The Montgomery Advertiser
- COTTON POOLING WORK PROCEEDING O'NEAL DECLARES
- RECORD ATTENDANCE SET BY THOUSANDS WHO CROWD MIDWAY
- Round Up 'Nuts' In Toledo Seeking To Find Slayer and Attacker of Teacher
The Montgomery Advertiser's front page of October 27, 1926, reported on Alabama's part in a Southwide campaign to rescue cotton growers. Alabama Farm Bureau president Edward A. O'Neal reported that nine counties were organizing their bankers, businessmen and farm bureaus to sign farmers up for a cotton pool and an acreage-reduction plan. The page also covered the state fair, where record crowds filled the midway and Ramer won first prize for community exhibits. A third story reported that Toledo police had ordered a roundup of people they called 'mentally deficient' after a schoolteacher was beaten to death in a way that recalled an attacker of the year before.
Translation
COTTON POOLING WORK PROCEEDING O'NEAL DECLARES
Organization of Alabama's part in the southwide movement for orderly marketing of cotton and reduction in cotton acreage is shaping rapidly, Edward A. O'Neal, head of the movement in Alabama and president of the Alabama Farm Bureau, advised Tuesday. Nine counties have already notified Mr. O'Neal that their bankers, business men and farm bureaus are perfecting organization for the sign-up of farmers in the cotton pool and acreage reduction plan; in some of these counties organization work is perfected.
RECORD ATTENDANCE SET BY THOUSANDS WHO CROWD MIDWAY
First prize for community exhibits, in a contest characterized by officials as unusual both in variety and extent of displays and in the artistry of their arrangement, was awarded to Ramer, Tuesday
Round Up 'Nuts' In Toledo Seeking To Find Slayer and Attacker of Teacher
Roundup of mentally deficient persons was ordered by Chief of Police Harry Jenkins tonight in the search for the attacker and slayer of Miss Lilly Dale Croy, 26, Toledo school teacher. The tactics of the murderer, who brutally beat the teacher to death in a school yard two blocks from her home last night, so resembled the operations of the notorious Toledo clubber of a year ago that police prepared for another wave of hysteria.
Context
A bumper crop and a falling price in 1926
O'Neal's campaign was a response to a glut. Time's business column of October 25, 1926, two days before this issue, said the year had been 'too good' for growers. It reported 47,207,000 acres to be harvested and a crop expected to reach 16,627,000 bales of 500 pounds each. The magazine added that cotton had fallen below 14 cents a pound and that growers were 'in a knot of nervous anxiety.' Against that background, the two goals named in the Advertiser's story had clear meanings. 'Orderly marketing' meant holding cotton back instead of dumping it on a falling market. Acreage reduction aimed to shrink the next year's crop, so that the surplus would not repeat itself.
Federal and Southern plans to hold cotton off the market
Alabama's plan followed a pattern that appeared across the South that October. Time reported that President Coolidge had appointed a commission whose tasks included encouraging Southern bankers to back relief steps, getting federal farm credit agencies to cooperate, and restricting cotton acreage for 1927. Agriculture Secretary Jardine wrote directly to the Alabama Farm Bureau's president, whom Time spelled 'O'Neil.' Jardine said there were facilities to store the crop for months or years and ample credit to carry it. Bernard Baruch proposed that local bankers who helped a farmer hold his crop should require him to limit next year's planting to about 60 percent of his acreage. South Carolina bankers moved to take 3,000,000 bales off the market. North Carolina bankers and merchants offered to finance storage if producers promised to cut acreage by 25 percent. The Advertiser's report that county bankers and businessmen were working with farm bureaus to sign farmers up for a pool combined with acreage reduction suggests Alabama was adopting the same bargain: bank credit for stored cotton in return for promises to plant less.
Edward O'Neal and the Alabama Farm Bureau
The Encyclopedia of Alabama says the Alabama Farm Bureau was organized at Alabama Polytechnic Institute, now Auburn University, in January 1921. Extension director Luther Duncan had called on state and local businessmen, bankers and farmers to form it. That mix of members matches the alliance of bankers, businessmen and farm bureaus that the Advertiser described in 1926. The encyclopedia names the bureau's second president, chosen in 1923, as Edward O'Neal III, grandson of Governor Edward A. O'Neal. The paper calls the campaign leader 'Edward A. O'Neal.' O'Neal's later career links the 1926 drive to federal farm policy. He became president of the American Farm Bureau Federation in 1931 and helped craft the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which paid farmers to plant fewer crops such as cotton in order to keep prices high. The 1926 plan relied on voluntary sign-ups; the New Deal turned the same goal into federal payments. One detail does not fit. The encyclopedia dates Montgomery County's first county bureau to 1927, while this 1926 story already describes county farm bureaus taking part in the organizing.
The Montgomery state fair and its agricultural roots
The fair whose midway drew record crowds in this issue had a long agricultural history. Alabama's Cotton Planters' Conventions and agricultural fairs came before the state fair. The first state fair, held in November 1855, was called the 'Agricultural Fair and Cattle Show.' By the turn of the twentieth century the fair was held at a fairground just north of Montgomery. In 1906 the Alabama Agricultural Association began encouraging African American entries and invited the construction of a 'Negro Building' to display the 'educational, moral, and industrial life' of Black Alabamians. The Advertiser's account of a community-exhibit contest judged on variety, extent and artistry shows that, alongside the midway's entertainment, the fair still served as a showcase where communities competed with displays of what they produced.
Original
COTTON POOLING WORK PROCEEDING O'NEAL DECLARES
Organization of Alabama's part in the southwide movement for orderly marketing of cotton and reduction in cotton acreage is shaping rapidly, Edward A. O'Neal, head of the movement in Alabama and president of the Alabama Farm Bureau, advised Tuesday. Nine counties have already notified Mr. O'Neal that their bankers, business men and farm bureaus are perfecting organization for the sign-up of farmers in the cotton pool and acreage reduction plan; in some of these counties organization work is perfected.
RECORD ATTENDANCE SET BY THOUSANDS WHO CROWD MIDWAY
First prize for community exhibits, in a contest characterized by officials as unusual both in variety and extent of displays and in the artistry of their arrangement, was awarded to Ramer, Tuesday
Round Up 'Nuts' In Toledo Seeking To Find Slayer and Attacker of Teacher
roundup of mentally deficient persons was ordered by Chief of Police Harry Jenkins tonight in the search for the attacker and-slayer of Miss Lilly Dale Croy, 26, Toledo school teacher. The tactics of the murderer, who brutally beat the teacher to death in a school yard two blocks from her home last night, so resembled the operations of the notorious Toledo clubber of a year ago that police prepared for another wave of hysteria.
Source: Holding institution