From the fall of 1913 the dry farmers of Arbon Valley were joining a farmers' cooperative. The Farmers' Society of Equity bought sacks, wire and machinery by the carload for its members and meant to market their grain together, and by June 1914 an elevator was proposed at Arbon. The papers of the time let us follow the hope for that elevator from 1914 to 1917.
A local at Arbon
The society reached the valley in the fall of 1913, the first harvest after Arbon, Pauline and Crystal passed from Oneida County into the new Power County. On September 6 the county's five Equity locals met at American Falls and formed a county organization, with representatives from Arbon, Crystal and Fairview. T. O. Phillips of Crystal was elected vice-president, and the American Falls Press reported that "the company will handle grain and potatoes this coming fall." In October the county board decided to open an agency at the Michaud siding on the railroad, reached by a road across the Fort Hall Reservation, to buy grain and sell hay and coal, and put Phillips in charge.
An Arbon woman wrote about the society. Mrs. Frank Fisher, whose husband was probably the Frank Fisher the Press had called one of "the new settlers of Arbon" in 1912, wrote to the women's page of Up-to-Date Farming, an Indianapolis farm paper. Her letter appeared on February 15, 1914. She wrote that she read nearly everything in the paper, then turned to the society:
I am much interested in its work for better marketing, which will mean more comforts and conveniences for our farm homes. I love farm life, run as it is, but when A. Y. Satterfield, the national organizer of the Farmers' Society of Equity, organized a local union here last fall, I became enthused with the visions of farm life as it might be and can be.
She added a recipe for cranberry sauce with raisins and a tip for keeping beets, turnips and carrots in sand in the cellar. That January Bishop W. F. Kowallis of the Meadow Ward at Pauline had gone to Logan on Equity business. He told the Logan Republican that some of the valley's farmers had to haul their grain twenty-two miles to market.
Carloads of sacks and wire
The society's meeting at Pocatello closed on the evening of February 16, 1914. It voted to back a farm paper for southeastern Idaho and told its secretary to buy ten cars of grain bags and several cars of woven wire fence, barbed wire and nails. Ten cars of machinery, most of it already sold, were on the way, and two cars of lumber were ordered. Directors were chosen by county or district, and beside counties such as Bingham, Bannock and Cache the Salt Lake Tribune listed "T. O. Phillips of Arbon district." This was very probably the Crystal man. The Shoshone Journal, reprinting the Pocatello Tribune, added: "Representatives of the society will be placed at the marketing places for grain and produce."
The valley held meetings of its own. Mr. and Mrs. W. Snyder of Crystal, probably W. C. Snyder and his wife, came over to Arbon for the Equity meeting in February and stayed with the Secrists. On Saturday, March 14, the society "held a rousing meeting," the Arbon correspondent wrote, and "the meaning of Equity was explained to those present."
Meanwhile, by early March, W. W. White had followed A. W. Davis as county secretary. With Satterfield, the state president, he organized new locals at Neeley, near American Falls, and at Rockland, in the valley west of Arbon. White then met the Rockland local to enroll members and take subscriptions for stock in the corporation, and plans for a farmers' elevator were to be discussed.
An elevator for Arbon
In late June 1914 the Press reported White's latest trip:
On Monday Mr. White went to Arbon, at which point it is proposed to build an elevator.
No later report of that elevator has been found. Frost hurt the crop that year: the next winter a grain buyer at Michaud said it had hit the Arbon valley harder than any other section, though its farmers still shipped fifty-six carloads of wheat through his warehouse.
The society kept coming back. A year later the Arbon column reported:
Mr. Morris, a representative of the Farmers Society of Equity, met with the Arbonites here Tuesday, June 8, at the Pauline meeting house, and on Wednesday, June 9 at the Central hall. The meeting was very much enjoyed by the large number present.
Mr. Morris played and sang, and one of his songs was his own, "Since we Organized the F S E." The paper said it was very much praised. A dance followed, with refreshments, and "all departed at a very late hour." The Pauline meeting house was probably the Meadow Ward's, and the Central hall was the public hall in the Central school building, where the weekly public dances were held.
The elevator came up again in 1916. On Friday evening, July 7, the society met at the Pauline L.D.S. church, and the Arbon column reported that "the society is trying to get signers in favor of erecting an elevator near Bannock creek." A man from Pocatello had lately been in the valley working for the company and secured many signers. The Pocatello Tribune, in an item the Twin Falls Times reprinted on July 25, reported that contractors were grading for a sidetrack near the Bannock section house, fifteen miles west of Pocatello on the Oregon Short Line railroad, where "the Intermountain Farmers' Equity will construct a large elevator to take care of the increasing output of the Arbon valley."
No later report of the Bannock siding elevator has been found. In the fall of 1917 the valley's wheat was still being hauled from platforms at Pauline and Crystal to the Michaud siding. Three motor trucks did the hauling until the roads stopped them, and then the buyers stopped buying until teams could be found. One of the Pauline platforms was the Farmers' Equity's. By early November its agent, Jewell Horton, had taken in more than 900,000 pounds of wheat, and nearly half a million pounds of it were still waiting there to be hauled. The grain warehouse later built at Pauline grew from one of those platforms, as the Stories tell it; no Equity elevator for the valley appears in the papers found so far.
On this site: the Stories entries on the first grain warehouse and on a June frost, probably in 1914, that broke off one homesteader's wheat, and the area histories of Pauline and West Fork and Crystal.
Sources
- American Falls Press, May 2, 1912, page 10
- American Falls Press, September 11, 1913, page 2
- American Falls Press, October 9, 1913, page 6
- Logan Republican, January 15, 1914, page 4
- Up-to-Date Farming (Indianapolis), February 15, 1914, "A Chatty Little Letter from Idaho"
- Salt Lake Tribune, February 18, 1914, page 13
- Shoshone Journal, February 20, 1914, page 1
- American Falls Press, March 5, 1914, page 5
- American Falls Press, March 12, 1914, page 1
- American Falls Press, April 2, 1914, page 11
- American Falls Press, June 25, 1914, page 5
- American Falls Press, February 4, 1915, page 4
- American Falls Press, June 17, 1915, page 1
- American Falls Press, July 20, 1916, page 1
- Twin Falls Times, July 25, 1916, page 4 (from the Pocatello Tribune)
- American Falls Press, November 16, 1917, page 1