46 www.FarmProgress.com – June 2013
Kansas Farmer
150th Celebration
Remembering Arthur Capper
By TYLER HARRIS
A
RTHUR Capper once said his philosophy on life was “Live and let
live — and lift a little more than your
fair share.” He certainly did more than his
fair share. He was well-known throughout
Kansas and the Midwest for owning several
agricultural publications; and for serving
two terms as the first native-born Kansas
governor from 1915 to 1919, and five terms
as a U.S. senator from 1919 to 1949. As a
leader of Washington’s Farm Block, Capper
fought for the interests of farmers, rather
than a political ideology.
Born July 14, 1865, to Herbert and
Key Points
■ In his publications and politics, Arthur
Capper was a strong ag supporter.
■ Although Republican, Capper worked for
farmers, rather than political parties.
■ He pushed for getting a fair share of the
domestic market and reducing surplus.
Isabella Capper, in Garnett, it didn’t take
Capper long to get started in the newspaper business. At 14, he began working
for the Garnett Journal. After graduating
high school, he worked at the Topeka
Daily Capital and eventually worked his
w up to editor, before buying it in 1901.
way
In the late 1890s, he purchased Mail and
B
Breeze,
which consolidated with Kansas
F
Farmer
in 1919. He purchased the Missouri
R
Ruralist,
Ohio Farmer and other publicat
tions
now under the Farm Progress name.
H owned the Missouri Valley Farmer,
He
w
which
became Capper’s Farmer, and
C
Capper’s
Weekly. In 1927, he purchased one
o the first radio stations in Kansas, WIBW,
of
a
according
to the Kansas Historical Society.
The Great War
T
O thing Capper was strongly opposed
One
tto was World War I, which presented
A MONUMENTAL REMINDER: A
2,000-pound statue of Capper now
2
sstands at the Kansas State Capitol in
Topeka.
T
some challenges to farmers. In an August
1919 Capper’s Farmer editorial, he argued
farmers and the general public paid the
price of war profiteering, causing higher
food prices and hunger. “The war has bred
thousands of millionaires, and many other
thousands of smaller but substantial fortunes have, at the same time, brought advances in prices to the consumer out of all
proportion to the advance in the cost of
production.”
Capper also took a stance on the
shortage of farmers during and after the
war. In another Capper’s Farmer editorial,
he encouraged the return home of farmers
still in Europe. “Men with farms or with
wives and babies at home, should not be
leveling shell holes in France at a dollar a
day when thousands of Frenchmen are out
of work … They should be here to help us
harvest and dispose of the enormous grain
crops every agricultural state in the Great
West will have ripe for the sickle within a
few weeks.”
The war meant rationing of supplies
needed by farmers. The Food and Fuel
Control Act closed factories to save fuel,
and Capper wrote President Woodrow
Wilson to open implement-manufacturing
plants. “There is a serious shortage of
agricultural implements imperatively
needed in the west …,” Capper wrote.
“Fifteen days shut-down of agricultural
implement factories between now and
May first will seriously handicap food
production.”
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FAVORING THE FARMER:
Although a Republican, Capper worked
across party lines to help farmers, for
example, with New Deal farm legislation
and the Agricultural Adjustment Acts.
Farm policy in the Roaring ’20s
Although the U.S. economy prospered in the
“Roaring ’20s” before the Great Depression,
Capper said farmers paid the price, as they
were living with surplus and high land
prices. At this time, he and other agriculturally minded politicians formed the Farm
Block. Along with them, he supported the
McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill, with the
goal of raising prices on domestic products
and reducing the surplus, although it was
vetoed by President Calvin Coolidge.
Capper was a strong supporter of cooperatives. Along with Andrew Volstead
of Minnesota, he pushed for the CapperVolstead acts of 1922 and 1926, which set
the stage for farmers to form cooperatives
to market their produce. It exempted the
Cooperative Agricultural and Cooperative
and Marketing associations from the