The Raw Wounds Have Healed

 The Raw Wounds Have Healed

Try as I might, I could not reach the top of that sand dune. For every step gained, I’d slip back to where I started. My shoes filled with sand, and I soon tired of climbing and sliding. I started pestering my mother and grandma that I was hot and wanted to go home. No, not til the pails were full of juneberries.

This little scenario took place when I was a young tyke about 75 years ago. Raw blowouts and sand dunes were plentiful in the eastern part of the county; reclamation had only started to heal it. A personal recollection of those times came from Elizabeth Bost who wrote “...the winds returned again and again to create their own landscapes of dunes and blow holes.” Later she remarked on playing in them: “...to play in the sand was a danger in itself. If one misjudged the depth of a blowout before sliding into it he might very well need help in getting out.”

At one time people lived on this acreage and tried to coax a living from its dry sandy soil, but the so-called “dirty thirties” arrived and endless winds blew and tore soil loose and carried it away in great clouds. To further complicate their troubles, everyone had to contend with the Great Depression.

The election of 1932 brought Franklyn Delano Roosevelt to the presidency. He soon set out to bring relief to the country suffering from this “double whammy.” Part of his attention turned to areas like these sandhills in Ransom County where farmers went broke and had begun leaving. Roosevelt’s response was to create the Resettlement Administration (RA) which resettled poor farmers on more productive land, promoted soil conservation, provided emergency relief and loaned money to help farmers buy and improve farms.

To administer the RA, Roosevelt tapped Rexford Tugwell as his point man. A liberal university economist, he had become an assistant secretary of agriculture. He successfully implemented the plan of resettlement but came under heavy criticism since he believed in a certain amount of government planning for land usage. Trained in the ways of a research scientist, he had traveled to Russia in 1927 to study their system. Upon return to the U.S., critics labeled him a communist, “Rex the Red.” Historians agree he was at all times a loyal American and was never affiliated in any way with the Communist Party.

In a nutshell, the plan was for the government to buy submarginal land and make loans available to farmers who wanted to move to better land and continue farming. It wasn’t met with universal acceptance though. A newspaper article from April, 1935 headlined this: “Farmers at McLeod Organize to Fight Purchase of Sand Hill Acres.” Spokesmen for the group insisted the ground was not sub-marginal and that if cattle prices rose the land would provide a good living again. Wyndmere merchants also objected fearing the loss of business from too many farm families leaving the community.

Tugwell forged ahead and prevailed. He had entered the fray with supreme confidence but started to weaken from the hammering he was taking. The Bismarck Tribune of July 16, 1936 stated in a headline “Tugwell Different From ‘Prof’ of ’33.” The interviewer detected his weariness, and in November, 1936, Tugwell resigned his position, lasting only two years.

Besides the local groups voicing their criticism, a Catholic priest made his opposition known through a popular national radio program. Father Charles Coughlin first took to the airwaves in 1926, broadcasting weekly sermons over the radio. By the early 1930s the content of his broadcasts had shifted from theology to economics and politics. He began as an early Roosevelt supporter, but later in the 1930s he turned against FDR and became one of the president's harshest critics. FDR’s programs and appointees suffered from the attacks.

Coughlin’s fervor rose as millions of Americans tuned in each week. Eventually his professing a dislike of Jews among other things might be what took him too far because soon the Catholic hierarchy finally silenced him and sent him back to the work of a parish priest.

Tugwell left, Coughlin left, but the project yielded 70,180 acres of public land and 64,769 acres of privately owned land. Termed tallgrass prairie, this Sheyenne National Grassland, locally administered by the Forest Service office in Lisbon, provides grazing for over 80 ranchers and habitat for a wide range of wildlife and plant life. It is one of the few places where I’ve heard Meadowlarks singing in recent years.

It was at my mother’s funeral that I learned of a thin yet personal connection to resettlement. A lifelong friend of the family told me the story of how his parents had resettled and vacated their old farmhouse. They still had the keys and decided to hold a community dance in it. A young boy at the time, he remembered seeing my parents, before they were married, having a great time dancing. The family’s move to productive land south of Sheldon paid well since I’ve seen many a good crop raised on the new farm.

Today, whenever the walls close in and we feel the urge to escape city noise and traffic, we like to head back to the sand hills in the eastern part of Ransom County. It is quiet and lightly populated and the blowouts and dunes have healed. It welcomes me.