This week, the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s editorial board endorsed Barack Obama for president, using 872 words to make its case. Seventy-six years ago, the Minneapolis Tribune made its case for Herbert Hoover in 1,738 words – without once mentioning his Democratic opponent, Franklin Roosevelt. Unless you count the reference to “rainbow peddler.”

Why The Tribune Supports President Hoover

——(EDITORIAL)——

The Minneapolis Tribune supports Herbert Hoover because we prefer performance to promises.

	Herbert Hoover in 1932

The Minneapolis Tribune supports Herbert Hoover because he would rather risk his chances for re-election than wheedle his way into a second term with campaign pledges for the fulfillment of which no vested executive authority exists.

The Minneapolis Tribune supports Herbert Hoover because he has no pre-mortgaged his independence of action to any sectional influence, or party group.

The Minneapolis Tribune supports Herbert Hoover because a man who has chored his way up from the deepest ruts of poverty may be expected to serve the plain people understandingly.

The Minneapolis Tribune urges the re-election of Herbert Hoover to the presidency because he carries the memory of hunger, cold, and insufficiency through life and will unceasingly devote himself to banish breadlines, inequality and social injustice from the nation.

Time can never erase the toil-scars of his own youth any more than the men and women of the Northwest can forget the blizzards that bit to the bone as they toiled on the wind-swept prairies.

Pomp and circumstance can never erase the memory of being turned out of bed at dawn to milk the cows and feed the pigs and water the stock.

Herbert Hoover saw his prairie mother drudge her youth away, at the rate of 24 months a year, and so he knows, as well as anyone, the bitter burdens of hard times like these inflict upon country women, and the bleak despair that gnaws their souls when foreclosure seizes their homes and the auction notice hangs on the door.

Herbert Hoover as an orphan boy had his first outlook on life in the hard times that followed 1873. He saw hope dwindle from day to day as crops failed and prices fell. He saw depression and despair stalking across the countryside.

Herbert Hoover knows the “hope deferred that maketh the heart sick.” These were the first lessons of life that he learned.

Herbert Hoover as an orphan ate the bread of dependency.

Herbert Hoover won the first elements of an education with the axe, the saw, and the wheelbarrow.

Herbert Hoover fought his way through college collecting laundry and waiting on table, the servant of luckier and richer young men.

Herbert Hoover mucked in a mine shaft with pick and shovel to get a few dollars with which to pay his tuition.

As an orphan boy in Iowa, as a chore boy in Oregon, as a waiter and mine mucker in California, Herbert Hoover went to the school of hard knocks.

Herbert Hoover cannot forget these toils, these hopes and these despairs. Herbert Hoover has toiled; he has fought against poverty and he knows the great mass of common men and women. He knows their hopes and their fears; he knows their hopes and their fears; he knows their ambitions and their dreads.

Herbert Hoover never learned the lessons of adversity from books or sociologists. He learned them in the heart-breaking school of experience, where most men and women have learned them, and he can no more forget them than can they.

We need to keep Herbert Hoover in the White house because he has already met so many of our problems boldly and fundamentally, because they are a heritage of his own meager boyhood – because he was teethed on hardships instead of a silver spoon – because he saw playmates and neighbors deprived of their homes in the black seventies – because he had heard the wolf of want snarl on his own doorstep, and because he wears the teeth scares from that wolf on his own yesterdays.

The flowers of oratory are not rooted in the soil. The plow and grubbing hoe aren’t teachers of elocution. Necessity cultivates corn, and cabbage, and potatoes instead.

Therefore Herbert Hoover had little opportunity to become a forger of fine phrases; but he can forge a horse-shoe and he needs no agricultural expert or college professor to tell what happens to the dairyman and to the stock breeder when the wells run dry and the hot winds burn the pasture.

If Herbert Hoover had not leaped to the rescue of our Northwest states when plague and drouth swept down upon them there wouldn’t be enough poorhouses in North Dakota to hold the bankrupt families hereabout.

Don’t anyone say things couldn’t be worse, and don’t tell the hundred thousand odd farm families whom Herbert Hoover’s action saved from destitution throughout this region that things wouldn’t have been cruelly worse if he hadn’t stepped in to hamstring the crisis.

In 1931 when famine stalked, and grasshoppers ravaged parts of Minnesota, denuding the most fertile areas of the Dakots and Monday into stark barrens, Herbert Hoover slashed red tape and hurried the secretary of agriculture posthaste to the scene.
The moment he received Secretary Hyde’s report the department’s rehabilitation fund was reopened and livestock emergency relief loans sped to the rescue.

In these four states 45,848 farmers were enabled to borrow $6,207,371 and that was the money which carried their beef and dairy cattle, their sheep and brood sows, and horses and poultry flocks through the winter of 1931-32.

	Grace Newton, secretary to President Hoover, presented him with a poppy made in the American Legion Auxiliary Veterans Work Room in Minneapolis in about 1930. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

Had this relief not been granted, and administered as swiftly and intelligently as it was used, all the patiently won diversification strides of the spring wheat belt during the past decades would have been wiped out, together with the flocks and herds.

He summoned the Red Cross to disburse two million dollars in cash and millions more in foodstuffs among 16,247 farm families in Montana, 11,591 farm families in North Dakota, and 15,708 farm families in South Dakota, and those desperately needed dollars carried them into mid-summer of this year, when their truck gardens, and creamery checks, and egg money helped to eke out.

Those unable to qualify for emergency livestock loans were furnished feed for a given number of cows per family, and every family in need was provided with food besides, so that growing boys and girls had butterfat instead of rickets, and infants who otherwise might have suffered from malnutrition, a full abundance of fresh milk.

If North and South Dakota and Montana do not cast their votes for Herbert Hoover, it will be because short memories have forgotten who their friend was in their hour of need.

Not a man, not a woman, not a child went hungry from the beginning to the end of the darkest hour that has threatened these states since the country was settled.

They can thank Herbert Hoover for it all, and the best way to thank him is to mark their thanks on a ballot.

When our farmers were unable to secure seed for 1932 crops, and regional agriculture was once more faced with collapse, it was your Republican President who made finances available for crop production loans, to pay for see, feed for horses, fuel for tractors and for machinery repairs.

And if anyone thinks things couldn’t have been worse let him remember that assistance from this source was so urgently necessary that 96,358 farmers of Minnesota, the Dakotas and Montana immediately requisitioned $20,781,000, without which they couldn’t have planted their usual acreages or stayed on the land.

It will be a matter of lasting regret if our people don’t advertise to the world that the Northwest is not an unthankful country by the vote of these 96,358 farmers and the votes of their wives and the votes of their sons and daughters.

When grasshoppers again threatened in 1932 (the opposition may as well blame him for bringing them into the country since they insist that Herbert Hoover is responsible for all the other griefs and woes and upsets on earth – so why leave out the grasshoppers?) the President besought congress for an emergency appropriation to forestall the plague with poison bait.

The senate four times unanimously passed the measure, but a block of southern Democratic representatives, led by Chairman Joseph W. Byrns of the house appropriations committee, saw no chance to grab a share of that grant for their own constituents, so they fought until they killed the bill.

Crop damage amounting to 25 per cent in some localities this year could have been avoided if the party now promising the earth, moon and stars, hadn’t again shown its habitual incapacity to think only in terms of southern, not national welfare.

The Democratic party is the pawn and chattel of the cotton growers of the south, and has been since Cleveland’s day.

It holds a mortgage on its candidate, and if a Democratic president is elected the south will receive preferential treatment in all legislation and the lion’s share of all agricultural appropriations and relief measures.

A southern speaker will rule the house and “Texas Jack” Garner will crack the senate’s whip, and then God help the northern farmers!

This fall, when President Hoover realized the difficult situation in the grain belt, he ordered that only 25 per cent of 1932 seed loans should be collected, and the remainder spread over the widest possible period to which congress will consent.

He has authorized that unpaid loans for seed purchases of 1930 and 1931 to the tune of $4,000,000 shall not be collected now.

He has directed that the emergency livestock feed loans are not to be pushed for collection, but renewed and extended on application.

He provided additional capital to Federal Land Banks and inaugurated a policy of leniency in collections to save Northwest farmers from losing their farms by foreclosure.

He encouraged inland waterway development, including the deepening of the Upper Mississippi, and he negotiated a treaty with Canada for completion of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence deep waterway to bring relief to land-locked Northwest states, and save the farmer ten cents a bushel freight on his grain.

These are the performances of a President in office – not the impractical promises of a rainbow peddler, who asks the electorate of the Ninth reserve district to replace tried experience with untested experiment.

If we try this Democratic experiment, it will be eighteen months or two years before we can determine whether or not it is to be a success. This means two years more of uncertainty, doubt, and business stagnation.

These are the reasons The Minneapolis Tribune is loyal to Herbert Hoover because he has been loyal to us, because we know that he will do for us if adversity should again strike at us.

In short we prefer performances to promises.

Signs at a campaign headquarters in St. Paul warned veterans of the perils of voting for Herbert Hoover and other Republicans: “If You Vote For Any Of These Men You Are Licking The Boot That Kicked You.” (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

Not sure what caught my eye about this story, which appeared under a two-column headline on an inside page of the Minneapolis Star. Maybe it was the year: 1966 seemed early for a Vietnam-era draft protest. Or maybe it was the reference to “two buckets of human excrement” in the first paragraph.

	Barry Bondhus’ senior high school photo, 1964.

Barry Bondhus, the youth arrested in connection with the protest 42 years ago, is now a toolmaker/machinist living in Princeton, Minn. I called him last month to ask if he had time for a phone interview about this period in his life. Yes, he said, but added that the event was probably bigger than I realized and that I’d likely need more than a phone call to capture the full story. He mentioned that his father had declared war on the United States and that the government, in effect, surrendered. And without elaborating he said that excrement was chosen as a protest tool for a specific reason.

He mailed me several documents about his protest, arrest and conviction. An update follows the original news story.

‘FLAG-DRAPED CASKETS’

Youth, 20, Arrested
After Draft Protest

A 20-year-old Big Lake youth was being held in Hennepin County Jail under $10,000 bond today on a charge that he dumped two buckets of human excrement into the files of the Sherburne County draft board [in Elk River].

Held is Barry Bondhus, who was arrested by FBI agents Thursday night at his home.

He is one of 12 children of Thomas Bondhus, 43, who operates machine shops at Big Lake, Monticello and Orrock in Sherburne County.

Sidney Abramson, assistant U.S. district attorney, said the youth would be given a hearing today before U.S. Commissioner Bernard Zimpfer in Minneapolis Federal Court.

The arrest of the youth apparently climaxed a series of difficulties he and his father have had with the draft board.

The elder Bondhus said he has told the board repeatedly that he is opposed to any of his sons serving in the armed forces.

“If you draft Barry I have nothing to look forward to for the next 24 years but flag-draped caskets,” he said.

Barry is the second oldest of 10 Bondhus boys.

After a board hearing Feb. 15, the youth was classified 1-A and ordered to take a pre-induction physical examination in Minneapolis.

The FBI said the youth refused to cooperate.

Wednesday, the complain charged, young Bondhus walked into the board’s office and dumped the substance into six draft board file cases. His draft board status still is pending.

The Bondhus house in Big Lake, Minn., in the 1980s.

MARCH 2008 UPDATE: A fat manila envelope filled my mail slot at work about a week after Barry Bondhus and I spoke on the phone. It contained a cover letter detailing his protest, arrest and conviction; a term paper about the event written by his youngest daughter while she was in high school; his father’s “declaration of war” against the United States; a one-page explanation of why human excrement was used in the protest; and a copy of a song about him that was part of an antiwar play performed in England.

Here’s what I’ve pieced together about “the Big Lake One,” as Barry Bondhus came to be known:

Soon after Barry received his draft notice in 1965, his father, Tom, composed the fiery declaration of war. He showed the missive to friends and family but apparently didn’t intend it for a wider audience. Perhaps he was blowing off steam or outlining his arguments for a later meeting with the draft board. At any rate, Tom Bondhus’ mother mailed the two-page, single-spaced document to the government without her son’s knowledge. “His mother was a little bit strange about things,” Barry recalled. “They used to argue about the Bible.”

A few key passages from Tom’s declaration:

• “Most people agree that war accomplishes nothing. I have asked myself from the beginning; Why go to war? When I was of draft age in the … second world war, I was constantly afraid of being forced into the army; not because I was afraid to die, but because I would refuse to kill others that were no more guilty than myself. The boys don’t deserve to die for the bungling of the politicians.”

• “My opinion is that since our constitution guarantees: Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness; and because the army denies all three; the draft is not lawful.”
• “God is not with us, we will never win another war, the trend is over for us. Our Boys fought valiantly in Korea with many men and much material, against a very small, weak adversary, and after a long struggle it was a draw. We attacked Cuba and were driven off.”
• “You are like filthy swine that eat the flesh of your own children. You worship false gods. You have sunk to the lowest form of life as described in the Bible.”

Then it gets, well, intense:

“I therefore state my terms: My boy will not be available for the draft, on my orders as his father. He is a ‘MINOR’ and responsible to me, and me for him, and he is obligated to obey me. His orders are not to come, so your quarrel is with me. If anyone comes to take my boy, you must be prepared to Kill Me. I will meet whoever comes on my front door step with a single shot, shot gun, and will attempt to kill the first man that gets in my house. I will have only one shot in the gun, and after I kill the man I will surrender, AS A PRISONER OF WAR. You will have a chance to kill me anytime before I kill your man as I will use No. 6 shot with a killing range of less than 50 feet.”

He concluded:

“None of my children has ever troubled the law because, I have taught them to obey the law, I have also taught them to love God, and hate the military. … The reason my children love me is because I love them, and will fight and die for them if necessary. … My terms are not unreasonable: the government must not take my children. If you want money or property, take it, but you cannot use my children to do your fighting. Fight your own war You Cowards.”

The declaration mentions “the Law of Moses” and “God’s law” and cites Jeremiah 10:21. What role did religion play in the family? “My dad tried a lot of religions and never did get along with any of them,” Barry said. “He actually started his own church before all this. I was ordained a minister. Church of the Morning Star, we called it,” after seeing a bright star in the sky during the trial.

Barry said that his dad, a machinist, admired guns and “owned lots” of them. He didn’t hunt much as an adult but had a pistol range in the basement.

Dec. 2, 1966: Tom Bondhus outside the federal courthouse in Minneapolis, with a book open to Washington’s farewell address. (Photo by Dwight Miller, Minneapolis Tribune)

The declaration’s threat of force explains why we need to go on the record at this point with a belated correction. Bondhus was arrested at the Sherburne County attorney’s office, not at his Big Lake home as reported in the Star. Government agents weren’t exactly eager to appear at the Bondhuses’ front door. Here’s what happened:

“Almost a week after I dumped the residue in the files … my dad received a phone call from the Sherburne County Attorney stating there were two men from the government in his office that would like to talk with us. My father and I went to his office in Elk River to meet with them. After talking to them for about an hour they told us they were from the FBI and showed us they were armed and at that time they arrested me. The county attorney told my dad that the FBI told him that the reason they had not arrested me earlier was because of my father’s Declaration Of War (copy enclosed). No one from the FBI was willing to go to Big Lake.”

Barry Bondhus was charged with destruction of government property and interfering with the Selective Service Administration. He was tried and convicted in December 1966. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail and fined $2,500. He served 14 months in a series of jails and prisons, from Madison, Wis, to Milan, Mich., to Peoria, Ill., to Leavenworth, Kan., and finally Sandstone, Minn. With time off for good behavior, he was released in March 1968.

What about the excrement? Let’s back up to February 1966, when Barry Bondhus and his parents visited the local draft board to discuss his classification. Tom Bondhus explained that, as the father of 10 sons, he “naturally would be more concerned and more emotional about losing his boys to the army” than a person with only one boy. The chairman of the draft board responded with a kind of wisecrack: “You have 10 boys, do you. Where’s the rest of them?”

That didn’t sit well with Tom Bondhus, who seethed over the next few days, considering responses that ranged from “cutting open a certain Pig to see if he had a heart,” to “moving to a peace loving country where the boys wouldn’t be forced to serve in an army of aggression.”

Barry Bondhus is listed as an inventor on U.S. patent No. 6,128,981, a folding allen wrench set, one that allows you to pull out a single wrench without its neighbors gumming up the works.

“Finally,” Barry Bondhus wrote, “an old sage in the family pointed out that when an ass hole makes a statement, it must have been shit he was talking about; so we concluded that by the rest of the Bondhus boys, he meant the residue. … Therefore it was decided that no one could be so [foul] as to ask for all of the boys themselves; he must have meant [their residue].”

So the Bondhus boys began collecting their waste in a stainless steel cream can in the bathroom “for a week or so,” Barry recalled. “It was starting to get a little rank by the end.” The residue was then transferred to two “dirty old tar buckets” for a one-way trip to Elk River.

Daughter Sandi, in her high school paper, picks up the story from there:

“He took the two buckets to the draft board office in Elk River … and set them on the secretary’s desk. He then asked, ‘Here’s the rest of my brothers[;] what do you want me to do with them?’ She was so scared she just kept repeating, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ My dad then commented, ‘Well, if you don’t know what to do with them I’ll put them in here.’ He opened up the top drawer of the draft filing cabinets and poured the two buckets in them. Then he quickly shut each one so the residue would run down and ruin all of the draft papers in that office.” Damage was estimated at $500.

“While I was in jail,” Barry Bondhus wrote in his letter to me, “my father met with Miles Lord [a freshly minted U.S. district judge at the time]. On behalf of the U.S. Government he promised my father that they would never draft any of his sons. This is the kind of thing you wouldn’t expect them to put in writing … but … the government has never tried to draft any of his sons. We interpret this as a victory in the war he declared on the government. My father was never charged with any crime.”

Barry Bondhus met his future wife, Linda, soon after he was released from jail. They will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary in October. They have 12 children – seven sons and five daughters – and will soon welcome their 30th grandchild.

Dec. 2, 1966: Tom and Barry Bondhus paused for a photo after Barry was found guilty of damaging government property and obstructing enforcement of the draft system. (Photo by Pete Hohn, Minneapolis Tribune)

The Minnesota Poll, introduced in March 1944, is one of the nation’s oldest public opinion polls. In its early years, the poll covered a range of political, economic, religious and social topics. Here’s a taste of the questions, as reported in the Star Tribune on the 50th anniversary of the poll:

1944: Two-thirds of men said they preferred cuffed suit pants.
1944: 87 percent of Minnesotans reported eating breakfast every day.
1945: 19 percent said children should not be taught to believe in Santa.
1947: 10 percent thought the Upper Midwest was called the land of the sky-blue waters.
1950: As the Korean War raged, more than half said they believed World War III was underway.
1958: 58 percent said they didn’t believe in leaving tips.

The poll has weathered its share of criticism, most recently when it showed John Kerry with an 8-point lead over George Bush in Minnesota in the closing days of the 2004 presidential campaign. The final result was much closer, and some Republicans called for Rob Daves, the poll’s director, to resign.

The poll’s future is unclear. Daves has left the paper, along with scores of other newsroom employees swept away in two rounds of buyouts in the wake of Avista Capital Partners’ purchase of the paper this spring. No Minnesota Poll has been published since the 2006 elections.

The very first Minnesota Poll, sporting a headline that would not be out of place in 2007, made a relatively quiet splash. It appeared on the front of the “Minnesota Section,” not on Page One.

3 Out of 4 in Minnesota Say
They Can’t Cut Use of Gasoline

Nearly 50 per cent of Minnesota people believe their communities can reduce consumption of gasoline, but almost three out of four said “no” when asked whether their families could get along with less gasoline.

This was brought out in the first report of THE MINNESOTA POLL, inaugurated to measure opinion on questions of timely interest.

The poll, on the question of gasoline usage, is of particular interest and importance, because of the reduction in “A” gasoline coupon value which goes into effect March 22.

Tapping a cross section of Minnesotans, the poll revealed 48 per cent believe their communities could get along on less gasoline while 42 per cent said their communities couldn’t reduce the amount used. Ten per cent offered no opinion.

This was the overall response to this question;

“The OPA announced the war effort will suffer unless Minnesota reduces its consumption of gasoline. Generally speaking, do you think the people in your community could get along on less gasoline?”

Breaking the totals down, it was revealed opinion varied between different groups and different communities. Defining a city to be anything over 2,500 population, a town to be any settlement under 2,500 population, and a farm to consists of at least three acres of ground and a $250 crop, for instance, the city group appeared more optimistic concerning a cut in rations.

To the above question, 52 per cent of city people said “yes,” 37 per cent said “no” and 11 per cent had no opinion.

Of town people, 53 per cent said “yes,” 37 per cent “no” and 10 percent had no opinion.

Of farmers, 38 per cent said yes, 54 per cent “no” and 8 per cent had no views in the matter.

When the question is narrowed from the community to the family, which is to say the individual, however, the picture is different. This is the result when respondents were asked if their families could be were asked if their families could reduce consumption of gasoline:

No …………. 70 per cent
Yes …………. 28 per cent
No answer ….. 2 per cent

Of this group, farmers were most positive in their aggregate answer. Seventy-nine per cent of farmers said they could not individually reduce gasoline consumption. Only 19 per cent agreed they could. Two per cent had no opinion.

Thirty-three per cent of each of the city and town groups, however, believed they could reduce consumption. Of city people, 66 per cent said they could not; of town people, 67 per cent said they could not get along on less gas.

Of the 28 per cent who said that they could reduce the consumption of gasoline, the following question was asked:

“How much less gasoline could you get along on?”

Here are the results by city, town and farm:

Most results of the poll appeared, on the surface at least, to correspond to accessibility of public transportation. Farmers, located away from public centers, were most reluctant to agree to allotments, and then plumbed for the smallest reduction possible.

Town and city people ran neck and neck on most divisions of the subject, agreeing closely on community and individual reduction. In the amount of reduction, however, they split, the city dweller believing he could effect a more drastic saving.

Further interesting results of the Minnesota Poll will appear each Sunday in the Sunday Tribune.

Eight prominent Minnesotans pass upon the policies and the phrasing of questions submitted to the cross-section of Minnesota.

Members of this Advisory committee include:

W.C. Coffey, president, University of Minnesota.

Donald J. Cowling, president, Carleton College, Northfield.

Mrs. George W. Sugden, Mankato, president, Minnesota Federation of Women’s clubs.

Robert A. Olson, Duluth, president, Minnesota Federation of Labor.

John S. Pillsbury, chairman of the board, Pillsbury Flour Mills, company, Minneapolis.

Randolph Hugan, general manager, Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis.

Einar Kulvinen, New York Mills, president, Minnesota Farmers Union.

Mrs. Phillip S. Duff, Wayzata, president, Minnesota League of Women Voters.

Pierce Butler, Jr., St. Paul, attorney.

Frank W. White, Marshall, president, Minnesota Farm Bureau federation.

Rabbi Albert G. Minda, Minneapolis.

O.J. Jerde, St. Cloud, president, Minnesota Education association.

The Rev. James H. Moynihan, Minneapolis.