8/12/2004
Marilyn Dodgen About the time action leading to an official World War II was firing up around the world, the U.S. Government decided that there was an immediate need for materials to make rope and netting to supply the needs of various services. This need took top priority and Iowa, with its ideal climate and rich soil, was suggested as the place to grow the plants that would produce the elements used in making rope. This crop was hemp. At that time, their supply of hemp came from Manila and that route was cut off due to the Japanese escalating war. Area farmers, eager to contribute to the war effort, quickly applied to the War Productions Board for a permit to raise hemp. Once the permit was issued, they were limited to raising 10 acres of the crop. Their other food crops were also important towards the every day lives of citizens, and farmers felt comfortable setting aside those 10 acres for Uncle Sam. Difficult as it is for today's generation to realize, the entire country arose to the challenge of supporting the war effort in any way they could. Since many farmers and other people of occupations essential to the survival on the home front were exempt from the draft, only those who went ahead and signed up were taken into the service to fight the war overseas. Local farmers found hemp to be a profitable crop. It was easy to raise and they were assured of having a local outlet ready to buy it. They were usually able to clear from $100 to $150 per acre a year, while their corn crop was bringing in $30 to $40 per acre per year. Approximately 2,000 local acres were set to produce the needed hemp crop. Carl Parsons and his brother, Paul, raised a field of hemp and said one of their neighbors, Bob Russell, ran a binder for the plant. The Adams brothers, Horace and Lloyd, helped their dad, Harry, raise a hemp crop. Leonard Kirchoff had high school students who would be let out of school to come out and turn his hemp crop to aid in the ripening process. Shirley (Penning) Zenor said many from her class at school, including Duke Edge, Bob Worthington, Fritz Eggerich (he also worked at the hemp plant while he was in high school awaiting his call-up to the draft), Virgil Heidt, Mary (Pitstick) Daggy, her sister, Margaret (Pitstick) Weiss, Phyllis (Skogstad) Edge, and others from their class at school, went to the Kirchoff farm. They took sack lunches and he provided cold drinks for them. Alice (Christensen) Warner and her sister, Louella (Christensen) Joiner, were among the students who volunteered to turn the crop. Their dad was a guard at the hemp plant. Doris Van Horn said she also helped turn the hemp plants. Turning of the hemp plants was hard work. It was done using 20-foot long poles with two people, one at each end, sliding the poles under the plants and then lifting them up and over so the under side was exposed to the sunshine. Leonard Kirchhoff described the operation and his one year of hemp raising as having a good financial return for a lot of hard work. He said he planted in early May with a grain drill and the crop grew so tall that weeds were not a problem. The summer had good rains, but the fall turned out to be too dry. It was late fall when the crop was flattened by a binder for the retting process, where the stalk would rot so the fiber would easily come out. He remembers Catherine Osia's class of girls coming out to turn the hemp stalks and Miss Osia worked right along with them. After 10 days to two weeks, it got cold and the binder was brought back, but several teeth broke off due to the hard ground. The government had furnished about five cutters and as many binders for the whole county, and repairing the broken teeth wasn't working. Finally, George Kunert, using a direct welder on his farm, was able to make repairs that lasted. Duze Volberding was coordinator of the machines furnished by the government and he worked with the farmers. The hemp was so tall that to lift it into shocks or bundles was too hard due to lack of manpower, so Leonard had the sides removed from his hayrack, which had rubber tires (Eddie Henderson had replaced the steel wheels the year before). Dutch Bjornson, from his implement store just south of the Gazebo Park, brought his International flatbed truck out to pull the rack. They laid 10 to 14 foot stalks on the flat surface and hauled it in to the hemp plant, where they made a huge pile to the west of the building, where it could be accessible to the plant. When they came to the underpass, three high school boys, Ben Bjornson, Kurt Kinseth and Warren Johnsen, who had been helping them, were riding up on top of the truck and Leonard said he never saw three boys move so fast as they did, sliding down off of that truck to keep from hitting the bridge. Leonard only raised hemp that one year. One reason was that the price being paid was cut in half the second year. He also said that the stubble in the field was so tough and stringy that it twisted around the plow or discs when they tried to clear the field. They finally used a harrow that rolled it into big balls and the stringy mass was set on fire to get rid of it. Wilma Erdman worked at the plant while her husband, Ed, was away in the service. Those were hard times for young mothers, who worked 10-hour shifts under conditions that wouldn't be allowed today. The hackle machine she worked with was very sharp, to the point of being dangerous. She said she pulled the fibers through the spikes to remove the tow (unwanted debris), and the work was strenuous and very dirty, but she said it paid pretty good money and that she was able to "put some aside." Her mother, Annie Blake, kept her young son while she worked. They lived with her mother until her husband came home from the war. Farmers in the Bode area also raised hemp. Those living north of town might have taken their hemp to the plant in Algona. A group gathered at the Bode Library to share information about their involvement in, or that of their parents, back in those early war years. Tommy Tompkins said he and Sammy Clark of Humboldt drove their flat-bed trucks south to Red Oak to haul 12-inch cement blocks back to Humboldt to be used in the construction of the buildings at the local hemp plant. He said the local cement plant made 10-inch blocks, but the government insisted on using 12-inch ones instead. Tommy also hauled hemp to the plant for either Clarence or Art Kunert, who both farmed east of Dakota City. He related that one time the hemp was 14 feet long and he almost didn't make it through the viaduct opening beneath the railroad track overpass going to Dakota City. Anna Larson said that her husband, Ralph, hauled hemp for Leonard and Delbert Holden, and she remembers working out in the hemp field, helping bundle the hemp into shocks. Charlotte Carson worked for Mandius Hanson who raised hemp south and west of Bode. She said his hemp was 12 to 14 feet tall and real hard to handle when it had to be turned over. Janice (Pflibsen) Parker has her father-in-law's certificate presented to him after the war, commending him for his participation in the hemp-raising war effort. Dave Halsrud also has a certificate issued to his family. Charlie Thatcher was one of many students who were let out of school to turn the hemp. Some farmers even paid the students, while most worked as volunteers for the war effort. Norm Petersen said students from his junior high school class and other classes at Gilmore City went out to turn the hemp in their area. Doris Cook and her girlfriend, Mavis Bowden, were among those students who turned hemp. Marvin Christensen was a teacher at Gilmore City High School, and he remembers that there was an office above a building downtown in Humboldt where the hemp plant officials worked. They would call the school when they needed students to come help turn the hemp crop on the area farms. Yvonne (Joenks) State said that she worked at that office for a short time and thinks that it was located upstairs over either the Dcor Shoppe or the next building east, housing the Hubbard Drug Store building (now The Cottage). She said Enid (Stoebe) Day, Della (Wells) Trauger (who was from Livermore and now lives in Humboldt), Darlene Edge, Catherine Ennis, Shirley Hanson, Tran Tjelle, Clarence Olson (Bode), and Everett Winter (Hardy) were the people she worked with during the years the hemp plant was in operation. It was called the AAA office. Della Trauger said that farmers came there to sign contracts to raise hemp, and business for the hemp plant operation was handled there. They hired committeemen from each district, who were farmers, to walk the fields with a tape measure to make sure the hemp crop was the full 10 acres for the government requirement. Larry Lynch's dad, Lester, farmed south and east of Gilmore City. He said his brother, Barry, was only 12-years-old and he pulled many a load of hemp behind a tractor on a hayrack all the way into Humboldt to the hemp plant, where it was unloaded and then drove the empty rack back to the farm. Larry's uncle, Frank Behrendsen, also worked at the hemp plant. Farther south, near Pioneer, E.D. Gochenour raised hemp and his daughter, Dorathy (Terwilliger) Boom (who lives at Friendship Haven in Fort Dodge) worked at the hemp plant. She said that her husband, Barney, was not well enough to work, and that was their only income to feed and house their family. Hemp is a vegetarian plant used mainly for making rope and grew anywhere from hip to shoulder height, and sometimes as high as 14 feet. Hemp was also used to make mattresses and seat cushions. The hemp was hauled to town on racks and graded on a one-two-three scale. The farmers would receive $30 to $50 per ton, depending on the class of their crop. The process included extracting fibers from the stalks of hemp. Large bales of the fibers were shipped to rope factories to be made into ropes. Extensive research failed to turn up information on where the Humboldt hemp crop was shipped. Only one reference could be found as to where these rope plants were located, and that was in an encyclopedia at the Humboldt Public Library. One sentence mentioned hemp-rope making factories in Wisconsin and Kentucky. At the turn of the century, rope manufacturing was done mainly on the East Coast, since it was used for ships and shipping routes came into the ports there from Europe. The refuse (herds) from the hemp stalk processing made excellent bedding for animals or fowls. Huge stacks of herds were made outside the plant and they resembled haystacks. Farmers and stock handling firms were encouraged to haul it away at no charge. Barbara Thorson said that her mother, Dorothy Nielsen, worked at the hemp plant and she made Barbara a grass skirt out of leftover fibers, that she had for several years. Kenny Kunert said they had a grass skirt in his family, too, and he is sure many other homes in Humboldt also had items made of hemp leftovers. Other uses for hemp by-products were manufacturing paper, canvas and some cloth material. Oil from the plant was used in caulking material, paint, plastics, varnish, and soap. Victor Anderson, local trucker, hauled the finished bales of hemp fibers to the M & St. L Depot, where they were rolled up and loaded into box cars for shipping to the rope factories. In addition to raising hemp in this area, a hemp processing plant was built about a mile west of the Hwy. 169 and Hwy. 3 intersection, on the north side of the road. There were six buildings, including a straw shed, grading and bailing room, a dryer, a mill, an office, and power plant, plus a boiler room. The main building was 300 by 600 feet. The plant, including 30 harvestors and 29 binders, was valued at $350,000, the same price as a bomber at that time. Neighboring towns of Eagle Grove and Algona also had hemp processing plants. It took almost a year to complete the Humboldt plant, due to the solid rock just under the surface of the soil there. Workmen had to chop through the rock to anchor the foundations. One person was quoted as saying that those buildings were so firmly grounded, that a storm fierce enough to destroy that facility would surely take most of the towns of Humboldt and Dakota City, too. There were a total of six buildings, and all six are still standing today. Bob Worthington said that he and several other high school boys helped build the hemp plant, doing cement work under Harold Ennis who was their supervisor on the job. Older residents remember what an imposing sight the plant was with its smokestacks that were 20 feet in diameter at the base and rose 85 feet into the air. Today's environmentalists would literally choke if they had been around in those days. The smoke was said to be "so dirty," but no one ever reported getting sick from the pollution it must have created. The smokestacks are no longer standing. Even though it was hot, dirty work, most people were just thankful to have employment at that time. It proved to be a great boost to the local economy. Since the younger men from the area were away in the service, the plant had to rely on women and older men for their work force. The plant ran two shifts, each of the 120 workers receiving 55 cents to 60 cents per hour. The foremen were paid 75 cents per hour. Workers came from all over the county. German and Italian prisoners of war, who were encamped at Algona, were brought by buses to work shifts at the plant. In an article interviewing the late Harold Ennis, who was the first foreman employed at the plant, he said that the Germans were excellent workers, but the Italians preferred singing and dancing to hard work. One of Harold's responsibilities was firing the boiler, which he did throughout the years of the plant's operation. Tran Tjelle was the general foreman, Clarence Powell was the assistant manager, and Mike Brayton was plant manager. An ad in the Humboldt Reminder brought response from several area people. Kenny Kunert was part of the crew from the start of the plant to the closing. He said that others who worked there with him included Alvin Ackerson, Marie Monson, Elvin Meyer Dorothy Nielsen, Sam Smith, George Grebner, Adolph Reitz, Bob Russell, Ruth Cook (who worked in the office), Ruth Campbell, Betty Crain, Gladys Stueve, and Aagot Meyer. He also worked along side the German prisoners. One of them, Heinz Boheme, he came to know well, and for several years after the war, corresponded with him after he returned to his family in Germany. Kenny also tells about the German SS prisoners who thought they were too good to do such menial labor. He said they wore a white scarf knotted at the neck, and if it got dirt on it, they would stop and hold up the other workers in the line, while they took the scarf off, shook it and then re-tied it around their neck. Harold Ennis told about the fine meals that were cooked by Guy and Olga Smith in their home and brought to the plant, at a 40-cent cost, to the day shift people. A piece of pie was an extra 10 cents. The night shift brought their own lunches. Mary Lou Smith, who lives at Humboldt Homes, said her husband, Allan, worked at the plant, and so did his dad, Guy Smith. Milford Knudson said he worked there, loading racks, and even had a picture of the crew, which he shared for this article. The entire plant was surrounded by a barbed wire, electrified fence. Five, full-time guards were on duty, along with guard dogs. No smoking was allowed, because of the flammability of the materials being used. Since two drugs, marijuana and hashish, are attained from the hemp plant, the government assured the people handling it that their hemp couldn't be smoked, because these crops were not kept in the field long enough to blossom. Today, most people would recognize that bit of information as pure propaganda. Although the plant only operated for a short time, its operation was recognized by the government for its contribution to the war effort. In 1945 it was announced that seven of the 11 hemp plants in Iowa were to be closed, due to the war going well, and the need for more hemp being limited. Two unprocessed stacks were moved to the Humboldt plant from the closed Eagle Grove plant for processing. Later, the machinery was moved from the Humboldt plant to four remaining plants still in operation in Iowa. The buildings were abandoned and left standing. Thomas Christensen, who started out as one of the original guards when the plant was under 24-hour surveillance, stayed on as the caretaker. He had an office in the former scale house near the front gate. His duties included sweeping out the buildings occasionally and looking after the area in general. He also oversaw removal of refuse from the estimated 125 tons left on site by anyone wanting to haul it away. He received a regular salary check through the mail from the government. He also worked as the Humboldt town constable. Tom was the father of Alice Warner, Louella Joiner and Don Christensen, who still live in Humboldt. After the plant sat idle and for sale, for three years, Humboldt businessman Elmer Lindhart purchased the property from the government for one dollar. He then reorganized the 1st Battalion, 194th Field Artillery Unit of the Iowa National Guard, and the site of the old hemp plant was once again being used as a government-related function. The unit was headquartered there until September 30, 1980. In 1981, Carla Peterson purchased the property, which is currently known for its antique business, "New, Used and Abused." According to Amy (Warnock) Kolacia of Fort Dodge, who did extensive research on the hemp plant as a class research paper in 1987, "From hemp plant to military installation to an antique treasure trove, the "old lady" on Highway 3 has played a proud and distinguished role in Humboldt's history. |
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The Humboldt
Independent • Official paper of Humboldt County
Telephone: (515)
332-2514 |
