Authors: Lorine Niedecker
Uncle Babe returned home these nights, his sack of Red Lime Fertilizer gone. Matty understood he was paying his expenses each day by selling these. John hated to tell her otherwise. I had ridden along sometimes and it seemed to me he had left most of it here and there among the poorer farmers as a trial gift. Altogether, he was absorbed in his new work but he brooded over his pipe ways and means of moving on. Maybe what he really wanted was company, a close friendship, someone in prosperous circumstances perhaps—he worried over these other people. Many persons loved the poor and hard-working because it was to the interests of the former…he had to in the speeches he was going to make on Memorial Day and later on the subject of organization…he really wished they were different. To better these people, and through that make himself a place in the country, the state, the nation…if only he still had the old dog to talk to. Was seeing a great deal of Phoebe Hake, she, fifteen miles away.
Sometimes he would deliberately go out over the marsh that skirted the lake and woods, the shitepoke still as grass until John's voice rose up in behalf of the people. Determined now to prepare himself for the dynamics of platform work. No light matter for a man shy and starting to take on fat. He must have been haunted by dreams of speaking so well that cannons would greet him at the various towns and villages.
He called himself a Progressive, sure to mean militant liberal. Soon he was speaking in town halls and old opera houses. He memorized his speeches but if he forgot could always put in something else. His practice of throwing the voice at times like a hand grenade into the back seats made him a recognized orator of the day and out from the woods or gardens of the vaudeville curtains he stood against would come: The question is who shall rule, labor or the big producers who control through slavery the laborers? I tell you it is our duty to curb corporation power. We have inherited, as it were, the great idea that this country is the place for free competition and we mean to have it. I am coming, Ladies and Gentlemen, to the farmers' co-operative. (Quieter:) Such a farm movement was started a few years ago that for two years agriculture defeated the corporations. This can be done again. All we want is a fair profit. When we have established a farmers' co-operative we will rest content…. After all, however much the economic conditions of the country stare us in the face we must look to the higher things of life…(Grenade:) You do want to possess this freedom from materialism. That boy of yours must have an education.…Uncle Babe maybe wished often that he could sink back into the sky of the curtain and be a pure idealist. And all the while the military bands. He may have remembered a former militant liberal in the state who had stuck to his post, had written way back in 1858 (in a letter to his wife but now the book is out). Uncle Babe would come away very hoarse from this kind of thing and very retiring. Sometimes on days of parades, unless he had to throw grenades into the ranks, he would join and march, the badges of his party and lodge upon him—never killed a man in his life, one old friend said. The liberal military air, a system of rank. Major F. and Commander St. B. were speakers even in peace.
John was still in the fish business in fall and spring. One of the working men was put in charge of the crew when John was away, and Matty was there. She let him go—his lime fertilizer must be going good, she thought. My mother helped with the cooking and Matty had a strong hand for business. When Matty called the men to dinner: Come now! she wasn't to be trifled with. Sometimes she'd jump into the gasoline launch, speed off down to the mouth of the river, circle around, watch the fishermen. She could handle a gun too, a good marksman. In many ways she was a better executive than her brother. As the men worked nearby she'd raise the window and call out how the rope should be passed or what kind of bolt or which parts should be put together next. John could always return to the executive mansion and find everything going at high pitch.
The old folks passed on. Great Uncle Gotlieb first. A stroke while in the woods, sat by a tree all night. His insurance company, Modern Woodman, failed. John had paid the assessments toward the last as they mounted, only to lose all. Made him dammad but of course, what could he do. The men in charge of the company were out of his reach. As time went on, thinking it over, he concluded perhaps the head men were business men used to taking profits and big salaries naturally; they couldn't understand that their salaries should be held down to the decent level of men giving service. An economist in England was way later to make that same excuse for the failure of a utility company in this country.
Riecky had stayed with my mother's mother in the north of the state as she grew older and not so well, and Grandma by way of Matty bought her gold belt buckle twice to help give the poor thing a feeling of security—she was always afraid she'd have to go to the Poor House. Wasn't long and she was gone too.
John was taking on more weight, becoming known, always advancing the cause of his leader and his party, and while he waited for things to take shape—give the people time, he said, they can't be hurried—he was opening up the land along the river into lots; could sell off a lot now and then, always a little income. The people out here did not catch an idea maybe as fast as city people. But when he thought of the masses in the city he was glad he was out here. Country people had more freedom. There in the city ground down by the industrial system—their minds were faster but could they show anything more for it?—came wandering out here sometimes either very much dressed up and no money to pay for drinks and a night's lodging, or looked very poor and spent their last nickel for drink and owed you besides—that element. He always spoke of the masses and the people as two different classes. Better to be out here, respectable owners of property, he said, better anyhow, do your own work, be your own boss. Beyond that, another class of big people who were everybody's—bosses?—he owned to the quaint separatist belief that some of these could have money control without oppressing others. In his day it was considered a good thing to liberate the mind but not to change it. Never too fast. Never appear eager for a livelihood. One had to have it but it wasn't nice to seem too eager, showed you were a gentleman of good taste not to seem hungry. J.J. had a way always of covering up money transactions, they were seldom direct. If he wanted to buy or sell something it worked through a third person who absorbed the taint, the profits. Usually lawyers, but also insurance and real estate men and even garage owners accustomed to out and out deals—they “had to take” houses, plows, furniture, in payment of debts. These masses of thirds—masses, Uncle John implied, had to work so hard and shamelessly—made business go round. Every decent family had its own or hired these ministers of buying and selling, hated and revered. They would line up prospective buyers for John's lots and hunting grounds, some of them John's own friends, and then he would choose the ones he thought would be interested and give a dinner for them, rather, Matty. But it turned out that those who really bought were the thirds on the staff of life seeing John was pinched at certain times and they could get a lot for a song. Matty had a greater respect for them than for the sportsmen who wouldn't spend so someone else could play too. She saw that the former got the best of everyone, were shrewd, saving, lived below their means and that's how they had something. It often brought her a spell of neuralgia and force as she saw how her brother must have a wild duck placed on each plate at his dinners and lose out. Later, by having eaten in the company of bankers he was to be able to borrow money. He said she must realize he was ahead there because not everyone during the depression could borrow money.
Cottages went up on the lots, they began to have neighbors. Somebody was always wanting to use the ladder when Matty wanted it. The woods were not sold. Uncle John could come back from stumping the country for himself or this senator or that to the solitude of his woods, the trees overtopping him. Always in his simple honesty he gave the neighbors the run of his garage and when he'd be ready to start work around the place—his clothes all changed, overalls on—he'd go out and find his tools not there, jacks gone, ropes gone, hammers, axe.…But he considered he was helping someone so all well and good. He sighed. Never got ruffled. After all, he owed them something for buying the land. He went back into the house to be comfortable again. He didn't doubt the borrowers would return the things, he was honest. Matty thought if they didn't he'd still count em his friends because he'd have forgotten who borrowed what. And of course he had in mind they'd vote for him some day. He's too trusting, no wonder he can't do business, said Matty. I think myself he must have seemed to people to be so honest that he wasn't just nor keen. While they used him, knew they could depend on him, they looked with suspicion on a man who almost liquidated his property for the sake of his neighbors.
At last the day when the farmers came around, the co-op established, Uncle Babe in charge. He was winding up his fishing for good. Filling out his income tax blank the night the man brought the news that a meeting of those interested in the co-op would be held the next night to settle it. He had made out a tan blank, the wrong color, and was now on a green one. We were all sitting around, electric lights just installed. I was there, taking a few days off from business college (my father's insurance). Matty must have made her usual remark about income tax and the like: Cheez, if they'd offer a job instead of taking money away…well, it won't be long before they'll want yuh to keep track of the number of jobs yuh do and pay tax on em. As the man came in with the news, Josephine's daughter gave up her chair with a loud meow and doubtless caught her toes in the black and tan crocheted rugs as she jumped down and stretched. Beer and cigars were passed.
The next day Uncle Babe gave his tax blank to a lawyer acquaintance to fill out and drove off.
For three years he was to give the hammers and ladders of his honesty to the co-op and sit in comparative comfort in the office. Things started well. A merger was soon made with a national organization and for a period of five years J. J. served on county and state committees as well, white shirt every day and fine-dot tie, and so he was led up to the World War but he was just past draft age. Unable to speak now as much as he liked since he sincerely did not believe in the war, he nevertheless kept in touch through others with the general in Congress, the governor who had befriended him.
They won and rested. He saw though that he was still up against the same things: the always stronger “interests,” the monopoly of power on the one side, and on the other the people of the agricultural community in a monopoly of sleep. He won an inch for the farmers, now the boom coming on—the only boom the farmers ever had was during the war—they relaxed. Things were going well even without the co-op. Their fight collectively slackened, as good as ended. Each farmer again competed with each. Wasn't it a free capitalist country? J. J. said they should continue the good work so as to prepare for times of shortage. Shortage? This was a prosperous farming section. Yes, but they must think what they would have for the next campaign. And they were doing better now, yet many of them, John noticed, refused tractors, telephones, vacation journeys. They mustn't slip into blind, unplanned production, he warned them. Price determines need!—all a matter of the people making it otherwise. He wrote in reply to my letters to him and Matty that the co-op leaders were holding picnics, giving out pop and ice cream cones free to induce people to come to their meetings. Some came, mainly children. It was like if you made an appointment they'd say: I'll see you yesterday. Never be different, J. J. told himself, so long as times stayed good. Of course he wished these times would stay…. Factory workers were faster, speedup, couldn't overeat. Out here the Middle Western Ages, farmers plodding behind their horses. Many drudged and denied themselves, put every penny in their farms, then sold or rented to retire to house and lot in town, their living going out of them—on the porch railing Will Farmer sat when he came to town, the basic principle of our government, the Will of the People. What could the people do against the money power now and always controlling the government? They must put men in power who could. J. J.'s chief, almost the only person who had dared militate against the war constantly called to the forces in his state to rally—freedom of the press, freedom of speech, tax the rich, curb the trusts—these things he was fighting for alone. J. J. would do the same. He would get himself endorsed by the leaders in the state. He would give a dinner, an influential standpat Republican would be invited along with the Progressives. To show they could be liberal minded. And La Follette had said, “Get and keep a dozen or more of the leading men in a community interested in, and well informed upon any public question and you have laid firmly the foundations of democratic government.” They must plan so that good times would stay, or at least come oftener.
Uncle Babe retained his determination for public service through the years he was shunted from committee to committee, and then finally he was placed on the ticket. Quite well known by this time, men began coming to take even suppers with him. Matty had spells oftener.
To escape there were his acres and his radio. He liked to turn on the negro spirituals, the melting deep…Christ, how they could sing…the blackbirds settling down…he could forget about government. If he were asked about negroes he said they should be treated well but implied they shouldn't be given the upper hand. Matty had no time for radio. Was getting so all people wanted to do was sit and listen in. She didn't understand radio really—just foolish this guesswork pulled out of the air. She went on baking with luck, washing with an electric machine, sewing with the old tread—still made her summer dresses. Her broom in the kitchen would sweep on ceiling and sidewalls as well as floor in loud complaint of existing conditions, or she'd balance it against her, both arms going free.