50 Years Ago
Late Autumn/Early Winter 1954
by Maurice Telleen
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Winter 2003 - 2004

(From the Belgian Review, the Percheron News of that period, as well as general news sources.)

The next big new thing for the masses was color television. On October 31 of that year the opera “Carmen” was televised in color. They chose this opera partly because of the lavish and colorful wardrobes used. A few tunnel vision fanatics might have preferred something else–like ‘Highlights from the National Holstein show’ or a football game on that particular hour. But that would have been dumb–black & white cows in color. Forget it.

No matter, television being what it was in 1953, only a handful of folks on the East Coast had access to that first color show anyway. The FCC was due to approve specifications for commercial color TV in a few weeks. Guess what the red hot gift idea would be, come Christmas 1953.

In the same month, the New York Yankees won their fifth consecutive World Series–something no baseball team had done before. Casey Stengel, then 63, had been the Yankees manager for that whole remarkable run which, incidentally, was also Casey’s first five years managing in the American League. He apparently had come in as a refugee from the National League at the sprightly age of 58.

Those 1935 Dodgers could be pretty exciting too–taking the Series into game six before going down. Their great catcher, Roy Campanella, had won the Most Valuable Player Award in the National League for the second year in a row. His reaction was, “I hope to play baseball as long as I live.” I don’t know what Casey Stengel said, but it was no doubt quotable. They were both off the cuff phrase makers, although Stengel sometimes did bodily injury to the English language.

Let’s go to the Nobel Peace Prize winners of 1953. Winston Churchill won the blue ribbon for Literature, not for any specific book, but for the whole body of his work, both writing and speeches. He was an eloquent man. Relatively few politicians are. Fewer right along. As for the Peace Prize itself, it was awarded to our former Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, for masterminding the Marshall Plan to put Europe back on its feet as quickly as possible. It was an amazing feat, considering the bitterness toward the Germans right after the war. It was a different mind-set and approach than was taken at Versailles after World War I. Considering that Marshall was a career soldier makes it even more remarkable.

From that let us take a giant step down to the antics of the then junior senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy. In November, he made a televised speech in which he came within inches of accusing former President Harry Truman of treason. It was McCarthy at his worst, which was pretty bad. He went on to blame the Truman-Acheson regime for fostering communism. The reaction of most of the country was “Good grief, won’t he ever shut up?”

At almost the same time, the former chief of the Soviet Secret Police, Lavrenti Beria, was shot by a firing squad, along with six of his cronies. The trial had lasted six whole days and was closed to public and press. He had been accused of implanting capitalism–which was, on the face of it, about as ridiculous as Tail Gunner Joe’s speeches on the senate floor and anywhere else where he opened his mouth.

I mentioned in this column in the last issue that an Armistice had finally been achieved in Korea in July. Does this mean that peace broke out on this globe? Not by a long shot. Much of the world news of 50 years ago, particularly in terms of the military, sounds like last week’s news.

There was another country on the Pacific Rim that was split into a north and south, very like Korea. It was a place called Vietnam. The Korean split was the result of an agreement between ourselves and the Russians. It was agreed that, upon conclusion of the war against Japan, we would occupy the south and they would occupy the north. So that split had been in existence for about eight years.

The division of Vietnam into two countries was more recent. That final rupture was in February of 1950, just a few months prior to the invasion of South Korea by the North. As with Korea, the north became a communist state and the south retained ties with their colonial ruler, France. It was all a part of what was once known as French Indo-China. It included Laos and Cambodia, as well as Vietnam. The French had been losing traction on this distant empire for years. When the split came, the “West” (the U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) quickly recognized the South with its emperor, Bao Dai, as the head big shot. The Soviet bloc, which included all of eastern Europe, recognized the North. The North did not even have a capital–but they had Ho Chi Minh, a master of guerrilla warfare who had gone underground to fight the French. And he was good at it. India’s prime minister, Nehru, called Bao Dai a French stooge. Subsequently events proved Nehru to be about on the money on that one.

The French had a relatively new general in charge. His name was Navarre. He was not optimistic about winning this seemingly endless guerrilla war but he was in charge and did the best he could. In late November, his paratroopers seized a strategic plateau near the Laotian border called Dien Bien Phu. The Japanese had built an airport there during their occupation and Navarre felt that he could use that to advantage. While pessimistic over his long term prospects, he thought this place was of great strategic importance, was defensible, and would be a useful base to support all pro-French forces in that theatre. In about six months it would be back in communist hands. Ultimately we would inherit France’s role in this war.

On October 14, an Israeli army unit enraged by an attack that killed a woman and two small children in an Israeli border town, took matters into their own hands. They stormed into a small Palestinian village, destroying fifty houses, and killing some sixty-nine Jordanians, many of them women and children. David Ben Gurion, the Israeli prime minister, tried to convince the world that civilian vigilante types had done this–but few were buying it, especially the armistice commission from the United Nations.

And over in Iran, that oil-rich country was torn between the forces of the Shah and the more conservative religious forces headed up by Mohammen Mossadegh. The Shah had been on the throne most of the time since 1941. It was no secret that our dog in that fight was the Shah. But fifty years ago Mossadegh had gotten the upper hand so the Shah was hanging out in Baghdad. When he got the word that his troops had again seized control of the government, he headed back to Tehran, courtesy–some folks said–of the American CIA. Shortly after this game of musical chairs was completed, President Eisenhower announced a 45 million dollar loan to Iran. Sometimes the more things change, the more they are the same.

The final “non-horse” or farm-related item from this period was to mention that a meeting of the big three was held in Bermuda in December. A nice place to be in December, I would imagine. There President Eisenhower, Prime Minister Churchill and the French President Laniel met to confront their common problems. Lord knows they had plenty of them–in both oceans and on a half dozen continents.

And now to the drafters and the dwindling group that was carrying their banner forward–not so much into a hostile world but into an almost completely indifferent one. To most folks, especially the movers and shakers, they just didn’t matter anymore.

But those crazy draft horse people went right ahead and had their meeting of their big three, Belgians, Clydesdales and Percherons, at the International Livestock Show in Chicago just the same. Like the meeting in Bermuda with the U.S., Great Britain and France, the breeders of Belgian, Clydesdale and Percheron horses had their common problem too–namely survival.

At the 1952 International, upon the urging of Mr. Billie Lynch (longtime Shire breeder and one time Shire breed secretary), they had whomped up a draft horse breeders’ dinner. They had such a good time that they did it again in 1953. Their 1953 speaker was Dr. A.L. Harvey from the University of Minnesota. He was a well known judge of draft horses and his speech was “My experiences in trying to forecast the future of the draft horse.” Well!

The year before it was a guy from the Indiana Farm Bureau telling them how to sell their horses at a profit (sort of a seminar in how to sell ice to Eskimos). I have no idea what either one of them said, but I would guess that Harvey’s came down to “well, you just never know what is around the corner.”

Given the dismal condition of the market at that time, I think you had to be kind of mean-spirited to even ask an old friend to make a speech. My guess is that both these speakers had no trouble keeping it brief and then they just settled down into enjoying the company.

So–just how bad were things draft horse-wise? Here is how bad: At the greatest annual livestock show in the U.S., one with a rich draft horse tradition, there were seven Belgians shown by two exhibitors, Roy Curtis, Princeton, Iowa and Reed Shank, Brookville, Indiana.

There were eighteen Clydesdales shown by two exhibitors. They were Nathan Goff, Clarksburg, West Virginia, and Charles Willhoit & Sons, Batavia, Iowa.

There were eight Percheron exhibitors that led out twenty-nine horses. There from Indiana: P.T. Brown & Son, Tangier; Lynnwood Farm, Carmel; Jerry Rybolt, Swayzee; also Bob Eschrich, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; George Dix, Delaware, Ohio; Bob Jones, Farmer City, Illinois; G. Sherman Read, Richland, Michigan; and Pennsylvania State College.

Shank had most of the Belgian champions; Willhoit and Goff split the grand championships in the Clydes; and Penn State had both of them in Percherons.

Now, isn’t that awful–for an INTERNATIONAL LIVESTOCK SHOW! I’m not even going to mention the names of the winning horses.

The annual meeting of the Percheron Association was held in Chicago at this same time. It was a full blown crisis at the Percheron meeting. Secretary Anne Brown reported a deficit of over $4,000 for fiscal 1953. With an expected loss of income from a decline in outside typing work that had been done for beef cattle associations, it appeared the future years could expect deficits of around $6,000 per year. Everything possible had been done to trim expenses down to the bare bones.

To further complicate it, Mrs. Brown reported that for personal reasons she and her husband would be moving to their farm in northwest Indiana. Oh, my! Some, I’m sure, were ready to just quit–cash it in–give the books and records to some agricultural college (they had ALREADY received quite a few of the top horses as gifts!) and walk away from it. But the great majority were anything but quitters.

There appeared to be only two real alternatives. One was to combine with the Belgian Corporation. But that had already been explored and was a dead end for several reasons. The other was to build a small concrete block building on the Brown farm in Indiana and retain Mrs. Brown, etc., etc., etc. (You can find it all in the Spring 1954 Percheron Notes.) And that is what happened. The Percheron Association’s days in Chicago were over. But then, the International itself, and the stock yards, and some of those packers were also living on borrowed time. They did, however, continue to hold their annual meetings in Chicago during International Week for several years.

They got one new director at that meeting. He would play a key role in the years of rebuilding that lie just ahead. His name was Ray Bast. He was from Richfield, Wisconsin and, as things turned out, he would be the new Moses to lead the breed to solvency and yet another promised land–this one in Ohio.

The Belgians had a less challenging meeting. I presume it was in Wabash rather than Chicago, but I’m not sure. Maybe, out of force of habit, they too continued to meet in Chicago for a few years.

In any event, the Belgians were much the healthiest of the lot in 1953. They had hit their all time low in registrations in 1952 with 171 head. In fiscal 1953, that bounced up to 220 animals. But their transfers dipped to 317, which was the low point for them in transfers. Fiscal 1953 showed a loss of $203. But they still had $27,000 in U.S. Treasury Bonds–probably the only association with any such assets.

The three top states in both registrations and transfers were Iowa, Ohio and Indiana, in that order. Registrations numbered 49, 46 and 26 in that order. Transfers were 55 for Iowa, 53 for Indiana and 45 for Ohio.

At that 1953 annual meeting, the directors had to select a new director to fulfill the term of Dr. Reed Shank, Brookville, Indiana, who had died. They appointed George Harkness, Sandusky, Ohio. Shank was a colorful man who really enjoyed “the game.” I understand that he was the team physician for the Cincinnati Reds baseball team. If that is untrue I trust someone from that Ohio River Valley country will set me straight.

Fred H. Cook from Beaver, Pennsylvania, and George A. Dix from Delaware, Ohio, continued on in their roles as presidents of the Belgian and Percheron associations. Both grand men.

That is how it was. If anyone thinks the early 1950s were “the good old days” in the draft horse business, they need to consult a psychiatrist. Every era is probably the “good old days” for someone and the “worst of times” for someone else.

Just what would you have said to that gathering of draft horse folks out at the Stock Yards Inn fifty years ago this November?