, but many times a well meaning senator or governor would be told, Oh, nevermind about the labor vote, Brown will take care of that, or Payne.
The current of thought started above and came down! Spirit, mind, existed before trees and rock?
The military spirit handed down to J. J. Beefelbein—was it for him? Could he stand it? He told himself yes. He would show em he could hand back just what they gave him.
He, Beefelbein, would organize the farmers.
So he started out, sometimes with horse and buggy, sometimes with the Rambler, depending on the road, and usually carried a sack or two of Red Lime Fertilizer, the agency he'd taken as an opportunity to combine salesmanship with—salesmanship! He felt if he could get them to try what he had to offer they'd never be without it.
He followed the farmers from the barn to the house and around. Not easy to gain their attention, busy plowing, milking, making hay, feeding stock, planting, cultivating—how many hours a day did a farmer work? Only time really was the noon hour and then they wanted to rest; even J.J. liked his noontime undisturbed like his father before him. They would nod to him after their heavy meals of hot soup and heaped up plates of potatoes, almost as though the radio had come already, their heads would fall from side to side on their chests as they rested in their chairs. Same way the evenings and to bed early to get up early. He managed to tell them he was organizing a farmers' co-operative. The strength of other industries lay in the power of combining and what they could do the farmers could do. When he said, We will pay the capitalists in their own coin, this did fire them. Only trouble was: they couldn't pay to enter it. And they had joined such an organization sometime before and nothing happened. He pointed out this would be bigger, more powerful, like the labor unions only better because “we” could handle “our own” products. They didn't like the mention of labor unions but John pointed out that whereas labor unions were perhaps socialistic, the farmers' union would be the good American thing. Of course, he said, no one group should be allowed to gain ascendancy over others, this was democracy. He must have thought it funny that one side could never be right but he was a man who always tried to see both sides. They all probably implied: capitalism has to exist in order to have labor unions; price determines need; strikes cause confusion in industry. Price determines need! John saw through that—funny!—and he told them how they could turn it the other way around. When he had their attention—time is slower out here than in the cities, so much space, people acres apart, illusion of freedom is greater—he would put the question: would they give their support? And they would smile: there'd be big ones in it would get sumpn, not they. They seemed better informed, usually, than Uncle Babe. Asked didn't they trust anyone in the country, they said they felt the government should be the one—what's the government for. J. J.: Well, the people must see that the government…. The People: Well, they were busy getting in the hay. J.J.: If farmers can't get legislation who can, they're the mainstay. The Farmers: Our children learn that in school, lots of things, they learn wrong. Use the ballot? Yes, on election days they went to the polls and voted, yes, mainly against. In this country you have to be on your guard against the officers chosen. In the first place who chooses em? Oh yes, direct primary now. A certain governor had done sumpn for em, the prosperous ones first. Uncle John said this was a prosperous farming section, milk machines coming in for those who could afford them so join the co-op and sell your produce to us for more than you get elsewhere because we can ship it in large amounts at lower rates. He signed up some of them. Others he could believe could not pay to enter. He said to these latter that if he got enough signers he would pay their dues for them and he did that later. He could never bear misfortune and he wanted this venture to be a success. The other man who was to be associated with him was around in different nearby townships getting signers.