DUCKING FARM ISSUES
Teller, Walter Magnes
Ducking Farm Issues TRAMPLING OUT THE VINTAGE, by Joseph A. Cocannouer. University of Oklahoma Press. $2.75. Reviewed by walter aaagnes teller THIS book is a kind of autobiography. The man who...
...In 40 years these things have been immensely bettered but the farmer is no closer to salvation...
...The free range advocates were the large cattle owners and shiftless farmers who gave little attention to their pasture fences...
...I wish he had been more definite...
...He writes, "there was more debating from the floor than from the regular debaters themselves...
...Apparently the closest he ever came to real issues was when he staged a school debate on resolved, that farmers should fence their crops and then throw the country open to free range...
...Of course Cocannouer is right that rural education needs drastic overhauling but very much more than that is needed to raise agriculture from the status of a backward industry...
...The man who wrote it was raised on a farm in the sand hills of Oklahoma, went to Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College to learn better farming, and then never farmed again...
...Cocannouer returned to the states and went to work for various California land companies...
...This was trampling out another kind of vintage...
...The immaturity, the conceit, the contempt of the unsuccessful, the cant, the bad writing are among the minor defects...
...Between these 2 extremes were the farmers who stood as a unit for fenced pasture lands and open fields...
...AFTER that it is not too surprising to find Cocannouer teaching agriculture to the Filipinos, practising his Latin on the padres, and wondering "why a carabao detests a perfectly Christian white man" like himself...
...He became a teacher of agriculture...
...And after 40 years Cocannouer should know it and should say so...
...That interest in economics and sociology disheartens him...
...Cocannouer writes a book without a chapter head and without a date...
...Here was something hot—here was where farming impinged on society—and what does Cocannouer make of it...
...This Dutchman, as Cocannouer proclaims himself, (and according to him the Dutch are the greatest gardeners in the world which is, of course, a silly statement) believes he has been trampling out the vintage where John Steinbeck's grapes of wrath are stored...
...Fresh from college he went to the sand hills to teach in the rural schools...
...Independence at any cost had won the day...
...It was plain to me that there would no longer be a future for the American in the Philippines...
...In the opinions of Joe Cocannouer and his mother there were few good farmers in Oklahoma in those days...
...But again after some vague period of time Cocannouer quit...
...But Cocannouer knew the answer...
...Cocannouer does not say how long he lasted in the Oklahoma schools but obviously he could not overcome forces which he did not understand and could not have overcome if he had understood...
...He seeks to record a 40 year period of personal and agricultural history and he says the events of which he writes took place in "the period . . . from the corn knife to the corn harvester of today...
...He had a missionary's faith in vocational agriculture...
...The Oriental mind was in control...
...One-third of the book is devoted to the experience in the Philippines and this is the most interesting part...
...The farmers were to be saved by better rotations, better tillage, better manuring, better feeding, and better breeding...
...The American was being pushed into the background...
...That was what those Okies needed, only he calls them "cotton minds," "movin' wagoners," "fly-by-nighters...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 16
