Locust (15 page)

And so, just a month after Ord’s initial request, he and General John Pope at Leavenworth were overseeing the distribution of military supplies throughout Nebraska and Kansas. The army distributed 10,004 heavy infantry coats, 16,184 pairs of shoes, and 8,454 woolen blankets in a desperate effort to relieve the suffering of the blighted homesteaders. But as the winter dragged on, the settlers were forced to consume their scant supplies, including seed that they would need for next year’s crop—if they lived until spring. It seemed certain that widespread starvation would arrive before the thaw. Ord knew that handing out surplus clothing was a less delicate matter than passing out stores of perfectly good food that were needed to feed the troops. Reallocating military rations to the locust victims required that Congress be authentically engaged in the matter, rather than being treated as a political afterthought. So, Ord advanced this second prong of his offensive, convincing Nebraska’s Senator Phineas W. Hitchcock to propose an allocation of $100,000 worth of army provisions for the besieged settlers. The bill failed in the early winter of 1874.

As temperatures dropped and suffering mounted in early 1875, Congress took up the matter of the pioneers’ plight in the bitterly cold days of winter. The previous year’s Mississippi flood relief efforts provided something of a precedent, as the federal government had given food and clothing (including some from military stores) to the victims. The flood of locusts pouring out of the Rocky Mountains arguably warranted a commensurate response. Lawmakers appropriated $150,000 in food and clothing, “to prevent starvation and suffering . . . to any and all destitute and helpless persons living on the western frontier who have been rendered so destitute and helpless by ravages of grasshoppers.” They also took a somewhat longer view of the crisis, earmarking another $30,000 for wheat and vegetable seed distribution in the spring. The president signed the bills into law on February 10, and a massive relief effort was under way.

The Dakota, Missouri, and Platte Departments of the Army shared the appropriation. According to the Commissary-General of Subsistence,
1,957,108 food rations were distributed that winter. The recipients amounted to 107,535 people, including nearly 44,000 children, in Colorado, Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Nebraska. Given the army’s standard food ration and the number of beneficiaries, we can calculate that the federal program distributed over 700 tons of salted or fresh pork, nearly 1,000 tons of cornmeal, 150 tons of beans and sugar, 100 tons of coffee and tea, and almost 40 tons of salt. Kansas and Nebraska received extensive aid, whereas the Dakota Territory saw the least assistance, not for want of need but because General Alfred Terry considered the crisis exaggerated. In March and April, the worst months of the year because winter larders were at their lowest, 750,000 rations were distributed in Nebraska. How many graves were filled with emaciated victims of the locusts in the winter of 1874-1875 is not known, but perhaps hundreds succumbed to hunger. The number would likely have been in the thousands if the country had not rallied to save the starving settlers.

In March, Ord was transferred to Texas, a move that put an end to the West’s most sympathetic and effective spokesman—and the hungry farmer’s most powerful political ally. The federal program of seed distribution to beleaguered farmers would continue for another two years, but the outpouring of food and clothing would not be repeated. Other proposals for federal support failed to garner support, such as this recommendation in a report commissioned by Congress: “To many, the idea of employing soldiers to assist the agriculturist in battling with this pest, may seem farcical enough, but though the men might not find glory in the fight, the war—unlike most other wars—would be fraught only with good consequences to mankind.” Despite this morally persuasive argument, lawmakers did not mobilize the nation’s troops to directly combat the locusts. The federal government would continue to provide logistical support in the war against the locusts, but the farmers were left to do the actual fighting.

The federal programs associated with the Rocky Mountain locust and its victims in the 1870s set the stage for the next 125 years of agricultural
policies in the United States. In late October 1876, Minnesota’s Governor Pillsbury organized a meeting of the leaders from other locust-afflicted states. The governors of Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, and Nebraska met in Omaha to devise a comprehensive plan for dealing with the crisis. This distinguished group was joined by a panel of experts consisting of university professors and the state entomologists from Illinois and Missouri.

The convention yielded three substantial, interrelated outcomes. First, the governors unanimously concluded that the locust problem was too sweeping in its scale and complexity for any state to solve. Federal assistance was desperately needed, although the form that aid should take was not immediately evident. However, the second outcome of the convention helped to crystallize the form of assistance that the state leaders would demand from Washington. The governors provided the funds to publish 10,000 copies of a pamphlet outlining methods for controlling the locust. In the course of preparing this document it became evident how little was objectively known about control methods. Between their conviction that the locusts were a national disaster and their realization that they lacked vital scientific knowledge, the third outcome of the convention was formulated.

The governors called on the federal government to form and fund an entomological commission, a group of skilled scientists to address this critical knowledge gap. For the first time in the young nation’s history the people were turning to science as a means of solving a national problem. A sense of urgency, even desperation, flowed from the public through the states, to the capital—and then beyond the mechanisms of politics and the machinations of economics to the hallowed halls of science. Perhaps science hadn’t been the country’s first answer to the crisis, but there was a growing sense that it might be the nation’s last hope. Without too much historical hyperbole, this venture can be understood as defining how American society would perceive the value of scientific research. In a very real sense, this was the Manhattan Project of the nineteenth century—the cultural precedent for the value of publicly funded science to the people of the United States.

Those politicians gathered at the convention drafted a charge for the proposed commission that reflected the need for practical science.
The commission was to be charged with “reporting on the depredations of the Rocky Mountain locust and practical means of preventing its recurrence or guarding against invasions.” The responsibility to assess and report damage ensured that the states would have reliable surveys of locust populations, both to warn of upsurges and to prove the extent and severity of the problem to Congress. The charge to develop and evaluate control methods meant that scientists might find a way of quashing outbreaks before they started. Or, failing this, qualified experts would provide farmers with the most effective methods possible for suppressing the locusts.

The only question was: Who should comprise the commission? The answer was a turning point in the history of American agriculture and politics. The enormous growth of the U.S. Department of Agriculture—perhaps its very existence—can be linked to the personalities selected for this high-profile mission. The man named to head the U.S. Entomological Commission was present at the Omaha meeting. His scientific acumen permitted him to cleverly direct the course of deliberations toward the formation of the commission, and his political savvy allowed him to be perfectly positioned when discussions turned to the nuts and bolts of appointments to the body. The Missouri state entomologist was a man with a love of power and a romantic name to match—Charles Valentine Riley.

C
HARLES VALENTINE RILEY IMPRESSED THE POWER brokers at the governors’ convention with his flamboyant confidence, artistic temperament, and captivating presence. As the state entomologist for Missouri, he was an undisputed expert on the Rocky Mountain locust, but his capacity for persuasion went far beyond his formal office. Riley’s elegant bearing made him appear much larger than his slender, five-foot ten-inch carriage would have suggested. With his luxuriant wavy hair, prominent eyebrows, and extravagant handlebar mustache, Riley, a colleague once said, looked “much more like an Italian artist than like an American economic entomologist.” But Riley might never have pulled off what became the greatest political coup in entomological history without the alliance of Cyrus Thomas, a man whose ambitions were more modest and whose appearance could not have been more different. The heavy-set Illinois state entomologist peered sternly over a beaklike nose—playing the role of wizened owl to Riley’s swarthy
peacock. The two scientists made an intellectually and politically formidable duo.

Riley was disdainful of the entomological incompetence of those gathered in Omaha, but in this case he chose finesse over his typical lack of tact. Although he’d managed to undermine his own interests in aggravating his superiors in earlier conflicts, he saw that the stakes were high enough at the conference to merit a modicum of diplomacy. Riley had long aspired to raise the status of agricultural entomology in the country. Pest management was mired in outdated practices and erroneous folklore, and he’d made the case that the nation’s agriculture desperately needed the scientific foundation that entomology could provide. Five years earlier, in his report as the Missouri state entomologist, he’d laid out his philosophy of the importance of insects, explained the need for converting losses into dollars, and made the argument that farmers could never master the complexity of insect life on their own. His dream for entomology was impassioned as to the future and, as was typical of Riley, caustically reproachful about the present: “Finally, I hope to live to see the day when there will be a corps of well supported economic entomologists scattered throughout the country, instead of the few who are now in the field under crippled conditions.” Riley perceived that the proposed entomological commission would be the catalyst for his dream.

After the governors’ conference, Riley lamented how difficult it had been to convince the attendees that the locust could not permanently persist throughout its region of invasion, and he mocked the taxonomic ignorance of the politicos. The governors and their aides had considered any large grasshopper a Rocky Mountain locust, and Riley knew that erroneous reports of the locust invading the Southeast were based on such confusion. Even in Illinois, farmers had sounded the alarm of an impending locust outbreak when they came across high densities of leafhoppers, tiny insects whose only real similarity to newly hatched locusts is the capacity to hop. The mocking tone of Riley’s later account of the confusion between a large common grasshopper and the locust reveals his contempt: “It [the grasshopper] has a wide range, hibernates in the winged condition, and not only differs in size and habits from the Rocky Mountain Locust,
but entomologically is as widely separated from it as a sheep is from a cow.”

But at the governors’ conference Riley and Thomas understood that public ignorance and confusion were valuable assets. American society was scientifically naive but increasingly enthralled by the power of technology and industry. The states were faced with an overwhelming and bewildering creature—and the entomologists held the key to unlocking the scientific insights that might turn the battle. The governors were convinced of the need to demand that Congress form an entomological commission, but calls by the states for assistance had frequently fallen on deaf ears in Washington. Riley knew that the political maneuvering necessary to garner the power and resources that he sought would require several more allies.

Alpheus Spring Packard, Jr., was the third entomologist to become involved in the scheme to create a federally funded commission. This Harvard-educated medical doctor with a penchant for insects provided a link to the eastern establishment. With a profile resembling that of Charles Darwin, a graceful manner, and immaculate dress, Packard also lent an aura of cultured dignity and academic credibility—he’d been the Curator of the Peabody Academy of Science and had cofounded the
American Naturalist
. And as icing on the cake, his status as state entomologist of Massachusetts provided a grounding in the real world.

Packard had worked with Thomas during an expedition of the U.S. Geological and Geographic Survey of the Territories in the early 1870s. These two scientists were clearly impressed by the leadership of the survey’s chief, Ferdinand V. Hayden, and they saw him as a man with the capability and foresight to administer the nascent locust commission. And in this regard, Riley wholeheartedly agreed. He had collaborated with Hayden once before in proposing congressional funding for a study of injurious insects. The bill had failed in committee, but Riley was sure that Hayden was the ally he needed to advance the cause of economic entomology in the country.