The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-06-19
Potato Bugs
by LOWELL MELLETT,

7 TERBERT HOOVER not only was one OF the
l. worlds highest-priced engineers in his
time apparently, but by his own statement, one
of the best-pad potato-buggers. AS boy IN
Iowa. he says, he received cent for every 100
bugs he removed from the potato plants
We didn't get anything. We just plugged
those potatoes or else! Not to give wrong i'm
preston. ours was not cruel family; it was
Just that children were not paid for doing chill
drens chores. 1t was perfectly all right II we
wished to get a little fun out Of the work. One
form of fun was to place crews of potato bugs
on chips and stage naval battles in the wash
tub Punk Shively would always come over and
help you with the bugging if you suggested the
big sea fight that would follow
All this was not on a farm, but in small
Indiana town, the typical country town so dear
to the memory of Hoover today. A town in
which one family in every block kept COW.
The idyllic early America for which our earnest
individualists now pine in vain. For it is gone
forever. We saw it go, right before our eyes,
TINE first factory came to town. 1t was a
i pretty big factory, made possible by the
Mckinley tariff which gave it a monopoly in
the United States. Many town people went to
work in the factory, pleased with the wages and
steady employment.
Then the campaign of 1896. Bryan was our
candidate. 1t happened to be a Bryan COM
munity. One of the most devoted followers of
the COmmoner was a next-door neighbor. He
had studied and read and talked on the sub
ject of Free Silver until he was we'll convinced
| that the salvation of the country depended on
a Democratic victory in November.
In the big parades he would get out his
dun-colored horse to represent Gold in the
equestrian 16-to-1 section-you know, 16 men
on white horses and one man on a dun.
He was a free American citizen. Nobody
could tell him how he had to vote! A rugged
individualist, if ever there was one.
Mother had called, Don't you want to come
in cut of the sun awhie?" and we were staging
a naval maneuver in the shade of the back
porch. Remember the White squadron of the
United States Navy-with the warshps all
painted white as they were in those days? Well
by saving the trade marks of Lord only knows
how many packages of Arbuckle's xxx coffee
We had obtained a beautiful volume containing
pictures of the squadron.
IN the midst of arranging formation in the
washtub to correspond with one of the pic
lures in the book, our attention was distracted
by the serious tone of the conversation in the
side yard. Father was talking with the neigh
Dor who owned the dun horse. This much we
heard and understood:
Il feel like traitor to the country, but my
family comes first guess. They've got big
OiueiS pasted up OF the bulletin BOARD and a
notice that says these orders will be Cancelled
If Mckinley isn't elected. It's worse than that
over at the glass factory, they tell me- Over
there they say they'll close down if Bryan is
elected. 1t just makes me sick, but guess
got to vote for Mckinley"
Which is how one small boy in the Middle
West busy fighting battle of potato bugs in
washtub, saw the coming of the industrial
age to his part of America. Herbert Hoover
collecting his bugs at a cent for each 100 seems
never to have witnessed the larger event.