Milo Reno

Milo Reno, the seventh son and twelfth of thirteen children of John and Elizabeth Reno, was born on a farm Wapello County on 5th January, 1866. Milo attended a local Quaker school and Oskaloosa College in Iowa. Milo's mother wanted him to enter the ministry and although he retained a strong interest in theology he decided to become a farmer.

Reno married Christine Good and they had three children, of whom only one, a daughter Susan Ann, grew to maturity. He was active in politics and in 1888 joined the Union Labor Party and agitated for farming reform. Reno was especially critical of bankers and capitalists who he argued were converting the American farmers into peasants.

In 1918 Reno joined the recently organized Iowa Farmers' Union, becoming its president in 1921. He supported the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief bill that proposed a federal agency would support and protect domestic farm prices by attempting to maintain price levels that existed before the First World War. It was argued that by purchasing surpluses and selling them overseas, the federal government would take losses that would be paid for through fees against farm producers. The bill was passed by Congress in 1924 but was vetoed by President Calvin Coolidge. He did the same thing in 1926, 1927 and 1928.

During the 1928 Presidential Election he opposed the Republican Party because of the actions of Coolidge. After the election of Herbert Hoover he campaigned against his proposed Federal Farm Board. He worked closely with Henry A. Wallace, the editor of the influencial Wallaces' Farmer .

In 1931 Iowa farmers decided to fight back against the impact of the Great Depression. In Logan 500 farmers joined forces outside the courthouse to prevent the sale of Ernest Ganzhorn's farm. At Storm Lake "rope-swinging farmers came close to hanging a lawyer conducting a foreclosure". At Le Mars in Plymouth County, five hundred farmers marched on the courthouse and dragged a judge out of his courtroom, placed a noose around his neck, and threatened to hang him unless he stopped approving farm foreclosures. Other mob incidents took place in Willmar, Minnesota and Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Reno emerged as the leader of this rebellion and in the summer of 1932 he established the Farmers' Holiday Association. His idea was to withhold farm products from the market, in essence creating a farmers' strike. The main slogan was "Lets call a Farmer's Holiday, a Holiday let's hold. We'll eat our wheat and ham and eggs, And let them eat their gold." On 8th August Reno called the first "farm holiday," a strike for higher prices. Pickets blockaded the roads into several Iowa cities and stopped trucks carrying farm produce to market.

Henry A. Wallace became uncomfortable with this approach. As John C. Culver, the author of American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace (2001) has pointed out: "Like his forebears, Wallace was uncomfortable with populist insurrection. He thought Reno's notion of a farm strike was ill conceived at best, but he understood well the anger and frustration behind it."

William E. Leuchtenburg, the author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (1963), has argued: "Milo Reno... helped organize farmers to refuse to ship food into Sioux City for thirty days or until such time as they got the 'cost of production'. Farmers blocked highways with logs and spiked telegraph poles, smashed windshields and headlights, and punctured tires with their pitchforks. When authorities in Council Bluffs arrested fifty-five pickets, one thousands angry farmers threatened to storm the jail, and the pickets were released on bail. In Nebraska, where farmers carried placards reading 'Be Pickets or Peasants,' strikers halted a freight train and took off a carload of cattle."

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected as president, he appointed Henry Wallace as his Secretary of Agriculture. On 8th March 1933, Wallace and Rexford Tugwell met with Roosevelt and asked him to expand the scope of the special congressional session to include the agricultural crisis as well as the banking emergency. Roosevelt agreed to this suggestion and it was agreed to summon the nation's farm leaders to an "emergency conference" to be held in Washington. Wallace went on national radio and told the country: "Today, in this country, men are fighting to save their homes. That is not just a figure of speech. That is a brutal fact, a bitter commentary on agriculture's twelve years' struggle.... Emergency action is imperative."

On 11th March, Wallace reported: "The farm leaders were unanimous in their opinion that the agricultural emergency calls for prompt and drastic action.... The farm groups agree that farm production must be adjusted to consumption, and favor the principles of the so-called domestic allotment plan as a means of reducing production and restoring buying power." The conference also called for emergency legislation granting Wallace extraordinarily broad authority to act, including power to control production, buy up surplus commodities, regulate marketing and production, and levy excise taxes to pay for it all.

John C. Culver and John C. Hyde, the authors of American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace (2001) have pointed out: "The sense of urgency was hardly theoretical. A true crisis was at hand. Across the Corn Belt, rebellion was being expressed in ever more violent terms. In the first two months of 1933, there were at least seventy-six instances in fifteen states of so-called penny auctions, in which mobs of farmers gathered at foreclosure sales and intimidated legitimate bidders into silence. One penny auction in Nebraska drew an astounding crowd of two thousand farmers. In Wisconsin farmers bent on stopping a farm sale were confronted by deputies armed with tear gas and machine guns. A lawyer representing the New York Life Insurance Company was dragged from the courthouse in Le Mars, Iowa, and the sheriff who tried to help him was roughed up by a mob."

The American Communist Party were active in rural areas, including Ella Reeve Bloor, who according to one historian "set up shop in hard-hit rural areas and began dispensing doughnuts and Marxist ideology". However, the main problem for Wallace was Milo Reno. He had not been invited to Wallace's emergency farm conference and instead he led some three thousand disgruntled farmers on a march to the state capitol in Des Moines, where he issued a sweeping list of demands and vowed to mount a nationwide farm strike if they were not met.

In 1933 Wallace drafted the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). The AAA paid farmers not to grow crops and not to produce dairy produce such as milk and butter. The money to pay the farmers for cutting back production of about 30% was raised by a tax on companies that bought the farm products and processed them into food and clothing.

The objective of the AAA was for a reduction in food production, which would, through a controlled shortage of food, raise the price for any given food item through supply and demand. The desired effect was that the agricultural industry would once again prosper due to the increased value and produce more income for farmers. In order to decrease food production, the AAA would pay farmers not to farm and the money would go to the landowners. The landowners were expected to share this money with the tenant farmers. While a small percentage of the landowners did share the income, the majority did not.

During the First World War, farmers grew wheat on land normally used for grazing animals. This intensive farming destroyed the protective cover of vegetation and the hot dry summers began to turn the soil into dust. High winds in 1934 turned an area of some 50 million acres into a giant dust bowl. Reno and Floyd Olson, the Governor of Minnesota, insisted on compulsory production control and price-fixing, with a guaranteed cost of production. Wallace argued this was against the idea as it would mean licensing every ploughed field in the country. Reno accused Wallace of "betraying the farmer".and called a national strike. According to William E. Leuchtenburg: "Strikers dumped kerosene in cream, broke churns, and dynamited dairies and cheese factories."

On 26th October, 1932, Reno's association declared a moratorium on tax and mortgage payments, and this developed into a strike against farm mortgage foreclosures. According to the New York Times the leader of the Farmers' Holiday Association (FHA) in Nebraska argued: "If we don't get beneficial service from the Legislature 200,000 of us are coming to Lincoln and we'll tear the new State Capitol Building to pieces." Governor William Langer of North Dakota, in an effort to reduce tension, mobilized the militia to halt foreclosures.

Although Franklin D. Roosevelt was vague about what he would do about the economic depression, he easily beat his unpopular Republican rival. William E. Leuchtenburg, the author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (1963), has argued: "Franklin Roosevelt swept to victory with 22,800,000 votes to Hoover's 15,750,000. With a 472-59 margin in the Electoral College, he captured every state south and west of Pennsylvania. Roosevelt carried more counties than a presidential candidate had ever won before, including 282 that had never gone Democratic. Of the forty states in Hoover's victory coalition four years before, the President held but six."

Roosevelt appointed Henry A. Wallace as Secretary of Agriculture. On 8th March 1933, Wallace met with Roosevelt and asked him to expand the scope of the special congressional session to include the agricultural crisis as well as the banking emergency. Roosevelt agreed to this suggestion and it was agreed to summon the nation's farm leaders to an "emergency conference" to be held in Washington. Wallace went on national radio and told the country: "Today, in this country, men are fighting to save their homes. That is not just a figure of speech. That is a brutal fact, a bitter commentary on agriculture's twelve years' struggle.... Emergency action is imperative."

On 27th April at Le Mars in Plymouth County, a mob of six hundred farmers marched on the local courthouse. A spokesman for the group asked the judge to promise that he would not sign any more foreclosure orders. Judge Charles C. Bradley said he had as much sympathy for the farmers who had lost their property, but that he did not make the laws. The men did not like this answer and dragged Bradley of his courtroom and taken to a crossroads outside of town, where his trousers were removed and he was threatened with mutilation. A noose was pulled tight around his neck, and the mob demanded that the strangling judge promise no further foreclosures. The sixty-year old Bradley bravely replied: "I will do the fair thing to all men to the best of my knowledge." Bradley was just about to be hanged when he was saved by a local newspaper editor who had just arrived in his car.

The case made the front page of the New York Times. Governor Clyde Herring declared martial law and sent troops to the town. Milo Reno claimed that the Farmers' Holiday Association had nothing to do with the incident. His statement was widely disbelieved when the president of the Plymouth County Farmers Holiday Association was one of the 86 men arrested. Reno and his followers were heavily criticized and he lost considerable popular support. However, Henry A. Wallace was now seen as a moderate and his bill was now passed by Congress.

In 1935 Reno gave his support to Francis Townsend and endorsed his Old Age Revolving Pension Plan and campaigned against the re-election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He supported Huey Long and introduced him at a meeting as "the hero whom God in his goodness has vouchsafed to his children" in compensation for "Roosevelt, Wallace, Tugwell and the rest of the traitors."

Milo Reno died of a heart attack in Excelsior Springs, Missouri on 5th May, 1936.

Primary Sources

(1) William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (1963)

Milo Reno... helped organize farmers to refuse to ship food into Sioux City for thirty days or until such time as they got the 'cost of production'. Farmers blocked highways with logs and spiked telegraph poles, smashed windshields and headlights, and punctured tires with their pitchforks. When authorities in Council Bluffs arrested fifty-five pickets, one thousands angry farmers threatened to storm the jail, and the pickets were released on bail. In Nebraska, where farmers carried placards reading 'Be Pickets or Peasants,' strikers halted a freight train and took off a carload of cattle.

(2) John C. Culver and John C. Hyde, American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace (2001)

The sense of urgency was hardly theoretical. A true crisis was at hand. Across the Corn Belt, rebellion was being expressed in ever more violent terms. In the first two months of 1933, there were at least seventy-six instances in fifteen states of so-called penny auctions, in which mobs of farmers gathered at foreclosure sales and intimidated legitimate bidders into silence. One penny auction in Nebraska drew an astounding crowd of two thousand farmers. In Wisconsin farmers bent on stopping a farm sale were confronted by deputies armed with tear gas and machine guns. A lawyer representing the New York Life Insurance Company was dragged from the courthouse in Le Mars, Iowa, and the sheriff who tried to help him was roughed up by a mob.

Communist agitators such as the notorious Mother Bloor set up shop in hard-hit rural areas and began dispensing doughnuts and Marxist ideology. Farm state politicians responded to the radicalism with remedies that were themselves radical. In North Dakota, Governor William Langer used state troops to prevent local sheriffs from conducting foreclosure auctions. In Minnesota, Governor Floyd Olson imposed a moratorium on foreclosure sales by executive decree, an action later found unconstitutional. Seven other states took similar actions.

At the nexus of the farm protest was the indomitable Milo Reno, brash head of the Farmers Holiday Association, who by March 1933 had reached the height of his power and popularity. Reno's claim of ninety thousand dues-paying members was almost certainly an exaggeration, but his ability to create a ruckus was unquestionable. The day after Wallace's emergency farm conference concluded in Washington, Reno led some three thousand disgruntled farmers on a march to the state capitol in Des Moines, where he issued a sweeping list of demands and vowed to mount a nationwide farm strike if they were not met by May 3.