The Farmer Takes A Holiday

The Farmer Takes A Holiday

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The present day relevance of the Farmers Holiday movement

The book has become a popular reference for students studying this time period.  A common question we get from students is about the present day relevance of the Farmers Holiday movement.  Below is the response from the author.  If you have any questions for the author please feel free to include them in the comment section under the “GET A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK” tab.

The question is as to the relevance of the history of the Farmers Holiday movement to today.

I am thankful for the question because one cannot appreciate where we are today without an appreciation of the forces and the reaction to the forces that brought us to the present circumstance.

Sadly, historians have ignored the Farmers Holiday movement and thus go on the pretense that there wasn’t fierce resistance to the transition of our society from an agricultural society to an industrial society.

Agricultural society was much praised by our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, for example, was quite contemptuous of urban society vis-a-vis rural society.

It is quite evident that the farmer can live quite independently.  He can produce his basic necessities on the farm and thumb his nose at urbanity.  It is this independence, of course which made the westward expansion possible.

It is this desire for independence on the part of the farmer that had to be crushed to produce our present society.  The farmer, in turn, fought bitterly to maintain his lifestyle.

The struggle was not only on our country highways.  A constant propaganda war was also waged against the farmer.  The farmers were portrayed as “Hicks” or “Rubes” and were made the butt of jokes.  The “Farmer’s Daughter” was portrayed as one who was of somewhat loose morals and naive.

This portrayal had its effect.  I recall at the University of Minnesota in the late fifties a professor suggesting that rural girls had at least the image of being looser in morality than urban girls.  Just recently a disc jockey on a Duluth station used the phrase, “He walks like a farmer.”  The Farmer magazine continues with its comedy “The song of the lazy farmer.”  As it has for at least seventy years that I remember.  This demeaning of rural fold is also on NPR in the personage of Garrison Keillor.

The transition of the United States to an urban industrial society was obviously successful.  The number that were driven off their lands was substantial.  The poverty of these displaced farmers is portrayed in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

All is, of course, connected to all.  One does not get a complete understanding unless one has all the pieces and puts them together as in a giant jig saw puzzle.

This army of displaced farmers now became a pool of workers for industry which would soon begin gearing up for World War II.  Although my immediate family continued to struggle on the farm, I had relatives who were displaced farmers who went to work in the shipyards in Seattle.  I admit they enjoyed their prosperity and became quite urbanized.

The children became quite urban; they enjoyed Garrison Keillor and learned to believe dependence on the government and industry was the good life rather than the life of independence on the farm.

The farmers that stayed rural became tenant farmers before finally being driven from the farms altogether.  We thus got what we call megafarms which would make the introduction of genetic modification, for example, easier.

I suggest that if it wasn’t for the defeat of the Farmers Holiday movement we would not be in the position of making it our business to involve ourselves in matters throughout the globe.  After all, it was George Washington in his farewell address that warned us about foreign entanglements.  He could say this because the country at the time was composed almost exclusively of small farmers.

Forward by Elmer A. Benson Former Governor of Minnesota

Everett Luoma has covered the farm and political movement in this part of the country with more than the usual accuracy and in a very interesting manner.

The manner in which he has treated his subject should bring forward thoughts from the rank and file about the unfavorable conditions that exist today on the farms and in the political movement.

Elmer A. Benson Former Governor of Minnesota – Appleton, Minnesota

John Enestvedt; National Farmers Organization

I feel greatly indebted to Everett E. Luoma for documenting this gigantic farm struggle of the past.  In my mind, history will never record a movement that had more sympathy and the backing of the farmers more completely than did the Farmers Holiday Association.  In each community the organization was completely dominated by local individuals.  The methods of struggle seemed instinctive and required no guidance from the top.  Aggressive, dynamic and democratic personalities guided the activities of the Holiday movement.  It was, in fact a most striking example of a grass-roots organization at its best.

This book is a short resume of the many dramatic and decisive aspects of this interesting, true-to-life document, told in an honest serious and enlightening manner.  If the experiences gained in that struggle could be utilized by the farmers of today, there is no question in my mind but that the solution to the farm problem would simply be a formality that we would take in stride.

It is to this end, that the experiences of the past shall be the stepping stones to a progressive future for the farmer, that I most sincerely ask: ‘Won’t you please read this most instructive book?’ The Farmer Takes a Holiday relates a most pleasing experience in rural sociology; since I was a very active participant in many of the events the book relates, this document ended my lifelong search for an individual dedicated to reporting the farm struggle of the 1930’s honestly and seriously.

John Enestvedt, former Publicity Chairman, National Farmers Organization, 6th District Minnesota

From the book jacket.

This important volume interestingly details the National Farmers’ Holiday Association movement of the 1930’s, with particular emphasis on methods which can be related to today’s farm problem.

As an economic analysis of this first rural-protest movement, this book places particular emphasis on the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota and its defense of the principle of independent farmer-labor political action.

This could not be more timely; for today, as in the 1930’s, the economic condition of the farmer in America borders on disaster.  Here we have a careful comparison of the methods of the national Farmers’ Holiday Association of the 1930’s with the methods of today’s National Farmers Organization.  Nowhere else can this information be gleaned, except in the pages of old newspapers.

The book presents a fascinating analysis in-depth of the role of government of political leaders, and of the average farmer; and a comparison of the role of the Farmer-Labor Party candidates and officeholders in Minnesota with the part played by Democratic and Republican office-holders in other states vis-a-vis the farm problem.

The National Farmers’ Holiday Association and the National Farmers Organization are the two organized groups that defended the farmer.  Because the Farmers’ Holiday Association was victorious, Everett Luoma describes here the social conditions that created it and analyzes the tactics used.  The author unequivocally outlines his belief that a political movement based on the economic interests of farmers is the requisite for permanent victory.

The Farmer Takes a Holiday, its style clear and readable, makes available in one volume a thorough assessment of the original rural protest movement – material sharply relevant today.  This is a vigorous account of an active time in our history.  It is a record of an important contribution to America.