The Pauline wheat pile and the Nonpartisan League, 1917–1918

In the fall of 1917 a grain company stacked sacked wheat in the open at a grain platform at Pauline, at the north end of Arbon Valley, to wait for trucks. By spring some of it was spoiling, while the nation was saving wheat for the war, and in May 1918 the Nonpartisan League, a farmers' political organization, carried it to Herbert Hoover and into the League's own national weekly.

Platforms at Pauline

Pauline was about 25 miles from a railroad, and valley wheat went out by wagon to Michaud, a siding on the Oregon Short Line eight miles west of Pocatello. In 1917 the buyers tried platforms at Pauline and Crystal, close to the farms, with motor trucks to haul the sacks on. The Intermountain Milling Co. and the Farmers' Equity had platforms at Pauline, and on August 8 E. E. Zaring of American Falls, a buyer of Arbon wheat since at least 1911, went out to superintend the building of grain platforms.

Ed England received the grain for Zaring at his place a mile north of the Pauline church, and lived just behind the platform. "Grain is stacked all over with Ed England behind the scales," the Arbon column reported on October 30. A motor truck began hauling to Michaud on September 25 and two more soon joined it, but the wheat came in faster than they could carry it, and in October one Pauline platform fell down with its grain. In November the "abominable condition of the roads" stopped the trucks, and on November 8 the Zaring platform closed to haulers.

On March 29, 1918, the Pauline column of the American Falls Press reported grain spoiling at "the Zuring platform" in stormy weather, the sacks rotting and the grain spilling on the ground: "This is a shame at any time but more so now on account of our allies and American soldiers needing it so badly."

"Where a Mountain of Wheat Rots Away"

On May 1 Ray McKaig, field secretary of the Nonpartisan League, wired Herbert Hoover, head of the federal Food Administration, from Pocatello:

Twenty-five thousand bushels good wheat exposed to elements; no protection; piled up on farm 25 miles from railroad. Wheat sold by Zearing Milling company to American Falls flour mills. One thousand bushels of wheat moulded and sprouted. Flour mills hauling only spoiled wheat because their elevators are full. Please commandeer said wheat and bring to railroad.

On May 27 the League's weekly, the Nonpartisan Leader of St. Paul, printed the telegram with its lead article, "Where a Mountain of Wheat Rots Away," by James DeK. Brown, and photographs of what one caption called "a year's bread for 2,500 people left to mould." Brown described the pile, "near the postoffice of Pauline":

Twenty-five thousand bushels of Blue Stem and Turkey Red exposed to all the elements, rain, snow and sprouting heat. Not even a board covers it, not even a bit of tarred paper; no sheds. Just a pile of sacked wheat — a pile of food 20 feet high.

By the Leader's count the pile had held 50,000 bushels and was down to half, and the spoiled wheat was being "HAULED AWAY AS HOG FEED." It said the "Zearing Grain company" had bought the wheat at $1.82 a bushel and sold it to the American Falls flour mills, whose elevators were full, and that only two trucks were hauling. It charged that the millers were letting the wheat mould rather than bring it to the railroad, where the government might take it: "a vicious, unpatriotic game of beating the government." Within half a mile, it noted, stood a Farmers' Equity platform where farmers had delivered their wheat at a loss.

Of the man on the spot it wrote: "The man on whose farm the grain is piled, a Mr. England, has been trying to save it. He has resacked much of it. But his company is not with him."

The company's answer

The Food Administration made inquiry through H. M. Houser of Portland, its grain administrator for the Northwest. His reply, printed in the Leader on June 3 from the Idaho Leader, passed on the company's account: the wheat was properly piled on a platform covered with lumber, none of it was spoiled, and "delivery of all will be completed May 15." The Idaho Leader answered:

There is no platform, nothing but a few loose boards laid on the ground several inches apart, so that the lower tier of sacks are only fit for hog feed, all spoiled.

The wheat, it added, had lain uncovered since Thanksgiving. On June 10 the magazine cited photographs taken May 18 showing the grain still there, and on June 24 it said the wheat remained on June 1 and that "orders had been given prohibiting any person from going into the field where the wheat was piled."

Three days before the Leader's article, a Zaring Holloway hail-insurance advertisement in the Press of May 24, naming E. E. Zaring and Ed England as agents, warned that mutual companies would cause "more trouble than a Hun-partisan League," a wartime pun likening the League to the enemy.

What the other papers show

The Leader wrote as an advocate. No other paper found confirms its figures, its price or its charge about the millers' motives, and the company's side survives only as the Leader quoted it. Yet the Pauline column had seen grain spoiling in March, and on July 2 the Salt Lake Tribune wrote of charges that a considerable quantity of the wheat the companies had stored in the valley was "spoiled for milling purposes by reason of exposure."

Nor was the hauling done by May 15. Early on August 13, Fred Hochbaum, driving a Zaring Grain company truck, brought "the last load of 1917 wheat from the Zaring platform at Pauline" to the Michaud siding. Filling his tank there by lantern light, he was burned, painfully but not seriously, the Press said, when the gasoline caught fire.

The Leader's "Mr. England" was almost certainly Ed England, who received the grain at his place: the Ed (E. C.) England of the Stories, Pauline wheat buyer and later a county commissioner.

A warehouse at Pauline

That summer the Zaring company put up a warehouse at Pauline. A large crowd came to its opening dance, reported September 3. On October 8 the Arbon column reported, "The Zaring grain warehouse is about full and teams remain standing for hours waiting to unload." It was probably the first grain warehouse of the Stories, which the Pauline and West Fork history remembers as the valley's only warehouse, at first just a raised platform.