Prairie Fires
Page 68
160. See Gene Smiley, “The U.S. Economy in the 1920s,” EH.net: https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-u-s-economy-in-the-1920s/. See also L. C. Gray, “Accumulation of Wealth by Farmers,” Annual Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, vol. 35 (New Haven, CT: American Economic Association, 1923), p. 177.
161. See RWL Notebook 1921–36, entry for August 15, 1929. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #12 (p. 78). See also, RWL to Guy Moyston, February 9, 1924.
162. RWL Notebook 1921–36, entry for January 22, 1921. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #12 (p. 3).
8. THE ABSENT ONES
1. Joint Resolution of Congress proposing a constitutional amendment extending the right of suffrage to women, approved June 4, 1919; Ratified Amendments, 1795–1992; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.
2. LIW, “Who’ll Do the Women’s Work,” Missouri Ruralist, April 5, 1919; Farm Journalist, p. 179.
3. LIW, “Who’ll Do the Women’s Work”; Farm Journalist, pp. 180–81.
4. LIW, “Women’s Duty at the Polls,” Missouri Ruralist, April 20, 1919; Farm Journalist, p. 182.
5. Farm Journalist, p. 182.
6. LIW, “Look for Fairies Now,” Missouri Ruralist, April 5, 1916; Farm Journalist, p. 64.
7. LIW, “Folks Are ‘Just Folks,’” Missouri Ruralist, May 5, 1916; Farm Journalist, p. 70.
8. Farm Journalist, p. 70.
9. Ibid., p. 181.
10. Alice Johns Myers, “My Roots Are Very Deep Here,” The Best of the LORE (De Smet: Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, 2007), p. 56.
11. Ibid.
12. LIW, “The Farm Home,” Missouri Ruralist, January 5, 1920; Farm Journalist, p. 210.
13. Who’s Who in Finance, Banking, and Insurance: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporaries, 1920–1922, ed. John William Leonard, vol. 2 (New York: Who’s Who in Finance, 1922), p. 251.
14. See RWL, Hill-Billy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1926). The character of “Uncle George Haswell” is clearly based on Freeman.
15. “Mansfield Justamere Club Stages Unusual Programs,” Springfield Daily Leader, May 8, 1922, p. 6. “In the French style” presumably referred to serving a cheese course for dessert accompanied by preserves.
16. LIW, West from Home, p. 20.
17. LIW, “Mother, a Magic Word,” Missouri Ruralist, September 1, 1921; Farm Journalist, p. 259.
18. LIW, “A Homey Chat for Mothers,” Missouri Ruralist, September 15, 1921; Farm Journalist, p. 260.
19. Farm Journalist, p. 260.
20. LIW, “As a Farm Woman Thinks,” Missouri Ruralist, August 1, 1923; Farm Journalist, p. 290.
21. “Mrs. C. P. Ingalls, Pioneer of County, Dies at 84,” De Smet News, April 25, 1924.
22. See RWL to Guy Moyston, January 19 and February 9, 1924.
23. See Fellman, p. 26.
24. LIW, “As a Farm Woman Thinks,” Missouri Ruralist, June 1, 1924; Farm Journalist, p. 309.
25. Farm Journalist, p. 310.
26. LIW, “As a Farm Woman Thinks,” Missouri Ruralist, December 15, 1924; Farm Journalist, p. 311. Wilder wrote one last article for the Ruralist in 1931, but it was not a continuation of her column.
27. Moyston and Lane would work on at least one play together, Fanutza, a one-act adaptation of a short story by Konrad Bercovici, produced at London’s Grand Guignol. See “Books and Authors,” New York Times Book Review and Magazine, December 11, 1921, p. 20.
28. Dorothy Thompson, November 27, 1920, as quoted in the introduction to Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane: Forty Years of Friendship, Letters, 1921–1960, ed. William Holtz (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1991), p. 4.
29. See ibid., pp. 4, 189.
30. See RWL, The Peaks of Shala: Being the Record of Certain Wanderings Among the Hill-Tribes of Albania (London: Chapman & Dodd, 1922), p. 24. See also RWL Diary, April 1921. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #9.
31. RWL to LIW, April 27, 1921, p. 3. I have corrected a typographical error (“rigosouly”) in the first sentence of the quotation.
32. RWL, The Peaks of Shala, p. 207.
33. Ibid., p. 223.
34. See, for example, RWL to Dorothy Thompson, February 16, 1927, in Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane, pp. 42–49.
35. RWL to LIW and AJW, March 21, 1922.
36. RWL to Guy Moyston, March 15, 1922.
37. RWL to Guy Moyston, September 12, 1922.
38. See Holtz, Ghost, pp. 124, 128.
39. RWL Diary, October 23, 1922.
40. RWL to Fremont Older, February 23, 1927, p. 5.
41. RWL, “America’s Guiding Spirit,” part of “Where the World Is Topsy-Turvy,” a series of World Travelogues, San Francisco Call & Post, August 20, 1923.
42. Ibid.
43. RWL to Fremont Older, February 23, 1927, p. 4.
44. Ibid., p. 2.
45. RWL Journal 1929, “Little Review Questionnaire,” unpaginated, HHPL, p. 76.
46. RWL to Clarence Day, June 19, 1926, p. 2.
47. RWL Diary, 1923, entry for October 3, 1923. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #17.
48. Ibid., October 9, 1923.
49. Ibid., December 31, 1923.
50. Ibid., December 20, 1923.
51. RWL to Guy Moyston, January 19 and February 9, 1924.
52. RWL to Moyston, February 9, 1924.
53. Ibid.
54. See RWL to Guy Moyston, August 6, 1924, writing about their plans to take rooms at Jane Burr’s house in Croton, New York, that fall: “if we were to stay at Jane’s, in that transplanted Greenwich Village, the Villagers would put the same construction on it that the Mansfield villagers put upon your being here.”
55. William Anderson, interview with Helen Boylston, August 4, 1981, p. 28. Transcript, HHPL, WHC.
56. RWL to Guy Moyston, undated letter, circa June 1924, beginning “Dear Guy, It’s good to hear that the cool weather followed you eastward.”
57. RWL to Guy Moyston, undated letter, circa 1924, beginning “Wishing for something to write about’s a useless expenditure of good wishing.”
58. RWL to Guy Moyston, undated letter, circa June 1924, beginning “Dear Guy, It’s good to hear that the cool weather followed you eastward.”
59. RWL to Guy Moyston, undated letter, circa summer, 1924, beginning “The clipping about English folk songs.”
60. RWL to Guy Moyston, undated 1924 letter, beginning “Dear Guy, The serial has gone to you and to Brandt’s…”
61. Ibid.
62. RWL Diary, 1924, entries for January 15 and February 2, 1924. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #21.
63. RWL to Guy Moyston, January 17, 1925, p. 2.
64. RWL to Guy Moyston, February 9, 1925.
65. Ibid.
66. William Anderson, interview with Helen Boylston, August 4, 1981, p. 3. The interview was conducted when Boylston, age 86, was suffering from memory loss. At one point in the interview, she exclaimed that “Mama Bess had red hair and the temper of an angry boa constrictor.�
� HHPL, WHC.
67. Ibid., pp. 35, 37. HHPL, WHC.
68. RWL to LIW, undated (November 1924).
69. Ibid., p. 3.
70. Ibid.
71. See RWL to Guy Moyston, August 30, 1925; in this letter, Lane calculates her parents’ annual income as one thousand dollars, half of it derived from her yearly contribution.
72. RWL to Guy Moyston, July 27, 1925.
73. RWL Notebook, 1921–36, entry for March 31, 1925. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #12 (p. 45).
74. RWL to Moyston, July 27, 1925.
75. Ibid.
76. See RWL to Guy Moyston, August 30, 1925.
77. RWL, “A Place in the Country,” Country Gentleman, vol. 90, no. 11 (March 14, 1925), p. 4.
78. See RWL Notebook, 1921–36, entry for May 4, 1924. HHPL, item #12 (p. 30).
79. RWL to Guy Moyston, July 27, 1925.
80. Ibid.
81. LIW, “A Few Words to the Voters,” Mansfield Mirror, March 19, 1925. The statement ran throughout that month.
82. Wilder’s late entry in the race can be seen from the Announcements column running in the Mansfield Mirror. Both of her opponents announced in February, with C. A. Stephens running his statement “To the Voters of Pleasant Valley Township” on February 12, 1925.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid.
85. RWL to Guy Moyston, March 9, 1925.
86. Ibid., March 22, 1925.
87. Ibid., March 31, 1925.
88. C. A. Stephens, “To the Voters of Pleasant Valley Township,” Mansfield Mirror, February 12, 1925, p. 4.
89. “The Election,” Mansfield Mirror, April 2, 1925, p. 3. According to these results, Stephens received 256 votes, Hugh Williams 84, and Wilder 56. See also RWL to Guy Moyston, April 1, 1925.
90. RWL to Guy Moyston, April 1, 1925.
91. LIW to Martha Carpenter, June 22, 1925.
92. Ibid.
93. Martha Carpenter to LIW, October 9, 1925.
94. Ibid. September 2, 1925.
95. Ibid.
96. Ibid., October 9, 1925.
97. Ibid., September 2, 1925.
98. Ibid.
99. RWL to Guy Moyston, undated mid-April 1925 letter beginning “I’m awfully lonesome…”; RWL to Fremont Older, November 25, 1926.
100. LIW to AJW, September 18, 1925.
101. Ibid., September 21, 1925, p. 2.
102. Ibid., p. 3.
103. LIW to Meroe Andrews, December 17, 1924, in SL LIW, p. 30.
104. LIW to AJW, October 6, 1925, in SL LIW, p. 48.
105. See RWL to Guy Moyston, July 27, 1925.
106. Ibid.
107. See RWL to Guy Moyston, May 30, 1925.
108. RWL to AJW and LIW, October 7, 1926.
109. Ibid.
110. This story was told by Don Brazeal and Imogene Green in Stephen W. Hines, “I Remember Laura” (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994), p. 228. Brazeal and Green, brother and sister, recalled that their father, Pete Brazeal, worked for the Wilders in the mid-1920s, at a time when the Wilders’ Airedale dog ate at the table with them. Although they remembered the dog’s name as “Ring,” their description matches that of Nero.
111. See LIW to Guy Moyston, June 28, 1926.
112. Ibid.
113. The sketch was included in RWL to Guy Moyston, July 4, 1926.
114. RWL, “If I Could Live My Life Over Again,” Cosmopolitan, March 1925, p. 33.
115. Ibid., p. 179.
116. RWL to Guy Moyston, February 25, 1925.
117. RWL, “I, Rose Wilder Lane, Am the Only Truly Happy Person I Know…,” Hearst’s International, combined with Cosmopolitan, June, 1926, pp. 42–43, 140.
118. Ibid., p. 42.
119. There is no way to verify Lane’s story, but chloroform figured prominently in detective fiction of the time.
120. Holtz, Ghost, p. 170.
121. See William Holtz, ed., Travels with Zenobia: Paris to Albania by Model T Ford (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1983), pp. 111–12.
122. RWL to Guy Moyston, March 5, 1927, p. 2; see also RWL to Clarence Day, March 5, [1927], and RWL to Clarence Day, undated fragment following her letter to him of March 5, beginning “Do you ever have times…”
123. RWL to Clarence Day, March 5, [1927].
124. Ibid., undated fragment beginning “Do you ever have times…”
125. RWL to Dorothy Thompson, March 11, 1927, in Holtz, Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane, pp. 54–55.
126. RWL, Hill-Billy, unpaginated dedication.
127. Ibid., p. 19.
128. See RWL to Carl Brandt, May 26, 1928.
129. RWL, “Yarbwoman,” Harper’s Magazine (July 1927), pp. 210–21.
130. RWL, “My Albanian Garden,” November 3, 1926, p. 4.
131. RWL Notes and Analysis, Books Read, 1928–33, entry c. June 1930. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #35.
132. RWL, “My Albanian Garden,” November 3, 1926, p. 4.
133. RWL Notebook 1921–36, entry for October 17, 1927. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #12 (pp. 55, 56).
134. Ibid., p. 58.
135. RWL to Dorothy Thompson, March 11, 1927, in Holtz, Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane, p. 54.
136. “My Albanian Garden,” February 7, 1927; November 16, 1926.
137. RWL to Guy Moyston, March 5, 1927; RWL to Dorothy Thompson, March 11, 1927, in Holtz, Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane, p. 52; and RWL to Clarence Day, July 10, 1927.
138. RWL to Fremont Older, July 14, 1927.
139. RWL to Clarence Day, July 10, 1927.
140. Ibid. Lane referred to the novel by its English title, Jew Süss; Feuchtwanger’s novel was not anti-Semitic, but in 1939 it was transformed by Josef Goebbels into the notorious Nazi propaganda film by the same name.
141. RWL to Clarence Day, July 10, 1927.
142. RWL to Fremont Older, January 23, 1929.
143. RWL to Guy Moyston, September 6, 1927.
144. RWL to Mary Margaret McBride, April 1930. Lane alluded to her father being diagnosed with cancer “last summer,” but may have mistaken the time.
145. Holtz, Ghost, p. 184.
146. RWL to Guy Moyston, March 6, 1928.
147. RWL Notebook 1921–36, entry for February 26, 1928. HHPL, RWL Diaries and Notes, item #12 (p. 45).
9. PIONEER GIRL
1. Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979; 2004), p. 93.
2. Ibid., p. 92.
3. Riney-Kehrberg, Map 1.2 on p. 13.
4. Ibid., p. 14.
5. Eugene N. White, “Lessons from the Great American Real Estate Boom and Bust of the 1920s,” National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2009, p. 8.
6. See RWL, “If I Could Live My Life Over Again,” p. 179.
7. See White, “Lessons from the Great American Real Estate Boom,” p. 1.
8. Wright County, Deeds of Trust, vol. 48.
9. In a profile of her mother for Harper & Brothers, Lane wrote that her mother had handled “nearly a million dollars o
f government money”; see “My Mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder,” in Reader, p. 170. My estimate is based on this and on information given in the minutes of the last Farm Loan Association meeting in which Wilder served as secretary, on February 25, 1928. Mansfield Collection.