Locust (14 page)

The powers of the federal government are constrained by constitutional limits, and the Congress was more than delighted to accede to President Andrew Johnson’s interpretation of the government’s role in ameliorating poverty: “A system for the support of indigent persons in the United States was never contemplated by the authors of the Constitution.” Although he was not referring to victims of locust outbreaks, Johnson’s argument was made in the midst of the swarms in the 1860s, and Congress was happy to extrapolate his sagacious and convenient reasoning to the disastrous situation in the 1870s. But there’s a rub: The president had been alluding to the chronically poor, not the accidentally impoverished.

Led by Minnesota’s governor, the states were casting the locust-afflicted communities as economic casualties of a natural disaster—not malingering paupers. Whether or not they had actually come to believe this, such an interpretation was politically necessary for there to be any hope of federal assistance. Drawn in by this contention, the federal government created a precedent for policies that would play out through the Dust Bowl, hurricanes, floods, and even the drought that left fields desiccated and cities parched at the turn of the twenty-first century.

As the disaster rose to the highest levels, so too did the sophistication of the attendant arguments. Representative Stephen A. Cobb from Kansas maintained that fundamental principles of justice required Congress to provide aid to the settlers. But how could Washington be blamed for locusts in Kansas or any other state? Simple, argued
Cobb: The federal government had lured the homesteaders to the West with promises of free land. By enticing settlement in the locust-ravaged lands, the government had put the farmers in grave risk. The Congress might have been unwitting in bringing farmers into the land of the locusts, but this did not absolve the government of all responsibility. The Homestead Act was tantamount to national complicity in the disaster that had befallen the West.

Others suggested that the government had promised, at least implicitly, that the homesteaders would receive federal assistance in times of crisis if they would remain on the land. After all, the U.S. Cavalry had been assigned to protect frontier communities from Indian attacks. The national defense argument was pushed one step further: The locusts were portrayed as an invading army and the farmers as brave patriots who were battling a fiendish enemy. Just as farmers had been called upon to defend the nation from foreign forces, so the nation now owed the settlers assistance in their conflict. The principles of civil defense, which continue to underpin our modern responses to natural disasters, obligated the citizens in the settled regions to help those on the frontier. The western states and territories contended that this support was not charity or even some sort of laudable—but optional—benevolence. Rather, the afflicted farmers had a right to aid in their time of need, and the American public had a civic duty to provide this assistance.

Whereas poverty aid was politically dicey, federal disaster assistance was on firmer ground. For their part, the farmers fully comprehended the social condemnation of the undeserving poor. They acknowledged that lazy paupers and dishonorable beggars had no moral claim on the generosity of successful businessmen and wealthy landholders. But the settlers’ case was put in terms of disaster relief, not poverty. The nation had not dismissed the victims of the Chicago Fire as lowly mendicants. The country had come to the rescue of those who had endured this tragedy, and the suffering caused by the locusts was no different. At least this is the case that the farmers and their representatives tried to make to Congress.

The arguments that carried the day in Washington had nothing to do with compassion or justice but relied on enlightened self-interest.
The expanding nation needed settlers to occupy the West. The powerful railroad and manufacturing industries wanted raw materials moving east and goods flowing west, and society needed citizens working on the land rather than rabble-rousing in the cities. Congress might have ignored the suffering that the locusts brought to the settlers, but it couldn’t dismiss the fear of railroaders, promoters, developers, counties, and states that the depopulation of the frontier would mean the end of economic growth. A hungry farmer was one thing, but an angry capitalist was something else indeed. As if to settle any remaining argument, the Department of Interior presented Congress with a report on the Rocky Mountain locust that had this dire introduction:

The most immediate problem from a political and economic perspective was the abandonment of the frontier by homesteaders. And this is where Congress first focused its legislative attention to mirror the state initiatives. The Homestead Act required settlers to improve and occupy their claims continuously for five years in order to gain title to the 160 acres of land. After just six months a homesteader could gain title through the process of commutation, which amounted to paying the government $1.25 per acre—an economic impossibility for most subsistence farmers. Another version of this occupy-improve-and-pay system was called preemption. But all of these formulations required residency and improvements, both of which had become impossible in the midst of a locust invasion. The insects were forcing families either to split up—as the husband sought work and the wife and children clung to whatever the locusts had left in their wake—or to abandon their homesteads entirely and relinquish any equity in and claim to the
land. And so Congress amended the Act in an effort to keep homesteading viable in the course of locust outbreaks.

The initial provision allowed homesteaders in parts of Minnesota and Iowa to vacate their homesteads until May 1, 1875. As the scope of the locust outbreak became apparent, Congress extended the amendment to exempt all farmers “whose crops were destroyed or seriously injured by grasshoppers” from the strict residency requirements. This broader provision was enacted from 1876 to 1878 and set July 1 as the mandatory date by which a homesteader had to return to his or her claim for the year in order to meet the residency requirement. In the mind of Congress, this provision allowed farmers to seek work outside the locust-ravaged districts for six months.

Critics pointed out that a midwinter deadline would have made more sense, allowing the afflicted people to farm elsewhere and then return to their own land. Others sniped that this provision resulted in a cruel cycle that turned settlers into itinerants who were dragged back and forth between wage labor and farming. The result was simply a prolongation of the suffering before the inevitable failure to eke out a living as a human yo-yo. A quick and definitive failure, rather than a lingering struggle, would have allowed families to move on to other opportunities. Despite these criticisms, the amendments were a political success and allowed at least some homesteaders to qualify for final patent after the locusts subsided. The public response was favorable enough that Congress extended this strategy to a lesser-known Act.

The Timber Culture Act allowed farmers to acquire a standard homestead of 160 acres by planting and cultivating trees on 40 acres of land for ten years. On much of the western prairies, creating forests was an ecological impossibility. However, significant tracts of the Midwest could support the growth of trees. The challenge of sustaining 40 acres of new timber for a decade and the consequent loss of this land to more profitable agricultural production led to the Act’s being amended to require that there be just ten acres of healthy and growing trees after eight years. But even these lowered standards became impossible to meet after a locust swarm arrived. And so Congress allowed farmers an extra year of residency on homesteads filed under the Timber Culture Act for each year of locust infestation.

These hands-off, legalistic tactics were sensible approaches for senators and representatives living and working at a geographic and emotional distance from the front lines. Amended laws provided broad solutions to a large-scale crisis, but a hungry farmer can’t eat the
Congressional Record
. The pressure for direct federal assistance came from a most unexpected quarter: the U.S. Army.

He was surely responsible for the deaths of more Indians—and American citizens—than most of his fellow officers, but Brigadier General E. O. C. Ord might also be credited with saving the lives of more western settlers than any other figure in American history. After graduating from West Point, Ord fought against the Seminole Indians in Florida, the Rogue River Indians in Oregon, and the Spokane Indians in Washington. In the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant reported that Ord’s “forces advanced with unsurpassed gallantry, driving the enemy back across the Hatchie, over ground where it is almost incredible that a superior force should be driven by an inferior, capturing two of the batteries, many hundred small arms, and several hundred prisoners.” He was given command of the right wing of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s army in the capture of Jackson, Mississippi. Eighteen months later, he led the Army of the James during the assault on Richmond, and General Sherman maintained, “[Ord’s] hard march the night before was one of the chief causes of Lee’s surrender.” Ord’s life as a warrior wound down after the Civil War, creating an opportunity for his humanitarian work.

Through a brilliant political maneuver at the state level, General Ord, commanding officer of the U.S. Army Department of the Platte, was named vice chairman of the Nebraska Relief and Aid Association. This appointment placed the general—and thus the federal government—smack in the middle of the human suffering wrought by the locusts. What emerged from this juxtaposition of power and poverty was an intriguing battle of principles and politics. The General’s greatest battle began in the fall of 1874.

On October 24, Ord sent a message to Lieutenant General Phillip H. Sheridan, commander of the Military Division of the Missouri, asking permission to distribute surplus army rations and clothing on the locust-ravaged frontier. Although no law permitted such a provision of supplies, Ord knew that the homesteaders decimated by the previous summer’s swarms would be in dire straits with the onset of winter. And without his impassioned—and unprecedented—plea to use military stores to alleviate a natural disaster, a horrific famine was looming. Ord’s argument was simple and straightforward:

Major N. A. M. Dudley, one of Ord’s trusted officers, had conducted extensive reconnaissance and reported detailed information on what he had discovered. For example, the Major found that of the 800 residents of Red Willow County, Nebraska, more than two-thirds would require help in the coming winter, and “of these 544 needy people, it was found that 100 had either no food or less than a five day supply.” Such details gave credence to Ord’s overall assertion:

Sheridan’s response to Ord’s request was immediate but evasive. His letter would warm the cockles of any modern-day, risk-averse administrator with a penchant for ambiguity. He took the bureaucratic tack of acknowledging that Ord’s proposal might be appropriate in particular cases but could be risky as a general approach—and completed the obfuscation by throwing in a non sequitur warning that aid would compound suffering:

Ord interpreted Sheridan’s reply to be an official, if somewhat cryptic, rejection of his proposal. Undeterred, he pressed his case with the Secretary of War, William W. Belknap. The secretary was sympathetic to the settlers’ plight and Ord’s logic, but he wasn’t about to put his neck on the political chopping block by authorizing the distribution of military property to a civilian relief program. So Belknap passed the buck, suggesting that President Ulysses S. Grant authorize the allocation of clothing and blankets in light of both the crisis and the likelihood, or at least the hope, of subsequent congressional approval. Permission was granted the next day, and the following message was sent by the president to the Senate and House of Representatives in order to affirm his decision: “I have the honor to lay before Congress a communication of the Secretary of War relative to the action taken
in issuing certain supplies to the suffering people of Kansas and Nebraska, in consequence of the drought and grasshopper-plague, and to respectfully request that such action be approved.”