.The Road to LeRoy #3
. Six
thirty in the morning is the best time to set off for LeRoy. But why would one want to go to LeRoy? To see the farm, perhaps, and check out the
crops. To schmooze with Steve Myers, the
farm manager. There are other values to
be derived from a trip to LeRoy. One can
experience the two states of Illinois,
so different one from the other. More
especially one can look for the traces that our forebears, real and virtual,
have left on the land. Some of these
traces are readily visible. Some are so
obvious as hardly to be seen at all. All
call for an understanding of the forces operating in the world from which they arose. So, let’s head
off, with hot coffee in a travel mug and
the end of breakfast in a paper towel.
Let’s see what we can see along the road, and let’s see if we can extract any meaning from what we
see.
LeRoy
is a little town located about one hundred miles south and slightly west of Chicago, between Bloomington
and Champaign-Urbana. In 1999 its
population amounted to 2,777 persons, almost all connected in some way or other
with Central Illinois farming. To get there from Winnetka
one drives along the TriState to the Stevenson and its continuation, Interstate
55, follows 55 south to Lexington, just this
side of Bloomington,
and then heads on country roads to LeRoy.
Allow three hours for the trip.
The
first part of our journey, from the North
Shore suburbs to the neighborhood of Joliet, runs through urbanized Metropolitan Chicago, with which we
are all familiar. Just west of Joliet everything
changes. We cross successively the two
headwaters of the Illinois River, first the DesPlaines and then the Kankakee River.
Suddenly the 17th century
is all around us. As we cross the
DesPlaines we can see in our mind’s eye Father Marquette and Louis Joliet and
their Indian guides paddling upstream on the way back from the Mississippi
River to the Chicago portage and Lake Michigan in 1673.
They were the first Europeans to go from the Great Lake
s system to the great river of the west and back. A little further along our route, as we cross
the Kankakee,
we can think of Robert de LaSalle and Henri Tonti, who came this way in
December 1679. They had accessed the
Kankakee when it was a tiny rivulet near what is now South Bend, Indiana, and
were intent on following the River
system to the Mississippi and ultimately to the Gulf of Mexico. A few miles below the point at which we cross
the Kankakee,
LaSalle and his companions found the great village of the Illinois Indians. Here is the original description of the event
(as recorded in the “Relation of the Discoveries and Voyages of Cavelier de
LaSalle from 1679 to 1681”): “Throughout the rest of December, M. de La Salle
continued his journey along the Illinois River; and finally, after having
traveled one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty leagues from Lake
Illinois (i.e. Lake Michigan) and having killed along the river two bullocks
(buffalo) and a large number of turkeys, he reached the Illinois village on the
first of January, 1680.”
“As
he had foreseen, M. de La Salle found the village deserted. According to their custom, all the Savages
had gone away to spend the winter in hunting.
Their absence, however, put him in great perplexity. He was in want of food, but he dared not
supply himself from the Indian corn, which the Illinois hide in trenches
underground to preserve it during their absence in the chase, on returning from
which they make use of it for seed and for substance until harvest.”
Ultimately
LaSalle and his men did appropriate some of the Indian corn. They were subsequently able to settle
peacefully with the tribesmen for this action and were in fact offered more
than they had taken.
The
corn that LaSalle found in the Indian village along the Illinois
was a staple of Indian life in the Upper Midwest. It had had its origin in the Highlands of
Central Mexico nine thousand years before, as the grass-like plant,
Teosinte. The distinguishing features of
modern corn were already present in Teosinte.
As opposed to most plants, the male organ of the plant (or tassels) was
at some remove from the female inflorescence.
The latter consisted of a cob, no larger than a cigar, with a few
primitive kernels. By selective
breeding over long periods of time the Indians of Mexico had formed from
Teosinte corn much as we know it today.
By 600 AD Mexican corn had reached the Indian culture of the tribes
around the Great Lakes and had become a pillar
of tribal life. Along with squash,
beans, the potato, and the tomato, corn had been a gift from native Americans
to the Europeans, who started invading their homelands in the sixteenth
century. By the late twentieth century
corn (or maize) was distributed world wide and competed with rice and wheat for
the position as mankind’s most important
food crop.
The
Illinois River and its two source streams, the DesPlaines and the Kankakee,
form the boundary between the Chicago Metropolitan area and the other state of
Illinois, known in one recent publication as “Soybeania” As we pass the rivers we enter some of the
most productive farmland in the world, comparable perhaps to Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, parts of Argentina, and parts of the Ukraine. This is
former prairie, gently rolling, relatively treeless, with vistas that
stretch to the horizon. The rich soil
and the characteristic landscape are products of the Wisconsin Glacier, which
covered this region during the late Pleistocene and which started receding some
twenty thousand years ago. Thick layers
of glacial till were deposited here, much as they were in other great
agricultural regions of the world.
Pressure
on the Indians of Northern Illinois and the Chicago region commenced almost immediately
with the appearance of Europeans
following the initial voyages of LaSalle.
Pressure came from three sources: the desire of EuroAmericans for land,
epidemic diseases introduced by the Europeans, and incursions of war bands of
Iroquois from the east. These latter
were themselves threatened by the demands of white settlers for their
land. However, there were still
substantial, albeit diminished, Indian populations in Northern
Illinois as short a time ago as 1830. As we look around us at modern America it’s
hard to realize how recently what we think of as ours was actually the homeland
of the American Indian. I doubt if
anyone in this room knows anyone who had personal contact with the native
inhabitants of Northern Illinois in their own
villages. However, a number of us knew
people who in their turn knew people who lived in this region when the American
Indian bands were still a significant presence.
In other words, as we sit here today we are perhaps two and a half or
three life spans from a time when our country was theirs and not ours. All of this changed in 1832, when the Illinois militia, including a company commanded by Abraham Lincoln, chased the last Illinois
Indians across the Mississippi and out of the
state, leaving the Illinois
prairie open for settlement.
We
see the products of this settlement as we roll along Interstate 55 on our way
to LeRoy. Farm land lies on either side
of the road. We pass by the towns. We follow the route of the railroad. Which came first, the farms, the towns, or
the railroad? The answer is that they all
grew up together, interdependent.
Following the Black Hawk War settlers poured into the upper Mississippi Valley.
Most were Irish, Germans, or old Americans. Can you imagine what it was like to leave a
forty acre piece of land full of stones in County
Claire or Connecticut
for one hundred and sixty acres of
fertile prairie soil in Northern Illinois?
] The
railroads were essential for successful farming on the prairie, since they
provided a way to get crops to market.
“Up to the year 1850, Illinois had only
one railroad, running a distance of fifty-five miles”, between Chicago
and Aurora / St. Charles.
Five years later, at the beginning of the year 1855, there were already
1,892 miles of railroad in the state.
(Gerhard p. 427). Our railroad,
the railroad the right of way of which
is followed by Interstate 55 , was the Chicago, Alton, and St.
Louis, built in this five year period, between 1850
and 1855. We pursue its course from Joliet to Lexington,
at which point we veer off into the countryside. The towns are dotted along the track like a
string of pearls on a necklace: Joliet, Gardner, Dwight, Odell, Pontiac,
Chenoa, Lexington, Bloomington.
These prairie villages were engendered by the railroad and depended on
the railroad for their existence. The
founding of Dwight was typical. On
January 30, 1854 a local luminary, R P Morgan, Jr., assembled railroad workers around a twenty-two
foot pole with a bucket on top, which had been placed near the northern edge of
Livingston County
to tell surveyors where the railroad was to go. Here he proclaimed to the crowd the founding
of the Town of Dwight,
and Dwight leapt into being. You could
easily say that it sprang into international prominence. Six years after the ceremony around the 22
foot pole on the prairie Dwight was visited by the British Prince of Wales
(traveling as Baron Renfrew), accompanied by the Duke of Newcastle, General
Bruce, Lord Lyons, Colonel Grey, Major Teesdale, Dr. Ackland, Viscount
Hinchinbrooke, and the Honorable Mr. Elliott. We remember the Prince (afterwards King Edward
VII) from his picture on cans of Prince
Albert tobacco.
The Prince, touring America,
had heard of the prairie chickens of Central Illinois
and was anxious to bag some. On the
afternoon of arrival the Prince managed to hit only a large white owl (perhaps
the inspiration for White Owl cigars).
Over the next few days, however, he and his party enjoyed a prime
hunting experience and departed well satisfied with the opportunities afforded
by Dwight and its surroundings.
In
1855 A. Campbell, esq. of LaSalle, Illinois published a pamphlet entitled “A
Glance at Illinois” in which he described a typical Illinois farm of the
period: “Say with a farm of 160 acres, you appropriate 40 acres to buildings,
orchards, and pasture grounds; upon which also may be raised the vegetables for
the family, and a provender for the stock; 20 acres for mowing,; 30 acres for
wheat, and 70 acres for corn. With fair
farming, 20 bushels of wheat to the acre is not too large an estimate, nor are
50 bushels of corn by any means a large average yield on our rich prairie
lands.” (This estimated mid-nineteenth
century corn crop, as we shall see, was an exaggeration,) But to
continue, “therefore, assuming the above to be a fair estimate of the yield, we
have:
Thirty
acres of wheat at 20 bushels per acre = 600 bushels
70
acres of corn, at 50 bushels per acre = 3,500 bushels
Now if you retain 200 bushels of
wheat, for seed and family use, and 900 bushels of corn, for working stock, and
fattening animals for family use, you will have left for market 400 bushels of
wheat and 2600 bushels of corn, in all 3000 bushels of grain.”
Mr.
Campbell points out that almost all surplus farm products north of the 40th
parallel of latitude were shipped to the eastern market by way of the railroads
to Chicago and the Great Lake
shipping to the east.
What does this description of an Illinois prairie farm in
the 1850’s tell us?
The size of the farm, 160 acres. Can you imagine how much work it took to
plow one hundred and forty acres in the spring with a horse and hand held plow,
to plant it with corn and wheat, and to weed this land with a hoe during the
summer and to harvest 30 acres of wheat
and 70 acres of corn by hand in the fall?
This plus the other chores around the farm was enough to keep a man and
his sons fully engaged from dawn to dusk.
The presence of farm
animals. The horses as work animals,
the pigs and cattle as meat, the cows to milk were part of the farm family much
as they had been for thousands of years.
Wheat. This was the great staple European
grain. The Irish and Germans and English
farmers had brought a knowledge of the cultivation of this plant as they
emigrated to the New World.
Corn. Immigrants to America must have been amazed by
this strange plant, but must have learned quickly from their new neighbors
about its advantages and culture.
The markets. Since the farm products moved north to Chicago and east to the Eastern
Seabord, these prairie farmers were tied economically to the north
and the east. Mr. Campbell describes
their dissociation from the South: “Although there is a considerable
consumption of meat and grain upon the sugar and cotton plantations of the
south, and in the West Indies, the country south of the line we have named
(i.e. the 40th parallel), is at all times fully adequate to the
supply except in case of a short crop.”
In the Civil War, which broke on the country five years after Mr.
Campbell wrote , the Illinois
settlers stuck with the North and the East (the site of their economic
interest) and filled the regiments which formed the core of U S Grant’s
successful western armies.
So
what do we see now when we drive south from the Kankakee
River. We don’t see old
McDonald or his cow or his pigs or his chickens or his horse, and his farm has
radically changed. It is possible to
drive from Gardner all the way to Lexington and not
encounter a single farm animal. The land
is too well suited for grain farming to be devoted to pasture.
Cows may well be in Wisconsin and horses in Tennessee. Neither are to be found in significant
numbers in Livingston and McLean
Counties, Illinois. Wheat is rarely grown north of Interstate 70,
the high road between Terra Haute and St.
Louis, so we do not see fields of wheat. And we see far fewer farm buildings than our
ancestors might have noticed along this route in the Civil War era. Barns are no longer necessary for farm
animals. Fewer farmers manage more land,
so the old pattern of one homestead every quarter section no longer
obtains.
What
we do see along this route is large, even giant fields of corn alternating with
equally large fields of soy beans. Corn
and beans, beans and corn define the gently rolling landscape. This rich abundance of crops reaches its peak
in the late summer and early fall, when the deep green of the corn alternates
with the golden brown of the ripening soy bean plants. There is no beauty queen among landscapes,
but the farm land
of Central Illinois just
before harvest would surely be a contender if such a contest were to be held.
Actually
the soy bean is a recent arrival, having displaced wheat, oats, and rye, which
used to be secondary crops. in the planting structure of the Middle
West. It now serves as a rotational crop with
corn. Admiral Perry brought back two
beans from Japan
in 1854, and a few nineteenth century farmers experimented with the plant. However, the good qualities of soybeans
were not immediately recognized. In 1923
Illinois passed North
Carolina in soybean acreage and
in 1924 in soybean production, to become America’s leading soybean
state. Soybean production really soared
in Illinois
and nationally after 1935. Seventy-three million acres were planted in the United States
in 1999. The soybean is a fantastic
plant. Not only is the bean itself a
good food source, rich in protein, but also bacteria in the soybean root
systems fix nitrogen in the soil, waiting for the nitrogen-hungry corn to come
along and gobble it up. The beans which
we see along the highway are part of a crop which is an important element in
the life of the state.
The
corn that we see has come a long way from the plants around the Indian villages
along the Illinois River or even from the corn in the 70 acres of our Illinois farm of the
1850’s. The first intimation of change
came in 1877. In that year William James Beal, at the Michigan Agricultural
College, crossed two
strains of inbred corn to produce hybrid corn.
He then crossed two sets of hybrid plants to come up with a double
hybrid, a plant which produced kernels of corn vastly more luxuriantly than had
its inbred grandparents, due to a phenomenon known as hybrid vigor. The kernels from this hybrid grandchild could
be used as seed to plant fresh fields of corn with the good qualities of the
parent. Beal had invented hybrid corn
and in so doing had revolutionized the field of agriculture.
The
advantages offered by hybrid corn were not immediately recognized. In 1900 corn yields nationally were 28
bushels/acre and almost all corn grown was open pollinated. This means that the corn ears were pollinated
from tassels on the same plant or neighboring plants, just as corn had been
grown all the way back to the early days in the highlands of Mexico. Starting in the 1930’s serious efforts were
made by the Pioneer Seed Company and other producers of hybrid seed to grow
this seed selectively and to persuade farmers of its advantages. Rural high school students during that period
found summer employment taking the
tassels off rows of corn so that the ears on these plants could be pollinated
from plants of another genetic strain grown some distance away, thus producing seed with hybrid vigor to be used in the next
planting season. Now in the twenty-first
century virtually all corn in the United States is grown from hybrid
seeds. The national average yield had
grown from the 28 bu. per acre quoted above in 1900 to 135 bu. per acre in
1999. In the great harvest of 2004, yields of 180 to 200 bu./acre were common
throughout the Midwestern corn belt.
Some two and a
half hours after leaving Chicago’s North Shore
we abandon Interstate 55 and drive through the little town of Lexington,
Illinois. We pass by the Civil War monument in the village
square and the white frame houses. On
the outskirts of town we turn right at the
seed plant and head south on a country road toward LeRoy. We are now in the heart of McClean County, Illinois. In July and August driving on these country
roads one has to slow down once every mile.
The tall corn plants reduce visibility.
Almost every mile one encounters an intersecting country road. These roads run along the borders of the
sections. The land is divided into
sections of 640 acres, squares measuring one mile by one mile. This road-a-mile feature of the landscape
reflects a crucial element in rural history and American history: the
rectangular survey system.
After
the American Revolution the greater part of the land outside of the thirteen
original colonies was uninhabited and undeveloped. It became property of the Federal
Government. To aid in settlement a
system whereby land ownership might be clearly described was thought
necessary. A committee headed by Thomas
Jefferson proposed dividing the undeveloped land into a series of
rectangles. This scheme was adopted by
Congress on April 26, 1785 and is now in use in thirty of the fifty
states. The country west of the
original states was divided into rectangles 24 miles on each edge. These were subsequently fractionated into
townships and these into sections of 640 acres each - or one mile square, thus accounting for the
location of our country roads.
Parenthetically, we note that Illinois
farm land was and is frequently traded
in sections or fractions thereof, thus accounting for our nineteenth century
farm of 160 acres.
As
one drives along County 21 south of Lexington
one has a close view of the land and the crops.
In McLean County farming is gardening. The fields are planted boundary to
boundary. Corn alternates with beans,
and beans with corn. Where, one asks,
are the weeds in the bean fields? Twenty
years ago, even with the careful tillage, stands of weeds (and of volunteer
corn) would show up among the soy plants.
The weeds seem to have been banished.
How? The answer is Round-up, a
glyphosphate herbicide made by Monsanto, which is lethal to weeds and which is
widely applied to bean fields in Illinois. But we know that Round-up damages bean plants as well as weeds. How have they been protected? Here the function of genetically modified
plants becomes apparent. These plants
are products of biotechnology. The
pioneers of biotechnology were two California
scientists, Stanley N. Cohen of Stanford
University and Herbert W. Boyer of the
University of California. In 1973 they managed to isolate fragments of
a gene from one bacterium and insert it into another bacterium to create a bit
of living cellular material that had never before existed. They had found a way of purposefully
modifying the genetic material, DNA.
Following in the tracks of Cohen and Boyer, in the 1980’s scientists at Monsanto devised
a method of inserting a gene which confers resistance to the herbicide Round-up
into the genome of the soy bean plant, thus rendering the plants Round-up
ready. Roundup could now be spread
widely in the bean fields, bringing death to the weeds and no damage at all to
the bean plants. This is no small
matter for the bean farmers. Typical
herbicide programs for conventional soybean weed control costs about
$21/acre. Soybeans with the Roundup
Ready gene allows growers to lower this to about $16 an acre, including the
costs of Roundup Ready technology. In
2004 86% of the soybean acres in the United States were planted with genetically
modified beans. Of course this
development in the United States
has led to huge international controversy, since soybeans are a major export
crop from America. The beans and their effects have been
subjected to extensive testing and no harmful effects from genetic modification
have been found. Resistance to
importation of genetically modified beans is gradually diminishing world-wide,
although importation of such beans is still prohibited by the European Union.
Sixteen
miles south of Lexington
the landscape changes. We cross a river
and head up an incline. Farm land is
replaced by scrub growth. In the little
pastures for the first time we see a few animals, horses and cattle. This is a terminal moraine of the Wisconsin glacier, where the ice paused and melted some
twenty thousand years ago, in the late Pleistocene A little further along our
car takes us to the crest of the moraine.
We are within sight of our destination.
Our trip has taken us one hundred and fifty miles in distance and has
ranged widely in time, back to the world of the great glaciers, to the French
explorers and Indians of the seventeenth century, to Thomas Jefferson and
Abraham Lincoln, to the settlers of the mid-nineteenth century and the seed
people and biotechnologists of the twentieth.
All this has been summoned up to us by what we have experienced on the
Road to LeRoy.
Robert
W. Carton
2 October 2005