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�We Plow
God's Fields
The Life of James G. K. McClure
by John Curtis Ager
�The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization
composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From
1973 to 2004^ its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies
documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian
Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of
the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day.
With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National
Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program^
Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access
digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press.
www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a
copy of the license^ visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses.
Original copyright © 1991 by the Appalachian Consortium Press.
ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper):978-i-4696-4i98-o
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-4200-0
Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press
www.uncpress.org
�APPALACHIAN CONSORTIUM PRESS
Boone, North Carolina
The Appalachian Consortium is a non-profit educational organization
comprised of institutions and agencies located in the Southern Highlands.
Our members are volunteers who plan and execute projects which serve
156 mountain counties in seven states. Among our goals are:
Preserving the cultural heritage of Southern Appalachia
Protecting the mountain environment
Publishing manuscripts about the region
Improving educational opportunities for area students and teachers
Conducting scientific, social, and economic research
Promoting a positive image of Appalachia
Encouraging regional cooperation
The member institutions of the Appalachian Consortium are:
Appalachian State University
Blue Ridge Parkway
East Tennessee State University
Gardner-Webb College
Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association
John C. Campbell Folk School
Lees-McRae College
Mars Hill College
Mayland Community College
N.C. Division of Archives and History
Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy
Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild
U.S. Forest Service
Warren Wilson College
Western Carolina University
Western North Carolina Historical Association
�We Plow God's Fields
is dedicated to
my wife Annie McClure Clarke Ager
her mother, Elspeth McClure Clarke
and to the Forgotten Pioneers
of Western North Carolina.
�Contents
Prologue
1. The McClure Family
v
1
2. Lake Forest
19
3. Texas
38
4. Yale
47
5. Europe: Edinburgh and Tubingen
69
6. Unsystematic Theology
86
7. Affliction
101
8. Iron River
124
9. Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
137
10. Marriage
165
11. Hickory Nut Gap
183
12. Farmer Jim
199
13. Farming in Western North Carolina
230
14. Farmers Federation
247
15. Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
277
16. Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
312
17. Farmers Federation in the Depression
346
18. Picnics
376
19. War Years
399
20. Last Years
435
Epilogue
464
�Acknowledgments
Researching and writing a book is on the whole a solitary and lonely
pursuit. And yet, you are dependent on a whole range of people for help. I have
needed a large contingent of people to urge me on, to encourage the work. My
mother, Mary Lucille Ager, my wife, Annie, my sons, Eric, Kevin, Jamie and
Douglas, and my mother-in-law, Elspeth Clarke, have all been my primary
encouragement team, and I am indebted to them beyond words. Debbie Aly,
secretary to the McClure Fund, labored over her typewriter long and tedious
hours for the benefit of this project. Buffy White agreed to subject herself to
editing the manuscript, masterfully providing order in the midst of a whirlwind.
The Trustees of the James O.K. McClure Educational and Development Fund,
including James McClure Clarke, Reuben A. Holden, Dr. Harold Bacon, Mrs.
Burnham Colburn, Martha Guy, Julian Woodcock, and Richard Jennings,
patiently provided the funds and the time to complete this biography. Tom Eller
of Warren Wilson College guided me through his word processing maze. John
Murphy, Donna Kilpatrick, Doug Clarke, Franklin Sides, Donna Price, Susan
and Chris Crosson and the Brown family (Ralph, Shirley, Clifford, Ben and
Charlie) all kept the cows milked and the apples picked at Hickory Nut Gap
Farm while I stole away to write this book. Finally, I am grateful to all my
editors at the Appalachian Consortium, and to those who typeset and printed
this book. In the end, it has been a community project, and how fitting that it
should be.
�Prologue
And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in
truth. (John 17:19, a favorite sermon text for Jim McClure)
Describe Jim? That's difficult. He's tall & very well set up. About 5 feet
11 in his stockings & weighs about 170 pounds. He looks more like an Englishman or a Scotchman than an American & he wears his clothes the way they
do—Tweeds and such likes. He has a very refined rather small head with dark
hair & dark eyes that are very brilliant at times & with humorous lines about
them. He has the most charming smile I've ever seen on any human being,
and that's not merely the opinion of his prejudiced wife! He has regular
features & a certain youthful almost childlike look to his face combined with
an expression of immense strength & a curious concentrated vitality. He has
a warm brown coloring that suggests an Italian . . . He has an extraordinary
mind & a very real gift of expression, a singular intellectual quickness and a
german thoroughness of investigation. He is one of the most original thinkers
I have ever known & is wholly untrammelled by tradition. Added to that he
has a humor & wit that is the joy of all who know him. This is written as much
as possible with the eye of a cold outsider! (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to
Martha Clarke, July 7, 1916)
This biography is a story of the life of one man, James Gore King McClure,
Jr., and his vision for a better life in the mountains of North Carolina. At his
prompting, and under his leadership, the Farmers Federation was founded in
Fairview, North Carolina (near Asheville) in 1920. Out of his own determination and his superb organizing skills, he created a cooperative agricultural movement that began to shift the economy of Western North Carolina from one
hopelessly beset with inertia to one that gave the farmers of the area new hope.
The Federation organized markets, provided test trials for farm products, and
upgraded breeding stock. For the first time in many years, farmers had money
in their pockets and a legitimate pride in their production.
A name like James Gore King McClure seems made to be announced in a
resounding bass voice, after which all mumbling and chit-chat would quickly
subside into attentive silence. But though honor, respect and even power would
eventually come to this man, they were won more with a smile and a cheerful
remark than with an authoritarian presence. He was brought up, a minister's
son, in the posh Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, Illinois, but was able to break
through the narrow circle of this society to move easily among different levels
�vi
We Plow God's Fields
and conditions of humanity. He inherited a powerful Presbyterian vision as the
descendant of staunch Scottish Covenanters, and was trained in theology and
the rhythms of Protestant church work. He could challenge the complacency of
a prominent New York City church with his message of the Social Gospel; and
two weeks later, in shirt sleeves, challenge the mountaineers of the Bearwallow
Baptist Church in Gerton, North Carolina, to take hold of their own lives, to
consecrate themselves for the sake of their neighbors and their children.
Jim McClure always felt a thrill when he gathered together the varieties of
people in his life. He possessed the gifts of charm and humor, and the ability
to create an ambience of good feelings and warmth that brought individuals with
little common ground in touch with one another. The man drew a kind of power
out of a crowd, a spiritual power he returned in kind. Whether it was playing
Santa Claus for the mountain children at his home, Hickory Nut Gap Farm, or
raffling off a rooster to a wealthy dowager at the Waldorf Astoria in New York,
he had a knack for understanding what it was in a situation that gave people a
sense of ease, satisfaction and excitement. He knew when to be serious, and
when a tense moment needed relief. His skills were human ones; and they
brought into his life most of all many, many friends.
This is also the story of his wife, Elizabeth Cramer McClure, an extraordinarily sensitive woman who saw the rich colors of life with a painter's eyes, and
who taught Jim to balance Calvin with Monet. Without her sense of proportion
and beauty, Jim's work for the Farmers Federation would certainly have failed.
She made a home for him, remodeling an old neglected inn and surrounding it
with flower and vegetable gardens. There were the two children, Elspeth and
Jamie, with their friends and cousins romping about the mountainside. It was
the kind of place Jim McClure could both entertain his guests and really relax,
and where he could find support and comfort in his spiritual struggles.
Elizabeth's portrait of Jim continues to greet his descendants and old
friends in the dining room of Hickory Nut Gap Farm. One mountain woman
who had grown up on the farm said every time she passed by it she just thought
he was going to jump out and start talking to her. Elizabeth, an exquisite portrait
painter, captured his gifts on canvas. It was with his famous eyes that she told
with her brush of his "immense strength & a curious concentrated vitality." The
eyes are determined and full of the adventure of a great vision of life. And his
mouth, with a little smile, balances the Presbyterian hardness to portray the
"humor & wit that is the joy of all who know him." Elizabeth showed how the
mouth and the eyes complemented each other, in the portrait as well as in her
marriage to him.
This man chose and articulated the highest ideals, and then doggedly pursued them. He had to struggle not only with the ingrown fatalism of the mountaineer, but with himself and the limitations his own culture imposed on him.
Both he and his wife worked to enjoy and appreciate the incongruities of their
lives. Their grace and good humor, though, did not leave them casual wayfarers.
They were hard-working participants with and movers of the people around
�Prologue
vii
them, always ready to take a stand for progress and then to battle hard for its
fulfillment.
It would be easy to say that these two people lived in an era when faith in
progress supported them. It is true they had the backing of a dynamic American
society that was making such economic strides that no problems appeared insurmountable, and yet was still old-fashioned enough to believe in an American
destiny. But Jim and Elizabeth McClure faced the cynicism and hypocrisy that
are always prevalent in human societies. The story of Jim's life is ftill of human
hope and courage. He wanted his life to stand for spiritual excellence, not as a
contemplative monk but as a man who was unafraid to dream that the Kingdom
of God could be established on this earth and was willing to dirty himself trying
to build it. His struggle was imperfect; not all of his projects were successful.
The Farmers Federation itself died a suffering death. His life, like most, was
filled with tragic elements that would haunt and discourage him. And yet he
kept battling and fighting right up to the very end. Read this book to discover a
great human spirit, the man baptized James Gore King McClure, Jr.
�This page intentionally left blank
�Chapter 1
The McClure Family
Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of sons is their
fathers. Proverbs 17:6
The memory of my Father is a constant inspiration to me—in every high
and holy line. (James Gore King McClure, Sr., to James Gore King McClure,
Jr., October 6, 1928)
The oldest room at Hickory Nut Gap Farm, the original log cabin in fact,
was made over by Jim and Elizabeth McClure to be their study. The bookshelves
were filled with his theological and historical works, with several shelves reserved for her art books, and volumes on landscaping, interior design and
horticulture that were used for the transformation of the old inn. When there
was a need for serious talk, the McClures retired to this study, closing the door
behind them. Of all the rooms in the house, it was the one reserved almost
exclusively for business matters and intellectual stimulation. It is no accident
that Jim and Elizabeth hung above the old fireplace in that room an engraving
commemorating a decisive development in Scottish history. Although these
events occurred nearly 300 years earlier, they had such a profound effect and
so powerful an influence on Jim McClure's ancestors that they were in large
part responsible both for his desire to enter the ministry and his very presence
in the United States.
The engraving is peopled with figures going about a most serious and, for
some, painful ordeal. On the right, men of the nobility arrive on horseback amid
aristocrats still wearing their swords and uniforms of command. No one smiles.
On the left, a confident and stern-faced minister of the gospel shoves into the
scene a small book, perhaps the hated Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The
light, the outstretched arms and the faces all focus onto the center of the picture,
where a simple country woman sits with an open Bible on her lap. Her face
looks off into the distance with an expression of unnamed terror, because she
understands better than all of the others that the consequence of this gathering
will be war. And war, to the peasant mother, threatens her family most of all,
because it brings along not only death, but hunger and disease as well. The year
is 1638, and the Scottish Presbyterians are rising to oppose the ill-fated King
Charles I and his Archbishop, William Laud. The specific issue is a decree that
the Scottish church must use the Anglican prayer book. But the real issue is:
who rules Scotland, the English crown or the Scottish Presbyterians? To under1
�We Plow God's Fields
"The Covenanters," an engraving hanging over the fireplace of the study at Hickory Nut
Gap, Fairview, N.C. Engraved from a painting "By His Most Obedient Servant George
Harvey."
stand Jim McClure, it is important to know what his ancestors were doing and
thinking at this time of crisis.
The Scots never developed an institution comparable to the English Parliament. But in order to root out the Roman Catholic Church, John Knox (15051572), leader of the Scottish reformation, had organized his Presbyterians into
a powerful political force, one that was astonishingly representative of the
different classes of its day. By the time Charles I assumed the throne, he was
faced with a church body that wanted to rule Scotland, and he had to find a
means to thwart it. The battle over the English prayer book was the loose thread
that started to unravel Charles's rule, ending finally with his execution. The
picture in the McClure study commemorates the renewal of the Scottish Covenant with God, and it bound each signatory to resist the authority of the Church
of England and its royal promoters. English historian G. M. Trevelyan wrote:
"The Covenant with God . . . embraced all ranks from the highest to the lowest.
In every parish men signed it, weeping and lifting their right hands to heaven.
When the Scots display emotion, something real is astir within them."1 The
Scottish resistance forced Charles I to call for the election of a Parliament to
provide money for an army, setting in motion the famous struggle for power
between that body and the English monarchy. When the dust had cleared,
neither Oliver Cromwell nor the restored Charles II could abide a Scotland ruled
by radical Presbyterians. Life was made increasingly uncomfortable for the
�Family
Covenanters. Some years earlier King James I, father of the ill-fated Charles,
had created a plantation of Scottish settlers in Ulster, Ireland, sowing the
dragon's teeth of sectarian hatred amongst the Catholic Irish. Some members
of the McClure family left Scotland at this early opportunity, and were well
established in Northern Ireland when the screws began to tighten on their Scottish brethren later in the century. A family letter describes the situation:
It ^as towards the latter part of the seventeenth century that the Sloans with
the McClures and Craigmiles were forced to take refuge in Ireland. As covenanting Presbyterians they were subject to severe persecution, and with their
brethren in the faith they sought peace and safety in a land where they could
worship God after the dictates of their hearts. Passing over from Craig in
Scotland they found a resting place in the province of Ulster where the Presbyterians so largely predominated, settling in the County of Armagh; they there
remained surrounded by sympathizing Mends, enjoying the quiet they sought.2
One family story tells of a mother and daughter hiding in a load of hay
being shipped across to Ireland. English soldiers sank their bayonets into the
hay, but miraculously neither mother nor daughter was discovered, and they
arrived safely. Through the fires of such adversity, a strong Presbyterian identity
was firmly stamped on the McClure family.
At this point in the family history, individual McClure ancestors emerge.
Archibald, Jim's great-grandfather, married Elizabeth Craigmiles. Her father,
if family traditions are accurate, felt that this McClure boy was too lowly to
marry the daughter of a famous military man. James Craigmiles, born Craig,
was a member of the family that had emigrated from Scotland with the McClures
during the seventeenth century. He had made a name for himself, in the literal
sense. At the age of eighteen he enlisted in the British Army, and in 1759 found
himself in the New World as a part of the siege of Quebec. In one of the most
celebrated military paintings of the period James Craig holds in his arms the
brilliant young General Wolfe as death overcomes him on the Plains of Abraham. Wolfe's watch and papers were delivered personally by Craig to the
general's family, and for his heroism he was granted property and the suffix
"miles" (Latin for soldier) was added to his name.3
With the passing of time, Ireland ceased to be a haven from persecution.
It was also a poor land where an ambitious person had little hope of satisfactory
fulfillment. Religious questions and questions of national identity were hopelessly tangled, as they are today, and the London government felt forced to limit
the rights of citizenship to those people loyal to the Church of England. By law,
both Covenanters and Catholics
. . . could hold no public office, nor be married by their own ministers, nor
bury their dead by their own simple rites, nor build churches, nor buy land,
nor employ teachers except those of the Established Faith. Thus deprived by
oppressive laws of every position of trust or honor, denied the liberty of
�We Plow God's Fields
speech, the free exercise of conscience, together with the burdensome restraints of commerce and extortionate rents from their landlords, they began
to look toward America as another and a better home.4
The new American republic was attracting settlers who hoped to leave
behind both the politics of the Reformation and the poverty of Ireland. In 1801
the McClure family made the decisive break, and Jim McClure's great-grandfather, Archibald McClure, sailed for New York. James Craigmiles and his wife
joined their daughter and son-in-law and their children for the voyage to America. Another young couple went with them, for Archibald's brother John had
married another of James Craigmiles's daughters, doubly diluting his fine new
name with McClure blood. Mary McClure, sister to Archibald and John, was
on board as well. She was the crucial link in her two brothers' future, for she
had married and moved to America in 1794 and had returned to Ireland to see
her family and accompany them across the Atlantic. The whole McClure clan
was presided over for the trip by Mr. and Mrs. McClure, Sr., Jim's great-greatgrandparents. They all settled in the primitive manufacturing town of Hamilton
Factory near Albany, New York, where Mary's family lived.5
Sailing the Atlantic in 1801 was very risky, especially for the older members of a family group. The boats were cramped and the crossing took many
weeks. Tragedy struck the McClure voyage as yellow fever broke out on board,
and when they arrived in New York the port authorities refused to allow the
passengers to disembark until the disease had run its course. It must have been
a dreary wait on the edge of the New World. The older passengers suffered
terribly, and when the time came to set foot on American soil, only the old
warrior James Craigmiles was alive among the collective parents of Archibald
and Elizabeth. But despite the sorrows of death, these two entered the New
World that much less encumbered with the ties and responsibilities of their
former lives.6
But the doughty old James Craigmiles was apparently enough to deal with,
remaining with his two daughters and making a terrible nuisance of himself.
The habit of command rarely dies out in an army man, and how tempting it is
for the most forbearing of fathers (which the senior Craigmiles was not) to give
advice to his own children and sons-in-law. The tensions at home were perhaps
exacerbated by the treatment he received out in the streets of the town. A spirit
of Jeffersonian egalitariamsm was sweeping the nation in 1801, and the common
folk failed regularly to tip their hats to him in passing. Elizabeth and Archibald
McClure must have been quite relieved when he decided to sail back to Ireland,
complaining all the way of the insolent Americans.
By 1808, Elizabeth and Archibald had five children. In 1810, Archibald
McClure died of a fever that had swept through the village. At his death,
Archibald charged his wife to see that the children "feared God and were
obedient."7 The Presbyterian faith remained strong in this family. As each child
was ready, the parents made a trek to the town of New Scotland, the nearest
�Family
Presbyterian Church, in order to have them properly baptized. Religion and
education were inseparable in this household. Archibald, Jr. told his own children later how he learned to read the First Psalm by the light of the fireplace as
his mother spun yarn on her wheel.8
The widow Elizabeth was an industrious mother, and was able to support
her family adequately. "Grandma McClure was a good manager . . . She kept
boarders, she made yarn and knit much, she put down pickels [sic] for a family
in Albany named Russell. She was especially successful in spinning shoe thread
and made . . . from it enough to more than keep her children in shoes. She also
made linen thread which was sold in Albany."9 As the children were able, they
helped their mother and grew up with the same industrious habits. The eldest
son, James, went to Albany to be apprenticed to Mr. Russell, Mrs. McClure's
"pickel" fancier. He owned a paint and glass store, and was so impressed with
the work of James that when young Archibald was of age, on his fourteenth
birthday, he too went to Albany to work for Mr. Russell. Archibald had been a
sickly child, and was quite attached to his mother. She found it difficult to tell
him straight that he was leaving home for good. She explained that the trip to
Albany was to be a special birthday present, a holiday with his brother. She
carefully gathered together his clothes and placed diem inconspicuously in the
wagon. Elizabeth Craigmiles McClure did her best to give him an ordinary
goodbye, but as soon as he was out of sight, she sat down and cried.10 Tradition
handed down in the family tells of Archibald sleeping under the counter in Mr.
Russell's store, and walking home to see his mother every Sunday, a fourteenmile round trip.
Religion and education, as well as a gift for business, were yoked together
in the McClure family. Mrs. McClure had certainly stressed these pursuits, and
after only two years of Archibald's apprenticeship, Archibald and brother James
went into business for themselves. They bought their own drug and paint firm
in an Albany buzzing with money and big ideas. The Erie Canal had just been
opened, and suddenly the town became the funnel for enormous wealth moving
down to New York City. At the same time, young Archibald devoted himself
to his own education by attending a Sabbath School his brother James helped
to organize. Classes were held in a sawdust-floored carpenter's shop, and were
designed to help those who worked the other six days of the week. This Sunday
School was quite a controversial idea as many thought it a sacrilege against the
sanctity of the Lord's Day. When the school tried to merge with the Second
Presbyterian Church the issue almost split the congregation. Archibald himself
saved the situation by convincing Mrs. De Witt Clinton, the governor's wife,
to send her children to the Sunday School. Archibald McClure felt such gratitude to the school that for the rest of his life he worked to build up its resources
and improve its services. He gathered together enough books to make a school
library, an expensive aid to education in that era. Many of the poorest boys of
Albany learned to read, write and 'cipher' at the Sunday School of the Second
Presbyterian Church, hearing as well the gospel of Jesus Christ.11
�We Plow God's Fields
Archibald married Susan Tracy Rice on May 22, 1833. She was a woman
of such deep-rooted New England ancestry that she could trace five direct
ancestors to the Mayflower. Her father had served in the War of 1812, and her
mother had been William Cullen Bryant's first teacher. The poet honored her
every year with a visit.12 Susan had grown up in Washington, Connecticut, and
loved to describe the visit there of the Marquis de Lafayette in 1825. The seven
Rice children were perched on the fence along the road, each proudly displaying
a new pair of shoes. The great hero spotted them in his parade through town,
and made the grand gesture of giving them a personal salute.13 Susan became a
teacher like her mother, and went to Albany to accept a school appointment
there. No one could have been more attractive to Archibald than a beautiful
teacher, and happily his affections were well received by Miss Rice. They spent
their honeymoon traveling along the Erie Canal to view the great wonder of New
York, Niagara Falls.14
Susan and Archibald McClure raised a family of seven children in a prudent
and sober atmosphere. Morning and evening prayers were an unvarying ritual
of daily life. No liquor, smoking, card games or dancing were allowed at any
time or in any place. Outside the home, the Second Presbyterian Church of
Albany was the most important family focal point. With Archibald's business
success, the McClure family's social position rose to a level of great influence
in Albany. The mahogany dining room table, made for Archibald's family,
became a gathering place for ministers, politicians and business leaders.
Archibald's success allowed him time to travel as well. He made one trip
to the Illinois frontier to investigate a mission society project of his wife's. In
1847 he sailed for Europe, returning to the world his father had left almost a
half a century before. On his return voyage, the link to the future of this story
was almost broken. A terrible gale blew up. And as the ship began to toss about
Archibald became gravely ill. A friend made during the passage, a prosperous
New York City merchant named James Gore King, cared for him and nursed
him back to full health from a state perilously close to death. Without Mr. King,
our narrative would never have been, because it was after Archibald's return
that Susan conceived a fifth child. On November 24, 1848, James Gore King
McClure, the father of our hero, drew in his first breath and let out his first wail
of greeting.15
Religion, education and business continued to blend and support one another in the McClure household, and young "Jamie" absorbed a balance of all
three. For him to be a minister of the gospel, however, was the dearest hope of
his parents. Archibald had been unable to study for the ministry himself, and
looked forward to the pleasure of sending one of his own children into that
honored profession, fulfilling a personal dream through one of his offspring.
To that end, they dedicated his young life, continually praying that the living
God would lead their son into His service.16 After his near death at sea, Ardvbald undoubtedly felt a keen sense of gratitude toward his Creator. In any event,
spiritual prompting affected young Jamie quite early. In later life he wrote:
�Family
Archibald McClure. The following note was written on the back of the portrait by James
G. K. McClure, Sr.) "This portrait was painted in 1838 Frederck Fink (?) of Albany,
N.Y.—when my father was 32. This was 10 years before I was born. The memory of my
father is a constant inspiration to me in every high and holy line. He lived to be 66. His
black hair was untinged. It was perfectly black."
The first distinctive religious experience that I recall was in 1858—when I was
nine years of age. The revival which originated in the Fulton St., New York
City prayer meeting in 1857 was a prayer meeting revival . . . The meetings
held in Albany were largely attended, were very hushed, had scarcely any
exhortation, but had much outpouring of the heart in prayer . . . Moved by the
atmosphere of such meetings, I asked a group of boys of my own age to gather
in my father's dining room—perhaps ten in all—and have a prayer meeting
�We Plow God's Fields
Jamie McClure.
of our own . . . At that time boys of our age were not allowed to unite with the
church—so we were virtually left to ourselves.17
Jamie McClure grew up absorbed in the collected wisdom of his Presbyterian heritage, and with the stature of a taut and wiry athlete. His physical
prowess opened up for him the boys' world of baseball, which complemented
the heavy doses of ecclesiastical training he received at home and at church.
He was a happy and witty child, able to gain the confidence of his peers. His
father sent him to preparatory school in Massachusetts and it was there, in the
spring of 1866, that he made a firm covenant with God. He once wrote. "It was
at Andover that I became a Christian . . . My whole life has been shaped by the
decision there made." (James Gore King McClure, Sr. to Marion Cooper, November 15, 1902) During his vacation, he united with the Second Presbyterian
Church of Albany.
Fortunately three questions were not asked me. One was: "Had I experienced
a precious hope?" Another, "Was I distressed for my sins?" the third, "Did I
love God?" These were questions often in the air. Now the fact was t h a t . . . I
had not experienced anything "precious," I had not been distressed about my
sins and I could not claim any such feelings toward God as my love for my
mother. All these features were in due time to be the fruit of the Spirit-but I
was just planted .. . Indeed I was rather irritated at God because I had felt
forced to yield to Him and I initially said, "If you insist upon my being a
minister, I will do as you say, but I don't want to ... "18
After his spring vacation, he returned to Andover with the adulation of all
of his parents' friends ringing in his ears. Before he knew it, he was in trouble
�Family
and the headmaster had to suspend him from school for a serious breach of
discipline. He had been attending a meeting of a theological society along with
a ball-playing schoolmate nicknamed "Tompie." On the way home, a plan arose
in some of the boy's minds to "egg" a particularly hated teacher. The final
strategy was to:
creep up the garden lawn and put the tick-tack9" on the window, pull the string
and when old B
comes out we will throw our eggs at him and run. This
was a turn in affairs for which I was not prepared. But Providence came to
my relief. The boy next to me was tossing his egg up in the moonlight (he was
a base ball player) when it slipped past his hand and fell upon the ground—
whereupon I said to him, "Tompie, you can throw straighter than I can, you
take my egg." Pilate like I attempted to evade responsibility for the scheme in
which I nevertheless was a participator. The scheme worked well. Old B
came to his front door, the eggs showered upon him and we disappeared.
The school authorities made a quick bed check, and the principal perpetrators
were summoned . . . convicted and . . . suspended. What should the rest of the
eleven do? In the spirit o f . . . loyal allegiance we drew up a paper stating that
we were equally guilty with the three . . . and presented it to the Principal,
who simply said, "You may consider yourselves suspended."
Here I was—just having united with the Church—and suspended! What
shakings of heads now by the elderly people, instead of pattings on the back—
if they could know. We were allowed to remain in Andover -and no word was
sent to our homes. After a week of uncertainty we were summoned one by one
to the Principal's office and were told that if we apologized in person to Mr.
B
, we would be restored . . . I had learned the best lesson of my life.19
His deference to Tompie was all the more condemning because Jamie
McClure was an outstanding baseball player in his own right. He eventually
played on two semi-professional teams in Albany, the National Nine and the
Albany Blues. Cousin Archie Bush, while playing for the Blues, is thought to
have developed the first "curve throw."20 Jamie went to Yale University in
1866, became the captain of the baseball team, and was third baseman when the
team trounced Harvard 38-18.21 Jim McClure, as his friends now called him,
realized that baseball added a common touch to his reputation. He credited the
sport for much of his success in influencing his classmates at Yale, because it
broke down the stuffy image students might have had of the practicing Christian.
He was chosen for the most prestigious secret society, Skull and Bones. At
graduation, he was awarded the traditional giant wooden spoon as the most
beloved man in the class. One professor, the distinguished Dr. Timothy Dwight,
could testify to his personal appeal. He said, "I have not the command of
*The author was unable to ferret out the exact nature of the 'tick-tack,' but perhaps a
more astute reader will understand.
��Family
11
language to describe the position which he held in our class. Someone once
divided the class into Lits and Pops. Jim was no mean scholar, attaining a First
Dispute stand and enrolled in Phi Beta Kappa, but was pre-eminent in the latter
class. No man in the class was more popular."22
And yet, Jim McClure maintained an active ethical vigilance against the
moral laxity he saw sweeping the university following the Civil War. Heavy
drinking had become a badge of manhood, and with all the fierce determination
of his Covenanter ancestors, he fought what began as a one-man battle against
the abominations of undergraduate life. He said, "My sense of responsibility led
me to fight the drinking customs of the day . . . It was . . . a terrible grief to me
to see ... scores upon scores of my classmates drunk. The class ahead of mine
was notoriously dissipated. Its leaders tried to influence the sentiment and
practices of my class. Quietly but unceasingly I endeavored—in every possible
way—to get ahead of those leaders and thwart them—much to their disgust and
anger."23 The confrontation on this issue was none too subtle. Some upperclassmen caught Freshman McClure and tried to force him to drink, " . . . but he
resolutely kept his lips tightly shut and the whiskey poured over him."24
For four years Jim McClure exercised his sense of responsibility from the
elected office of class deacon. That he took his duties seriously is clear by the
testimony of a former underclassman:
Dr. McClure . . . was perhaps the most prominent senior at Yale when I was
a Freshman .. . While I naturally never spoke to him in college, I well
remember that he called our class together near the end of freshman year and
gave us a little talk urging us not to drink at all during Sophomore year and
mentioning that liquor was never served in the successive fraternities of which
he had been a member, an argument of much more force than can be imagined
by one unfamiliar with the conditions .. . perhaps more than half the class,
signed an agreement of compliance and I think observed it.25
Perhaps the life work of young Jim had been preordained by a pact made
between his parents and God at his birth, and maybe he was dragged squirming
and kicking against his will as he realized the moral force he was able to bring
to bear on his contemporaries at Yale. In any event, when his college years
were almost finished, he decided to attend Princeton Seminary. In pondering his
decision, he credited the little boys' prayer meeting for opening " . . . the soil
of the heart to seed thoughts and seed ideals that lay there quietly for ten years
or more, and then the sunlight got down to them, and they felt the stirring of
their life, and the boy decided to be a minister."26
Opposite: The National Nine, 1865. Players left to right: Lansing, Sprague, Johnson,
Server, Waddell, Ross (Capt.) Woolverton, Cantwell, McClure. E.W. Trow, V. Pres;
W. Bruce, Jr. Scorer; B.C. Smith, Pres. Published by Churchill andDenison, Photographers, Albany, N.Y.
�NatfonoYBittd BaR.
clnb of AltHPy, aiid the Riverniont club of this*
village, played & match game on the grounds of
tho latter club. A large number of spectator
were present, among them many ladies, who
viewed the content with pleasure and interest.
The Nationals are n "crack chib,'* and their
playing was very beautiful, and elicited the encoiniums of every beholder. The RivermontB
hare been but recently •rganized, and having
had but limited fraotiot, were not able to cope
with their morlfractieed adversaries, with any
hope of success. The Nationals are heavy batten, excellent fielder*, swift runners, and spry
and active on the bases. Th|y scoreH fI3 runs
to the Rivermonts IS—beating them U8 ran*.
We append the set»re As4ow, which will give
our readers on insight ler the game s
BIVBBKO5T.
<X
x>nnKerpou, c.. *
•pMtjifi __ii1i
tf
M
A
8mith?Lew.sY*4
Rogers, 1st b.. 3
8trong,C.L.2b 3
.Strong, J. 3d b. 4
Smith, L.l.f.. 1
Oqurtney, ^'f*. 4
HATlOlfAt.
B,
o.
o Bprogue,3db.. 6
Bush) e; .--.'•..: -0
1 Ross,r.f
2
2
3
I
2 Lansing, 1st b. 3
2 McClure, 2d b. 3
Brtabcrger, 1. f. 4
1 Johnson,e.-f... 2
«
1
B:
11
15
15
13
10
13
12
12
12
Total
:..?7 15 Total....*....'87 113
Innings... 1 ^ 3 4 5 6 f 8 9
Rivermont 0 2 0 5 0 4 0 1 3— 15
National.. Q 32 7 9 23 H 0 J4O»—1KT
tjmpiiy ^Plius. Llwyttfifl JJnderciiff
Scorers—Me»«r8. Bruce and ScoticW.
Fly-catches—Nationall3; Rirermont?.
Time of game—3 hours and 10 minutes.
At the conclusion of the gfttrto, whieh ended
shortly after 6 o'clock, the clubs, with a few invited guests, repaired to Wood's Hotel, where
about 8 o'clock, the company sat down to an
excellent supper, provided by the Riveruiont
club, for their guests Vigorous appetites appeared to result from the exercise taken, and.
amid the clatter of knive»and forks, tho monster Rtmger ;was obliged to succumb. At the
close of the repast, several brief speeches were
made, and a number of songs given^ *U of which
tended to strengthen the bands of friendship, so
pleasantly begun. The Nationals are a body
of gcntieafen, whose Courteous demeanor, pleasant manners, and smiling, frank oountcmuuM*,
won tocwteem and respeot of rill. We wish
them that racccm In their present tour, which
their merits as ball players and gentlemen en*
title them to. Tuesday morning they played
with the Lorillard t-lnb of Rbiuebeck, beatiug
them, wo believe, W runs. Weduenday they
worti to piny at CUtld Spring, witli thb Undercliff!-*; Tburbday at MorrisaQiii, with the Unions;
aai rri4»T 4t Bn>eklyn, with Ifcjj g^c
�Family
13
If Yale had been the scene of his moral battles, Princeton Seminary would
be the seat of his intellectual struggles. He later admitted that for his Yale years
"I scarcely recall the actual material of any book in any department of my four
years—though I had the supposedly best books of the day and had teachers of
wide reputation."27 At seminary, he reined in his active social life in order to
make up for lost time, and was able to master Hebrew and Greek and the
philosophies of the day. Princeton Seminary in the early 1870s was being pulled
back and forth by conflicting theological voices, but Jim McClure refrained
from controversy, preferring to master the knowledge at hand in order to prepare
himself for a life of service to whatever community the Lord entrusted to him.28
While he was in seminary, his father Archibald died of pneumonia. He
never forgot how his father's influence had led him into the ministry. At the
ordination of his own son, he reminded him: "At the time of the death of your
grandfather, my father, two papers inscribed in his own handwriting were found
in his private desk. One read, 'It is impossible to estimate the power of a
completely consecrated life;' the other read, 'I have no greater joy than to know
my children walk in TRUTH.' These two sentiments . . . speak of the religious
earnestness of your ancestry."29 Archibald McClure had taught his Sunday
School class for forty years, bringing 111 new Christians into the church. The
power of his consecrated life had its background in the Scotch-Irish ancestors
who had suffered so much for their beliefs, and his example would inspire his
descendants to do mighty works in their respective generations.
But mighty works begin one day at a time, and the Reverend James
McClure left the heady atmosphere of academia for a small rural community of
Christian souls in need of pastoral care and simple teaching. In 1874, the
Presbyterian Church of New Scotland, New York, called the young graduate,
and he accepted their offer.30 Years before, Jim's immigrant grandmother had
carried his father to the nearest Presbyterian congregation to be baptized, in this
very same church. The new shepherd of the flock became a beloved member
of the community, known to all by the endearment "Dominie," the Scottish and
Dutch term for minister.
On at least one occasion, though, his youthful instincts betrayed his sense
of pastoral duty. In a book of stories written for his grandchildren, he recounted
the time that some of the young men of the congregation challenged him to a
race. The winter snows were deep, and the evening service had just ended. The
Dominie sped away in his sleigh, tearing along the country roads—to victory.
Only then did he remember his promise to drive an older lady, one of the pillars
of the church, home. She had remained forgotten on the church steps, wrapped
in blankets, anticipating her drive in the young minister's sleigh.31
Despite such setbacks, the New Scotland Presbyterians hung onto their
bachelor minister for five years. On November 19, 1879, he left his post to
marry Phebe Ann Dixon, whom he had met just before accepting his first
Opposite: Box score & story—National vs. Rivermont
�14
We Plow God's Fields
Kev. Jam** o. 1£. atcOiure Hid* Farewell
to New Scotl&ud.
Never in the events of the past hata scene
been witnessed in New Scotland to compare with
t on the evening of Sunday, October 5th, at
the Presbyterian Church, Our dear pastor, Rev.
O. K. McClure, was to apeak his farewell
woro>. Soon after five o'clock carriages began
entering the churchyard, and from that time on
the crowd came pouring in. At a little past six
o'clock the church was Ailed to overflowing. The
aisles were packed) standing room could not be
found in the vestibules, and enough were left
outside to nearly fill the church were it empty.
Every window was raised, and the window sills
filled with people, much to the discomfiture of
those who were crowding up to the windows
from the outside. One had only to glance at the
assembled throng, and the involuntary expression
would be; "Behold, how they loved him."
Newspaper clipping: Rev. James G.K. McClure Bids Farewell to New Scotland.
position in the ministry. He met her at his sister Grace's marriage to her brother,
Nathan F. Dixon. Their father was Rhode Island's Congressman.
Phebe Ann Dixon was a gentle, sensible person who never appeared agitated or ruffled no matter what the circumstances. She had been born to privilege. Living with her parents in Washington, and studying in New York, she
remembered shaking hands with President Abraham Lincoln at a White House
reception. Her grandfather had been a U. S. Senator during the Jacksonian era.
Later her brother, Grace McClure's husband, would become a Senator as well.32
In 1840, her grandfather wrote a prescription for greatness, while observing his
colleagues in Congress:
Since I have been here I have been more thoroughly than I ever was before
convinced of what it is that makes great men. It is hard study—and intense
application. The lawyers and members of Congress here work like slaves and
no man at the present day can be favorably distinguished without i t . . . John
Q. Adams is up every morning at four o'clock—takes his walk—and then
down to his work—he studies more than twelve hours every day of his life . . .
any man of ordinary capacity can be great who will adopt that course of
industry.33
Phebe Ann's own father was described as "... remarkably endeared to all
... people, old and young, far and near, on account of his ease of manners,
geniality of spirit and large generosity. He had the characteristic traits of the
Dixons largely developed, namely, benevolence, hospitality, frankness and
good fellowship."34 Phebe Ann moved easily from the political realm to her life
as a minister's wife. She was quite accustomed to a home always open to visitors,
�Family
15
+Atttt*.?
At tt*rtfMeiM* of the Hon. Nathan F.Dix-«,
•ttbe bout of four, Wednetday afternoon, bia
Hits Annie P., WM joined to
w4tti Kev J*Mtf1». K. MoClore, BOO
UU Archibald McOtor*, of Albany. in»
tHdegrootm b$tog tbe brother of Mrav Kathen F.
Dixon, Jr. A TOT distingaishfd and brilliant
party was pretent Oat tonr prior to the servicef, carriage after carriage rolled up the hill,
while al 2:55 P. M.. • special train from Stoning,
ton arrived, acd on the arrival«( the & 15 express from Froridenoe, many iadiea and gentlemen aUo arrived, ftoe bride was attireJ in a
dress combination of while silk anftsatinf and in
foil drefi rtyle. Her ornameoU w«ra rlsh and
brilliant There were no brideamaide. Keetrt.
E. Pnelpe Hnbtord and Q. P. Dixon, Jr., meted
at ashen. Bev. Mr.fiLarria,of the Central Congregational Cfiurcb, of Proridenoe, offldated.
[mmediately after the ceremony and the congratulation* of friend*, the Invited gueefc went
cot to a enroptuoni collation. Toe hrlde'i
pretentt were almoat endlete in num&er and uoeorparatd in eieganoe. The bridal party leave
on the aiz o'clock expreae, to be atwent a few
day*, when tbey return to pats Thankagifiog at
home, and will sail for Europe on the 3d of Deer mber, in the Ounard iteamer Scytbia,—[Praridmcc 'Journal,
Newspaper announcement of the McClure-Dixon wedding.
and felt comfortable discussing topics of intellectual breadth. She understood
how much the ambience of one's home contributed to an effective ministry.
The union of the politician's daughter and the young minister was the talk
of Westerly, Rhode Island, as the two clans gathered a second time for a marriage
ceremony. A family story illustrates at least one conflicting tendency between
the Dixons and the McClures. One of the McClures, less preoccupied than the
others, noticed that many of Mr. Dixon's Washington friends made frequent
visits to the private study. Pursuing the matter further, he discovered the dispensary of the young Reverend's most hated substance. "Mr. Dixon wanted neither
to upset his ... in-laws nor to let his old friends go dry. He was a politic man!"35
The honeymoon was to Europe and the Holy Land, a time for the two
young people to soak up the sights and sounds of the Old World, while being
able as well to devote themselves to each other. With a characteristic sense of
the past, James took his bride to County Armagh, Ireland, in search of living
evidence of his family's Covenanter past.36 The marriage of these two people
was a great union whose fruits would be a sense of purpose and great happiness.
When James McClure was asked years later whether he might live his life over
�16
We Plow God's Fields
Correspondence of the Mew York Obwrrer.
AMERICA ABROAD.
BT BET. JAMI8 O. K. IfC CLUBB.
To cross tbe Atlantic aud leave America entirely behind is to-day an impossibility. The traveller wbo sails away
from his native shores with any such expectation has surprises in store for him
at every point of his foreigu tour. His
heartbeats lightly as he puts foot for
the first time on European soil, and his
eye brightens as he thiuks that all that |
ha is now to sep will be uew and strange.*}
Scarcely has he reached hia hotel at Liverpool before he opens his wiudow to
look out upon the street life of England's L
second commercial city. Right before'
him in this laud which has sung the
merits of its roast beef for centuries he
sees a huge sign bearing tbe words,
" American Beef," and he is forcibly remiuded of the statement he has often j
heard, but never appreciated until now,
|thut our Western cattle supply England's
I tables with their choicest joiuts.
"America A Broad."
again, he replied that he would rather not, because "Suppose that somebody
should get ahead of me and many my wife!"37
The newlyweds went west, to Illinois. The Reverend James McClure accepted a call from the Lake Forest Presbyterian Church. What had been a
frontier when visited by his father was now, one generation later, a thickly
settled and thriving state, with prosperous farms and a growing meat-packing
industry. The city of Chicago was rapidly expanding, with its superb location
as the hub of rail and inland water transportation. These two dedicated Christians stepped into the midst of a world of growing wealth (and materialism), and
here they would raise their family and live out their ideals.
Lake Forest, Illinois, twenty-eight miles north of Chicago, had been
founded by Presbyterians as a suburban experiment, on 2300 acres along high
bluffs above Lake Michigan. The founders hoped to build a community where
they could bring up children in a Christian atmosphere, uncorrupted by die evils
of the city. Lake Forest College was established in the center of town to encourage faithful Presbyterian scholars. The Reverend James McClure accepted the
�Family
17
call of the one church in this community. For more than twenty years he handled
each controversy with such delicacy, and maintained such a broad-minded,
ecumenical spirit, that when he left there was still just one church, despite the
rapid growth of the community.
And it was not as though the sheep of his flock were mild-mannered and
deferential. Some of the most powerful captains of industry moved to Lake
Forest: the Farwells, the Armours, the Swifts and the McCormicks were only a
few. Mansions were constructed, many to be used only in the summer. A
swirling social scene came to life. And yet, amidst all the money and mansions,
there was not a more respected and beloved man in the community than James
G. K. McClure, nor a more cordial hostess than his wife, Phebe Ann. The
charm, intelligence and integrity of these two influenced an entire town. James
McClure was not afraid to stand up as he had done at Yale against the most
powerful of men and demand excellence and virtue in Lake Forest. He took the
leadership in routing the liquor interests. He could upbraid a church member,
but most of all he was a sympathetic and understanding counsellor and Mend.
Perhaps his greatest contribution was issuing a call to manly Christian living and
to "high ideals of daring" to young people growing up in the midst of wealth
and culture.
James Gore King McClure, Jr. was born three years after his parents were
called to Lake Forest. He shared with his sister Annie and three more children
who were born later a great heritage reaching back to Scotland, Ulster, the
Mayflower, New England and Albany. Religion had always been, for the
McClures, the interpreter of life, and the boy would be taught about his family
in that light. The great battle of each generation was a spiritual one. He was told
of the Covenanters, the escape from Scotland, persecution in Ireland, the hardships of immigration to America, the Pilgrims' voyage, the struggles of his great
grandmother McClure in Hamilton Factory, raising her five children to know
the truth in spite of poverty, and of her son's devotion to his Sunday School.
By adhering to the enduring principles of Christianity one could replenish and
build up the spiritual stores on earth, and perhaps take a place among the family
heroes. He learned the importance of developing a Christian character.
The power and influence a family can have over its members can be
overrated, but in the case of the McClures, how can that be? They have been
ardent Presbyterians as far back as the historian can see, and right up to the
present generation. There has been faltering along the way, but those members
who have remained faithful to the ancient Christian ideals have lived extraordinary lives.
1. G.M. Trevelyan, History of England, Vol. H, 'The Tudors and the Stuart Era,"
(Garden City, N.Y.:1953), p. 177. (originally published in 1929)
2. Elspeth McClure, "The McClures," unpublished paper, no date, p. 3. The letter
quoted was from Mrs. John McClure to Grace Griswold, March 26, 1900.
�18
We Plow God's Fields
3. Ibid., p. 6. Also found in Archibald McClure and Elizabeth Craigmiles, his
wife (private publication, 1938), p. 3-4.
4. James Alexander McClure, The McClure Family (Petersburg, Virginia: Frank
A. Owens, 1914), p. 15.
5. Elspeth McClure, "The McClures," p. 7.
6. Op. cit., Archibald McClure and Elizabeth Craigmiles, p. 4.
7. Op. cit., Elspeth McClure, "The McClures," p. 11-13.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid. Cited from William M. Clemens, The McClure Family Records (New
York: W.E. Clemens, 1914), p. 3.
10. Op. cit., Elspeth McClure, "The McClures," p. 14.
11. Ibid., p. 19-20.
12. Ibid., p. 24. Also mentioned in James Gore King McClure (Chicago: Lakeside
Press, 1932), p. 27.
13. Christmas letter prepared by Katherine McDowell Rice, date unknown.
14. Op. cit., Elspeth McClure, "The McClures," p. 25.
15. Ibid., p. 30-33.
16. Op. cit., James Gore King McClure, p. 25-26.
17. James G. K. McClure, Sr., "Would I Do It Again?" Cleric, March 8, 1930.
18. Ibid., p. 4-5.
19. Ibid., p. 5-7.
20. Op. cit., Elspeth McClure, "The McClures," p. 45.
21. Op. cit., James Gore King McClure, p. 29.
22. Ibid., p. 31.
23. Op. cit., James G. K. McClure, Sr., "Would I Do It Again?" p. 10-11.
24. Op. cit., James Gore King McClure, p. 31.
25. Op. cit., Elspeth McClure, "The McClures," p. 46.
26. Ibid., p. 47. Taken from a piece written by James G. K. McClure, Sr., "The
Autobiography of a Dining Table," Unpublished, p.9.
27. Op. cit., James G. K. McClure, Sr. "Would I Do It Again?" p. 9.
28. Op. cit., Elspeth McClure, "The McClures," p. 47.
29. James G. K. McClure, Sr., address given to his son James G. K. McClure, Jr.
at the time of his ordination.
30. Op. cit., Elspeth McClure, "The McClures," p. 48.
31. James G. K. McClure, Sr., Grandfather Tells Some More Stories, from "The
Horse That Won the Race," (Chicago: The Lakeside Press), p. 1-9.
32. Op. cit., Elspeth McClure, "The McClures," p. 51.
33. Senator Nathan F. Dixon, in a letter to Nathan F. Dixon, Jr. June 18, 1840.
Found in a notebook of James G. K. McClure, Jr. dated November 1, 1910, p.61.
34. Op. cit., Elspeth McClure, "The McClures," p. 52. Originally from In Memoriam: Nathan Fellows Dixon (Rhode Island; private publication, c. 1881), p. 15. First
published in the Providence (R.I.) Press, April 12, 1881.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., p. 53.
�Chapter 2
Lake Forest
The man or woman brought up in ... a home [of] self-sacrifice, trust and
love . . . cannot help believing in mankind. He may be disappointed again and
again but he knows that these qualities are real . . . (James G. K. McClure,
Jr., Iron River sermon, "The Family and the Home")
As I lay in my bed at night—[a] candle from mother's & father's room
lighting [the] rafters—I w[ou]ld hear Father night after night pray, kneeling
by Mother—"Oh God Bless these boys." (James G. K. McClure, Jr., in his
Santa Barbara notebook)
Owners of country estates in Lake Forest spent Christmas much as the great
land owners of England spend theirs each year, with family and friends and
retainers about them. The arrival of snow on Friday night made the country
more alluring than ever and a joy to the lover of outdoor sports. (A newspaper
clipping stuck in Jim McClure's Santa Barbara notebook)
Lake Forest, Illinois, remains a quintessential American suburban town.
The grass is greener, well-nourished, properly (and regularly) clipped. Driving
through the streets of Lake Forest, one senses that here is a community of people
who have won a great victory over chaos and disorder. Peeling paint, dirty
children, weeds and broken-down cars seem to have been zoned beyond the
town limits. Beautiful homes present the unmistakable appearance of confident
success. The business world lies down the train tracks in another realm altogether: Chicago. The view from the commuter train window as it approaches
the city speaks of the daily litany of social and political evils that churn constantly there. By contrast, Lake Forest appears safe, tranquil and comfortable.
Lake Forest occupies a two and a half mile bluff along Lake Michigan.
The appearance of order has been imposed on an undulating terrain by skillful
planners and architects. Deep ravines lie behind fine houses, allowing Lake
Forest to retain most of its natural splendor. These ravines are a wonderful haven
for children, who seem to prefer the disorder of the natural world to the order
of their own lawns. The great lake is nearby, with all of its moods from calm
to rage.
The Lake Forest of today is the creation of well-organized and powerful
people who have worked hard through civic clubs and local political offices to
build up their town. In 1856, a group from Chicago left the city by rail to picnic
along the high bluffs of Lake Michigan. The train dropped them off in a wilder19
�20
We Plow God's Fields
ness accessible only by an old ox cart that wound around the ravines to a
clearing in the woods. That clearing was the first improvement made by the
Lake Forest Association. These men and women were interested in a project:
to build a Presbyterian Seminary for the Northwest territories. Ironically, the
project was spurred on by the promise of $40,000 from a Cincinnati brewery
owner. When the money failed to materialize, the moral overtones of depending
on such ill-gotten profits were not lost on those promoting the project.1 In fits
and starts, lots were sold and resold, homes and schools were built, and the
church became the focal point of the town.
When James and Phebe Ann McClure moved to Lake Forest in 1881, the
local economy was just sputtering along. Town real estate was moving slowly,
and the old church, as the Dominie remembered, " . . . was not at all presentable. All along its side walls might be seen the impression made upon the paper
by the heads that had leaned against it. ... Its furnaces . . . heated the head but
left the feet well nigh frozen . . .; many times I have kept my overcoat on until
I stood up to preach."2
A member of the Lake Forest ministerial search committee first remembered the name of James McClure in connection with the Yale baseball team,
and that set into motion the train of events that brought him from the East. A
group went to Albany to hear him preach, and he was subsequently invited to
Lake Forest as a candidate. On his third Sunday, a member of the congregation
gave him the first indication of his acceptance. ". . . Mr. Sylvester Lind, the
Scotchman, perennial Mayor and general head of Lake Forest, met me in the
aisle and said, 'And have you a lady?' 'Yes,' I said, 'I am a married man.'
'Well,' he continued, 'you may go your way back and get your lady, for I think
we'll take you.'3
The Reverend McClure and his lady arrived in Lake Forest on September
16, 1881, during a torrential rain storm, and he later admitted, "We both were
self-distrustful."4 He was to be the pastor of the Lake Forest Presbyterian
Church for twenty-four years. He knew the hidden difficulties of many of the
residents, and with his quiet charm and strong leadership he set a moral tone
that earned him enormous respect. As he saw it, that respect enabled him to
move people towards Christian perfection, and to influence the entire life of the
community. His wife, known to her friends as Annie, fulfilled her variety of
roles with the same evidence and appreciation of God's grace as her husband.
The work of a minister's wife is difficult. Mother and housekeeper, paragon of
virtue in the community, and entertainer of an endless stream of guests are all
duties of the post. Her husband's time is the property of the community, and his
working hours are irregular. She is expected to be a leader in the church, and
most every other civic organization. Annie Dixon McClure's capacity for work
and her ease with people served her well in Lake Forest, and as the children
began to come, served them well also.
On October 28, 1884, James Gore King McClure, Jr. was born into this
place and this family. He was the second child, having left the chore of breaking
�Lake Forest
21
lahe Jforest iJnsbgiman C|mt|
PRAYER MEETING TOPICS
Jan,, Feb., Mar,, 1882,
Wednesdays (excepting Jan. 26th) at 7% p. M.
JAN. 11,—-THE SPIRITUAL IJFE A CONFLICT.
"We wrestle against spiritual wickedness."
JAN 18.—MAINTAINING OUB GBOUND.
"Stand therefore."
JAN. 26.—TBUTH THE FIBST BEQUISITK TO VICTOBIT.
"The girdle of truth."
Day of Prayer for Colleges.
FEB. l.—RIGHTEOUSNESS AN UNASSAILABLE DEFENCE.
"The breast-plate Of righteousness."
FEB. 8.—READINESS Tp OBEY ALL DIVINE INSTRUCTIONS.
"The sandals of preparation."
FEB. 16.—TBUST IN GOD DISARMS TEMPTATION.
"The shield of faith."
FEB. 22.—GOSPEL HOPE THE SAFE-GUABD FOB THE INTELLECT.
"The helmet of salvation."
MAB. 1.—GOD'S WOBD THE WEAPON OP THE CONQUEBOB.
"The sword of the Spirit."
MAB.
8.-^-PBAYEB A CONSTANT NECESSITY TO VICTOBY.
"Praying always."
MAB. 15.—VlGHLANCE ESSENTIAL TO VICTOBIOUS PBAYEB.
"Watching thereunto with all perseverance."
MAB.
22.—CONSIDEBATION OF OTHEBS A MEANS OF
SAFETY.
"Supplication for all saints."
MAB. 29.—BESUI/T OF SUCCESSFUL SPIBITUAL CONFLICT.
"Strong in tneLord."
"Prayer meeting topics" from the Lake Forest Presbyterian Church, 1882.
in his parents to the vicissitudes of child-rearing to his older sister Annie. Not
yet six months, on April 19, 1885, baby Jamie was baptized in the Lake Forest
Presbyterian Church, the duties being performed by a minister who served in
Canton, China.5
The town of Lake Forest grew up around little Jamie McClure. When his
father first came the streets were unpaved, the fire department was unorganized,
and there was only a small shopping district of five stores. By the time Jamie
graduated from Yale, there were six times as many stores, city water and
sewerage, and an excellent rail service to Chicago.6 All of these accomplishments meant innumerable meetings of committees, and Dr. McClure was always
sought out as a key figure in any undertaking. He first proved his determination
when he made a great push to have a new church built.
Mr. C. B. Farwell was perhaps the wealthiest man in his congregation, and
when the drive to raise money for the new church building was under way, Mr.
Farwell sent a note to his minister saying he was not giving a cent as he wanted
��Lake Forest
23
to support the University exclusively. Jamie Jr. later wrote in one of his notebooks, with obvious admiration:
Father walked down the next Sunday before church and said, "Mr. Farwell
I received your letter. Here it is. I want you to take it and tear it up." "Tear it
up," answered C. B. "I never had a man talk to me like that." "Yes, I want
you to tear it up" said Father—and he tore it up and later gave largely to the
Church. Had he not torn up the letter and had he thought that Father had shown
it to anyone that Mr. Farwell was on record so positively, he would have stood
his ground for aye.7
In 1887, when Jamie was two and a half years old, the family moved to the
Manse that was built along with the new church. The little boy was now firmly
located for his childhood. Later on, when his father became president of
McCormick Seminary, the congregation presented the Manse as a gift to the
McClures, in order to keep them as a Christian influence in Lake Forest. After
this extraordinary gesture of generosity, the McClures named the house "Gien
Hame," Scottish for "given home."
As well as holding firmly to their religious principles and remaining dedicated to education, the best of the McClures have also been effective businessmen. When Lake Forest University found itself in debt, the Board of Trustees
called on Dr. McClure to become its temporary president. He promptly raised
the money, and then returned full time to his church. In 1897 he was again
installed as the president, remaining in office for the next four years. He not
only wiped out the deficit, but also successfully followed through on a major
building program.8 All of the talk and stories of these projects surrounded young
Jamie as he grew up, and as later events bear out, the son learned well.
The McClures made no pretense of their faith at home. There were five
McClure children in all: Annie; Jim, Jr.; Harriet; Arch; and Nathan. They were
surrounded by Christian teachings and habits, and were involved in church
duties and the entertainment of numerous guests. Religion was a way of organizing life into a daily rhythm.
Every morning in the Manse, family prayers were held and great petitions
offered for those in the community in which we lived and for God's children
everywhere, so that each child of the Manse felt an intimate relationship to the
events of the day in households of joy and sorrow, in world conditions. Every
Sunday afternoon at five o'clock Mother gathered the children about her for
prayer. First she offered prayer asking God's blessing on Father, his work, the
people of Lake Forest, and then praying for the missionaries in the home and
foreign lands. In turn each child, according to age, followed with his petitions,
so that.. . [Jamie] from his earliest days, could speak to God in the presence
of others, and from his childhood days felt a deep interest in the people of
every land and nation.9
Opposite, left: James G. K. McClure, Jr. Opposite, right: Annie and Jamie McClure.
�24
We Plow God's Fields
Religion in the McClure home was a serious matter, where principles of
character in the conduct of one's affairs were continually discussed and emphasized. Correct behavior first, then self-sacrifice, were held up as the marks of a
Christian. But the Reverend and his wife were not harsh parents; self-sacrifice
was not taught as a form of flagellation. To give oneself freely to help others
was simply the law of grace handed down by the Heavenly Father, who gave
his Son as a sacrifice to an undeserving humanity. By acting on earth as an agent
of grace, one comes naturally under the spiritual care of the Deity, and as such
one receives incomparable spiritual blessings. The real battle in life was an
unseen one, within the hearts of men, fighting against selfish tendencies in
hopes of spiritual regeneration. These teachings were an integral part of the
heritage of each child in the McClure family.
The daily duties of the home fell on Mrs. McClure. She was no less a
Christian than her husband, and because his time was so filled with duties, it
was her influence in the early years that nurtured the children. From a pamphlet
written about her, perhaps written by her husband, one learns that:
She held stoutly to her [Christian] convictions but with persuasive gentleness. In her loyalty to high standards she made others aspire to them. She held
an imperturbable mental serenity which was without coldness or aloofness.
Although she herself was consistently efficient she was patient of the interruptions of others . . . she exercised tact without compromise and a diplomacy
which sprung from a genuine interest in people. Her selfless, creative interest
in other people characterized her in every waking hour.... With all her public
responsibilities she still found time to foster for her own family an ideal
Christian upbringing. She instinctively used methods of child training that
many another mother struggles to learn from a book. Her techniques of Christian education were in practice what so much present-day religious training is
in theory.10
Years later, she wrote her oldest son a compassionate note of support when
he left home, revealing her tenderness and affection for her children:
My beloved son,
While you and Nathan are playing ball, I am writing a line which will, I
hope, reach you on the steamer as you are starting. I have dreaded your going,
for the joy of your presence with us again in the home, taking your place in
the family life has been so great—that I have not known how I could get on
without you. Today, that day of your acceptance God had filled my heart with
more appreciation of the privilege for you of this year abroad and I shall try
to feel glad that you are to go. You have been a great blessing to us all this
year and a half, and I am sure that we are all the better, and stronger for your
home coming. My thoughts and prayers will be daily with you . ..
[You] may think of me as knitting early and late to get another necktie ready
to send . . . I will also "en aliens" (I do not dare promise more definitely)
encourage the family in literary pursuits. . . .
�Harriet McClure and her mother, Annie Dixon McClure.
�26
We Plow God's Fields
Your devoted Mother, Annie D. McClure (Phebe Ann Dixon McClure to
James G. K. McClure, Jr., April 29, 1909)
In the church, she made use of her natural talents as a mother to care for
other children along with her own. She knew each by name, and taught them
in Sunday School. At home, the Manse was open to all, without a tinge of
reservation. And people came. Missionaries, visiting intellects, university students, members of the congregation and later any and all connected with
McCormick Seminary. The table around which those varied people gathered
came from the McClure house in Albany, where it had been used for the same
hospitable purposes. Christmas often meant a sit down meal for thirty-three,11
and for Thanksgiving:
At dinner we had four students—later in the afternoon . . . fifty students and
members of the Faculty families dropped in upon us for a cup of tea, for
singing and for games. I am sure you will appreciate my statement that
Mother, Annie and Harriet were quite wonderful in their ability at such a time.
Everything moved off yesterday without the least suggestion of difficulty, and
all the guests were happy. (James G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K.
McClure, Jr., November 26, 1909)
There is evidence of at least one quiet Sunday in the life of this family:
We had an almost undisturbed Sunday. We read, sang, attended services,
listened to Annie's paper on the Passion Play, talked and went to bed. Perhaps
it is selfish—but I trust not, to spend a day in this way. Our thoughts were on
high themes, we were happy and we came to the opening of the week refreshed
in heart as well as body. (James G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K. McClure,
Jr., December 27, 1910)
While in Lake Forest, on many Sundays Dr. McClure spent the time between services making calls on members of the congregation. In his twenty-four
years, the Dominie made 19,211 such visits (as he meticulously recorded), and
one can only marvel at the amount of coffee and tea he must have consumed!
He loved to take young Jamie along with him, both as a chance for father and
son to be together, and as a way to soften the entrance into a parishioner's home.
When he was old enough, Jamie would hitch up his Welsh pony Erma and drive
his father in the buggy. The son could observe how his father, with a kindly
smile and a remembered shred of information, would break down the barriers
that separate people. To be able to make people laugh and feel at ease is a great
gift, and it was perhaps on these visits that the young man learned these skills
from his father. Humor was a means by which Reverend McClure could enter
a home and relieve fears enough so he could really comfort or advise the people
in his care. The son would later employ the same skills.
Jamie's first agricultural venture is revealed in a notebook he kept when
�Lake Forest
27
Note home from school, 1892.
he was eleven and twelve. He recorded an expense of $1.30 "For grit and
powder, 50c for chicken feed and 15c for a poultry almanac." Maybe the
business was in its early stages, but the only income evident is a mere ten cents
for eggs sold. Much more profitable was his delivery enterprise. He charged
fifteen cents an hour, and cleared almost $2.00 in July, not including the nickel
he found. Golf was a large drain on his finances, especially when it cost him
$1.25 to repair his broken driver. He did earn thirty-five cents for "cadying,"
but his golf bill ate that up. A nickel for "cracker jack," a penny for gum were
his only apparent splurges, while a dime went to Sunday School and $1.42 for
Christmas presents. The next year tennis balls show up as an expense, and the
chickens had become a luxurious hobby: "exhibition coop, $1.50." The missionaries garnered a mere seven cents, which still might be respectable considering a twelve-year-old's sense of priorities. A recurring expense was his subscription to "Steady Streams," which was not a fishing magazine but a children's
missionary society organized within the church, in which Mrs. McClure was
quite active. It provides a good example of how church life affected the views
of its young people.
The unrealized possibilities of the Sunday School was a thought constantly
on the mind of the mature Jim McClure. During the Second World War, he
proposed that the churches of America train their young people to go into the
world in a Peace Corps-like venture. He reasoned that if Hitler could motivate
his people for evil, why couldn't the church motivate theirs for good? His
grandfather Archibald, who taught Sunday School for forty years (and was never
once late!) had clearly made his mark on his descendants. Young Jamie joined
Steady Streams at birth. The Victorian era was a great one for societies and
clubs, and was also a period of intense missionary effort. What could be more
natural than a club to develop in young people an appreciation for foreign lands
and the work the church was doing there? Steady Streams also worked to
�28
We Plow God's Fields
inculcate the habit of Christian giving, and the song sung at every meeting was
none too subtle on this point.
Give, said the little stream
Give, O give, give, O give!
Give said the little stream
As it hurried down the hill.
I am small I know but wherever I go
Give, O give, give, O give
I am small I know but wherever I go,
The fields grow greener still.12
At the April 1897 meeting, the subject was India, and the children were to
describe an imaginary journey there. "Jamie McClure told of the trip to Benares,
the holy city of India, and of the pilgrims they met there."13 In time the boy
would actually visit this city, and throughout his theological training he fully
expected to enter the mission field. The spirit of Steady Streams was a vibrant
reflection of the times, and that spirit made its mark on Jim. An old pamphlet
from Steady Streams concludes with this version of a Mother Goose rhyme:
Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating a Christmas pie,
While out in the cold,
With hunger untold,
He heard another boy cry.14
But Jamie McClure was a normal boy, and he did not spend all that much
time worrying about the hungry people of the world. There were his hens, and
his friends. And of course there was school, in his case the Lake Forest Academy. This letter to his mother, who was visiting her family in Westerly, Rhode
Island, reflects his interests. "I hope you are safely at Grandmas . . . I got a
ninety five in my Algebra . . . Yesterday I got three eggs and day before I got
two . . . 1 gave Papa a dozen eggs last night and he paid me ... We are having
pretty good meals and Annie is very good to me. We miss you very much but
under Annie's care we get along beautifully without you." A postscript from
Annie, very suspicious of her brother's charm, is included. "I think Jamie must
have added this last thinking I was to see the letter and that must be the reason
for these compliments . . . " (James O.K. McClure, Jr., to Phebe Ann Dixon
McClure, February 12, 1897) Three days later he wrote again to his mother.
"Jamie Fales sent for some white fantail pigeons and two pair came today . . . I
have been over at Judy's all the afternoon . . . shooting paper wads . . . Tell
Uncle Nathan that my Wyandottes are laying a great deal better than the Leghorns . . . Tonight Mrs. Holt sent over some ice cream . . . " (James O.K.
McClure, Jr. to Phebe Ann Dixon McClure, February 15, 1897)
�Lake Forest
29
Xafce Jorest
Report
For Year 1897-1898.
FIRST FORM.
Beginning Latin . .
English
Algebra
U. S. History
English History. . .
SECOND FORM.
Caesar
Latin Prose
Beginning Greek. .
English
Algebra
Zoology
Ancient History. .
THIRD FORfl.
^
ty
£
5
y...
•?
F
Cicero
Anabasis*
f?
^
^
German
French
™ •
..£?.
9+w
*
Greek Prose
£
FOURTH FORM.
Virgil..
>
L
fr
Iliad
English
German
French.
r^dui^W
^4*^
r,
Above 90, E for Excellent: from 80 to 90, G for Good :
from 75 to 80, F for Fair : below 75, P for Poor.
75 is passing mark.
..Head Master.
Report card, 1897-1898.
He may have learned to shoot wads at the Academy, because he gained a
strong reputation there as a prankster. Years later he ran into two young men
in Berlin, and wrote home t h a t " . . . the strange looking one asked me if by any
chance I ... was the Jimmie McClure who used to disturb things at the Academy . . . " (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to his family, November 9, 1909). Under
his picture in the Academy annual are the words: "James G. K. McClure, Jr.
�30
We Plow God's Fields
has practiced his innocent little pranks upon the inhabitants of Lake Forest for
fifteen years. He ... is the youngest graduate of the Academy."15
He was in fact three or four years younger than most of the other seniors.
Jamie McClure possessed an excellent mind and was a precocious student. His
home life provided an extraordinarily rich blend of ideas and discussion, and
his parents took a strong interest in their children's education. Jamie excelled
in mathematics, but mastered the entire secondary school curriculum with only
one mark below 80 percent. A good dose of Greek and Latin were considered
excellent remedies for ignorance in that day. Jamie mastered, or in any event
completed, translations of Caesar, Cicero, Anabasis, Virgil, Xenophon and
Homer, all before he was sixteen. He commented, "Every morning at 9:45
o'clock we have to go to Little Bill's room to study Algebra. He said that he
would give the best ones a little extra work: so this morning I started to work
my examples for tomorrow and I did them pretty quickly, so he gave me another
book to work the examples out of. They were awftilly hard but I got ten" (James
G. K. McClure, Jr. to Phebe Ann Dixon McClure, February 15, 1897). Jamie
grew up breathing an intellectual air that promoted science as the means to
solving problems, and this faith remained with him always. In his youth, he
would take great pains to describe events with such precision that their meaning
was often lost in the detail.
At his graduation ceremony, the commencement address of one John Harlow of Chicago made a lasting impression on him. At best, his memory of the
speech made it sound hackneyed and predictable, but it expressed heroism and
a life of purpose. To a precocious fifteen-year-old, that was enough. He reported: "John Harlow . . . told us that as we got on in life we must every so often
go to the looking glass and face the man we saw there and ask him what he was
doing with his life—whether he could respect himself, whether he was making
any contribution to the rest of the world, whether he was helping the world;
whether he was doing his part or whether he was wasting his life."16 These
words stuck with him, and there were to be periods of his life when facing that
mirror was very painful. But always, he could count on the support and encouragement of his family.
Reverend and Mrs. McClure worked at their family life, made it the first
priority of their marriage, and were rewarded with devoted children. And they
in turn remained loyal to one another. The oldest, Annie, eventually married
Dumont Clarke, a minister. He and Jim became great friends, and in time both
would move to North Carolina to share in the work of the Farmers Federation.
Jim's younger sister Hetty, or Harriet, had an exuberant personality that
matched his. Whether in serious matters or in family pranks, these two siblings
remained close. Archibald or Arch followed Jim to Yale and through divinity
school, and always saw his older brother as a source of wisdom and honest
advice. The two older boys corresponded often, debating weighty theological
and philosophical issues of the day. In fact the entire family was quite comfort-
�Lake Forest
31
Seated, left-right: James McClure, Jr., James G.K. McClure, Sr., Annie Dixon McClure,
Nathan McClure. Standing, left-right: Harriet McClure, Archibald McClure, Annie
McClure.
able discussing matters of the intellect, a tribute to the broad-minded environment fostered by the minister and his wife.
Then there was baby brother Nathan, whom Jim adored. Nathan kept him
up to date on the fortunes of the Cubs and White Sox, and in return Jim liked
to take him out to the ball parks. Professional baseball in the early 1900s was
thought by many to encourage the most boorish and uncouth of habits. How
was a child to build up his character if his heroes were baseball players? But the
sport had been a large part of Reverend McClure's life, and he was wise enough
to realize that children hemmed in on all sides by petty rules could lead a
suffocating existence. The playful and happy life of these children can be
gathered from this excerpt from a wonderful letter Jim wrote to Nathan from
Germany, where he was studying: " . . . [y]our fears of what I will do to you
for pushing me off the raft are well grounded. I have not fully made up my
mind what I will do to you . . . I am sorry to say that your life next winter will
be a hard one. I have been practicing on German children and have made several
boys and girls cry simply by looking at them . . . I intend to take one whole
year to think up a fitting return for pushing me off that raft." He went on to tell
Nathan of the circus he had attended in England, where he shook hands with the
tallest woman in the world and watched elephants play cricket. Jim concluded
with the remark, "The children in Paris seem to be a very happy set—in Ger-
�I
#*&
^1
.
�Lake Forest
33
Jamie's parents.
many I have not seen so many children, probably because I was preparing for
next winter and they see me coming and hide in the houses." (James G. K.
McClure, Jr. to Nathan McClure, 1910).
The raft incident undoubtedly took place on one of the family outings to
Wisconsin. Dr. McClure's wealthy Lake Forest parishioners gladly offered their
summer camps to the family for vacations. Pictures survive of Jim with his
sisters and parents, all in the remarkable bathing garb of the era, posing selfconsciously for the camera. The physiques of the family range from the lanky,
angular style of the McClures to the more rounded, almost pudgy Dixon model.
Without question, Jamie was on his mother's side in this matter. His oval,
smooth face always made him look younger than his contemporaries. He joined
sister Annie in this respect, but Arch inherited the almost Lincolnesque body
of his father.
On one of these trips to Wisconsin, the two elder siblings, Annie and Jim,
remained behind when the rest of the family returned to Lake Forest. From
Lake trip with family and friends. Young Jim McClure in the center, seated, parents
standing behind. Jamie (left) with friends on a buggy.
�34
We Plow God's Fields
Island Lodge, Lakewood, Wisconsin, the thirteen-year-old boy (apparently suffering a spelling relapse during the summer vacation) reported home that:
Sunday, in the morning we had church in which we sang and Mr. Wheeler
read a chapter from In His Steps as a sermon. In the afternoon Annie and I
went off in the woods and read and Annie here a noise and there stood a dear
it was awfully pretty but as soon as it saw us it turned and ran. At about five
we all went out in the boats and joined them and sang.
This morning Mr. Wheeler and I got up at five o'clock to go bass fishing,
we fished 'till eleven o'clock leavig [sic] out breakfast but the fish must have
been all caught for we did not get one. All the rest of the party started off for
Boot Lake but only got so far as Bass Lake because some went one way and
some another. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to James G. K. McClure, Sr.,
August 29, 1898)
The book In His Steps, by Ralph Connor, is the story of a young man, quite
popular in upper-class society, who makes the decision to become a practicing
Christian, thus setting himself against his friends' standards of behavior. It had
a lasting effect on Jamie, and he urged his children to read it in later years.
Jamie McClure, now beginning to be called Jim, graduated from Lake
Forest Academy in June 1901. What to do with this lively young man next? His
wise father knew that Yale College was not the place for a fifteen-year-old boy,
and what could he do in a wealthy suburb like Lake Forest where everyone knew
him as the son of their beloved minister? He spent some months at Lake Forest
College, living at home, but apparently had little interest in his studies. Jim had
a lot of Tom Sawyer in his nature, and he yearned to find out what life was like
beyond the fringes of the circumscribed civilization of Lake Forest. There were
tastes of wilderness on the family jaunts to Wisconsin, and yet life there dealt
with the natural world from within the bounds of Victorian habits and decorum.
There was no grit or struggle, and too much talk. And most of all, there were
no Huck Finns, poor boys up against the real fight of life, with whom to join
in comradeship on some great adventure.
Vigorous boys at the turn of the century all dreamed of going to one place,
where life was down to basics and where what talk there was, was to the point
and necessary. In 1902, Owen Wister wrote The Virginian, establishing the
American cowboy on the pinnacle of the American Olympus of mythological
heroes, and Texas was the home of the cowboy. In the spring of 1896 Dr.
McClure had gone to the XIT Ranch in the Panhandle of Texas as a guest of the
Farwells, who owned a part interest in it. He returned with stories and descriptions that were bound to excite the imagination of any young boy. The characters he met and the vocabulary they used did nothing to tarnish young Jim's
dime-novel view of the cowboy.
Dr. McClure had kept a journal of this expedition. The XIT was then the
largest ranch in the world, occupying as much land as several states. At first the
Panhandle was thought to be virtually worthless. Rainfall was minimal. Very
�Lake Forest
35
little grew except prairie dogs and coyotes. But after the cattle boom in the
1870s ranch land became more valuable. The people who lived on the XTT in
1896 were isolated and often lonely. A man's wife could go six months without
seeing another woman. With such a thin population and a geography that attracted desperate men, there was naturally a law enforcement problem.
Into this world came the gentle Reverend. His guide was a Mr. Boyce, "a
wonderful combination of activity, fearlessness, principle and purpose."17
Spending the night with this man, he was shown several bullet holes where the
Graham brothers, local cattle rustlers, had tried to shoot his host. In the ensuing
melee, six-shooters blazed and one Graham and the sheriff died. The other
Graham went to the "pen" and was eventually released. He was reportedly out
to avenge the loss of his brother, aiming to ambush Mr. Boyce. "It is not much
of a wonder that he carries a six-shooter with him when he is off on his
wanderings," Dr. McClure wrote.
The minister went by buckboard more than 500 miles, camping out with
Mr. Boyce who loved to wake up his citified guest with injunctions such as
"Take up your bed and walk."18 He met horse wranglers and watched a roundup.
When the cook sang out, "Chuck is ready," he helped himself with the other
cowboys. One of his favorite stories, often retold to his children in Lake Forest,
involved meeting a local legend—Ira Atin.
People had told me about a very brave fellow. Once two men had threatened
to shoot him. They were standing close to him. Putting his hands in front of
his chest as one catches a ball he said "Shoot and I will catch the bullet and
throw it back." They shot, neither hit him . .. one dodged behind the corner
of a building and the other under a wagon. They shot again. Then he drew.
He shot through the corner of the building and hit one on the arm: then he shot
under the wagon, got his man in the back of the neck and he dropped. Then
the men came forward, apologized and said, "Ira, you are a better man than
we thought."19
Near the end of his western trip the gentle minister was packed into a small
room one night with some strange cowpokes.
Somehow I could not sleep. The moon was still bright. It was past midnight
when to my utter amazement what should appear in that doorway but a man.
It was but an instant before he was down the steps. What did this mean I asked
myself. He struck a match; he entered. The match woke the sleepers. They saw
his face. "Is that you, Ira?" they said. "Yes." One rolled a little closer to his
bed fellow and said, "here's room." In a few moments I was asleep.20
There was something in the independent spirit of these men that appealed
to James G. K. McClure. Many years later he himself drove off two robbers
from the house on Halsted Street in south Chicago, where the McClures lived
while he was president of McCormick Seminary. As he and his wife lay sleeping
�36
We Plow God's Fields
Jamie McClure, Jr., in front; Sister Harriet on right, standing beside brother Arch. Annie
McClure stands behind little Arch. Others in photograph are unknown.
he was wakened by a light shining in his face and a voice telling him not to
move. Leaping out of bed with a shout he rushed down the stairs after the fleeing
intruders. They fired several shots as they ran, but miraculously missed. The
bullets sank harmlessly into the walls of the stairway. He told his family afterwards he had never thought to be afraid.
When one of the Farwell brothers heard that their minister was wondering
what his son could do until he was old enough to attend college, he immediately
suggested the ranch in Texas. Young Jim, stimulated by his father's tales,
enthusiastically embraced the plan. It was surely a dream realized, a chance to
swap the refinements of Lake Forest for the sweat and leather of Texas.
A photograph remains of Jamie McClure as a child, and it says a great
deal about his youth. He must have been eight or nine years old. His brothers
and sisters are all bunched around him, their dour expressions reflecting perhaps
the coercion that was applied to get them all into their clothes and before the
camera. Jim sits cross-legged in front, with one hand holding the collar of the
family pup, a marvelous little white dog with one black patch over its left eye.
Jim's shoes are the high-laced variety, with the laces hooked to the proper
tension. His socks disappear under his knickerbockers, and his knickerbockers
disappear under a checked coat buttoned three times. Poking out from a Little
�Lake Forest
37
Lord Fauntleroy collar is his round Dixon head. A most stupendous polka-dotted
bow tie dangles from beneath the collar. And on top of that head a small,
curl-brimmed hat is perched, making either the head appear too big or the hat too
small. The brim travels just over the eyes of our young hero, and already they
are eyes of distinction. In later years, his eyes could sparkle when he was having
fun, they could bear down on someone whose performance had come up short,
and they could mesmerize the ladies. And so what else can be said for this picture
of our hero? My bet is that hat, collar, tie, knicks and shoes all came ripping
off before the photographer was halfway through dismantling his equipment.
The life of this boy would create a man of unusual instincts. He would
grow up to be part theologian and part missionary, part cowboy and part intellectual. All of these tendencies were kept boiling by Jim's extraordinary pursuit
of heroism. He wanted, desperately, for his life to stand for something great.
He sought challenge, not as a businessman does, but more like the best of
missionaries, who burn with desire to change people's lives. At age sixteen, he
was anxious to taste the different diets of the folks of this world, and so with all
the dreams of youth he headed west to be a Texas cowboy.
1. James G. K. McClure, "History of the Presbyterian Church," A pamphlet
printed in April, 1905.
2. James G. K. McClure, Sr., "A grateful Review of his Happy Pastorate of the
Presbyterian Church, Lake Forest, Illinois, as Presented on the Twenty-fourth Anniversary of the Pastorate" (Unpublished), Sept. 10, 1905. p. 8.
3. Ibid., p.5.
4. Ibid., p. 6.
5. Notation in the baby book of James G. K. McClure, Jr.
6. James G. K. McClure, Sr., "History of the Presbyterian Church, Lake Forest,
Illinois" unpublished, 1905, p. 26-27.
7. James G. K. McClure, Jr., personal notebook, dated 1910.
8. James G. K. McClure, Sr., "History of the Presbyterian Church Lake Forest,"
p. 38.
9. Untitled pamphlet about the life of Archibald McClure, printed privately, 1931.
10. "An Appreciation," paper about Phebe Ann Dixon McClure (unpublished), no
date.
11. James G. K. McClure, Sr., letter to James G. K. McClure, Jr., Dec. 27, 1910.
12. "For Auld Lang Syne: A Retrospective of Steady Streams," pamphlet printed
in 1906.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Lake Forest Academy Annual, 1900, p. 125.
16. James G. K. McClure, Jr., sermon given at the Iron River Presbyterian Church,
Jan. 1, 1914.
17. James G. K. McClure, Sr., "Among the Cowboys of Texas," unpublished, no
date, p. 9.
18. Ibid., p. 13.
19. Ibid., p.56-57.
20. Ibid., p.57.
�Chapter 3
Texas
Please tell Father that the razor was a plumb good one and I thank him ever
so much for it. (James G. K. McClure, Jr., to Grace McClure, February 2,
1902)
If you send off a young lad, already inclined to be Tom Sawyeresque, to
live among cowboys, eat their food, and talk their talk, and then try to bring him
back home, you have to expect some resistance. The benefits of life in Lake
Forest are hard to dispute, but Jamie McClure wanted to taste a rougher and
manlier world. He wanted to be on his own without the amenities a mother
provides. Like most young men at the turn of the century, bronco busting, chuck
wagons, chaps and cowpokes evoked for him the gritty, but nonetheless romantic world where coyotes, long-horned steers and wild horses squared off against
courageous men. Jamie threw himself into that world, and when his allotted
time there was over it was his love for his family, his sense of duty, and his
father's persuasive ability rather than the attractions of Yale's intellectual and
social life that convinced him to leave.
Young Jim McClure landed in Texas in November of 1901. He arrived at
the Shoenail Ranch through a connection with a Presbyterian minister in Chicago. Word that he was coming came late, and without a letter of introduction
he appeared to be just another greenhorn Yankee looking for a job. He was taken
on and thrown in with all the other hands. He had to make his own way without
the benefit of his father's introduction, which suited him just fine.
In later years Jim was always quick to say that at the start he was just plain
lucky. It was probably at the Shoenail that a group of horses were corralled and
Jim was asked if he could ride a bad horse. Not being constituted to say "No"
in the face of a challenge, he said he could. One of the cowboys brought forward
several noted buckers for the suburban greenhorn, one after another on successive days. He was told to "Thumb 'em and hang 'em in 'em," which means run
your thumbs up the horse's mane the wrong way and spur him at the same time
to irritate him. All these procedures Jim carried out, but still these broncos just
trotted off with him. The days happened to be quite warm, Jim was a confident
rider, and the horses were in no mood to act up. The greenhorn began to acquire
a name for himself. They called him "Chicago Jim," and fortunately his reputation for riding a bad horse remained untarnished. He found himself well accepted in this new society.
38
�Texas
39
In winter, there was time to become close friends with the other cowboys.
Two fellows named Emory and Enoch became devoted to Chicago Jim and vice
versa. He wrote to his family:
Emory and I set traps. The next morning we w e n t . . . [and] found nothing
but a hawk in one and shot a few quail.... I shot a large Mallard duck.
Wednesday was spent in fruitlessly hunting duck and getting about 10 or 12
quail. . . . Thursday for dinner we were going to have duck but the duck failed
to materialize
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to family, December 1, 1901)
A few days later:
Yesterday . . . we all went to town. Emery and I got a hair cut and ate a
fine dinner at the hotel. I then got my saddle repaired.. .. We then watered
some stock and the horses. .. . (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure,
December 10, 1901)
On the day following:
After dinner Babe Owens, Enoch, Emery and myself went to West Pasture. . .. We rode nearly twenty-five miles during the afternoon.. . . Father's
pants which I brought along have already given out completely at the seat.
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure, December 11, 1901)
Perhaps it was a sign of his growing confidence that he dispenses for the first
time with his childhood name and signs the letter, "Your devoted brother, James
G. K. McClure, Jr."
Even though going to church meant a two-hour buggy drive to town, he
often made the effort to go, even if he had only "womenfolk" for company.
This morning Mrs. Craven, Miss Hempstead and I went to church in the
buggy. They had no church at the Presbyterian or Methodist churches so we
went to the Baptist. The church was full and the preaching was certainly queer.
The house was so full that one old fellow sat on the carpet on the platform.
The chairs had done give out. There were sure a right smart a people there.
If you happen to have an extra razor. . . . I wish you would forward it by
mail as my G. strings are about 1/2 inch long. Maybe that accounts for my
weight. . . . The presents that you'uns sent were fine. . . . [I am] more thankful
every day that I have such a fine Father and Mother and brothers and sisters.
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to James G. K. McClure, Sr., December 30, 1901)
Jim was trying out the language of his new buddies, and apparently ready to
begin serious shaving (although the G. string terminology certainly is baffling!)
Even more than his reference to needing* a razor, however, it is his stated
appreciation for his family that shows he was gaining a new perspective. When
the child ceases to take his upbringing for granted, he is beginning to see himself
in a new light.
�40
We Plow God's Fields
Such a new perspective is often hardest for mothers to accept. Young Jamie
dashed off a note to "My dearest Mother" on New Year's Day. She had sent him
some cookies and a homemade plum pudding, and had inquired tentatively as
to when he might return home. In this note, he revealed to her an astounding
plan. "As to coming home I thought that I would spend the winter here and . . .
start from here about the first of April with Emory and . .. ride home on horse
back. The ponies cost about twenty dollars apiece and we could take a tent,
bedding and a few cooking utensils on a pack horse. I think the best plan would
be to tell fortunes on the way home and live as the gypsies do" (James G. K.
McClure, Jr. to Phebe Ann Dixon McClure, January 1, 1902). He had a lifelong
ambition to live for a time like a gypsy. He loved the exhilaration he felt when
completely free and independent. The reaction of his mother to this idea was
predictable, and somehow the idea was squelched.
It was the freedom of Texas, where the very geography breathes the word,
that helped to mature young McClure. The pictures he took with Harriet's
Kodak camera, which she loaned him for the trip, show a land so vast and flat
that the barns and people look inconsequential. He loved to photograph friends,
and his horses. "The picture of the single horse is Bob Short with my saddle on.
My thumb got in the way and spoiled his head" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to
James G. K. McClure, Sr., February 5, 1902). Next to Bob Short in his album
is a picture of a wildcat that was caught and tied up by one of the other hands.
Another shows Jim posing on one of his horses, cutting a fine figure with a large
cowboy hat, vest, boots and lasso. He loved to hunt coyotes, and wrote to
brother Arch: "... we jumped a coyote quite near us. The dogs went after him
on all fours and Ned and I right behind. Old Swapsie (a dog) caught him in
about half a mile and the dogs just ate him up. He had Miss Dordy (another
dog) by the upper jaw and swung her round and round but when she got loose
she just tore at him.... It was fine" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Arch
McClure, February 16, 1902). And to his poor mother he wrote, "Can you
please ask Father to let me know how he got his coyote skins home and how
much he paid to have them made into rugs" (James G, K. McClure, Jr. to Phebe
Ann Dixon McClure, January 19, 1902). In a birthday letter, he undoubtedly
scared her to tears with this story:
Talk about your Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, we beat it all to pieces
Thursday. They brought up four broncos which had never had a rope on except
when they were branded. We had been coyote hunting and when we got in
we threw up for the first choice. I was the lucky number.... I chose a boy
with a white spot on his face.. . . When we got back from feeding the cows
and calves . . . I . . . saddled my bronco and rode him. We had to ride without
bridles, simply with halters. Mine didn't do anything at first but shortly decided that he wished no more of me and pitched a little. . . . It felt very funny
to ride all over the prairie totally unable to guide your horse. I had a short rope
to quirt [whip] mine with and accidentally I hit him on the tail with it and he
broke in two for a second or so.
�Texas
41
We are each going to get three dollars when they are broken to saddle and
bridle. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Phebe Ann Dixon McClure, February
22, 1902)
Jim McClure made his mark in this cowboy world as a bronco buster. Of
all the challenges not involving a six-shooter, taming a wild horse earned the
most respect in this society. It was a skill that took great courage, and one that
Jim was justly proud of ever afterwards. He became friends with a bronco buster
named George Young, and they teamed up to ride from ranch to ranch to break
horses. They were paid $3.00 a head to "bridle 'em, saddle 'em and ride 'em
five times." These horses, mostly four-year-olds, were herded in from the range
where they had grown up in perfect freedom except for the terrifying experience
of being branded as colts. Jim used the Kodak to record an excellent sequence
of George Young, master broncobuster, saddling a bronco, mounting, riding
through the first jump, and finally astride a subdued horse.
Jim's daughter remembers him telling her about their experiences:
.. . most of the cowboys hated to ride a bronc.... He and George would
take the broncs turn about, and at first it seemed to him that George always
got the worst ones. After riding a particularly tough bronc the first time,
George would sometimes have blood running out of his nose, mouth and eyes!
Once . . . they had finished all the broncs at a ranch and went in to get their
pay. The boss said there was one bronc they had not yet ridden. My father was
very tired and said he wouldn't ride it, but the boss was insistent. Finally my
father said he would look at it. He went up to the corral and saw the horse
standing exhausted at one side of the corral. He realized that it had just been
driven in from the range by the cowboys and that it was exhausted. So he said
he'd ride it right away. He soon discovered it was not a young bronc (four
years old as they usually were) but a horse of about seven and probably an
outlaw. But since it was so exhausted he saddled it right up and decided to ride
it on the range rather than in the corral . . . it just walked off quietly. Pretty
soon a "norther" sprang up, as sometimes happened in Texas. At first he felt
just a little puff of wind, then another and another. The temperature dropped
twenty degrees in minutes, and the cold wind roared. The bronc pricked up its
ears. It began to feel better and better. Then it started to buck. My father said
he rode it from its ears to its tail, and it kept right on bucking. All the time he
kept spurring the horse and sawing on the bit. At last the horse slowed down
until its bucks were just crow hops and finally it stopped altogether. It was all
bloody from the spurs and at its mouth, too. And my father rode the horse
slowly back to the ranch. It was a rough business on both horse and man. This
horse remained a tough one to ride. One day my father needed to go into town
and decided to give the bronc a good workout. When they arrived at the town
corral, the horse was terrified of all the wagons, men and buildings . . . things
it had never seen. My father tried to leave it in the corral, but the horse just
put its head on my father's shoulder and followed him like a dog. After that
the bronc never bucked with my father again. It was a regular pet, but no one
else could ride it. It was a "one man horse." When my father went East some
�42
We Plow God's Fields
of his friends wrote him about that horse. No one could ride it and they sold
it to a rodeo.1
Jim's success at this job was all the more remarkable as he had ridden very little
more than old Erma back in Lake Forest.
The letters he wrote home spilled over with the ebullience of his new life.
Sensing a potential problem, his father continually reminded his son that Texas
was only a short excursion. He could not really escape the patterns laid before
him and, although admittedly he was tempted, in later life he would be glad he
had stayed on his ordained course. Son, like father, would attend Yale University. He needed to return to Lake Forest in time to brush up on his Greek and
Latin, so he could pass the college's entrance exam. He kept pushing back the
time of his return as far as he could. Early April became mid-May in his plans.
" . . . I would just as soon stay until Annie gets home . . . about the first of July.
That would give me from six to eight weeks to study, according to whether I
got home on the first or middle of May. . . . 1 never appreciated my father and
mother as I do now" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to James G. K. McClure, Sr.
March 2, 1902).
The appreciation was sincere, but comparing Greek and Latin to riding the
range was to compare dreary duty with youthful freedom. At the Shoenail, one
aspect of range riding revolved around water. In the winter, Jhe ice had to be
broken. In the early spring, a fascinating aspect of ranch life appeared with the
hatching of the heel fly. During the first warm days, these flies would attack the
cattle with such fury that the animals would rush into the nearest pond or bog
for relief. But they tended to be so weak after the winter that they would get
stuck in the mire and eventually die if they were not dragged out. Jim and his
friends would ride the bogs looking for animals in such a state. The cowboys
tied ropes from the pommels of their saddles to the cows and pulled for all their
horses were worth. If they succeeded, they had to quickly release the rope from
the cow—the cattle were so wild and mean that as soon as they returned to solid
ground, they would as often as not turn and charge the cowboys. The animals
that had died in the bogs were skinned on the spot. Jim reported, "Friday
morning we rode the bogs and in the afternoon we tried to pull a cow out of the
creek and finally had to skin her in the creek. My horse broke loose from her
ten times, breaking the rope five times. We then found another cow bogged
down but she went off all right" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to James G. K.
McClure, Sr. April 13, 1902).
His daughter remembers that he had one mean bronco whose buck had a
twist that made it difficult to stay on. He decided to take this horse to bog camp
with him so that he could ride it where the other hands wouldn't see him get
thrown. Only his friend Enoch would be with him. The first time the horse threw
him he landed in a briar bush, the second time he just missed the camp fire and
the third time as he lay on the ground he saw the horse coming down at him to
stomp him, which few horses will ever do. Jim drew back his fist and punched
�Texas
43
the wild one in the nose and the horse whirled away. The horse's fate is not
known.2
The time was drawing near that Jim would have to go back to his preordained life, and he had not ridden a roundup. He learned that on the XIT Ranch
this event was held early. He could take part and still get back in time to study
for his Yale exams. On April 14, Jim left the Shoenail Ranch for the XIT. It
was a sad parting, for the men and animals of that ranch had taken him a good
distance towards manhood. Emery, Enoch, Oscar, Bob Short and many more
would become part of the repertoire of adventure stories with which he would
later entertain his friends and children. One he loved to tell was how the hands
were loafing around in front of the fire one day, so bored they could barely keep
their eyes open. A lively cowpoke thought he would have some fun, and
grabbed a handful of bullets and tossed them into the fire. Grown men never
left the prone position any faster.
A roundup on the XIT was an enormous undertaking. Yearlings were
branded and made ready for the trip to Montana, where they would graze all
summer and then be slaughtered for the Chicago meat markets. The ranch was
the largest in the United States, approximately three million acres. Jim used
Harriet's camera to record pictures of the men and their activities out on the
prairie. Pictures survive of the men sitting around the chuck wagon eating
breakfast; the men saddling up; Lee Landers on his horse Black Snake; Boss
Moore and Old Joe. Jim loved to talk about how a man had to check his bed
roll carefully before crawling out in the morning. It got cold at night and
rattlesnakes often crawled in beside or under the sleeper for warmth.
Each cowpoke had a string of five or six horses, so that he could ride a fresh
horse daily. When a large number of cattle had been gathered together to drive
towards the rail head there was always the danger of a stampede. Several men
rode around the herd all night keeping watch; for any strange sound, a roll of
thunder or a sudden coyote howl, might start the herd running out of control.
Jim McClure understood the essential loneliness of the cowboy's life. His
daughter remembers:
He told me what a lonely life the men led, and that so many he met were
always talking about how they would go back home and settle down when they
were paid off in the fall. But in the spring most of them would show up again.
It was the only life they knew. There was an old cowboy along on mat XIT
roundup who would sing at night before they went to sleep, "I ride an old Paint
I lead an old Dan I'm goin' to Montana just to throw the hoolyan*."3
The song Jim remembered best was the "Cowboy's Prayer." He used to
sing it for his daughter when he drove her to school. It went like this:
*A 'hoolyan' is a lariat or rope.
�44
We Plow God's Fields
"Chuck Wagon," picture taken by James G.K. McClure, Jr., in Texas.
Last night as I lay on the prairie
And looked at the stars in the sky
I wondered if ever a cowboy
Would get to that sweet bye and bye.
I wondered then if I'd meet her
That mother whom God took away
And if in that bright land I'd greet her
Upon the last judgement day.
They say there will be a great roundup
When the cowboys like dogies will stand
To be cut by the riders of judgement
Who are posted and know every brand.
They say there's another great owner
Who's ne'er overstocked, that day,
He always makes room for another
Upon the last Judgement Day.
The trail that leads to those bright regions
Is narrow and dim, so they say,
But the road that leads down to perdition
Is broad and blazed all the way.
�Texas
45
In the East the grey dawn is breaking
Heaven's thought from me take wing
The cattle from sleep are awaking
And into my saddle I spring.4
One can imagine the boy lying in his bedroll under the Texas stars listening
to the old man sing. His daughter surmises:
His experience in Texas certainly meant a lot to him and he did love to think
about it all those many years later. I loved to hear about it, as he had taught
me to ride and even though he often scared me because he rode fast and hard,
I loved it. I tried hard not to show my fear because he was the kind of person
you were desperately anxious to please.
I think it was while working on these ranches that my father first really got
to know men who worked on the land for what they had. I think it stayed with
him all his Me. He probably saw some of the same admirable qualities of
independence and humor and ability to bear up under the hardships of life here
in the North Carolina mountains.5
Texas also gave Jim tremendous confidence. He had earned the respect of
men who lived an earthy, basic way of life. This life always afterward appealed
to Jim. He did not throw away the cultural graces of his upbringing, but neither
was he a prisoner to them. He learned to appreciate those segments of society
that lacked the refinement of Victorian manners. He always loved the daring
courage of the moment: challenge made him come alive. His friends in Texas
were for the most part straightforward and unpretentious, and for those very
traits they gained the admiration of young Jim McClure.
And I'm sure Enoch, Emery and George never forgot him either. He
received a few letters later from the more literate of his friends.
I imagine you had quite a tune hunting and fishing last summer! Wish I
could have been with you. But instead of that I was down here punching cows
to beat thunder.... I traded off one of your main cowhorses the other day,
"Old Splity." . . . Well next year during vacation come down and spend a
month or two with u s . . . . I am still in the race for County Judge with fair
prospects to win out. Will send you my card.... (J.E. Moore to James G.
K. McClure, Jr. October 8, 1902)
Another letter came from Oscar Ledbetter, the windmill man on the Shoenail Ranch. Jim always remembered a day when Oscar, driving a wagon and
team of four mules, was persuaded to join the boys as they galloped by on a
coyote hunt. Mules and wagon were flying over the prairie when they came to
a hidden draw, a deep cut made by a small stream. The mules really flew,
landing safe on the other side, leaving Oscar and the wagon in a tangle of broken
traces and cuss words, but miraculously uninjured. Oscar wrote:
�46
We Plow God's Fields
The barbecue was a howling success. . . . The boys had a good time. Old
Mary Ann took it all out to Coxey's race mare. Old Will is all right, he is in
gopher flat pasture getting fat. ... Jim what about that fish story? It sounds—
well-er like—just let it go. Jim I wish you could arrange to come down this
winter as hunting is going to be fine. We have nine brand new dogs, that makes
us nineteen so you see I will deal the coyotes misery this winter. Wishing you
a bushel of pleasure. (Oscar Ledbetter to James G. K. McClure, Jr. August
23, 1903)
The course of Jim's life was scheduled to pass through Yale, and despite
the pleasures of Texas, that plan remained unaltered. So he returned to Lake
Forest in the late spring, by railroad and not as a gypsy, to review Virgil and
Xenophon. That summer he attended the annual "Lake Forest Open-Air Horse
Show." Serious riding there was English style. He must have thoroughly enjoyed leaning up against the ring and telling his stories about riding out West
while the McCormicks and Swifts and Farwells pranced about winning ribbons.
He did pass his entrance test to Yale, and by the fall of 1902 he had exchanged
his Stetson and chaps for a bowler and cane.
1. Interviews with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
�Chapter Four
Yale
You must think my chief pals when I was in college were sweeps and old
clothes men—I suppose my name would sound unfamiliar to every professor
in the place. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Arch McClure, Fall 1909)
I once knew an old professor, who woke up one morning with ill health. By
mistake, his wife brought in a barometer instead of a thermometer. When she
pulled it out of his mouth, it registered "dry and windy." (A joke Jim McClure
used to tell when speaking.)
Yale University at the turn of the century catered to young men of wealth
and social standing. New money and old money were represented, but all had
money nonetheless. The only notable exception were the sons of clergymen.
Yale reflected the chasm between the social classes that had been yawning wider
over the decades since the Civil War. It was one of the precipices from which
the monied class overlooked the working class at a greater and greater distance.
Shortly after the anthracite coal miners of Pennsylvania went back to work after
one of the country's most devastating strikes, the university served to Jim and
his classmates the following Thanksgiving dinner: "Grape Fruit Round Cut with
Sherry, Blue Points on Half Shell, Salmon with Tartar Sauce, and Filet of Beef
with Mushrooms, Turkey, Cranberry Sauce .. ."*
In 1902, a dynamic young American, Theodore Roosevelt, succeeded to
the presidency after the assassination of William McKinley. Roosevelt began
to push his plan for the Square Deal (the first of many "Deads" in this century),
which in essence was an attempt to arbitrate fairly between the competing
elements of labor and capital. In February of 1902, while Jim was still hunting
coyotes and breaking broncos, Roosevelt told his attorney general to bring suit
against the Northern Securities Company for violating the Sherman Antitrust
Act. It was a dramatic break with the past, and signaled a new epoch in American politics now remembered as the Progressive Era.
The following May, when Jim was getting accustomed to Yale, the coal
workers went out on strike, creating the largest work stoppage in the history of
the country. For decades, labor unrest had threatened the United States as the
social changes wrought by industrialization created pressures that upset the
agrarian status quo of an earlier and simpler America. In every labor dispute to
date, the federal government (if it became involved at all) put its weight directly
behind the business interests. But in a precedent-smashing decision, Roosevelt
47
�48
We Plow God's Fields
called both sides in the coal dispute to come to Washington. He had become
convinced that the mine operators were prolonging the strike and threatening the
national welfare (coal was the principal source of energy and heat in this era).
To further urge the owners along, he threatened to confiscate the mines and
operate them with federal troops if they refused arbitration. By October the
mines were reopened and the worst abuses had been rectified.
Despite his Dixon heritage, in 1903 Jim's political consciousness remained
shallow. Roosevelt's Progressive Era would stamp a deep impression on him,
educating him more thoroughly than the Yale Greek and Latin departments. He
remained throughout his life a loyal Republican, even after moving to the
Democratic South. But his Republicanism was in the style of Teddy Roosevelt:
progressive, forward looking and full of energy. This Republican was no businessman's flunky, but a Progressive whose loyalties were with the downtrodden
of America.
Jim's father was deeply loyal to his alma mater, and was quite sure that his
years spent at Yale had helped to develop his strength of character and breadth
of vision. He eventually sent all three of his sons to Yale, and returned yearly
himself to celebrate the reunion rites with his friends of the class of 1870. There
were still McClures in and around Albany, particularly Jim's Aunt Grace; and
there were the Dixons in nearby Westerly, Rhode Island. Yale would be a
homecoming for his sons. But during his first weeks at Yale Jim was very
uncomfortable. He did not feel at home with these elegant young men from
Exeter and Andover and the other prep schools. Like Yale and Harvard, these
schools had been founded originally to educate the clergy, but now their main
patrons were well-to-do industrialists and professional men. In later years he
told his daughter laughingly that he felt totally out of place that first fall at
college. Texas certainly hadn't lost its lure for Jim, and at least twice he was
tempted to go back, liie first offer came through a friend named Charles K.
King, who wrote:
. . . I have a letter from the owner of the C Ranch down in New Mexico
where I learned the business, you know, and he wants me to send him a young
fellow to learn the business and his ways and eventually take charge of his
business and as he has a fine place and lots of cattle it is certainly a fine
opening for any young man who would like the life . . . Please write and let
me know what you think about it, Jim. Do not decide in a hurry, for he will
wait if I ask him to ... I believe it will mean a fortune in the years to come
and it would take me just long enough to get there to accept it if I were foot
loose . . .
I write to you and thought of you simple because I like you most sincerely
and because I believe you are just the sort of man he wants, honest, straightforward, true and obliging. I am not jollying you now, Jim, but merely enumerating the qualities I am positive you possess that will please him....
(Charles F. King to James G. K. McClure, Jr., November 14, 1902)
�Yale
49
Then came a letter from another Texas friend, an "old nester." This was
the Texan term for a comparatively small landholder, nestled in among the big
ranches. The old fellow had taken a fancy to Jim, and had already asked him
to come to live with him. Now he wrote that if Chicago Jim would come to help
him run his place he would deed him half his land and cattle, and make the rest
over to him in his will. Jim thought it over, but briefly, and wrote his father he
was going to accept the offer and leave Yale for Texas, the place where a man's
work made the difference and the people were not so layered with civilization.
Dr. McClure did not write and he did not telegraph. He boarded the Twentieth
Century Limited at once and appeared unannounced in Jim's room. The impulse
for Texas was thwarted.2
In time, Jim realized the wisdom of his father in this matter. His years at
Yale, while not marked by academic achievement, included contact with a
critical mix of people and intellectual influences that bore great fruit later in his
life. Yet, it must be said that his dream of a practical life, with cattle and
chickens and earthy farmhands, remained part of the young man's makeup. His
life would have to make room for that vision, too.
Jim speedily adjusted to the social mores of his classmates. As it had for
his father, Yale meant a time to build character and make friends. The uneasiness of his first term soon disappeared, and more than any other aspect of his
college career it was the solid coterie of loyal and devoted friends he made that
helped him tremendously then and all through his life. Like his father before
him, he took much more of an interest in the social and religious aspects of
college than in academics. One acceptable scheme of attending Yale in 1902
was to get by with the daily recitations in order to take advantage of the myriad
activities that swirled around the college. He constantly received notes from the
Dean's office concerning academic problems, quite drastic ones in some cases,
but they seem to have had little effect on the goings and comings of his daily life.
Jim was met on his arrival at New Haven by Mr. Franklin Dexter, one of
his father's dearest friends. He wrote his sister Annie that he could see "Mr.
Dexter's head and shoulders over the crowd at the train...." He stayed a few
days with the Dexters while purchasing furniture for his room, "... a Bed,
Mattress springs, bureau, washstand, Toilet Set, desk, desk chair and cane chair
for $50.22 ..." (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Annie McClure, September 24,
1902). Later on his father would become concerned about his son's ease with
money, but he apparently made a thrifty beginning. Yale was a large, disorienting place. After a month, a little homesick thread creeps into a letter to his
family.
I can never thank you enough for these eighteen lovely years. Since coming
here I have felt the meaning of life more than ever before. In the Dwight Hall
[religious] meetings there have been some of the finest things said that I have
ever heard.
I hope that you will always remember that although I am a long ways off
�50
We Plow God's Fields
yet I love you more than ever and I do wish that you could be here or better
still I be at home for a little while. Christmas will be here soon, however, only
eight weeks from tomorrow. As I write I suppose that you are both at Prayer
Meeting and that Annie is playing the piano. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to
family, October 28, 1902)
Jim learned to love Yale, and threw himself into diverse aspects of the life
there. Most important of all for him was religion. He joined the YMCA, and
faithfully attended his class prayer meetings on Sunday after chapel. He told his
family that the Dwight Hall meetings of the Yale University Christian Association meant a lot. He was placed on the Freshman Religious Committee.
At a meeting of the Freshman Union, Jim debated the affirmative side in
the question, "Resolved, that Latin and Greek should not be required studies in
college." Despite the strident pragmatism exhibited by Jim in this debate, the
ancient texts still had to be faced daily, Monday through Saturday, by Freshman
McClure.3
Religious life and daily life at Yale were completely intertwined. The
current president, Arthur Hadley, was a political economist and the first president of the university who was not a clergyman. Among the class of people who
attended Yale, Christianity in one form or another was an expected part of one's
intellectual wardrobe. Academic regulations for the school included the following: for chapel, "students are required to occupy the seats assigned by the ushers
at morning prayers each weekday, and at the Sunday morning service... ."4
The idea implicit in these rules is that one of the principal responsibilities of the
college is to inculcate the habits of religion in the student body, and that in this
pursuit it had the approval of the wider culture the college represented. In the
name of student free choice, discomfort with religious coercion, and certainly
as the result of a more diversified student body, such rules have disappeared
on nearly all American college campuses today. Even back in his college days
though, Jim McClure felt a growing suspicion of a religion that was "expected"
and class bound. It should be, he thought, alive with ideas and truths that helped
real people in need regardless of their station in life, and that energized souls
with the immense spiritual power available to them. Protestant Christianity had
reached a zenith of sorts in 1902. It was a distinguishing mark of Northern
European and American culture, and world wide there were few who doubted
the power and influence of these Protestant countries. At Yale, Jim breathed the
air of this cultural confidence, and it was an obvious source of his optimism.
And yet he began to catch an occasional musty whiff that all was not so well
after all.
If the seeds of Jim's eventual revolt against the status quo were in the
ground in 1902, they showed precious little evidence of germination. He was
actually much more interested in football—Yale football at this time was national news. He became an avid fan of Yale sports in general, and his scrapbook
is packed with tickets stubs and sports articles. He was on his freshman football
�Yale
51
team, but by the looks of the picture, everyone who went out made the club.
There is no evidence that he ever played in a game, but he remained a touchfootball enthusiast ever after.
Another freshman delight for him was sneaking into the junior prom:
Monday night was the Prom Concert. Of course there was a terrible crowd
of freshman striving to get in to their gallery. Everyone going in was searched
but nevertheless lots of things were brought in. Thousands of these paper
streamers were thrown, lots of confetti and lots of cards. We took balls of
string and let down notes to the girls and they sent up flowers and notes and
all sorts of things. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Phebe Ann Dixon McClure,
February 4, 1903)
He collected many of the cards he mentions and pasted them into his scrapbook.
One, with a slight political ring, went:
Of the Prom Girls he thought he's a trust
But the Freshman class on high
Caught the pretty girl's eye
And behold, all the fuss trust was bust.5
Since the college athletic teams were beyond his abilities, Jim made a habit
of working out on the college track and helped to organize informal football and
baseball games among friends. To better focus his body-building efforts, he
submitted to a physical examination provided by the college. In nearly every
way his body was approved by the physician, except for one glaring defect: a
flat thorax! Remedies were referenced for him in a booklet, and whether or not
he succeeded in adding some bulge to this area of his anatomy is a question left
to other historians. He did help to organize a spring baseball game between his
own Pierson Hall and White Hall. He wrote home, "Everyone has to be as poor
a player as possible. . . . At present I am going to catch for the Pierson team"
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Arch McClure, March 26, 1903). We will leave
the gymnasium segment of Jim's Yale career with the admonition he received
on the local regulations: "Attention is called to the following rules regarding
lockers: Offensively soiled clothing must not be stored in the locker. The director will remove such clothing without notice."6
Academically, he averaged 2.50 his first term at Yale, an adequate but
unimpressive score. In the spring, he developed a passion for the German
language and at the same time made a friend of Joe Twichell, a devoted companion from that time on. He and Joe worked over the German together and made
the effort to attend German language plays on campus. As a nation, Germany
always fascinated Jim, so much so that he eventually studied at three German
universities. It was a nation that was to thrust itself on his generation like no
other. But despite this spark of interest, he wrote home that his second term
scores would be worse if anything: "My dear Harriet: As to your questions I
�52
We Plow God's Fields
will reply as follows: 1st studies Very Poor, can't do very well this term. Started
out poorly. Have been very busy with outside work. May get 2.35 if lucky."
And to the eternal question, he replies: "Common food fair. Not starving." And
as if to substantiate this fact, he adds, "Weight 149 Ibs. last Friday" (James G.
K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure, May 13, 1902). Just how busy with outside
work has he been?
Monday afternoon I went out to the golf course and fooled around a little.
In the evening I went out to Lake Whitney about ten o'clock with Joe Twichell.
The moon was out and full and we got a canoe and paddled around. It was
simply great. We are going out again tonight. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to
Harriet McClure, May 13, 1903)
Monday six of us started out sailing about eight-thirty . . . We had a great
time. We sailed down to the Thimble Islands where we got lunch and then
started out again. The wind died down at half past two and we were becalmed
until six. At six a strong wind sprang up and we arrived in port at eight o'clock.
I had one of the best times I have ever had. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to
Phebe Ann Dixon McClure, June 3, 1903)
Good times evaporate into memory, but somehow those ancient tongues
that bedeviled Jim so much forever loomed before him: "Thursday we had our
Latin Examination. I think that I got through it all right" (James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to Phebe Ann Dixon McClure, June 7, 1903). As our hero completes his
freshman year, we see him as a fanatic sports fan, an endearing friend, a
survivor of the ancient languages, and now out for the summer.
Along with obvious enjoyment of the entertainments at Yale, religion does
appear to have been his central focus. Like his father he became a leader in his
class in this sphere of college life. Before returning to Lake Forest, he attended
the Northfield Conference. This was a prestigious annual gathering of student
religious leaders from schools and colleges all over the Northeast. Bible classes,
missionary projects, "Life Work meetings," and platform discussions all helped
to bring out current topics of interest in the Christian community. There were
also tennis courts, a river to swim in, and new friends to make. And even at a
religious conference there were the inevitable pranks. Once the boys laid a trap
for an irascible professor. They papered the walls of the hallway with flypaper,
then shouted "Fire," and ran. Jim found himself charged up by this conference,
and returned each year he was at Yale except his last, when a scheduling conflict
prompted him and some others to organize a parallel gathering at a different
time for those who could not attend Northfield.7
Jim McClure exercised his social conscience by helping with a local Boys'
Club in New Haven that had just opened its doors. Teaching Sunday School
there, he appears to have begun to try to break through the class barriers that
separated him from so many Americans. One of his young charges wrote to him
this touching but misspelled letter over the summer:
�Yale
53
My dear James:
I received your letter Wensday . . . well Jemmie it is awful lonesome sence
you went away all I do is to sit in my room and smoke my pipe and listen to
the Katie did and katie didn't . . . be sure and write me long letters as I will
be anxious to here from you.
Your Friend Patrick Cody.
(Patrick Cody to James G. K. McClure, Jr., June 31, 1903)
The Edwin Foote Boys' Club, with Jim's help, met with phenomenal success its
first year. By December of 1903, a news article stated that it was "only ten
months old and yet over 800 different boys have joined.... These working boys
have contributed over two hundred dollars to meet the expenses of the club."8
Between the Northfield Conference and his last exam, Jim met his mother
at Westerly, Rhode Island. For three generations the Dixons went to Washington
to rule the nation, and naturally the habits of politics ran deeply in the family.
A good portion of Jim's education took place around the dinner table in Westerly, where the great issues of the day were common talk, and where the talk
itself was on the highest level. Pictures of the Dixon home give the impression
of confident elegance. The position of the family was so well established in the
community that any brash or pretentious additions would have been superfluous.
A large, white clapboard structure enclosed an interior filled with a vast array
of Victorian jumble. No corner was left unadorned, and no shelf or mantle left
unladen with knick-knacks and objects of interest.
Jim had visited Westerly during the summers of his youth, and rather
enjoyed a household oriented more toward pleasure than toward the Presbyterian
Church. Trotting horses and a servant known as "Old Harry" were of special
interest to Jim. The horses were an extravagant hobby of the Dixons. Old Harry
was a black servant who resembled the faithful Southern house slave more than
anything else. He and Jim were devoted Mends, in the manner of an old man
serving the family of the young man. One time, Jim and Harry decided to leave
early to see the trotting races, and Jim wanted to be sure he woke up in time to
get out of the house without waking anyone else up. He told Harry that there
would be a string dangling down from his window, and early in the morning
he was to yank it. Tying it to his toe, he dangled it out the window and went to
bed. Early the next morning, Harry began to pull, and yank, and tug—and never
let up. Jim was almost dragged from his bed, but managed to gain his balance
in time to save his toe and to notify Harry that his efforts had been quite
successful.9
Later in the summer of 1903, Jim enjoyed the pleasures of a resort in
Oconto, Wisconsin. Several of his Yale friends were there, along with two
lively young ladies, Helen and Martha. On the train back to Chicago, the two
girls wrote Jim a crazy letter that appears to have been written by both girls at
the same time, each alternating a sentence. The mood of the gathering can best
be described by this correspondence: "At Oconto we needed a chaperon . . . I
�r',4m
,•'
'Ajj^^mmi^ ,
"" "
§r. . . ". . .i
i»
I 'I
I :i
><'.j^.
�Yale
55
was kept busy holding Martha from tackling the men who were making eyes at
Helen. Martha is holding me, or the above would be erased . . . Helen's tears
have soaked three handkerchiefs and has now begun on mine . . . Please try and
think of us as being very grateful for having the best of good times ..." (Helen
? and Martha ? to James G. K. McClure, Jr., August 13, 1903).
Two weeks before, Jim and his family helped to organize a picnic from the
Lake Forest Sunday School that really does sound like fun. The usual games of
the day, including sack races, lemon hunts, nail driving contests (for girls only!)
and three-legged races, were successfully worked through, all culminating in a
big baseball game. Dr. McClure played his old position of third base, while Jim
pitched for the opposition. Jim's nine was reduced to eight almost immediately
when Mr. Durand became "tired out in [the] first." In the fourth, Dr. McClure
was injured, surely costing his team the game as Jim's pitching maintained the
4-3 win.10 Jim had a naturally cheerful disposition, and there were few discordant notes to mar his college summers with family and friends.
Back at Yale in the fall, Jim proudly reported home that he had been elected
class deacon, a position of great respect. "My dear boy:" his father wrote,
I do not believe any word from Yale could have brought me more joy than
the word of your election as a class deacon . . . As I look back on my own
days in College it seems to me nothing tended to steady me and make me
careful of my example and influences more than my sense of responsibility as
a class deacon.
I think the fellows look for a high type of life in their deacons, and however
much they may joke about them, the fellows wish their deacons to be men
whom they thoroughly respect. While preserving an attractive demeanor it is
better for the deacons to err on the side of consistency rather than on the side
of inconsistency. (James G. K. McClure, Sr., to James G. K. McClure, Jr.,
October 26, 1903)
Respect, though a cruder version, was also part of Deacon McClure's
initiation into the Junior Society Psi Upsilon Beta. As described by the college
press corps, the story ran:
Junior Society Fun: How the Neophytes are
Made to Recognize Their Humble Station
. . ."Fagging" services are required of the candidates. This is a late revival
of an ancient custom. Each man has a master to whom he is appointed for a
certain period between his pledging and his initiation . . . He must wake him
at a stated hour, prepare his bath, bring each morning a fresh boutonniere, his
mail and his breakfast, if need be. He must walk behind his master in the
rounds of the Campus, keeping a respectful four paces in the rear.
There are other things the candidate for election must do. He may have,
Opposite, top: DixonHome, Westerly, R.I. Opposite, bottom: Old Harry
�56
We Plow God's Fields
perhaps, literary aspirations. In that case he may be asked to deliver an oration
to the moon and in the highest flights of imagination he is interrupted with
deprecatory remarks reflecting on his ability on all points, his truth and sanity.
Passersby are frequently in doubt about the latter and have been known to take
another street to avoid what seemed to them a real madman. Another trial for
a literary candidate is to have him embrace a tree or post and murmur words
of deep affection, while instructions such as these are shot at him from his
tormentors. "Louder," "Take off that smile and stick it on the tree," . . . Soon
the unfortunate man is shouting endearments to his wooden friend.11
Skits and short plays were a specialty of these "literary" societies, and
during initiation week impromptu productions could be seen all over the campus. Jim saved for posterity a collection of instructions such as "Candidate
McClure will be at 172 Farnum Hall at 8:40 3/4 p.m
Do not reveal these
instructions."12 In the end, tormentors and tormented alike gathered for an
initiation banquet that was held in the Hall of Beta, amidst Broiled Squab, Filet
of Beef, Bisque Tortini and Cigars. Officially, the miserable life of the "fag"
was over, and following dinner he was royally entertained by the older club
members in dramatic productions such as Beatrice, the Bovine (A Bucolic, The
Milky Way, In Two Tits and a Tatter). Jim was mentioned in the elaborate
program as part of an "Entirely New Troup, Imported at Great Expense" that
will next season present Three Little Jades.13
But if the absurd was given its hour upon the stage, most of the weeks and
months were given to Latin and Greek. But Jim began to veer away from the
slavery of the ancient texts, and to search out in academic nooks and crannies
more up-to-date and scientific studies. Science, and its remarkable success as a
method of discerning the workings of the world, had already drawn Jim very
closely into its orbit. Much of his optimism about the future of the human
condition, which was a distinguishing characteristic of his thinking, emanated
from a strong faith in the ability of science to solve once and for all the problems
that created strife among mankind.
Increasingly, Jim took courses in the social science department. Economics, the American Social Condition and Nineteenth Century Communities were
all subjects a young progressive would find vital. He had a faith that the social
scientists were on the brink of discovering how to "inoculate" society in order
to eliminate human poverty. If the riddle of smallpox could be unraveled, why
not the disease of hopelessness?
Slowly through time, Jim reconciled his faith in science and his faith in
Christianity. He became a practitioner of the Social Gospel, a movement led
by Walter Rauschenbusch, who preached the Holy Word as a means to bring
about the salvation of society. In Rauschenbusch's vision, the minister was
comparable to the medical doctor in his battle against physical ailments, except
that the minister's goal was a healthy community. Public health, education,
settlement houses, the fight to clean up crooked politics, YMCA's, and Boys'
Clubs all became legitimate realms for the minister. At Yale, these ideas were
�Yale
57
still in their germination stage for Jim. His struggle with these two faiths is a
fascinating dynamic that is the proper subject of his seminary years, yet it should
be noted that as far back as his college days he was searching for a scientific
base in the social science departments for his spiritual prompting.
As a part of the Yale religious community, he was given opportunities to
speak before a variety of gatherings. "COMING: TWO YALE STUDENTS!
Messrs. Banks and McClure . . . To address Young Men of New Britain, at
YMCA Hall . . . General subject 'Standards and Tests.' A unique meeting for
men only."14 "Young Peoples Meeting, in observance of the Day of Prayer for
Students. Address by James G. K. McClure, Jr. and Joseph H. Twichell of Yale
College... ,"15 One of his speeches remains from this period of his life, and in
it can be discerned an immature expression of the ideals he pursued throughout
his life. Before the Yale YMCA he proposed:
To show that men can live and do live at college a Christian life. To show
that it is the only way to live here at school . . . We will only live once and
now is the time to live an upright Christian life . .. Mr. X was living a
careless, thoughtless life. Mr. Y had a purpose, a great desire to better mankind, he was filled with love .. . [U]nless we lead a Christian life, we will
fail in the hour of trial. So let us be men, face the questions squarely, not be
afraid of the man in the looking glass [remember him?] and live up to our best
ideals. Let us strive to be like Christ-to love as he did ... But what shall our
ideals be? That is a question that puzzles man but it should not—Let's go back
to first principles. Our ideals should be Christ. Now Christ is love. Therefore
our ideals should be perfect love . . .
We will take for instance the matter of drinking and see how this perfect
love ideal would answer such a question. I want to drink and I say, can I drink
in perfect love to my fellow man? If I drink a little will I cause another, a friend
to stumble and fall? Is there danger of my drinking causing suffering anywhere? Reasonably I can't drink with the ideal of perfect love.16
On this final point, he joined up with a long line of his McClure forebears, and
refused throughout his life to yield to the temptations of strong drink.
Jim McClure was never a mean-spirited fanatic, however. Like his father,
he took a strong stand against alcohol but did not condemn or embarrass friends
who used alcohol in moderation. He always enjoyed a party and the Helens and
the Marthas adored him. He escorted Joe TwichelFs sister Louise to his own
class's Junior Prom. His dance card was full, forty-one dances in a row, alternating between the two-step and the waltz. During his summer at home, he had
struck up a strong friendship with one of the several Elizabeths in his life. She
was a spicy girl, and addressed a letter after the summer was over to "Simple
Life McClure," an obvious jibe at the discussions the two of them had had about
their personal aspirations.
When you read this you will be rolling swiftly away from-shall I say "Home
and Mother?" Don't forget "the girl you left behind you" nor how to make the
�58
We Plow God's Fields
happy moments fly when we are together. It's an art any girl will appreciate
and one which you have to almost as great degree as Louis [Douseman, Jim's
friend and Yale classmate.] Perhaps if you see a great deal of him this winter
you will catch on to his methods .. . Don't do anything rash in the Helen
Boyce line or the Louise Twichell region or the Nellie Lake direction until I
reach the East so that I can bait fairly . . . for you . . . Also don't pick up any
stray chickens but turn up in New York to greet me with some real sensible
hen, a nice, old one . . . I will announce my arrival in New York in some way
or other and then I shall expect an immediate and insistent descent and that
right early too.
I hope you have a pleasant journey, a corking trip (I am so glad there is no
girl there to read aloud, drive and fish-with you), a wonderful year and that
you won't forget me or that I love you in the same old way. I am yours
sincerely, Elizabeth manager general.
To heighten the mystery, she scrawls in the note. "I hope you can read between
the lines as there is more to this than I dare say" (Elizabeth Waller to James G.
K. McClure, Jr., no date).
Jim's remaining college years contained more of the patterns he had already
established. He flourished in the Beta Club gag shows. His soft-looking face
made him a natural for those dramatic parts hardest to manage at Yale in those
days, the female ones. He pranced about on stage as "Sidewalk Sadie—The
Swash of the Sewer," and in a photograph of the Beta Club members, he is
found with some difficulty perched on the lap of a fellow member (next to
another dressed as a gorilla), as pretty a belle as fashions of the period allowed.17 (These fashions, quite cumbersome by modern standards, did a superb
job of losing a male physique inside numerous folds and ruffles.) Glee club
concerts, baseball games, summer trips to the lakes of Wisconsin and the Spring
Regatta were only part of his normal round of activities.
Jim was sent as a member of the Yale religious community on a tour of
boarding schools, in order to "Inform the boys about all phases of college life"
and to "Attract them to the Christian life." He was given strict written instructions that included these admonitions: "Give a talk describing Yale life. Emphasize the opportunities...Get together informally the boys who are coming to
Yale and let them ask questions . . . This isn't a fussing tour . . . so don't spend
too much time in the company of the principal's daughter or anybody else's
daughters. You're after the boys and ought to spend the time with them."18
On one such trip in 1905, he went to Washington, D. C. to see the inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt and then the next day spoke to the Quaker students
of Haverford College. His theme was " . . . to show [that] manly men can live
[a] Christian life":
I want to talk to you today . .. about the tests in our lives and the way to
come out of them triumphant. Life is a series of tests.
. . . I want to tell you of two men who were in [the Iroquois Theatre fire in
Chicago] . .. One was a man of some sixty years. He escaped. A friend saw
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him the next day and congratulated him but he wanted no congratulations, he
was absolutely ashamed of himself, had lost all his self-esteem. He thought
that in his sixty years he had built up within himself a respect for women and
helpless children that would have kept him from trampling down and pushing
back helpless ones, as he must have done to escape. There was no more
pleasure in life for that man . . .
There was another man at the fire who saw an exit which had two stairs
leading up to i t . . . He stationed himself beside it and handed out woman after
woman, child after child. The fireman outside could see him helping them
out, his clothes and hair aflame. Then he fell and somehow . . . he was gotten
o u t . . . Think of the difference in the way these two men met their tests.19
Does Jim's speech sound simplistic? Do his examples of heroism smack
of a morality melodrama, a Victorian tear jerker? Remember first of all that Jim
is a college student, young and with a relatively limited experience. But more
to the point, the sophistication of our own times has become a smoke screen.
The smoke distorts moral questions by exposing their complexity without even
asking, but what is right? This is a tendency to consider heroism pass6, and
mixed motives are assumed to be behind the purest of good deeds. Self-denial
is perceived as limiting personal freedom, or worse, a repression that may cause,
when one least expects it, an ugly psychological reaction. To pass off Jim's
thoughts as naive, not the stuff of reality, is to deny the heroic possibilities of
mankind. Sophistication is too often synonymous with cynicism. Jim spent his
life searching for corruption; he wore no rose-colored glasses. Wrongdoers were
meted out swift punishment when it was in his power to do so. And yet, he
maintained his dream that, given encouragement and right understanding, and
given the possibilities of the human will, everyone could raise himself or herself
above the sinful state of the world.
If Jim thought life was a series of tests, he knew that college was. Daily
recitation followed, in theory, daily preparation. For our hero, such a rule
remained all too often in the realm of theory. He saved and carefully pasted into
his scrapbook a collection of incriminating cards that circulated regularly from
the Dean's office to Jim's mailbox. "Your work for the first term of Junior year
was not satisfactory in Archeology, Rhetoric, English, Physics. Your attention
is called to the rule, in accordance with which a student cannot be enrolled in
the Senior class until he has satisfactorily completed 41 hours of class-room
work."20 "Your allowance of absences for the term was exhausted on Feb. 28.
Since then you have been reported absent as follows: Soc. Sci., Feb. 28, Soc.
Sci, Mar. 1, English Mar. 12, Soc. Sci March 12 ... [the list goes on]. Over
cuts involve failures. If you know any reason why the penalty should not apply
to the above, please explain it promptly."21 There seemed to be little selfdiscipline in Jim's own pursuit of knowledge at Yale, and how he came out
unscathed is not known.
Horace Ferry, his freshman roommate and close friend from Lake Forest,
telegraphed this mysterious message to Jim's father: "Jim tapped for Bones
��Yale
61
DEAN'S OFFICE,
Yale College.
January, / C
Your work for the first term of Junior year was not satisfactory
....^..^^..^^^^^'^/.^..^.^L
Your attention is called to the rule, in accordance with which a
student cannot be enrolled in the Senior class until he has satisfactorily completed J^l hours of class-room work.
Truly yours,
.....
-WILLIAM: ^ILTOJST HESS.
Dean's office card.
Congratulations."22 Skull and Bones is the most prestigious of Yale University's
secret societies. Rituals, codes, special handshakes and oaths are unfailingly
honored by its members. Each initiate swears devotion to members past and
present, one of whom was Jim's father. Exactly who belongs to Skull and Bones
is held in strict confidence. The club meets in an eerie building in New Haven
with no windows. There were fifteen members of "Bones" in the class of 1906.
Jim considered his election to Skull and Bones one of the greatest honors of his
Yale years. He wrote in his diary, "Who would have ever thought I would have
been included among Yale's strongest men."23
Many of Jim's classmates maintained an exciting and expensive social life.
Jim did his best to keep up, and thoroughly enjoyed the round of weekend house
parties to which he was invited. If he missed a lot of classes, he also spent a lot
of money, and on this last point he touched one of his father's very few sore
points.
My dear son:
I hope your Norwich trip was happy and profitable, and I hope your boils
are gone . . . I . . . enclose a New York draft for $150.00.1 am unable to send
you more at this time. It is only by being as careful as I can be, of every little
expense in the way of a car fare or an extra paper, that I have been able to
provide for my children as I have. This draft makes the amount I have handed
you since Sept. 1, 1905 [7 months] $1163.50.
Beta Club Photograph. Jim McClure can be found on the bottom right, sitting on a young
man's lap between the gorilla and the policeman.
�62
We Plow God's Fields
. . . Unless you have pledged yourself to go to George Miller's this summer,
I suggest you do not go. It really seems to me that it would be better for the
fellows themselves if they called a halt to this running around. It is not fair to
you—for it tends to .develop thoughtlessness that may be akin to selfishness.
(James G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K. McClure, Jr., March 23, 1906)
But it must be admitted that one trip would have had the approval of his
father. Jim was in charge of organizing all Yale men interested in going into the
ministry, and taking them to Hartford for a conference whose purpose was "To
present to those college men who are now deciding upon their life work, definite
and reliable information concerning the opportunities and work of the Christian
Ministry in this country."24 Horace Ferry and Joe Twichell both went along.
Among the many speakers was the President of Princeton University, Woodrow
Wilson. Jim's father was a personal friend of Wilson's, and on at least one
occasion stayed in his home. Ironically, three weeks later, Jim brushed with
another future presidential candidate, the man who opposed Wilson in 1912.
Helen Hadley, the Yale President's wife, asked Jim "to be one of our ushers"
when Secretary of War William Howard Taft arrived to give a series of lectures
on campus.25
Before going to Hartford, Jim had decided to enter the ministry. It was a
natural decision arising out of his interests at Yale, his respect for his father,
and the McClure's Covenanter heritage. Jim's father, after reading his letter of
decision, mailed back a carefully composed message touching on thoughts that
were very much on his son's mind.
First, I believe you can do and will do fine service in the ministry if you
give yourself to it. Men like you are eminently needed—never more needed
than now. The very fact of your going into the ministry will do good. It will
encourage men like myself: it will point the way to oncoming boys and college
fellows to do as you have done.
The work of the ministry is so varied that in one way or in another I feel
you will help the world very much.
I do not say that the ministry is easy. It is not easy: it is difficult, very
difficult. That is one reason why I think it should appeal to a man: it is a
summons to his heroism. (James G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K. McClure,
Jr., March 23, 1906)
Heroism is exactly the quality that attracted Jim into the ministry, and he
meant to give himself up to the Christian work that was the most taxing. The
young man, after four years of a plush Yale education, after sixteen years of
privileged suburban life in Lake Forest, wanted to devote the rest of his life to
mission work in China. Many an idealistic young man of this generation had the
same impulse. Rudyard Kipling and his white man's burden seemed reasonable
to the Western world before it was saturated with talk of the Third World and
imperialism, and surely the Peace Corps, albeit a more secular approach, is
guided by a similar missionary spirit.
�Yale
63
Back in 1906, Protestant nations giddy with the sense of power and accomplishment were scrambling to collect parts of Asia and Africa like so many
stamps. The heroes in this complex process, as seen from home, were the
missionaries. Forsaking all the fruits of progress in the Western world, they
were seen as sacrificing their lives to teach a solid base of Christianity to people
whose local beliefs had left them in cultural bondage. In fact, the missionaries
were the cutting edge of a powerful Western European and American culture
whose very success muted criticism. Missionaries were as varied as the myriad
of Christian denominations and individual personalities they represented. Not
only did they bring a new religion and culture to the four corners of the earth,
they also brought back to their churches and missionary societies vivid reports
of the foreign lands where they worked. The remarkable volume of cross cultural flow that occurred was unprecedented in the history of the world, and one
has only to remember young James' church group, Steady Streams, and its
hundred of thousands of counterparts to conceive of the impact that was felt.
In any event, this comfortable world of Western domination began to fray at the
edges early in the twentieth century. Woodrow Wilson himself, by including
national self-determination as one of his Fourteen Points to end World War I,
detonated the explosives that destroyed the basis of European colonialism.
Certainly genuine idealism was at work in the minds of many young Americans when Jim McClure was attending Yale. China and the life of a missionary
were topics of discussion at nearly every conference and religious meeting he
attended. He knew several people who went to China. For example, a college
friend, John Magee from Pittsburgh, experienced a remarkable conversion as
he walked down the corridor to his room. He was struck as by lightning, like
St. Paul, and from that moment he determined to go into the ministry, and then
to China.
As an undergraduate Jim corresponded with Warren B. Seabury, who had
already graduated and was in the Chinese mission field. His letters came to Jim
during his senior year, and clearly had an impact on the young man's thinking.
Mr. Seabury gave Jim an unheroic, somewhat homesick, but provocative picture
of his role in China. "My dear Jim:" one letter began, "Can you stand a drip
from an old missionary friend tonight? Brace up, it won't hurt long." These
communications gave Jim, and also give us, an idea of the rewards of missionary work and an insight into the missionary's drive.
. . . I returned last night from a trip up into the country with a mighty good
friend of mine . . . Well this friend of mine although an Episcopalian is very
human! He is one of the wittiest and drollest men I ever knew. We went up the
Han River from which Hankow is named and ... The more I see of these
native cities the worse I think they are. People who have been in China always
talk about the smells until you are tempted to think it more or less of a joke,
But actually the odors from open drains, dirty corners, stale meat-shops,
boiling fat, Chinese dye (one of the worst known to science!), "tonsorial
parlors" etc., etc. is a rank catalogue of impossibilities! At the first you find
�64
We Plow God's Fields
these cities interesting and novel but soon the novelty wears off and you take
a full breath when you come o u t . . .
A good part of the morning we pushed along on the puffy little streamer . . .
A village street is as Chinese as a city street, but it is if anything darker and
meaner, rougher and more uneven. Up and down steps you have to go with
houses above and below you. The mission hall was not large and Episcopal
looking at all. Rude benches, horses such as carpenters use were all we had
to sit on ... We wanted to be alone but our Chinese hosts conceived it their
duty to escort us and regarded our earnest protestations as only polite phrases
. . . You notice two things in almost all your travels in typical China. One is
that there are very few nice little nooks, a bunch of trees, a brook, a shady
pasture. The trees are cut down; the brooks are dug out ... for irrigation
purposes; the pastures are grave yards on high land and fields for crops in
lower land. Everything about you looks used for something. Another thing you
noted sooner is that China is a very populous country for there seems to be no
getting away from them. Chinese, Chinese everywhere. You sit down and they
gather about you to ask you questions and discuss you but always to stare. A
missionary over in Hankow said that his first idea of eternity came from a
Chinese stare!
. . . I do really think that there is lots of room for men who see that they are
not like other men, who feel that they are not pious and gentle souls, but who
want to chip in somewhere and help. It is not only the natives with whom we
must deal. There are plenty of foreigners here with whom much is to be done.
And it seems to me that all the health and ability of body, all the social grace,
all the mental vigour and breadth and all the spiritual desire . . . ruling a man
in his devotion to the progressively revealed will of God can find no better field
for exercise than China . . . The best things we do are done by bravely entering
open doors. (Warren Seabury to James G. K. McClure, Jr., October 10, 1905)
. . . In your last letter you speak of the possibility of being a missionary. I
had not known how you stood on the question although I had reason to think
that you and your friends were considering the thing with care. It is a big
question and no one can settle it for any one else. At Northfield and at New
Haven one hears a great deal of argument and . . . if he is in earnest he studies
it very carefully . . . He would like to know the joys of real missionary life as
they really are but he would also give much to get a fair view of the trying
features of life in these lands. I am going to mention a few of these harder
features of life in China.
How would you like to live in a city of narrow crowded streets as all the
Chinese streets are? Every time you go out people on every hand stop and gaze
at you. If you enter a shop or stop to talk with anyone a crowd of curious,
ignorant looking people gather about you asking you questions, feeling of your
clothes and making remarks about you as if you were an inmate of the zoo . . .
How would you like to live among a people who are not trustworthy and
not appreciative? . . . They do not tell the truth. They do not believe in each
other. They don't trust you and they don't want you here . . . You are their
guest but you are not a welcome one and you have to watch in every purchase
. . . that they don't get away with two or three times as much as they have
earned . . .
I will come closer home. How would you like to work in a mission with
�Yale
65
whose members you are not in sympathy? They are older, they are very
conservative, they want you to do just as they irregardless of your tendencies
. . . There are those who come from different levels of society, coarse men
and women, critical, outspoken, ill natured perhaps . . . Upon you, the new
man, a lot of the work is placed which you regard as too much. . . . They might
be jealous of your ability or injured by what they regard as your feelings of
superiority.
.. . Jim this may all sound pretty hard. You will find noble exceptions to
all of them. (Warren Seabury to James G. K. McClure, Jr., November 26,
1905)
The thoughts of Jim McClure were with Warren Seabury, and as graduation
approached China weighed heavily on his mind. Certainly Jim was no academic,
but he did graduate on time. Yale honored his father on the same day, awarding
him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. His sister Harriet came to dance with his
friends at the Senior Prom. It was a joyous and happy moment; songs such as
"Bright College Years" were belted out by the Class of '06. Others must have
grated a bit on the McClure ear, but were none the less part of the festivities of
these final days. Is it possible Jim Sr. and Jr. joined in enthusiastically on the
likes of "Here's to good old Yale, Drink her down" and "My comrades, when
I am No More Drinking?"26 The class poem was written and read by James
Wallis of Dubuque, Iowa, who compared Yale to Camelot and his fellow classmates to young knights.
But there is greater work
We yet shall do, for we shall travel far, . . .
To give the good here molded into us
To needy places where we shall set up
New Camelots.27
Even if the meter was heavy, in Jim's case the sentiments of Mr. Wallis were
truly prophetic. The class orator was Jim's close friend and fellow Bones member, Lee Perrin. In his commencement speech he said: "We are born to an
heritage of privilege and responsibility, an heritage which we may altogether
accept or decline .. . For our common foster-parent Society . . . requires where
she gives; and it will not answer that we have our talents laid up in a napkin."28
That foster parent had given richly to those young men, and no one was
more keenly aware of this truth than Jim McClure. His father, now the president
of McCormick Theological Seminary, advised his son to put off China for three
years. He wrote:
It may be that the very best thing you could do would be to come right here,
take a room in one of the Seminary buildings, have your meals either at home
or in a club and let us feel your presence and your aid ... At the end of the
year you would know clearly whether you desired to continue your studies for
the ministry or not.
Of course this would involve . . . the surrender of many social opportuni-
�66
We Plow God's Fields
ties. A man cannot do his professional study well and keep up a round of social
engagements at the same time. But I believe you would be happy. In due time
you would be interested and contented . . .
I love you very dearly, my boy—I do not mean to lean upon you too
heavily. (James G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K. McClure, Jr., March 23,
1906)
After graduation Jim was in charge of organizing a Yale Summer Conference at the Hotchkiss School, because the Northfield conference was scheduled
in conflict with activities in New Haven. Afterwards he was off to the St.
Lawrence River to join his Skull and Bones friends on Deer Island. One last
fling with his closest of comrades, and the Yale years were complete. He sailed
to Chicago with Louis Douseman on the steamship Northland.29
The summer of 1906 was a social feast for Jim, a final chance to gorge
before, if he followed his father's advice, his seminary studies would force him
to slim down his list of engagements. Chicago's North Shore during the summer
featured a spectacular series of fairs, with each community vying to outdo the
next. Lake Forest brought in American sharp-shooters and Japanese contortionists for an open air vaudeville show. But it was in the town of Oconomowoc,
Wisconsin, that in 1906 the Chicago society crowd was most dazzled. A news
article reported that when it was over, " . . . the women who had toiled hard for
the success of the event . . . drew a long breath, and asked each other, 'Was it
better than Lake Geneva?' "30
One of these sighing ladies was a Mrs. J. H. Eckels, who had invited Jim
to be a house guest during the fete. She filled her large and splendid house that
weekend with privileged young people. Her daughter Phebe, along with a
friend, Charlotte Partridge, appear to have garnered the most attention. Jim
enticed Charlotte into a photography booth long enough to snap a souvenir
picture of the two of them staring intently into one another's eyes.31 At the fete,
Mrs. Eckel's exhibit was an elaborate stage show known as the French Amusement Hall. Jim took turns as barker, a role for which he had a natural gift. For
his efforts he was awarded a card that read, "Jim McClure (The Handy Dandy
Man). And he Barked where ever he went (the Dog)."32 His pitch went something like this: "Step right up, ladies and gents, and see the prize fight of the
century. Inside, the French Amusement Hall proudly presents an entire troup
of midgets, preparing this very minute to box for your entertainment." Or else,
"See the saucy Salvaggi five, who will bring to your unbelieving eyes an
acrobatic orgy that will confound the forces of gravity."33 At heart, Jim McClure
was a showman, a promoter. Nothing could fire his vital forces more than a
crowd needing to be entertained.
This Oconomowoc Fair was a reflection of the vast wealth being made in
Chicago at the turn of the century, and the good ladies who worried lest the
town of Lake Geneva surpass them flaunted this fact. It was tagged the Billion
Dollar Carnival, because the net assets of the twenty families who backed it
�Yale
67
supposedly exceeded that figure. A Chicago newspaper gloated, "never before
in the west has so much wealth been represented in an outdoor entertainment."34
A Mrs. Valentine spent $5,000 to build a German village that included an exact
replica of an old Rhine River beer garden.35 And yet, mirroring the rapid shift
in the local economy, there were also awards for the best white onions, beets,
potatoes and corn. Undoubtedly, Jim enjoyed it all, despite the conspicuous
consumption and display of wealth. The $5,000 could have helped so many
suffering people in China, or in Chicago for that matter. He was caught up in a
world in which he was losing faith, and in due time this conflict would make a
strong mark on Jim McClure's outlook. But to the residents of Oconomowoc,
Wisconsin that summer of 1906, the burning question remained, was their fair
really better than the one in Lake Geneva? The society editors in Chicago all
agreed, "It was the special success of the summer .. ."36
Jim had every right, in that same summer of 1906, to feel that his own
prospects promised a "special success." He had avoided (barely) burying his
talents in the Panhandle of Texas, and Yale University had indeed offered him
a great deal. He had thrived within the religious community. Everyone liked
him, not least of all the young ladies. He enjoyed the friendship of the sons of
the powerful families who attended Yale. He had been asked to join a small and
select group, Skull and Bones, an honor that his father shared. The past and
future members of this society had a continuing constructive influence in American Society. Years later many of them would help Jim finance his work for the
mountain people of North Carolina. In his heart he was sure that idealism would
yield the real treasurers of personal satisfaction, and time would show that this
notion was right, but not before he endured a great personal struggle. After
Yale and the festivities of summer, a period of austerity set in, and a gloom
began to hang over his life that was not fully dispelled until after his marriage.
He began this phase of his life in Scotland, the home of his ancestors, during
the long nights of that country's dreary winter.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Scrapbook of Yale memorabilia made by James G. K. McClure, Jr.
Interviews with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale College Book of Rules, in the Yale scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Interviews with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
Yale Scrapbook
Article in Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook, March 13, 1904.
�68
We Plow God's Fields
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
Yale Scrapbook, February 14, 1904.
Address by James G. K. McClure, Jr., to the Yale YMCA< no known date.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Speech made by James G. K. McClure, Jr., at Haverford Pa., March 5, 1905.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Telegram to Rev. and Mrs. McClure from Horace Ferry, no date.
James G. K. McClure, Jr. in his Berlin notebook, 1909.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook, several photographs.
Yale Scrapbook, newspaper clipping, paper and date unknown.
Yale Scrapbook.
Yale Scrapbook.
Chicago Evening American, August 4, 1906.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
�Chapter Five
Europe: Edinburgh and Tubingen
Well James my boy, you are about to start across the briny deep to take up
the more serious forms of life and I only hope you find it as fine as you expect
and the vocation just suited to you. (Louis Douseman to James G. K. McClure
Jr., October2, 1906)
The home to which Jim returned in the summer of 1906 was not the familiar
manse in prosperous, safe Lake Forest. His father, as president of McCormick
Seminary, now lived on Halsted Street, the border of Chicago's Little Italy.
Their home was not far from Jane Addams' pioneer urban settlement project,
Hull House. She had opened Hull House seventeen years before as a challenge
to all Christians " . . . to share the lives of the poor [and] express the spirit of
Christ." Jim's new surroundings must have reinforced the powerful pull he felt
toward meeting the needs of the less fortunate. Already he was questioning the
smug and class-ridden Victorian church, which appeared to him to dodge its
duties in an industrial climate bearing the ripe fruit of hate and violence. With
broad strokes, he began to rough in a mental picture of a reactionary religion
bent on maintaining the status quo, while feeding the oppressed a thin diet of
repentance, ladled out with large portions of bourgeois morality.
The plight of the American laboring class dwelt heavily on Jim's conscience. He often imagined himself denying his own position of privilege. These
attitudes led him inexorably into the political camp of Progressivism, a body of
opinion that encompassed a wide range of reform ideas that began to dominate
the American political and intellectual scene during these years. Republican
Theodore Roosevelt became the most visible leader of the movement. Indeed,
1906 was the beginning of the era of the "muckraker," a term coined by
Roosevelt. A muckraker was a journalist who was prone to explicit exposure
of corporate or political evils, and wrote in a style designed to create a wave of
moral outrage. The year Jim graduated from Yale, Upton Sinclair published his
book The Jungle, which spoiled an entire nation's taste for packaged meat by
portraying with graphic detail some of the common practices of the processing
plants of Chicago. Sinclair set the style, and following his lead exposes began
rolling off American printing presses. This intellectual climate of moral outrage
shaped Jim's impressions of politics and capitalism. Part of a new generation
rejected the dying spirit of the Gospel of Wealth for the hope of Progressivism.
While an older generation might still extol the pluck of Horatio Alger, the
69
�70
We Plow God's Fields
favorite author of a series of success stories for boys, their sons and daughters
began to question the smug theories of Social Darwinism and its proclamations
about the "survival of the fittest" in a competitive society. The Progressives
envisioned a new role for government, that of protector of the powerless and
underprivileged. Laissez-faire politics came under heavy attack. "Trust-busting," political reform, concern for the rights of the working man, and even
consumer protection came to life with the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt. In
short, the Progressives believed that American government ought to purge itself
of corruption in order to become a f air arbiter between the various power centers
of a new industrial society.
But even while these new ideas were forming the outline of a value structure for Jim McClure, he could not resist the pleasures available to a young man
of his position. The summer of 1906 was a string of grand parties and romance
all along the North Shore. Perhaps he knew himself well enough to guess that
for him to remain in Chicago at this time would prove disastrous to his growing
sense of serious purpose. He decided not to enroll at McCormick Seminary that
fall, but accepted instead a generous offer from Mrs. Cyrus McCormick, the
inheritor of the vast reaper fortune and a member of his father's congregation.
She offered to pay his way to Scotland, ancestral home of the McClures (and
McCormicks!), so that he could study at New College, the theological school
of the University of Edinburgh. Nothing could have appealed to "Madame"
McCormick more than to send her beloved minister's young son back to his
Presbyterian homeland to prepare for the ministry.
Jim left for Scotland by way of New England in the fall of 1906, accompanied by his two younger brothers, Nathan and Arch. They were keenly interested
in all the stories and pranks of Jim's Yale years. They were interested as well
in his decision to enter the ministry, in his theological views, in everything he
said and did. The love within this family was never more evident than during
these weeks before his departure for Scotland. In Boston they watched their
White Sox fall to the Red Sox. In Westerly, they were embraced by the Dixons.
Perhaps it was there that their father caught up with the three of them. He
reclaimed the two younger sons, and later reported back to Jim:
My dear boy:
As soon as Nathan and Arch got out of your sight, Nathan pulled his hat
over his eyes—to conceal his tears, and both he and Arch wept silently. I am
lonely without you. The more you are with me the quieter we are together, the
stronger I feel. I commit you to God . . . I have been up in your room and
thought of you. (James G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K. McClure, Jr.,
September 22, 1906)
Several days later, he wrote again to Jim:
Paul said to Timothy, whom he called "my beloved child," "I thank God,
whom I serve from my forefathers in a pure conscience, how increasing is
�Europe: Edinburgh and Tubingen
71
my remembrance of thee . .. Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of
Christ Jesus." So I say to you. When I wake at night, I will think of you: when
I do my daily work I will likewise think of you . .. You and I have many ties
together. Yale is one, and Bones is another and now we may look forward to
another . .. Every morning and every night your name will be on my lips
before the throne of Grace. (James G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K.
McClure, Jr., October 3, 1906)
From his mother came a package with pajamas and slippers " . . . and
Annie sends the paper and envelopes ..." (She had graduated from Wellesley
and was helping her father as secretary). Every member of Jim's family sent an
expression to him of his or her love. There was a feeling that Jim's status with
them had changed; he was now severing his ties with them, leading the way for
the others into the adult world.
These family love offerings arrived for Jim in Norwich, Connecticut,
where he had gone to usher in the wedding of his Bones comrade, Grosvenor
Ely. Both of Grove's parents had died, leaving him an enormous house and
plenty of endowment. The wedding was one of those occasions Jim absolutely
adored. There were all his friends, and an opportunity for frivolous entertainments that he more often than not devised. For his services as an usher, Jim
received a wooden cane topped with a gold snake head. The night before the
ceremony, the bachelor's party spilled out into New Haven, and the young
graduates toured about "the upper part of town singing glees."1 Louis Douseman
had been unable to leave Wisconsin to come East and writes to Jim with obvious
envy. Louis described the disillusionment he felt on returning home and trying
to deal with his family's neighbors. Class divisions haunted America, and for
Jim, having just participated in his friend's wedding, Louis's words must have
made him pause and wonder about what illusions he himself might have to shed.
I have changed my ideas about things considerable since my home coming,
as you are bound to do, and it isn't all such a cinch as I had hoped for as the
ways of man [aren't] as noble as my acquaintance in the past has led me to
expect . .. You ought to see me attending meetings of the Town Board on
roads and surrounded by farmers, who have it in for me, as I force them to
give up some of their old habits of making public thoroughfares of our land.
It is rare sport but I almost had a fight at our last session—They surely are a
dullheaded bunch who have to be taught a lesson sooner or later. (Louis
Douseman to James G. K. McClure, Jr., October 2, 1906)
As the "knights" of Yale '06 returned home, anxious to recreate Camelot,
contact with real people struggling to survive in a difficult world rapidly eroded
their college ideals, bringing out the old defensive and snobbish instincts of
class. Jim McClure had yet to be tested, but it would be the mark of the man
throughout his life that he sought to maintain the Christian ideals of both his
upbringing and his choosing. He learned to empathize with people of all layers
�72
We Plow God's Fields
and conditions of society. He considered it a human tragedy when a man left the
high road of idealism to pursue a life of cynicism.
On October 6, 1906, Jim left the United States as a First Cabin Passenger
on the steamer Columbia. He was sent off with a batch of telegrams from his
family, friends and romantic interests (the last group skirmishing a bit over
whose special Mend he was!). Just before sailing, he squeezed in an automobile
race on Long Island, the Third Annual International Competition for the William
K. Vanderbilt, Jr. Cup, quite something to see in 1906. So our hero left this
country, quite independent and with the spirit of great adventure. Great Britain
in 1906 ruled much of the world, and was the cultural foundation for the
English-speaking world. By comparison, Chicago was considered a crass metropolis somewhere west of New York, buried in the provincial hinterland of the
United States.
The New College of Edinburgh was a very demanding theological institution. Enrolled there were some of the finest young minds of the Presbyterian
Church, having endured a rigorous curriculum in order to earn the privilege of
attendance. Jim's academic record was mediocre; he had concentrated on friends
and fun. His grasp of Greek and Latin, World History, Literature, Philosophy
and the rest was thin and confused. He had been preceded at the New College
by another Bones man, Henry Sloane Coffin, who was destined to become one
of the most influential men of his generation. Jim wrote to Mr. Coffin for
advice, and received in return a list of his friends in Edinburgh and some kind
encouragement. He was also preceded by his father's reputation as a leader in
the American church.
On arrival he was greeted by the distinguished New College theologian,
Marcus Dods, who knew and admired his father. He spent several days as a
guest of the Dods family before settling into a room. By this time Jim was
beginning to realize that his personal charm gave him the ability to persuade and
move people. Perhaps he was getting overconfident of his ability. Dr. Dods
sized him up quickly enough. According to family tradition, he wrote an American friend that "Jim McClure is the most charming and the most ignorant young
man I have ever met."2
It was not long before Jim himself realized his abysmal ignorance in comparison with the serious and dedicated students in his class. He learned that for
a McClure, especially a Presbyterian McClure, ignorance was a sin. You
couldn't get by on charm alone. With characteristic zeal he began an all-out
assault on his academic shortcomings. He loved to gather up his strength for a
plunge into combat, and so he began by making a list of great books, those he
felt constituted the essence of Western Civilization. He then determined to read
a book a week until the list was done. He kept records of his progress, making
it harder on himself by counting books of two or three volumes as only one
completed work. Green's History of England, in four volumes, was a particularly arduous seven-day challenge. It was an endurance race of sorts; and he
kept at it, with list after list, until 1913. He read in all more than 500 books, in
�Europe: Edinburgh and Tubingen
73
m
Marcus Dods, President of New College, Edinburgh, Scotland.
addition to the required reading for his courses. He polished off William James,
Rudyard Kipling, John Fiske's History of the United States, Huckleberry Finn,
Charles Dickens, Aldous Huxley, Ibsen, Dante, Bunyan, Balzac, and the list
stretches on.
Jim's roommate in the dormitory was a young man named John Baillie.
They became great friends and used to lie in bed at night making up lists such
as "ten things I most dislike" and "ten reasons for not getting out of bed in the
morning." Later on, John became a distinguished Scottish theologian and president of the New College. In his books there are a number of such lists, but in a
much more serious vein.3
By December, Dr. Dods had come to appreciate Jim. He sent word back
to the McClure home on his progress. "I think I cannot send you a Christmas
card you will find more welcome than the thankful acknowledgement that your
son has quite won the hearts of all members of our College. He is, I think, the
most popular man we have had from the U.S.A.... His face captivates everyone and on acquaintance we find it is lived up to...." But he went on to say
he was unsure about Jim's decision to leave the dormitory in order to live in an
urban settlement house in the Cowgate, a tough section of Edinburgh. He wrote
with resignation that he "Certainly . . . will see a good deal of institutional
church work" (Marcus Dods to James G. K. McClure, Sr., December 11, 1906).
"Institutional church work" was putting it mildly.
The weekly routine of the Pleasance Street Settlement House included
mothers' meetings, Bible classes, Sabbath services, Lads' Club, a Savings Bank
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meeting (to teach profligate Scotsmen a little thrift), classes for sewing and
music, and something called the Band of Hope, which might have been a
program for alcoholics. The purpose of this mission was to involve members
of the local "community in a daily routine that would break the old patterns of
self-destruction. A new culture of Christ was provided to replace the general
culture of vice that operated in the neighborhood. Pleasance Street was an area
of the city so densely populated that Jim could count fifty-five families using
the same doorway across the street from the mission, in a structure not over
four stories tall. He noticed that the people's physical growth was stunted by
their poverty. He remarked later in a sermon that he had " . . . never met a man
taller than 5'7" living in the Cowgate."4 Jim was looking face to face at the
alcoholism that is endemic to Scotland, a cultural sickness that surely influenced
the determination of his own family's choice of abstinence.
On Saturday evenings Jim walked along the streets with Warden Symington, who was in charge of the mission. He was a great big man with a shock of
red hair. The two of them walked along breaking up fights. Symington would
catch hold of one man and Jim the other, and they would forcefully jerk them
apart. Once they went up to the second floor of a tenement to stop a fight. A
"Bobbie" was ahead of them, and the warden disapproved of his behavior. He
picked him up and dropped him out the window.5 Drunks, prostitutes and brawls
were a part of the routine. These drunks remained for Jim a symbol of the
fantastic possibilities of human hypocrisy. He said later, "In Scotland, I have
heard some of the finest talks on religion and temperance from men who were
drunk."6 Mr. Symington left the employ of the mission during this time. At the
farewell party, Jim received two playing cards, the King and ten of hearts, as a
memento. The warden signed them, and inscribed this message to Jim: "May
this be the only card of this kind you handle unless to destroy."7 Evil for these
Scottish Presbyterians of 1906 was not a matter left open for debate.
And so the young idealist from Yale came face to face with the scourges
of an urban society. Many a young man in such a situation retreats hastily back
into the safety of academia, allowing fatalism and cynicism to grow up from
within to crowd out his former hopes for a finer world. Jim McClure took his
walks in a world where brutality and anger had to be dealt with quickly and
confidently. Forever afterwards he remembered the Pleasance Street Settlement
House in a quaintly fond way, as an exciting time of testing when he became
engaged in the problems of the lives of people outside the confines of the
college. He discovered he had a taste for this work, and that neither his courage
nor his ideals were easily shaken. Unlike his friend Louis Douseman, he did
not change his ideas. Jim thrived on excitement and liked to think of himself
as courageous and persuasive enough to wade into other people's problems.
Scattered through Jim's diary are many entries referring to his work with
the Settlement House. On one of those interminable Scottish winter nights he
wrote " . . . out with the Warden . . . quiet—one woman's purse stolen-awful
sight—women drunk with children—pity."8 A few weeks later he noted,
�Europe: Edinburgh and Tubingen
75
"Brought a poor boy home—gave him 4d... ."9 He celebrated Washington's
birthday by skipping all his classes in order to attend the trial of one Pougrate,
who was "condemned and hung by Shaw, the hangman."10
Despite Jim McClure's curiosity about the sensational, the routine of these
days in Edinburgh rotated about the daily class meetings with his seminary
professors. The winter term began on January 8, 1907 with a controversial
address presented by Dr. Dods, castigating the gathered group of Highlands
ministers for laziness. Jim must have felt a little uneasy himself. His own
academic diligence remained an unproved commodity. The Yale good-times
habits were hard to extinguish. Worrying about his little vices, he confessed to
a lapse in personal purity; he smoked "10 sigs" the week following Dr. Dods'
sermon. Other entertainments included the companionship of two young ladies,
a Miss Simpson and Dorothy Lowe. He entertained the latter on horseback, no
doubt exhausting his repertoire of bronco-busting stories. Jim also received
several visiting friends. With one, Frank Dodge, he spent the day talking and
sight-seeing, walking up to Holy Rood, the ancient seat of Scottish royalty, and
becoming so absorbed in conversation at one castle that they remained late into
the night "til we were thrown out." He enjoyed several day trips to nearby towns
of interest. He returned in a rush from Aberdeen in order to read Pilgrim's
Progress to a group of children. For sports, there were field hockey and rugby.
His seminary "ruggers" challenged the "Established Church" to a match. He
belonged to the local Theological Society, where he read a paper on Tolstoy.11
Jim McClure allowed himself to be pulled in many different directions.
He had an appetite for adventure and excitement, something he rarely found in
theological classes or books. From 9:00 a.m. to noon each day, he attended the
classes of each of his three professors. The educational methods were formal,
but the small size of the faculty and student body allowed for an intimate
learning environment. There were regular teas with the professors, where a
student could launch out on a tangent or clarify a theological point. These
classes and assignments Jim pursued with a sense of duty, not pleasure. He often
discovered delightful reasons why he might cut a class from time to time,
especially those of a Dr. Martin. Exams were scheduled for late March, and by
Jim's own admission he had as yet not mastered the rigors of academia. On
March 21st, he "Sat a poor exam in Dogmatics ..." and four days later admits
that he "Cut [a] poor figure in exams... ,"12
Jim was never particularly concerned with church dogmas anyway. The
study time he lost he turned to advantage in travel around Scotland. He tried to
see as much of the country as he could. For one jaunt, an agreeable young
Princeton man joined him for a tour of Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, and
on "up to Rob Roy's cave... ,"13 By the end of March, after his exams, he
announced in his diary that the Scottish time was running out. "Hate to leave
Edinburgh—very happy days—Everyone too kind!" Well, not everyone, for he
goes on to say that he made a farewell stroll in the moonlight "up Carlton
Hill—lots of bad people."14
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Dr. Dods closed the session with another address, summing up the theological thicket in which Jim McClure now found himself. Jim greatly admired
Dr. Dods, for both his intellect and his persuasiveness. Jim would mourn his
death within the year. Dr. Dods had endured throughout his career the theological fads of his generation. He explained to Jim and his classmates that the
unsettled condition of church dogma was an opportunity for the young men
listening to him. He said, "It was in a time of transition such as this, when every
old belief was called in question and when the traditional moorings were sunk,
that men felt their need of guidance and the expert found his opportunity. When
all things were fixed and ready to take their shapes, the hand that could form
the mould had the control of the new world."15 Jim left New College with many
friendships and a growing theological curiosity. Dr. Martin signed his diploma
stating that "Mr. J. G. McClure Jr. B. S. had been a student in this College
during Session 1906-7; is much esteemed both by the Senatus and by his fellow
students; and is recommended hereby to the kind offices of the authorities of the
University in which he proposes to study during the summer."16
The University he chose was located in Germany, the country that had so
fascinated Jim McClure at Yale. Germany was the center of the theological
controversies of the day; the very place where Dr. Dods' "new moulds" were
being shaped. The force and power of science, in the German universities more
than anywhere else, were at work to "demythologize" and "modernize" a Christian creed that had for so long viewed the cold objectivity of the scientific
method as a threat. Jim McClure, having caught the excitement of these struggles, and having a natural predilection for the rational as opposed to the revealed
nature of Truth, was drawn to Germany.
The Seminary of the University of Tubingen was founded in 1537 amidst
the theological revolution of the Reformation. It was established as Protestant,
and has remained a leading theological center for Protestant thought. The town
of Tubingen lies in the southwest corner of Germany, within about sixty miles
of both Switzerland and France in the old political region of Wurttemberg. The
seminary had maintained its revolutionary vigor into the twentieth century, and
was widely known for the number of brilliant professors working there in an
attempt to demythologize Christianity. Rudolf Bultmann, who became most
skillful in the science of form criticism, and Paul Tillich, who devised a comprehensive existential theology and had a considerable intellectual following, were
Tubingen students and Jim's contemporaries. Bultmann labored throughout his
life to unravel the mystery of the "historical Jesus" by carefully trying to discern
and remove the various layers of myth surrounding him in the Biblical testimony. Paul Tillich based his theology on a synthesis of culture and faith. Both
these men were looking for a new, firm basis for faith, in order to revitalize the
churches with a meaning that did not try to side-step the scientific method of
inquiry. Jim McClure came searching for a religion that would energize people
and societies as well, so that a transformation could begin that would usher in
a new era, a real earthly Kingdom of God. He was ready to plunge ahead and
�Europe: Edinburgh and Tubingen
in
77
s-
Postcard from T. Zieglar, July 4, 1907.
to get his hands dirty, but he needed first to find a message that he could both
believe and act upon.
Jim's letters from Tubingen sounded a variety of themes, and were read
with interest around the dinner table on Halsted Street.
. . . [Tubingen] is about the most beautiful place I have ever been in—right
in the midst of the Swabian Albes . .. We could see the Hohenzollern Castle.
The hills and small mountains are wonderful and we walked through valleys
and through Pine Forests and it really is wonderful.
Also for theology it seems that I have chosen very fortunately. There are
about 300 theological students here . . . However I am the first American
student—they say.
Today . . . I attended two lectures without understanding a word . . . I wish
the family could all see me thrashing about in this unutterable language. I
never expect to understand a word. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to family, May
1, 1907)
Talk about silent people. Your boy has not opened his lips to speak for five
days . . . Since last writing nothing of importance has happened except the
forgetting of three German words which I thought I knew when I came here.
Also Mother will be pleased to know that as yet no German students have
challenged me to a duel . . . (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to family, May 2,
1907)
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The German language remained a puzzle to Jim at Tubingen. This blocked
his comprehension of the theology he was studying. Despite his afternoon
efforts with Joe Twichell at Yale, attending lectures on Kant and Hegel in
German was a great trial to him. Philosophy is subtle enough in one's native
tongue, and so Jim appears to have taken to doodling. His notebook is full of
fanciful caricatures half man-half beast, no doubt satirizing his proud and serious German professors. He became quite lonely in Tubingen, and treasured
letters from home. From Nathan he received this peppy note: "3 cheers for the
cubs . . . Wright me soon .. ." (Nathan McClure to James G. K. McClure, Jr.,
December 10, 1906). Arch follows up with a more concrete summary of the
baseball situation. "The Cubs are still eight games ahead of New York . . . In
the American League, Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia in that order are right
at the Sox heels" (Arch McClure to James G. K. McClure, Jr., July 16, 1907).
Dueling was the honored sport of the German aristocrat. Face scars were
for many the prerequisite for respect. Sunday afternoon duels were a fine spectator event in Tubingen, and Jim was unable to keep himself away. "[I] walked
out . . . to get a look at duelling. Butted in but students very polite . . . Blood
flowing freely."17 Jim was always drawn towards excitement, whether Cubs
baseball, Yale football or German duelling. While Jim watched one of these
duels, a contestant lunged at his opponent, neatly severing one ear. The lost
appendage dropped to the ground, and was immediately gobbled up by the
victim's pet hound, who had been waiting in the wings.18
In another episode, Jim was entertaining his American friend Charlotte
Partridge. Her family had come to Germany on a European tour. Jim and
Charlotte were sitting in a small garden cafe in Heidelberg. There had just been
a heavy summer rain shower. Tables were set up outside, protected from the
storm by a canvas awning. As awnings are prone to do, it bulged this particular
afternoon with the water that had collected during the shower. Jim and the girl
were happily preoccupied with each other's company. Into this lovely garden
scene marched a haughty Prussian officer. Perhaps the world of man has never
created a personage that could exude such a sense of superiority, such contempt
for others, or such excessive pride, as the Prussian officer. The mien of such a
man grated against the democratic ideals of the young American, and anyway
he had a fine girl to entertain. He was seized by a reckless impulse. Canes were
in style in the Germany of this day, and Jim surreptitiously reached up with his
and pushed the nearest bulge in the awning at just the right moment to drench
the officer. A moment later, the joke became a little hollow as the officer sent
a message to Jim demanding a duel; after all, a proud man's honor had been
thoroughly debased in a public place and the local codes demanded an opportunity to redress. A foolhardy joke had now placed Jim in a serious predicament.
According to the duelling code, the man challenged had the right to choose the
weapon, the time and the place. Jim returned a note to the Prussian, accepting
the challenge under the following conditions: as for weapons, one could use
only his fists; as for the time, it was to be right away; and as for the place, it
�Europe: Edinburgh and Tubingen
79
was to be behind that very garden cafe. Jim McClure had shrewdly chosen a
"duel" no German of honor could abide. Brawling was too undignified, and the
Prussian declined.19
Charlotte's family invited Jim to join their entourage. It was for him a
glorious reprieve from his studies and his loneliness. He wrote home, "Charlotte
Partridge wrote me this morning that they would be in Munich on Sunday—so
will I. Though—this for father—I will return to Tubingen without a pfennig and
hold a record breaking fast until reimbursement comes" (James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to family, late April, 1907). Charlotte made life gay for Jim again. They
went to vaudeville shows, rowed on ponds, ate pastries for breakfast, and drove
about in an automobile Mr. Partridge had hired for the family's use. Jim's diary
gives a lively account of his movements. Motoring through Germany, he and
Charlotte
. . . saw everything in Wurzburg and ate two sausages in that half hour . . .
Ch[arlotte] and I drove madly thru town . .. We got to Frankfort in time for
lunch—after lunch we drove over town and through it ... [At Wiesbaden]
Mr. Partridge and I arose at 5:30 the next morning . . . and had a hot mineral
bath. I felt gouty before but the bath put me on my feet again. We then drove
to the Rhine and embarked on a capacious boat and took the trip down the
Rhine—it was simply wonderful—descriptions do not touch the real thing with
a long bamboo pole . .. Koln [Cologne] at 5:00 said goodbye .. . did not relish
it.20
One picture that has survived of this episode shows Charlotte under and behind
a large and discrete veiled hat, with Jim peering cheerfully from beneath a
handsome bowler.
It might seem surprising that Charlotte should turn up in Germany, but in
fact Europe was fairly swarming with Jim's friends. Between Edinburgh and
Tubingen, he ate dinner with "Bill" Coffin, and went to Buckingham Palace
with Frank Dodge. Russell Cheney met him in Paris, and then who should
appear but Charlotte's rival, Phoebe Eckols. Jim and Phoebe did their driving
in Paris, on the Bois du Bologne and in the shadow of the Pantheon and Notre
Dame. After Phoebe left, Agnes Booth arrived in town. It was as if the powers
of American society were making a special effort to entertain the lonely seminary student. The Booths invited Jim to join them for a chauffeured tour of
France. From Chartres to Orleans to Tours, and on and on they went; chateaux,
dungeons, cathedrals and the finest French cuisine, with dominoes after dinner,
for a week of luxury. They breezed back to Paris in time to catch Madame
Butterfly. Sadly for Jim, the "... Booths start for England [and I] almost went
with them."21
But Jim's friends in Paris had by no means been exhausted after the departure of Agnes Booth. There was a fine bunch of his Yale buddies there, and he
drove around with them in a Mercedes taking in more sights, including the tomb
of that most famous of all Frenchmen, Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1907 Europe
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We Plow God's Fields
had become a wonderful American playground. If the Old World was exporting
its masses "yearning to breathe free" to the New World, the new was returning
tourists who had "struck it rich" in America, returning in part to discover their
own backgrounds, and also to brag a little about their success and their country.
After some weeks of language difficulties back at Tubingen there was a
holiday. In late May Jim and Otto Berlin, a German student, planned a walking
tour in the nearby Black Forest. Jim looked forward to playing the gypsy. He
carried along a little concertina, and accompanied Otto's singing to pay for
supper and lodging. Otto wished to learn English and Jim expected to learn
German. But Jim found that he missed the comforts of the more lavish tours in
the automobiles of his lady companions.
I am at present . . . situated in the worst hotel in the world . . . We climb
up to our room on a ladder.
You would die if you could see me on my tour with the German student.
We left Tubingen yesterday morning . . . and travelled by train to Freudenstadt—on the train we travelled fourth class—rather we bumped over the rails
fourth class . . . We each carry a pack on our back and in said pack besides
clothes for the journey we carry a loaf of bread and a Big Wurst which we eat
for lunch.
Yesterday he tried to tell me the love story of his life, showing me a picture
of his loved one. I however understood almost nil and tried to put in intelligent
ejaculations.
Yesterday we walked 61 kilometers—a breath taker for me—but I pulled
in at night ahead of the student . . . after this I will never think of falling in
love. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to family, May 19, 1907)
At Lake Constance, on the Swiss border,
The German student left for Munich and I heaved a large sigh of relief . . .
This whole journey—some 400 miles and seeing all these things cost me just
$13.00 which I think is about as cheap as such journey was ever made . . .
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to family, May 24, 1907)
Although at the time this walking trip certainly seemed difficult, Jim remembered it with joy in later years when telling his adventure to his daughter.
On returning to Tubingen, Jim McClure began again the struggle to comprehend the contortions of philosophy and theology in a language he did not
understand. To make matters worse, his professor was a Hungarian named
Haring, who lectured on material straight out of his book Dogmatik. Jim doodled through his lectures and then went back to his room to try to figure out from
Dogmatik what the man had been saying. He had to look up nearly every
German word, moving at the glacial speed of about a page an hour. "Fearful
stuff he called the professor's writings. He decided German lessons would help
him, and so employed a Fraulein Oeler to teach him the language each afternoon. Soon afterwards, he felt as if he had made progress. "[I] Understand
�Europe: Edinburgh and Tubingen
81
Scheel and was delighted." But he was still puzzled about Dogmatik. "After
three hours [I] did not understand Haring."22 Slowly the Fraulein helped him
improve his German conversation, and he was able to make more friends and
join in informal meetings with the professors and students. Professor Haring
presided at one such gathering, and Jim brags a little about his temperance:
"The students all sit around a table with beer, cigars and water—note this last
as it is quite unusual at such an occasion—and hand in questions to the Prof,
and a discussion follows" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Phebe Ann Dixon
McClure, July 7, 1907).
There was a strain to his life here in Tubingen, excepting his interludes
with Miss Partridge and Miss Eckols et al., that began to eat away at his health.
He naturally possessed great nervous energy that needed a constructive outlet.
He was determined to master theology, and at the same time week after week
he added to the growing list of outside reading in the notebook he had begun in
Edinburgh. The stress of his work, the loneliness of being in the midst of people
whom he barely understood, and the confining style of student life began to
have a physical affect on him. He found it difficult to digest regular meals, and
throughout June and July he often subsisted on a diet of bread and milk. He
decided to play tennis regularly, in order to benefit from proper exercise. But
tennis tended to aggravate his knee, which he may have damaged when climbing
in the mountains of Craig while in Scotland.23 Beginning in Tubingen, a dark
cloud of illness began to build up over Jim McClure, which he would be unable
to shake off for many years. He decided with hindsight that perhaps the strain
of trying to push himself academically, plus the personal problems any young
man faces, plus all his difficulties in adjusting to Germany added up to a
damaging burden. Jim McClure did not possess an academic temperament; he
was a man of action who believed that theory was useful as a starting reference,
but had to be followed up in a practical way for courage and persistence to
achieve results.
A man's youth, however long it may last, needs to be a testing time, where
one probes the limits of endurance and capacity. Jim McClure discovered at
Tubingen that he had limits. He found it hard to be happy without friends. He
discovered, eventually, that he could learn a great deal from study but could
never lose touch with life and become completely absorbed in books. The magic
of the man was his ability to inspire people with his personal attributes, from
street urchins in Edinburgh, to chance acquaintances on the street, to the loyal
cadre of friends he maintained throughout his life. People in the flesh, not in the
abstract, inspired him to selflessness and Christlike acts. And although he was
eventually able to stretch his understanding in order to master the thorniest of
intellectual difficulties, academic pursuits rarely provided him with as much
spiritual lift and inspiration as did personal contact with a single struggling man
or woman. In Edinburgh and especially in Germany, the strict academic regimen
stifled the more natural interchange among people that he had enjoyed at Yale.
His father had warned him that this might be the case, and that he should
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nonetheless steel himself to the task. But without his friends, Jim found it hard
to see much purpose in what he was doing. And so he complained about the
"stiffness of German social intercourse."24
Beyond the frustrations of his daily life, Jim McClure was also beginning
to grapple with difficult theological questions. In Germany he began to see
beyond the cheerfulness of his immature idealism, and to face the rooted depths
of human misery. Was the Christian message, perhaps, really a simple crutch,
an opiate to soothe the world's pain? He wrote to his mother t h a t " . . . the more
I see of the world, the more the surface layer vanishes and the sorrow and
burden-bearing and strength underneath become evident" (James G. K.
McClure, Jr. to Phebe Ann Dixon McClure, July, 1907). Sorrow and inner
strength are the stuff of religion, and even though it took him an hour to decipher
a single page of each German tome, he was beginning for the first time to face
the real religious battles that were raging within the souls of men and women
at this time.
Fred Henderson, a Scotsman from New College, was one soul with whom
he kept in intimate contact during his time in Tubingen. This man's letters were
an indication to Jim of his personal gifts, and speak of the intellectual milieu
of the period. Fred wrote:
I don't suppose you know and perhaps I am making a mistake in telling you
but I know you must have better friends and people you love far more than
me—still all the same I am going to tell you that there is no one else I know
that I love in quite the same way that I love you. You don't feel the same way
towards me and I can't expect you to. But Jim man you have got a tremendous
power in your personal influence and not only for your own sake but for the
sake of all of us whom your life touches you must keep holy, keep close to
God. "For their sakes I sanctify myself." . . . We'll have a rare good time in
heaven when the wrestling is over .. . (Fred Henderson to James G. K.
McClure, Jr., February 24, 1907)
These two men, like many of their age and class, talked a great deal about
healing society; they both were fascinated by the world of the working classes
that functioned so close at hand, and yet so out of reach. Fred wrote on his way
to an Asian mission field:
Dear Jim,
I have been looking at the steerage passengers and I think it wouldn't be at
all a terrible experience after the first three days . . . Of course I haven't seen
the sleeping accommodations or the grub but just watched their games on the
cargo hatch and with the Arabs who came aboard to sell things off Suez. The
net result of all which discussion about steerage is not that I am to go steerage
all the way back or go out of my way to take a special steerage trip but that if
the only way to do anything that I ought to do involves travelling steerage then
that will rather spice the doing of it than prevent it. (Fred Henderson to James
G. K. McClure, Jr., March 10, 1907)
�Europe: Edinburgh and Tubingen
83
There is a comical aspect to this young missionary peering over the deck at the
poorest passengers, but it serves as a poignant reminder of the artificial barriers
in this class-ridden society. For all their naivete, young men like Jim McClure
and Fred Henderson were seriously uncomfortable with the compartments that
limited social intercourse.
Fred and Jim were dedicated "self-improvers" as well, and worked out a
set of duplicate cards in order to concentrate better on their spiritual battles.
Fred suggested an amendment in one letter. "About these duplicate cards of
ours: What do you say to inserting for Sunday 'to get rid of self-consciousness.'
I think we ... are quite sick of ourselves in that line...." He goes on in his
letter to discuss the practice of the Sabbath day, contrasting Jim's more modern
and casual approach to the common practices of Scotland: "... [Y]ou don't
know the Scotch tradition about Sunday and the feeling that lurks in every
Scotchman's heart that he ought to be uncomfortable on Sunday when he is not
in church or reading the Bible . . . you are emancipated from all that Jim but I
am not sure that I envy you. That dear old Scotch Sunday has got into my blood
and qualified by sincerity and humanity it still . . . seems to come nearer the
ideal than any other I know" (Fred Henderson to James G. K. McClure, Jr.,
March 10, 1907).
From one of Jim's American friends whom he had just seen in Paris, Mary
Kay Waller, he received a letter that illustrates once again Jim's powerful
influence over people:
. . . I feel as if I ought to apologize for the cynical nasty mien I showed in
everything that night at Dorothy's . . . I've been working on so many problems, that my mind is settled on a wheel, and instead of facing the real facts
fearlessly, I've hidden my defeat in cynicism. Way down deep I do believe in
sincerity, in absolute simplicity which is really only the direct expression of
the universal in us—of all that is noblest in us-of God . . .
Whatever we believe, we can always be honest in living up to the very best
in us. That is what you are starting out to do now, Jim, and to think, in your
very decision, you have grown—you seemed older . . . more manly the other
night—and I am wishing you all the courage, all the strength which it takes to
be true to one's highest self . . . I am proud of your friendship. (Mary Kay
Waller to James G. K. McClure, Jr., 1907, exact date unknown)
One of Jim's closest Skull and Bones friends, Hugh Wilson, sounded the
very same theme. Jim McClure, if he did not know anything else, knew that his
friends looked to him for advice, and as an example. Hugh Wilson later became
the American Ambassador to Nazi Germany, the last before the Second World
War. He wrote to Jim McClure in 1907:
I have always said that to my knowledge no man had ever influenced my
character one way or the other, but now I shall have to take it back and say
that I am a decidedly better man for having had that talk with you. Not so
much better, as changed, having a greater pleasure in things beautiful, in music
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and poetry that I had been gradually shutting off from myself by a wall of
materialistic selfishness . . . You see, Jimmie it was the sight of you and
analysis of how high and spiritual thinking combined with unselfish living had
changed the boy fond of the good things of life into a man of reason and power
that set me to realizing how little my nature had grown in the same period of
time, and how small was a spiritual increase compared to the intellectual of the
last year. Thank you, Jimmie for all such realizations and let me believe that
this will help a little to heal up the pain in your heart that I saw you carrying
away from Paris with you. (Hugh Wilson to James G. K. McClure, Jr., May
13, 1907)
John Magee, who became a missionary to China and who had served with
Jim as class deacon at Yale, echoed Hugh Wilson's comments: "Hugh said last
night that you had had a tremendous influence on him, more so than any other
man. The change that had come over you was so wonderful. He said he had
gotten more materialistic before he saw you than ever before in his life . . . It
certainly was a splendid tribute" (John Magee to James G.K. McClure, Jr.,
June 19, 1907).
These letters were heady praise for a young theological student, and must
have encouraged Jim enormously during a difficult period of his life. Surely his
friends were telling him that his chosen field matched his gifts. He finished the
term at Tubingen, leaving on July 20 with a diploma inscribed for one "Jacobus
McClure." He then met up with John Magee and Lee Perrin, their class orator,
for a tour of Europe. He sent his trunks on to Paris and carried a few belongings
in a small canvas sack, a gypsy traveller once again. He made his first visit to
Worms to pay homage to Martin Luther, the man who had changed the history
of the West and shaped the Christian views of Jim's Scottish ancestors.
John Magee arrived in Paris in a dismal frame of mind, dampening the
impulsive spirits of the other two. The three of them meandered about Switzerland, lazily absorbing the scenery from Lucerne to Geneva. Then, for a brief
period, Jim left his friends and made a breathless tour of northern Italy. This
was typical of his constant push to get the maximum dosage of sights and
sounds. He rejoined them in Paris and departed for Chicago in mid-September,
1907.
The remaining years of Jim's seminary career involved learning the rudiments of his trade. The faculty of McCormick Seminary trained him in all
phases of Presbyterian theology, church history, apologetics and the meaning
of the Gospel. He wrote sermons, and tried to deliver them properly. He wrote
papers on social and ethical questions, including one on the world of the Chicago saloon. In 1909, Jim was ready to return again to Germany, and studied
there at the universities in Jena and Berlin. He was now comfortable with the
habits of scholarship, and understood great chunks of the philosophical masters,
in both German and English.
�Europe: Edinburgh and Tubingen
85
1. Norwich Evening Record, September 27, 1906.
2. Interview with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
3. Ibid.
4. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "The Social Crisis," sermon given March 22, 1914,
Iron River, Michigan.
5. Interviews with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
6. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "The Social Crisis," sermon given March 22, 1914,
Iron River, Michigan.
7. The cards were found in a scrapbook kept by James G. K. McClure, Jr.
8. Edinburgh diary, March 1, 1907.
9. Ibid., March 22, 1907.
10. Ibid., Feb. 22, 1907.
11. Ibid.t various entries.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Marcus Dods, closing address, Edinburgh, March 1907.
16. This diploma is among the papers of James G. K. McClure, Jr.
17. Diary entry, July 18, 1907.
18. Interview with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
19. Ibid.
20. Diary, various entries.
21. Diary, no date.
22. Diary, no date.
23. Diary, June 7, 1907.
24. Edinburgh diary, March 23, 1907.
�Chapter Six
Unsystematic Theology
. . . Here lies the danger of every young man—that he will make a choice
which will stunt him, will dwarf him, will choke down all these high yearnings
of his youth and will land him at fifty high and dry and wizened with parched
tongue on some sandy, hot island, while the heroes of the race have safely
gone on far beyond. (James G. K. McClure, Jr., untitled sermon written while
attending McCormick Seminary 1908)
My religious views are so different from [the] Presbyterian that I doubt of
the board's accepting me. (Letter to L. B. [Lucy Blair?], November 21, 1909)
I must devote more time in the morning to prayer—to fixing in my mind the
reality and omnipresence of God . ..
Matter is so near; the interest in details . . . so absorbing; pleasure is ...
so alluring; the seen world is so explainable and seemingly sufficient that
unless I start out in the morning by fixing in my mind the deeper interpretationthe seeing of God in everything—1 am apt to lose him altogether .. . (Liverpool journal, 1909, undated entry)
Last Sunday evening I visited a Pietist Hour—you know of the Pietist
movement—and I was very much impressed. The German theology needs a
good airing and hanging on the line and beating . . . (James G. K. McClure,
Jr., to Phebe Ann Dixon McClure, end of July, 1907)
In the autumn of 1909, Jim McClure found himself for a second time
steaming across the Atlantic for Europe. The conviviality and adventure of an
ocean voyage gave Jim great opportunities to make friends and discuss the
issues of the day, but he was not returning for pleasure. Instead, he was trying
to rediscover the theological glimpses he had seen before, and find out if they
held answers to his questions. He was dissatisfied with the conventional doctrines of McCormick Seminary, and he had not forgotten how his intellect had
been stirred and challenged in Edinburgh and Tubingen before. Now he needed
to go back to Germany, where a new and disturbing theology was being formulated.
Already the American Social Gospel movement, which made service to
one's fellow man the criterion of one's religion, was influential in Jim
McClure's theology. But he wanted to know why a man should devote his life
to such service. What was the compelling drive of Christianity? He was simply
dissatisfied with the traditional catechism of responses. He felt he must probe
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�Unsystematic Theology
87
deeply for himself. He sought ideas that would send him with abandon into
battle, with a fierce determination and reckless confidence that could upset the
lethargic world around him. Jim McClure dreamed heroic dreams of a conquering youth who with logic and energy might sweep away the evils inherited from
the past. It was a posture he would never abandon, although the experiences of
life would temper his energy and increase his wisdom.
As he plunged into his studies he was at first overjoyed, and wrote in his
journal:
Never, in all my life, until this fall have I been able honestly to thank God for
anything for I had never been thankful for my existence. I am now beginning
to realize what it means to exist—an incomparable thing . . . It is like a small
boy gaining admittance to a circus tent and there is no comparison with the
outside—and I would lie on my belly on the tent ropes, or perch under the tiers
of seats or lie on my face under the tent skirts-simply for the fact of figuring
among those present.. .l
In this enthusiastic frame of mind he began to dig out the answers to his
religious questionings, to find a theology that inspired action. It hardly seems
possible that the Yale sports buff and gay blade of only three years before could
write in his notebook, "If a man is to study theology he should master Thomas
Aquinas and the Aristotelian logic . . . He should grind his nose on the Scholastic grindstone."2 This intelligent young man, fired with an inborn determination
to serve his fellow men, was about to run head on into the great controversies
that marked off modern Protestant thinkers from conservatives in 1909. On
what authority could answers to the problems of existence be based? Was the
Bible the holy, inspired word of God, or was it simply a random collection of
ancient documents, full of wisdom but carrying no supernatural authority and
meaningful only in its historical context? Was Jesus divine or simply a man of
outstanding compassion and nobility after whom men could pattern their lives?
Could a man ask a personal God in prayer to intercede on his or anyone's behalf,
or was such hope the folly of presumption? Was a belief in immortality essential
to Christian doctrine? Where could a Christian fit in the new scientific explanations of the world? Science and religion seemed to be deadlocked in a struggle
for men's minds. Was man's sinful action a grief to God and a cause for guilt
to the man who had sinned? Or was sin only an expected, and therefore acceptable, falling short of the ideal?
Armed with the logic and reason of the pedagogues of Jena and Berlin, Jim
joined with his German mentors in questioning the core concepts of Christianity.
After studying the work of two orthodox theologians Jim wrote in his notebook,
"Seeberg and Kaftan emphasize again and again that theology has as its one
ground the Bible and ethics has as its main ground the Bible. This is as conservative theology must hold to—but however gallant it may be to remain on the
sinking ship—there comes a time when it is better to row calmly ashore."3 The
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"shore" he rowed to was the firm ground, so he thought, of the scientific
method, so widely acclaimed as the solution to all questions in the early twentieth century. Scepticism, logical reasoning, controlled data, hypotheses and
conclusions were helping to unlock many of the great mysteries of the physical
universe. To many people it seemed that religion, which was often attended by
tradition and superstition, blocked the march of scientific truth.
While studying in Scotland, Jim had been much impressed by a book
written by a Scottish minister, Henry Drummond, called Natural Law and the
Spiritual World. Drummond outlined a plan for using scientific law in personal
Christian development. One instance was the theory that a spirit, like a plant,
begins to decay if it is not growing. Jim felt it was possible to end what he
considered the fruitless struggle for supremacy in the battle for human progress
between the devotees of religion and those of science. He wanted to bring the
two great forces together; to maintain his belief in reason and the scientific
method while enlisting the powerful theological arguments that would move
humanity closer to a world of perfection, to the Kingdom of God on earth.4
As he continued to question Christian tenets, Jim demythologized Jesus
Christ in the same fashion that he cut through the authority of the Bible. He
asked himself the question, was Jesus unique, different from the rest of man?
Writing in his journal, he replied:
. . . modern thought answers in the negative—for to help us, Christ must
have lived as we did; must have been one of us—and modern thought has no
use for a God who is out of touch with the world . . .
When we come to the Divinity of Christ—I do not see that believing Christ
divine has advantages while believing him human has great advantages.
The work supposed to have been done by the divine Christ—forgiving sins
and presenting eternal life-we no longer look at as done in this way.
God should not need to send his son to show his interest in the world and
in each individual...
The death of a holy man caused by sin, would strike the lowest note in our
scale of values—and the divine element added could strike no deeper note.
Here then the last advantage of attributing divinity to Christ vanishes.
To make such a lot of the acceptance or non-acceptance of the belief that
Christ is the Son of God seems absurd because it is merely a figure of speech,
an analogy. It is only in humanity that we know anything of a relation between
Father and Son—and we are simply using this human analogy in connection
with God. We have no reason to think, that God has a "Son"—we simply
mean that God seemed to be in an especially close relation . .. that the nearest
men of his day could come to describing it was to say it was the relation of
Father to Son.5
One might want to ask Jim the question, if Jesus Christ was a mere man,
what is there to preach? After reading several rather contradictory entries in his
journal, I believe he would have vehemently objected to the adjective "mere,"
�Unsystematic Theology
89
and carefully reapplied "divine" to describe Jesus as he did on one page from
his Berlin notebook.
But by saying that Christ is not God I do not say he is not divine, or [that
he is] a mere man. I say he is not God simply because the word God represents
a being of powers and of an existence which Christ does not claim to have and
of which he has no need of being.
Christ was certainly more than a mere man—to call him mere man does
injustice to his character—therefore I use the word divine. Here comes out a
great deal of misunderstanding about words. As far as I can see there are two
possibilities. Christ was a mere man or more than a mere man—a or b, but b
I call divine. (I believe that people who call him a mere man but a perfect man
. .. stand on the same ground.)
Christ is not God, and never assumes that he is-always distinguishing himself and God—for God (as the word means to me) expresses both the character
and Being of God whereas Christ claims only to represent his character .. .6
Here one can see Jim trying to stake out new theological ground for his
"modern" Christianity, but reluctant to throw out the terminology that had
served the church so well. In his use of words like "divine" he forced the
language, redefining words so that he could continue to use the traditional
religious vocabulary. In a moment of honesty, he looked forward to being able
to dump the whole load of archaic Christian terminology. He wrote: "The next
great convulsion of society will be a revolt against language. It is absurd to
suppose that a language formed when man's idea of himself and nature were
primitive can content the man with a more definite knowledge of himself... ."7
But Jim was doing more than stretching the meaning of words. He was
trying to reconcile what was thought to be a scientifically determined universe
with the Christian religion. He was always a forthright thinker who asked direct
questions and expected from himself and others an honest response. Knowledge
for him would always be based on reason. Facts were to be laid out straight, and
firm conclusions drawn from the evidence.
Thus he was puzzled when one of his professors, Herr Weniberg, postulated that scientific sceptics were able to question, to peel back the layers of
truth, until the whole philosophical basis for any knowledge was destroyed.
Facing such existentialism, Jim pondered in his notebook:
Is knowledge possible? This question is forced upon me by the uncertainty of
my relation to the external world. I must investigate and see what this relation
is and if knowledge at all is possible, for knowledge is the basis of my action
. . . I think I perceive a thing-but when I investigate I find that the thing is to
me colored, hot, hard, etc., i.e. that it is only its qualities that I perceive and
these qualities only exist in my consciousness . . . The thing itself I cannot
discover-its nature is absolutely unknowable.
Does the thing externally exist then? All that I think I know of it I find to
be a product of my own consciousness .. . What proof have I that my knowl-
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edge even of this subjective world is true—that the logical forms under which
I try to formulate it are true? None.
And then he wrote, "I am simply convinced."* And convinced he remained,
although these thoughts may have disturbed him deeply at the time. No American devotee of pragmatism could be dragged into an intellectual hole of nihilistic
despair for long. The Texas bronco-buster would not dwell on the essential
nature of a pin stuck in his hand, debating whether the pain was real or subjective. He had larger questions on his mind.
His younger brother Arch, to whom he was very close, was at Yale,
thinking of entering the ministry himself. The two young theologians enjoyed a
rich correspondence. Jim replied to Arch in one of his letters from Germany,
I am glad you sent the questions . . . In the first place in all my answers
remember two things. First-that I do not know any more about these things
than you do—except as I have thought more about them—and Secondly—no
other man who ever lived does either. We have to decide things each for
ourselves and we [have] as good a chance at solving them as Solomon. One
thing we always must be—that is—we must be honest in our thinking; and no
matter how true other people say a thing is, if it is not true for us we must
never say it is true for us. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Arch McClure, Fall,
1909)
Jim's Covenanter ancestors might have argued with him over his modern
ideas, but his sense of personal integrity and tenacity in the defense of his beliefs
would have struck a sympathetic cord. He wrote in the same letter:
"Why did God make the world? Which I can not answer nor can anyone else
. . . we must not think of God as creating the world out of nothing, i.e. saying
Presto and there the world is ... I do not think of God as making the world—
but of God as existing and so the world necessarily existing, too."
Perhaps it is unfair to take such scraps from Jim's notebook and letters,
presenting only a cursory view of his answers to these questions. But it is
important to understand some of the thoughts that were troubling him. Jim
continued in his letter to Arch:
Your 2nd question—is why God made the first mortals so imperfect that
they sinned? The answer follows partly out of my answer to the first. We think
of God as the infinite and perfect being. Now as the existence of the world
follows naturally from the existence of God so it must be perfect. For out of
perfection only perfection could follow and God is not limited by anything.
You see the way I have always judged the world before recently is this—I
have myself set a standard and when the world and men fall short of it I have
said . .. they sin ... I used to condemn [the world] because it fell below my
idea of what it was meant for—Now I say that I do not know just what God's
�Unsystematic Theology
91
purpose is but the world as it is must be perfect. (James G. K. McClure, Jr.
to Arch McClure, Fall, 1909)
A naturally perfect world is a beautiful proposition, but Jim McClure was
quick to condemn much of what went on in it. He, along with many others of
his optimistic generation, was tempted to follow the lead of thinkers like Hegel
and Marx, believing that mankind was progressing, evolving, towards a harmonious and perfect world. Darwin's theories implied that biology was moving
from a simple state, a primitiveness, to complexity, towards a more perfect
adaptation to the environment. As Jim concluded his letter with a firm statement
of his belief he moved further and further from the concept of a personal God
and closer to the rather ethereal notion of a spirit moving in all things. Yet he
was firm in his belief in a God of some sort.
An atheist is either irrational or insane. No man who looks at the world and
man honestly and clearly can deny that there is a power behind things which
is superhuman. We call it by many names: "the Great First Cause," the "Absolute," the unknowable . . .
And the progress that this power has wrought out during the last 100,000
years is incomprehensible. From the brute to man, from savage, barbarian,
from primitive to civilized man—until we feel that some day we shall be as
gods. The reason we hear the outcry that mankind is growing worse is that the
crier has tied his eyes to the moment and to the backward or stagnant or
outworn tendencies of the present—such a pessimistic utterance is silly in the
extreme. The world, and man cannot help advancing. And advance has now
become so rapid that we can see it with the naked eye.9
If progress appeared inevitable to Jim, he never thought it would be automatic. Our species, in his view, must struggle for every inch of collective
improvement.
That brings me to the historical appearance and development of man. The
Genesis account is the way the wandering Hebrews thought men were created
and started on their development. Today we think a little differently. In the
process of the upward development the animals appeared and then the animal
man and he kept developing. To develop man must struggle and keep struggling to develop this nature in him . .. The nature of man demands that in
every choice, he choose right. This [is] man's free will. The idea of sin is one
which was brought in by people . . . who thought God's plan was that no one
should ever fall short of their better nature . . . and so when they fell short they
said . . . you have sinned . . . (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Arch McClure,
Fall, 1909)
He explained his understanding of personal sin this way:
If man is to progress he must have an ideal and if his ideal is sufficiently
high, if it is higher than his attainments, he must at various moments fall short
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of its realization. For these acts of omission and commission—these fallings
short—he should feel sorry but not letting them discourage him, he must press
on again toward the goal . . . Our relation to our ideal is forming our character—and the long and persistent striving toward the ideal creates in us a
character that is, as virtue, its own reward.10
By trying to soften the sting of sin, and thus minimizing the burden of
guilt, Jim lost the powerful image of a divine Father sorrowing over his lost
children. He admitted as much in his notebook.11 But he felt it was important
to lead people toward attainable ideals rather than have them dragged backwards
by being constantly reminded of their failures.
He was constructing his cosmos by radically departing from the traditional
Christian view, moving, like many other theologians of the era, out into the
borderlands between Christianity and pantheism. The pantheist sees God less
as a personality or mind, and more as an essence that pervades all of reality. In
most forms of pantheism, all matter, all nature, is indistinguishable from God.
Jim wrote in his notebook while trying to sort out these conflicts: "That brings
me to ... believe in a God who permeates and is the Universe .. . But it is a
personal pantheism—which although a contradiction of terms expresses my
meaning. God comes into relation to me in everything . . . Father, mother,
friends, acquaintances, things I see, handle, this pen with which I write-everything in fact."12 But if God permeates all creation, and is the universe, how can
evil exist? What becomes of personal sin when each person is a part of the
God-essence?
Even as Jim was pondering all these perplexing questions with the intention
of becoming a Christian leader, he was also questioning the institution of the
church. Martin Luther, whom he greatly admked, attacked the Catholic church
for, among other things, acting as a barrier to the personal relationships between
men and their Creator. Now the time had come, Jim thought, to extend the
theological frontiers of personal freedom once again. He feared that the modern
Protestant denominations were once again damming up struggling humanity's
communication with the Diety.
A blurring of God's personality and the need for each person to work out
his or her own salvation with only an impersonal essence places a heavy load
on the strength and accuracy of the individual conscience. While recovering
from a knee operation with his relations in Liverpool, Jim wrote in his journal:
My creed—as I hastily write it out—is something like this—and I find it
differs very much from the creeds behind most of the sermons that I hear.
I believe that there is an intelligent power outside myself—which I will call
God. The universe is an expression of God and every single thing that happens
to me each day, whether it be from nature, from human beings or in my
thought realm—is God expressing himself to me. All these things constitute
my relation to God, which will thus be seen to be a personal and uninterrupted
one (comprising everything which happens to me, which I do, or that I think.)
�Unsystematic Theology
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The purpose working out in the Universe and in me in particular is beneficient
[sic.]. [This purpose] I call the Will of God. The working out of this purpose
is the very best thing for us as a race and as individuals —in fact in no other
way can we answer the end of our existence, i.e. be happy. It is therefore the
best thing for us as a race and individuals to do the Will of God. Our only
means of doing the Will of God . . . is to follow unreservedly the dictates of
our conscience enlightened by as much education as is possible . . . (We are
never able to see far ahead into the program of the eternal purpose—for us all
that is possible is to see a step at a time—but we can always see this one step.)
. .. Believing that God is good, I am confident that if I do His Will,
everything that happens to me will be the very best thing for me. This includes
weather . . . all relations of Nature to me ... all words spoken to me, all
chance acquaintances, accidents, disappointments—in fact everything that
happens to me. "All things work together for good to him that loves the Lord
All these things become expressions of God to me-it is impiety to fear
anything that may happen to me in the Universe and it is impiety to complain
of or seek to elude anything . . . for which I am not personally responsible.13
Although Jim did not consider the Bible infallible, he did see it as a great
source of inspiration and help, a record of men and women struggling to understand the source and purpose of life. So Jim McClure concluded that "Nothing
in the Bible is true for the mere reason that it is in the Bible . . . But the
authoritative value of the Bible lies herein that it speaks deeply and truly to the
conscience."14 Here was a young man who believed in action, but was trying
desperately to understand the roots of Christian belief in a modern setting. In
the process he dove into the murky philosophical waters that have drowned
many a young idealist.
Rigorous academic pursuits and Jim McClure would never become comfortable companions, yet in the fall of 1909 he felt a sense of progress in his
efforts to cope with the esoteric thoughts of theology and philosophy. His
self-imposed regime of long nights of study had overcome most of the academic
deficiencies first noted by Marcus Dods of Edinburgh three years before. Moreover, he had mastered the German language, both as a scholar and in the tea
rooms. He now found himself plunging into the philosophical abyss, trying to
formulate a comprehensive theology that would give him the freedom and confidence to go out into the world and act, and at the same time dovetailed with his
sense of pragmatism. In his later life, of all of his beliefs, he felt most certain
that nothing could be more debilitating than knowledge without action. There
must have been a subconscious undertow, even here in Germany, that all of his
study, all of his time and energy pursuing academic goals, might be quite
useless to him later on. Such a cross-current might have added to his sense of
strain during this time. He wrote in his notebook:
In talking with the students of Philosophy here . . . They seem to think that
Psychology and Philosophy are ends in themselves whereas they exist and
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should be studied and taught simply to enable a man to act more wisely and
rightly. The proper business of men is acting, doing. And these men who can
talk glibly of the different schools and viewpoints of philosophy and can
logically maintain, fairly well, a certain system—and yet do not realize that
the proper business of philosophy is to better the actions of men, have not
begun to know what they are about; they are interested and entangled merely
in forms as were the sophists in the day of Socrates and do not even know that
they are ignorant . . . Descartes's quote should be "I act therefore I am ..."
[Instead of "I think, therefore I am."]15
Berlin University marked the end of Jim's seminary training, and it was
there that his theological views began to germinate a confident and distinctive
view of man, his Deity and the condition in which he is found in this world. His
views contrasted sharply with his father's, allowing Jim the sense of independence a young man needs. For three years he had thrashed about in the theology
of the day, questioning, evaluating and making tentative solutions. In Berlin,
an order grew out of the conflicts, a balance that fitted with Jim's sense of
reality. At Berlin, the culmination of his education was a powerful, almost
mystical sense of discovering the Truth. His friends and family followed him
along in his discovery, especially his father, who never found it difficult to
discuss such matters with his son. He decided to write to his father a letter on
prayer. "Warn Father that his letter is temporarily in dry dock at the 41st page,"
he wrote to his mother (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Phebe Ann Dixon
McClure, July 1909). The letter was not only a summary of his new vision, but
also a declaration of independence.
In 1902, Jim's father had published a book entitled Intercessory Prayer: A
Mighty Means of Usefulness. It is a serious step for a son to reject a central tenet
of a loved and revered father. Perhaps that is why Jim's letter ran on so long—
seventy-two pages. In essence, Jim explained in this epistle that he did not
believe in the usefulness of intercessory prayer. "God's will towards his creatures is perfect," he wrote, "and therefore cannot be increased by a prayer of
man's." He felt that " . . . the whole content of prayer is in the expressing of
our yearnings, hopes, purposes and desires to God, and in his presence correcting what errors have crept in, 'what flaws may lurk'" (James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to James G. K. McClure, Sr., August 22, 1909).
One such "lurking flaw" took Jim to his knees in prayer. Being twenty-five,
and living in the near monastic conditions of the university of that day, besides
being very handsome and attractive, Jim naturally enjoyed the friendship and
even adulation of many young women. For most of September 1909, he was
incapacitated after a serious knee injury. With typical exuberance, he had leaped
over a tennis net to congratulate his opponent, only to find himself unable to
walk, and suffering from terrible pain. He had torn a ligament, breaking the
blood vessel that passed through his knee. Blood filled up the knee cavity,
making it stiff and very sore. When it failed to improve, he went to stay with
some Dixon relatives in Liverpool, and had an operation.
�Unsystematic Theology
95
Recuperating in the household of his "Cousin Lilly," he found himself
surrounded, in his helpless state, by a number of kind and adoring young
women. One of them wrote to Jim's parents afterwards, "I made i t . . . my study
to surround him with comforts and am constantly devising fresh plans which I
think will help his amusement" (Jim's nurse to Phebe Ann Dixon McClure and
James G. K. McClure, Sr., name illegible, no date). His parents visited him in
England at this time, and his mother especially seemed much concerned about
his health. Perhaps she sensed that his mental state was not easy. Jim's father
wrote to him:
During all our married life I have never seen your mother cry so much and so
hard as when she held your flowers in her hand, kept her eye upon Liverpool
where she was leaving you and let her grief find its relief in tears . . . Surely
you have been blessed with a good mother and whatever experiences of disappointment in humanity you may have, her beautiful spirit is to be your life-long
comfort. (James G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K. McClure, Jr., September
1, 1909)
After a month of being surrounded by comforting lady friends, Jim trudged
sadly back to Germany. Back in Berlin, he attempted to befriend "an innocent
German girl," inviting her to go somewhere with him. He was flattened by her
rejection, and in the evening wrote with a penitent tone that "We cannot act the
same everywhere that was right at the nursing home and all right at Cousin
Lilly's where I was known—but not here. The woman was right to refuse."16
The little incident lay heavily on his mind, and he composed this prayer soon
afterwards:
Oh God—Forgive me that so often I have let impure thoughts creep into my
mind and dwell there—and not made a more spirited effort to throw them out.
Enable me to act toward every woman that I meet or am thrown near in the
whirling vortex of this great city as I would have my mother and sisters acted
toward—remembering that the courtesy of a stranger must differ from that of
an acquaintance . . . Impure thoughts . . . soon allow me to do the questionable
thing, to do something or say something not because it is right or necessary
but because it ... has the added zest of a little impure excitement. Help me
Oh God this winter in this great city and alone . . . 17
As well as striving to give his best to his studies, Jim strained to realize
ideal behavior, to achieve the perfection of a complete harmony with the purposes of the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. In that pursuit, he honestly
tried to admit his failures. No matter how taboo a subject might be, he wanted
to expose it to the light of reason with the detached air of the scientist. Nothing
should be allowed to remain in the shadows, gathering superstitions and misconceptions like dust in a cobweb. The Victorian bugaboo of sex he treated with a
remarkable frankness, all the while trying to maintain an ideal attitude. In his
Berlin journal he wrote:
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Knowing only of the young man's problems, I should say that the most
difficult problem the young man has to solve is his relations to women—the
keeping of his ... actions, his motives and thoughts pure. This problem too I
should say to be the fundamental one of Society—as long as we are under
earthly conditions these two classes of beings, males and females, will exist.
And seek to hide the problem we do, speak of it in undertones or not at all;
ignore it; cover it up etc., it keeps popping its head up and I am deceived
unless history shall find that it is the fundamental whetstone of human existence.
In young men it takes all sorts of forms running up the scale from the mad,
blind rush for sexual intercourse with any young woman and at any price, thru
the more refined gratifications of the passions, through impure and smutty talk,
impure thoughts and here rising to a higher plane, but still the same basis, the
thought of marriage as the "sunnum bonum," [highest good] not looking beyond it, the filling of the mind with the thought and talk of marriage and thus
closing the mind to any higher ideal than a happy marriage . . ,18
And later in Liverpool he added:
The reason for sexual morality is that a man can not scatter his affections
and have deep and true affections for any one person. For this reason, the man
who in his youth has scattered his affections will not have deep enough feelings
for his wife to enable him to carry through the sacrifices that true married life
means and will mean. The man who holds aloof is building the foundations
deep and strong for the love of one woman.19
If the most difficult battle of the young man is his relationship to women,
worries over career choice must rank a close second. In 1909, Jim felt the call
to serve mankind as a Christian, but he was questioning his earlier idea of going
to the mission field in China. Clearly Spinoza and Hegel would not be much
use. Such thinking, which influenced Jim and many of his well-educated, modern contemporaries, chilled the fire and zeal needed to convert the Chinese
"heathens." He wrote to his college roommate and childhood friend Horace
Ferry:
I cannot imagine on what ground I could ever have a reasonable longing to
go to China unless it were arrant adventure which we outgrew at 12 years . . .
[A]s to trying to take our forms of theology to China, that I consider absurd
. . . And as for this pitying wail that goes up and the mentioning of the
hardships well as you say life is pretty much a scrap anyway and we might as
well fight it out where the thing is thickest and we will have to take our gloves
off ... [Life] only lasts 3 score years and ten, and [what a waste] if we wear
Jaeger underwear 4 score and . . . are not winded yet nor sweating . . . 20
Jim sought neither arrant adventure nor warm underwear to insulate him
from the battles of life. He dreamed of becoming a great leader of men, and he
did not expect it to be easy. Realizing that God had given him extraordinary
�Unsystematic Theology
97
powers of influence and persuasion, he struggled to conquer even small weaknesses and become a model of Christian ethics. Keeping a close watch on his
actions he confessed his failings to his Lord:
Oh God! .. . [I]nstead of loving display, putting myself forward, seeing to
be noticed, being loud or eager in speech, and bent on having my own way
. . . help me to be content, nay, to rejoice in being made little of, to perform
what to the flesh are servile offices . . . not to argue, not to judge, not to
pronounce censure . . .
Oh God . . . increase my humility . . . forgive me for striving so for the
good opinion of others, for aiming at effect; for thinking too much of my
personal appearance—and above all—to which I am a slave—to little deceits,
in expression and act, by which I plan to raise myself in the opinion of others
He had read Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography when he was laid up with
his knee, and he was an enthusiastic believer in the old patriarch's theories on
the ability of individuals to control their habits. Many scholars think that Franklin wrote with tongue in cheek to cash in on the American fascination for
self-improvement, but Jim McClure took Franklin at his word. He was always
looking for ways to improve himself, and jotted down these notes after witnessing a "heated discussion between two ear-splitting Germans":
The cock-sure and assertive attitude that many people, especially men, have
is an attitude which hinders communion of spirit, rouses unconscious hostility,
is the opposite of persuasive, keeps the owner of the attitude from further
enlightenment, is apt to lead him in to absurd positions and is on the whole
an attitude more suited to a bar room than a home . . . Benjamin Franklin's
idea was better. He found this assertive method in discussion not so valuable
as the humbler, so he dropped such words as "absolutely," "without a doubt,"
and substituted "It appears to me" and "I consider" etc. Neither does loudness
of talking seem so effective as a regulated pitch.22
On his own, Jim discovered the best way to draw out a stranger, to charm
him from his isolation. He had mastered this technique, and it is wonderful to
see his humor in the midst of all of his serious philosophizing:
What a man carries in his pockets, how he carries his money, what sort of
a hat he wears, what he likes for breakfast... how he keeps up his socks, the
way in which he likes to recreate, whether it be to talk, to read, to ride, to
run, to sleep, how he sits when by himself, with shoes on or slippers, how
many hours he sleeps, these are all of great interest to a man, his dog, his
horse, his knick-knacks in his house, especially if he has some pet little thing
made, or labor-saving device invented by himself, his garden, his chickens,
on all these things will a man warm up, especially perhaps on the dare-devil
pranks of his youth.23
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As he developed his personal gifts, Jim also struggled to create for himself
a powerful new vision of what his service to humanity ought to mean. And his
answer continued to harp on the heroic, a self-perfecting model of personal
sacrifice. After absorbing the philosophy of Spinoza, he was plainly becoming
a theological elitist. He questioned all theological systems and formulas, and
cast the bulk of humanity, who accept the current view of life without questioning, into the role of the mindless. Jim was determined to find his own system.
He was sure that his education, and intellectual quest for honest truth, had raised
his religious sensibilities way above those of most men and women. He refused
to compromise his sharp critique of the Christian church. Being an idealist, he
saw around him little evidence of a world being redeemed by the sacrifice of the
Son of God. He drew away from his earlier optimistic view that the world was
rapidly improving.
Has Christianity been such a great success as it is sometimes spoken of as
being? Take a rapid survey of it at present . . . we could scarcely call South
America, Russia, Spain and Italy Christian countries . .. with our Protestant
ideas . .. We must hesitate to brand France and Germany Christian countries.
England, Scotland and North America seem to have more religion than any
[other] country, yet the existence [of] drink, war, discontent, worry, restless
striving for money, class divisions, will not warrant us in calling these Christian countries . . . There must be something wrong with the religion which has
made such slow progress. Impurities must have become mixed with it.24
Then he writes on a more positive note:
Whether I believe in God or not my words do not show truly, only my life.
I have met a few people whom I can plainly see believe in God . . . some
people really have believed in God enough to give their whole lives, their
money, their home, their friends and everything to Him . . . All philosophical,
theological, scientific discourses, proofs and writings concerning religion I
believe to be merely concerning the outworks of Christianity and to be of
comparatively little worth. The only unanswerable argument for Christianity
is a Christian life. And it is the one persuasive and influential argument. In
my life the arguments for Christianity that have really affected me are Christian
lives—Mother, Father, Dr. Dods, Fred Henderson, and John Magee.25
In spite of his theological differences with his father, Jim certainly felt a
deep admiration for him, and thought his example was worthy of emulation.
But once more he described his discomfort with the status quo:
What makes me doubt religion is the way it is lived—so many professors
of religion and so much preaching of love of one's neighbor and the good
Samaritan—and yet the brotherhood of man, nothing but a phrase, no reality
in it—men everywhere striving for themselves . . . the brotherhood of man
seems ages o f f . . .
How the love of humanity and battleships come into the same scheme is
�Unsystematic Theology
99
absolutely ununderstandable to me . . . The patriotism which limits one's
neighbors to the inhabitants of one's own land and sees in every other nation
a possible and already armed enemy is un-Christian. How can an Englishman
cherish at first sight the feeling of love for a German with a subconscious
knowledge on both sides that each is armed to the teeth? How can the universal
brotherhood of man come when each nation looks out of its own feathered
nest over a fringe of guns and pikes?26
Five years later, a gruesome answer to Jim's question came as the Great
War bled Europe of its vision and vitality. He felt such a natural affinity for
people, with all of their idiosyncracies and problems, that he truly was baffled
by die powerful forces of hate that seemed to divide nations and set people at
each other's throats. What about the brotherhood of man? Was it just a pretty
idea? Jim knew better. Of one thing he was sure, that the moral idea of Christianity can best be seen in a person's life rather than in any doctrine he might
hold. He remained convinced that all theology was of little use unless it transformed people, and unless it contained the power to use a man like him to
change others.
What Jim hoped to find in theology was not so much a neat intellectual
solution that pleased his sense of order, but a powerful, motivating vision that
could sweep people together into action, giving their lives purpose and meaning.
Jim was sure that meaning in life came more out of doing something positive
than out of believing the right dogmas. Christianity had been a powerful force
in history when it inspired people to sacrifice themselves for spiritual ends. Jim
wanted to weld this Christian spirit to the progressive historical forces he felt
gathering strength around him.
But as he prepared to go back to the United States and seek out a place to
serve and lead his fellow men, a serious problem was developing for him. His
health was going seriously awry. Indigestion and severe headaches were beginning to plague him. Was his demanding philosophy of self-sacrifice and perfectionism to blame, or perhaps his rebellion against the tenets of the church and
his father? Or was he just exhausted by too many late nights of study, neglect
of physical exercise, and a hard play schedule when he did take time off to be
with Mends? In any event a man who sought the heroic virtues of self-sacrifice
and moral action was to spend the next ten years of his life in virtual bondage
to his health problems, with only brief periods of reprieve. How did he keep his
faith through this long, difficult period? How did he regain his balance and
become an instrument of God's purpose?
His daughter, Elspeth McClure Clarke, knows that he had gained a deep
faith in God's unfailing help by the time she was growing up. Certainly he was
no longer trying to achieve his goals unaided. Again and again he stressed to
his children and in his sermons, "I can do all things through Christ which
strengthened me" (Philippians 4:13). "Fear not, for the Lord thy God is with
thee whithersoever thou goest" (Deuteronomy 31:6). "He who doeth the will
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shall know the doctrine" (John 7:17). Perhaps this was the verse that finally
made sense of all the theological conflicts and confusions. The simplicity of
Jesus' invitation, "Follow me," would again become clear to him. In all his
daughter's recollection he was a vigorously healthy person.27 But for some time
after these intense theological studies Jim was not well, and his illness was
difficult to diagnose, difficult to treat, and, most of all, difficult to live with.
But these years were not wasted, frustrating as they must have been. How often
does adversity work to strengthen the characters of great men and women?
1. James G. McClure, Jr., "Berlin Journal," 1909. Most entries in this journal are
undated.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Henry Drummond, Natural Law and the Spiritual World. (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1883).
5. Berlin Journal.
6. James G. K. McClure, Jr., from a set of miscellaneous theological papers,
1909.
7. James G. K. McClure, Jr., note written in his notebook on German Psychology,
1909.
8. Ibid., November 29, 1909.
9. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "God," paper written at McCormick Seminary,
1908.
10. James G. K. McClure, Jr., Liverpool notebook, 1909. Most entries in the
notebook are not dated. Exceptions are noted.
11. Ibid. The entry reads "one thing I seem to lose—namely the personal sorrow
that each sin causes God ..."
12. Miscellaneous theological papers, 1909.
13. Ibid., September 29, 1909.
14. Liverpool notebook.
15. Berlin journal.
16. Liverpool notebook, September 29, 1909.
17. Ibid.
18. Berlin journal.
19. Liverpool notebook, December 18, 1909.
20. Ibid., October 24, 1909. The journal entry appears to a copy of a letter sent to
Horace Ferry.
21. Berlin journal, October 27, 1909. Italics in the original.
22. Liverpool notebook, October 1, 1909.
23. Ibid.
24. Liverpool notebook.
25. Miscellaneous theological papers, this section inspired by a walk with John
Bailie, June 13, 1909.
26. Liverpool notebook.
27. Interviews with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
�Chapter Seven
Affliction
Oh God in whose goodness I try to believe—enable me, as I have come
home discouraged and with every hope apparently blighted and with no light
at all for the future, to accept this lot in which I am with sturdy cheerfulness
and determination. Give to me courage, Oh God, to persist in those ideals and
hopes and aims of conduct which I believe to be for the world's good irrespective of the hopelessness in which they seem to involve my own future. Oh
God, help me to give Thee a willingness to do and accept whatever is meted
out to me ... confident that Thou who inflictest the pain will at the same time
and even more surely dole out strength and patience to bear it.
Forgive me that my heart has been heavy and even bitter and that I have
added to others burdens by talking about my own—And now God, give to me
patience to wait and to cause others to wait and courage Oh God how I need
it! to persist in believing and acting on the belief that it is grandly and altogether worthwhile to live wholly for Thee—
Amen
(James G. K. McClure, Jr., personal notebook begun November 1, 1910,
entry made May 12, 1911)
Jim McClure returned home to Chicago early in 1910, in order to fulfill the
requirements for graduation from McCormick Seminary. He graduated in the
spring, finishing his formal education at the age of twenty-five. He had had the
advantage of a comfortable and stimulating home life, and the educational
opportunities of seven institutions of higher learning, including some of the
world's most highly renowned. He had met the challenges of Texas, New
Haven, Scotland and Germany. He possessed a natural charm and leadership
ability, qualities that made him ideally suited for his theological vision. In short,
he was a dynamic young man, well-motivated, with the ability to work and to
bring energy and enthusiasm to projects. At twenty-five, it was high time for
him, according to his own precepts, to act, to put his knowledge to work for the
benefit of mankind.
Then how to explain the years from 1910 to 1920? The years between
twenty-five and thirty-five are often the heart of a successful man's career, and
yet Jim McClure spent more time in those years playing golf than preaching his
gospel. His only position of responsibility was a ten-month pastorate at the Iron
River Presbyterian Church. For the most part, he traveled about visiting friends.
He fished in the lakes of Wisconsin, played golf in lavish Santa Barbara, rode
burros in Arizona, helped to build his sister Annie's home in Vermont, and
101
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We Plow God's Fields
made a mad dash around the world on Mrs. Cyrus McCormick's money. He
also ushered at numerous weddings.
It is a curious interlude in the man's life, and the one firm explanation for
what happened is illness. His knee was mending slowly, but it was never a
serious obstacle for him. The problems were physical, but with psychological
origins. There were the apparent digestive difficulties that first cropped up in
Tubingen. But the complaint that sapped his drive involved severe headaches,
migraines perhaps. The exact nature of his malady is not discernable, because
Jim McClure was never a complainer, and mentioned his problems rarely and
without detail. What is more important is how he and his family diagnosed the
source of his trouble. Everyone agreed on this point, that Jim McClure suffered
from mental strain, overwork, trying to do more than is possible given the
circumstances. In November of 1910, Jim's father wrote to him:
Our hearts are with you by day and by night. I want you to carry as free a
spirit as possible to be such that your mind may be without burden and your
body without strain. Let us take it for granted that months must pass before
you are in condition to take up the work you desire. In the meantime let us
believe that our lives are planned by God and that some wise and helpful result
is to be the outcome of these present days . . . Always know, my boy, how
precious you are to your mother and me, and how I rejoice in you.
Affectionately,
Father
(James G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K. McClure, Jr., November 4, 1910)
In retrospect, Jim himself traced the origins of these difficulties back to
Edinburgh. Trying to keep up with his daily lessons, piling on extra reading to
compensate for his academic gaps, and taking on responsibilities at the settlement house had been more than he could manage. He had allowed for too little
relaxation in his life, he surmised. Jim had been determined to test his capacities, to find out just what the powers of his will could accomplish. But the record
of his theological years does not indicate that his life was all work and no play.
There were all the interludes with his lady friends and the gents of Skull and
Bones in Europe. While much of his training took place in the familiar confines
of Chicago's McCormick Seminary, perhaps there was an added strain in attending classes where one's father is president. Jim did have a rather restless mind,
one that suggested many more worthy projects and deeds than one person can
carry out. And he did tend to follow up these notions, throwing himself behind
ideas and over-volunteering himself without regard for the limitations of time
and energy. He was always happiest when lost in some enterprise or other, and
found it difficult to pace himself, to quit rushing long enough to relax, especially
during these early years. And yet, only those people who knew him best even
noticed these tendencies. He also worked hard to present himself as a relaxed
and affable young man. No one ever thought of him as nervous; he rushed on
his own time.
�Affliction
103
As a young man, Jim McClure imagined the joys of the solitary, simple
life, not realizing how ill-suited his temperament was for Thoreau-like contemplation. Just after graduating from seminary, he managed Mrs. Cyras
McCormiek's country residence on White Deer Lake, Wisconsin, and during a
quiet moment there he wrote:
.. . character is the only thing in the world worthwhile .. . and to this end
[I should be] guardedly simple. That motor cars, clubs, fine clothes, expensive
and luxurious food are things which only seem to have a high value—and but
blind us to the simple virtues . . . [They are] not only a great drain on character
but a soil in which a great character can hardly grow . . .
Let us realize that with simple food, with plain clothes, with quiet retired
living—we can best grow in character and our lives will become fuller and
we can best serve mankind . . . corn meal mush instead of caviar.1
Jim McClure was a man who appreciated the simple pleasures of life. He
would rather wear his coat out, and then ink the worn places, than be stylish.
But Jim McClure could never be happy leading a "quiet retired" life, contemplating the activity around him. He was a man of action who would much rather
conduct the music than listen to it.
There were spiritual links to Jim's afflictions of 1910 that may help to
understand them. His belief in a theology of perfection allowed for no relief
from his own indiscretions. He would grieve over his faults, feeling quite guilty
when his quick mind inflicted a sharp rebuttal to someone else's pet ideas. He
wrote in his diary:
Oh God . . . Keep me from jumping to conclusions, from thinking that I
understand the point of another before he is half thru explaining or even half
begun; keep me from nervousness and irritation at what seems to me the
obtuseness of people, and the slowness with which they understand, and the
slowness with which things happen in the world. Help me Oh God to be calm,
and tranquil and very patient with all people and all things and in disappointment and most of all with myself.2
Jim moved home again for brief periods of time, but felt the discomfort of
being supported by his family and surrounded by his friends, all of whom were
busily organizing their own families and careers. He spent a lot of time with his
youngest brother Nathan. The two of them liked to hitch up old Erma to her
cart, drive to the lake shore, and go swimming on a hot summer day in Lake
Forest. He used to treat Nathan to a day at the ball park, rooting for the Cubs
or White Sox. In June of 1910, Jim drove up to Prairie du Chien to usher for
Louis Douseman's wedding. Hugh Wilson joined him for the trip, and the two
of them would have been quite a vision on the rural roads of Wisconsin in their
Packard.
The following fall, Jim packed himself off for the Territory of Arizona,
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We Plow God's Fields
=:: • :;:"F?:
|;:
\j
m
JimMcClure, Jr., at White Deer Lake, 1910.
thinking that the climate there would help to cure him. Foster Rockwell, of
"Yale '06 and Skull and Bones," was trying to make it there as a rancher. The
dry winter weather of Arizona, along with the physical work of a ranch, held
out for Jim much better prospects than being confined at home during the
blizzards of Chicago. And besides, he had always enjoyed Foster's companionship, and admired his football prowess as the quarterback for Yale. The Dominie
supported the move as well, and made a point of writing his son regularly during
this difficult period for him. Dr. McClure understood Jim, knowing that his
impetuous temperament was his own worst enemy. He watched his son struggle;
he saw his energy and impatience cause great frustrations, and felt the need to
caution him about building up unreasonable expectations.
�Affliction
105
. . . I often feel how little is accomplished that is actually worthwhile.
However, there must have been in Christ's life very many days—and perhaps
years, where the advance appeared to be very small, if it could be detected at
all. ... Wherever I went in the East affectionate inquiries were made concerning you. You certainly have an abundance of warm and devoted friends who
believe in you . . .
Keep as free a heart and mind as possible and be a vegetable. (James G.
K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K. McClure, Jr., November 22, 1910)
If matters do not progress by the middle of January, we will try to work out
some new scheme. I fancy that you may not be able to do much but virtually
loaf for some months to come. I am not at all discouraged about you. We will
get the better of this trouble in due time. It is pretty hard on a temperament
that likes to act quickly to be obliged to go through this prolonged process of
delay, and I feel great sympathy with you in the delay. Still let us expect that
in due time patience shall have its perfect work .. . (James G. K. McClure,
Sr. to James G. K. McClure, Jr., December 7, 1910)
As Christmas approached, the Dominie continued to encourage his son, to
look for God's purposes in the present difficulties, and to maintain reasonable
expectations for recovery.
The word from Drs. Billings and Haven does not discourage me. Mr. David
Pagan thinks you are doing as well as could be anticipated and he expects that
some further time will elapse before all is right, and then he expects it to be
permanently right. . .
Mother and I are seeking all possible light as to your immediate future . . .
Yesterday I preached in Evanston on the words "God who commanded the
light to shine out of darkness." For several years I have been thinking of how
God takes the dark periods of our lives and makes them conducive to our
good—causing light to spring out of darkness. It is wonderful how many
people have been stopped in their desired courses—by hindrances to themselves or their homes—and how later they had reason for thanking God for
their dark experiences . . .
So let us be brave and hopeful, and walk the pathway of the present as
gently as possible, and steady ourselves by believing that the outcome of it
will be to the good of God's world.
This morning I went to the minister's meeting. Dr. Shailer Matthews of
Chicago University made a searching and thorough address on the subject of
the religious need of today, and he ended with the idea t h a t . . . the supreme
need is in Christian people (so called) denying themselves, taking up their
crosses of human helpfulness and living Christ's life of self-sacrifice for one's
good. I thought of you and our conversation during the summer, many times
as he spoke. (James G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K. McClure, Jr.,
December 19, 1910)
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Between one letter and the next, events back in the McClure home took a
surprising turn. A young seminary student had begun to direct his affections
towards Jim's older sister Annie. He was in truth determined to pass successfully through the Victorian courtship maze and emerge arm in arm with Annie
McClure. The Dominie described the scene at home.
As Annie has sent you word a young fellow has appeared on the scene,
Dumont Clarke, a Princeton University man, with a partial Seminary career
at Auburn and Union, a gentleman and a consecrated man, and it looks as
though he had taken Annie and would some day carry her off ... Annie will
accompany me to New Haven . . . and then go with me to New York—where
she will see Mr. Clarke's family and they will see her. If all then seems
favorable, I fancy that an engagement will be the outcome.
This is the most sudden and overwhelming thing that has occurred in our
family life. It has taken dear Mother off her feet. She has not been able to
sleep. At the same time she likes the fellow and feels that the affair is all
right—as I do.
To think of Annie in such a situation is well nigh ridiculous . . . The fellow
is quiet and unassuming—but he went straight at Annie and told her his love,
and took her breath away—and I should judge that he has got her.
I suppose it devolves on me as the fattier to ask all proper questions of the
young man and also about the young man—this I am trying to do ... (James
G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K. McClure, Jr., February 1, 1911)
A week hence, Dumont himself relays the message to Jim that the proper
questions had been asked, and he in turn had given the proper replies, and that
all parties therefore concurred in his proposal of marriage to Annie McClure.
Dear Jim,
Well—yes—brother Jim! You don't know how eager I am to meet you. For
its all settled now! . . . I am very fortunate . .. God has richly blessed me in
giving me your dear sister.
When David Lusk told me, out in Madras, India of a certain Jim McClure—
a friend of his in Edinburgh; I little thought of the relationship that was in store
for us ... And now that these eventful weeks have gone by I feel as though I
know you almost as familiarly as ... 'brother' Jim! For we have much more
in common than simply our affection for, and our relationship to Annie! We
have ideals and purposes in life, that, nourished and strengthened in atmospheres much alike, are, I doubt not almost identical. The religious life of Yale
and Princeton is of that healthy type that, together with other opportunities and
environments we have both experienced—and accidental resemblances (I was
taken for you one day at the Seminary!)—it would seem that we could be
chums right off. Lets try anyway! . . . Annie may have told you of the break
down from which I suffered . . . then after my year in India I had another bad
time of it—Well I know what you're going through and I feel for you . . .
(Dumont Clarke to James G. K. McClure, Jr., February 9, 1911)
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These two men did find more in common between them than their breakdowns, and an enduring friendship grew up that would bear fruit later in their
lives. Meanwhile, though, Jim remained through the winter at the R & R Ranch
in Arizona, his social possibilities limited by the flux of his own spirits and the
great expanses of desert. Jim helped to organize a softball game with some of
the local ladies, snapping a picture of everyone out amongst the sage brush. The
ladies look quite peculiar amidst all their ruffles and bows, bending down in the
desert and awaiting their chance to make a play over to first base. And then there
was a Mr. Reeves and his sister, whom Jim met on a burro trip across the arid
country along the Salt River, through Tortilla Flats to Fish Creek. It was so dry
that a drink of water for either man or beast cost five cents. Jim was cooking
some biscuits one night, and maybe bragging a little about his days as a broncobuster, when the Reeveses appeared. They were invited to join the expedition
for dinner. Mr. Reeves looked like a down and out prospector— a loner dogged
by failure. His long drooping mustache gave a theatrical look that was more
than matched by his sister, who was wearing a funny straw hat with the front
of the brim pinned up. Jim noted in his log of the trip, "Camped by the roadside
near Mesa—completing the outfit we entertained Mr. and Miss Reeves at dinner."3
The daily rhythm of the R & R Ranch revolved around young Rockwell's
vision of a successful ranch in an Arizona desert. There were to be orange
groves and lemon groves, rose bushes, grape arbors, olive trees and a large
commercial hay operation. Jim claimed to have planted 221 rose bushes in one
day out there. He and his old friend had plenty of time for talk, and Jim loved
to hear Rock's stories from the inside about the Yale football team of his day.
Jim loved sports because he admired struggle and the spiritual cohesion that
develops among the members of a successful team. He wrote down in a notebook he kept in Arizona some of the anecdotes that Rock told him, fascinated
by the techniques of successful leadership these stories illustrated.
Jim returned to Chicago in June of 1911, in time to help with the preparations for Dumont and Annie's wedding. The family chose Lake Forest and the
Presbyterian Church for the ceremony. Eighteen hundred admirers squeezed into
the sanctuary. "One of the largest weddings ever celebrated on the north shore
.. ."4 chirped a social reporter, a fine tribute to the love for the McClure family
in Lake Forest. One news article describes the crowd as " . . . a long line of
solidly massed humanity on the streets leading to the church."5 The reception
afterwards was held on the grounds of the old Manse, "Gien Hame," just across
from the church. "As Mr. and Mrs. Clarke hurried across the lawn after the
reception to their carriage, a dozen or more children were waiting to say goodbye to the bride, and she stopped to kiss every one of them."6
The newlyweds invited Jim to join them in Manchester, Vermont, where
they were planning to build a home. So Jim went East, after leaving Dumont
and Annie to themselves for a respectful period of time. Manchester might be
the essence of Vermont; it lies between two long ridges amidst the Green
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ru
" **-" *
Jim McClure at the R & R Ranch in the territory of Arizona.
Mountains, just underneath the focal point of the village: Mt. Equinox. Whitespired churches, red barns, maple syrup, rocky brooks and glorious fall foliage
all appear to be divinely arranged to entice people away from the distractions
of urban worldliness to the "Walden Pond" of New England simplicity. And
besides, there was a fine golf course in Manchester. Jim's Uncle Will McClure
had been hooked by the town and lived out his life there, fly fishing for brook
trout in defiance of his family's stern work ethic. Jim came to help build his
sister's new home, but Manchester was destined to play a much larger role in
his life than mere carpentry, for another young Lake Forest resident often
returned to her family's ancestral homeland in this very same Vermont valley.
But carpentry was the trade at hand, and it was a good one for a young
man whose mind had been too long absorbed in the philosophical battles of the
day. Rafters and joists yield much more easily to the queries of mankind than
do questions of eternity. A day's work produces the kind of physical fatigue and
the palpable results of progress that are a wonderful antidote to the scholarly
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109
life. And Jim always enjoyed helping someone. He and Dumont grew to be
good Mends, close friends, just as the latter had predicted.
Jim made Manchester his home base through most of 1912, making intermittent excursions to meet friends and relatives around New England. He and
Dumont were working on April Fool's Day that year, and both of them needed
only the smallest excuse to pull a practical joke. Dumont slipped into the
workshop the night before to take all of Jim's tools and nail them down to the
bench. The next morning, after a great deal of prying and laughter, the working
day settled into a routine. But all through the day Jim was scheming to top
Dumont's prank. That evening, Jim left the house to take a short stroll and in
the meantime Dumont received a telephone call from one of the great characters
of the village. Bill Tutfle was something of a mad inventor, a prospector of
patents hoping to strike riches and glory. "Mr. Clarke, I have a terrific idea I
want to talk with you about. With a little backing, we will both become rich.
Can I come over to talk with you right now?" Dumont tried to brush him off
politely, but the persistence of the inventor won out, and soon he appeared in
the doorway. The two men sat down to discuss the inventor's idea: a system
whereby the headlights of an automobile were connected to the steering rods,
so that when the driver turned a corner, the lights turned as well. Dumont
listened politely, inwardly groaning at the nuisance of having to put up with this
man. As incredible as it may seem, the "inventor" was none other than Jim
McClure, who had mimicked the neighbor so well that, as the story goes, Jim
left that night still undetected.7
The Clarke's new home was finished and ready to dedicate on July 4, 1912.
It was christened "Sa Du Ja Dit," an acronym of the names of the principal
builders including "Du"mont and "Ja"mes. Everyone was invited to visit and
explore it on Independence Day. There is an old photograph of Aunt Kitty (Will
McClure's wife), looking stiffly from the porch with the young married couple.
Her coachman and carriage await her pleasure in the background. Uncle Will
was no doubt off fishing on the Fourth. Another picture shows Annie and
Dumont, Jim, Arch, Hetty and Nathan in greatly relaxed poses, together with
their parents, enjoying one another's company on the new porch.8 Jim's parents
always made great efforts to bring the family together, to the extent that Hetty
was brought home from boarding school the year Jim returned from Germany
so that the entire clan could be under the same roof for a last brief time.
Moving on from Manchester, Jim and his family went to Castine Island,
Maine, for a vacation together that included walks along the rocky coast and
plenty of golf. Jim and Dumont had played quite a bit in Manchester, and in
fact golf seems to have been a sport Jim pursued throughout this time as a
remedy for his difficulties. Jim helped organize a tournament at the Castine
course for late August, although there is no evidence he won any prizes. There
is a wonderful picture of him entertaining three beautiful ladies with his accordion.9
Curiously, a golf game was one of the few situations in America at this
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time where the different classes came into informal contact with one another
outside the home. Many a gentleman understood the working class world solely
through the eyes of his favorite caddie. Jim noted a report from Dumont and
Annie's "man." He had a wife and four children, and was forced to caddie
because work was scarce. Judging by his tips, he took home between $1.50 and
$4.00 per day. Jim responds to these facts with a sense of outrage that began
to grip him during these years. "[It is] distressing to see men caddying at
Manchester. [It is an] indictment of [the] industrial system when a man at a
decent employment can find no work and goes caddying and has money thrown
at him."10
Jim McClure tried to break through the barriers of class to become interested in the lives and potential nobility of the tradespeople who surrounded
him. He collected short anecdotes to prove to himself the worthiness of the
working class men around him. "The Larned's chauffeur worked like a Trojan
. .. and would take no tip. The caretaker, a fine looking young chap, pushed
the car with me 200 yards and would take nothing. .. ."u
Jim McClure was more and more drawn during this period to the Social
Gospel. He read and quoted the works of the two men most prominent in the
movement, Washington Gladding and Walter Rauschenbusch. Simply put, these
men advocated a Christian socialism. They hoped to use the power of religion,
and religious terminology, to transform society. The Kingdom of God was a
fully realizable state of social perfection, in which class differences and antagonisms would disappear. In effect, the labor agitator could lie down safely with
the capitalist. The emphasis shifts from individual sin to social sin, whereby the
actions of one person can demoralize the entire community. In the Social Gospel
vision, Jesus becomes the greatest reformer of all times, enlisting tax collectors,
prostitutes and fishermen together into an organization that threatened the entrenched class structure of first century Palestine. With the death of Jesus, the
movement did not die but took on the mighty Roman Empire with little more
than a belief in the brotherhood of all men. Martyrs died as a sacrifice to their
vision of an ultimate Peace on Earth. It was Saint Luke's "The Acts of the
Apostles," full of examples of an early church that practiced a form of socialism,
that most inspired advocates of the Social Gospel.
In reading Rauschenbusch's Social Gospel manifesto, Christianizing the
Social Order, Jim checked and underlined this stirring call:
To become fully Christian the Church must come out of its spiritual isolation . . . It has often built a soundproof habitation in which people could live
for years without becoming definitely conscious of the existence of prostitution, child labor, or tenement crowding. It has offered peace and spiritual
tranquility to men and women who needed thunderclaps and lightnings. Like
all the rest of us, the Church will get salvation by finding the purpose of its
existence outside of itself, in the Kingdom of God, the perfect life of the
�Affliction
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Like many members of the American elite, he felt strong twinges of guilt
about the unequal distribution of wealth in the United States. In looking for
scapegoats, he found the same ones everyone else found, and then some. Here
is a compendium of his thoughts on some of the social and political questions
of the day:
Alfred Hamill [a Lake Forest neighbor] told me that all the great Banks of
Chicago [and] New York . .. break the law continually and knowingly .. .
This country is in the hands of a few men, i.e. Rockefeller controls most
of the large banks in New York and Chicago. When a man attempts to initiate
a new business, he applies to the banks for funds. The Bank officials—being
to a certain extent figureheads, ascertain whether the Rockefeller interests are
willing that the new business start up—if they agree to loan the money they
do it on condition of the control of the new business. By this system the whole
country is held in a few hands.
[Mr. Ambrose Cramer, Jim's future father-in-law, on corruption in the
Chicago city government.] 'Hinky Dink' sends a ton of coal to every needy
widow, tides over all men out of work; pays for funerals, etc. in his ward with
the money he secures from legislation. Should an honest man win from him
once he would surely lose at the next election—for Hhiky Dink by these
kindnesses would have secured the allegiance of the voting majority . . . no
track or switch can be laid in Chicago without paying the council—no tracks
laid in the state without paying the legislature . . . the most serious feature is
the growing disregard of the Sabbath.
I do not see how a man with a family of 5 can spend more than $10,000 a
year without committing grave social wrong.
Father thinks the country needs a whipping.
The idea that the method of life is "the survival of the fittest" furnishes the
excuse to advance their own interests, perhaps ruthlessly and at the expense
of the good of the whole body of humanity. This phrase is a catchy one and a
popular one and yet it supports an entirely erroneous idea.
All my friends give me this excuse for not going to church (for none of them
go) "I get nothing out of it." That is very true and I grant it. But I feel that
that is but one half of the question and I should reply "What do you give it?"
We must realize that we are the privileged class-have had education and the
culture and breadth which are only possible thru wealth and our attitude toward
the ... church . . . as a means of affecting the community, should not be
"What can I get out of it?" but "What can I give it?"
Imagine the treatment Jesus would receive, should he enter a first class hotel
in any great city . . . He would probably be ejected without ceremony.
Whereas the most immoral, debased man, with his pockets lined, arriving in
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a touring car and swaggering in with a chorus girl would be bowed to by every
bell hop.
These large hotels are one of the culture nests of artificial values—character
counts for nothing—money for all ... (Of course this is too sweeping for
kindliness . . . the bell hops are working for dying mothers; the old lady in
No. 17 thinks of the long hours of the maid and brushes her clothes herself
. . -)13
The Social Gospel, in Jim's view, condemned the old vices of drinking and
dancing as strongly as the Presbyterians traditionally had done. His prom standbys, the two-step and the waltz, might be safe enough, but he became concerned
about new dances corrupting the working girls of America. He saved a New
York Times article that expressed his outlook, and conjures up images of this
lost world.
Influence of Social Follies
The manner in which lax conduct in high social circles can influence the
humbler to evil practices is somewhat alarmingly shown in ... the investigation of some new kinds of fashionable dancing which have been made by the
Committee of Amusements and Vacation Resources of Working Girls. The
"turkey trot," the "grizzly bear," and other dances, so called, which are merely
developments of terpsichorean extravagances . . . have been taken up this
season to diversify fashionable dancing. They are not lively, and whatever
may be done with them, in the way of artistic modification, in polite circles,
they were originally intended to be indecently suggestive.
The working girls get them from good society. They were not introduced
into the popular dance halls directly from the lower depths, the unspeakable
places where they constitute one form of joyless diversion. Because it is noised
abroad that at a "coming out" party of a daughter of good society the "slow
rag" or the "tango argentine" were danced, those grotesque posturing must,
perforce, be imitated in the Saturday night dances of the poor girls . . ,14
Such a quaint world America was in 1911. Will there ever be a "Committee
on Amusements and Vacation Resources of Working Girls" again, or an article
on "Social Follies" and the "grizzly bear" in the New York Times! At the height
of the Progressive flood tide, the mood of the country was a paradox. On the
one hand, the muckraking spirit searched out evil, corruption and self-interest
in every level of American life. But the national mood was basically optimistic,
with a strong "can do" spirit riding high. Exposure, along with die legion of
committees, would rout out the blemishes within the country. Confidence in the
democratic faith was strong. In 1912, one of the more remarkable of the nation's
elections took place. Two Republicans (Taft and Roosevelt), sought re-election,
thereby splitting their constituency. As a result, the nation elected Woodrow
Wilson, the first Democratic president since Grover Cleveland. Stern and moralistic, Wilson became an apt symbol of the era, taking his views of a world based
�Affliction
113
on Christian principles to the Treaty of Versailles. Never before had an American president received so much attention or been so influential on the world
stage.
And never before had the mood been right for the prohibition of liquor.
Evidence of the evil of alcohol is never hard to find, and the hope of the
Progressive movement coupled with the self-denial of World War I produced
the Great Experiment. Jim McClure's position had been staked out long before.
In his haphazard study of the working class, he came up with this particular
case to add weight in the general Temperance struggle:
Nels Hanson, whose funeral was held on August 20—was 23 years old, and
after spending an evening at Waukegan, was killed by a Northwestern train.
He was intoxicated. A great deal of drinking is done by the young [working]
men of Lake Forest.
.. . The liquor is secured by getting some man . . . who is out of a job for
the day to go to Highwood or North Chicago for the stuff. [Jim's father had
kept it from being sold in Lake Forest itself.] Whiskey is the beverage and it
is drunk straight.15
Temperance supporters have the reputation for being fundamentalist crusaders, popularly pictured as ax-wielding females who are naive enough to think
that the sins and ills of mankind can be laid almost exclusively at the door of
one substance. Jim McClure, and there must have been many more like him on
this issue, was not of that ilk. He believed that it might be possible for mankind
to perfect itself on this earth, and that for this reason alone alcohol should be
removed from the list of demoralizing temptations. He wrote a paper while at
McCormick on the saloon trade in Chicago, and pointed out how these institutions gave away free sandwiches to the working men who patronized them
during the lunch hour. The enticement of the free lunch, Jim reasoned, was
more than enough to bring "straight" men into a "crooked" place. Conviviality
and relaxation soon worked its magic to draw even the strongest men into the
habit of drink.
To these saloons, in winter, the men must come at noon hour. They must
have a warm place to eat their lunch in. The saloons supply the place—they
offer to the cold ignorant men warmth and free lunch, but in return the men
must fulfill the one condition attached—they must drink. If the workman does
not drink he is put out in no time. Right here is where the man starts on his
slide. On the cold days he will drink more to keep warm—he will seldom
thereafter drink less. He will cash his pay checks at the saloon—there is no
other place. The saloon-keeper gets a grip on his throat and gradually tightens
it... 1 6
There must have been quite a number of reformers such as Jim McClure
to join up with the more fanatical Temperance adherents in order to pass the
Eighteenth Amendment.
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But as the tides of Temperance were rising, Jim struggled with his own
weaknesses, his own character. He wanted to feel in tune with God's progress,
to have his natural inner impulses match the high ideals of his thoughts. On
January 26, 1911 he wrote down this remarkable prayer:
Oh God, give me too some surety and conviction that this whole process
of development and progress that thou art engineering on this earth . . . has
. . . a benevolent purpose toward each individual . .. And as time goes on
enable me more and more to understand how these two purposes are one.
Make me to feel this personal relation to Thee and to feel, too, that the daily
doings of even the most obscure of us all, the cooks and the ditch diggers and
lazy Mexicans, is of importance to Thee and really matters in Thy plan for the
whole.
. . . Help me to dignify all men in their own eyes.
And now God, give to me enduring patience that I may accept this long
period of inaction with a cheerfulness, tho not boisterous, [that] may infect all
those with whom Thou dost throw me with the conviction that after all and at
bottom life is tremendously worth while. . . ,17
To truly appreciate and empathize with the "menial" class (and the lazy
Mexicans!) for a man with Jim's education and Lake Forest upbringing took a
great deal of rethinking, and reshaping, of his behavior to fit the ideal. The
habits of class ran deep. Jim wanted desperately to feel real love for all of
mankind, and he tried to follow that ideal with each individual he met. Whenever he traveled, he had the conviction that the person sitting next to him was
sent by God, and it was his duty to encourage that person in some way. This
attitude made life for him a wonderful carnival of surprises, and indeed the
uplifting effect his personality had on many, many people became one of the
living fruits of his life. Again he prayed:
Oh God, who art so silent that I forget thee, and who art so all pervading
and so necessary that I take thee as a matter of course—forgive me that I live
so much for the sake of cutting a figure in the eyes of those people who are
about me. Forgive me that I give a real value to artificial standards and aim
to be thought well of by the rich man or the successful man than the good man
and by Thee. Forgive me that I flee . . . to artificial standards and lean to them
rather than stand on our common humanity. Help me—Oh God! to feel toward
and to act toward each man as a man and as a child of all loving source—
Forgive me that I retire within the walled city of social position, good clothes,
friendship with those in power or of money rather than stand in the open plain
of simple manliness and uprightness and honor. Forgive me that I am ...
unwilling to appear to be on the losing side or to be outdated. Give to me more
common sense and prudence and keep me from so recklessly and heedlessly
rushing into things. Forgive me for talking so much.18
With all the energy, wit, and intelligence within him, he did find it difficult
to control his tongue. He wrote: "Oh God . . . Help me to keep my mouth shut
�Affliction
115
on all derogatory remarks and all remarks that may in any way strain or smudge
another's honor, or diminish the esteem in which he is held or he holds himself."19
Out of this period in Jim's life came a thorough search from within of his
impulses and pretenses that would never have been possible had he been in
China, say, building up a school or hospital. His father had told him how often
God teaches those people who are receptive during their weakest moments.
Jim's friends were out in the world, pursuing a variety of successful ventures
that built up their self-esteem. Jim had nothing to fall back on, no accomplishments he could point to and say to himself, I have achieved something worthy
of the world's praise. The courage of St. Paul, who like Jim suffered debilities
during his ministry, was an inspiration to him. Paul's single-minded adherence
to the highest standards, the Apostle having been shown on the road to Damascus how much his life was based on artificial standards, produced in him a
beautiful character of strength and courage.
Jim McClure was facing a dilemma that has troubled Americans since the
beginning of the industrial revolution. On the one hand, the efficiency of machines and business practices has created enormous amounts of wealth along
with the possibility of material subsistence for all. But the drive that produced
such wealth was fueled to a large extent by the desire for personal power,
influence and a sumptuous way of life. Jim, like many of his contemporaries,
wanted to infuse the American business spirit with selfless Christian virtue in
order that "society" might be saved.
In 1912, Jim returned from Manchester to the elegance of Lake Forest.
Even if he felt strong yearnings for a simple life, how could he turn down a free
trip around the world backed by his generous benefactress Mrs. Cyrus
McCormick, widow of the inventor of the McCormick reaper, and a member
of his father's congregation? She had taken a special interest in Jim, and worried
about his present difficulties. Perhaps the ocean air and the variety of the world
would work a special cure, and show him at the same time the wide variety of
Christian mission work. Mrs. McCormick loved Jim as she loved his father.
She was perhaps the richest widow in America, and thoroughly Presbyterian.
Her hearing was almost gone by this time, and so she carried her silver ear horn
everywhere. Being a doughty old woman, she liked to wield her horn as something of a weapon. If someone bored her, or she did not approve of what was
being said, she laid down the earpiece to return to her silent world, leaving the
speaker noticeably embarrassed. Young Jim was never boring, and he was full
of wonderful ideas she approved of, and so he maintained ready access to her
horn. A trip around the world might indeed clear up his troubles, and how much
he enjoyed travelling! Jim found a friend, Bob Dangler, who was likewise in
the mood for travel. In fact, the two of them left the day after Bob heard the
plan, on New Year's Day of 1913.
To travel in Asia and the Middle East just prior to World War I was to see
the last rays of twilight of the European colonial order. In August of 1914, the
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empires of Europe's most powerful nations began to unravel. Colonial competition was a major source of tension that lay behind this tragedy, and by 1918 the
colonies began to hope for an end to European domination. But in 1913 Asia
was still part of the old order, and Bob and Jim could travel amongst Christian
missionaries hard at work, European administrators firmly in control, and Western businessmen confident of their markets. A Yale graduate could expect to see
a world that, to a large extent, "his people" managed.
The first stop was Honolulu, in this day a pristine town managed by the
United States for the benefit of its navy. Then it was on to Japan. Jim thoroughly
enjoyed life on the steamships. He and Bob played baseball on deck, and Jim
became the master of ceremonies for a day of activities. His knee held up as he
won the one lap race around the boat, and his stomach likewise as he beat back
all opposition in the Bun Eating Contest.20 Throughout his trip, Jim had lists of
family contacts to visit and look up. He wrote home from aboard the Japanese
ship Shinvo Maru:
We left Kobe yesterday noon, and coming thru the Inland Sea, are on the
way to Nagasaki which we should reach about noon today. We have just
passed the place where the Japanese destroyed the Russian fleet.
I enjoyed my stay with Mr. Learned. He was in high spirits, gave his classes
a day off and kept me trotting from morning to night. He wanted me to tell
you that the Japanese have a custom of retiring about 55 or 60 years of age,
handing over their duties to their sons and spending their days in meditation
and writing poetry. He wants you to come to Kyoto for the poetry end of i t . . .
The best thing about my trip thus far is that tho I have been doing a good
deal in Japan I feel none the worse for it. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to James
G. K. McClure, Sr., January 26, 1913)
Like many young men, Jim became fascinated by the institution of the
Geisha girl in Japan. He talked with a Dr. Schwartz about them, and recorded
what he learned in his notebook.
Geisha girls are girls trained to entertain by singing, dancing, conversing.
They are used by Japanese men in giving dinners, even in their homes. They
are kept by some person . .. and let out.
As to their morality they all have their price, tho the tea houses in which
they dance are not houses of prostitution, they can be taken to a house across
the street or someplace after their performance. Dr. Schwartz considers Geisha
the greatest influence impairing the purity of the Japanese home.21
On to Shanghai, where Jim and Bob were only two of the many "Sons of
old Eli" who attended the annual Yale dinner. Such a comfortable world in
which to travel! In Hong Kong, Jim met up with one of his old friends from
Germany while crossing the street, and Bob Dangler immortalized the moment
with his camera. The superstition and poverty of China he discovered to be as
rampant as he had expected. He thought the Chinese were foolish to think that
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they needed firecrackers to let the local god know someone was needing attention. Chinese beggars were a part of any American's view of the country, and
Jim recorded the following incident:
[I saw] a mob of some fifty of the dirtiest, toughest and most ragged
individuals I had ever seen, lying in the sunshine of the street. I asked the
missionary whom I was with what that filthy crowd was. "Why," he replied,
"they are professional beggars. They travel together with a leader and start
down a street, the leader going into a shop and asking the proprietor for a
handout. If the proprietor is reluctant or stingy he points to the crowd outside
and if the proprietor refuses to come across he beckons to the gang and they
pour in and wreck his store. They work the city systematically, working each
street every couple of months."22
Jim concluded that Christianity was the factor that made Western society
different, that made helping the helpless a virtue. In China and throughout Asia
he noted great numbers of suffering people and almost a complete void of
compassion. "It is only under Christian civilization that we have hospitals . . .
I found that in China if a coolie is injured in the streets he is left there or finally
hauled off much as we would haul off a sick horse... ."23 Soon the trenches of
the Western Front would remind Jim and his contemporaries that barbarism lay
just below the surface of European civilization as well.
After Hong Kong, the two travelers boarded a ship that would eventually
land them in India. Bob Dangler wrote to Harriet McClure about Jim's colonial
appearance. "Just docking at Manila in glorious sunshine—flags flying and
band playing. Jim is looking like a prosperous planter in helmet and pongee
suit" (Bob Dangler to Harriet McClure, February 6, 1913). They visited a rubber
plantation at Kuala Lumpur and McGregor's Lumber Yard in Rangoon, with the
main attraction at the latter being an elephant handling teak logs. A Miss Starr
was very much in evidence during this phase of the excursion. The countries
came and went so fast that Jim rarely broke beneath the superficial colonial view
of this complex world. He returned with comments such as "The Burmese do
not make soldiers . . . The Burman is indolent, the women industrious... ,"24
He was horrified to find people bathing regularly in a river infested with maneating crocodiles. One had been killed and its stomach found to be fiill of the
bangles of his victims. Because of a fatalistic religion, Jim wrote in his notebook, "the natives in the neighborhood of a man-eating crocodile continue
bathing in spite of the losses in their ranks, looking upon it as fate."25
Bob and Jim maintained their fast pace of sight-seeing in India. Two days
at each stop seems to have been the maximum time allotted. Their itinerary took
them to Calcutta, Darjeeling, Benares, Agra, Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, Madras (where they visited Eli Yale's son's grave!). To sister Harriet, Jim sent a
picture of the gruesome funeral pyres along the Ganges River at Benares, the
city he had visited years before in his imagination for "Steady Streams." "Knowing your moribund taste I send this postal" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet
��Affliction
119
McClure, March 3, 1913). And with similar grim humor, he sent to Annie and
Dumont the message that "We have seen the Towers of Silence and the vultures
who polish off the Parsees ..." (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Dumont Clarke,
March 7, 1913). He and Bob made a pilgrimage to Bangalore, where Dumont
Clarke had worked as a YMCA secretary and had done so much to raise money
for a new building. There they found the new YMCA just completed. Dumont
had asked Jim to bring with him the original scale model that had been made
of clay, which he did, through all the vicissitudes of the remaining trip. It was
packed in a big, bulky box, most unsuited to the gypsy life of Jim and Bob. But
Jim wanted to do this favor. When he presented it to Dumont proudly, and
opened the box, the clay model had been reduced to rubble!
In between the Taj Mahals and the Mt. Everests, Jim did have a chance to
meet and talk with a young Indian "of one of the lower castes" who had picked
up some English. "He asked me about caste in America and I told him the story
of Lincoln. He frankly would not believe it. His ambitions, his possibilities, his
future, his hopes were circumscribed . . . Nothing could call forth the best in
that man."26
Jim's insatiable curiosity aroused his interest wherever he went. Questions
about carpentry and queries about religion tumbled about in his mind, and
wherever the language barrier could be circumvented, out they came. Bob wrote
to Arch McClure that "Jim is very busy righting the wrongs of the Orient" (Bob
Dangler to Arch McClure, no date).
The trip served to buttress Jim's faith in America and in Christianity. A
Miss Richardson, whom he met at an archeological dig in Egypt, told him
another story to support this faith. A Turkish foreign minister worked with her
father in the diplomatic community of Athens, Greece. One day he "... received an order from the Sultan to return to Constantinople. He was afraid to
return for the Sultan had a habit of ordering those not in his favor home and
having them dropped overboard en route. He wanted to return hoping that he
was to be promoted to Secretary of State . . . He went home and was never heard
from again."27 In Egypt, family acquaintances like the Richardsons continued
to take in and entertain the two young men, and Jim made a noteworthy trip to
Luxor on the back of a camel known as Will Taft.
The final and certainly inevitable leg of this grand tour was through the
Holy Land. In 1913, Palestine was on the eve of becoming the political thorn it
has remained ever since. A few years later, in 1917, the Balfour Declaration
was signed by the British to enlist Jewish support for World War I. This pact
was the first great victory of the modern Zionist movement to reclaim Israel for
the Jewish people. Jim visited a backwater land full of donkeys, Arabs and a
preponderance of religious shrines. After landing in Jaffa, Bob and Jim made
their way to Bethlehem. The next day they rented a pair of donkeys, and slowly
Opposite: Postcard to Harriet McClure from Bob Dangler, February 6, 1913.
�120
We Plow God's Fields
made their way along a Jericho a road not much different from the one Jesus
had walked 1900 years before. They enjoyed a picnic lunch at Elisha's spring
and an afternoon swim in the Dead Sea.28
Jerusalem yielded up its list of familiar sites: the Mount of Olives, the
Garden of Gethsemene, and the Via Dolorosa. At Jacob's well they ran into 900
Russian pilgrims who had walked from their motherland. These people fascinated Jim, all the more so because he witnessed their simple joy as they attained
the object of so great a trek. At the same time, he was disheartened by the way
they were gypped out of their meager savings by unscrupulous Arab souvenir
sellers. In Nazareth, Jim and Bob become acquainted with two pretty English
ladies, the Misses Tassel, and that eventful day ended with the four of them
praying together on the roof of the hotel.29
The Misses Tassel appeared again just over the border in Syria, where Jim
and Bob had been touring the pagan ruins of Baalbek. Three Hellenist temples,
one each to Jupiter, Bacchus and Venus, contrasted in Jim's mind with the more
subdued Christian and Jewish sites to the south. Damascus, "the Pearl of the
Desert," which was the city Paul entered after his dramatic conversion, was just
about the end of the trip. It was a Grand Tour of the world in five months, and
what can be said for it? First, it was a conventional trip with a predictable
itinerary. From the Taj Mahal to the Wailing Wall to Chinese beggars and the
pyramids, Jim McClure saw what was expected. There was nothing in this trip
to shake his basic faith in the views of Protestant Christianity or in Western
superiority, the American variety in particular. His admiration for foreign missionaries, with whom he almost invariably stayed, was heightened. One of his
last visits on the trip was to the Syrian Protestant College (soon to become the
American University) in Beirut (Lebanon was then a part of Syria). He was
visibly impressed with the work there; American churchmen and American
money were educating about 900 local students each year in the school's program. Jim yearned to be a part of such a work. The mission field that eventually
captured him was found nowhere along the itinerary of this trip; in fact, it lay
only a long day's train ride from Chicago. Yet the quaint habits of the people,
the rigors of life, and the primitive nature of the society there could match
almost anything he had seen in Asia.
Jim returned to America on the 5. 5. Cretic, from Naples to Boston. He
sailed first class, and greatly enjoyed the company of several gentlemen traveling likewise. He took an engaging picture of a Mr. Dunn, a Mr. Hammond and
one Marziale Sanchioni; the accoutrements of class in this photograph are all
too obvious, from attire to pose, and remind us once again of the clean lines of
social status that existed in this world. The young Indian who asked Jim about
caste in America would have been even less likely to believe the Lincoln story
had he been able to sail on the S. S. Cretic in 1913.
Jim remained in New England, going directly to Dumont and Annie in
Manchester with his bulky box. After the shock of opening the box for Dumont,
and finding nothing but dust, he told the details of his trip. One of his favorites
�Affliction
121
was the time he and Bob were accosted by bandits. The family memory is
somewhat vague on the exact nationality of these men, but they seem to have
found our young hero on a mountain top somewhere, possibly the volcanic Mt.
Etna of Sicily. How did Jim McClure handle the prospect of being robbed by
dangerous natives of a foreign land? He challenged them to a jumping contest.
If Bob and Jim could outjump the two bandits, they would go free. If not, the
bandits could have their fair share of the Americans' loot. Well, as unbelievable
as this story sounds, Jim's bad knee held up, and the wan Bob Dangler gave it
all he had; the bandits were beaten fair and square and went home emptyhanded.30
The Manchester crowd all returned to Lake Forest in time for the June
marriage of sister Harriet. Douglas Stuart was the groom, a very upright and
capable business executive who would in time rise to be President of the Quaker
Oats Company. During the Eisenhower administration, he would serve a successful stint as the U. S. Ambassador to Canada. The wedding occurred on June
10, 1913, and the surviving pictures show a wonderful scene of a baseball game
on a Lake Forest lawn. One of Harriet's and Jim's close friends, Marian
Farwell, was playing third base while wearing a Quaker costume in honor of the
bridegroom's business affiliation. The Stuarts hired a special train to bring their
South Side Chicago friends to Lake Forest. Since the size of "Gien Hame" was
restricted, "the wedding tea was served on the lawn, where pretty girls in
lingerie dresses, flower hats and gay colored silken coats poured tea at beautifully decorated tables."31 Jim ushered, and helped to escort one of Harriet's
best friends, the lovely Elizabeth Cramer, among the rounds of society during
this occasion. She was to return to France shortly thereafter to pursue her artistic
aspirations which, fortunately for Jim, were interrupted by the events of August
1914.
For Jim McClure, the days of restlessness were almost over. He was now
feeling well enough again to take on responsibilities. For three years he had
traveled about, to Arizona, to Vermont, around the world, with uncounted side
trips. He was desperate to engage himself in the world, to try out his abilities,
and yet his nagging health difficulties had kept him back. In August of 1913, a
letter came to Mrs. McCormick from a small mining town in Michigan. She had
helped the writer find a pastor six years before.
At the present time I am located at Iron River, Michegan [sic] at which point
we have a church consisting of about thirty-five members.
Iron River is situated in a district where large ore deposits have been made
recently, the opening up of which has brot [sic] one a boom phase, causing the
influx of a large number of families, and the church is desirous of getting in
touch with these people. (Unknown writer to Mrs. Cyrus McCormick, August
30, 1913)
�122
We Plow God's Fields
Mrs. McCormick recommended Jim McClure for the position, and truly it
was a situation ideally tailored to fit a young purveyor of the Social Gospel.
Iron River was a rough mining town, with immigrants pouring in for jobs. Rapid
growth and the strain of absorbing many different national groups had left any
previous sense of community in a shambles. Crime and alcohol were common
problems. Great distrust among the immigrant groups, exacerbated by a babble
of languages, created enormous tensions. Jim understood the role of the church
to be a great force for civilization, and in Iron River he had his chance to start
practically from scratch. In November, the Iron River Reporter announced that
the "Rev. James G. K. McClure, Jr. of Chicago arrived here yesterday and will
become the pastor of the Presbyterian Church . . . Rev. McClure is a young
unmarried man. He is a graduate of Edinburgh, Scotland, and McCormick
seminaries and also of Yale University . . . He is a pleasant and genial young
man and comes to his new charge highly spoken of."32
Jim's three and a half years of convalescence were over. They were not
wasted years. New influences and experiences became a part of his life. Arizona, Shanghai, Vermont and Nazareth ceased to be simply names to him. He
had learned the rudiments of carpentry, and met hosts of new people. But his
efforts had been scattered and undirected, and his life remained nearly all
potential with very little yet accomplished. The Iron River pastorate fitted him
well, and yet his strange and debilitating malady lurked in the background.
Friends and family, and Jim himself, wondered whether 'the cure' was complete.
1. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "Stray notes" journal, 1910.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Newspaper clipping from June 28, 1911, saved by James G. K. McClure, Jr.,
paper unknown.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Interview with Dumont Clarke, Jr.
8. Family photograph album
9. Ibid.
10. James G. K. McClure, Jr., 1910 personal notebook, entry dated January 2,
1911.
11. Ibid.
12. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, (New York: MacMillon, 1912), p. 464.
13. 1910 notebook.
14. "Influence of Social Follies," New York Times, January 5, 1911.
15. James G. K. McClure, Jr., Lake Forest Notebook, 1910.
16. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "The Saloon Question in Chicago," unpublished
paper.
�Affliction
123
17. James G. K. McClure, Jr., notebook begun on November 1, 1910, entry dated
January 26, 1911.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., entry dated September 4, 1911.
20. James G. K. McClure, Jr., scrapbook of his trip around the world.
21. James G. K. McClure, Jr., Loose-leaf notebook.
22. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "Rackets and the Public," unpublished paper written
in the early 1930s for the Pen and Plate Club, (Asheville, NC), p. 1-2.
23. Loose leaf notebook.
24. Ibid., entry dated February 23, 1913.
25. Ibid.
26. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "Has Democracy Achieved Its Economic Purpose?"
an unpublished paper presented to the Pen and Plate Club, Asheville, NC, 1926.
27. Loose leaf notebook.
28. Loose leaf notebook and the Scrapbook of the trip.
29. Ibid.
30. interviews with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
31. Newspaper clipping, June 11, 1913, paper unknown.
32. Iron River Reporter, November 14, 1913.
�Chapter Eight
Iron River
No one disputes that the forces of good in the world, with their divisions
into denominations, are inefficiently organized. So inefficient are they that tho
we have millions of members in our churches, each with a professed belief in
the brotherhood of man, the organization of these millions is not able to
translate their ideals into action. It is as if into a giant hopper, the church
people were pouring their ideals of brotherhood, their hopes for a better world,
their money, their prayers, their work, their time. And out of the hopper
instead of a society permeated by the spirit of Christ... comes a thin stream
of prayer meetings, of exhortations & of accomplishment.1
I mean never by word, look or sign to show my discouragement. Further,
no matter what happens I will see life thru & see it thru handsomely &
graciously. Further I mean always to appear to be and to be content with my
lot & full of quiet courage—no matter what the Lord calls upon me for.
(Inserted by James G. K. McClure, Jr. into a notebook he kept while in Iron
River)
Iron County, Michigan, is an aptly named district that lies on top of one
of the world's finest mineral deposits. The ore extracted from the Mesabi Range
of Michigan's Upper Peninsula has been a major component of the growth of
the American economy in the twentieth century. In 1913 the town of Iron River
was a rollicking, boozing, boom town, spawned by the growing appetite of the
American steel industry. In a year's time, the demand for Mesabi ore would
soar, and much of it would be shipped to France after having been fashioned
into implements of war: bayonets, artillery, helmets, and even the barbed wire
that was rolled out along the trenches of the Western Front. But to see Iron
River's connection to that bloody future, or its connection to much of anything
else in 1913, took an act of imagination. The place was remote, and its inhabitants for the most part were a rude collection of men and women drawn together
by the wages of the mining industry.
The raw nature of life in Iron River was the precise quality that drew Jim
McClure into service there. He wanted his ministry to be an act of social
healing, a building up of a town and its inhabitants. He saw the opportunity to
establish the ideals of Christian civilization among a people who were suffering
from its absence. Rather than coming to soothe and comfort, Jim McClure came
to Iron River as a general leading his congregation into battle. He intended to
124
�Iron River
125
renovate the spiritual life of all the inhabitants of the town and better align it
with his concept of the Kingdom of God.
The elders and deacons were impressed with the young man's sense of
purpose, and so the church issued a formal call to Jim McClure: "The Congregation of the First Presbyterian Church of Iron River, Michigan, being, of sufficient grounds, well satisfied of the ministerial qualifications of you, Mr. James
G. K. McClure, and having good hopes from our past experiences of your
labors, that your ministrations in the Gospel will be profitable to our spiritual
interests, do earnestly call and desire you to undertake the pastoral office in said
congregation ..." (Board of Elders of the Iron River Presbyterian Church to
James G. K. McClure, Jr., October 28, 1913). The church promised to pay him
$1,000 a year, and to allow him a four-week vacation.
His call to Iron River was followed by his ordination as a minister of the
Gospel of Christ. In the McCormick Seminary Chapel, Dr. Andrew Zenos,
Jim's former teacher, issued him his charge. Jim's father prayed for the fruitful
guidance of his son by the supreme Lord of creation, and then everyone sang a
most appropriate hymn, "Faith of our Fathers."2
Working and on his own at last, Jim gathered up his belongings and left
his family. He found the church itself to be a simple structure, with bare grounds
without any flowers or shrubs. Houses crowded right up to the church building,
which was a plain white clapboard box with a large and rather ill-proportioned
steeple. His congregation was made up of the leaders in the local mining industries, the owners and engineers. The only other Protestant congregation of any
consequence in Iron River was the local Methodist Church, which had about as
many members as the Presbyterian congregation. The bulk of the working class
families, excepting the Scandinavians, were left to the two Roman Catholic
churches, one of which was Polish.
Jim intended to cross all of the barriers that divided the people of Iron
River, from religion to language to social class to national origin. He would
minister to the entire town. He chided in his first sermon the businessmen in his
congregation, demanding that they follow him across the social chasm on a
mission of Christian duty. On November 16, 1913, twenty-nine members listened as he outlined his purposes in his first message to the church:
As several of you know it was with some hesitation that I decided to offer
my name for the consideration of this congregation, for as I looked around on
the Sunday which I spent here the tasks confronting this church seemed so
large, the town growing as it is and indifference in the community to the deeper
values of life so strong and militant that it seemed to me that considering my
lack of experience in the ministry, the whole work was more than I should
attempt. I was strongly drawn to the work, however, and I felt that, as I had
explained my limitations and emphasized my lack of experience, and endeavored to make that clear, that if you felt that I could be of service to this church
and community I should like to come.
�126
We Plow God's Fields
II
»
CHICAGO, MILWAUKEE 8c ST. PAUL RY.
GOOD FOR
ONE FIRST CLASS LIMITED PASSAGE
CHICAGO (U. D.)
TO
GOOD ONLY ONE DAY FROM DATE OF SALE
13489
FORM L.'-i5
Passenger Traffic Manager
Top: Iron River Presbyterian Church, Iron River, Mich., photographed by James G.K.
McClure, Jr. Bottom: Train ticket to Iron River.
This morning I want to speak in general terms about what I come here to try
to do.
In the first place, I come here not to do certain things, I do not come here
to attempt to run anyone's business . . . 1 was born and brought up in a
community of business men and they were fine, strong, self-reliant men and I
have always had a great respect for business men and men engaged hi the
actual affairs of life. In those spheres you men are experts. Almost all the
�Iron River
127
young men with whom I have grown up have entered some form of business
or the law.
But there is one thing, in connection with the business world, that is a
burden on my heart and I expect I shall frequently mention it and speak of it
and that is my hope that the business world may be permeated by the spirit of
Christ... the fact remains that the principle upon which business is based is
not that of the strong helping the weak and it is the great task of our generation
to attempt to re-generate business-to have business permeated from top to
bottom with the spirit of Christ and that is a task before those of us who are
businessmen.
. . . I do not mean to ... interfere with anyone's individual responsibility
or conscience.
. . . in all matters of conduct, I shall not interfere with your personal decisions . . . such as dancing, theatre-going, keeping Sunday, card playing.
. . . I mean to hold before you the highest ideals.... A church, anywhere,
to be of any use at all must be a working church—and it must be working for
the community. Every member must be doing something. It is more important
that a member of the church do something than that he believe something. Do
not think of the church as a place of retreat, a place in which you can escape
the trials of the world and the strenuousness of life. The church is not a place
for tired men and women.3
The die was cast that Sunday. If Jim wanted a working church, then its
pastor would be required to exert himself to the very limits of endurance. He
would have to overthrow the accepted notion that a minister rode a pretty soft
ride, and earn respect first of all as a man of action, and secondly as a man of
vision. With no home or retreat of any sort, it would be hard for him to resist
filling each day, all day, with some useful activity. He had to prove himself to
these people, and do it by making an impact on the community. The question
was, how much stress could he maintain before his old symptoms returned?
Jim's father and mother visited him about two weeks into the work. The
Dominie understood the strains of his own profession, and what can happen to
overeager young ministers. Moreover, he knew his own son's personality, and
so cautioned him to learn to pace his life.
. . . Annie, Dumont, and Arch are eager to hear every possible word about
you and your church.
. . . Now my dear boy, let me say:
I. Try to be as calm in your mind as possible: "Study to be quiet" is
Scripture.
n. Don't try to make matters move too hastily.
"Hasten slowly" is a good motto for you and your work.
HI. Make your sustained health a matter of "purpose, plan and persistency"—Get to your room and lie down—and not think.
IV. Persuade Mrs. Young to let you remain where you are for the winter. I
will pay the bill. Fix up your bedroom in the Manse and when she wishes your
room, you can go to the Manse for a night or two.
V. I see the limitless opportunities and demands that are sure to come to
�128
We Plow God's Fields
you. Conserve your strength. Visiting is killing to nervous peace, to intellectual
development and to spiritual power. A call counts for more in many instances
than a long visit.
VI. You are answering to all that my heart could possibly wish. You are a
noble man, you are doing noble work—and I am perfectly content. Only—Be
careful not to overdo.
Let time be an element in your power. You made us very happy every
minute we were with you. Our tender and abounding love is yours.
Father
(James G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K. McClure, Jr., December 15,1913)
A week after receiving this advice, Christmas would come to this frozen
community. Jim was determined to bring the spirit of brotherhood into his
church, to fill it with as diverse a group of people as Iron River could provide.
At the same time, he would sorely miss the great joy of being with his own
family at home, a very special time for him each year. He set out throughout the
town and surrounding countryside, knocking on the doors of strangers and
persuading them to come to the Presbyterian Church for a fine Christmas service. His famous powers of persuasion worked their magic, and on Christmas
the church began to fill up with the most remarkable variety of people. As the
regulars and the newcomers began to settle into the pews, a palpable sense of
uneasiness began to settle over the congregation. Feigning nonchalance, people
began gazing about the church, wondering whence all of these people had come.
It was the kind of scene Jim McClure adored. He was a master at breaking
down the barriers between people, cutting through the suspicion and creating a
joyful and friendly ambience. After the service, he rushed about thanking the
newcomers for making the effort to come, and introducing them among the
regulars. He had a knack for remembering names, and for remembering some
small item of interest to dispel an embarrassing silence; and soon, almost
singlehandedly, he created that Christmas among a group of men and women
very strange to one another, a wonderful feeling of conviviality and Christian
brotherhood. The event was a grand success, and the Presbyterian Church in
Iron River afterwards became a growing body of believers.
Back home on Halsted Street, gathered around the McClure table that same
Christmas Day, Jim's family prayed for his well-being and then sent some letter
paper around to everyone, to cheer up their missing member.
My dear boy:
We are all gathered around the family dining table, Mother, Annie and
Dumont, Harriet and Douglas, Arch, Nathan.... and myself. We think and
speak often of you. We have wished for you a thousand times today .. .
[Harriet writing] Dinto [Nathan] and Doug are upholding the 'arty appetite
club'; D. Clarke is trying a good deal of his pleasantries much to the annoyance
of his wife, who claims that she "doesn't talk as much as she used to." Whereat
the whole table burst into a shout of acclamation.
[Annie writing] The above is not literally true. Nothing that Dumont does
�Iron River
129
annoys me, as you well know. We are having a grand Christmas but we do
miss you every minute. The baby (Dumont, Jr.) has had a wonderful day,
enjoying all his gifts with true delight. We wonder where you are celebrating—
and how many attractive ladies are looking at your "melting eyes"—I must
close as Douglas simply can't wait to put his sentiments down—
[Douglas Stuart writing] This has been a great Christmas . ..
[Dumont Clarke writing] I am following in the foot-steps of a great man,
you see so I shall shine only by reflecting glory. Dumont Jr. is just sighted and
havoc ensues—so there is no chance for more or greater thoughts. (McClure
family to James G. K. McClure, Jr., December 25, 1913)
In Iron River, the winter that followed Christmas was as harsh and cold as
it always was. Like everyone else Jim pulled his driving blanket right up over
his nose when he drove about. The physical suffering of the local inhabitants
was exacerbated as the demand for ore slackened, and the mines began to close
down. Yet, what glory there was must have shined off the young minister Jim
McClure, for he persistently worked to alleviate any hardships that came to his
attention, physical or spiritual. The boom town atmosphere of Iron River
seemed to break down the bonds of self-restraint, and Jim had to face squarely
the ugly faces of sin. Of his nine Sunday School teachers, three had had sisters
or a daughter "ruined." In one month alone twenty-one cases of rape were
brought to his attention. One girl had to leave Iron River for the second time to
abort her illegitimate child. One man, Kilkollins " . . . had slept with every cat
in the county." His wife was almost raped by her uncle, but she tore up his face
with hair pins. She eventually hired a girl with syphilis for $10 to sleep with
Kilkollins so he would contract the disease, and she would have grounds for
divorce. With unflagging energy, Jim waded into the midst of these problems,
doing what he could.4
During the winter of 1914, widows were being turned out of their homes
for the lack of $5 in rent. Young children roamed about town with no place to
go but the saloons for a little excitement. The local Catholic priest was hopelessly corrupt, getting drunk with his housekeeper and carrying on with little
girls at church picnics. At church suppers, after liberal doses of wine, the priest
would urge girls to dance the jig on the table. The local Polish community tried
to have him removed, but according to Jim's notes the priest bribed the bishop
and had the leader of the movement put into an asylum!5
Jim McClure took on the town's business. He once smelled a whiff of
corruption in the local school system, and stood up at a public meeting to grill
the Superintendent and bring to light the duplicity of his policies. He helped to
found the Iron County Welfare Association, whose purpose was to abolish the
"Liquor Traffic" and to prevent "Immorality and Vice." To the surprise of
everyone, saloons were voted right out of the county. That spring, Jim spearheaded a drive to build and equip a playground and ball park. Bats and balls
were purchased, and teams organized. Jim brought in a gymnastic exhibition,
to inspire the local children on how to use the new parallel bars and spring
�130
We Plow God's Fields
boards. He realized that the life of any community revolves around shared
activities, and that sports were a great deal healthier for the morals of the young
than hanging around idle.6
Jim's mission to Iron River fulfilled his ambitions; here was a place where
his Godly training could be put to work, rooting out sin and bringing people
together in a more holy and less suspicious environment. Here he could minister
to an entire town instead of a single, well-established church. By his own
reckoning, he set himself up as a model of high character and self-sacrifice.
He wanted to drag this grimy little mining town a little closer to paradise, and
he knew that his influence could make a difference only if he remained above
reproach. Not unlike Moses leading his ungrateful people about the Sinai desert,
he was determined that no amount of grumbling would dissuade him from his
purposes, and no amount of sin would force him to compromise his adherence
to the moral commandments. How long can a man endure such a life? His heroic
outlook masked the loneliness of his role.
In February of 1914, in the middle of that awful winter, Jim showed
himself to his parishioners as a man who was obsessed with perfection, and
consequently was unhappy with anything less in himself. Jim's ministry in Iron
River was largely a matter of preaching the highest of ideals, and then setting
himself up as an example. In a sermon, entitled "The Mastery of the Will," there
were no biblical references and God was a distant and somewhat fuzzy concept.
One's ultimate faith, Jim explained, rested solely in the individual will. Sin and
human frailties were too easily accepted; instead, through the exercise of will
weakness was to be rooted out. "We make the universe we live in," he told his
congregation. "If we determine to live as if God is good and as if men are the
children of God we will find that true. If we determine to live as if God is a lie
and all men are liars & deceivers we will find that true." He advocated a " . . .
systematic training in Mastery of the Will... ."7 He concluded by saying that
"The man who will call upon his will, with God's help, can keep from doing
wrong because . . . he brings his will into battle & creates a victory." In these
ideas, and in Jim's natural inclination, there was very little room for him to
follow his father's advice, to find a time and place to rest and relax his mind.
He began to have headaches again, but tried to ignore them.
During the following summer, he threw himself into a campaign to draw
immigrant families out of the Catholic fold. Most of the miners in Iron River
were a part of the pre-World War I exodus from Southern and Eastern Europe.
Like most old-stock, Protestant Americans, Jim was appalled by the behavior
of these men and women, and felt the Catholic Church was in large part to
blame. He saw his mission to Iron River as a chance to influence the ideals of
these Catholic workers and their families, almost none of whom attended his
church. The Presbyterian Board of Home Missions was interested in Jim's
efforts among the immigrants as well, and advised him that summer to make
an informal census of the town, partly to answer specific questions and partly
as a pretext for meeting and talking with these people. Jim was advised: "In
�Iron River
131
your canvas I hope you will find some way of ascertaining what your people are
thinking about. It is not adequate simply to say that so many people are Roman
or Greek Catholic. What do they think of the church? Are they loyal to it?
What is their affiliation with socialism?"8
"Socialism" was a scare word to the businessmen in the Iron River Presbyterian Church, filled as it was with the specter of violent labor unrest that a
small mining town could ill afford to endure. But Jim thought these businessmen
worried too much about their profits, and too little about the welfare of their
workers. He told them so in a sermon called "Unsparing Helpfulness," and
challenged his congregation to work out a plan to raise the moral level of the
local Slavic people and to alleviate some of their grievances. The businessmen
must be examples of Christian charity, or else "American standards will inevitably be sucked down by those Southern European standards—as a drowning man
sucks down a rescuer-unless we raise them artificially to our level."9
But by the time Jim McClure proclaimed "Unsparing Helpfulness" from
the pulpit, he began to face the prospect of leaving this work behind. He had
not followed his father's advice, and now all of the old troubles with his health
began to creep in and incapacitate him. In October he took a leave of absence,
hoping to rest up and return. Two months later he officially resigned, with this
letter. "After thorough examination by and careful deliberation with specialists
it appears that there is no possibility of my immediate return to the pastorate. I
feel further that a longer postponement of decision would be unfortunate. It is
with sorrow and disappointment that I herefore tender my resignation of the
pastorate ..." (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Iron River Congregation,
December 9, 1914).
It was with very similar emotions that the congregation accepted his resignation. They responded with a resolution, adopted unanimously.
Rev. McClure, in a period of less than one year, completely won the hearts
of the people of Iron River. He impressed everyone with his sincerity, cordiality and common sense.
. . . Under his care the work prospered greatly, as may be judged by the
fact that forty-eight new members were received, and a large increase was
made in the number of adherents . . .
As a leader he drew both the weak and strong to him and called forth the
best they had to give. We were drawn by his enthusiasm; we were held by his
tact, and helped by his teaching.
But Mr. McClure was a pastor to the community rather than to a single
church. That an enterprise was for the public welfare was sufficient for it to
claim his interest. He adapted himself strikingly to the peculiar needs of this
community, holding firmly to his convictions, yet cheerfully admitting room
for difference of opinion. He saw good in every man and in every creed. His
numerous small acts of attention and kindness bound him to scores of the
young and the mature. He seems to try not so much to find perfect men as to
make better men. He regarded every man's conscience as sacred. In many
cases he won the loyalty of those who naturally would have opposed him.
�132
We Plow God's Fields
Predbf tertan Church.
Services* will be held on Sunday,
10, aii-follows: ' " t^JtS^'SSZ*
10 :30 a. ra., —Morning tterviee,
Subject, /'TfeetChur^li |S;the
inanity,"
,
7:30, p. m. — Baaing .service.
ect Choosing ih$ 6*st Things. " ;
James G. K. MtrClare, Jr., will
preach at both morning at*d evening
service*.
Top: Gymnastic show brought to Iron River by Jim McClure. Bottom: Newspaper announcement.
In letting Mr. McClure go we feel that our Church and our community has
suffered a great loss. We wish him God-speed in his future life and work.10
The ways of the Lord are indeed inscrutable, for in a year's time that future
life and work would take on an entirely new look for Jim McClure. But for
now, all was the gloom of his ill-health with only the letters of his former
parishioners to cheer him up. Gustavus R. Waeber wrote:
It is difficult for me to express our feelings of regret and loss that your
resignation has brought forth among us all. The hope of your returning to the
Iron River pastorate has been with us at all times and our prayers have been
for your speedy return, for we felt that we needed you here . . .
It is we who have to thank you for the seed you have planted within us; altho
your work at Iron River was only begun, I am convinced that it will have its
lasting influence, marking the time when this congregation took its first steps
�Iron River
133
toward a practical Christianity. (Gustavus R. Waeber to James G. K.
McClure, Jr . . . Exact date unknown)
A Mr. William H. Seldon wrote this rather personal note, offering as well
a sure cure for his troubles:
We miss you, and while we miss your presence and influence at all times,
we miss you particularly Sunday evening at crackers and milk . . .
I felt that you were working very hard last summer, and perhaps carrying
too great a burden, but did not discover that it was affecting your health, in
fact thought quite the reverse was the case, and that you seemed to become
more vigorous under the pressure of hard work.
Now I am going to prescribe a remedy, which I believe cannot fail to restore
you to health, which is a summer spent in our Michigan woods, getting just
as near to nature as possible .. . (William H. Seldon to James G. K. McClure,
Jr., December 20, 1914)
One of the mine owners, Herbert Fisher, wrote Jim:
Your resignation came in the form of a shock I assure you and the loss of
your presence in this community was a real loss.
I personally knew right along that I owed you a lot for the influence on my
life and my family's, but I did not know how much that same influence had
been to the whole community.
I seldom go anywhere but what you are spoken of, and they seem so anxious
for your welfare.
Even tho you were here but a short time the people of Iron River will never
forget you and the master you served.... (Herbert Fisher to James G. K.
McClure, Jr., February 16, 1915)
Although Jim never returned to take up his post in Iron River, he never
forgot his friends there either. He continued to send money to the Welfare
League long after he had moved away, and that summer he sent one of his coats
to the minister in the neighboring town, Reverend J. W. Helmuth, who wrote
him back:
Your letter came stating that I was to be the recipient of a frock coat and
vest. In due time they arrived and I put on the coat and we all delighted to think
you sent me so good a coat and made so well and such excellent fabric . . . I
moderated the congregational meeting when they acted upon your resignation.
Your letter when read made a great impression upon the people, and when I
asked for statements from different persons bearing on the resignation, it was
hard for them to speak
(J. W. Helmuth to James G. K. McClure, Jr.,
June 28, 1915)
Of all the letters he received from Iron River, one, more than the others,
indicated to him that he had sown the seeds of Christian life there. George
Terrill, a high school student, wrote Jim that spring:
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We Plow God's Fields
Dear King:
Last Wednesday night I appeared before the Presbyterian Session to join the
church on confession of my faith . . .
I will have to be a good boy after this, which I am afraid I will find a hard
thing to do altogether. But "one and God is a majority." (George Terrill to
James G. K. McClure, Jr., March 13, 1915)
Iron River was an aborted start for Jim, but he did have a chance to try out
some of his ideas. He saw himself as a crusader, not only making his church
and Iron River a better community, but also trying to prove that religion still
had a role to play in modern society, that Christianity could lead mankind
forward. Many people, including Jim, thought that the institution of the church
was a reactionary force, retarding progress by thwarting science. Jim wanted to
disprove this view. He preached in Iron River, in January of 1914, elaborating
on the Apostle Paul's vision of the church as a body with many parts (Romans
12). Forty-two parishioners came to church that morning, and listened as Jim
preached "Is the Church Necessary in Modern Society?"
You hear often criticisms of the Christian church and disparaging remarks
about the church, remarks pointing to the idea that the church has finished its
task and is becoming impotent. When I was studying for the ministry in
Germany comparatively alone and with time for thought, I asked myself the
question, "Is the church necessary in society today?" And after withholding
my judgement for months and considering the question from all sides, I came
to the conclusion that it was absolutely necessary today.
He reviewed at some length the direct and indirect good done by the church
in history, and attributed " . . . much of all that is brightest and best in our lives"
to the influence of the church. Then he turned to the present. He quoted a judge
who claimed that he had never tried and sentenced a youth who was a church
member and attended Sunday School. The judge went on to say:
The influence for good of the modern church is greater than the church's
influence ever was before. The church has grown amazingly as the world's
wisdom has increased, all statements to the contrary notwithstanding . . . 1 go
about a good deal to the men's clubs of the churches, to deliver addresses upon
one topic or another, I find their membership to be made up, not of milk and
water youths, and doddering old men with a foot each in the grave and nothing
to live for on this earth, but of energetic, fine young chaps of all ages, among
them always, the best men of the neighborhoods in which the churches are
located...."
Having established the present moral influence of the church, Jim turned to the
future. He said,
Even if the church had had no past and were not existing at present, I believe
that some such organization would be absolutely necessary for the future. We
�Iron River
135
are in the midst of a vast historical movement. .. The organization of society
is being called to the bar of judgement and being confronted by its sins. We
are in a period of flux .. . We are in a position to inject into the organization
of society, the spirit of the brotherhood of man. . . .
He argued that, in order to establish the brotherhood of man, sweeping social
changes would be necessary, and the church would have to be involved in
making those changes take place. He talked about the redistribution of wealth,
"making a simpler life the fashion," and the importance of helping the laborer
see the importance of his contribution to society as a whole. In defense of the
poor, he said:
People often tell us that the poor are poor through their own fault, and [the]
rich [are] rich through their own efforts, and one can cite instances enough of
shiftlessness keeping men poor and industry making men rich to seem to prove
this. But it is not true. There are any number of hard working, faithful,
industrious men who are poor through no fault of their own and any number
of comparatively worthless men rich through no fault of their own.
He talked then about changing society through the efforts of "regenerated
individuals, whose wills set justice above profit and policy, and whose vision
is not warped by the desire for wealth." He urged the businessmen in his
congregation to be seekers after justice, who will bring this "social gospel" to
their business decisions, and so change society. He called for unity among
Protestant Christians to accomplish this task. Then he concluded with this call
to the church, which expresses the ideal he longed to see in the church throughout his life:
The amount of power that a church has depends on the amount of selfsacrifice that goes into it and there lies before us, the possibility, by each one
sacrificing time or pleasure, of making this church a great power in the community and in the lives of every one who comes in touch with it.11
Although Jim McClure left his mark on the Iron River Presbyterian Church,
he was not able to achieve its perfecting as he had hoped. Nor did he ever, as
it turned out, hold the position of pastor hi a church again. But he did have an
influence on many churches in another part of the country. Before he could
continue his life, however, he had to overcome the strange debility that crippled
his work. Was it in fact his approach to that work that was the problem? Did
he fight so hard against imperfect behavior in himself that eventually his emotional and physical equilibrium was destroyed? He had to find answers to these
questions before he could go on to the active life he desired more than anything.
1. James G. K. McClure, Jr., Berlin notebook.
2. Church Bulletin for the ordination service, among the papers of James G. K.
McClure, Jr.
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We Plow God's Fields
3. James G. K. McClure, Jr., sermon given at Iron River (Michigan) Presbyterian
Church, November 16, 1913.
4. Iron River notebook.
5. Iron River notebook.
6. Iron River notebook, including a photograph showing the Iron River ballfield.
8. Letter to James G. K. McClure, Jr., from The Board of Home Missions of the
Presbyterian Church, signed W.P. Shriver, August 10, 1914.
9. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "Unsparing Helpfulness," sermon given at Iron
River Presbyterian Church, September 27, 1914.
10. Resolution passed by the Congregation of the Iron River Presbyterian Church,
December 29, 1914. Found among the personal papers of James G. K. McClure, Jr.
11. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "Is the Church Necessary in Modern Society?"
sermon given at Iron River Presbyterian Church, Sunday evening, January 11, 1914.
�Chapter Nine
Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
Painting should be an accompaniment to life—it should be a means of
stimulating the imagination and spiritual side of human beings to further development, and at its greatest epoch this is what it has always been. (Elizabeth
S. Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., February 28, 1915)
Since I have known you, I have somehow been "born again." (Elizabeth S.
Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., March 2, 1916)
In the summer of 1914 two unconnected tragedies conspired to bring Jim
McClure and Elizabeth Cramer, daughter of a successful Chicago businessman
who had been studying painting in France, back to their homes in Lake Forest.
Jim returned from Iron River, discouraged and distressed over the breakdown
of his health. In October, 1914, he requested an indefinite leave of absence from
his duties as pastor from the Board of the Iron River Presbyterian Church. The
work of preacher, pastor and town reformer had broken him again. By all
accounts his efforts had been effective, and he was much beloved and respected
by his congregation, but something remained terribly out of balance in his life.
His old maladies flared up again, leaving him incapable of sustained work; so
he was forced to leave the only church he would ever have under his care.
That same summer Elizabeth Cramer was in France, busy painting. She
had set up a household in the little village of Tripled with her friend and
"chaperone," Miss Martha Clarke. The German attack on France effectively
spoiled her dreams of intense artistic efforts. Trenches, mustard gas and casualties soon took hold of the popular and serious imagination alike, and art ceased
to be the passion of Europe for some time to come.
Elizabeth had been back and forth to France for several years. She was
brought up in Lake Forest, the daughter of wealthy businessman Ambrose
Cramer, and Susie Skinner Cramer. Elizabeth's mother had been known in her
youth as a brilliant conversationalist, and was the favorite of Chicago society.1
Elizabeth's grandfather was Judge Mark Skinner, an important figure in the
development of early Chicago. The Skinners were from New England, having
been prominent in early Vermont history.2 The Cramer ancestors were from the
Church of England settlements of Southern Ireland under Cromwell. Ambrose's
great grandfather had come to Virginia in the 1700s. Ambrose grew up on a
plantation, and watched the family fortune crumble during the Civil War. After
a stint at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, he came to Chicago to recoup that
137
��Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
139
Elizabeth reading on her lawn at Rathmore.
fortune, and succeeded. The family moved to Lake Forest in 1896, when Elizabeth was eight. Two years later, her mother died. This was a tremendous loss
for Elizabeth and for her younger brother Ambrose, Jr. When Elizabeth was
thirteen, her father remarried. His new wife was Isabelle Corwith McGennis,
who had a daughter around Elizabeth's age, also an Isabel. These two girls
became dear Mends. As Elizabeth grew up she remained very close to her
maiden aunts, Elizabeth and Frederika, the adoring older sisters of her mother,
Susie.
The Cramers were members of Lake Forest Presbyterian Church, and
moved in the same circles as the McClures. They lived in a large brick house,
"Rathmore," on the bluff above Lake Michigan, with a ravine beside it winding
down to the lake. Elizabeth wrote a small book, which her father had bound in
green leather, about the children's daily adventures called Life on the Bluff.
Elizabeth and Isabel were inseparable friends of Harriet McClure, Jim's sister,
throughout their school years in Lake Forest. It was through this friendship with
Harriet that Elizabeth eventually met Jim.
Opposite, top left: Elizabeth Skinner Cramer. Opposite, top right: Elizabeth with her
father, Ambrose Cramer, and her brother, Ambrose, Jr. Opposite, bottom: Elizabeth
swinging; brother Ambrose sits on ground at left (holding bow), with an unknown companion; step-sister Isabel at right.
�140
We Plow God's Fields
Elizabeth.
Elizabeth had early shown a talent for art. As a little girl she had been
delighted at winning a contest in St. Nicholas Magazine (until her mischievous
brother Ambrose pointed out that the shadows of the pine trees in her drawing
were slanted towards each other). At St. Timothy's School near Baltimore she
and Isabel suffered under the petty regulations of a traditional boarding school,
but her artistic ability continued to develop. Then, through a program of Miss
Wheeler's School in Providence, Rhode Island, she was able to spend a summer
painting in France. A small group of girls lived in Giverny, on die Seine, right
next door to Claude Monet, who was then in his eighties. Elizabeth and Mildred
Barrage, from Portland, Maine, watched him paint in the field beside his garden. He would set up eleven canvasses in different positions around a hay stack,
then move every fifteen minutes as the light changed.3
�Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
141
Elizabeth Cramer's pursuit of art was no mere whim of a grown-up school
girl with nothing better to do. She had ability and she took her artistic education
very seriously. Her father sent her to study art in Paris. There she imbibed the
air of Impressionism, studying with an American impressionist, Richard Miller,
who had earned a fine reputation in his day. Her considerable talent grew and
developed. Her companion in art, Mildred Burrage, was equally dedicated.
Both these young women felt that the techniques of painting were based on a
firm philosophical foundation, or they were based on nothing at all. Mildred
was a vivacious and active person who pursued her intellectual sources with
something of a vengeance. A lively interaction of ideas grew up between her
and Elizabeth, and greatly stimulated the latter's curiosity. An example of
Mildred's scope of ideas is evident in the following letter, bringing in as well
Jim's Mend and fellow Skull and Bones man, Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "...
Mr. Coffin thinks we have gone back to where the Renaissance began in the
13th Century. Then men broke away from the Byzantine and Oriental standpoint
and tried to accomplish realism—and that has been done—so now we are to go
back to the East to get 'the record of a spiritual impressionism' ..." (Mildred
Burrage to Elizabeth Cramer, January 8, 1909). Elizabeth felt a spiritual kinship
with these Asian artists, who were seeking in nature a perfectly balanced beauty,
but she and Mildred, like other artists in France, were still trying to comprehend
the artistic revolution brought about by the Impressionists.
In the meantime, Elizabeth had fallen in love with France: its people, its
language, its landscape, its "influences." Lake Forest must have seemed to her
crass and rather showy, a place where time had not been allowed to deepen and
enrich either the look of the landscape or the thoughts of the people. Ambrose
Cramer, like most of the men, enjoyed discussing business. Although that
particular topic bored Elizabeth, her father's financial successes helped to pay
for her French sojourn. In 1913 he helped her buy a lovely little house in the
village of Trdpied near Etaples-sur-Mer, a noted artistic community. She invited
an older friend, Martha Clarke, to live with her. Mildred Burrage and another
young American artist, Julie Turner, planned to join them. Miss Clarke, affectionately known as "Wiggy Wags" or "Wiggy," came from Antrim in Northern
Ireland. She was well educated but had limited financial resources, and she lived
with the American girls and one or two friends as a companion, teacher and
chaperone. The exact relationship is lost in the mists of the conventions of the
time, but the fact of their mutual admiration was clear enough from their letters.
Elizabeth began to correspond with her before the Trfcpied house was purchased,
in the winter of 1913 when the Cramer family was touring Italy. She collected
great quantities of postcards to send back to Wiggy in France, with comments
such as these: "Don't you think this fat angel is a darling? . . . It's the nicest
thing in all St. Peters I really think, and it's tucked away in the vestry ..." and
"These little monks are such darlings that I had to send them to you! Do you
suppose Fra Angelico's contemporaries ever did look like these two little
ducks!" (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, winter of 1913)
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We Plow God's Fields
Elizabeth's lovely world of Fra Angelico's monks and fat angels exploded
with the first shells of the Great War. Trfcpied was located in the northeast corner
of France, just across the channel from England in the old province of Picardy.
Centuries before, Flemish immigrants had brought the cloth trade to the region,
and enough prosperity and foreign influence to tempt other powers of the region
to try to pry it loose from the French. Since the Hundred Years War, this area
had been a small splinter in a larger bone that has been fought over constantly.
In August of 1914, with Elizabeth and Wiggy having just settled in, the Kaiser
began his sweep through Belgium, just shy of Trepied, with the most superb
war machine the world had yet seen. Her prior concerns, such as planting and
managing the little garden in her yard and trying to remove the "horrid" concrete
walk, a job her brother Ambrose, who was travelling in France, had promised
to do for her, became irrelevant in the face of these events. Ambrose, nicknamed
Pedro, made a mad dash for Trfcpied to help his sister leave the country. Her
mother's indomitable maiden sisters, Miss Elizabeth (Bessy) and Frederika
(Freddy), were visiting their niece, staying at a nearby inn. This little American
society in France was caught by surprise, and the swirling excitement that
ensued quite thrilled Elizabeth. She described in a letter to her parents the series
of events that led to their escape to England.
Here we are safe & sound in London . . . It was absolutely impossible to
get any reliable information at Etaples. A week ago . .. nobody even dreamed
of such a thing as war. Everybody knew of course, about the Austrian-Serbia
business but absolutely nothing else was known . . .
When the news of Germany's ultimatum came we gloomily decided that
we should probably have to leave . . .
Saturday morning everything was quiet as usual . . . We all went bathing
. . . & the only indication of anything out of the way was the long line of
people in front of the Banque Adam cashing money. We all had a hilarious
lunch together at noon & I went over to Paris-Plage where Aunt Bessy and
Aunt Freddy were staying to have dinner with them. At four O'clock came the
sudden news that the men were to mobilize at once. A trumpeter rode through
the streets reading the proclamation & inside of two hours the men were
leaving for the front. The waiters in the hotels left instantly—in the Casino the
head-waiter came in and said that he was very sorry but he "could serve no
more tea." There was no excitement & no noise.
. . . [the] Aunties and Miss Clarke and I decided we had better go in to
Etaples & find out what was happening at the Mayor's office. We managed
to cram into the little tram that ran into Etaples in company with countless men
who were leaving at once for the army. It was then only 6 o'clock & the order
for general mobilization had come at four & the men were already on the way.
It was unbelievably swift. They all seemed eager & ready & one man said
"Well if it had to come this is the best time." Ever so many of the men in the
little tram car looked as though they had just come from their work in the
fields; their clothes were tied up in handkerchief bundles & they had not even
had time to change their working clothes . . . we tried to get a wagon to take
us back to Trepied but there were no men left to drive the horses. Finally we
�Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
Left: Elizabeth. Right: With brother Ambrose in Southern France, ca. 1913.
did manage to find an old, old man who took us home. Nobody yet believed
there would really be war. Everybody insisted that the mobilization was merely
a precautionary measure . . .
We were told Sunday that "foreigners" would not be allowed to leave until
they had seen the mayor of Tifcpied Monday afternoon. That of course meant
the loss of another day. We spent all Monday trying to close the house & pack
up a few things . . .
In the afternoon the mayor told us that we could not leave France without a
pass-port from Arras which might take from two to three weeks to secure. He
also said that no tickets would be issued on the railway to Boulogne as the
trains would be needed for the troops . . . All this had come about in one day-it
seemed simply unbelievable. "All I can do for you" the mayor said, "is to give
you permits to stay in Trepied in order that you may not be seized as suspicious
persons." Well we got our permit anyway and then I tell you we got busy.
Somehow or other aunties had been able to get hold of a motor & truck .. .
There were no men left to drive but they managed to secure a woman chauffeur. We determined to motor to Boulogne then & there & see what we could
do about leaving for England. That afternoon the order had been published for
the mobilization of all motor cars & horses on Tuesday so that if we didn't get
away that day goodness knows when we ever should . . . We left Trfcpied at
four o'clock for Boulogne & were stopped several times by armed soldiers.
You can't think how exciting it was—it didn't seem real for a minute &
everybody said that we should never get through. The railroad tracks were
guarded by soldiers & all the river bridges, but there was no excitement, only
a kind of fierce determination to kill the Germans.
At Boulogne there was the most fearful crowd of people on the docks I have
143
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We Plow God's Fields
ever imagined. There was a frightful crush & at times it came near to panic.
We all got separated from each other & from Ambrose who was buying the
tickets & we were nearly squeezed to death. I don't know how Aunties ever
survived .. . Some how or other Miss Clarke managed to find Ambrose with
our tickets & in turn she found each one of us. Once we had our tickets we
could at least try to get on board. The crowd pushed and jammed so that we
were perfectly unable to find each other & the first thing I knew poor Aunt
Freddy in a half fainting state was pushed up the gang-way by two officials &
onto die ship. After a long time we saw Aunt Bessy pushed on. Then after an
interminable interval I squeezed up to the entrance. A French soldier grabbed
me by the arm & said "Vous etes anglaise." I said "no"—whereat they pushed
me back & said "you can't get on without a passport."
I was only conscious of being perfectly enraged and as soon as I could, I
bobbed up again & tried to get by the French soldier but he pushed me back
again in the same way. Ever so many people were being turned back & I
couldn't imagine how aunties had succeeded. Finally I managed to go up a
third time & when the officer told me I couldn't get on I told him he'd just
have to let me on & that if I wasn't English I was at least part Irish & that I
would keep turning up until he let me on ... The officer looked at me hard &
finally said "Laissez passer les femmes" with which they shot me up the
gang-way . .. when Pedro [Ambrose] turned up he said he'd gotten on by dint
of his beautiful British accent acquired at Cannes! Poor Aunt Bessy and Aunt
Freddy had looked so ill that the officers had been obliged to hustle them on
It was a thrilling sight going across the channel. The full moon shone
through masses of jagged clouds & the great line of French battleships absolutely dark—without a light anywhere about them was beyond measure impressive. Tremendous searchlights played up & down the harbor & through
the sky seeking for the enemy's airships.
. . . The next night, about one o'clock, we were awakened by the most
tremendous shouting & singing. "God Save the King," "The Marseillaise,"
"Britons never, never will be Slaves" & the most tremendous hurrahing &
shouting. War had been declared between Great Britain & Germany.
At present Pedro is moving heaven & earth to get passage to America . . .
it's a cheerless thought to feel that we may be blown up by indiscriminate
German mines on the sea or captured by one of their warships! . . . Yesterday
evening Pedro & I saw Lord Kitchener come out of the War office. The crowd
around the war office were beside themselves with enthusiasm. The cheering
almost made me want to fight too! . . .
I wonder if in America you have any idea of how thrilling it is here.
(Elizabeth Cramer to her parents, October 25, 1914)
Ambrose secured, with much difficulty, reservations on a British ship, the
Royal George. When he brought the good news back to his ladies, Aunt Bessie
flung up her hands and recited, "Down went the Royal George, With all three
hundred men!"
The Aunts refused to go on such an ill-starred ship. The earliest passage
that Ambrose could find was for October, so he and Elizabeth went over to
�Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
145
Ireland to visit their Cramer relatives in the tiny sea coast town of Castle
Townshend, County Cork. The Coghills and Somervilles had been living there
since the mid-eighteenth century. Sent originally to help maintain order amongst
the "wild Irish," they lived in sympathy and harmony with them. Edith Somerville's books on Irish country life were just receiving acclaim in England. There
Elizabeth met her cousin, Sir Kendall Coghill, veteran of the Crimean War and
the Indian Mutiny. He had the power to hypnotise and used it to save suffering
in the primitive hospitals at the front (even for amputations!) In Ireland she also
met people who accepted fairies as a part of life, and she read Dracula in a
lonely tower room in the Coghill family's rambling stone edifice, Glenn Barahan. The Cramer entourage finally sailed back to America on the S. S. Olympic,
surrounded by the uncertainties of war.
After docking Elizabeth hurried back to Lake Forest, looking forward to
her old room at "Rathmore," the family home. Her friend Harriet McClure was
now the wife of Douglas Stuart, a smart young businessman who worked for
Quaker Oats. Harriet was beginning to take on the responsibilities her parents
had raised her to accept. Among other things, she served on the board of
directors of the Day Nursery, a child care center in Chicago. Working women
brought their children to the nursery to be cared for during the day. Harriet
thought if only the place could be made less drab, what a wonderful improvement that would be. With her old friend Elizabeth home, she knew just the artist
to take on the project. The board voted to provide the money, and Elizabeth
accepted the job. Later in October of 1914 she wrote to Wiggy, who had
remained in France to guard the house and work as a volunteer nurse:
What do you suppose? I have a lovely job at last. You've heard me speak
of the Day Nursery I'm sure. Well Harriet McClure asked me if I wouldn't
decorate it right off now & of course I am only too delighted. It's a large room
where the poor women leave their kids while they work . . . I had Hetty &
Douglas Stuart & Jim McClure to dinner & we all had a really charming time.
(Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, October 29, 1914)
A week later, Jim McClure again appears at the dinner table with Elizabeth:
"Saturday I went . . . to spend Sunday with Harriet Stuart & her husband. Jim
McClure & I were the only guests. Jim had come down from Iron Mountain
(where he has a church) for a rest, and we all had a delightful old time visit"
(Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, November 5, 1914). That particular occasion ended abruptly when brother Ambrose called with an urgent message that
Aunt Bessy, on a trip, had been admitted to a Washington, D.C. hospital and
required immediate surgery. Ambrose asked Elizabeth to go right to her Aunt's
bedside. Jim McClure volunteered to drive her to the train, " . . . so I packed
my bag and went as far as Evanston with Jim where I caught the 3:39 train ..."
(Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, November 5, 1914).
Aunt Bessy recovered fully from her operation, and Elizabeth returned
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home again. But something quite momentous had taken place. The little trip to
the train station proved to be a most propitious event. Elizabeth wistfully recalled a year later her feelings that day in a letter to Jim. "I have just remembered that this coming Sunday a year ago we were at Hetty's and poor Aunt
Bessy was suddenly laid in the dust and you were so nice & friendly about
helping me to get off. Do you remember sitting on the bench in the sun at
Evanston waiting for the Lake Forest train to come in, and talking? A year can
sometimes be a very long time" (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure,
Jr., October 29, 1915).
And so it was to be. By early December she began to suspect that Jim was
showing her special attention. She wrote to Wiggy, who was the confidante she
did not have in her kind but distant stepmother, that she dreaded his "getting
such ideas in his head," for she considered him just an old friend of rare charm
and interest. One of the signs of Jim's interest was his persistence. If she
declined an invitation he asked her again. He invited her to go with him to the
Art Institute in Chicago. He sent her articles and books. She wrote to him " . . .
I like being poked up and I am immensely grateful to the person who does it and
a mere 'thank you' is not at all adequate to the occasion" (Elizabeth Cramer to
James G. K. McClure, Jr., December 15, 1914).
Jim stimulated her thoughts in the religious realm, and it was perhaps at
his suggestion that she read a book called The Inside of a Cup. She reviews it
for Wiggy, revealing a good deal about herself at the same time:
It is not in the least a "work of art," or literature either, for that matter, but
it is the best interpretation of modern Christianity that I ever read anywhere
and you must read i t . . . 1 nearly burst with joy when I found a good many of
my own "heretical" views being trumpeted forth as the essence of Christianity
. . . The minister in it is very much like my unorthodox clerical friend Jim,
who informed me yesterday that he meant to do his level best to rid the Church
of "outworn doctrines" and "archaic forms" & that he thought the creeds ought
to be thrown out root & branch! I like reformers & I like fighters & anybody
who can do that . . . is both. (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, December
9, 1914)
Again she wrote to Wiggy:
My parson friend comes to see me all the time & we converse on the most
revolutionary topics. I have a feeling that he will end up by being "unfrocked"
but he's just the sort of man the churches need and I don't think he'd stop at
anything, but the poor dear has got a dreadfully hard row to hoe in the face of
all the old Presbyterian members of the session & the stick-in-the-mud formalists who rule the church boards. He has so much real charm, and is such a
favorite socially that it is extraordinary to find such single-mindedness and
virility besides. (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, December 16, 1914)
�Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
147
Meanwhile, Jim's doctors advised him to spend the winter in a more
agreeable climate than Chicago. He was urged, in fact, to give his famous
single-mindedness a good, long rest. His cousins, the Sages, were more than
happy for him to visit them at their Santa Barbara home, so after Christmas he
decided to make his move to California. With such a long absence from Lake
Forest imminent, he thought he had better clarify matters with Elizabeth, known
among her friends as Siddy. How painful for even the most courageous and
charming of young men to broach the subject of love. There had been a heavy
fall of snow and he came for her in a cutter, a one-horse sleigh, and they drove
all around the McCormick's ravine. "The vivid moonlight on the trees was a
sort of fairy land," she wrote to Wiggy. Jim only asked her if she was engaged
to anyone? When she said "No," he was silent for a long time and then said,
"Well the first thing for me to do is to get well quick." No more was said about
the subject, but Elizabeth told Wiggy she thought Jim felt he could not ask her
to marry him as long as he was ill and could not support her. She continued:
I think I told you that he'd broken down this fall and had been obliged to
lay off . . . Jim is one of these ardent tremendously interested people who go
until they drop & never consider themselves. He has had a church at an awful
place called Iron Mountain—miners & such likes & he boarded at a drummer's
hotel & not only ran the church all alone but tried to do an awful lot of social
work in the town, besides, amongst the 'Bums' and the bad lot. The consequence was he had to resign the church which was a blow.
She felt that he would probably ask her to marry him when he returned from
California in April and admitted:
I like him immensely, we both have a good many crazy, socialistic ideas
about things which make us extremely congenial and I admire him very much
. . . I'm not in love with him but then I don't really know him—it's been years
and years since I've really seen him as we've both been away— but it is
perfectly possible that if he were very much in love with me & made me feel
it—it might—in time—create that feeling in me. I don't want to be in love
with him because I want to be free to do nothing but paint & live with you . . .
so I'll fight against it, if that feeling ever should come. (Elizabeth Cramer to
Martha Clarke, January 4, 1915)
Jim McClure's removal to Santa Barbara marked off a breathing space in
his affections toward Elizabeth. He needed not only to get well, but also to be
sure the healing process was providing a permanent cure. He and Elizabeth
thought almost continuously about one another, their future together, and the
obstacles and uncertainties that plague all romances. They were both mature
adults who could articulate and often even understand their personal feelings.
The social labyrinth they had to negotiate in a proper Victorian courtship insured
a slow pace to their romance, and their ages and temperaments reduced even
further the chances of an impetuous decision.
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In California, Jim did manage to achieve one victory of sorts. Never before, or afterwards, did he play golf so well. On what must have been a glorious
winter's day at the Santa Barbara Country Club, Jim achieved a "select score"
of sixty-six, seven strokes under par.4
liie slow pace of Jim's present life gave him time to wonder, not only
about Elizabeth, but also about many other issues that touched his life. He kept
a rambling notebook of thoughts and ideas, allowing us to peer into his concerns
of 1915-16. The physical debility that kept flaring up caused him the greatest
worry, because until he could overcome this problem, none of his other dreams
would ever be realized. He found great solace in the gospel of Luke. There he
found a Jesus with a "spirit of abandon, insouciance, gaiety, recklessness . . .
[who] based everything on [an] unrestrained life of spirit & full speed ahead-...
Do not bother about what you are to eat or drink: God clothes lilies, he will
clothe you... ."5 Jim sought just this vision of Christian freedom in his life; he
felt that Christ's life was a beautiful example of a man divorcing himself from
anxiety, letting himself become-a perfect instrument of God's will and ceasing
to care about the material preoccupations of the world. If only he could achieve
this freedom, his mind and body would stop rebelling against his desire to carry
out God's will.
Jim also wanted to lead a rebellion against the spiritless and dreary practices of the Christianity of the day, which he felt dammed up its potential.
Religion must be lively .. . The Man in the pulpit must realize that he is
trying to inject into life a force more powerful than any other. A lively force,
that will turn a man inside out, change him, drive him, carry him thru the mud
of life & thru a long distance run ... The Organist should play hymns jig-time
. . . I do not believe Christ would have boasted about his family tree &
ancestors as many do today. He probably would have hidden the fact & tried
to make good himself... If Heaven is what it is often cracked up to be, a lead
pipe cinch, etc. I do not want to go there until all the misery & wrong is
removed from the world. I would prefer living in the worst hell hole in the
slums & trying to make it better.. .6
And yet, there he was surrounded by the luxuries of an exclusive resort,
where everyone was " . . . going about as if life was a soft snap—motors, golf,
idleness."7 He moaned about the expenses of his hostess, Mrs. Sage, who
thought nothing of spending $4,650 to rent a private railroad car in order to tour
America, while that same winter many wage earners were without work and
their families were hard pressed to feed themselves. "Mrs. Sage is as kindly,
generous, dear old lady as you can find—she means to do the right thing, on the
other hand, men & women are starving."8 Clearly, Jim felt great discomfort in
his own social position. At times he wished he could have been a nameless
urchin pitting himself against all the evil forces of the day without a good name
and comfortable friends to fall back on. He saw the "difficulty in a place like
Lake Forest where no one is an out & out worker of evil . . . in Iron River the
�Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
149
saloons & saloon keepers drew a sharp line—children were brought up to feel
they must fight the saloon. Life is a battle & they lined up. The Saloon element
would knock their blocks off in a dark alley, if they opposed."9
In the Progressive Era Jim saw himself as a rebel, both by temperament
and by choice. He threw his weight in with the reformers who want to overturn
the established social order, and yet he recognized the tendency in himself and
those like him to " . . . throw out the baby with the dirty water...." He went
on: "Certain individuals are born rebels—grow by rebelling, by taking the
opposite side. This is the way the world keeps from stagnating, by the introduction continually of these people. They have a divine office. But they are in
danger of rebelling negatively. They must take it upon themselves to rebel
constructively—to better what they see is wrong . . . We need rebels, & should
welcome them but their lot is a hard one—construction is harder than destruction."10
Even though Jim leveled broad attacks against Victorian piety, in some of
his prejudices he was out of step with the most progressive of his brethren. First
of all, the literary trend towards realism and naturalism chilled his emotions, in
part because they pictured man in a determined world helplessly hemmed in by
forces beyond his manipulation. He much preferred the Victorian morality play,
shoe-shine boy to bank president, over the stories of Dreiser and Norris and
writers of their ilk. He wrote, "Many 'realistic novels' are not true to life; they
simply see things without the vision. The vision is more real than the thing
itself."11 He always felt that novels, and later movies, were a wonderful vehicle
to raise the hopes of men and women, to give people a lift and encourage them
to work hard for a better world. But when a book or a movie left one in despair,
he felt progress was thwarted. Jim also found it difficult to tolerate the Roman
Catholic Church, a long standing McClure position.
Back in Chicago, Elizabeth Cramer was intent on her work at the Day
Nursery, locking horns with her own sense of social responsibility. She was
desperate to inspire the little children of the Day Nursery, and their parents,
with the same joy in beauty that meant everything to her life. The murals she
painted there would eventually win great acclaim for Elizabeth. By January, the
basic designs were worked out. The average size of the three works was to be
ten feet by seventy-six inches, quite a large space for a painter to fill. The
pictures were to be based on three nursery rhymes: "Jack Sprat and his Wife,"
"Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" and "Curly Locks, Curly Locks, Wilt Thou Be
Mine?" Elizabeth sent this general description of the designs to Wiggy. "Little
figures against a balustrade . . . with an occasional pillar now and then, big vines
sweeping down across the skyline & distant country that you look off at with
winding rivers, trees & little villages. It's more fun than a goat..." (Elizabeth
Cramer to Martha Clarke, January 12, 1915). Behind all of her effort was a new
vision of the purpose of an artist, a vision very much influenced by her talks
with Jim McClure.
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Isn't it funny how the minute you begin to do anything with an eye to using
it for the good of other people that thing at once becomes immensely interesting and worthwhile in itself. It seems as though we had to relate our lives or
rattier what we do with our lives to the people about us & just as soon as we
do that, things become really thrilling. It's so queer & that was what was &
is the matter with so many painting people—they don't connect their "life
work" with the needs in the world about them. (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha
Clarke, January 26, 1915)
These "decorations" were Elizabeth's connection to the world about her.
The patrons of the Day Nursery were the Chicago tenement dwellers so much
on the Progressive mind. Elizabeth was sure that beauty in itself, no matter how
imperfect, would move people emotionally, encourage them, and give them
hope and new vision. By placing these pictures in the daily world of all these
mothers and their children, the power of beauty might help to lift up their lives.
The more cynical thought she was wasting her time, hoping to make silk purses
out of the rabble of Chicago.
.. . People have said to me that they think it is practically a waste of time to
spend so much time & effort on things that are going up in a place "where they
won't really be appreciated." "Something else not requiring nearly as much
effort would please them just as much" the old wheezes say. It makes me so
mad but I understand what is in the back of their minds. They are thinking of
the replicas of Greek statues & the Braun photographs of Italian paintings &
all that sort of thing that the "uplift" people are always putting around settlement walls. Of course those things don't mean much to the people. It's not
because the "masses" don't appreciate & want beauty it's simply that beauty
expressed in terms of Greek goddesses & Italian renaissance ladies is simply
unintelligible to them—before everything else it's "queer" to them. It's the
interpretation of a life & epoch that Westside Chicago can't figure out at all
. . . I am convinced that the masses always respond to beauty when it reflects
or interprets what they can understand.
I've tried to keep this in mind in painting these decorations & by Jimmy
they are so awfully simple & obvious & everydayish that the little North
Avenue children really like them & enjoy them and so do the North Avenue
mothers & aunts . .. I'm sure that the "masses" in America don't get beauty
enough. They're just crazy for it & by gum I don't think I'm being foolish or
quixotic. (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, 1915)
Jim encouraged her in the work and Elizabeth's justification of it, telling her
she had discovered the very reason to paint. He went on to explain that by
catching a sense of the beauty in these pictures, these "Westside people" would
be in direct contact with Christ's spirit, thus raising their ideas and vision of
life's possibilities.
In her return letters, she loved to describe her efforts at the Day Nursery
and her thoughts for Jim.
�Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
151
I am up to my ears in the Day Nursery pictures . .. We [a Mend who had
painted with her in France, Julie Thompson, was helping her] pasted huge
sheets of butcher's paper together & then carried them in bodily to the Day
Nursery where we tacked them to the walls and drew the designs as they were
to be, right onto the paper. We spent three fervid days of climbing step ladders
and falling off of them and swallowing clouds of ancient Day Nursery dust
that we had disturbed from its hallowed resting place on the top of picture
moldings and doors . ..
The Day Nursery Playroom is a miserable narrow high room that gives you
the impression of prison walls and it has been a most interesting proposition
to make it seem wider and lower by the use of certain lines and masses. The
children persisted in swarming about the step-ladders a large part of the time
and narrowly escaped complete annihilation but their excitement was something unbounded and all sixty filled the air with criticism, enthusiasm, and . . .
instructions as to how we might improve our labours. In spite of threats and
cries of rage from me on the stepladder, they played London Bridge with joyful
abandon, right under it, & then, with a Biblical precedent to guide them, they
impersonated Sampson and struggled to bring down the roof by grappling with
the pillars of my support. I was mindful that the jawbone of an ass had once
laid low the Philistines .. . Next day, Julie and I in the proverbial "wiser,
sadder" frame of mind crawled out of bed before dawn and made much headway at the Nursery before the arrival of the sixty Dreadnaughts!. . . (Elizabeth
Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., January 24, 1915)
In a month's time, Elizabeth wrote to Jim about more of her ideas. "The
dreadful part about ideas is that half the fun of getting them is sharing them with
somebody else ..." she said. The letter continued:
Our things for the Day Nursery are slowly progressing but the hardest work
is about done & I shall go off to California with a free mind. I've found out
all sorts of things about painting. I told you that for a long time I had had a
sneaking fear that the business of going off into a pleasant corner & painting
two foot square "pictures" was never going to mean much to anybody. Once
or twice I said this to people who I thought might help straighten me out but
they always looked so astonished that I finally decided that it was no use that
I never would find out why I felt the way I did. No other painting people
seemed at all bothered that way excepting a girl with whom I had worked a
great deal off & on—a very special friend [Mildred Burrage]. Then all of a
sudden, last Spring, we ... found out for ourselves that art was never worth
anything except when it was related to life; that painting was only vitally
important & significant when it was an actual factor in the spiritual development of the race. The trouble with us was that what we had been doing was
artificial and meaningless. We spent all our time doing ladies under trees and
at tea tables or painting landscapes that had a certain amount of charm. Our
things were reasonably presentable & they gave the people who saw them a
certain momentary emotional thrill but that was absolutely all. We had never
used our minds a moment in the whole process; we were perfectly satisfied to
express a mood rather than an emotional truth,... It isn't so much the subject
that counts in art as it is what you may discover in the subject that is significant
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& universal & worthy of being recorded. Everything hi the world is an expression of the Spirit one way or another, I suppose, & in painting it's up to you
to find that out & put it down whether the subject is an Annunciation or a polo
game. Painting should be an accompaniment to life—it should be a means of
stimulating the imagination & spiritual side of human beings to further development, and at its greatest epochs this is what it has always been. In the
thirteenth & fourteenth & fifteenth centuries artists realized that they were just
as important and necessary as plumbers are now. They realized that it was their
business to make life more beautiful & more significant to the people about
them & they got right to work & did i t . . . There's just as great a need for art
now as there was then but very few artists are supplying this need.
The trouble is they devote all their time to doing clever stunts; or to getting
an emotional effect of sun & shadow, or to painting a mood. That's why our
art exhibits are such fearful bores for the most part. You go to them in search
of bread & you receive a stone. You give a few admiring gasps at somebody's
clever "realism" or somebody else's "interesting brushwork" but after all you
come away with a dissatisfied, disappointed heart! It is very rare that you
come away with a feeling that your spiritual eyes have been opened, that you
have responded to 'somebody's revelation of a great truth. You almost never
feel, after a dose of this sort, that life is tremendously worth living. That all
this should be so is very bad business. The proof of the pudding is, perhaps,
that on the other hand, the average human being cannot go into a Gothic
cathedral without being carried quite out of himself,—he cannot see the Greek
temples at Paestum and go away unchanged,—he cannot see a Botticelli fresco
hi an old convent, or a drawing by Holbein, or a statue by Rodin without being
convinced that the life of the Spirit is the only thing that matters in the end . ..
If these things that we're doing for the Day Nursery mean anything, they ought
to mean a lot! The decorations, if they are any good, should make the children
realize- unconsciously—that there is an order & a beauty and a joyfulness in
life that is greater than anything they have yet come in contact with. They
ought to create an impression that, were they to analyze it, would make them
dissatisfied with dirt and evil and conscious of a better order of things somehow attainable. Of course, to these little mites, the decorations will be primarily amusing—that is all, I suppose, that they will be directly conscious of, but
nobody can be really amused without being interested & to be interested is to
be open to many influences. Of course our things are bound to fall a long way
short of doing all this, ... [but] perhaps the next time I do a decoration, it
will have a creative influence.
Mildred & I are just bursting to do a Sunday School, —white walls & big
decorative panels from the Parables or the Life of Christ set in the walls, and
blue flower pots with pink geraniums in the windows & queer little blue chairs
for the children to sit on. Don't you think it would be nice & don't you think
the children would have a different feeling about Sunday School in a room like
that? One could do the Parables in a very simple, human appealing way .. .
I was immensely interested in what you said about substituting the word
Life for God in some of the New Testament sayings. It is extraordinary how
revealing such a change can be. A year ago for many reasons, I was all tangled
up and I wasn't sure whether there really was anything to work for. But now
I know what Christ meant by "the Kingdom of God" and as you once said,
�Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
153
just because "God needs man's help," human life is significant when it is
expressed in terms of service.
When you realize that Christ impressed it upon his hearers that perfection
is attainable & that all one's efforts should be directed to such an end, it puts
a new meaning into life. But when I was a child, I was taught the dreadful
gloomy doctrine that no matter how much you strive for perfection around you
in this world it was no use really because you were merely "human" & Christ
was "Divine"—and yet; you were to go on trying just the same . . . This is a
very long queer letter for me to be writing to you but we did talk about these
things and somehow or other my inky tongue has pursued an unbridled course.
That A.C.C. [her brother] letter paper was so inviting (fortunately the supply
has come to an end!) It has such a leisurely expansive air! You can't help being
conversational on paper like that whereas my variety is the tall, crabbed species that spells moderation & sedately chaperones your pen! . . .
Sincerely, 'Sid' (What a funny stubby name! I feel apologetic for this
document. I had no idea of its length!!) (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K.
McClure, Jr., February 28, 1915)
This author makes no such apologies, and is only grateful that the A.C.C.
stationery held out as long as it did. Jim McClure was becoming involved with
a remarkable woman.
By a stroke of good fortune, Elizabeth and her family were leaving in a
week's time for a trip out West, and Santa Barbara was on the itinerary. Leaving
a slowly thawing Lake Forest for the sunshine of California, the Cramer entourage included Aunts Bessy and Freddy and young Ambrose. For Jim McClure,
it would mean a short rendezvous with Elizabeth, and he looked forward to the
visit with all of the expectations and fears of a young man in love. Perhaps his
golfing scores began to balloon upwards as he began dividing up and filling in
the time she would be with him, wondering exactly what activities would please
her the most. Fortunately, Jim was the sort of man with friends scattered everywhere, and right nearby he had one who was a painter! The Cramers were all
house guests of their cousins the Bakers, who claimed a spectacular view of the
Pacific Ocean in one direction and the mountains in the other. To Wiggy,
Elizabeth sent her confidential report on the fruits of Jim's efforts:
In about five minutes Jim is coming for me in his motor to go up to Russel
Cheney's studio to see his paintings. Do you remember hearing Mildred speak
of him? . . . He is also a great friend of Jim's . . . We had such an entertaining
time the other night. The children plus the Reverend James have been planning
a concert for weeks. Isabelle & young Grace Meeker [who had sparked a
romance with Elizabeth's brother Ambrose] being the star performers on
combs, Mary Baker on a concertina & Jim the master of a dreadful instrument
called a "humanatone" that he manipulated somehow with his nose! Ambrose
& I were drawn into the thing so I got a cheap fiddle down town & Ambrose
took the part of Orchestra leader . . . It was very amusing & absurd; the night
of the performance the "artists" were all asked to come dressed to dinner, so I
roughed & curled my "short" hair until it stood out around my head like a
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regular German Genius. Then I wore my black goggles & Father's evening
coat, collar & shirt. I was a sight! But I did look the part even to the legion of
honor button. It was a huge joke because I sat next to Mrs. Sage (Jim's cousin)
at dinner & she was so surprised she pretty nearly went under the table.
Naturally she had a lively curiosity as to what I was like & when she was
introduced to "Monsieur Jaques Thibaut" a wild mass of ... terrier hair &
black goggles, I wish you could have seen her face! (Elizabeth Cramer to
Martha Clarke, March 17, 1915)
Monsieur Thibaut and her Cramer clan ended their short visit, leaving Jim
to himself and his golf. They went off to view some more of the wonders of
California, as her next letter to him reveals.
Dear Jim,
After several days of intense enthusiasm in the Yosemite Valley, we are
back again in San Francisco. We spent most of four days driving behind a
bouncing stage and eight horses. It is an amazing place. Everything was
somehow on a superlative scale. The "Big Trees" are the most extraordinary
things in the world & it is all I can do not to give you detailed accounts of just
how high & how thick they were . . .
I do hope your head isn't bothering you,—I have somehow a feeling inside
me that you should not write long letters even to a very appreciative lady
friend, for I know what a fatiguing business it is when you are not feeling up
to the mark. These, sir, are sage words . . .
What you said about the possibility of really attaining perfection had a very
special meaning because in your case it was backed up by actual experience.
It must have been a thrilling kind of life to make those Iron Mountain people
realize just what they were up against,-but every now & then I keep thinking
how did you do it,—how could you always give them what they demanded, how could you so interpret their own needs when the intellectual stimulus in a
place like Iron Mountain must have been very slight, very meagre? How could
you do it! All this is very personal but when we passed through the dreary little
Kansas towns with their hideous frame houses and their dingy streets I tried
to imagine myself living in just such a place,—it was a kind of test after all
our conversations,—and somehow or other every bit of self confidence seemed
to leave me and I had a dreadful feeling that in spite of everything I had said,
six months in such a place would use up every thought, every worth while
emotion I had ever had & that in a little while I would be going about with a
dead spirit in a living body. Because, if you give & give to people and nothing
in the way of spiritual or intellectual stimulus comes back to you why how can
you go on living? But perhaps the answer to all that is again in Christ. When
He said, over & over again, "The Kingdom of God is within you" isn't it
simply making a definite amazing statement that the life of the spirit can after
all be best renewed from within; that prayer, in the highest meaning of the
word is a source of eternal life to the spirit,—that in seeming to lose all, one
gains everything? I don't know; when I said something like this to you a little
while ago you said that you too were dependent on outside stimulus. And yet,
one thing is certain. Christ, who possessed one of the richest minds the world
has ever known, lived in surroundings that demanded all of him that gave him
�Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
155
almost nothing in return. The people he came in contact with had for the most
part simple untutored minds. The poverty and sordidness about him must have
been immeasurably alive. Nothing in the life of Christ seem to me more
significant testimony than that. (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure,
Jr., April 11, 1915)
With what beautiful encouragement Elizabeth Cramer gathers up the
threads of Jim's life into a poignant sermonette. She too worships the hero Jesus
of Nazareth, who effortlessly waded into the sordidness of first century Palestine
without obvious encouragement and cultural sustenance. Could it be that the
kingdom within, the power of the Almighty, might sustain one in the desert of
poverty? Or maybe there is nourishment after all, a world "immeasurably alive."
Both Jim in Iron River and Elizabeth at her Day Nursery were seeking answers.
For Jim, the practical question remained, "How can I 'lose my life' to the
gospel, and yet remain healthy?" He had to solve this riddle, not only to carry
on his work, but to propose marriage to Elizabeth. As she left California, Jim's
spirit—the health of his spirit—weighed heavily on her thoughts as well. Was
the California cure working its magic? When would he be able to come back to
be with her? She writes to Miss Clarke about the present state of his malady,
going on to outline some of the thoughts the two of them had been sharing.
He is better—but he said that he wasn't as much better as he had hoped to
be ... Older people shake their heads & say "he ought to leave the ministry
& take up something less absorbing & less taxing" but he won't hear of it. He
is confident that once he is well again he can go back to his job, & it is a job
that he is perhaps peculiarly fitted for because he has a fine mind, a rare quality
of charm & sympathy & an ability to meet people on their own ground. At
heart he is a reformer & a radical but he has much tact & a way of looking at
every question from many sides. At Iron Mountain parish . . . he lived hi a
perfectly crazy sort of way. He had a room in a drummer's hotel & ate there
with all sorts of people & he worked like a dog every minute to change social
conditions which in a mining town are apt to be pretty bad. He said himself
that the people he was up against were the kind who felt that a minister had
an easy berth & an easy job & that the only way he could get a hold of them
was to work harder than anybody else. That he did with the result that at the
end of ten months he was knocked out. What makes me hopeful however is
that he has never been to a real nerve specialist & they are bound to give a
treatment that is different even from that of the best general practitioner.
In the meantime we are both the richer for a friendship that is very real &
very stimulating—a friendship that is based on a community of ideas & that
is constantly opening up new paths in many directions . . . [Jim] thinks that
humanity will get rid of poverty just as it has freed the world from the Plague
& from certain other horrors & that once this is done, the "Kingdom of God"
will come far more swiftly. But charity is never going to do it. Charity is only
a poor substitute for justice & love. (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke,
March 29, 1915)
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Springtime in Chicago drew Jim away from the eternal summer of California, where his homemade "cure" had produced only a meagre improvement.
He decided to take a more professional approach toward better health. He found
a sanitarium in New York State, the Jackson Health Resort, that held out hope
for a full recovery. There could not be a resolution of the romance until Jim's
health began to respond to treatment, and any uncertainty was enough of a
reason for Elizabeth to try to keep the condition of her private affections as
secret as possible. Before leaving again, Jim slipped out to Lake Forest and left
a small gift at the Cramer residence, Rathmore. He wanted to let her know that
his intentions remained serious, and she, in turn, writes back in her most
assuring style:
There are blue violets in the woods. The wild crab-apples are in bloom and
the blue sky behind the pink blossoms is the most beautiful thing in the world.
This evening the maid brought me your flowers—I wonder why you sent them.
I remember so well the first ones you brought me—pink sweet peas & some
little stray white flower that had an indescribable haunting fragrance. I was so
surprised when you brought them to me; it was a cold winter day & the dear
things made me remember Spring & all the joyful moments that come with
Spring. We went for a long walk afterwards and all at once I knew that you
were not like anyone I had ever known. There was a strange little joyful song
in my heart all mat evening—"Here at last is someone who regards life as a
high adventure. Here is a man who has dug down below preconceived opinions
& old prejudices and who is willing to stake his life on his beliefs." It meant
more to me than I can say. Ever since my mother died I had been searching &
questioning & sometimes giving up on the fight & just drifting with the tide,
then last year all at once I began to feel that at last I was on the right track,
that the light ahead was from God & that the business of life from now on was
to keep on this road. After so many years of following blind trails & beating
about in pathless woods it meant a peace that could not be put into words. And
then came that walk with you; the water was a strange magic colour, indescribably beautiful. I remember how delicate & lovely was the tracery of the black
twigs against the sky. We talked of ordinary commonplace things and then on
the way home when it was dusk you talked on the things you believed in. I
said almost nothing but all the time in my heart I was saying "does he know
how much it means to me to hear these things?" It wasn't so much the things
that you said though these things illumined my own life but it was that you
should have said them. Can I ever make you know what that meant. It meant
that something gallant and brave and adventurous had suddenly revealed itself
as the very essence of one man's life. And this man would perhaps some day
be my friend—one of those rare precious friends with whom one is permitted
to share the life of the spirit. I wonder if you felt at all any of the intense
eagerness & the amazed happiness that could find no adequate expression in
my words to you? After you had gone I sat still for a long time & thought of
all the things you had said. I was proud, in a curious personal way that you
had not given in or accepted the beliefs & conventions of the society that
claimed you; that you had been too honest to accept belief before you had
earned the right to take it. There is something tremendously exhilarating in
�Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
157
what you had done. I wanted you to know that I felt this but there were no
words to tell you. (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., May 18,
1915)
Jim McClure left Chicago two days after receiving this message from
Elizabeth. He was determined to overcome his disability, but restless determination was also a source of his difficulties. At the Jackson Health Resort, he would
be under the direction of doctors who assured him that cases like his came
through their doors all the time. Jim's new "cure" consisted of great quantities
of fresh air and water. The air was breathed playing more golf; he bathed daily
in the hot mineral springs around which the sanitarium had been built. He wrote
Elizabeth that after so many baths, he was bound to emerge as either a sea lion
or a tadpole. The doctors wanted him to rest and forbade reading; he was
somehow to slow down the torrent of ideas that swept through his mind. He did
hire a Mrs. Steele to read aloud to him, otherwise the ennui of this life would
have been unbearable. To his mother he wrote that "My days pass without much
variation. Today I indulged in a hair cut ... Mrs. Steele ... finished Cortez
some time ago, then read accounts of various other Spanish explorers in America ... Golf every other day has been my program" (James G. K. McClure, Jr.
to Phebe Ann Dixon McClure, exact date unknown). Mrs. McClure herself
arrived to help break the monotony, perhaps on her way to Rhode Island, a trip
she tried to make every summer. Indulging in a little 'cure' herself, she had
come to comfort her son, and give him the confidence he needed to see his
recovery through to the end. Jim kept careful records of all his considerable
expenses, and somehow fought back the notion that was a basic part of his view
of life: a thirty-year-old man not pulling his own weight in the working world
was draining the resources of his family and the pool of wealth of the society
at large.
Another sinking notion that must have crept into his mind from time to
time concerned the distance between him and Elizabeth. Despite all the letters,
there was no formal agreement between the two of them. She was a most eligible
young lady, and disastrous scenarios of successful suitors replacing him were a
natural condition of his tenuous circumstances. The romance had reached a
plateau. But she and Jim still continued to enjoy a rich intellectual relationship,
despite the distance between them. She wrote him after a dinner party when she
had sat next to a gentleman who considered Christianity
. . . morbid, reactionary, most injurious in its effects on the world. He also
said that he would never have anything to do with any clergyman because "all
clergymen were either fools or hypocrites." I said that I personally knew two
who were neither—yourself, Sir, & an Irish Mend, whereat he very amusingly
asked, to my secret indignation, "were they good looking?" I regretted bitterly
that I could not tell him that you were both as homely as a rhinoceros! . . . I
couldn't understand at first why such a very clever man should so utterly
misunderstand the teachings of an extraordinarily keen-minded revolutionary
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like Christ . . . After I had thought about it a while it seemed to me that
Christianity to him meant bondage & ceremony & hypocrisy & an emphasis
on doctrines that are based on assumptions rather than on fact and behind it all
Crusades & Albigensian wars & all the hundred & one inquisitions & horrors
that have been perpetuated in the name of Christianity, and that living in
Europe one feels perhaps with added force. He has mixed up Ecclesiasticism
with Christianity, I feel sure. He condemns the fire that warms his house
because of the smoke that fills his eyes. And yet he is so sincere & so intolerant
of shams . . . The last time I saw him he said "Never believe anything, you
only know." I thought about that & then I had to admit that while he had a
remarkable intellect, he had no imagination whatever, & that after all civilization has only progressed when people were willing to trust their imaginations
. . . 1 wished for a glib tongue every time I saw him instead of my own
stumbling possession! (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., June
2, 1915)
A week later, her thoughts return to painting.
. . . I suppose the whole "raison d'etre" of art depends on whether you think
beauty is necessary in life or not and that is something that almost everybody
would answer in only one way. Perhaps it is because real beauty is something
that possesses a life giving quality,—it somehow or other renews your spirit
and everybody wants that.. .Everybody wants beauty—it seems always to
quicken your sense of being alive and that means happiness and peace and a
blessed conviction that you are really necessary in the scheme of things. The
people who live in the hideous dreary parts of Chicago just flock to the Art
Institute Sunday afternoons hoping that they will find what they lack there . . .
I used to think that people's souls couldn't develop in sordid hideous surroundings but I know now that I was wrong. Spiritual development comes from
within but beauty is an incalculable help because it keeps your spirit alive.
(Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., July 2, 1915)
Elizabeth Cramer loved the reveries of a carefree afternoon, when her
imagination could be loosed without constraint to stumble over some new inspiration. She told Jim, "I feel envious of tramps. They have no possessions to
chain them down. They can go comfortably out in the sun & smell the ...
flowers & lie on their backs and watch the clouds making patterns of themselves
while all the time the affluent Mrs. Jones & Mrs. Smith are angrily cleaning
their silver or making new chair covers" (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K.
McClure, Jr., July 5, 1915). Relaxation never came easily to Jim. He always
thought of one more chore that needed doing, remaining uneasy until the
thought was followed by the accomplishment. Elizabeth's quiet nature, her
insistence on late afternoon strolls, her constant thrill at finding new and unexpected scenes of beauty all brought into Jim's life a new dimension of experience that protected him from his own nature. Jim's life in the summer of 1915
was in flux, and slowly but carefully he and Elizabeth learned about each other.
�Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
159
The events that followed their marriage would alter his aspirations, his daily
habits and his geographical allegiance.
The doctors of Dansville were already telling him to stay away from the
ministry for a few years. In one of Elizabeth's letters to Wiggy she mentions
that " . . . the Dansville man says he will be cured but that he cannot go back
to the ministry for two years & that he would have to do something that keeps
him out of doors. It is cussed luck & he thinks now of getting some land in
South Carolina or Georgia & as he says digging himself in" (Elizabeth Cramer
to Martha Clarke, August 20, 1915). The Jackson "cure" was taking a long time.
He spent the summer and most of the fall there, except for a brief sojourn in the
backwoods of Michigan. "Jim is up in the Michigan woods," Elizabeth reported
to Wiggy. "Poor dear he's rather cast down. He wrote me the other day that he
would have to give up writing me until he gets the better of his head. The doctors
say he will surely be cured but that he will have to be outdoors & live a quiet
outdoor life for the next two years which he says has upset all his plans"
(Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, August 25, 1915).
In another letter, she explains to Wiggy the diagnosis of Jim's difficulties.
"It seems that they think that for some years he has forced the blood into his
brain through overwork & study & that in doing so the blood vessels became
dilated & lost their elasticity so now they're trying to get it back again & I rather
think he's there for all summer." And then to Jim again:
Of course you mustn't write letters to people until your head is quite well
again, I said as much to you before, young man.
Isn't it splendid that your Dansville doctor has discovered the reason for
your headaches. That is so encouraging because of course it is only a question
of time now before you are quite over. I'm so glad you've decided to take his
advice about leading some kind of outdoor life for two years or so ...
In two weeks I expect to wipe the last remaining paint stains off my shoes
and start for Manchester. How nice that there is a possibility of seeing you
there—. . . (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., August 30, 1915)
Manchester, Vermont held out great possibilities for Jim and Elizabeth.
The Green Mountains in the early fall put on one of the natural world's most
miraculous events, "The Foliage Season." Jim did indeed plan to visit Manchester. He was to stay with Annie and Dumont in the house he had helped to
build. Elizabeth's home base would be the stately and rambling Mt. Equinox
Hotel, where she resided with the aunties, Bessie and Freddy, who were often
seen strolling down the shaded marble sidewalk in long white dresses.
She wrote to her confidante, "Jim is staying with his sister . . . I'm afraid,
Wiggy darling, he is nicer than ever. My aunts adore him . . . The poor thing
is nearly dying of ennui because he can't look at a book and he adores reading"
(Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, September 27, 1915). With both Skinners
and McClures in the surrounding countryside there was a constant round of
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We Plow God's Fields
social obligations for both of them. But despite Elizabeth's expectation of a
month of companionship with Jim, he abruptly cut his visit short, returning to
the sanitarium a frustrated young man unable to see himself a marriageable
prospect. She was stunned by his departure. She wrote to Wiggy:
. . . We went on some long, long walks & climbs & the time just flew by.
Tuesday we took lunch with us up Stratton Gap . . . He told me then that all
his best hopes had gone smash, that the Dr. said he wouldn't be really well for
six months & that he was going back to Dansville the next day. I was so
surprised I nearly fell off the log into the ravine below because, only the day
before he had been planning for us to go up Equinox and over to Roaring
Brook & goodness knows what all. I tried to appear as though it were perfectly
natural for him to be going though I knew that his original intentions had been
to go back to the Sanitarium in November but he seemed so dreadfully upset
that I didn't ask any questions. "You see," he said, "the trouble with me is
I've got congestion of the brain; that's the long & the short of it. The doctors
say it's a very common thing but that it takes time to cure & that I'll have to
come back here for the rest of winter." He started to say more but he stopped
short & after that we both of us tried to forget all about it—and we did I think.
We talked & talked & finally as it seemed about lunch time Jim looked at his
watch & found it was 3:30 & there we were at the top of the mountain with
our lunch way at the foot of the mountain. It was too absurd for words but there
were so many things to talk about that the time had fairly rushed by. When
we finally did get back to our lunch it was five o'clock & pitch black before
we started home. We had motored over the stoney field . . . just below the
mountain & it was a delicious black night with huge shooting Northern lights
in the sky. Going back I behaved as though his departure next day were the
most natural thing in the world. "I'm sure you'll feel a lot better Jim after this
second Dansville bout," said I in my most commonplace tones. He didn't
answer at first. Then he said right out flat, "It isn't that I really have to go
back to Dansville tomorrow but I can't go on seeing you any more until I'm
perfectly well,—so I've got to go away. As far as my head goes I'm feeling
pretty fit; —its been pretty stiff work to keep from saying anything to you,"
he added. That was all but of course I knew what he meant. He won't ask me
to marry him, he won't even tell me that he cares about me until he's a well
man. If he did, I don't suppose any longer that I could give but one answer. I
might even be a bold & brazen hussy & do the proposing myself if I were not
afraid that it would only make him feel worse about it all & be totally ineffectual. With all his charm & his gentleness he is perfectly immovable when he
makes up his mind. Apparently he thinks that it would be dishonorable to ask
me to marry him & to even tell me he cared about me while he is out of a job
& ill, & I suppose he felt that it was an impossible situation to go on seeing
me day after day without speaking of what was uppermost in his mind. There
was nothing else for him to do but go, but it has been hard on us both....
(Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, October 3, 1915)
Annie and Dumont, like the Aunties, were doubtless hoping the match was
being made on the hike up to Stratton Gap. When darkness closed in, his
brother-in-law Dumont decided that either Jim had proposed, or they were lost,
�Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
161
or most likely they were both engaged and lost. He organized a search party,
setting forth to meet the straying couple with lanterns, and when they met them
both smiling and in good spirits, he was even more sure of the results. Later he
queried, "Well Jim, did you ask her?" It was of course the very worst of
questions under the circumstances, and even Jim could not hold back a gruff
reply.12
In two letters to Wiggy, Elizabeth wrote:
He sent me yesterday a perfectly huge enormous box of lilies of the valley
& orchids. I never had so many flowers from anybody in my life. They filled
four or five huge vases & I felt like a debutante . . . I didn't open the box for
ages because it was huge I thought it contained my clothes from the wash & I
almost passed out when I opened it and saw the flowers. I feel as though the
sender had vanished. I had a little note from him when he reached Dansville
but he was unable to write oftener than once a month as writing brings on the
pain in his head. I don't write either . . . It's the deuce . . . The time seems
awfully long & next spring seems a hundred years o f f . . . . (Elizabeth Cramer
to Martha Clarke, October 16, 1915)
The Aunts are horribly disappointed that he is gone & totally mystified.
They think of course that he simply overdid here. I don't know what in the
world his sister & her husband think! Of course they know that he likes me &
I'm afraid they think I've calmly turned him down & sent him packing like
an unconscionable flirt. The Aunts, dear things, are so amusing. They do
nothing but descant on Jim's charms & they would almost burst with joy if I
should marry him. Aunt Freddy keeps telling me how fond she is of him &
what a thoroughbred he is & how much charm she thinks he has, though she
adds quite frankly that she doesn't agree with him in all his ideas. Dear Aunt
Freddy, she and Jim are poles apart when it comes to theology & a number of
other subjects! I'm writing all this dearest because . . . I just have to talk about
it to somebody. (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, October 3, 1915)
Jim and Elizabeth must have been central figures amongst the parlor gossips that fall, and when he pulled out of town so abruptly, theories of cause and
effect rattled around Manchester. Elizabeth remained with the aunts at The
Equinox for her allotted stay, missing Jim terribly.
The leaves of Vermont turned brown and dropped. The smell of them
burning filled the late afternoon air after the men had come home from work.
It had been a year since Jim, Harriet and Doug Stuart, and Elizabeth had dinner
together at Rathmore. Time in Manchester passed very slowly for Elizabeth and
her letters to Jim were fewer and attempted to rejuvenate some interest in
theology. It seemed that the six more months at Dansville would be a year. Jim
wrote her to explain.
The thing that has been at the bottom of my mind & that has been bothering
me for a long time is not so much the getting fit but the ability to stay fit &
do heavy strenuous work. I knew all along that I was apt to go at things too
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hard and in a way that might use me up again, so I asked this man (Dr.
Gregory) could he do this for me. He is a direct sort of a chap & his answer
rather staggered me, "Not unless you remain here a year." I've decided to
settle down & see the thing through. . . . (quoted by Elizabeth Cramer in a
letter to Martha Clarke, November 26, 1915)
She absorbed the latest setback while visiting her artist friend Mildred
Burrage in Kennebunkport, Maine. By late November, it was time to return to
Lake Forest. She planned to spend the weekend in New York City, and then
on to Chicago and home. On the train from Kennebunkport, she wrote Jim about
the Burrage household and the little town. Doing her best to set an encouraging
tone, she told him: "You're a regular 'brick,'—I feel like saying a lot more but
I won't! Of course the only thing for you to do is to stay on at Dansville . . . A
year seems an awfully long time when you first think of it but even two years
wouldn't be long if it meant that you were going to come out with sound health.
Do stay a full year where you are" (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure,
Jr., November 22, 1915).
Elizabeth checked into the Martha Washington Hotel, a prim establishment
that advertised itself as "The only hotel in the world exclusively for women."13
She received there an urgent message from Jim that he was coming to New
York and wanted to see her. She left him this message at the front desk:
Dear Jim,
I feel turned topsy-turvy,—a few days ago it seemed as though I should not
see you again until I had achieved white hairs & a cap, and now,—here you
are!
Will you meet me at the Plaza—in front of the news stand near the elevators
& across from the main desk, about half-past three this afternoon? It is too bad
for you to have this trip down town for nothing but I am obliged to keep an
appointment with the oculist this morning and it is apt to be a longish performance. Rather than keep you waiting in this odious place [the Martha Washington] I shall take you at your word & name the Plaza instead, as I have
appointments in that neighborhood. Besides, I somehow hate to think of associating anything nice like you with this smug bourgeois spot! The drawingroom resembles a dental "parlour" and the "lady guests" all wear white waists
with stiff collars & seem to be concealing curl-papers under their hats! Ugh!
Why is Respectability always so uninviting! This seems to be the one place in
New York where the lone spinster may stay without offending Madam
Grundy. You are a bright prospect and after 3:301 am bound by no ties. The
Plaza is near the Park so we can go for a walk therein & throw peanuts at the
monkeys, or take a bus-ride, or just retire to the Plaza drawing room & talk...
I have a sort of an idea that this is all the result of a Thanksgiving dinner &
that I shall presently wake up & find that you are not coming at all. (Elizabeth
Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., November 27, 1915)
At the Plaza hotel a remarkable scene unfolded. Impediments fell away,
and the romance of Jim McClure and Elizabeth Cramer found its freedom.
�Elizabeth Skinner Cramer
163
Without hesitation, he asked; and she accepted. A flood of the rarest joy swept
over them both. They rushed out and hired a horse and carriage. Jim told the
driver to keep going around Central Park until told to stop. Afterwards, they
returned to the Martha Washington, a most ironical setting for the newly engaged, and he proceeded to scandalize the patrons with his obvious affections
towards Elizabeth. She laughed and called him a "shameless creature," and
recalled later that " . . . you so disturbed that respectable, open-mouthed old
lady in the corner . . . and you a properly brought-up young man!" (Elizabeth
Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., December 14, 1915) She was as guilty
as he of course, and they were both utterly unconcerned about the rest of the
world. All that mattered was that the waiting and uncertainty were over, their
engagement had begun. What had happened to change the situation so quickly?
My own dearest Wiggy,
. . . I wrote you a hurried tiny line two days ago to tell you that your
indifferent celibate Pigie was actually going to marry Jim McClure . . . You
see when the Eh*, told him he would have to stay on for a year he said he just
couldn't bear it, that he couldn't sleep for thinking of me & that he knew all
the good he got there would be nullified so he went to Dr. Gregory & told him
he just couldn't bear it living away from me, & not speaking and that Dr.
Gregory had somehow got to help him. With that, Dr. Gregory sprang from
his chair, grasped him by the arm and said, "Why, why, why didn't you tell
me all this at first! Why the best thing you can possibly do is to get married.
You'll be all right in no time. You are well now. It's only to insure your
remaining well that I said you must stay here a year. Why you'd be far better
off married. You'd recover your staying powers more quickly & there is
absolutely no question about it's being the best thing to do!" Jim said that he
brought up every possible objection and that the Dr. just bowled them over
one after one. Jim said it took him just twenty minutes after that before he
telegraphed me thinking I was still at the Barrages and—you know the rest.
Of course Wiggy darling he will not be able to do any work for two years and
he will have to live very quietly. But he has a small income—a very small one
& considerable money put by, & so we can get married anyway. We shall
always be frightfully poor .. . Anyway it's much more exciting to marry a
poor person with ideas than a rich one with none & then there's always my
money for emergencies though he declares that he will never touch a penny
of it. . .
We don't know where we shall go & what we shall do. Jim's idea is to rent
a little place somewhere in the mountains of Carolina or Virginia perhaps with
the option of buying it at the end of two years & then keeping it as a "retreat"
for vacations & things like that when he was busy with a parish. When he gets
well he'll probably take a parish in the slums because he said that for all he
knew he would always pick out poor & unfrequented districts but it's a grand
good adventure & I can cut my coat to fit my cloth even though it may be a
bad job at first. (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, December 1, 1915)
Earlier in the same letter, Elizabeth had told Wiggy:
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. . . his whole life seems to be permeated & filled with what Matthew
Arnold calls "The Power not Ourselves." I never thought I should find anybody who could somehow make my own life so much larger & freer & with
it all so full of humor & lightness. I am a very lucky person Wigywag darling.
A curious thing is that ever since I have known him I have had the feeling of
being tremendously stimulated & yet immensely peaceful—there was no effort
no striving after anything, just a curious sense of being recreated within. I
knew after Christmas last year that nothing but this inevitable end was possible
but I wanted to think it out clearly & consciously. (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha
Clarke, December 1, 1915)
And in yet another letter:
. . . It isn't that Jim is brilliant or extraordinarily clever either. I don't know
what it is exactly. I've known men who were very much cleverer. I think one
reason that I like him so much is because he is so unconscious of himself as it
were; he's such an odd mixture of impulse and reason and he's a very eager
person only he's almost more eager for other people than he is for himself if
you know what I mean by that. And then he always trusts people & expects
the best of them and he consequently always gets it. (Elizabeth Cramer to
Martha Clarke, winter of 1915)
Other people have commented on Jim McClure's personal qualities, but
no one ever described them better than Elizabeth. Here was a woman who could
match Jim's intellect, slow down his "impulses," help him to notice the beauty
around him that he might otherwise rush past. Elizabeth Cramer was the perfect
match for Jim McClure—intelligent, sensitive, fun-loving, and willing to share
a life of intellectual and literal adventure.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
Clipping of article from Chicago newspaper, 1916, found among family papers.
Pamphlet on the Pierrepont family genealogy.
Interview with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
Jim's scorecard, found among his personal papers.
Santa Barbara notebook, February 20, 1916.
Santa Barbara notebook.
Santa Barbara notebook.
Santa Barbara notebook.
Santa Barbara notebook.
Santa Barbara notebook.
Santa Barbara notebook.
Interview with Dumont Clarke, Jr.
Hotel slogan printed on a piece of letterhead found among family papers.
�Chapter Ten
Marriage
So long as our lives individually strive to embody the spirit that comes of
God, our souls seeking renewal always in the source of all life must then meet,
and of necessity become one, since in God there is no separation. (Elizabeth
Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., February 8, 1916)
I thought of you in the middle of salad tonight . . . about made everyone
else in the dining room look as gray and uninteresting as oysters. (Elizabeth
Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., January 23, 1916)
If Jim and Elizabeth's courtship had meandered and lingered through a
difficult course, the end came in a rush. Now they would have several months
of engagement to savor their joyous new status. Before their rendezvous in New
York, queries and doubts had often piled up in their minds like afternoon
thunderheads on a hot summer's day.
Elizabeth had not always been sure that she was ready to become Jim's
wife, characteristically because she worried that she, an artist, might hinder his
work as a minister. The conventions of the day portrayed the artist as a freespirited rebel, especially if the artist was a woman and had left the confines of
America to pursue her craft in Paris! There could not have been more distance
between that image and the one reserved for the wife of a minister, who was
expected to radiate prim virtue, to be in all matters reverent and uncomplaining,
to participate in the endless talk of missionary societies and sewing circles, to
raise her family according to the rules of the Victorian Age, and to entertain the
steady stream of visitors that were a part of her husband's job. If the pastor's
wife was not a "paragon of virtue" the parish would not accept her, and this
would make her husband's life extremely difficult. Elizabeth had been thinking
about all this before she and Jim were ever engaged. She had written to her
confidante, Wiggy, her doubts about being able to fit into a minister's life. Now
she rejoiced to find her worries evaporated in the sunshine of Jim's optimistic
view of her future role.
. . . But way back in my mind is still the thought of those ladies in the Tuesday
afternoon Benevolent Society who will raise their eyebrows when they meet
your wife in a paint-apron—perhaps, I thought, I can coax them all into
wanting the Sunday School "done up," and I know I could teach a Sunday
School class! There are quantities of things in the Bible that I should just love
talking about to a lot of youngsters and it would be so satisfying to have a free
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fling. I read "Jonah" the other night to Corwith [her half-brother] & Susan [a
cousin who was living with the Cramers] and we all three almost burst with
excitement. Poor Jonah was so human & so able apparently and so "temperamental" & he was dealt with so promptly! I never knew there was any more
to him than the whale! .. . (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr.,
December 6, 1915)
After receiving a letter from Jim on the subject of her art, she wrote to
Wiggy:
The beautiful part Wiggy darling is that he feels just the way I do about
painting—he has all sorts of awfully interesting ideas about it & he says that
he just couldn't endure it if I had anything to do with the details of church
work & that the only thing he wants is my cooperation in the spirit—just what
you said Wiggywag. He insists that I go on painting & says mat I will mean
just that much more to him if I do. You can't think how relieved & happy I
feel
(Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., December 1, 1915)
And to Jim she wrote:
. . . If you by any chance had said that you wanted me to paint because it
was temperamentally a way of living that satisfied me, I should have been so
low in my mind that I could never have done a stroke of work thereafter. Of
course it is a way of living in which I find much happiness but that is not the
reason for adopting it. The reason is because it is simply a means to an end
and the end is never anything but the Kingdom of God. I will never forget how
absolutely joyful I felt when you suddenly made me see it all in this way. I had
only the most scrappy little glimpses of it, I could never get everything into
focus. I lived in a hundred different ways and they were all more or less
detached. I was always having glimmerings but the glimmerings were somehow unconnected & then, all of a sudden, after a conversation we had out in
the studio one late afternoon, in front of that old stove, everything suddenly
shifted and fitted into place. [She was recalling a day at Rathmore during the
early months of their courtship.] It was the most extraordinary experience. All
the loose ends seemed somehow caught up, and ever since, every idea or
experience or sensation I have ever had has somehow or other fitted itself onto
the piece; it was like a pattern that you slowly evolved. Formerly I had quantities of colors all jumbled together, all valuable in themselves, but confused.
Then you came along & I suddenly got a clue that I hadn't had before & ever
since then I have known that if I kept at it long enough, I could always fit the
pieces on where they belonged and the pattern would be always growing and
growing . . .
You can't think how I felt on that "stove day" after you had gone home. I
had never, I think, been so happy or so peaceful & at the same time so thrilled
through & through. I felt as though I had been hitherto walking along a road
with a high wall on either side and above the wall were the tops of trees & birds
& now & then roses climbing down the sides. All of a sudden, it was as though
the doors in the walls had opened and I could henceforth whenever I wished
go into those lovely gardens and then I looked in all directions there were vistas
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leading everywhere. It was all just like that. For a long time I only wanted to
stay outside and look in. After a bit I went inside—and always there was you.
My Dearest,—do you know, have you any idea what it all meant? (Elizabeth
Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., December 14, 1915)
Jim, of course, had been terribly concerned about his health, but the doctor
at Dansville had now assured him that if he married Elizabeth and lived and
worked outdoors for a couple of years he would be as strong as ever. The
decision reached that day in the Plaza Tea Room transformed their lives. For a
few days they kept the joyful secret between themselves and Jim's brother Arch.
Jim was staying with him at Union Seminary, where Arch was studying for the
ministry, so he was in on the engagement from the beginning. Then Jim and
Elizabeth went to visit the Skinner Aunts, who were staying in New York, and
they rejoiced with them.
Elizabeth returned to Lake Forest and the painting of the Day Nursery
murals and made preparations for the wedding, and Jim went back to Dansville,
but little must have seemed the same for them. The larger questions had been
resolved, but there were other tensions and differences that would have to be
understood. After all, both had been living independently for some time and
inevitably there were points of view and habits that would have to be questioned
and thought through before their marriage. The two of them had a future to be
sketched in, for one of the remarkable circumstances of this marriage is that
despite their ages (Jim was 31 and Elizabeth almost 28) basic decisions such as
their livelihood and where they would live were virtually undetermined.
Jim thought it best to remain quiet and away from Elizabeth, making a brief
appearance during the Christmas season for a proper announcement and a round
of entertainment. The result of this separation is a daily stream of letters to him
from Elizabeth. Through these letters she and Jim shared their inner thoughts
and worked out their differences. It is a loss that Jim's letters have not been
found, but by Elizabeth's replies we can learn much of what he was thinking.
Their first duty was to inform their family and close friends. Discretion in
these matters was important; the right people had to hear the news in the right
order, so that no one would be miffed at being left out.
Dear Jim,
I have told Isabella & Father and Mother . . . and the rascals say they were
not surprised! Though Father admits that he thought "nothing was going to
happen." The dear things are immensely nice about it all and full of little jokes
and much affection. They think a great deal of you—more than you have any
idea of—and as for Isabelle, she nearly burst with satisfaction . . . Father is
already full of ideas as to a "retreat" and insists that he knows of one already
that is promising—an old, very old house 15 miles from the Hot Springs,
where there is, as you know an excellent golf course . . . I only mention all
this to show my parent's immediate enthusiasm. He already has us housed!. ..
Dear, there are no words to tell you all I feel. The thought of you is like a
light shining where once there was only darkness, like a strong wind that blows
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suddenly through a room long closed, like flowers springing up in April among
the winter leaves. The dear remembrance of you fills my heart. My cup
runneth over. The fervor and the joy that quicken my days are only equalled
by the peace that comes of a mutual understanding, by the love that purifies
and restores.
God bless you my Dearest all my life.
Elizabeth (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., December 1, 1915)
Dear Jim:
How much I liked your letters to Father & Mother. They were such splendid
straight sincere letters—so beautifully written & so free from anything that
was cheap or lacking in dignity . . . What you said in them about me touched
me more than I can ever tell you. As for Father, he & Ambrose both said that
if they had chosen from all the men they knew for me they could not have
chosen differently. That is a great tribute Mr. James G. K. McClure because
the above mentioned gentlemen are inclined to be extremely fussy and overcritical! I like to think of something I read once. "Through such souls alone
God . . . shows sufficient of his light For us in the dark to rise by."
Dear Light in my darkness illuminating countless ways that hitherto seemed
somehow all obscured, my heart is yours utterly. . . . (Elizabeth Cramer to
James G. K. McClure, Jr., Dec. 6, 1915)
Arch McClure rushed a letter off to Elizabeth as soon as he understood the
news was out.
There is no one that I love quite as I do Jim—no one whose life and
character I respect more. He has done far more for me in opening my mind to
truths I hadn't seen than I can ever repay; and then his own life has been one
of such amazing and unfailing cheerfulness during all the months of his waiting
for strength that he is a constant inspiration to me ... In fact it always makes
me want to be better just to be with him . . .
It certainly did surprise me to have him appear in New York, and to have
the whole thing happen almost under my very eyes. And it did delight me to
see how happy he was and to know that you had made him so. (Arch McClure
to Elizabeth Cramer, December 1, 1915)
Soon after the news reached McCormick Seminary, Jim's father wrote to
Elizabeth.
. . . I make humble but joyous confession that I have hoped for a long time
that you and Jim would care for one another. I never have spoken to Jim about
the matter for it seemed too sacred to be mentioned . . . again and again I have
told his Mother of my great wish. I have the truest respect and the tenderest
affection for you. There is no girl I have ever seen whom I would be so glad
to have Jim marry as yourself. My confidence in you is absolute, my admiration for you is perfect. (James G. K. McClure, Sr. to Elizabeth Cramer,
December 6, 1915)
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Jim's mother had written promptly exclaiming her support.
This morning's mail brought us, from Jamie, a letter telling us a secret that
seems almost too wonderful to be true . . . you are, of all the world, the one I
would most rejoice to have as Jamie's choice for his life companion, and I
know that since he saw you in New York, he has been happier than ever before
in his life. (Phebe Ann Dixon MeClure to Elizabeth Cramer, Dec. 3, 1915)
Elizabeth wrote to Jim: "Such dear letters from your Mother and Arch and
Nathan—1 didn't know how they might feel about it and my mind is immensely
relieved. I have such a proud feeling, Sir, when I think that you are considering
me with some affection! ..." (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. MeClure, Jr.,
Dec. 6, 1915).
Jim wrote to his sister Harriet and her husband Douglas Stuart, ending with
"Tell Dudley [Doug's nickname at that time] he must decide whether to come
in his shirt sleeves or his bath gown to Sid's and my wedding for I will have to
be wearing his cutaway—" (James G. K. MeClure, Jr. to Harriet Stuart, Dec.
1, 1915).
Jim's sister Annie Clarke wrote, "Our only regret is that it didn't happen
here in Manchester, where we felt that we gave you every opportunity" (Annie
MeClure Clarke to Elizabeth Cramer, Dec. 7, 1915). And then from Dumont,
"Perhaps . . . you will tell us that the atmosphere of a stone in Manchester did
have some part in helping a man whom we love to win you to the decision we
think is so beautiful" (Dumont Clarke to Elizabeth Cramer, Dec. 8, 1915).
Elizabeth's artist friend, Mildred Burrage, wrote that she wept for joy when she
received the news in her family's Kennebunkport, Maine, home (Mildred Burrage to Elizabeth Cramer, December 8,1915).
Elizabeth found it hard to concentrate on her murals at the Day Nursery in
Chicago. She wrote Jim:
. . . Such a job as the Nursery is,—my thoughts go way off and the part of
me that paints somehow gets along as best it can. If there were any real
composing to do I should hang a sign up & inform the public that the person
who worked therein was temporarily deceased. To have to paint apple trees
& toys when every thought is running your way is a form of mental discipline
that is unequalled. I do disastrous things—paint eyes red and apple blossoms
blue . . .
Dear Thing, good night—Siddy
(Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., December 3, 1915)
Four days later she wrote again:
Dearest,
The only natural easy thing to do is to write, -everything else I do with one
hand as it were in a very lame fashion—all of which goes to show you that I
am in a bad way .. .
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Tonight I dined . . . to the tune of scrambled eggs & muffins, & there was
I eating them with much composure when suddenly I remembered that I had
no idea whether, when it came to Sunday night suppers, you would have a taste
for onions or alligator pears! (Dreadful things, those last!) . . . [She would
soon find out that he liked boiled eggs and crackers and milk.]
. . . I told Corwith [her half-brother] today about you and me. First I made him
guess. He launched the most incredible and disturbing conjectures that forced
me to enlighten him with all possible speed, and then, his surprise was unbounded. "Well," he said reflectively, "I'd forgotten about him, you see."
(Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr. Dec. 7, 1915)
Later she wrote that Corwith had told her one morning that Jim might never
marry her after all. "Mr. McClure might change his mind before January first.
It's a long ways off, you know." Elizabeth feigned scorn and laughed at Corwith
but he continued solemnly, "Still, Tibbits, you will admit that it is quite possible." Elizabeth added to Jim, 'Ponder and reflect, young man! Youth is hotheaded and rash and there are yet twenty-two days in this month for mature
reflection ..." Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., Dec. 9, 1915).
In several letters she told him how she pretended that his "ghost, as the Irish
say," would come in to sit by her bedroom fire of an evening and how she
looked forward to this. Thinking of their walk in Central Park after Jim's
proposal and her acceptance in New York, she wrote:
When I think that only a week ago we were walking in the park in all that
amazing fog and darkness with the shining Plaza glittering behind the trees! I
love to think of that. Always, always, the park is there full of peace and
thoughts that are apart, and around on every side is the roaring hungry city
with all its enterprise & struggle and effort.
It was like that, I think, when you talked to me & said the little things that
made me think you really cared. It was the first time that I had ever known the
real meaning of peace. All life must somehow mean a desperate effort, but
that at the heart of it there should be peace & serenity and a joy that was
somehow not of this world was something that transcended all experience.
Only a little over a week ago what sober guarded creatures we were. And I
was none too sure that you would even want my frequent letters! Now, Sir, I
am pleasing myself. It is a relief to write long pages about nothing at all.
(Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., December 7, 1915)
Two days later she wrote:
My Dearest,
The first of January seems further off than ever, —I almost believe that
time is going the other way & that we're slipping back again into November
. . . I have a sort of a feeling that when you do come I shall wait until you are
within sight of a window & then I shall promptly hide in the cellar. You seem
such a safe distance off just now that I feel I can write you all kinds of rubbish,
if you were here, I should never run on in such a fashion—I should always be
looking out of the tail of my eye to see whether you are astonished or dis-
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mayed, and when I see you again after all the nonsense I am always writing
you, I shall feel very red and stiff and inclined to disappear. I shall probably
call you Mr. McClure & shake hands politely and ask after your health and
you'll have to begin all over again, if you still like me! Have you ever noticed
that there are some people you like very much in Winter whom you can't abide
in summer? and vice versa? I'm not sure whether you've had a real square
all-around look at me, or n o t . . . Besides, you've never seen me at Breakfast.
I, at any rate never like anyone before eleven o'clock and until at least twelve
I always wear my hair slicked tight back and never speak of anything but the
thermometer or why Gustave hasn't fixed the furnace. This is all in a burst of
honesty that might never again come back so I'm hurriedly writing it down
while it lasts. Also I always wear my shell spectacles at least half the day and
I sometimes waste a terrible lot of time picking out tunes with one finger while
the maids are dusting and I have an old blue skirt that I love & that everybody
else hates because it somehow has a tendency to drop in the back no matter
how much I hitch it up. I feel sure, now, that I am going to be quite made
over & that I shall never lose any more handkerchiefs or door keys if you still
continue to like me, BUT,-I saw in the paper the other day that "marriage
does not change the individual" which is a sobering thought and one that urges
me to bid you reflect! What, just what if you should get a church in which
your parishioners . . . demanded a competent, efficient, capable, executive
wife!!!!
1.1 am not competent.
2.1 am never efficient
3.1 am not capable
4.1 am not executive
(Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., December 9, 1915)
Jim remained in Dansville until just before Christmas. When he arrived at
the Lake Forest Station he was greeted by Rathmore's butler. Jim's physique
came to inhabit the spirit that had been visiting Elizabeth every evening, and
presumably he did not need to search the cellar to find her. The season of 1915
was the gayest yet at Rathmore, because not only had Jim and Elizabeth agreed
to marry, but young Ambrose was ready to announce his engagement to Grace
Meeker. She was a member of Jim's Santa Barbara "band," and had been
featured in the previous spring's Vogue magazine. Both couples decided to
announce their intentions on New Year's Day, but beforehand they enjoyed all
the social events of the season, pretending to keep the well-known secrets. Jim
returned to Halsted Street on Christmas Eve, to spend his last holiday as an
unmarried son in his family's household. As he drove out of Rathmore that
night, he found Elizabeth concealed behind the stone gate that served as the
entrance to the estate. There they parted, after exchanging affections and written
messages, the latter to be read on first arising Christmas Day. Elizabeth and Jim
were savoring, with all of the literary accoutrement, the fruits of their romance.
According to the firm rules of the day, Jim and Elizabeth and Ambrose and
Grace acquired a new status on January first. The double engagement of Susie
Skinner's children made quite a stir in Chicago when it appeared in the Society
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pages. Elizabeth wrote a eulogy on Jim to Wiggy, who was still holding the
fort in the Tr&pied house, surrounded by war: "... I feel so natural & so happy
& so comfortable with him & never have a single fear or worry or anxious
thought about the future with him which apparently is almost unheard of with
an engaged young person!! . . . People seem to be very pleased about it everywhere & I just go about on air ... Jim is as honest as you . . . 1 can't say more
than that & he has the loveliest sense of humor & can be as much of a goat as
Ambrose! ..." (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, Jan. 1, 1916)
A flood of congratulatory notes poured in on Jim and Elizabeth after their
engagement was made public—some two hundred altogether—and they add up
to a great crescendo of support. One sad young man, who had tagged doggedly
after Elizabeth, wrote in a defeated tone, "I feel absolutely no bitterness toward
you" (John W. Brown to Elizabeth Cramer, December 16, 1915). Her cousin,
Mark Skinner Watson, had come from Chimney Point, Vermont, to work on the
Chicago Tribune. He was a promising young newspaper man and they had had
great fun together. From his letter it is easy to see why he became a noted
columnist.
Possibly your Aunts have told you that I received your letter and read it
with keen excitement the very day after you wrote it instead of three or four
weeks later as you had expected. Thus, for four days I carried with me the
mighty secret, restraining the impulse to show an unsuccessful suitor's vengeance and tell the Tribune all about i t . . .
Also I've been hoping particularly that I might see you and tell you face to
face how happy I am that you are happy . . . But [you are] rather inaccessible,
particularly to a youth who still finds his hours of freedom better suited to
owls, nightingales, bats and deeds of darkness, rather than to young ladies
who now, if never before, must be exceeding prim.
Prim? Ah me. How can we again have a spree at the Blackstone, followed
by "Tristan" or Mr. G. B. Shaw . .. How unless then be added Jim and, and,
and, —why, of course, my own fiancee! The only trouble is that the poor thing
is non-existent . .. And you will continue nice and agreeable, even though
married. Please.
. . . my very best congratulations and as near a prayer as a heretic can come.
.. . (Mark Skinner to Elizabeth Cramer, Jan. 4, 1916)
A friend identified only as Beth wrote a sharp commentary on the same
social conventions of the time that troubled Jim and Elizabeth:
Many time and aft have I heard the familiar name of Jim McClure mentioned, and I feel as if I knew him well. And your letter—which, I hasten to
assure you, did not resemble the Ladies' Home Journal—assures me beyond
any doubt that that fabulous creature, a nice modern saint with all the latest
improvements in brains, and the courage of his convictions, exists after a l l . . .
I'm not very fond of the cloth, as a rule, but I'll hand it to anyone who can
live and work in Iron River . .. and return with a sufficient sense of perspective to encourage his future wife to go on beautifying the world with mural
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decorations. Most reformers look at you with a wild gleam in their eye and say
"How dare you be happy when children are starving?" .. .
I can't imagine anything more fun than your slum existence. No, I'm not
sentimentalizing for the occasion. Ever since I grew up I've wanted to do just
that-discard every non-essential and concentrate on the things that really ought
to be done, instead of—oh, sending cards to every fool who invites you to tea.
Goodness, what a relief! No clothes, no social stunts, no more servants than
you need, no more food than you want to eat. And all the time there is in which
to do the interesting things. Please, may I come and visit you and see how it's
done? Because some fine day, when I'm fifty, or so, I may be free to do the
same thing, and I want some pointers meanwhile . . .
. . . how glad I am that you're not marrying anything even resembling a
stockbroker! When my friends' husbands are "in business" I go and dig the
grave of any human sympathy we may ever have had. Thank goodness for a
socialist for you .. . ! You always needed one, anyhow, by the way; it will
do you pounds of good. (Beth [last name unknown] to Elizabeth Cramer,
December 26, 1915)
There were peons of praise for Jim from classmates and fellow members
of Skull and Bones at Yale, including a prophecy from John Magee, now a
missionary in Nanking, China. He wrote, "I'm sure your coming into Jim's life
at this time will mean a very great deal to him in every way and that he will now
be in the way of gaining completely his normal health" (John Magee to Elizabeth
Cramer, Jan. 13, 1916).
Just before Jim was to go south for a little more rest with Annie and
Dumont and their new son, Dumont Jr. at Daytona Beach, a tragedy leveled the
high spirits of Rathmore. Elizabeth's step-sister Isabelle and her husband,
Donald Ryerson, lost their little son. Jim was asked to conduct the funeral
services. Elizabeth had always been very close to Isabelle, and Donald and Jim
were friends as well. But the wedding plans had to go on. While Jim was
keeping a safe distance in Florida resting with his sister's family, Elizabeth's
father sent his adored daughter off to New York with her step-mother on a
shopping "bat." From the Biltmore Hotel she wrote to Jim:
.. . New York should always be visited a deux. I only feel half a person!
If only it were last November, but all the same I'm glad it isn't, because I am
just fifty one days richer than I was then and the last two weeks have been
worth six ordinary ones besides . . .
This afternoon Mother and I surveyed various silver services and I am now
sleeping on two as the saying goes, —it is not as simple as buying a Hudson
[automobile] but nevertheless vastly absorbing. How I wish you were here!
Only half of me looks at things—the other half is at home trotting around with
you, sir. Father is presenting me with the most galumptious petticoats and
suchlikes. I shall never want to put a dress on at all. Such fine feathers! ...
(Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., Jan. 19, 1916)
Your little book of treasures is such a joy. I read a bit of it every night.
Here is a quotation that you wrote January 1906—"for those children of God
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to whom it has been granted to see each other face to face and to hold communion together and to feel the same spirit working in both can never more be
sundered though the hills be between. For their souls are enlarged for ever
more by that union and they bear one another about in their thoughts continual
as if it were a new strength." That is it, isn't it, Dearest? (Elizabeth Cramer
to James G. K. McClure, Jr., January 20, 1916)
Elizabeth settled on her silver service, and frequented several New York antique
dealers looking for suitable furniture for her new household, slum parish or not.
Dearest—such a place as this is to get ideas about things! I'm just full of the
house furnishing variety . . . I go around to all kinds & varieties of shops so
as to see everything going, and if you don't have a nice house, Mr. James G.
K. McClure Jr., my name isn't mine own! I've penetrated antique shops of all
varieties and entered "Decorator's Parlours" with a brazen air of intending to
buy everything and leave with nothing, and my notebook & my head are just
crammed full . . .
You will love the silver service. It has the most extraordinary dignity and
simplicity. Just to have tea out of it is a privilege .. .
This [the Biltmore Hotel] isn't a bad place & you have a room with a bath
and three meals for $3.00 a day. From the front windows you look out over
the roof tops at that beautiful Madison Square Garden Tower and down below
are some nice old red brick houses. At night I hear the boats as the river is
just back of us & it makes me think of our ferry ride. I can shut my eyes and
remember every inch of it. Dearest Thing, if I were going to live in a cave in
South Carolina and eat acorns and frogs, if you were there I should be just as
happy as I am now—the automobile and the silver service . . . don't make any
difference at all, somehow. They are just like the holly tissue paper and the
red ribbons that tie up ones loveliest Christmas present.. .. (Elizabeth Cramer
to James G. K. McClure, Jr., Jan. 25, 1916)
Elizabeth's buying spree brought to light one of the tensions between the
prospective mates. The whole question of the correct use of material possessions
in one's life had been an early philosophical link in the romance. Both agreed
that conspicuous consumption, buying for show, material self-indulgence and
the like were rank sins that many of their own class were guilty of, and suffered
spiritual difficulties as a result. The irresponsible rich, they were both sure,
flaunted their wealth and thus aggravated class tensions, and were in fact monopolizing the resources of the world to the detriment of nearly everyone else.
Elizabeth had grown up in a privileged household, but the material objects that
appealed to her did so because of their beauty, a spiritual quality of the greatest
importance to her. She felt that her gift was to create an ambience of beauty
that would surround her and those she loved, and that furniture, dresses, silver
services and flowers were her means to that end. Such an environment, touched
with the divine, lent itself to spiritual development. Jim, on the other hand, was
as thrifty in all ways as the reputation of his Scotch forebears would indicate.
His habits, like his father's, were built around the premise that one should be
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most careful in managing whatever financial resources one had. The more
surplus money there was in one's budget, the better able a person would be able
to support worthy projects. In short, Jim felt that spending money in excess of
need was pure and simple selfishness. Jim would have to increase his vision of
"need" to include Elizabeth's urge for beauty. As she explained to him:
It seems to me that it is an impossible thing to go on living with people
simply on a basis of material interests—meals and dinner parties and hats and
servants and railroad tickets and sports. It's terrifically wearing to keep up a
close personal relation of that sort particularly if you've ever known what the
other thing means. That's what's at the bottom of so much unhappiness in
married people's lives. Often the only things that two people have in common
are material interests and the difference of sex. Of course that can only result
in material dissatisfaction and I suppose, under such circumstances, it simply
goes to show all over again that the life of the spirit must be shared or the
material expression of it can have no real meaning. That's another thing that
neither the church nor school ever touches on. (Elizabeth Cramer to James G.
K. McClure, Jr., Jan. 23, 1916)
But in her next letter she asserts the importance of owning material things that
are beautiful.
If we go off & live in some starving place . .. why then there will be much
more reason for our acquiring essentially good possessions, because in such a
place, the need for sharing such things is so terribly felt even though people
there may not be really conscious of it. With our knowledge of beauty and how
it can be used, we've got to use every means we have to bring people in touch
with it. If we have nice furniture (and by that I don't necessarily mean costly
furniture) and surroundings that are poles removed from their horrible lace
window curtains & "bird-eye maple" furniture & red velvet rockers it will
mean a lot, I know. We can create a house that will express, through its self,
law and order and proportion and repose and aliveness-all those things that you
will be constantly opening people's eyes to in what you say. I want equally to
open people's eyes to it in what they see. And that's what's the trouble with
all modern painting right now, It tries to give you a "thrill." . . . (Elizabeth
Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., January 27, 1916)
In her struggles to conceive of a sensible attitude where her art and the needs
of the "masses" could meet, she met a figure from across the social gulf, who
gave her more to think about. The maid came in to clean her hotel room.
. . . a huge, strapping, coarse, kind, sort of a woman & she appalled me
by seizing upon the remains of my lunch & gobbling them up!—horrid cold
remains they were, too,—salmon & cold vegetables and the bitterest kind of
strong tea that I couldn't touch. She said apologetically that she was hungry
because the hotel didn't give the "help" enough to eat. Then I asked her later
on if she liked pictures & her eyes just shone, & her whole manner changed
when she said that she did.
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We Plow God's Fields
I never can get away from the "poor" somehow or other! . .. After the
chambermaid had departed, I had a violent reaction .. . and I almost hated
my silver service when I thought of that woman's need of food. At such a time,
I feel like chucking "art" entirely and going out & handing forth bread line
tickets or working for a better wage system! But I know that this is mere
emotionalism & I know that such a state of mind is unintelligent. The "poor"
need bread for their souls as well as for their bodies and a silver tea service
. . . is something they should have access to in their lives and it is only a
millstone around your neck when you aren't willing to share it. Some of the
poor think that they resent ownership by the upper classes of a silver tea service
. . . but it isn't really the fact of possession that they resent. It's the attitude
of mind that they resent (but they aren't developed enough intellectually to see
that this is so), the attitude of mind that assumes that beauty and culture are
the special, private privilege of the rich. But if you become one of them in
spirit and make them feel that you insist on having your own surroundings
beautiful because you feel that beauty is a necessity of life & something to be
shared and experienced by all who want it too,—why then I'm sure their
resentment would disappear. (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr.,
Jan. 28, 1916)
If Elizabeth struggled with her higher views of silver services, she knew
Jim to be the most frugal of men with himself, but very generous to others.
Dearest, I look at all your pictures & none of them look like the same man.
So many different people propped up on my bureau and every one of them you
. . . There is the you (and such a cuke this one is!) that rolls on the rug with
Percy [the Cramer dog] & Corwith and ties poor unoffending Chum [the
Cramer cat?] up in a [sic.] overcoat! Then there is another one that buys me
velvet overshoes for bad weather and insists upon my going to bed early. (Dear
thing, what a nice man that one is!) Then there is another that pulls the Aunts
legs every now & then (to use an outrageous old expression) and another one
that carries a horrible old german bag around (the same man that does that
inks the bare places on his black coat), and still another that always looks as
clean as a whistle and has the nicest kind of hands. Then there is a specially
dear one that treats me as an equal & that tells me about things & that takes it
for granted that I won't shirk facts even if they are hateful ones . . . (I love
that one—he always gives me a kind of strength that I never had before.) And
then there is another you that reveals to me a far wider more beautiful and
significant life than I ever before imagined could come to any one. (Elizabeth
Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., Jan. 29. 1916)
Art was Elizabeth's passion. She sought to understand life and apply what
she learned through her art, and to understand other people through theirs.
While in New York, Mildred Burrage came down from Maine and the two of
them called on Claude Monet's daughter and her family, whom they had known
inGiverny.
Yesterday . . . we had tea with the Butlers. Mingie [Mildred] & I knew them
very well in France and it took me straight back to Paris to meet them again.
�Marriage
Mrs. Butler is Monet's (the French impressionist) daughter & she's very
French & very much powdered & rouged & made up but with such a generous
kind heart. I like her immensely. Mr. Butler was a Mend of Stevenson and
Will Low and St. Gaudens & all that 1880 crowd in Paris. He's an extraordinarily handsome man with huge black eyes and much charm of a certain sort.
They have two children —Jimmy & Lilli about 25. Lilli is a fascinating little
thing with an oriental kind of beauty and Jimmy is a straight, thin, lean youth
with real ability if he could only be gotten on the right track. He got in with
the post-impressionists in Paris & while he has an awfully honest mind he still
sees things from their standpoint and turns out the most awful things just like
his father -reds & blues & terrible violent greens. (Elizabeth Cramer to James
G. K. McClure, Jr., January 30, 1916)
Before leaving New York, she returned to the Plaza Hotel.
. . . Mingie & I fell in with an older friend . . . and in a burst of extravagance
I took them to lunch at the Plaza.
Such seemly conduct on my part, Mr. McClure, all the time I was there.
Never a suggestion of my shady past! OI glance with a furtive eye at the waiter
to see if he recognized my purple suit but being a man of infinite tact &
discretion he looked the other way. What a bold brass monkey you were! I can
see that scandalized waiter now rushing off to tell all his dear Mends the latest
"spice." And there wasn't anything hesitating or apologetic about you either!
Ach, such a man!—(dear thing, how I love him for all his bold ways—perhaps
—between you and me—the bold ways are just an added reason.)
After lunch, Mingee & I parted company . . . I wanted to be alone.
It was a dully gray afternoon. The street was full of dirty snow, and a raw
penetrating mist blew in from the river. I passed the little church where we
went together that Sunday morning in November and because you seemed very
near, I went inside.
It was dark and quiet and peaceful. Away off in a distant part of the church
a man was talking to some coloured people and after a time the service ended,
& the people left.
I sat there a long time. Never before, I think, have I been so conscious of
all the joy and blessedness that has come to me through you.
I had your precious letter with me—the one you wrote last Thursday & I
read it again and again with increased joy and tenderness and humility and I
thought of New Year's Eve & of all that you had said to me that evening when
we were alone together in the little room. I can never forget your words nor
the sincerity & pureness of heart that shone in your dear eyes.
"For their souls were enlarged for evermore by that union"—the quaint
words of the old quotation in your little book come back to me always.
I thought of all the things we had talked of together. I tried to realize anew
what marriage must mean—marriage in its deepest, truest sense; union of heart
& soul & body through mutual longing to be more nearly one with God in
order to further his purposes here by whatsoever means are possible.
So long as our lives individually strive to embody the spirit that comes of
God, our souls seeking renewal always in the source of all life must then meet,
and of necessity become one, since in God there is no separation. That which
is you and that which is I must then perforce unite and become eternally part
111
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We Plow God's Fields
of one another just as two rivers meeting, henceforth mingle and become one
stream that continues on its way until it is merged in the great sea ...
I stayed a long time in the church. After a while people came in and a later
service began. A choir of little boys sang the te Deum, & everything in me
responded to that magnificent glorious chant, "Oh Lord in Thee have I put
my trust, let me never be confounded." (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K.
McClure, Jr., February 1, 1916)
Elizabeth Cramer was a deeply sensitive woman, and there would be times
when confusion overtook her, but always she maintained ready access to her
emotions. She felt deeply, but understood that emotions are the steam that runs
the locomotive, but the driver must control them firmly or the engine will run
away. She felt deeply, but had the self-discipline to control her feelings. Such
a rich interior life was the source of her perceptiveness. If mankind is unique
in the scheme of creation for being "life aware of itself," she experienced a high
degree of this essential trait. She half-apologized for her last letter when she
wrote the next day:
I have a sort of an idea that I wrote you a terribly serious epistle last night
. . . it was just the result of being happy, I suppose. Because I didn't feel a bit
long faced inside when I wrote it, even though it undoubtably sounds that
way! I hate solemn people & I'm not one myself, truly I'm not. But in my
"early youth" (and I'm ashamed to say occasionally now thus well along in
years,) I used to retire to a secluded corner & indulge in a private outburst of
tears whenever I felt really happy through and through . . . Another shocking
tendency in your future bride is an inordinate desire to laugh at funerals. I
always think of the most absurd and comical and outrageous incongruities even
though inwardly I may be touched to the heart. (Elizabeth Cramer to James
G. K. McClure, Jr., Jan. 27, 1916)
She accepted her own inward emotional conflicts, and in the same way that she
hated "pure emotionalism" in art, and she was bothered by feelings within her
whose meanings she could not grasp. She never wanted merely a frothy emotional "experience."
Despite Elizabeth's serious thoughts, new subjects of a more mundane nature
were beginning to creep into her letters. She picked up volumes on the science
of Victorian household management, and bravely began to wade through them.
. . . I'm reading valuable tomes of what day you sweep & what day you wash
& which day the maid claims as her own! It seems that "system is a great thing
but not system at the price of family comfort." If your husband likes to write
in the library from ten to twelve it seems that you are not to disturb him with
a broom. I grow daily more and more enlightened!
Dearest what you say about living perhaps among Mountain [folk] might
be an awfully interesting thing to do. With a hot water bag and overalls we
could be comfortable anywhere. (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure,
Jr., February 1, 1916)
�Marriage
179
On her way back to Lake Forest, Elizabeth decided to visit the Jackson
Health Resort in order to discuss with Dr. Gregory the care of her prospective
husband. To her unconcealed delight, the doctor ordered a wonderful carefree
existence for the newlyweds.
What a thoroughly likable man that doctor is. He talked to me for a good
three quarters of an hour & I sat back in the chair & listened with all my ears
& now & then asked him a question. He was as direct & definite as could be
and he talked straight from the shoulder . . . there was no question whatever
but that you could in a course of time take up your work again & do eight
hours hard concentrated work everyday, PROVIDED .. . you were willing to
give those overworked brain cells of yours absolute rest from thinking for a
good long time (two years or perhaps three, say I). . ."He's got to do nothing
but play," Dr. Gregory said—"Just have a good time & refuse to feel responsible about anything or anybody. He must remember that the one thing for him
to do from now on is to let everything else go & just have a good time because
only in this way can he give the blood vessels & capillaries in the cerebellum
a chance to renew themselves.."..Anything that requires direct intellectual
effort on your part, Mr. James Gore King, is hotly denounced. Just mere
surface exchange of ideas between you & me when you feel them cropping
up inside you of their own accord .. . But any deliberate concentration on an
abstract problem . . . is tabooed .. .
In other words, my Dearest, you are to turn into a good healthy Bromide,
agree with everybody and let everything disturbing . . . roll off your back . . .
You're just to tend chickens & plant a garden & now & then make a piece of
furniture if it so pleases you sir, for your wife to paint alarming colours. And
the rest of the time you're to cultivate all your faculties of enjoyment; think
what fun it will be—all the delicious sensations that come from seeing apple
blossoms against an April sky—late spring afternoons & the fresh odour of
wet brown earth-strawberries for breakfast out of doors —white "pinks" in the
moonlight on a summer night—golf balls & green turf—the comforting fragrance of Don-fires in the autumn-picnics in the woods when you can lie all
day on your back under an oak tree & watch the chipmunks & the clouds—.
My goodness me, I can hardly wait. (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K.
McClure, Jr., February 9, 1916)
Back home again, Elizabeth continued to retrace some of Jim's past. She
went to Chicago and stayed on Halsted Street with the McClures for a short
while. Mr. McClure gave her a tour around the seminary, and then invited the
faculty over for dinner to meet her. Many of these men had taught Jim, and she
said, "They all eyed me with immense curiosity & were extremely cordial & I
was hugely interested as it was wholly unlike any party I had ever been to
before. Your father was superb! He mixed them all up, made them all so pleased
with themselves & kept things going in a way that was simply astonishing"
(Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., February 11, 1916). The
McClure social gatherings were much more intellectual and academic than the
usual Cramer ones, and Elizabeth was quite intrigued by the contrast. In this
new world, she was delighted by Jim's mother.
�180
We Plow God's Fields
To my great pleasure I sat next to your mother at dinner. She gave me a
darling little tea cup—a beauty-such a charming design.
I truly love Mrs. McClure. I don't know of anyone who in every single thing
she does or says always shows such distinction and graciousness and charm.
It is just a joy to be with her—it gives me a curious impersonal kind of pleasure
just to see her & hear her talk—it's a little bit the delight one always gets from
contact with essential beauty. She has the most exquisite sense of proportion—
1 always feel with her that she is an artist through and through and by an artist
I mean, in the real sense of the word, a person who understands proportion.
(Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., Feb. 11, 1916)
The Cramers, Annie McClure Clarke, and the Aunties all pitched in to help
Elizabeth prepare for her wedding. There were parties and showers, presents to
receive, and silver sorting with brother Ambrose in the treasure trove of
Rathmore's attic. Her dressmaker made great demands on her time. "Marriage
apparently is akin to dying!" she wrote to Jim, "I am as neat & well arranged
& tidy as though I were about to make a sudden but graceful departure from this
dark world . .." (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., Feb. 21,
1916). "I feel that marriage," she wrote four days later, "is in the same class
with Plagues, Fires, Floods and other pestilences in that it effectively sweeps
away the debris of years and is something that only the fit survive" (Elizabeth
Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., Feb. 25, 1916). Aunt Bessy and Aunt
Freddy were as excited about the event as Elizabeth, and they were in charge
of the lists of family Mends who were to be notified. "Between us, we seem to
have close on three thousand acquaintances. Aunt Bessy & Aunt Freddy have
been simply invaluable as 'Collaborators.' They seemed to know by instinct
whether people had died or taken unto themselves new husbands or departed for
good & all to unknown parts" (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr.,
March 1, 1916). Many nights, Elizabeth went into Chicago to stay with the
Aunts at their house on Rush Street. She could not resist describing the comedy
scene that unfolded there at bedtime, every night. "The aunts have just finished
'going the rounds.' The tremendous nightly affair of 'locking up' is at last over.
Aunt Bessy has performed her regular nocturnal ceremony of looking under the
beds to see if any burglar could be spied timidly crouching, & peace has at
length settled down" (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., February
29, 1916). The Aunts wanted to be sure their house was neat before they went
to bed because, as they told Elizabeth, the doctor might have to be summoned
in the night!
Meanwhile, Jim remained at a safe distance in Florida. His life moved at
a leisurely pace, and included long walks with his young nephew Dumont, Jr.
along the beach. He took the time to investigate the marvel of the age, the Ford
automobile, this one owned by the Clarke family. Elizabeth wrote him that "It
is too splendid to think of all that you have done in the garage! It was so like
you, my Dearest, to want to do it. I love to think of you grubbing round under
motors covered with oil & dirt and looking like a mechanic yourself. I told
�Marriage
181
Father what you were doing & he was enormously pleased" (Elizabeth Cramer
to James G. K. McClure, Jr., March, 1916). Jim spent a lot of his time reading,
pondering, re-reading and replying to Elizabeth's letters, one every day. On his
last day in Florida, he received her final offering.
My dearest,
What do you suppose! The future Mrs. James G. K. McClure is about to
have her portrait painted! . . . I feel more than ever as though I were about to
depart this earth & the portrait seems part of the last obsequies!
It is such a strange feeling—this business of packing up all ones belongings
& all at once leaving the old life behind. In a way, it's a wrench, & I never
thought it would be I who have been such a rolling stone these many years . . .
to know that you are freely and voluntarily leaving behind you much that is
dear & cherished, is to experience a very poignant emotion. Sometimes it's
even a bit overwhelming. A state of mind that savours of absurd & hateful
tears brought about merely by the sight of ... [brother] Pedro's hat, or the
look of the lake from my window in the morning. When this happens, I
remember how funny I must appear & this makes me laugh, but that little devil
of a Hob-goblin Memory, comes & perches on my back when I least expect
him, & then I'm forced to seek a private corner and a comforting pocket
handkerchief. It's ridiculous in anybody who has been away from home &
about the world as much as I have! It's wholly inconsistent in a "sensible
party" who is truly rejoiced to be shaking the dust of Lake Forest off her feet!
Nevertheless, such is the case. We are so bound, in spite of ourselves, by
what has been. We feel so sure of ourselves, so independent of the past; yet
when the time comes we cannot break away without paying the price. The
Past rises up in us—insistent, ironical & tender; it is relentless & pursuing . ..
I know, too, that some of our possessions can be truly gained only when
they are finally lost; my dear people here, this old place with its cherished
memories, all that my days here have meant, are now truly mine in a way that
they never were before. In leaving them I have found them again . . .
Dearest, these long waiting days are nearly over. Your letters have meant
more to me than I can ever tell you. Because of all that you have written me,
I have come closer to you than ever before. I am so glad that it was possible
for us to write one another.. .. (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure,
Jr., March 6, 1916)
This particular letter continues on in a most adoring, personal way, but it
is time to draw the curtain of discretion. Elizabeth Cramer has arrived to give
Jim's life form and meaning, proportion and beauty. Her perceptions and vision
will fill the rest of this book, just as they filled and enriched Jim's life.
Their wedding was held March 29, 1916, at Rathmore. It was small and
quiet because Mrs. Cramer's mother had died recently. "If there were only
some way of 'working in' your famous brown hat," Elizabeth mockingly wrote
Jim, "I should be entirely satisfied. Perhaps it could be suspended from above
like a cardinal's hat in a cathedral. And you might carry the ring in that terrible
green woolen bag" (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., March 4,
1916). But the Cramers and the Aunties remained in firm control, and the
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We Plow God's Fields
A small and extremely quiet
ding service was that of Miss '^izabeth
Cramer/the daughter of Mr. an*d Mrs.
Ambrose Cranfer ot Lake Forest, land
James G. Kf MdClure Jr., which took
place yesterday .before the members
of the two frimilies*and a few friends
at "Rathntore," the residence* of the
Cramers' in Lake Forest. Th6 seryice, at 4 o'clock, was ^read b^ I}r.
James G. K. McClure, the bridegroom's father, who is president Of
McCormick Theological- Seminary^ and
former pastor of the Lafce Forest
F. Ryerson, a half twister oi the bride,
was matron of honor, and Archibald
McClure, i the bridgpmQom's brother,
was best; man: \";*rae :jbrido wore a
simple robe of ivory wliite satin with
garniture '«6f Venetian Iac6 and carried a bouquet of lilies of the j^lley.
Mr. and Mre. MeClure left immediately after %- ther Wedding for a trip
South and probably will be in Lake
Forest upon their return, although
their plans are ratner indefinite.
Wedding announcement, March 30, 1916.
wedding was a picture of decorum. Dr. McClure performed the ceremony,
Isabelle was her sister's matron of honor, Jim's brother Arch was best man.
Elizabeth described it for Wiggy, still in France.
The wedding was very small . . . We were married in the library in a niche
opposite the fireplace and just before it was time the sun came out & just
illuminated everything. It was lovely. I had a white satin dress made with huge
panniers on either side & a funny little pointed waist & a fichu of my mother's
rose point applique lace that she had on her wedding gown—it was a pretty
dress Wiggy dear, if I do say it. Only a very few Lake Forest friends like the
Thompson's & Farwells & McCormicks were there—we didn't even have
invitations issued so you see what a quiet affair it was . . .
Wiggy darling I'm so very happy, you can't think how dear & good &
considerate Jim is to me. At the end of a month I shall be totally spoiled and
we are such huge friends Wiggy wag & I somehow feel as though I had been
married years & years . . . It's the real thing Wiggy dear. . . . (Elizabeth
Cramer to Martha Clarke, April 6, 1916)
The circle of the beautiful courtship of Elizabeth Cramer and Jim McClure
was complete. With indefinite plans they went south, allowing the promise of
adventure and odd circumstances to rule their days. Their marriage would prove
to be a strong foundation on which to build a new and remarkable life together,
one that even Elizabeth's vivid imagination could not have foreseen.
�Chapter Eleven
Hickory Nut Gap Farm
Mere possessions don't interest me a bit but possessions that can be used
to create surroundings that will express the best understanding of beauty that
one has, becomes a rarely worthwhile undertaking and one that is worth
immense effort. Why? Because a room or a house "furnished" with this principle back of it means something added to the collective beauty of the world and
is another way to bring people in contact with the spirit of perfection. And as
the Collective Beauty of the world grows, just so the Spirit of God is increasingly revealed. (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., January 24,
1916)
Mr. and Mrs. McClure will go south on their wedding trip. They are undecided
as to where they will reside . . . and for how long a time they will be away.
(The Chicago Daily News, March 29, 1916)
There is much to be said, if one marries at thirty-one, for being thoroughly
unoccupied with and disconnected from the distractions of the world for a time.
Although both Jim and Elizabeth had been involved in their own pursuits and
adventures, the circumstances of their courtship helped to wipe clean any commitments one would have expected of two such vibrant individuals. In the spring
of 1916, the only given in their lives was their marriage. And from that point
of departure, all else had to be added, consciously and together, one item at a
time. It was, as Elizabeth would have said, a "delicious situation."
They were not particularly pressed for time. They had a sufficient joint
income to keep themselves afloat financially, and they had the admonitions of
the doctors from Dansville to let life flow lazily around them until Jim's recovery was complete. The circumstances could not have been better arranged for
the new couple, and it seems clear that during this time of adjustment both
individuals were fortified and strengthened by the union of each other's habits
and daily conduct of life.
The honeymoon was to be a blend of spring in Appalachia, the new Hudson
automobile, and an adventurous "gypsy life." Jim suggested to Elizabeth, when
he was still in Daytona, that they have the Hudson shipped to Asheville, North
Carolina; and that they roam about the mountains camping out, or staying in
small inns and in general being completely incommunicado from their former
lives and acquaintances. Elizabeth's response was enthusiastic.
I just adored the idea of sleeping out, tine nights a la belle etoille! It would
be such a joyful thing to turn into gypsies! I've always envied them, their
183
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We Plow God's Fields
ability to go to bed by the road! And as you say, it would be so easy to manage
with good warm blankets and some rubber things (and a pillow or two—you
wouldn't object to my having a pillow, would you my own Dear!) (Elizabeth
Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr. February, 18, 1916)
I can hardly wait to turn into a gypsy! It's such a joy to be marrying
somebody who likes to do haphazard out of the way things! I should hate the
idea of a tent, but a bed on the ground is something I've always pined after. I
quite agree with you that it is better to "go slow" at first. It will take us a little
time to get a financial grasp on just how much living expenses are going to
work o u t . . . Besides it will be much more fun to go to little inns & boarding
houses than to go to big hotels. All my days I've been going to big hotels &
it would be so stupid to go on doing it now. We'll get a lot more out of the
little places & it will be immensely interesting. Once in a blue moon or so we
can stop off at a sporty hotel just to see the people & hear a band. I so love to
think of the frying pan & a bed out of doors. I've got an old jaeger sleeping
bag, maybe it would be a good thing to take along? (Elizabeth Cramer to James
G. K. McClure, Jr., February 19, 1916)
. . . I'm so rejoiced that you like doing queer things & that you like stopping
off at queer places. Let's always keep on doing queer things all our days! I
don't care if I never see a bathtub again . . . All my days I've had a gloomy
fear that if I ever did get a husband he'd be eminently respectable & sober and
anxious to do everything a month in advance and, oh my goodness me, all our
days we'd jog along in one little rut with never a turning to right or left.
Now you are not at all respectable, James Gore King. More than that, you
are not at all "careful" or "anxious" or cautious and I love you more than
tongue can tell. .. You've given me such a nice comfortable feeling of space
about me too; I feel as though I could stretch up in all directions & there would
be no restraining bars anywhere.
To go back to the alluring topic of gypsies, do you remember Stevenson's
"Night Along the Pines," in the Travels with a Donkey? And the lines in it
from an old play?
The bed was made, the room was fit,
By punctual eve the stars were lit;
The air was sweet; the water ran;
No need was there for maid or man,
When we put up my ass and I
At God's queer caravanserai.
Do you remember what Stevenson says? "Night is a dead, monotonous
period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly with its stars &
dews & perfumes . .. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked
between walls & curtains is only a light & living slumber to the man who
sleeps afield . . . And to live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of
all lives the most complete & free ..."
How does this affect you, Sir? When I read it & think of you, it is almost
as though I were with you now. (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure,
Jr., February 22, 1916)
�The Road to Hickory Nut Gap
185
Elizabeth's literary imagination easily transformed Stevenson's donkey
into the Honeymoon Hudson, as incongruous as her gypsy vision must have
appeared in that sleekest and shiniest of new cars. To the mountain people of
Western North Carolina, they would have appeared in 1916 as nothing less than
strays from a world of wealth unimaginable. But they were by no means the first
of their kind to appear in the region. Asheville, North Carolina in 1916 had
earned for itself quite a sporty reputation, and catered to some of the wealthiest
citizens in the country. George Vanderbilt's colossal home, Biltmore House,
was located just south of town. E. W. Grove invested part of his patent medicine
fortune in the Grove Park Inn, one of the most well-known and respected hotels
in the United States. During the summer season, Asheville glittered with many
of the same kinds of people and gatherings with which Elizabeth and Jim had
grown up.
But just beyond the glitter, there was a population of mountaineers who,
for the most part, were left untouched by the Industrial Revolution. Cash was
scarce, and Hudson automobiles were cause for comments. Out beyond the local
markets of towns like Asheville, there was almost no way to sell crops, and as
a result great populations of people lived a subsistence style of life based
invariably on a big garden, a few hogs, wild meat, berries and edible plants. It
would be to these men and women, with their strong religion, self-sufficient
habits and ability to work, that Jim and Elizabeth would devote their lives. And
it was on their honeymoon that they became acquainted with this peculiar
region; and they never left.
The plan of the honeymoon was of course to have no plan. But they were
required back in Lake Forest on April 12 for young Ambrose's wedding, and
they returned for two weeks to take in all the festivities surrounding that event.
Elizabeth described it to Martha Clarke: "Jim and I spent two hectic weeks at
home alternately visiting the aunts, the McClures & Rathmore. We spent all our
free moments boxing up various possessions ..." (Elizabeth Cramer McClure
to Martha Clarke, April 28, 1916). Jim's father again performed the ceremony,
while Jim ushered. Afterwards, they fled south again, this time to look seriously
for a farm to rent as a temporary home to speed Jim's recovery.
They began again in Asheville, where they had left the Hudson, and headed
west into the Sapphire Country near Brevard, North Carolina.
Dearest Wiggy,
We have been camping out in the mountains having the finest time in the
world but far from the post! I wish you could see us! We are honeymooning
with no plans whatever; we just move from day to day. Jim has concocted the
greatest sleeping bag you ever saw which is a bed all "made up" and ready to
pop into. It is encased in black oilcloth & stands up in the bag like a fat black
sausage! Then Jim has devised a box which hinges onto the side of the car and
carries all our provisions & food, it's famous! And we look highly respectable
but are really wandering gypsies. (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Martha
Clarke, May 17, 1916).
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We Plow God's Fields
One morning they awoke to find themselves surrounded by curious little
boys in overalls, which made dressing a bit of a problem. Sometimes they stayed
in country inns. Wiggy learned from Elizabeth: "We are just having the time of
our lives. We spent Sunday with an old lady in Morganton who lives in an old,
old house & who gave us the most delicious food while two ancestral portraits
looked down on us from the wall. Tuesday night we slept at a farm and were
royally entertained. There were box hedges growing in the front yard that the
farmer's mother had planted 60 years ago and some quaint old furniture within
..." (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, June 21, 1916)
Their plan was to find a small country place to rent so that they could take
time to find a farm to buy. They kept looking, but saw no place that suited, until
one day they were driving along the old turnpike road that led from Asheville
through the little town of Fairview and across a valley toward the mountains.
They began the ascent of the Hickory Nut Gap, historically one of the most
important passage ways across the Blue Ridge. As the Hudson's gears groaned
under the strain of the steep and rough road, Elizabeth and Jim looked up to see
a large weather-beaten house nestled under the mountains at the top of a long,
sloping pasture. Slowing the car, Elizabeth and Jim both gasped, "That's the
place for us!" The old inn, in its unique situation, appealed to their sense of
drama and history. But of course they had to have a closer look, and who could
say that the inhabitants had any notion of selling?
Jim and Elizabeth pulled up to the house, and found the owner was an
elderly gentleman of about eighty whom everyone called "Judge" Phillips. His
title signified nothing but the respect of his friends, perhaps earned by his
success in persuading his young ward of eighteen to marry him. Her mother, at
some age in between, rounded out the Phillips household. Undoubtedly Jim
cheerily thrust his hand out to the old gentleman and said, "My name is
McClure, and this is my wife, Elizabeth."
Jim McClure was famous for his charm and he must have been especially
persuasive that day. He and Elizabeth were given a tour of the place, and at
some critical juncture of the visit the old Southern 'judge' and the young Yankee
minister disappeared into a room of the house to talk business, man to man.
Elizabeth and the young wife were left in each other's company on the porch.
The girl broke down and sobbed on Elizabeth's shoulder, begging the newcomers to buy the house so her husband would move back to town and she could
leave her solitary rural existence behind. Elizabeth used to say in later years she
wondered why one bride should be in such a hurry to move in when another
was so anxious to move out!1
Mr. Phillips said he would consider Jim's offer of $6,000, and the
McClures headed for Virginia where Ambrose Cramer was anxious to have them
settle. "For three sporty days," Elizabeth wrote Wiggy, "we went to the Homestead, which is the swagger hotel here" (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke,
July 7, 1916). Then they moved to a more modest pension de famille and
�The Road to Hickory Nut Gap
187
Top: Sherrill's Inn; photograph taken by the McClures circa 1917. Bottom: Smokehouse/
stockade located at Sherrill's Inn.
�188
We Plow God's Fields
continued their search. But nothing they saw in Virginia compared with the old
inn at Hickory Nut Gap. Elizabeth described it for Wiggy:
. . . & it has been . . . because of its commanding position, a genuine landmark. It is 45 minutes en auto from Asheville on a fine motor road & just two
miles & a half from a little village called Fairview. It has an altitude of 2700
feet so you can imagine how fine the air is & it is just at the crest of one of the
Blue Ridge ranges with a most superb view across the valley at the mountains
in the distance & at the little town lying far below. There are 50 acres of
bearing apple trees—2500 trees so the present owner tells us, & superb old
oak & chestnut trees on the grounds; wide porches, the finest spring you can
imagine flowing so freely that it can be piped to the house by gravity & the
loveliest little cement lined "springhouse" for keeping milk & butter etc. cool.
Then there is a big farm & a dairy & a huge vegetable garden. Of course the
house is just the simplest kind of an old southern wooden farmhouse unpainted, but it has a great deal of atmosphere & is by far the most distinguished
place around Asheville,-or indeed of any we've seen. It could be made fascinating with very little expenditure & it has a wonderful all year round climate
& is so near to Asheville that you could run in for lunch or golf or anything
else. Then there is an R.F.D. right to the door & in summer (I'm not certain
about winter) a regular motor service twice a day past the door into Asheville.
It would be a simply wonderful place to live in. We've made the owner an
offer of renting it for two years, we are putting in a bath & furnace & making
some minor changes with an option of buying it for $6,000 at the end of that
time. Jim thinks that the apple yield alone will pay the tenants salary & the
general upkeep, so we feel sure that old Judge Phillips will never accept our
offer but they say he wants cash so there is just a chance so, though it's a very
slim one indeed
(Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, July 7, 1916)
When the McClures returned to Asheville they discovered that a catastrophe had struck in their absence. On Sunday, July 16, 1916, the worst flood
ever to hit the region swept away millions of dollars worth of investments and
a considerable number of human lives. The damage was not confined to the
flood plains. Many a mountain cabin came tumbling down the hillside as the
over-saturated soil slid off its rock base. It had been a grim Sabbath in the
mountains, and Jim and Elizabeth must have been shocked by what they saw.
But they were desperate to hear from the Judge, and despite the fact that no
automobile had been able to drive to Fairview since the flood, Jim loaded up a
shovel and with characteristic determination made his way. All the bridges were
washed out, but by careful driving and a lot of shovelling he was able to ford
the creeks and reach Sherriirs Inn. The results of this meeting were recorded
in the Buncombe County deed books for August 10, 1916. Both husbands and
wives signed the lease agreement giving the McClures approximately sixty-five
acres, and the house, with an option to buy in two years for $6,000. In lieu of
rent, the McClure's were to " . . . install in the residence of said property a
heating plant and bathroom." Soon after, Jim and Elizabeth rented eighty acres
�The Road to Hickory Nut Gap
189
contiguous with the property, for $100 over two years, and with the option to
buy it all for $900.2
It is a testimony to the vision of Jim and Elizabeth that they saw the
potential of this neglected and dilapidated landmark. Elizabeth, with her high
standards of decorum, was taking on a new home that was unpainted and served
by an outhouse. Old pictures show a drab building situated on a landscape
strewn with boulders, as if pigs had been allowed to root right up to the threshold. Neighbors later commented to the McClures that Mr. Phillips was so lazy
that when someone came to buy apples, he would stick his head out of a window
and tell them to go pick their own and leave the money on the doorstep. The
room that became the McClure study had been used by the Judge to store hams
in ashes, and was in fact the original log cabin, built around 1800. His method
of curing hams was to cover them with ashes, and Jim and Elizabeth had to
wheelbarrow out nine loads of dirt and debris to even find the floor. The project
they undertook together to redesign, repair and landscape this property is alone
worthy of praise. It has remained a landmark in Western North Carolina, providing to date a 'home place' for four generations of McClures and Clarkes.
Despite the short term of white settlement in Buncombe County, just over
a century when Jim and Elizabeth moved in, their home half-way up Hickory
Nut Gap already claimed a rich heritage of history and legend. A man named
John Ashworth first bought the land for a shilling an acre, in "the XXXIst year
of independence" (1797).3 The following story gives the flavor of the times:
On a frigid winter night, the Ashworth family was huddled around their enormous fireplace, built big enough for the "old woman" to roast a whole pig. On
this particular night, a starving wolf pack began to howl and moan just outside
the cabin door. Mrs. Ashworth's husband was away, perhaps in the lowlands
buying salt and other necessities, and so the responsibility of protecting the
family fell to her. She grabbed the poker and placed it in the fireplace until it
glowed red hot, and then she thrust it out under the door. One wolf bit at it, and
burned his mouth so severely that the others smelled cooked meat. Another
wolf snapped at the smell of burning flesh. A vicious fight broke out within the
pack and soon they all ran off howling with hunger and pain.4 The first structure
John Ashworth built on his place was a log fort, which was later used as a
smokehouse. The building still stands, and is thought to be the oldest standing
structure in Buncombe County. He believed the Cherokee enough of a menace
to cut rifle slots in the thick, square poplar logs, so that he could fend off an
attack if necessary.
In 1834, Mr. Ashworth sold out to Bedford Sherrill, a stage coach driver.
Sherrill married Molly, the daughter of the owner of Rack's Hotel in Chimney
Rock, a village on the other side of the mountain. A new era in the mountains
came with the construction by private companies of turnpike roads. One such
road was built over Hickory Nut Gap to connect Asheville to Rutherfordton and
points to the south and east. Mr. Sherrill secured the contract to carry the mails
�190
We Plow God's Fields
along this route, and to Tennessee on the northeast run. His "Albany Coach"
could carry nine passengers inside and more on the top. He was an enterprising
man, and could see the possibilities of his home becoming a tavern and inn. So
when he bought it, he built a long two story addition onto the cabin, with plenty
of room to put up travellers. The fifteen miles from Asheville to his inn were
about as much as a traveller could endure in a day over the roads of that era.5
Within eight years, Bedford Sherrill was out of debt and pushing his business in new directions. He dropped the mail route, and began to sell goods to
travellers and the local farmers. Records remain of the transfer of such items as
cloth, shoes, coffee, tobacco, spices and brandy. Everything from horses to
guns to castor oil was peddled at the inn. The farmers would usually pay for
these goods in corn. In fact, a remarkable economy grew up in Buncombe and
Henderson Counties in pre-Civil War Western North Carolina, as merchants
used the turnpikes to drive great herds of swine across the mountains, to be sold
to the plantation owners of South Carolina and Georgia. The trade built up to
around 175,000 hogs a year, plus a number of turkey, sheep, mule and horse
drives to boot. Bedford Sherrill worked hard to attract travellers away from the
more popular Buncombe Turnpike to the Hickory Nut Gap road, with enough
success to set up his own "stand," or temporary stockyard, to feed the hogs and
drovers for the night.6
The stage coach continued its route through the mountains during most of
the Nineteenth century, adding some colorful details to the history of the inn.
As the stage began its slow journey up the mountain, the driver would blow a
long horn, sounding it as many times as there were passengers on board. Up at
the inn, Mrs. Sherrill listened and could judge by the horn just how much food
she needed to prepare for supper. When the coach arrived, Mr. Sherrill would
offer apple brandy to the weary and jolted passengers, and his slave boy would
take the horses down to the barn. The guests would be shown their rooms, which
were small cubicles reached by passing through the rooms in front. But travelling in those days provided few comforts, and there was always the tap room,
where apple brandy, corn liquor, and sometimes strawberry wine and grape
juice were available.7 Many distinguished guests stayed for the night at SherrilFs Inn, including members of the wealthy plantation families from the South
where malaria threatened during the summer. In October of 1857, Governor
Andrew Johnson of Tennessee signed the guest register, the same man who
went on to become President of the United States after the assassination of
Abraham Lincoln (and was nearly impeached). The signature of Millard
Fillmore appears the year before, when he would have been president, but it has
not been authenticated and may have been penned by a school girl practicing
her handwriting.8
The Civil War brought chaos to the mountains. Local sympathies were
divided, but once a young man had enlisted, his loyalty was fierce. The topography provided cover for the whole range of common criminals, deserters and
�The Road to Hickory Nut Gap
191
renegades that grew up along with the disturbances of the war. Bedford Sherrill
was a slave owner, and his sympathies lay clearly with the South. Toward the
end of the war, a General Palmer brought a detachment of Union soldiers
through Hickory Nut Gap, and they stayed at Sherriirs Inn.9
Family stories of the Yankee soldiers' visit survive among Sherrill descendants. Word must have raced across the gap of the troops' approach, for the
family had time to hide a gold watch or two on a ledge in one of the great
chimneys, and to hang the hams in the thickness of the wall in the log cabin
room, hanging Mrs. Sherrill's hoop skirts on pegs to cover the new carpentry.
When the soldiers arrived the commanding officer rode his horse right onto the
porch to demand lodging. There was a trap door to the basement in the floor.
With bated breath the family watched to see if it would give way, but the hinges
held. When a slave girl was frying eggs for the soldiers' breakfast next morning,
one of the six Sherrill daughters took off her stockings and shook them over the
pan exclaiming, "Those Yankees can eat the dust off my feet and they'll think
it's pepper!"10
After the war, the Sherrills sold out to a Mr. Lee from Tennessee, who was
fleeing persecution by the Union sympathizers of that region. Jim Walker
(known as "Tight Jim") eventually took Mr. Lee to court, trying to prove that
he had had him arrested and thrown in a Confederate prison in Richmond. Mr.
Lee's troubles never seemed to cease. When he tried to market the "Woman's
Friend and Steam Washer" and the "Genuine Improved Common Sense Sewing
Machine," his only comment for the failure of his enterprise was that "The
people here seem very cautious." He tried to attract the old drover traffic again,
but the economy of the plantation South lay in ruins, drying up the hog market.
So in 1874 Mr. Lee gave up, sold the place back to the Sherrill family, and left
the country.11
The Sherrills re-established the inn in their name, and entertained travellers
from Asheville on the way to tour the gorge on the other side of the gap. When
the railroad was completed in 1880, the town of Asheville experienced an
economic boom, and was well on its way to developing a reputation for "salubrious air," beauty, wealthy summer tourists, and tuberculosis sanitariums. The
little town of Fairview grew up, and travel across the Gap increased. At the
same time, visitors began to expect more comforts than an old inn could offer.
The Sherrills sold out again, this time to a Captain Spangler, who in turn sold
out to Old 'Judge' Phillips. He had worked the place for about ten years when
Jim and Elizabeth drove up in the Honeymoon Hudson automobile.
The newlyweds saw life as an adventure, and the purchase of this old inn
with its romantic history was characteristic. No doubt their relatives back in
Illinois were somewhat taken aback, but soon a fine traffic of Lake Forest
visitors began to make their way to Hickory Nut Gap and they, too, were quickly
charmed.
Elizabeth was ecstatic. The house had history and good architectural lines,
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�The Road to Hickory Nut Gap
193
and the location was a rare confluence of superb natural beauty, picturesque
buildings and enormous potential for improvement. There were even ghosts to
remind the McClures of the past!
Dearest Wiggy,
Do you remember that in my last letter I wrote you all about the place near
Asheville that had once been an old inn..? . . . He accepted our offer & we
take possession the 15th of September. It is a simply ideal place for us ...
We are planning to move out to the Fairview Inn on Monday to take up our
quarters there as there will be a good deal of red tape with regard to leasing the
house . . . Then, as soon as the owners move out we will put in a furnace & a
bathroom etc. & paint the house . . . Such apple trees, Wiggy darling, & such
quinces! When you come to see Pigie you will have to put up loads & loads
of jam & preserves! Just you wait till you see the fruit on the place & the lovely
spring & oh such fine mountain air. You will get so fat when you come that
you will have to buy all new clothes. I shall need your advice badly about
planning the garden. If you ever get time to, send me a plan of the Trfcpied
flower borders & I will try & duplicate it here—it would be such fun. (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Martha Clarke, August 5, 1916)
Our place here is just a dream, darling, and some day we will be sitting
[you] .. . down on a wide porch with a whole stretch of superb mountains out
in front. Then dear, you'll be set down to a table full of country food & after
that tucked into bed (perhaps a four poster) with a fire in the grate & a warm
comforter over your toes & you'll sleep as you haven't slept in years . . . In
no time you'll be just as fat as butter again & you'll forget all about this cruel
war...
In the meantime here we are at this charming little inn 2l/2 miles from the
house & we shall probably be here until Christmas as there are a lot of little
things that we have to do to the house & Jim has to take them slowly. Ever
since we arrived here he has been so much better as he sees nobody & just
rests & keeps out[side]-The doctors don't want rum to make any social effort
so I don't think we will be able to have any guests—even family 'till next
summer anyway & perhaps not till autumn. But he is getting on so splendidly
I am very happy .. . We've decided to call our place "Old Tavern" because
that's what it once was. How do you like the sound? It sounds cozy don't you
think? (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Martha Clarke, August 20, 1916)
For the next several months, Elizabeth and Jim managed the repair and
remodelling of "Old Tavern." They also began interviewing for a man to be in
charge of the farm and a couple to help out with the work. By mid-November,
Wiggy received this report:
We have got the steam heating system almost in, at Old Tavern, & we're
going to have the finest water system that was ever anybody's, I truly believe.
Opposite: One of Mr. McClure's payments to Mr. H.T. Phillips for Hickory Nut Gap
Farm.
�194
We Plow God's Fields
The source of the spring is about 300 feet above the house on the side of the
mountain & the loveliest purest water will come running down to the house
that you ever tasted. Our altitude is equal to the top of Mt. Equinox in Manchester so you can see how high we are & how good the air is.
. . . We are more and more delighted with the place-it is superbly situated
with a magnificent view, & all sorts of old stories center about it. We have had
the house painted white & are lining the inside with beaverboard —painting it
& panelling it with moldings. We can't afford to do but 3 of the rooms this
year but it will be all the more fun doing a little at a time. I long for you to see
it. The windows have little panes of glass that are all rainbow colours from
age. (Elizabeth Cramer to Martha Clarke, November 10, 1916)
Amidst all the projects going on about the house, and purchasing the
property, and hiring on help, Jim McClure had to spend money as he never had
before. Ever after his Yale days, he had worked to be as carefiil with money as
he could. He felt strong resentment towards "conspicuous consumption" and
felt great satisfaction in walking through Germany for almost no money at all
and in inking the bare spots on his winter coat. His dreams of being a gypsy,
or of going back to Texas and working with the old nester until he died, were
the direct result of his attitude that real freedom came when one was no longer
dependent on money. However impractical such a dream would be as a way of
life, Jim McClure always remained unable to spend money merely to increase
his own comfort. As a goal, he wanted to live for under $3,000 a year.
On these issues, Jim and Elizabeth had some working out to do. No spendthrift herself, she did love the objects of life that were beautiful, and these were
invariably expensive. All of the silver that flowed their way delighted Elizabeth,
but bothered Jim. There was no great battle here, but merely a sore point that
says a great deal about each of these people. In putting together the pieces of
their household, the ways and means of spending money had to be faced.
It was during the engagement that this issue of wealth was first broached.
Dearest Thing:
I know you wish you were marrying a pennyless creature! I'm sorry my
blessed Dear to be depriving you of all such opportunities! But there's no use
pretending you are marrying a lady without a red penny to her name. Facts are
facts & they have to be accepted and the old idea that a husband must pay all
the expenses & assume all the financial burden in marriage has always seemed
absurd & conventional & irrational.
It isn't any question of a man's growing "flabby" either as you said to me
once so long as he .keeps true to his own highest purposes. Jointly, we shall
have an income of $8,000.00 a year. If you were the sort of a man whose
standard of life consisted of giving "sporty" dinner parties and keeping a
footman & generally taking things easy there would be some truth in what you
say about a man's becoming "flabby." But you know you're not that sort &
you never could be. And it doesn't matter a row of brass beans which of us
has the most money. What's yours is mine and what's mine is yours, that's all
there is to it & its not right to make any difference .. .
�The Road to Hickory Nut Gap
195
You can't think my Dearest, my darling Jim how dreadfully it would make
me feel if you refused to let us together use all our money, mine as well as
yours. If you did otherwise it would be to live on an artificial basis. What
earthly difference does it make that by some curious accident of life I happen
to have a little more money than you? The fact that I am a woman should not
for one moment have any bearing on the case. The only thing that is to be
considered is that we lose no single opportunity to use all the money we have
to the best possible advantage in God's world. It may be in buying furniture,
it may be in getting you a new coat and it may be in doing over a church or in
financing some social scheme or in buying me a hat. It's the principle that
matters every time.
I insist upon figuring always in all our living together on the basis of an
$8,000.00 yearly income & not on the basis of a $3,000.00 income. Then .. .
if we choose to run a very simple establishment, it will be because we feel
that such action is in accordance with our attitude towards life & our social
beliefs and not for what would be an artificial reason—namely the assumption
that we couldn't afford more inasmuch as we only had $3,000.00 a year.
I am as anxious as you are to try to run our house on $3,000.00 a year, but
I am only anxious to do so because, just now, we have decided that $3,000.00
a year "establishment" best expresses our attitude toward life. I should never
for a moment be willing to do so if I thought that it was because we were going
on the assumption that we had only $3,000.00 a year to spend; that would be
insincere because it would be dealing with an unreality. If our living expenses
are kept within $3,000.00 a year we shall simply have to use the remaining
$5,000.00 for the best purposes known to us; it might be for a pool in the
garden, it might be for a sea voyage, it might be as a boost to somebody who
was down and out, it might be to get a church going; all these things perhaps,
and it goes without saying of course that we should always want to put some
by for the inevitable rainy day & that the "ten percent" to the Lord seems a
cold way of measuring out his money & that it would just have to go any way
because we couldn't help ourselves.
It seems to me, the only thing to remember is that you & I have been
brought together to more adequately serve God's purposes & that if incidentally we have money it's simply up to us to use it to the fullest capacity & to
accept life as it has come to us & use it.
I tried to say all this to you once before but somehow I couldn't. I didn't
think you were taking a square look at things. If you don't agree with me you
can tell me why when you get back & then we'll talk it over. (Elizabeth Cramer
to James G. K. McClure, Jr., February 21, 1916)
Elizabeth's thoughts here were not the last word on the matter, but without a
doubt there were to be times when Jim McClure would be mighty glad to have
some of her family money to tide him, his family and the Farmers Federation
over some tight places.
One such place came early. Just after paying out so much money for the
farm and its restoration, and then hiring the first wage earners, Elizabeth became
ill and had an internal cyst removed. The bills began to pour in. The two of them
moved back into Asheville and were staying at the swanky Manor Inn when Jim
wrote to his sister Harriet: "You will be startled at the luxurious look of this
�196
We Plow God's Fields
letter heading but you will be more startled to see Siddy & Jamie reach Lake
Forest in rags and overalls respectively, hounded by creditors and with a lean
and starved look . . . E. is getting on famously . . . but it has been a very severe
financial jolt to the McClures and they will be groggy for several months"
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet Stuart, October 31, 1916). Elizabeth
related her version to Jim's mother:
We hope to go back to Fairview early next week and I am eager to see how
they are getting on at the "farm." Just now the countryside is gorgeous . . .
"The operation" was more trying for Jim than for me—I redly believe. The
poor dear lost ten pounds but he will soon get them back. He is really much
better than he was when we were first married but he has not yet much
endurance & so is still obliged to go very slow . . . 1 think "the farm" & its
various out of door healthy activities are already doing him much good. . . .
(Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Phebe Ann Dixon McClure, November 1,
1916)
The McClures decided to remain in town as the Fairview Inn was not
heated. By December the work on the house was nearly completed and Elizabeth
wrote to Wiggy describing how the place was looking. They were only completing three rooms downstairs.
. . . the house is really going to be fascinating. It is all painted now with green
blinds (like Trepied's) and the roof is a nice gray. Then inside, we are panelling the walls in the dining room & living room with strips of moulding and
it will then be all painted a lovely old ivory white. The little hall is in the oldest
part of the house together with Jim's study, so we have left it just as it was &
have painted the old walls cream colour. There are two little ancient doors in
the hall with old, old iron latches & hinges such as they used to have 100 years
ago. You go up a step & one of these doors opens into Jim's study. There are
huge hand hewn beams running across the ceiling & there we are staining an
old one walnut & polishing with wax . ..
We have engaged two such nice coloured people, a man & wife who
together only cost us $8 a week(!) & who will do all the work about the house
& in the garden. Our "apple man" too arrived Monday & has started pruning
the old apple trees. He is named Davidson & has been superintendent of two
State Test farms besides having an agricultural education to boot so we hope
that he will make a financial "go" of the place. We are putting a good deal of
cash into it all as we're so anxious to have the place pay in a couple of years.
We really think it is one place in a thousand! (vain creatures!) We are putting
up a nice little house for Davidson, down in the lower pasture & we also have
to put up a little one-room servant house right near the back of "Old Tavern."..so you see we have our hands full. We've built the tenant house so that
it looks as old as the rest of the place. The roof has a fine sway & the place is
built along old time lines so its quite in keeping with the rest...
The country life down here is really more like the Old English Country Life
than anything . . . I just adore this country. There is really nothing in Europe
more lovely . ..
�The Road to Hickory Nut Gap
197
Tomorrow we plan to motor out to the place & spend the day taking our
picnic lunch. It is such fun & we both love superintending the work . .. We
have a fine road & such a drive. (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Martha Clarke,
December?, 1916)
The black couple, Esther and John Shorter, soon became the heart and
soul of Hickory Nut Gap life. Esther died quite young, but John remarried. His
new wife Mathilda Shorter, a plump young New Orleans girl, took over and
stayed to raise the grandchildren. John Shorter had grown up in Fairview, and
was a highly respected man for his fine character and his working skills. He had
a cheerful heart and fine bushy mustache. James Davidson's first appearance
was brief, as he was drafted into the U. S. Army during World War I. After the
war, he returned to the farm and in time married a lovely young red-head named
Virginia, adding another valuable member to the community.
Elizabeth and Jim traveled to Chicago for Christmas, returning to North
Carolina laden down with purchases for their new home. Elizabeth enjoyed so
much thinking through the problems of interior design and making discoveries
in shops of items that suited her exacting criteria. They returned to their Old
Tavern in February, still unable to move in. In the latter part of the month, Jim
and Elizabeth began to keep a diary together, jotting down short notes of their
activities for the day. Often they would also include endearments to each other.
Added to her father's nickname for her "Bios," and Wiggle's "Pigie," Jim added
his own nickname for Elizabeth, "Petie." For her part, she addressed Jim as
"Cricket." The first entry was a momentous one: February 27, 1917, "Esther &
John start in with us." On March 12, 1917, the house was finally ready for
habitation. Esther and John had worked hard to create a livable situation, but it
certainly did not match the elegance of Rathmore. That March day was not a
glorious one in the mountains. As Jim and Elizabeth motored along the highway
from the Fairview Inn, it was pouring a chilly March rain and the gravel road
was turning into mud. At the foot of the mountain, the Honeymoon Hudson
bogged down for good. Jim trudged out into the weather and found John. Full
of good cheer, John harnessed up his yoke of oxen, hitched them to the Hudson,
and, with perhaps some happy thoughts about the superiority of animals over
machines, dragged the automobile up the mountain.
In his daily activities, Jim still had to go slowly. He and Elizabeth had the
wonderful opportunity to picnic and take walks together and investigate the
mountain landscapes they had purchased. More than that, they could both make
decisions, and both plan and dream about the future of the farm and of their
own lives. At this stage, the future remained outlined roughly this way: Jim
would recover his health, seek a "call" in a church, and they would leave
Hickory Nut Gap as a smoothly functioning business in the charge of Mr.
Davidson. They would return for vacations, but it was not envisioned as a
permanent home. In fact, they had only leased the property, and could have
turned it all back over to Judge Phillips if other opportunities had come along.
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But slowly, the work, the money and the dreams the two of them enjoyed
together, not to mention the very real charm of the house and mountains, worked
their magic. If they had been forced to face the facts, they might have even
admitted that they had found their home. Once Elizabeth planted her gardens,
the die would be cast. Even though Jim's daily activities were slowed down by
his debilities, the important elements of his life were rapidly fitting together.
Within the span of two Marches, 1916 and 1917, Jim had both married and
moved into his permanent home, having relocated both himself and his wife to
completely unexplored territory. And little did he realize that in a few years
time he would create an organization that would have as large an impact on this
mountain region as perhaps any in its history. When Jim's father wrote him
back in 1910 that so often the tragic times in one's life are seen in retrospect as
the key turning points towards a new plan and purpose for that person, Jim
perhaps shrugged off the idea as merely loving encouragement. But his father
was correct. How else could events have conspired to bring together Elizabeth
Cramer, Hickory Nut Gap, the mountaineers of North Carolina and Jim
McClure?
1. Interview with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
2. Buncombe County Deed Books, Book 208, p. 435.
3. Old Deed located at Sherill's Inn.
4. Elspeth McClure, "Sherrill's Inn and the Development of Buncombe County,"
Unpublished paper, p.7.
5. Ibid., p. 9^-10.
6. Ibid., P. 10-11.
7. Ibid., p. 12-14.
8. Old Registers found at Hickory Nut Gap.
9. Op. Cit., "SherrilFs Inn and the Development of Buncombe County," p.2526.
10. Interviews with Elspeth McClure Clarke. This story was told to Mrs. Clarke by
a member of the Sherrill family.
11. Op Cit., "Sherrill's Inn and the Development of Buncombe County."
�Chapter Twelve
Farmer Jim
This week Jim has sold four pigs, purchased 4 ducks and a calf and sold
large quantities of stuff to the hospital... in Asheville. His sales for the month
of August are already over $200. (Arch McClure to Harriet Stuart, August 22,
1918)
Since the Aunts installed a "cabinet de toillette" off the Green Room upstairs it is really not at all bad so we now have ample room for guests with a
little country squeezing. (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Harriet Stuart, September 13, 1918)
Our visit was a memorable one. I feel that Elizabeth and Jamie live hi an
enchanted country, it is so beautiful. The mountains, the wonderful growth
and variety of trees and shrubs, all make a real fairy land. Mr. McClure and I
are delighted with it all.
The house under Elizabeth's transforming genius is a gem in its rare setting.
I wonder at all that has been accomplished.
As to Elizabeth's housekeeping abilities, it is indeed amazing. Such order
and system in her household, such delicious viands, the table so perfect in
every particular, I must see you soon, and then talk it all over with you. How
Elizabeth manages it all, through Esther and Eliza, I do not know. She certainly succeeds in inspiring them to do their best. As to the shelves filled with
those shining jars of fruits and vegetables, all prepared under Elizabeth's
directions, words fail me to express my amazement, and admiration. I do not
wonder that 'Town and Country" celebrates her skill. (Phebe Ann Dixon
McClure to the Misses Skinner, October 9, 1918)
In the spring of 1917, the ghastly pall of World War I still hung over the
Western World. The excitement and patriotism of those early days when Elizabeth watched Lord Kitchener emerge from the war office amidst cheering
crowds had been replaced with the issuing of endless lists of grim statistics and
numbing casualty lists. The Russian Empire was beginning to disintegrate under
the weight of the war. As the McClures moved into their new home, the Tsar
had abdicated and a moderate democratic government under Aleksandr Kerenski
was searching for some formula on which to base its rule. Elizabeth expressed
the American satisfaction with Russian democracy when she wrote to Wiggy,
"Isn't it superb news about Russia. It is truly one of the few good things that
have come as a result of this war. It should greatly aid the cause of the allies"
(Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Martha Clarke, April 20, 1917). But as the apple
199
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trees bloomed that April at Hickory Nut Gap, the Germans were sending the
fateful sealed train containing the communist "bacillus" in the person of Nikolai
Lenin across the border to infect the already weakened Russian body politic.
At the same time, America was preparing to enter the war. On April 2, 1917,
Woodrow Wilson expressed the idealism of the American people when he
explained his reasons for declaring war. He said, "The world must be made safe
for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political
liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion.
We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall gladly make."1
Despite Jim McClure's dogged opposition to American involvement in the
war, he was moved by Wilson's words of idealistic purpose. One can imagine
him bringing home the Asheville newspaper, and excitedly calling Elizabeth
into the study to read her the speech. She had always suffered with her old
French neighbors. She would argue with her more pacifistic husband that the
war was a struggle against the German spirit of mechanical brutality. Before
they were married, in 1915, she wrote him that when the cathedral of Reims
was leveled by the Germans, she recoiled in horror that such beauty could be
so quickly destroyed, and it confirmed her suspicions that the German government opposed the very ideal of beauty she held dearest. She also wrote to her
father about it, and he wrote back that although the Cramers were of German
stock, they claimed the ancestral homeland of Southern Germany, and not that
of the militaristic state of Prussia.
Wilson's message of self-sacrifice and a united effort to win the war could
not have been better designed to put a zealous spirit into Jim McClure. Here he
was, living on a farm, and what the nation needed was food, enough to feed the
allied armies and all those left behind without a breadwinner. Herbert Hoover
was placed in charge of the home front, and was so successful in appealing to
the nation's patriotism that there was never a need for ration cards. The popular
sentiment was:
My Tuesdays are meatless,
My Wednesdays are wheatless,
I'm getting more eatless each day.
My coffee is sweetless,
My bed it is sheetless,
All sent to the Y.M.C.A.2
World War I was all out war, and by 1917 it was clear to nearly everyone that
the winning side would be the one whose economy could be mobilized to
produce the necessary food, arms and supplies. Russia, with its immense stores
of raw materials, was about to withdraw altogether, but not before the German
army had captured the Ukrainian bread basket. France and Britain had been bled
almost dry by 1917, and morale was beginning to slip. The Germans prepared
�Farmer Jim
201
one more large thrust at Paris, to break through before the United States forces
could arrive. But in the end, as much as her soldiers, it was the strength of
America's industrial economy that won the war. Moreover, it was Woodrow
Wilson's statement of. high principles that allowed his country to rally so
strongly behind the effort.
The call for production of foodstuffs made a serious farmer out of Jim
McClure. He wrote to Harriet during the summer:
The food shortage seeming so acute, and not being able to do anything else,
we decided to get the remaining land that the old Judge had and which was
lying idle & useless. We are now engaged in making plans for its temporary
and future use and enjoying it vastly. As time goes on our specialties will be
orchards & beef cattle, but the next year or so we may raise considerable grain.
Except for the car, oxen are our sole means of conveyance & work & we
use them to plough, cultivate and every other farm activity. (James G. K.
McClure, Jr. to Harriet Stuart, June 11, 1917)
Elizabeth wrote to Wiggy in France:
Everyone here is of course occupied with the war. Many of the young men
in Chicago have already enlisted. Ambrose has gone into some sort of clerical
work to do with the Navy . . . We are very busy planting extra crops as that
seems to be the great necessity this year .. . We've planted about 4 acres . ..
in beans for the allies besides various other crops such as corn & wheat.
(Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Martha Clarke, May 27, 1917)
Her father kidded them when news came to Rathmore that they had purchased more land to aid the war effort. "Darling Bios," he wrote, "So you
Hickory Nut Gap people are land Barons and deliciously short of cash. Well,
*Ya can na be baith grand and comfortable'" (Ambrose Cramer, Sr., to Elizabeth
Cramer McClure, August 8, 1917; quote from J.M. Barrie, The Little Minister).
Ambrose Cramer's curiosity had already brought him down to North Carolina to see just where this idealistic minister had taken his "Darling Blossom."
Elizabeth wrote to Wiggy, "Mother & Father & Corwith came down for a few
days ... Father just had the time of his life walking about and giving advice.
We really have a perfectly beautiful old place & such a view of the mountains
. . . I think it was really far nicer than they had anticipated. It really is quite a
place, Wiggy dear, & in 10 years if we are still in the land of the living & still
out of Debtors' prison it ought to be a beauty" (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to
Martha Clarke, May 27, 1917).
Jim hired James Davidson, an agricultural graduate of North Carolina
State, to manage the farm because he was an experienced orchardist. He was
promptly drafted into the U. S. Army, but returned in 1918. Mr. Davidson was
not only an able farmer, but also had the knack of leading the work force with
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a minimum of tension. Jim himself enjoyed the men who came to live on his
farm. He found their mountain ways both fascinating and exasperating. He
wrote to his parents that March:
We have a new hand working for us. He moved in on Tues. with a wife and
three children—using our oxcart for the moving—and reported for work on
Weds, with a wife & four children at home—mother & daughter doing well.
He is quite pleased with himself & feels that he moved just in time.
. . . if we do not go broke should make a good showing with our crops.
We plan to plant so much that they will have a hard summer caring for it—but
I feel relieved to have three men we can depend on & not have to chance
picking up day labor. . . . (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to his parents, March
17, 1917.)
Elizabeth had never cooked a meal, although in later years she became as
talented a cook as she was a painter. In her report to Wiggy she listed the latest
acquisitions, and described the routine of her typical day.
We have had to buy a pair of mules & two oxen-we also now possess 3
cows & 3 pigs and two calves so you see our livestock is increasing—not to
mention chickens . . .
You said you wanted to know how we spent our days. In the morning by 8
o'clock breakfast comes, rumbling up on a dumbwaiter. Then after breakfast
I attend to our room & bathroom, make the beds & generally tidy up. Jim stays
in bed until after lunch & I spend the morning doing all sorts of things from
painting chairs & tables to arranging flowers. After lunch we both snooze for
an hour; then Jim gets up & goes down to the porch & we read or write. After
tea we go for a little stroll & then comes supper. Once in a great while we go
over to Fletcher & call on friends there but as a rule Jim sees nobody.
He overdid a little this Spring in the interest of making over the place, so
now I am very strict with him so that he will be well enough to go to Manchester in September to visit the Aunts. . . . (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to
Martha Clarke, July 16, 1917)
This letter reminds us that Jim McClure was still a long way from full
recovery. His daughter Elspeth finds it hard to believe this schedule after knowing the vigorous and tireless man her father became. It was somewhere between
his after lunch snooze and tea that Jim sat and wrote down the ideas that bubbled
through his mind. Prior to Wilson's declaration of war, he had taken a strong
stand against American involvement. Back in 1914 he had written a letter that
was published in the Chicago Tribune under the heading "Faith in Mankind."
In it, he suggested a radical departure from traditional dependence on military
strength.
We can wipe out our coast defenses, reduce our navy to a police force, and
say to the world that the day of force has passed, as we in 1775 said the day
of autocracy is past...
�Farmer Jim
203
If we adopt a policy of non-resistance we proclaim once more and out loud
our faith in all mankind.3
Jim never shrank from challenging the basic presuppositions of any cause
or concept, and rather enjoyed his provocative nature. His brother-in-law,
Dumont Clarke, was equally devoted to Christian ideals in his own way and
according to his own temperament. He was a determined leader in the peace
movement during and after World War I, and Jim admired especially the way
Dumont made a personal sacrifice to back his beliefs. Long before the war he
had been given a number of shares of stock in a company that manufactured
submarines. Prior to August 1914, the stock price languished at around $15 a
share. When war broke lose, the price naturally leaped upwards. Dumont told
Jim of his dilemma, a man preaching world peace growing rich off the war.
Most of his friends told him not to worry, that he should not miss a chance like
this to make easy money. As the price rose, Dumont felt more and more guilty.
At $115 a share, he sold out. The money realized, $19,000, was sent to missions
set up to relieve suffering caused by the war. That particular stock continued to
rise in value, eventually reaching its apex at $530 a share. Jim wrote in his
notebook that Dumont was "Very glad he sold when he did for [he] fears if [he]
had gotten so much for it, he would have thought of other things he could do
with the money & not had [the] resolution to give it all away. Even as it was
[he] caught himself looking at [the] papers to see how [the] stock was rising &
felt [the] beginnings of demoralization."4 But Jim and Dumont encouraged each
other's ethical decisions, trying to make their own way of thinking conform
better with the notion of the coming Kingdom of God.
After the declaration of war Jim joined in support of his country's struggle
against the German state, at first reluctantly and then with enthusiasm. Actually
the conduct of war fascinated him, and the leisure of his convalescence gave him
the opportunity to study events as they unfolded. What interested him most was
the self-sacrifice demanded of the soldier, and of the whole country as well, and
how people willingly joined in overwhelming support. Why was it that war
commanded so much unity and obedience, and most people at the front enthusiastically accepted the extra burdens? Why could not men and women learn to
pursue the vision of the Kingdom of God with a similar attitude of single-minded
selflessness? Peace and world harmony were much worthier goals than victory
in war. Ironically, Jim McClure was quite heartened by the American response
to war, and he became convinced that the same power of morale could be kept
strong when it was over, to rebuild the world on firmer foundations. That
summer of 1917 he wrote in his notebook:
The right attitude toward mankind, is, I am sure, something like this—That
millions of men have a longing & a vision of an ideal state of society. This
ideal might with ease be developed into the ideal of the Kingdom on earth.
Further, millions of men are willing to make enormous sacrifices for this idea,
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We Plow God's Fields
i.e. the millions of men, & of others at home, too, who are willing to sacrifice
in the present war.
The great need then is to work out the means of bringing this ideal state of
society & explaining it definitely.5
Jim continued to wrestle with these thoughts, trying to develop them h
a workable and practical alternative to war.
This frightful monster, Prussianism, with all its loathely characteristics,
suddenly unclothed itself and attacked an unbelieving world, a world not
willing to believe & not able to conceive such barbarism still possible . . . It
sardonically & efficiently violated everything that the long labors of idealists
had made sacred.
It had to be opposed immediately, there could be no delay. Many & many
a man was torn between the ideal which he dimly felt that he saw in the life
and death of Jesus, the way of love and reliance solely on spiritual power and
on the goodness & divinity latent in mankind; and the old and tried method of
armed resistance . . .
The decision had to be made at once . . .
But there can be no doubt that it was not Christ's way. Christ grew up at a
time when the whole hope of his nation was in the Messiah who was coming
to lead the people by force into freedom & security . . . Christ chose . . . a
different way. He put his sole reliance on the spiritual forces latent hi the hearts
of mankind . .. With no resistance he allowed himself to be battered & killed
by brutal, coarse, densely unspiritual men. There can be no doubt that he
discarded physical force as an inferior method.
And astonishing as it seems there can be no doubt of the success of his
method. The very sacred belief that he wanted to give mankind, that each
individual was capable of infinite spiritual development, that he was of the
same nature as God himself . . . that very belief commenced to spread. As it
spread it commenced to recreate mankind. Force never has been able to prevail
against it. Rome, by force, attempted to exterminate the Christians . . .
The offenders (Germany et al). . . are going to continue living in our world
&, as the distances grow shorter, cheek by jowl with us. Shall we have a
continual thorn in our flesh or shall we have a well wishing cooperator &
helper. Our problem is how to make the offender into a co-operator. And this
is where force fails .. .
The German is going to keep on living & right in our world, rubbing
shoulders with us. Our problem is not to exterminate him but to make him our
co-worker, our helper... We can do that only by spiritualizing him. And there
is but one way to do that. It is not by talking, or writing . . . It is by living it
ourselves; by the power of life (or example)...
It happened to Christ. He recognized the futility of a tirade against force,
or a wordy spiritual propaganda when he was tried. He went ahead, simply
living his life staking his all on the spiritual possibilities in mankind and let
them try and kill him . . .
It takes nerve, it seems impossible, a joke almost, absurd, but Christ took
that very sort of a chance—and God stood by him.6
�Farmer Jim
205
All this time Jim kept plugging away at farming, but often he overworked,
and his old physical troubles would flare up again. He was unhappy with the
slow progress of his recovery and decided to consult again with a doctor who
had offered him hope for recovery the previous fall. He and Elizabeth went first
to Manchester, where the fall foliage was still bright, to see the Skinner aunts.
They enjoyed many of the old haunts of their courtship days without being
pursued by the gossip of friends and relatives. In November they went down to
the little town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in the Berkshire Mountains, to
submit to the care of the remarkable Dr. Austen Riggs. Elizabeth described the
situation to Wiggy:
Here we are ... for a few days with the Aunts on our way to Stockbridge,
Mass, for two or 3 weeks where Jim will take a "cure" with Dr. Riggs who is
supposed to be quite a wizard in these respects. He looked Jim over last
September & said that his case was as definite as typhoid or a broken leg &
needed similar definite treatment. Jim was not making the fast progress he
wished to make, so we are going north for a few weeks. I myself am in the
best of health as usual—fairly bouncing. (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to
Martha Clarke, November 18, 1917)
Dr. Austen Riggs had been a successful physician in New York City when
he contracted tuberculosis in 1908. He moved to Stockbridge to recover, and
there had the leisure to reread the philosophy of William James. He also filled
his hours by working with his hands: building ship models and constructing his
own bows and arrows. He took up "clog dancing," a curious Appalachian folk
style, and he fenced and drummed along with Sousa marches. It slowly dawned
on him that the satisfactions of such activities were a wonderful antidote to
"modern life," and he prescribed similar pastimes as therapy for his patients.
When a patient first came to talk with him, he would ask, "Why have you
come to me?" Invariably the reply would be something like, "Because I want
to get well, Doctor, I want to get well!" "That," Dr. Riggs would reply, "doesn't
interest me. Why do you want to get well?" Austen Riggs understood human life
to be an interaction between one's intellect and one's environment. If a person
was struggling along, it was because he had made a poor adjustment to that
environment, or because the environment itself was faulted. Since there was
little Dr. Riggs could do to alter the conditions of a person's situation, he
worked to understand how an individual had adjusted both psychologically and
philosophically to his environment, and then tried to improve that adjustment.
He was forever quoting Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes around the sanitarium,
"The great purpose of life is to live it," then adding the corollary, "Happiness
. . . is only a by product of successful living." He believed that the body and
mind were indivisible, but that the mind or intellect must always take the lead
in the adjustment process. His stated theory was: " . . . a person functions on
four levels, the reflex, the instinctive, the intelligent, and the ethical . . . The
elements of mood and temperament complete the picture of an individual. The
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We Plow God's Fields
individual plus his environment . . . equals adaptation or maladaptation. Out of
the latter rise the problems loosely catalogued as 'nervous,' the psychoneurosis
sometimes so elaborately cloaked by resulting physical ills."
Dr. Riggs worked almost exclusively with men and women of social position. He found that the first step was for them to overcome their inhibitions
enough to admit that their breakdown was something other than self-indulgence
or worse, incurable insanity. Jim's cure, like everyone's, began with a frank
talk. Dr. Riggs continued these interviews, trying to learn in what way the
patient was out of line with his world. In the meantime, the cure consisted of
working with one's hands in the shop in therapeutic activities. In short, the
Riggs treatment was an educational process that emphasized "balanced living,
with work, play and rest all in proportion ..." His only advice was to accept
reality, accept life as it is. "Nervousness is not a disease but a disorder.. .simply
a maladjustment on the part of an otherwise perfectly sound, essentially normal
person, and therefore it is avoidable." He preached his own ten commandments:
1. Neither run away from emotions nor yet fight them. Accept them as the
wellsprings of all action. They are your automatically mobilized energies.
Force these energies into the channels of your choice . . . it is like guiding
spirited horses.
2. Be efficient in what you do. Do not drive your tacks with a sledge
hammer. Find out how easily you can do things well, and take pride in such
skill.
3. Do one thing at a time. Only thus can we practice concentration. I do not
mean that violent over-dramatization of effort, but the gentle art of controlling
the attention.
4. Make clean-cut practical decisions, subject to change in the face of new
facts or additional knowledge.
5. Do not accept hurry as a necessary part of modern life. Quality of work,
not quantity, spells success, and quality is destroyed by hurry.
6. Worry is a complete circle of inefficient thought whirling about a pivot
of fear. To avoid it, consider whether the problem in hand is your business.
If it is not, turn to something that is. If it is your business, decide it is your
business now. If so, decide what is best done about it. If you know, get busy.
If you don't know, find out promptly. Do these things; then rest your case on
the determination that, no matter how hard things may turn out to be, you will
make the best of them—and more than that no man can do.
7. Keep work, play, rest and exercise in their proper relative proportions;
not only in the space of decades, but year by year, month by month, week by
week, day by day.
8. Shun the New England conscience. It is a form of egotism which makes
a moral issue of every trivial thought—
9. When a decision has been reached, when something has to be done,
waste no time in "getting up steam"—just do it.
10. Do not criticize your part in the play, study it, understand it, and then
play it, sick or well, rich or poor, with faith, with courage, and with the proper
grace.7
�Farmer Jim
207
Dr. Riggs' philosophy of treatment spoke to Jim's problems. He had been
struggling with his temperament, one that certainly resembled "spirited horses,"
and needed to be told how important a balanced life was: "work, play, rest and
exercise." "He seems to be benefiting Jim already," Elizabeth wrote Wiggy,
"& [he] assures him that he will come out on top—all of which is very good
news. Jim is really in very good shape most of the time, but he is eager to get
back all his old endurance & vim so we are here to hurry things up" (Elizabeth
Cramer McClure to Martha Clarke, December 4,1917). They remained in Stockbridge through Christmas. Jim includes a progress report in this "thank you" to
Harriet, who often supplied him with new suits and had sent him one as a
Christmas gift:
I only fear that when the doc sees me sporting all the grandeur, he will
murmur "some fellah," and double his bill.. .
I am progressing famously and in about 10 days we are going to Andover
(to visit Annie and Dumont) for my trial trip. The doc sends his patients out
on a trial trip & then they return to report to him.
After that we will rush for Hickory Nut Gap— . . . The Aunties & Siddy
each gave me a Hampshire sheep—I am most anxious to see them. (James G.
K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet Stuart, December 26, 1917)
The visit to Andover, where Dumont Clarke was serving as school chaplain, went well. Elizabeth's next report to Wiggy continued to be optimistic.
"Jim is getting on wonderfully. He is better than he has been in years. Isn't that
fine?" (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Martha Clarke, January 1, 1918). A few
weeks later she reported, "Here we are back . . . for what we think will be only
a short stay. We have been in Andover 10 days staying with Jim's sister on a
sort of trial trip & Jim fared unbelievably well. He didn't take a single rest,
even, except for the orthodox Sunday nap and did just what he liked. It is
wonderful to see him so well again" (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Martha
Clarke, January 27, 1918).
And finally, Elizabeth relays the message to Wiggy that "Here we are, mon
chere, on our way back to the farm from Stockbridge. Jim is wonderfully well
but the doc wants him to remain at the farm another year" (Elizabeth Cramer
McClure to Martha Clarke, February 11, 1918).
Jim and Elizabeth left Dr. Riggs' sanitarium on the eighth of February.
The short interlude with Dr. Riggs made a dramatic difference to Jim McClure.
Somehow, those private meetings and all the therapy in between helped him to
finally take control of the illness that had plagued him for eight years. Throughout the rest of his life, Jim gave Dr. Austen Riggs the credit for freeing him from
his malaise.
They were home at Hickory Nut Gap on the twentieth, settling back into
their routine. The "Riggs cure" seemed to be holding, except for a few mild
warnings, and Jim did his best to balance his life better with equal doses of
work and play. Mr. Davidson was in the Army, and Jim slowly took on more
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of an active role in managing the farm. As Elizabeth mentioned to Wiggy, the
household was still enduring life on a wartime footing.
Everyone here in America is trying to think up substitutes for meat, wheat
& sugar & the housewives are busy delving into cookbooks. I wish you could
hear me talk about corn breads & wheat products! I made a poster a short time
ago representing a beautiful lady feeding a pig with a stout soldier standing
by. It read KEEP A PIG IN THE BACKYARD!
Hoover says "a pig is worth more than a shell in winning the war." . . .
We hope to put up 500 quarts of vegetables & fruit this summer so I shall be
busy! (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Martha Clarke, January 27, 1918)
Jim set his production goals quite high for 1918: "three to four thousand
bushels of corn, two hundred bushels of wheat and rye, one thousand bushels
of apples, five hundred of potatoes and fifty pigs . . . pretty good for a farm
that has been producing nothing to speak of for years past!" Elizabeth noted.
Three more hands were hired, and Hickory Nut Gap began to hum with life.
The two Yankees became totally immersed in the farming ways of the mountains, and their new home began to be the scene of a remarkable cultural
interchange. For Jim and Elizabeth, the summer of 1918 was their true baptism
into an Appalachian world. A fascination for the people caught in the mountain
backwaters began inexorably to overcome these two. They became consumed
by a desire to throw their idealism, their leadership and their very lives in with
them, in order to create a new economic and spiritual basis on which everyone
could enjoy the fruits of modern civilization. A look at the diaries of the learned
minister and his artist wife give a graphic picture of the education the mountaineers provided for the McClures during 1918, when they returned from Dr.
Riggs' Sanitarium. Sometimes one made the entry, sometimes the other:
March 7 Elizabeth] spent a furious day cleaning the dairy. Clad in a
raincoat & perched in the rafters she used the hose with such effect that she
nearly took the roof off.
March 8 E. spent another terrific day wrestling with the old kitchen. After
dinner [we] went together down to [the] Sumner tract where Sinclair was
ploughing & Mr. Nix, John Settle & Zeb MacAbee were clearing. Pisgah
[Mountain] had "broke out" [in fire]. Mr. Sumner letting it out, when burning
over his land. The three mentioned as clearing, went to the North of the fire
and headed it off.
March 9 While E. still wrestled with the remains of the old kitchen & John
[Shorter] assisted by Mr. Nix & John Settle performed the ceremony known
as "hog killing." .. . Home to find Petie [Elizabeth] worn & haggard cranking
the churn with her teeth set, after 3 hours at hard labor the butter did not come.
March 11 Zeb MacAbee hired on at $32.00 per month .. .
�Farmer Jim
209
March 13 Registered sow & boar from Mr. McCoughlin arrived. Boar got
out at Biltmore but Porter [MacAbee] who was "in for a ride" saw it & it was
captured.
March 16 Mr. Sinclair drilled 9 1/4 bu. [of] oats in bottom . . . Raspberries,
gooseberries & currants planted.
March 21 Wild orgy of house cleaning. The army posted all over the house
& every five minutes stage coach & bustle in new location. Hay loft & upper
orchard only refuges.
April 11 Our own ham for supper & it was delicious.
April 14 to church 1 hr. late but still heard 35 minutes of ghastliness. Wrote
article "Is Peace Possible?"
April 15 The pet polished my article. Dispatched article to New Republic.
April 20 Article returned by New Republic.
While Jim labored over this article it was beginning to look as though the
Allies were going to win after all. He took one more crack at trying to resolve
the issue of war. Although the editors of The New Republic chose not to publish
it, a copy remains in the family archives. The article reveals not only what he
thought on this issue, but also how he approached all such problems.
Is Permanent Peace Possible?
Permanent peace in the world is possible. The one condition of our attaining
it is that we refuse to be denied i t . . . Wishing and hoping will not bring this
to pass. It will be more difficult of accomplishment than the defeat of Germany.
So long as the nations of the world have sovereign and supposedly equal
power, there is bound to be war. Each nation is a law unto itself. Each nation,
therefore, will have recourse to arms when it considers the grievance or the
prize sufficient. At any time this may bring on a general war. No sovereign
nation could brook interference on a point of national honor or national aggrandizement.
To each nation its own government is the ultimate and highest authority.
We shall have in the world, then, several highest and ultimate authorities. Any
one who knows anything at all of human affairs realizes that sooner or later
these ultimate authorities are bound to clash. Nothing can prevent future wars
if we adhere to this old basis. No league of nations would ensure peace—for
it is merely a league of equal nations and no ultimate and mobile authority has
been created.
The only possible basis of permanent peace is to have one ultimate and
highest seat of authority; and this must be a mobile authority, created, freely
granted, and controlled by the people of the nations themselves. This would
insure permanent peace.
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Such a plan can be actualized by an international parliament or congress.
The people of each nation would elect representatives . . . The number of
representatives might be proportionate to the number of literate voters in the
various countries. The capital of the world would be situated at the Hague or
Constantinople or any such satisfactory place. Let me call to mind that the
distance in days travel in 1775 was longer between Boston and New York than
it is now between New York and London; San Francisco is capable of closer
communication with Constantinople than Charleston then was with Philadelphia. The details of such a plan present no insurmountable difficulties and it
is our one and only hope. There is no use deluding ourselves, or building our
structure on 19th Century hopes. Unless we, the people of the world, voluntarily create a representative international authority, we are fighting in vain.8
The war was much more than an intellectual puzzle for Jim. He and his
wife had spent a considerable part of their lives in Germany, France and England, and they wondered often about their friends remaining there. Nathan
McClure enlisted in the Army, and Ambrose Cramer served in the Navy and as
a French translator and administrator overseas. Jim himself was called up by the
draft, but when he reported for his physical, he had such a bad case of poison
ivy that they flunked him.9
In spite of these disappointments Jim kept working steadily on the farm and
in the community.
April 30 1st meeting [of the] Hickory Nut Gap Farm Co ... Mr. Davidson,
Mr. Sinclair, & John Shorter assembled in my study & I outlined the plan . . .
[This was a plan to allow the farm workers to share in farm profits. It was later
given up because profits just did not materialize.]
(Elizabeth) May 5 Bearwallow Baptist Church "Choir is all tore up." Old
man wanted to "Get shut" of his collection money. Grand revival hymns!
Cricket [Jim] referred to as "Brother McClure." Hateful turkeys are hatching.
(Jim) May 10 —rounding up sow that got out . . . a Mr. Williams desired
a night's lodging for his party, appearing about 9:30 & was hesitatingly refused.
May 12 ... 58 minute service on "Unbelief & Everlasting Torture."
May 17 Went to meet Hetty [Stuart] & Grace [Cramer, wife of Ambrose]
both delighted with country. Took them over Beaucatcher [Mountain] . . .
Quite impressed with place and views . . .
May 18 Mr. Dalton's, mail carrier's, first trip in Ford—displacing mule.
May 19 another ghastly sermon.
May 20 Gracy ploughed. Hetty churned.
�Farmer Jim
211
May 21 Africa [a sow] brought 6 pigs.
May 22 Africa lost 2 pigs—one strayed another crushed. To Asheville . ..
bearing John Settle on his matrimonial errand. After errands were taken by
Hetty & Grace to lunch at Grove Park. Home via Fletcher . . . Ran into mud
on Cane Creek Road & girls much agitated by skidding.
May 24 graphophone moonlight party . . .
May 27 Motored & climbed to top of Chimney Rock . .. picked 10 qts. of
strawberries.
May 29 Canning bee lasted 'till 9:30 p.m. —owing to misfortunes —
spinach & chard & beets canned.
May 31 ... bull calf . . . was down. We worked in Herculean manner all
morning—dosing him with whiskey . . . the cow . .. died.
June 2 Anna [Esther's mother] arrived & took Eleazer [a young household
helper who was John's niece] dissolved in tears home to hoe corn—conference
with Anna lasted until we had to rush for the mules to go to Bear Wallow
Church—tires being flat.
June 9 At 1 a.m. started to rain & up again & with lantern got Australia
[another sow] & offspring into dynamite crib [for shelter].
June 15 Sent in 24 quarts [of] cherries & got 12 1/2 qts. = $3.00 & for 5
doz eggs $1.75. Brought car back with a bill of $73.00.
June 17 anointed turkeys with oil Petie saved a chicken by warming on the
hot water bag.
June 19 Supper at [the] Bandanna Tea Room & to a screaming movie "A
Dog's Life" Charlie Chaplin— Forgot the tires at the movie & started for Mrs.
Heywoods 7-9 tea at 8:45 p.m. Burned up the road till puncture came—finally
arrived at Mrs. Heywoods about 9:20.
The resources of good health gave Jim the freedom not only to push along
his plans for the farm, but also to begin tentatively to act on behalf of his
community. He and Elizabeth organized a local chapter of the Red Cross before
the Germans surrendered. Since the war still seemed far away it was a little
difficult to raise money for the Red Cross in such a poor area, so a fair was
organized in the Bat Cave section, which was over the mountain from the inn.
Jim always loved a big community get together, and threw himself into this Red
Cross Fourth of July affair with wonderful enthusiasm. On July 3rd, the Red
Cross supplies of 300 pounds of ice and 15 gallons of ice cream arrived at
Hickory Nut Gap at 5 p.m. and were transferred to a wagon. Mr. Davidson,
farm manager, Mr. Sinclair and John Shorter started at once for the Esmerelda
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Inn, some ten miles over the mountain in Bat Cave, causing great excitement
along the route. Next day Jim started at 8 a.m. with the Pet, household helpers
Mary and Pete, and Croaker [or Croak, a farm worker] on the running board,
bringing more supplies. A huge crowd bought lemonade, cider, ice cream, cake,
cookies, apples, peaches and buttermilk, and the successful event cleared
$70.00. Not even a puncture on the return trip could dim the joy of the participants.
Jim discovered early on that he, like his father, had a knack for raising
money for a worthy cause. He sold Liberty Bonds throughout Fairview, which
took him inside the homes of many of his neighbors.
Once the neighbors found out that Jim was a preacher, and an educated one
at that, he began to receive invitations "to bring the message" to several of the
local Baptist congregations. Jim relished the idea, and made use of the opportunity the rest of his life to preach his gospel of progress. The Sunday after the
Red Cross picnic he was invited by the Bearwallow Baptist Church. He wanned
up his neighbors that day by describing the old mountain circuit riders, who
were called not to a particular church but to a community. "Don't just help out
the saved among you, but go out and minister to everyone in the community,"
he told them.
We can not only help the poor, but we must remove poverty. We must so
build up our soils, & breed up our stock so that we remove poverty . . .
Only when we got to thinking it was Christ's work to prevent boys & girls
from getting liquor did we start the liquor business] on the toboggan.
There are two choices before us—-the life of selfishness or the life of service. The life of selfishness dries up the sources of vitality of the comm[unity]:
it stunts development & paralyzes the comm[unity]The life of service liberates. If you live among men as one who serveth you
will find that you are setting free the life of the community & creating the life
of God in other men. "He who loseth his life shall find it."10
The title of this sermon was "The Sin of Aachan." Jim McClure felt it was
one of his most popular, and he reworked it many times for different churches.
The text was from Joshua, the sixth and seventh chapters, which deal with the
battle of Jericho. The walls of Jericho had just fallen, and the city was on the
verge of conquest by the Jewish nation. Yahweh ordered the city destroyed, but
would condone no looting in order to maintain the religious purity of the people.
" . . . [K]eep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction ..." lest trouble
be brought down on the camp of Israel. But Aachen was tempted by all the
wealth he discovered in Jericho, as well he might after having spent his entire
life in the desert. He was eventually caught, but not before the morale of the
Jewish camp was poisoned by his selfish act. It is an anecdote perfectly suited
to Jim's notion of social sin.
Jim McClure wanted to introduce a new concept of sin into the mountains.
The old idea he called "a selfish view of sin." Many country preachers continu-
�Farmer Jim
213
ally hammered on the idea that specific acts, such as swearing or drinking, no
matter how secretly performed, would be discovered at the judgement day by
the Lord God Almighty. Jim wanted people to see that drinking and swearing,
and a whole multitude of other selfish acts, had an immediate impact. Your
friends, neighbors and relations all were demoralized by your sin. Moral weakness would be caught like the influenza, and passed about the community. The
truth about sin, as Brother McClure told it, was that selfishness endangered the
strength of the entire community. He liked to tell the story of an American
soldier in France who drank up the entire ration of water for his company,
bringing down on himself the hatred and derision of his fellows. "They knew
his breach of discipline endangered their lives. ..." Sin was not simply a mark
in the "Black Book on high." "Think of yourself as owing, not owning, all you
have . . . Much of what you have [is in] trust... If land . . . think of generations
to come and build it up." When one realized the debt owed to those who came
before, one also understands that the conduct of one's present life will leave a
legacy for future generations. Jim then exhorted the members of the congregation to serve one another, in honor of the past and to prepare for the future.
"Believing does not mean anything unless put into action." Jim argued that the
instinct to serve one's friends and neighbors emanated from the Holy Spirit, and
to dam it up, to leave it unfulfilled, would block off the source of true satisfaction and happiness. Service, in Jim's scheme, covered a broad range of helpful
activities, from building pure water systems to keeping scrub bulls from siring
new stock. A man pursued God's purposes when he worked to eliminate the
breeding areas for typhoid fever, built better schools and roads, and brought
electricity into the community.
On the practical side, Jim's parents were coming to visit soon and the old
inn must be made ready.
Aug. 1 The cursed pigs are rooting up the whole lawn.
Aug. 10 Great Cleaning up—barns, barnyard & house in preparation for
coming of Mother & Father [McClure].
Aug. 12 Passing thru Biltmore with enormous load—found Pete & Mary
with 4 nieces and nephews stranded. Somehow packed them in.
Aug. 16 Nathan & Arch arrive. Nathan looking very fine in his new [Army]
uniform. [They were soon followed by Dr. and Mrs. McClure]
(Elizabeth) Aug. 18 All went to church & heard the dreary Dr. Loache
preach his best effort. Dr. McClure requested to preach in the evening . . . Dr.
preached to quite a little gathering.
(Elizabeth) Aug. 19 Dr. & Mrs. McClure leave. Felt sad to have them go.
Aug. 24 Cow choked on an apple.
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(Elizabeth) Aug. 25 Nearly driven to distraction & boredom by the terrible
effort of Dr. Loache; a most unchristian man! Resolved not to attend any
longer.
Sept. 11 ... threshed 46 1/2 bu. [of] wheat, 15 rye, 18 oats & 1 barley.
Sept. 13 Sent wheat to Alexander's mill & they said it was the best wheat
they had had brought in.
Sept. 14 — 12 a.m. to 1 a.m. I arose & made a sally after hunters.
Sept. 18 molasses being made, Fin [Sinclair], John Shorter & Foy Wall at
the evaporator, John Settle with Red & Brown hauling cane—& W. B. Morgan, Croak & Zeb [MacAbee] stripping & cutting cane.
Sept. 19 Molasses started at [the] crack of dawn. By noon [the] cane was
stripped & cut and 50 gal. was made by 8 p.m.
(Elizabeth) Sept. 23 Black Monday! Eleven hands failed to appear that were
due to pick apples. Poor Cricket deeply gloomy. Esther & lola depart for the
circus via very late mail man . . . The poor coloreds return in the evening—
unable to get into the circus!
Oct. 8 Finished picking apples—totalling 125 bbls. [Barrels] . . . Started
[grain] dryer this day & it did twice catch on fire & we are feeling sullen at the
Demonstrating agents for getting us into it.
Oct. 9 Influenza 'a raging . . .
Oct. 13 Rumor that Germany has unconditionally surrendered.
Oct. 19 — . . . made chairman [of the] Transportation Local Influenza
Committee — 2000 cases in Asheville.
Oct. 25 In bed all day to prevent sore throat developing . . . The Pet read
me the sinister, bloodcurdling, terrifying & fearful Dracula.
Oct. 27 Still housed with sore throat... spent the day reading with the Pet,
writing & swatting flies . . . swatted 61 in dining room & study, 16 in pink
room, 54 in pantry & over 700 in kitchen.
Nov. 1 —Evening enlivened by a great rat hunt-finally John & I secured the
burly victim . . .
Nov. 2 Just before noon George Sherrill appeared, out of his head. I put him
to work in my overalls & jumper, but he soon left for other parts leaving his
coat behind & promising automobiles to us all—stating he had invented a steel
cat to catch rats.
Nov. 11 PEACE.
�Farmer Jim
215
The Great War finally ended in the fall of 1918, or rather the fighting
paused for twenty years, resuming in 1939. In countless ways the world was
never quite the same again. When the armistice was signed in November 1918,
Jim could feel the country relax. Self-discipline and sacrifice dissipated, and the
American people hungered for a "return to normalcy." The stage was set for the
frenetic and worldly Roaring Twenties. Jim was left wondering why the same
people who were willing to sacrifice even their lives for victory over the Germans had little interest in working for peace. "Is Permanent Peace Possible?"
he asked again, and then watched as even Wilson's much less radical idea of a
League of Nations was rejected by his countrymen.
Jim McClure hoped he could inspire the people in his area to maintain the
sense of self-sacrifice and what he called the "thrill of common purpose" that
the nation had developed while fighting the Central Powers, and re-direct the
energy to fighting poverty. In the little churches he spoke of the satisfactions
that most Americans felt enduring the privations of the home front. "Soldiers
of Christ arise . . . Put money into community purposes as you did into $50.00
Bonds— War [wants] to tear down— Get . . . at [the] idea of building up."11
These were noble ideas. Jim McClure would put them into action when he
founded the Farmers Federation, but for most Americans, the Roaring Twenties
were anything but an era of self-sacrifice.
He became a different preacher than he had been in Iron River. Up there,
he had composed weighty messages more likely to impress his professors than
his parishioners. In North Carolina, his delivery became more extemporaneous,
his sermon notes more sketchy. He included humorous anecdotes that he collected from his friends, little stories that perked up his listeners and helped to
lighten the message. It was a step away from his somber Calvinist tradition, a
step toward the lively style of the mountain preacher, and it gave his sermons
the impact needed to move people.
Certainly the lives of Jim and Elizabeth McClure had been changed since
the beginning of the Great War. Four years before, the two of them were rather
distant acquaintances whose ambitions were carrying them in two different
directions: she into the French artistic circles and he into the social ministry of
the Presbyterian Church. Now they were married and living on the side of a
mountain in the midst of the Southern Appalachians. In August 1918, Elizabeth
and Jim learned something wonderful and become aware that their life together
might mean more even than the challenges of their household and their mutual
friendship and respect. After bustling the often-present Aunties off on the train,
they visited their doctor, "... who confirmed our judgement and forbade motoring." Two weeks later Elizabeth broke the news to Wiggy.
Now then for some thrilling news which is to be a secret dear darling until
the end of October anyway. We are expecting a small McClure about the
middle of March. Can you imagine me mere de famille! I can't!!! Anyway I
am enormously well—I have no disagreeable symptoms that apparently people
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We Plow God's Fields
usually have & really I can't believe anything is going on at all. However the
doctor who is a very excellent one says that everything is very normal & I look
just as I did 3 months ago so its hard to believe at all, at all. (Elizabeth Cramer
McClure to Martha Clarke, August 26, 1918)
She held out another few weeks before sending the word northward, charging Hetty to strict confidentiality. "This is for your special private ear—how
would you like being Aunt to a little new McClure—about the middle of next
March? Do you suppose it will preach or paint? I already have grave fears as
to its future." (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Harriet Stuart, September 13,
1918)
Life at Hickory Nut Gap during the following fall and winter revolved
about the expectations of the new arrival. Elizabeth's movements, according to
the custom of women of her station in that day, were severely circumscribed,
but the pace of life at the farm went on.
Nov. 15 —Mr. & Mrs. Cramer come.
Nov. 18 — . . . Mr. Cramer and I went hunting . .. getting 9 quail a.m. &
4 in p.m.
Dec. 12 [replanting of boxwoods in front of the house] . . . all hands going
without lunch & getting 8 of 9 to our place after dark where we unloaded aided
by the famous efforts of Zeb [MacAbee] . . . The Pet thrilled.
Dec. 20 Brought Alec Huntley back from Asheville where he had sold his
potatoes for $1.00 per bu. I should think the fanners would quit.
Dec. 23 The Pet working hard on Santa Claus suit.
Dec. 24 ... A roaring morning, getting Xmas presents, trees etc., seeing
about George Sherrill & with much embarrassment even purchasing nighties
for my Pet.
Dec. 25 Santa Claus appeared and gave presents to those assembled-to wit
Ben & Maggie Owenby & their 3 offspring, Christine, Gertrude & Aimer,
Baxter & Minnie Owenby & their offspring Geneva & Otis, Katy Sinclair &
Porter & Homer, Belle McAbee & Hattie Pearl, Porter & Annie May . . . Ice
Cream & cake served, Cricket superb as Santy—great delight amongst crowd,
[the last addition by Elizabeth.]
With nearly the whole farm crowd on hand for a Christmas celebration that
was to become a tradition at Hickory Nut Gap, one can see what a cast of
characters was around to educate Jim and his wife, to show them how life was
led back in the mountains of Western North Carolina. During these years, Jim
McClure learned what the mountain family battled against. His education was
a practical one; the economics and sociology involved the lives of real people
in the community as well as on the farm. He learned how enduring and tough
�Farmer Jim
217
these people were, and he discovered endearing traits as well: the earthy humor,
patience and religious faith that made them survivors. He also discovered what
happens when a society can afford only the most meager of schools, and how
ignorance can become an accepted part of the culture. Not all the mountain men
and women were ignorant, or humorous, or religious, or even welcoming to a
stranger. Some were utterly poor, and others relatively prosperous. But Jim
knew, having grown up where he did, that the economic life in Fairview, and
elsewhere in the region, lagged well behind the rest of the country. He had an
idea that if the people could make a little money, the spiritual reservoir that lay
backed up in the mountains could be unleashed and great works could be
accomplished.
As the winter progressed Elizabeth, who had to curtail her usual activities,
took on the project of copying a picture of Jim's Grandmother Dixon. Jim rather
irreverently commented in the diary, on the completion of the portrait, that she
had succeeded in "making a decent looking old lady of her ..." (January 9,
1919). He continued to read and ponder such subjects as the future of Christianity, democracy and the United States. The country did seem to be in the grip of
a very disagreeable judgement of some kind, whether demonic or divine, in the
form of an influenza epidemic. Death was not at all an uncommon result of the
virus, and so when it swept up into the coves of the mountains, Jim wanted to
do all he could to protect Elizabeth. John Shorter fell ill, and he was immediately quarantined in his home. By the end of January, the strain of the winter,
the flu, and the ennui of pregnancy finally overrode all objections, and the two
of them decided to move into Asheville for a few days. "Both feeling somewhat
drab & determined to have a spree at the Manor—started for Asheville ..."
(January 25, 1919). Even though "Fear of the 'flu' kept us from church" (January 26, 1919), they were stimulated nonetheless by their new surroundings and
companions. Elizabeth notes in the diary that "Cricket talks late with various
lobby loafers" (January, 1919). The interlude at the Manor helped to dispel for
a time the gloom of winter, but the diary reveals that tempers may have been
short on through February.
Feb. 6— . . . selected all chickens for execution & then they all got out.. .
Feb. 16—Went to Bear Wallow . . . to preach on Zaccheus & found no one
there . . .
Feb. 21—Esther sent up word that she was sick & feared it was the flu ...
her temp . . . was only 101°-but sloshed down to Fairview—not a light anywhere—A roused the Dr. who prescribed in a flannel night shirt. [This was
Dr. Cicero McCracken, who took faithful care of the sick of Fairview for
many years.]
Feb. 24 Esther in a rage at finding her dishes washed separate from the
others in the Old Kitchen because of the "flu"—[She] departs . . . John depressed. Petie incensed.
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March followed February, and with it came a heightened sense of expectation. Elizabeth's parents arrived just before the presumed time of arrival, and
close on their heels, "Wiggy" appeared to take command. The latter had retained
for Jim a somewhat mythical existence up until the moment she appeared in the
flesh. All in all, Jim fared rather poorly in these last days, quite overwhelmed
not only by his role as a prospective father, but also by the amount of entertainment required by all the guests. The Cramer's train arrived on March the tenth,
and Elizabeth notes in her diary that "After lunch rush to station to meet Father
and Mother who appeared just as we were pulling up" (March 10). Elizabeth
and Jim, the Cramers including their son Corwith, who was about thirteen, and
Martha Clarke (Wiggy) were all waiting together for the baby at the Grove Park
Inn, Asheville's finest resort hotel. The waiting usually took the form of golf,
for those so inclined, and for three days Jim tensely entertained his father-in-law
and young Corwith on the hotel course. On March the 18th, Jim's patience
wore thin. "After leaving Azalea I drove fast & furiously over the rough roads—
the strain of paying for 3 rooms being too much . . . dined at the G. P. Inn &
bored to death by the movies" (March 18).
Late the next night, however, all was different; the long wait was about to
end. "The dear Pet soon after lights were out finding signs multiplying we
decided to move to the hospital. Miss Clarke was summoned . . . Fetching 3
dishes of ice cream & with Miss Clarke's birthday cake we had a fine party. [It
was] a most gorgeous moonlight night so we determined on a joy ride part way
up Sunset [Mountain] before interning in the hospital at about 12:30 a.m."
(March 19).
The exact role of the moon in such cases is, shall it be said, mysterious.
But by the next morning, its power had worked a magic, and the redoubtable
Dr. Charles Millender delivered a fine baby boy, James Gore King McClure,
III. It was March 20, 1919. He was tucked away in the bathroom because the
baby ward was befouled by influenza.
For the young minister, not really so young anymore, the birth of the first
child confirmed, as it always does, the miraculous nature of life itself. For a
man who had fought through volumes of theology, the birth of his son was a
supremely religious moment. He fell in love with Elizabeth all over again, as
they both bathed in the joy of the birth of James Gore King McClure, HE. The
day after, Jim wrote, "The Pet progressing famously & looking as if she was at
a party. Her color was good as ever & she looked most beautiful" (March 21).
Two days later, he wrote: "... Took Miss Clarke up Sunset—Then to see the
dear Pet looking perfectly beautiful..." (March 23).
The baby boy was given his father's name, a name that went back to
grandfather Archibald's near death on shipboard years ago. Born with the finest
of Presbyterian heritages, this child would grow up to be as stubbornly principled as his Covenanter ancestors. But as a baby, all of that history was less
important than the motherly attentions that surrounded him. Even his imposing
name was temporarily discarded, and the child became known simply as
�Farmer Jim
219
"Punie." Weights and measurements were important tools for child-rearing in
that day, and by all accounts young James grew slowly. Mother and child
remained in the hospital for nearly a full month. Elizabeth had not been allowed
to even sit up for nine days. Four days after that, she was carefully lowered into
a wheelchair for her first venture away from the bed. Jim always admitted that
he belonged to the "slow and easy" school of childbirth, a remarkable contrast
to the way children were born amongst the tenants on his farm.
Jim was busy entertaining his in-laws and supervising work at the farm,
but he made daily visits to the hospital, bringing stories to entertain Elizabeth.
There was her young half-brother, Corwith, who was depressed by his freckles,
and unmercifully teased by Jim about his interest in the young ladies at the
Grove Park Inn. On the day after the baby's birth new cattle arrived at the
Biltmore Station and he drove the Cramers over to see them, finding "Croak
attached by a long rope to the biggest cow & being yanked hither and thither
..." (March 21). Mr. Cramer was always greatly interested in the farm.
With these cows Jim created probably the first registered herd of Herefords
in Western North Carolina, which he hoped might prove an encouragement to
purebred breeding in the region. Ever since his days in Texas he had yearned
to raise cattle, and to raise them right. Yet, despite his farm work and the birth
of a son, and even though he was slowly sinking his roots into his adopted
region, Jim McClure was still unsettled in the spring of 1919 about his own
future. By now, Jim was well and able to cope with a full work day again.
Moreover, the war was over and with it went, to Jim's way of thinking, the
justification for pouring his efforts into farming. James Davidson had returned
to take up his post as manager, and the place could be safely left in his capable
hands. It was time, then, for Jim to pursue his goals as a minister.
He began scanning for possibilities. Just prior to the armistice, he considered working with the YMCA in Europe, in a war-related capacity. He had
informed the powers of the Presbyterian Church that he was looking for a
position, and with Elizabeth still in the hospital he made a dart up north to
inquire about the position of minister at the Lafayette Square Presbyterian
Church in Baltimore. While there, he wrote his minister brother Arch about the
trip, who replied:
Your letter from Baltimore quite took me by surprise. I didn't know you
really had a line on Baltimore —but am awfully glad you have. It will be great
to have you back preaching again. Would you take a church this Spring or are
you going to wait until fall? . .. Any church that hasn't sense enough to give
[you] a call . .. must be made up of a set of dominoes. It's lucky for me that
my congo can't hear you or they would fire me immediately & call you. (Arch
McClure to James G. K. McClure, Jr., April 15, 1919)
Jim preached twice at this church, but felt as if his "reception was lukewarm at
best." " . . . Not a sign of cordiality before & but 3 handshakes after [the]
service. Ibid in the evening—about 35 out. .. ,"12
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We Plow God's Fields
Jamie McClure and his father's Hereford bull, "Foundation.
So he returned home again and spent another summer as a farmer. He threw
himself once more into a bond drive, as vice chairman for Fairview township,
selling Victory Bonds to help finish paying for a war already won. In two
weeks, he turned in $10,000 from this rural district. As a founder of the
Fairview Community Club, Jim worked hard to sell shares to bring telephone
service to Fairview. He had a definite talent for talking people out of their
money when the cause was right: by midsummer local telephone service became
a very real possibility, with forty-nine people taking stock.
Along with Victory Bonds and telephones, Jim, began organizing another
effort that in retrospect stands out as a completely new beginning, not only for
those who benefitted personally, but also for Jim himself. Clearly, the momentous nature of this occasion was not felt by either Jim or the others. He notes
in his diary, in matter-of-fact style, that on April 19, 1919, he " . . . went out
to [a] meeting at Fairview to organize farmers. Many women present, when I
had thought it was to be entirely men. After much hot airing from women,
decided to organize...." Elizabeth adds the " . . . following officers were
elected. Cricket, Pres., S. J. Ashworth, vice-Pres, Luther Clay Sec." The
Fairview Federation of Farmers was launched! By May third, the group was
officially organized and under way.
Jim McClure always believed that the best way to fathom the divine purposes of the Creator was one step at a time. The first step of the Farmers
Federation was halting and tentative, but in time, in a short time, it would
change forever the opportunities for farmers in Western North Carolina. The
�Farmer Jim
221
remainder of the summer and fall, he kept busy with the wide variety of activities that came his way. All the while he must have been wondering what form,
what direction, his life was to take. Such a proposition is difficult enough for a
young man, but Jim McClure was well into his thirties, with growing responsibilities, and as yet his dreams to spread the Social Gospel remained unfulfilled.
But Hickory Nut Gap was certainly an enviable location to sort through such
doubts, especially with a new son, a steady stream of visiting Mends and
relations, and a wife as lovely as Elizabeth.
Among the visitors were the Misses Skinner, come to view their darling
niece's new son. In their long white linen summer dresses, they were determined
figures on the porch or in the house. There was soon a confrontation with
Wiggy, who had been firmly running the show since her arrival. Amidst the ups
and downs of command between the three powers, little Jamie continued to
thrive and Jim was barely able to find enough time to prepare a sermon to be
given at the Asheville School for Boys.
The Reverend James G. K. McClure, of Fairview, preached to the Graduating Class on Sunday, May 25th. His sermon, based on the text, "What seest
Thou?" was a strong, forceful appeal... He analyzed the attitudes of different
people—those who spurn the vision entirely, those who fail to see it, and those
who are willing to act on it—and impressed the School with a sense of individual duty.1-'
But the rivalry between the visitors must have told on him. Elizabeth noted
on June 23: "Cricket with his old trouble again." However he was soon well and
back in the fray.
June 28— . . . Great washing of Rex & Bowser [their dogs] & Lysoling
porch to rid us of plague fleas . . .
June 29 — to a Singing Convention. Great gathering of mountaineers.
July 1—To town at 7:30 with 20 bu. potatoes & Miss C[larke] .. . Grove
Park which was to have taken 10 bu. I unloaded etc. & 2nd Steward saw me
& in a 2nd class way told me he wouldn't take them, as he had waited all
preceding day for them, etc. and I had promised [he said] to bring them in day
before.
July 21—A.M. to 0. F. Settles—whole sprightly family on deck Big talk
with 0. F. & his mother—Lola studying Sunday School lesson on porch.
Mr. O. F. Settles lived at the head of the Bud Owenby Creek in a "holler"
between Tater Knob and the shoulder of Little Ksgah Mountain. Jim and
Elizabeth carried little Jamie to see the family. Perhaps Jim was hoping to
arrange a trade with Mr. Settles, which was later completed, giving the Settles
family some of Jim's land on the highway in exchange for the Settles' land that
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We Plow God's Fields
adjoined the main farm. Jim asked Mr. Settles if he ever found his location
lonely. Mr. Settles replied that he liked it "cause if anybody comes to see me I
know they really want to see me, or they want somethin'" (July 21). This visit
may have been the beginning of the long connection between the McClures and
the Settles. Clinard Settles worked for Jim and Elizabeth and their children from
the time he was fourteen until his death sixty-eight years later. Other members
of the family, John Scott, Dorothy, McKinley, and Lola, were all faithful
helpers at various times.
In August the McClure family came together for the important Presbyterian
rite of baptizing James Gore King McClure, III. What a delight it must have
been for Jim to have his parents and his brother Arch come for a good visit. It
seems likely that Jim and his father and minister brother had many discussions
of Jim's possible future. Jamie III was properly baptized in the Presbyterian way
by his grandfather, using water he had brought from the River Jordan, sprinkled
from a small silver christening cup that had been used for the baptisms of all
three James McClures. The senior McClures and Arch returned home, and Jim
and Elizabeth prepared to interrupt their life in the Southern Appalachians with
an excursion to Vermont and Lake Forest, which would include time for Jim to
survey the opportunities for returning to the ministry. If the world beyond
Western North Carolina wanted to make a claim on them, this long vacation
would be its last chance to make a pitch. The preparations for this trip, with
baby, were formidable. A black travelling nurse, Effie Thomas, was hired. The
day of departure, September third, was a
Furious morning by all—John taking in early load of trunks—all hands
finally getting packed into the 2nd load . . . & off for Biltmore, ice box and
all. We swarmed onto the train, about eight. . . assistants helping us with our
thousands of bundles—then commenced a journey unparalleled in crowdedness. The ice box, Puny, the Pet, myself & some 16 bags & boxes were
cramped into the drawing room—The Pet banging her head whenever she
turned around & Miss C. & Effie forcing their way in & out constantly. . . .
(diary. September 3)
The little party arrived safely next morning in New York to spend two days.
Elizabeth and Jim ate lobster and blue fish only to find Puny "very loud with
colic" when they returned to their hotel room. Next day there was "a permanent
for the Pet" and dining and dancing at Churchill's on Broadway, amidst many
street speeches from striking actors. Then they joined battle again to get the
luggage on board the train for Manchester, where they were welcomed by the
indomitable Aunties and Ambrose and his wife Gracie.
Autumn in the Green Mountains! They remained on into October, and
apparently Jim, "Bowser" (Ambrose), and Dumont agreed that the finest vantage point from which to enjoy the colors was out on the golf course. Jim and
Elizabeth slipped away for several little day trips together, leaving Puny with
Effie. Jim preached two sermons, and made one noteworthy trip down to Wil-
�Farmer Jim
223
liamstown, Massachusetts. There a cousin of Elizabeth's, Parmalee Prentice,
had single-mindedly set out to study the secrets of improving the genetics of
plants and animals. Mount Hope Farm, because of the work of Mr. Prentice,
became an agricultural magnet for progressive farm leaders, and although Jim
did not yet know it, that was what he was about to become. He was thrilled
enough with the work going on at Mount Hope in 1919, noting the "Painstaking
attempt to improve existing stocks of poultry, potatoes, corn, [&] small
grains
"14
Church work, not agriculture, still seemed to hold out the greatest prospect
of service for him. In the midst of the Vermont vacation he and Elizabeth went
to New York. A large and prestigious Presbyterian church on Fifth Avenue was
looking for a minister, and Jim had been asked to a dinner in Englewood, New
Jersey, where the search committee from New York City could look him over
unobtrusively. He and Elizabeth left Vermont on October the tenth. Elizabeth
described the next morning in New York:
Cricket spent morning cooped up in his chamber .. . writing prayer &
sermon . . . Petie makes frantic effort to buy hat. Decides on one chez Mme
Florette. Consults time. Late!! Frantic rush to meet Cricket in front of Scribners. Cricket denounces hat!! Frantic rush back to Mme Florette's. Old straw
resumed. Great Flurry. Terrible crush in tube owing to ferry boat strike.
Missed Englewood train. Despair! Petie very low. Catch next train & arrived
only 12 min. late. Met by Powersy [their host] .. . much worried as to the
need of dressing for supper. Decided in the negative. Sharply inspected during
meal. . . The evening reasonably successful but extremely trying.15
The next day they attended the morning service at the Englewood church,
and in the afternoon Jim returned to New York to speak at the Vesper Service.
Elizabeth described the occasion: " . . . Slim congregation. Cricket a 'false note'
in the 'well valeted church.' Refused to wear a gown. Scarcely probable that
he was liked. He jarred them & was anything but soothing in his discourse
"16
Their guide to the church, an enthusiastic gentleman, did gymnastics later
in the anteroom on the red carpet to "get his blood up." Jim's blood was already
up. He did not shrink from preaching a fiery message of social responsibility
to these wealthy Presbyterians. Later he compared this church to a beautifully
carved chest that was empty inside. "Religion is so well valeted . . . [there] that
the real thing is suppressed. Elder came to me & told me aft[er the] service
[that] they tried to make a quiet, beautiful vesper service—(I disturbed them,
made them uneasy—they hated it, it offended them, seemed in bad taste.) . . .
Everything in such good form in [this church] & good form so worshipped that
. . . good form for good form's sake is committed."17
Following the vesper service in New York, Elizabeth and Jim went by train
to Passaic, New Jersey, where Jim preached at the evening service of the First
Presbyterian Church. The printed program welcomed Jim to the pulpit. "He is
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We Plow God's Fields
a son of Dr. McClure, the President of McCormick Seminary and it is hoped
our people will make the effort to come out and hear this message." His sermon
was titled, "Service: I am among you as one who serveth."18 In the diary,
Elizabeth again tersely writes of Jim's reception there: "Cricket again made a
scene at the Passaic Church about wearing the gown. [He] preached a thrilling
sermon on service. Powersy muttering to himself that 'he had *em all stirred
up.' Petie proud . . . No idea at all what impression we made."19 The next
morning, Jim apparently felt little need to exercise restraint, and Elizabeth
chides him a little in their diary (Oct. 14): "Cricket a bit bold & loud at
breakfast— . . . ruined his chances by announcing at breakfast that he had once
been thought to have had a brain lesion! In New York, he talked over an
Englewood proposal as well as the possibility of being secretary of the Yale-inChina mission."20 The next day, after a very difficult excursion into the strongholds of comfortable Christianity, they rode the train back to Vermont to be
reunited with their son.
From Vermont, Jim and his entourage travelled westward to Lake Forest.
The journey was full of personal possibilities for Jim. He was seeking his own
"highest and best use" in the battle to make the world conform to his specifications for the Kingdom of God. Somehow, though, agriculture stayed foremost
in Jim's mind. In Chicago, he visited the stockyards and was given a tour by
Louis Swift, one of the chief buyers for the Swift family's meat company. He
rode on horseback through the 20,000 head that were being held ready for
slaughter and found himself talking over agricultural possibilities with men he
knew to be knowledgeable in the field.21 He also searched around for a waterpowered electric generator to set up at Hickory Nut Gap and electrify his home
and farm. That may have been the pretext for him to go to Detroit to visit Henry
Ford. But clearly, he went also to test out on the great inventor a vision for a
mission to the Southern mountaineers. He wrote in his diary:
Nov. 6— . . . started for Dearborn for 11:30 appointment . . . Ford took
me through [the] tractor plant, showed me water wheels & said he would send
for, test & send me [a] Pelton wheel—said my scheme for Mt. farmers was
the best scheme he had brought to him—To lunch with him . . . table of about
12 ... Very stimulating clean cut, capable idealists . . . Then sent around in
a Ford to Blast Furnace, Body plant [old Eagle plant] & motor works where
3500 per day are being turned out & 240,000 behind in delivery.
The rest of his time in the Chicago area revolved around pleasant social
occasions, particularly the pleasures of showing off his new son to Hetty and
Doug Stuart and other family members and Mends. There were "big Powwows" with Doug and Mr. and Mrs. Cramer on the church and religion. On one
late evening of talk, "Mr. C. making stealthy trips to [the] dining room or den
& returning more loquacious each time."22 The day before he and Elizabeth
were to return home, he received a job offer that momentarily unbalanced him.
�Farmer Jim
225
"To town at 10:30 much messed up by offer of job for 3 mos. to convert
Presbyterian Churches of Chicago to social Gfospel] & no chance to speak of it
to the Pet... Decided to turn down offer."23
That night at dinner with his parents, Jim's father sensed his son's agitation, and after he and his wife said their final good byes, he sat down to pen a
special letter of encouragement to him.
My dear boy:
I did not say anything special to you as you left the house tonight. Let me
now say that I love you very much, I am happy in you, I believe your life is
telling and will tell for great good in the world. I rejoice in your marriage and
I feel quite sure that you are doing right in starting back to your home.
Mother and I are grateful to God that we could have had you and Elizabeth
and the baby boy with us so much as we have had; and we rejoice that on this
special night the gathering about the table had so many of our dear ones . . .
Your mother is no usual woman. She has made a very sweet and blessed
home for us—these beautiful years.
May you get back to a restful condition of heart and be ennobled to meet
your duties and responsibilities in a brave, patient and sustained way.
. . . There is a very, very great work to be done in our world for God, and
only God's grace can be sufficient for us!
Tenderly, Father
(James G. K. McClure, Sr. to James G. K. McClure, Jr., November, 1919)
The next morning, Jim, Elizabeth, Puny, Effie and the well-travelled ice
box were all hustled to the Chicago train station and "Seen off with a rush by
the Aunties." Their journey was slowed by a railroad strike, but two days later
they all "Reached Asheville about noon . . . John came for us ... & a beautiful
drive home."24
Hickory Nut Gap, after two and a half months, was both beautiful and—
most importantly now—home. Their two dogs came barking out to greet them
as the familiar putter of the Honeymoon Hudson rounded the curves up the
mountain. For two and a half months they had been singing the praises of their
mountain country, telling tales about the local people, and describing the projects begun on the farm and house. That sort of conversation has a way of
building loyalty, and they had surely convinced themselves, if no one else, that
Western North Carolina was now their home. But what to do? Did Jim really
want to spend the rest of his life puttering about the farm? What was to become
of his career in the ministry? Could he be so bold as to direct his energies outside
of the church into a farmers' federation? All of these questions ran about in his
head that fall, as did the very basic question of how to support his growing
family. His farm income was not even paying the expenses yet, and it rankled
him to even consider living off of his wife's income. And yet, he and Elizabeth
both dearly loved their adopted homeland, along with all the peculiar ways of
its inhabitants. There was certainly a great work crying out to be accomplished
�226
We Plow God's Fields
.
V*, H*1
Elizabeth and "Puny" at Hickory Nut Gap.
in these mountains, and Jim held it to be a basic tenet of his personal faith that
when a man threw himself in with God, the material details would fall into
place.
Remarkably, considering his jarring performance at the Fifth Avenue
Church, he received a call to become the minister there. Although we can find
no formal record of this, his daughter Elspeth was told of it by her father, along
with a caution not to mention the name of the church. Perhaps the search
committee felt their congregation needed stirring up. In later years, Jim told
Elspeth that he and Elizabeth decided he should accept. Then a little group of
members of the farmers group Jim had founded that spring, hearing the rumor
that Mr. McClure was leaving the mountains to go back to full time preaching,
arrived at Hickory Nut Gap. The somber delegation, headed by Mr. Luther
Clay, asked him to stay and help them. Jim and Elizabeth thought it over and
decided to stay, a decision they never regretted. Jim McClure pledged his
support to those men, and continued to work with them until his death.
But how could he begin to help these people? Jim's cumulative experience
in agriculture and business were minimal at best. The mountain economy,
especially outside of Asheville, was so stagnant that almost no one could even
imagine what could be done to generate profits. There was no industry, no single
cash crop, little investment money, and the people practiced, on the whole, a
simple, superstition-ridden form of subsistence agriculture. Local fanning was
so inefficient that most of the food for the city of Asheville was shipped in by
rail. Furthermore, the mountain farmers were reluctant to take advice from
�Farmer Jim
227
outsiders; too often they had been made to feel ashamed of their backwardness.
They were a proud and independent people, exhibiting the traits of their pioneer
forefathers. Unfortunately, though, game in the woods was getting scarce, the
land was wearing out, and there was almost no market for the scrub produce and
meat that was being grown on these farms. Jim wondered whether his organizational skills could make a dent in these problems.
What he knew about the mountaineer he had learned from those who lived
on his farm or close at hand in Fairview. He constantly found himself caught
up in the daily problems of both his own tenants and others in the community.
People trusted his judgement and knew that he was always willing to help a
neighbor out.
Nov. 20—P.M. to Fairview to talk with Old Man Morgan relative to
making his will—he asking my advice as 5 of W. B.'s children not his own . ..
Nov. 21—After lunch [a] visit from O. F. Settles, with Lola heavily on his
mind. Lola having become enamored of a 40-50 yr old Pegram woman.
Dec. 2—Stopped at Uncle Mouse Freemans on [my] way home—Myrtle
Bell & her new husband there—Asked Uncle Mouse what his son-in-law's
name was & he replied "Let me see. Its Boyd isn't it—yes its Boyd" Was
introduced to him by Myrtle Bell & found his name was Baird.
Dec. 16—Up mt. looking for moonshiners on Rocky Point—the tip having
been given me mat Emory was operating near that Point. No sign of him . . .
Jan. 5, 1920 — Zeb Nix told me he had been awakened the evening before
by Bud Owenby's boys who had requested him to come & see to their sister
who had cut her throat by falling on a nail. Zeb said that "he jumped out of the
bed & run into my cold clothes" & found the wound bleeding badly but he
stopped it. How I asked? By stuffing it with cobwebs—Where did you get the
cobwebs? From the rafters, lots of them there.
The rhythms of life in the Southern mountains were a constant revelation
to Jim and Elizabeth. They were fascinated by the dialect, and the endless
strings of colorful sayings that helped people to understand their lives. Jim
especially was genuinely appreciative of the mountain singing styles, and loved
to attend the local shape-note conventions to hear family quartets sing the
old-fashioned gospel songs. The quaint habits and ideas of the mountaineers
were only a part of the culture that, at its best, produced men and women of
strong character and determination. Very few people with Jim's background
bothered to look too far below the surface of these people; the hillbilly stereotype was to most a perfectly workable model for understanding them. But while
Jim was not blind to the defects within the mountain community, neither did
he overlook the strengths. He had grown up in the midst of the business miracle
of Chicago, and he knew that sound business organization was effective. Could
he create such an enterprise in partnership with mountain farmers, and begin
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building up a firmer economic foundation on which to construct better churches
and schools, better homes, and more opportunities for the coming generations?
By 1920, Jim McClure had set his mind to just such a task. He had the support
of his wife, and the full energy of a man whose health problems were behind
him.
His trip up north had soured him on the prospects of a more conventional
career in the ministry, and just after Christmas of 1919, he wrote down his
thoughts on the church as he saw it.
I am convinced that there is something essentially wrong with Christianity
as organized today . . .
I have at times thought, tho more often I have doubted, and I have always
hoped that the church could be saved—feeling that it would be a shame to
waste a great organization that had a hold & means of access to and opportunity to utilize so great a number of the best human elements in this country or
Europe. But as I find the church continuing to be blind to and to be neutral to
the great movements for the liberation of the Spirit, i.e. the labor movement,
science, the increase of machines, the fight of the workers for control, the
mastery of the machinery of civilization, the forcing of that nature & of
commerce & industry to serve mankind & not enrich the few, the unbrotherly
distribution of wealth & of political life . . . I have come to think that the
church must be left aside, just as the R. C. church was at the Reformation, and
that the time has come when the movement toward the development of the
Spirit is hindered, more than it is helped by the church.
The church is so unshaken in its allegiance to a system of metaphysics &
to various forms & traditions. Christ found that organized rel[igion] was so
taken up with forms & metaphysics & traditions & inhibitions that it hindered
the development of the spirit more than it helped it.
Luther found that organized rel[igion] was so taken up with forms & metaphysics & traditions & inhibitions that it hindered more than it helped . . .
We are a race capable of great spiritual achievement, capable of arising and
accomplishing things, capable of sharing the life of God, of controlling nature,
of controlling the affairs of mankind so that brotherhood is produced (not a
war & poverty) and we are not told these things, but our eyes are turned to
unessential setting up exercises of rel[igion], to ... quaint beliefs in heaven
& to a strange assortment of metaphysical guesses. The church can not prevent
us from sharing the life of God, developing our spirits, but they will have to
be revolutionized or pushed aside in the doing of it.25
When the ink had dried on this manifesto, Jim McClure's own doubts were
behind him. He wanted to carry out God's work in Western North Carolina.
Perhaps, as a reporter once wrote of him in the old New York Sun, "Jim
McClure was a minister who went wrong." But his wrong turning turned into
the greatest single hope for a better life among the farmers of Western North
Carolina.
�Farmer Jim
229
1. President Woodrow Wilson, speech declaring war, April 2, 1917.
2. A popular verse at the time, cited in Bailey and Kennedy, The American Pageant, Sixth Edition (Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath, 1979) p. 680.
3. James G. K. McClure, Jr., letter to the editor, Chicago Tribune, November 28,
1914.
4. James G. K. McClure, Jr., brown notebook.
5. James G. K. McClure, Jr., 1917 notebook, dated January, 1917.
6. James G. K. McClure, Jr., brown notebook.
7. Donald C. Peattie, "Dr. Austen Fox Riggs" (An Atlantic Portrait), "The Atlantic
Monthly" 168 (2), August 1941, pp. 200-207. All the general information and quotes
from Dr. Riggs are from this article.
8. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "Is Peace Possible?" unpublished paper, submitted
to The New Republic in April, 1918.
9. Interview with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
10. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "The Sin of Aachen," sermon given at Bearwallow
Baptist Church, July 7, 1918.
11. Ibid.
12. Diary, April 13, 1919.
13. From a clipping out of the Asheville School for Boys newspaper, May 25,1919.
Found clipped in the McClure's diary.
14. Diary, September 25, 1919.
15. Elizabeth McClure, diary, October 11, 1919.
16. Ibid., October 12, 1919
17. James G. K. McClure, Jr., personal notebook, October 13, 1919 (pp. 59-61).
18. Program from evening service, First Presbyterian Church, Passaic, NJ, October
12, 1919.
19. Elizabeth Cramer McClure, diary, October 12, 1919.
20. Elizabeth Cramer McClure, diary, October 13, 1919.
21. James. G. K. McClure, Jr. diary, October 21 and 23, 1919.
22. Ibid., November 2, 1919.
23. Ibid., November 13, 1919.
24. Ibid., November 14 and 16, 1919.
25. James G. K. McClure, Jr., 1919 notebook. Written December 28, 1919 after
attending the Fairview Church.
�Chapter Thirteen
Farming in the
Mountains of North Carolina
Dear Sirs:
The problem of the farmer must be seen from many angles before the
composite and true solution can be arrived a t . . .
All these . . . farm people manage to exist by working every member of the
family, commencing with the child of five or six. The women are worked,
literally, to death. The men work 12 hours a day and have no time for leisure
or improvement of any kind. The housing conditions are worse than in the
slums. In many a house in our section when the "flu" hit us there have been
ten sick at the same time in a one room house and in three beds.
Farm produce has never yet brought a price high enough to warrant the
replacing of the soil elements sold off in the produce .. . and farming has truly
been called mining. The nitrogen, the potash and the phosphorus have been
sold off the land from the Atlantic right through to the Pacific as the wave of
pioneers has swept westward . . .
When he [the farmer] sees another demand for a raise from some Union,
supported by the journals of opinion, and probably favored by the Government, he feels that he will have to pay for it. He fears the freight will be raised
all along the line and he will pay the freight. He is beginning to feel sore. He
is realizing as a farmer said to me the other day "the farmer doesn't control
anything." (James G. K. McClure, Jr., letter to the New Republic, February
23, 1920)
James McClure had found his congregation. Scattered about a picturesque
mountain terrain, in cabins built alongside clear creeks and amongst the wild
laurel and rhododendron, lived one of the nation's least prosperous peoples.
Jim's "church" members raised their big families in the timeless methods and
habits of the subsistence farmer; at least most of them did. These men and
women were of the purest Anglo-Saxon stock, frozen into a kind of permanent
frontier existence. These people were an embarrassment to the race, some would
say, who by their failure disproved the theories of racial superiority so beguiling
to the age. So they were ignored, or worse, caricatured. The moonshine jug
with a few X's on the side, the long, lanky frame, a felt hat with a feather stuck
in, and of course the Kentucky rifle, mostly to be used on "revenuers" or some
other brand of "furriner," were the stock props.
Most of the mountaineers in 1920 were independent; they rarely lived
together in towns, for the simple reason that there was little commerce or
230
�Farming in the Mountains of North Carolina
231
Mountain couple in Western North Carolina, 1920s. (McClure Fund Photograph Collection.)
industry to bring them there. Those who owned land lived on it. Land meant
wealth, freedom and independence, or so their forefathers thought when they
left England. Mostly though, in 1920, it meant taxes, hard work and a bare
survival. Most of these mountain families were poor; poor at least in the way
wealth is usually measured.
Jim noticed, too, a weary, disheartened look on the faces of his neighbors,
and decided there was a spiritual poverty among the people, a poverty of hope.
He saw it in the faces of young mothers, prematurely wrinkled from the burdens
of the endless cycles of child-rearing, many of whom married in their early teens
to escape the confines of their own parents. Jim always remarked that it was the
faces of these women that had haunted him; he felt that he ought to try something to help them and their children. When he visited a farm, he always liked
to calculate how far away the water supply was from the house, and multiply
the distance by twice a day and then by 365 days in a year to estimate the miles
that woman walked carrying water.
He also was disturbed by the message of hopelessness he heard in the
churches. Twice on Sunday, and once on Wednesday, the best of the mountaineers attended church, and were fed on a steady diet of heaven and hell. The
former was certainly going to be a lot better than the latter, but in the midst of
the descriptions of everlasting torture and eternal bliss came the idea that the
��Farming in the Mountains of North Carolina
233
present life on earth was so corrupted by sin, and the forces of Satan so powerful, that it was an illusion to think that man could possibly improve his lot. It
was best just to come on down to the old-fashioned altar and get yourself some
fire insurance before it was too late. Look forward to the joy of heaven, they
were told, when the misery of this life will be over. "Don't you hear the bells
now ringing? Don't you hear the angels singing? Tis the glory hallelujah Jubilee!"1 Jim McClure cringed in the face of this theology of hopelessness, and
often came home enraged by the sermon.
To the Fairview church with the Aunts & the Rev. Blackburn preached on the
second coming . . . with a chart showing the dispensations etc. Perfectly awful. E. & I were nearly wild. The man spoke from conviction for the first time.
[He] said, "I do not despise education, do not despise movements for bettering
conditions. These things are all right but the world can not be bettered that
way-the only way is by the second coming which is immanent!" It seemed
terribly wicked to exploit the aspirations of those people in that fruitless way.2
Jim despised the religion of resignation. But in more reflective moments
he would have admitted that real opportunity was so absent in the mountains
that few people could imagine life being any different. Aspirations were better
left until after death, until after the testing period was complete, as fruitless an
attitude as that may be. For them, living was strictly a matter of survival.
But life in the mountains did have its compensations, in spite of, or maybe
even because of, its meager contact with the industrial revolution going on all
around. These people were in no way homogenized by the forces of American
culture. Speech in the mountains was a unique blend of coarse and earthy
description, flecked with words and pronunciations more at home in a Shakespearean play than the twentieth century United States. These people were the
direct descendants of those who sat in the one-penny seats at Shakespeare's
Globe Theater, and howled at the antics of Falstaff and his cronies. The speech
of the isolated mountaineers had not been exposed to influences from the outside. The place names in Western North Carolina reflect the variety of influences that worked on the culture. The Cherokee Indians left a strong legacy,
not only with place names like Tuckasegee and Nantahalla, but with a wideranging knowledge of plant and animal lore that the Europeans adopted. The
plants and animals themselves were often chosen as labels, from Hickory Nut
Gap to Rattlesnake Knob. From Jackson to Madison to Clay Counties and from
Franklin to Democrat to Jefferson, politics left its imprint on mountain geography. The Bible (Mount Pisgah, Shiloh), the classics (Faust, Sparta), and even
Greek mythology (Mars Hill, Jupiter) were popular place names. In at least
once instance, a local name has entered the national language: the term bunOpposite: Washing day in Western North Carolina, 1920s. (McClure Fund Photograph
Collection.)
�234
We Plow God's Fields
combe or "bunk" derives from a label applied to the speeches of a particularly
long-winded member of Congress from Western North Carolina. Ferguson
Mountain, just behind Jim and Elizabeth's home, was named for the losing
British general at the Battle of King's Mountain during the Revolutionary War.
Most of all, the names in the mountains reflect the hardships, the prejudices,
the curiosities, and the humor of the inhabitants: the Devil's Elbow, Nigger
Skull Mountain, Good Luck, Loafer's Glory, Burntshirt Mountain, Cold Ass
Mountain (sanitized to "Cold" by the cartographers), 'Tater Knob and Licklog
Creek are only a few graphic examples.
If one wanted to hear the poetry and literary talents of the mountaineers in
1920, one sought out perhaps a gifted Preacher on Sunday, the old country store
on a cold winter's day, or best of all, the schoolhouse on election day. If the
preacher burned your ears for sinning, the pot-bellied orator or politician would
likely cuss you to death. There was usually quite a struggle between the sacred
and the profane, between the abstainers and the drinkers, between the honest
and the dishonest, the hardworking and the worthless. Often it was the woman
who dragged her family to church, while her husband stood outside chewing
tobacco or worse. In any event, everybody appreciated language, and the man
who could tell a good story was a popular man indeed. Rattlesnakes, panthers,
chicken thieves, whiskey and even the old Deluder, Satan himself, made frequent appearances in the mountain tales.
Yet many of these same men and women were hard pressed to write their
own names. Illiterate people hindered progress; Jim McClure's support of local
education ran parallel with his hope to bring profits to the mountain farmer. A
man who could not read would forever cling to the old ways, fear new ideas and
find it hard to embrace progressive programs. Even before he started promoting
the Farmers Federation, Jim attended the school meetings in Fairview to try to
find a way to improve local education. On one occasion, when a meeting was
to be held at the nearby Pleasant Grove School, to discuss consolidating with
the more modern one in the center of Fairview, Jim's progressive ideas were
so feared that an opposing faction tried to prevent him from attending by felling
a large tree across the road, blocking the way for his Hudson. But anyone who
really knew him knew that it would take more than one tree to discourage Jim
McClure. He arrived on foot, and when he stood up to speak, he looked into the
crowd and saw all of those wrinkled faces of the young women staring back at
him. He said later that he had resolved that evening to devote his life to those
women, their farmer husbands, and most of all to the new generation of children
who might otherwise inherit the same life of drudgery as their parents.
Once Jim had resolved to act, he immersed himself in the economics of
American agriculture. In order to understand the work of the Farmers Federation, it is important to try to grasp at least the primary threads of this subject,
one that has been of great discomfort to the American body politic throughout
the twentieth century. The "farm problem" is as old as civilization. Agriculture
is the most vital of topics, not only because it is the source of man's food, but
�Farming in the Mountains of North Carolina
235
Young girls hoeing corn on steep mountain land in Western North Carolina. (McClure
Fund Photograph Collection.)
also because all the rest of society must rest on its foundation. Throughout the
ages, until recently, virtually everyone spent all of his time working the soil.
Civilization, which first appeared in the irrigated river valleys of Mesopotamia
and the Nile, was (and still is) impossible without a food surplus that frees up a
portion of the population from the toil of farming to specialize in a skill or
profession. The growth of towns and cities is dependent on the countryside for
food. In fact, there are so many religious, social and economic ramifications
within the subject of agriculture that its history is easily the most important
component in understanding man's past and present.
The American present in the agricultural history of mankind is so remarkable that scarcely anyone could have predicted it. That so few people can feed
so many is a fact whose true significance is scarcely appreciated. There has
been no American revolution to equal the changes in agriculture that this country
has pioneered. The rapid process of change also has caused its inevitable share
of side effects and social dislocations. Even today, the prospects for a new
wave of agricultural miracles lies just behind the exciting research into genetic
engineering, but at the same time the difficulties of overzealous pesticide use,
monoculture and soil erosion make one pause to wonder about the benefits of
progress.
The pace of change in agriculture picked up after the Civil War as new
machinery and techniques began to appear. The source of the McCormick for-
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We Plow God's Fields
tune was the marvel of the age: a mechanical reaper that virtually replaced the
scythe, an implement that had been used for more than 10,000 years. As one
agricultural historian explained, " . . . Production and marketing functions began to peel off the farming operations. Farm machinery and implements became
more productive and more complicated, and had to be produced . . . in factories."3 Farming itself became specialized. Transportation, marketing, processing and supplying for the crops took many of the tasks of previous generations
of farmers elsewhere. Wise capital investment became the key element of success, and debt the common cause of personal disaster. The social and economic
ramifications of these changes created an understandable sense of loss of independence, and independence was perhaps the strongest value of the family
farmer. All of the uncertainties found expression through organizations such as
the Grangers and the Populist Party. Writers like Frank Norris, and later John
Steinbeck, wrote movingly of characters crushed between invisible economic
forces that seemed more evil for their impersonality.
These forces are now rather well understood. In the parlance of the economist, farm prices are extremely inelastic. It has been shown that to increase
per-capita food consumption by 2 percent required a 10 percent decline in retail
food prices, which translates to a 20 percent decline in farm food product prices.
In other words, "Farmers are at the crack end of the price whip."4 The " . . .
face of market demand is precipitous: supply the market with a little more than
it will take and the extra amount tumbles over the edge of the glacier and sells
for a price at the bottom of the precipice. However, not only does the extra
amount sell at a price at the bottom . . . but all the products sell at ... [that]
price. . . ."5
Outside of the vagaries of export, there is only one way for the market
demand for American food to increase: more Americans. People might substitute roast beef for hamburger, or wine for milk, but there is a real limit to the
total bulk one person can eat. A product manufacturer, on the other hand, can
continually dream up new gadgets, stimulate demand for his goods with advertising, and try to manage supply to avoid over-production. Even then, the
company has the advantage of being able to manipulate the price to stimulate
customers. The farmer has no control over his price; he looks in the newspaper
and takes what is offered, or leaves it and hopes for an improvement the next
day. The total demand for food will not budge even with the best advertising,
although people can be convinced to shift items on their grocery lists. Furthermore, over-production in the agricultural sector is very difficult to prevent, and
as has been shown, is the worst enemy of the farmer. He, as one individual,
will borrow money to buy a new tractor and machinery. He then needs to reap
the biggest return possible to pay his bills. The new machinery increases his
productivity, but when the increases are multiplied across the country, oversupplies are almost assured. Through price supports, allotments, market advice,
and even paying farmers not to plant, the federal government has erected a
�Farming in the Mountains of North Carolina
237
rather byzantine structure to try to cope with this problem. The results are
controversial at best.
During the years that Jim McClure began farming in North Carolina a
milestone in American agriculture slipped by almost unnoticed.
The farm economy crossed a great divide during 1910-20. Farm employment increased in every decade up until that one and thereafter declined . . .
Output per worker jumped unpredictably before 1910; after that it skyrocketed . ..
Something fundamental to or about farming in the United States changed
between 1910 and 1920. Before then the national farm plant grew and developed by territorial expansion and an increased number of farmers. After 1920
it continued to grow, but in a new way; it grew through capital formation, the
adoption of new and improved practices and technology, and improved management.6
The number of farm workers and the amount of acreage under production
actually declined after 1920, despite the increasing production. The marginal
family farms went out of business, and the surplus agricultural labor moved to
the cities. "The traditional approach to farming—son learning from father and
farming as his father and grandfather had before him—had crumbled slowly
during the nineteenth century, and was shattered completely during the 1920s
by the gasoline engine, the tractor."7
During the early twenties, when most of the American economy was decidedly upbeat, the agricultural sector plunged into an early depression. Several
economic forces collided, conspiring together to glut nearly every commodity
market. First of all, the preceding two decades had been lush times for the
farmer. From 1900 to 1910, farm prices increased 40 per cent. The large influx
of immigrants helped to push up the national population 21 percent while farm
output jumped only 4 percent. The next decade was even more profitable.
Output still lagged behind population growth, but much more dramatically.
World War I opened up the enormous European markets to a continent too
preoccupied with war to grow its own food.8 Two decades of rapidly rising
demand stimulated agricultural production in the United States. New equipment,
new techniques and better management were all pressed into service to supply
the customers. The addition of the tractor meant that several acres previously
tilled to feed the draft horses and mules could now be used to grow food for
sale. When the war ended, however, the Europeans began to seal off their home
markets and American agriculture immediately found itself overproducing. "After World War I, farm prices fell sharply . . . That decade was not a happy one
because so many farmers paid the price—business failure—for the land speculation of the preceding decade. But conditions could and did get much worse. The
relation between population and farm output became decidedly unfavorable to
farms during the unhappy 1930s: the population growth increased only 7 per
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We Plow God's Fields
cent and farm output 11. The consequence once again was tumbling farm prices
and badly depressed farm incomes."9
Jim McClure's dream was to bring cash to the mountain farm by integrating
the region's farming resources into the national agricultural system through the
introduction of modern agricultural methods and a strong marketing effort. As
it turned out, he picked the worst possible moment to try to plug in: for two
decades that system remained ill, some thought terminally so. The year 1920
began favorably enough, but "Twelve months later prosperity had evaporated
and farmers were confronted by the worst agricultural depression they had ever
known."10
The short-term factor that kicked off the decline was the post-war deregulation of several spheres of the economy that had been managed by the government during the war crisis. The de-control of railroad freight rates, the end of
the War Finance Corporation, and the elimination of government wheat supports
all had a direct bearing on agriculture. To cope with the post-war inflation, the
Federal Reserve Board pushed up interest rates, which cost the farmers in higher
interest payments. The long-run effects, however, were what kept agriculture
on the ropes. Foreign orders for American grain immediately went slack and
prices plummeted. Two decades of prosperity had built up the cumulative agricultural productive capacity of the nation to levels domestic consumption alone
could never sustain. From June to December of 1920, agricultural prices slipped
an average of 40 percent.11 Disaster had struck, and the torturous relationship
between farm interests and government policy began to heat up in earnest. Jim
McClure launched the Farmers Federation in the midst of this crisis. It may
have been in large part because of his determined effort that the Federation
survived these early years, but truly the mountain farmers had been in such
perpetual depression for so long, and were so isolated from the national economy anyway, that the problems of Iowa or Kansas made hardly a ripple in
Western North Carolina.
But the sharp drop in prices did create momentum across the country for
cooperative agricultural movements. Joseph Knapp, an authority on the subject,
wrote: "The year 1920 produced a veritable explosion in cooperative activity
that brought a doubling of cooperative marketing business within five years. A
combination of factors contributed. Most important was the severe post-World
War I depression which led to chronic agricultural distress in the face of general
business recovery. The depression awakened interest in cooperative marketing
as a means of restoring farm prosperity, and it gave birth to a strong demand
for monopolistic commodity marketing cooperatives that could control farm
product prices.12 The impetus, then, was for the wheat or tobacco or cotton
growers to band together to sell their product as one seller, and command a
higher, monopolistic price. This is known as selling on a "commodity basis."
The difficulty with this kind of a program is the great discipline required of
individual members not to create a break in the monopoly price. Cartels are
notoriously unstable.
�Farming in the Mountains of North Carolina
239
One remarkable man worked tirelessly to promote this system among the
different commodity associations in the United States. Aaron Sapiro started
organizing in California with the prune and raisin growers. Later, almost by
chance, he found himself in Mobile, Alabama, in April 1920 at the annual
meeting of the American Cotton Association. Even though his name was not
on the program, Aaron Sapiro took that meeting by storm. Under his direction,
a National Cotton Exchange was organized to sell, warehouse, finance and
transport cotton. Sapiro next turned to both the flue-cured and burley tobacco
markets, both of which were reeling because of price drops in 1920. The momentum of his ideas increased rapidly throughout the agricultural community.
His theory included these requirements: organization on a commodity basis
[rather than by region], democratic control by the members, long term and
binding contracts, orderly and businesslike marketing, and the control of a
sufficient proportion of the entire crop to dominate the market.13 Jim McClure
was well aware of Sapiro's activities, and tapped into his sense of mission and
enthusiasm. But, unfortunately for Western North Carolina, there was no commodity with which it could compete in the national market, and so the Farmers
Federation by necessity had to organize on a regional, not a commodity, basis.
Moreover, Jim McClure was interested in more than economics. He wanted the
mountain people to build for themselves a rural civilization based on the highest
of spiritual values, so to him the marketing of farm produce was really only the
means to an end. In time, the weaknesses in "Sapiroism" began to overshadow
the movement, and by about 1925 it had lost its fervor.14 Mere market power
had been unable to combat the problem of over-production, and without coercion the monopolies became difficult to maintain. Yet Aaron Sapiro was one
of the most remarkable and influential men of the history of the American
cooperative movement, and his efforts created a favorable climate in which
many such organizations thrived. The Farmers Federation was one.
In Western North Carolina, over-production, monopoly power and modern
technology were concepts as alien as if the region occupied a forgotten corner
of the Himalayas rather than the Appalachians. Larger than several states, the
region the Farmers Federation eventually served was sliced and criss-crossed
with mountain ranges more formidable and extensive than any others east of the
Mississippi. Along the rivers and creeks the soil could be rich and fruitful, but
more often, especially on the more rocky upland farms, it had been exhausted
by short-sighted farming methods Jim McClure always likened more to mining
than agriculture. The more one climbed the hillsides, the more the soil thinned
out, and yet in 1920 many an Appalachian family survived on a farm perched
overlooking the most prosperous bottom lands in the valley. Cash on these
marginal farms was the scarcest of commodities: it was hoarded to pay taxes,
and to buy a little salt and sugar. At Christmas time, a Florida orange and a big
dinner was about all a child could hope for.
In 1920 there were no reliable cash crops in the mountains. The railroad
brought the local farmers into competition with the more efficient, quality ori-
�240
We Plow God's Fields
ented farmers elsewhere in the United States, with the result that even the small
population centers in Western North Carolina were fed to a large extent by
farmers outside the region. During the early years of the Farmers Federation,
the composite picture of mountain agriculture was bleak. If one traveled about
in the 1920s, the visual evidence of one run-down farm after another would
have been convincing enough. But in 1928, the governor of North Carolina
received a "Report of the Tax Commission" that substantiated, with a series of
grim statistics, how thin the economic base of life in the mountains was. The
Commission studied 281 mountain farms from Jackson, McDowell and Ashe
Counties. These farms were chosen to represent the actual diversity of the area
as closely as possible, and then were studied by economists in great detail. One
can only imagine what comic scenes developed when these representatives of
academia invaded the mountaineers' home turf. For certain though, the farmers
were given a great opportunity to pull pranks on the city folks, and for years
afterwards the best of them were told and retold around the wood stove on a
cold winter's day. There was no sport in the mountains better than aggravating
invaders. One also wonders how anyone representing a tax commission could
maneuver around at all. But the data rolled into Raleigh, outlining the shocking
truth that agriculture in the mountains was not only providing little income, but
in fact represented negative profit. As meager as the farmers' capital investments were, they were producing on average a negative return of-$192 or -3.4
percent. There were no incentives, clearly, to increase production by buying
machinery, or more land, or even a better mule. Agriculture was simply a
strategy for survival, the only option available outside of the logging camps.
Discounting the unpaid wages of the farmer and his family, the average cash
income for these mountain farmers in 1927 was $86 a year. Eighty-six dollars
before taxes translated, when spread amongst the farmer's large family, into
bare feet, homespun clothing, and a psychology of hopelessness that bothered
Jim McClure more than anything else. Many farms, especially in Buncombe
and Henderson Counties, were no doubt much more prosperous than these
figures indicate, but on the other hand there were many farms where the $86
would have been a boom year.15 It is no wonder that men turned to moonshine,
for cash and consolation. How powerful the vision of that heavenly "city of
gold" described by the preachers must have appeared when compared to the
drab realities of life in this world.
In the starkest of contrasts, the city of Asheville glittered during the twenties as an earthly "city of gold," with a tempo that never skipped a beat throughout the Jazz Age. It was condemned by the local Baptist ministers as a magnet
of vice and temptation. Wealthy patrons flocked in to enjoy the pleasures of the
climate and the comforts of some of the most luxurious resort hotels in the
United States. It was the town and the time of Thomas Wolfe. Asheville had
earned the renown of the rich and famous, and became for a time their summer
playground. George Vanderbilt had moved in earlier, to give the town one of
the most monumental expressions of the gilded age anywhere in the country, the
�Farming in the Mountains of North Carolina
241
chateau known as Biltmore House. He also constructed the little town of
Biltmore, with an integrated architecture of red roof tiles and stucco, to house
and maintain the artisans who built the house and other employees of his estate.
If the Vanderbilts represented a dying age during the twenties, Zelda and Scott
Fitzgerald were the most notorious, the most frenetic harbingers of the new.
And they too brought their show to Asheville. But if Asheville was enjoying its
historical moment in the sun, those who lived in the countryside couldn't have
cared less.
The local farmers could only sell perishable goods such as milk, butter,
cream, fresh vegetables and fruit to this elite population. The railroads had
created the Asheville boom, bringing in and taking away 250,000 visitors a
summer,16 and they also brought in the high quality food these visitors demanded. The choice meats, produce, eggs and potatoes that suited this clientele
were not being grown by the mountain farmers. Ignorance and lack of capital
meant that even the lucrative local market was being eroded away by outside
farmers who bought quality seed and standardized breeds and practiced improved farming techniques. Even though potatoes are a crop well-suited to
Western North Carolina, the guests at the Grove Park Inn preferred that their
roast beef be complemented with a big baked potato from Maine, and therein
lay the challenge before Jim McClure.
The same railroad that brought down potatoes from Maine also supplied
the mountain farmers with fertilizer, lime, seeds and implements. But these
farms were comparatively small, and lacked bulk buying opportunities. Buying
supplies usually meant a day lost driving behind the old mule to the local feed
and seed store. These stores themselves usually sold a low volume, and were
often poorly stocked in a region plagued by notoriously poor roads. So the
farmers paid dearly for what few agricultural supplies they could afford to buy.
Selling produce was equally inefficient. The wagon was hitched up again and
driven into the town square. In Asheville, the usual market was around Pack
Square, and the farmers would spend the day with their load, haggling with the
customers, swapping tales and chewing tobacco. It could be a pleasant day
away from the routine of farming, and a chance for father and son to explore
the delights of urban life. But all too often the journey home was spoiled by the
meager return a year's work brought to the man and his family. It seemed as if
every farmer picked his beans or dug his potatoes the same day, and nobody
wanted to haul his load back home again. Towards the evening, when the
farmers were ready to leave, the market tilted in favor of the buyers, first one
farmer and then another would sell out for a pittance, reducing the value of his
labors to almost nothing. Jim McClure ran up against the same problem. He
combatted it by lining up his buyers ahead of time at hospitals and hotels, and
endeavoring to grow a superior product. If he could not find his price, he
brought the load back home. But he discovered early on that inferior products
marketed in a haphazard fashion had almost killed and buried any profit in
mountain farming.
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We Plow God's Fields
Mountain farmer plowing with a matched pair of horses. (McClure Fund Photograph
Collection.)
Prior to 1920, there had been at least two healthy spells of farming in the
mountains, especially in Buncombe and Henderson Counties. An excellent turnpike road was built in 1827 that connected Tennessee, Kentucky and Western
North Carolina with markets in Charleston and Augusta. Upwards of 170,000
hogs ambled through on this and other roads before the Civil War destroyed this
commerce. It took bushels of corn to feed these animals each evening, stimulating such a demand that a surprisingly large number of slaves were purchased
as laborers in areas near the road. After the war, from roughly 1870 to 1890, a
flue-cured tobacco boom brought cash to the mountains. Curing barns in the
countryside and warehouses and factories in Asheville sprang up like mushrooms in the rich soil of tobacco profits. Mountain leaf was popular as the
wrapper for cigars, but, by the turn of the century, the introduction of cigarettes
along with competition from Eastern North Carolina ruined mountain tobacco
markets. Jim McClure helped to bring tobacco culture (and cash) back into the
mountains during the Twenties, with the introduction of the Burley variety.
Unfortunately, the intensive culture of both corn and tobacco during the Nineteenth Century, without the means or knowledge of the use of proper fertilizers,
had left many of the farms with lifeless, eroded soil, creating a further challenge
for the Federation.
Jim McClure was not the first man to attempt to organize the farmers of
�Farming in the Mountains of North Carolina
243
Traveling the roads of Western North Carolina. (McClure Fund Photograph Collection.)
Western North Carolina, although he was by far the most successful. In 1873,
the Grange movement had three chapters in Buncombe County.17 As was the
pattern elsewhere, though, the Grangers became discouraged when their overblown expectations could not be realized, and the meetings sank into mere
conviviality.18 The shrill political ideas of the Farmers Alliance vocalized the
next wave of discontent. That group's strong stands in favor of better education,
self-government at the county level, an increase in the amount of money in
circulation (the silver issue), higher farm prices, and regulation of the railroads
by the government were later co-opted by the likes of the populist orators Tom
Watson of Georgia and "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman of South Carolina. In North
Carolina, the Farmers' Alliance went political in 1890. Many of their candidates
were elected to the General Assembly, and this woke up the entrenched and
complacent Democratic Party. But the Alliance's "farmers' legislature" failed
to solve the financial problems of North Carolina despite its free-spending ways.
As Theodore Saloutos explained in his book on farmer's organizations, it was
because the rhetoric did not match the reality. "Alliance, instead of realizing
that they, as farmers, were becoming the victims of sweeping economic changes
to which they would have to make radical adjustments, preferred to believe that
they were the victims of a money-mad society . . . The Alliancemen were simply
stumbling in the dark in search of a working formula that would put more of the
earnings of 'productive toil' into their pockets, and they called this formula
'cooperation.'"19 The final wave of farmer protest and organization came
through the efforts of the Farmers' Union, which derived its intellectual suste-
�244
We Plow God's Fields
Mountain boys thinking about hoeing corn. O.T. Ashe's boys on the left, with Tom
Anderson's boy on the right, Shooting Creek Section of Clay County, June 7, 1946.
(McClure Fund Photograph Collection.)
nance from the free spirit of the Progressive Era. When Jim arrived in Buncombe County, there was the vestige of the Union locally, and a pathetic
cooperative store near Fairview in Oakley.20 Much of the appeal of the Farmers'
Union came from the fascination with secret rituals and "bawdy horseplay."
Many joined out of simple curiosity, just to learn the secrets.21 Despite the
ineffectiveness of these three organizations, the Grange, the Alliance and the
Farmers' Union did help to encourage progressive agricultural techniques. But,
as each wave came and went, as leaders rose and fell, enthusiasm was replaced
by suspicion and cynicism. In the South, racial tensions tended to blunt the
ability of these groups to make a political impact. For example, the Alliance
was completely destroyed when the Democratic Party began preaching race
hatred, thwarting the efforts of the Alliance leaders to unite the power of black
and white farmers in North Carolina.
Jim McClure began selling stock in the Farmers Federation in the midst of
the memories of all those failed attempts to help the farmer. A sharp gambling
man would have given him long odds on success. The three organizations that
preceded him all had a wide base of national support, and yet each died as the
bloom of enthusiasm wore off. He was attempting to create a business over a
rather large geographical area with an abysmal transportation system, among
�Farming in the Mountains of North Carolina
245
farmers with a high rate of illiteracy whose agricultural practices lagged far
behind the competition's. The Federation was to be a boot-strap, self-financed
organization in a region that was extremely cash deficient. He would have
insufficient operating capital, no well-established outside market for crops, and
himself as president, a man more knowledgeable about theological trends in
Germany than agriculture in Western North Carolina. Moreover, the last time
he had worked hard, his health had broken down within ten months. The very
thought of a Yankee preacher, and liberal one at that, coming into the mountains
and organizing a group of people who had little more than their own sense of
independence to be proud of, seems in retrospect a preposterous scheme. How
could he possibly hope to create a business out of thin air that would not only
pay its own bills, but also pay dividends to its members? How could such an
organization expect to survive the first little adverse business ripple? Undoubtedly many discouraging remarks were made both to Jim and behind his back
about his scheme to help the mountain farmers by the bankers in Asheville and
the residents of the hollows out in the countryside. But Jim's mind was made
up; his course was set. He believed that men and women who dared to dream
great visions were given the strength and support of the Lord God Almighty.
With his own mind firmly committed, he could persuade people to believe in
the impossible. For more than forty years the Farmers Federation served as an
agency of change in Western North Carolina, as a cutting edge of progress. It
became the great work of its founder and long-time president, reflecting his
ideas and his urge to serve mankind until his death in 1956.
1. "When They Ring the Golden Bells," copyright 1887 by Dion DeMarbelle.
Used by permission of the John Church Co., owners of copyright. Found in the Church
Hymnal, (Cleveland, Tennessee: Tennessee Music and Printing Company, 1951), p.294.
2. James G. K. McClure, Jr., diary, June 13, 1920.
3. William W. Cochrane, The City Man's Guide to the Farm Problem (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1965), p. 3.
4. Ibid., p. 81.
5. Ibid., p. 85.
6. Ibid., p. 26.
7. Ibid., p.27.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 28.
10. Joseph Knapp, The Advance of American Cooperative Enterprise: 1920-1945
(Danville, Illinois: Interstate Printers and Publishers, 1973), p. 5.
11. Ibid.,p.6.
12. Ibid., p. 3.
13. Ibid., p. 1-9.
14. Ibid., p. 74-75.
15. "Report of the Tax Commission to Governor Angus Wilton McLean," authorized by the 1927 General Assembly, Raleigh, 1928.
16. Talmage Powell, "Asheville: An Historical Sketch," Doug Swaim, editor, found
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We Plow God's Fields
in Cabins and Castles: The History and Architecture of Buncombe County, North Carolina. (Asheville, N.C.: Historic Resources Commission of Asheville and Buncombe
County, 1981), p. 43.
17. John Ager, "Buncombe County: A Brief History," in Cabins and Castles . . .
OpCit., p. 22.
18. Theodore Saloutos, Farmer Movements in the South, 1865-1933, (Lincoln,
Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1960), p. 41.
19. Ibid., p. 88-89.
20. Interview with Guy Sales.
21. Op Cit., Saloutos, Farmers Movements . . . , p.87.
�Chapter Fourteen
The Farmers Federation
The greatest agricultural possibilities of the mountain country, indeed, can
only be realized through the growth of the co-operative movement. Until the
farmers of a neighborhood far from market join in some definite co-operative
undertaking . . . the efforts of the individual fanner will fall far short of their
desert, no matter how excellent his method."1 John C. Campbell
[Jim] is still running the "Federation of Farmers" which has many ramifications & it seems too funny that he, a "town" man, should be President of a
Farmers' Concern. (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Harriet McClure Stuart,
January 12, 1920)
By the spring of 1920, the Fairview Farmers Federation was duly organized
and incorporated under the laws of North Carolina, and by the next fall it had
grown so fast that the "Fairview" in the name had to be dropped. Suddenly, Jim
McClure became surrounded by an organization that required all of his energies,
all of his intellect, and most of all, every ounce of his famous charm. At times
he dragged the Federation along as a dead weight in impossible circumstances,
and at other times he just did his best to keep up with the momentum. After all
the years of frustration, Jim McClure was back to work. He was satisfying his
deepest convictions with an energy that infected those around him. The Farmers
Federation was on the move, and so was James Gore King McClure, Jr.
Fourteen years later, Jim reminisced about those early days at the annual
meeting of "The New York Farmers," a group of wealthy gentleman farmers.
We started in 1920 and had a little meeting in a log cabin, when we had a
committee of five of these mountain farmers. We had the organization meeting
in a log cabin where the family could not go to bed until after we got through
with our meeting, because there was just one room with the beds in it. At this
meeting we decided to put up a shed on a side track, which we were to put in
ourselves. We had since put up two additions on this shed. We started in with
one manager. At first we thought one of the directors would open the building
on a Tuesday and another on Saturday, but we decided to risk employing a
manager by the month. Within six weeks we had to have an assistant and
within another six weeks we had to have another one. Then the movement
began to spread.2
Despite the romance conjured up by this log cabin meeting, the most
important of these early gatherings probably took place in Tom Nesbitt's modest
247
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We Plow God's Fields
frame house in Fairview. Mr. Nesbitt was a farmer who milked a few cows and
raised a few crops to peddle around Asheville but like most farmers at this time
he made a meager living for all his efforts. Around his fireside the members of
the Federation took the courageous step to launch themselves as a business
enterprise.3
In 1920, when the Farmers Federation was organized, there were no special
laws set up in North Carolina under which the cooperative could be created, so
these men incorporated under the general business laws of the State, and became
a cooperative through their by-laws. These by-laws followed the Rochdale plan.
The Equitable Pioneers of Rochdale, England, were a group of unemployed
weavers who in 1844, with twenty-eight pounds, began the first consumers'
cooperative. The weavers, like the farmers of Western North Carolina, were
worried about the cost of their supplies, and so pooled their buying power to
reduce their costs. The two distinguishing features of the Rochdale system were
the financial structure and how voting power was organized. First of all, everyone who joined, no matter how many shares of stock he or she owned, was
entitled to one vote. The usual corporate law is one share, one vote; but in a
region where cash was scarce and suspicion of "big money" people was rampant, "one man, one vote" avoided disputes over control of the organization
that could have blown the Farmers Federation away in the first discouraging
wind. The second Rochdale fundamental incorporated into the Farmers Federation determined that all supplies were to be sold at prevailing retail rates. At the
end of the year, after all the expenses were paid, each member would be given
credit for his or her share of the profits, based on the quantity of business done
during that period of time. Some profits were held out to be distributed to the
stockholders, and some were plowed back into the organization. The Rochdale
system of co-operation was created to serve its members, not make a profit. But
its finances were based on sound business methods.
Jim McClure was elected President of the Fairview Farmers Federation,
and although he offered to resign in favor of someone else near the beginning,
he was always re-elected by the directors until his death thirty-six years later.
At the first meeting a neighbor, S. J. Ashworth, was elected Vice President, and
G. L. Clay was chosen as Secretary-Treasurer and Business Agent. Jim McClure
believed in involving as many people as possible in an organization, so that they
would feel interested and responsible. He wanted the work done for the Federation to be meaningful, to give those involved a feeling that their efforts promoted an enterprise of high purposes, of God's purpose. Jim McClure's notions
were based as much on the Apostle Paul's description of the "body of Christ,"
where each member contributed his God-endowed gifts for the consecration of
the whole, as they were on the modern business practices that had surrounded
him in Lake Forest. He worked to pull in as many hands, feet and mouths as
he could, and in those early days of the Federation he cajoled the strongest men
of each of Fairview's districts to be on the Finance Committee. Added to the
officers, then, the following men were appointed to solicit subscriptions of
�The Farmers Federation
249
stock: Boyce Miller of Laurel Bluff, Ottis Briggs of Cane Creek, Henry Garren
of Pleasant Grove, John B. Merrill of Brush Creek, Albert Reed of Gashes
Creek and R. T. Merrill of Gap Creek.
On June 19, 1920, the directors decided that the Federation should print
up a news sheet to promote its ideas, and chose Winslow Freeman as its first
managing editor. This publication grew with the organization, and was itself a
powerful agent for change in the region. Community news, recipes, morale
boosting, constipation remedies and great quantities of hard-nosed agricultural
information were the staple of the Farmers Federation News. To a region starved
for reliable information about proven farming techniques, the News was influential beyond measure.
Volume 1, No. 1 of the Fairview Farmers' News Sheet, was published July
15, 1920. Jim McClure wrote most of the editorials, and his first is a wonderful
expression of his enthusiasm and the early spirit of the Federation.
HELP YOURSELF
Every one knows that the farmer is up against it, and the farmer knows it
better than any one else . . . He cannot help his children at home because he
cannot offer them what they can get under die shadow of the big smokestacks
There is a great deal of talk about helping the farmer. That kind of talk does
not accomplish anything. The only man who is going to help the fanner is the
fanner himself. The farmer has got to save himself, and what is more, he can
doit.
The one and only way that the farmer can help himself is to control the price
of his product. At present the farmer does not control the price of the stuff he
produces, and until he does control it he will never be safe. As a step toward
controlling what we produce, we plan to put up this warehouse on the Fairview
siding. It can help every man in this section. It has great possibilities, but it
can only do us good if we all stick to it. We have a chance now to help
ourselves get ahead, so let every man in this section put his shoulder to the
wheel and keep grunting.4
This first project of the Federation was to build a warehouse along the
railroad near Fairview, in order to sell supplies and handle crops. Stock (at $50
per share) could be "bought" by helping to build this structure, and so the first
News Sheet issued:
A CALL FROM THE FOREMAN
The Federation of Farmers of Fairview have completed plans for the warehouse which they are planning to build at the Fairview siding.
They are hoping that each farmer in the township will take at least one share
of stock in the warehouse. These shares may be bought with material at market
prices or by labor. The material may be delivered at the siding or at Fairview.
Labor is required to extend the siding and to build the warehouse.
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We Plow God's Fields
"Goodbye Forever"—cartoon in the Asheville Citizen, July 5, 1924.
The prices: Muscle men, $3 per day
teams, $5 per day
Material at market prices as follows:
One set switch ties.
120 cross ties, first class
4 pieces 6 x 8 , 10V£ feet long . . .
The News Sheet also urged readers to:
SET YOUR ALARM FOR AUGUST FIRST
. . . We have arranged with the railroad to furnish the labor for all the work
on the siding. They will furnish a foreman who will boss the job. This will
give a chance to all the muscle men and all who can tap a spike on the head
to earn a share of stock or at least make a running start toward a share . . .
�The Farmers Federation
FINANCING THE WAREHOUSE
A day or two after this paper reaches you the members of the finance
committee will start around to solicit subscriptions. BE READY FOR THEM.
We will have to pay for three car lengths of track and for moving the switch.
Two of these car lengths will be beside the warehouse and one will be for
loading directly from wagons or trucks. We will also have to pay for our
warehouse and having working capital in addition.
Stock can be taken in either one of three ways: (1) By full payment in cash,
or by check. If it is possible, take your stock in this way, for we have to make
a deposit of eight hundred dollars with the railroad company at once and we
will need a substantial sum for the warehouse and working capital.
(2) Stock may be taken in work or materials.. . .
(3) Stock may be taken as outlined in the plan by the payment of ten dollars
down and giving your note for the balance, which shall be paid out of your
profits before any cash profits are returned to you.
Every farmer in this section should be able to pay ten dollars down in cash,
or in materials or labor and so obtain the benefits of this cooperative enterprise.
One fifty dollar share is the minimum required to become a stockholder. It
is expected that those who will do more than a minimum business . . . will
take from two to four shares . . . This project cannot go through unless many
of us make a sacrifice in the present for future advantages. The only rule that
we have made is TAKE ALL THE STOCK YOU CAN AND THEN SOME.
LOOK OUT, FARMERS!
Don't let this opportunity slip through your fingers! If we farmers in this
section will all go into this warehouse proposition and do our business through
it, we can control the entire output of this section. "Now you've said something." We can write to companies with which we want to do business to meet
our terms and they will. The united selling and purchasing power of the
territory which feeds into this siding is great. We will never get any advantages
from our power if we remain individual buyers and sellers . . .
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE ASHEVILLE MARKET?
The other day with potatoes wholesaling for $4 and retailing at from $6 to
$7, a Rutherford farmer came into the market and sold a few bushels at $2.
The whole market dropped right down.
The trouble is with us farmers and not with the market. The farmer who
sells his produce at less than what it costs to produce it plus a fair profit is
robbing all the rest of us. As far as the writer of this article knows, no Northern
potatoes are shipped into Asheville until September. The Western North Carolina farmers supply the market and in addition 100,000 summer visitors. The
market will pay what we ask if we all stand together. If the farmers of Western
North Carolina only knew it they could hold the summer market right where
they wanted to.
. . . We must work toward all standing together or quit the farm.5
251
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We Plow God's Fields
The News Sheet continues discussing potatoes, specifically THE FEDERATION POTATO, that soon will be narrowed down to two varieties, with strict
specifications to make the grade. Cabbages are mentioned, along with Mr.
Clifford Shuford's "decision to launch upon the sea of matrimony at some future
date" with an unmentioned accomplice. Finally, Jim McClure described THE
PLAN, the by-laws of the Federation based on the work of those Rochdale
weavers.
Many of the ideas on which the Federation was based came from a remarkable young man who became something of a legend in Southern agriculture and
the cooperative movement. With zeal and common sense, he promoted modern
agriculture and farmer's cooperatives as the editor of North Carolina's own
magazine, born with the Farmers Alliance Movement, The Progressive Farmer.
The young man's name was Clarence Poe, and he spent his lifetime formulating
practical solutions to the problems of the Southern farmer. Naturally, he and Jim
became friends. But before they met, Jim knew Clarence Poe from his book
How Farmers Co-Operate and Double Profit, which Jim used as a blueprint for
the Federation. For example, Poe made these comments and suggestions in his
book:
Agricultural co-operation on the whole .. . means simply that the fanner
must take control of all phases of his own business . . .6
[They] . . . may adopt the best marketing system on earth, but they must
also do better farming or lose out in competition with other sections.7
[One system for robbing the farmer. Your product is shipped off and when
the report comes back it might read] . . . market glutted since you started your
shipment; prices all off, . . . [or] Your shipment reached us in bad condition;
will command only one-half or two-thirds regular market price." And in such
cases, what redress has the small unorganized trucker? He cannot afford to
make a trip to New York or Buffalo or Chicago, . . . to see whether the report
is correct or not. He must take what is offered.8
No sort of movement for rural co-operation or for the development of a
greater rural civilization can win large success unless it recognizes and makes
room for the country woman; and it is also true that the man will never
organize the women.9
Against all odds, the early years of the Farmers Federation saw an organization take root and grow like the most persistent of weeds, in a soil few thought
could support life of any sort. Jim's wife encouraged him at home, but the early
enthusiasm of the local farmers in Fairview was crucial to the Federation's
growth. The work of raising sums of money through stock sales, promoting the
ideas in new sections of Buncombe County, and soon enough in new counties,
fell to a very hardworking group of men who followed Jim's leadership. These
men volunteered to spend time away from their own farms to serve the Federa-
�The Farmers Federation
4 ' ••
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253
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"Watch Us Grow!" September 23, Fanners Federation News.
tion. In addition to the farmers of Fairview who have already been mentioned,
some of the early "strongmen" behind Jim McClure were Church Crowell of
Enka, a former state legislator, and Allan Coggins, "the mayor of Bee Tree,"
both graduates of the University of North Carolina. S. C. Clapp of the State
Test Farm at Swannanoa, North Carolina, and C. C. Profitt, agricultural extension agent for Buncombe County, also helped.
With the second issue of the News in November 1920, the Federation had
grown to 150 members, and could boast a substantial warehouse along the
Southern Railroad tracks between Fairview and Asheville. The roll call of members that appeared in that issue represented the first time most of these men and
women had ever seen their names in print. These members read the News with
great interest, and learned the grim truth that just at the birth of their organization, the bottom was dropping out of American farm prices.
�254
We Plow God's Fields
HAMMER THE FARMER
Right now you can see the process of hammering the fanner going on.
Prices are coming down. The papers are carrying big headlines every day.
There is a strong campaign on to hammer down the cost of living. As usual the
heaviest blow falls on the farmer. Wages are not going down and we are all
glad to see them stay up. But the farmer's wage has been driven down lower
than any other thing. The farmer's wage is the price of his potatoes, his apples,
his cabbage, his cattle, his cow, and the farmer's wage is being reduced
50%
Hollering and grumbling will not, however, do us any good. If we want
relief, we farmers will have to get it ourselves. And we already have here in
this section the beginning of relief, the point of the wedge . . . The warehouse
and siding is our best chance. To make this proposition go we will have to get
behind it and stay there. We will have to be patient with it. It is a baby and
will have to be nursed along for some time. Give it two or three years. Don't
expect it to set the price or to sell produce at fancy prices yet awhile. Don't
expect it to be able to handle everything right at once. Give the Federation
time to grow and the officers time to learn the ways.10
Clearly, Jim wanted the members to keep their expectations in line with
realistic prospects. He preached solidarity and discipline to his stockholders,
knowing full well that soon enough the beauty of the new bloom would begin
to fade in the face of unrealized expectations.
THROW AWAY A NICKEL ONCE IN A WHILE
Don't lose that dollar because you can't see it for the nickel in your eye.
Throw away the nickel and pick up the dollar.
When some one offers you cottonseed meal cheaper than the Federation is
selling it and you think you can save a nickel, just remember that dollar. You
know what cottonseed meal sold for before the Federation got its first car and
sold it for $2.50. The Federation brought the market down, and every man in
this section is getting the advantage of it.
If someone cuts under us a nickel or a dime and you only see the nickel and
quit the Federation to buy from him, just remember that if the Federation is
put out of business the price will jump right up again. You will save your
nickel but lose your dollar.
Stick to the Federation. Glue to it. It has saved this section hundreds of
dollars on fertilizer and meal already. And remember that you get your profits
back at the end of the year.
STICK TO FT! GLUE TO FT! TRADE WITH IT! IT IS OUR BEST AND
ONLY CHANCE.11
Not only did Jim McClure have to worry about the price of cottonseed
meal and the defection of members, but in order for the Federation to survive,
he had to find some way to market the products of Western North Carolina. In
1920, these products lagged behind other parts of the country in quality and
�The Farmers Federation
255
standardization. From potatoes to hogs to chickens to beef cattle to string beans,
the mountain farmer invariably grew crops from inferior seed or bred animals
of poor genetic quality. Then, the cash starved farmer under-fertilized, or underfed what he was raising, often using methods long ago discarded as inefficient
or counterproductive in other parts of the United States. Right from the beginning, the News emphasized standard breeds and quality products. There were
articles each month covering all aspects of farming, written by a wide range of
experts. From the beginning, Jim McClure preached his message of agricultural
excellence. The theme of uniformity was hammered by the editors of the News
month after month, "Beg, Borrow or Steal A FEDERATION POTATO," and
"GET A RED HOG" (Duroc-Jersey) were typical headlines.12 Jim McClure had
taken it upon himself to educate an entire region in modern agriculture, and
slowly the results began to appear. Always the tone of the advice was clear and
sharp, but not condescending. Information came in the form of new hope, with
a heavy dose of enthusiasm.
MR. BUNCOMBE COUNTY FARMER, YOUR OPPORTUNITIES
ARE UNLIMITED IF YOU WILL STOP THE LEAKS
With a CLIMATE excelled by no other in the world, and a soil that is
naturally rich in all the plant food elements . . . you should certainly be one
of the most progressive farmers in America . . . You should have modern
home conveniences, with good schools, good churches, good roads, and other
things that go to make country life more pleasant and wholesome.
The system of farming and marketing that you have used in the past has not
yielded you a good living . .. Your profits have been leaking through the
following channels:
First—You have let about 33% of your cultivated soils become sick and die
Second—You are growing scrub stock, which is not profitable . . .
Third—You have been planting poor seed.
Fourth—You have not been pruning and spraying your orchard, and as a
result your fruit is not marketable .. .
Fifth,—perhaps the greatest leak has been your system of marketing. You
have hauled your products to market, unstandardized and ungraded, and took
what the market offered you, which was often less that the cost of production.
This is the most difficult leak to stop, but you can stop it by joining your
neighbors as a member of the "Farm Federation."13
BUNCOMBE COUNTY FARMER ROBBED
A New York man and a Pennsylvania man recently turned a neat trick on a
Buncombe County farmer. In February and March when broilers were bringing about a dollar a pound they came down here and slipped away with all the
dollars from the big hotels and hospitals right under the Buncombe farmer's
nose. The Buncombe County farmer did not realize he was being robbed. He
acted as if he was sandbagged; he was not conscious of his loss.14
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We Plow God's Fields
Thanks to the Federation, the leaks and the thefts began to subside. By
November 1921, a second warehouse was built on the other side of Asheville,
beside the railroad tracks at Craggy. By January 1922, the farmers of North
Buncombe had rented their own warehouse at Stony Knob. Each of these efforts
required an enormous amount of groundwork by Jim McClure. He had to organize the stock sales, set up the meetings, and keep everyone's enthusiasm from
sagging. He had a genius for organizing meetings, mixing enough entertainment
to bring the crowds out with enough hard facts to get his message across. He
showed movies and stereopticon pictures. At one open meeting held in Fairview
in the summer of 1921, a leading citizen of the community, Federation director
John Baxter Merrill, was put on trial for (1) Putting in a bushel of undersized
potatoes on a Federation contract; (2) Selling the Federation truck one ounce of
buttermilk in a pound of butter; (3) Selling the truck an egg with age on it.15
Nearly 1,000 people turned out to see this mock trial.16 During one of these
early meetings Jim McClure brought in his first string band, and ever afterwards
he knew that there was nothing like the sound of the banjo and the fiddle to bring
together the mountain folks. Guy Sales, who came to work for the Federation
during the summer of 1922, recalls this first Federation string band. About
twenty-five farmers were gathered in downtown Asheville, and Jim McClure
asked young Sales if he knew of any music that could be brought in quickly.
Across the street was a drinking and gambling establishment, and Guy replied
that he thought there were some musicians inside. The teetotaling Presbyterian
minister did not hesitate; he wanted musicians, sober or drunk. Guy Sales found
his men inside, engrossed in a poker game, and talked them into coming to the
meeting. "But you'll have to wait til we're done with this game," they said.17
Jim McClure could always feel the pulse of a crowd. To his sister he wrote:
The interest in the meetings has been rolling up like a snowball and we have
been accumulating performances until we are putting on as fine a show as the
rural districts have ever had. We have a five piece string orchestra which
accompanies us, a moving picture outfit and a Delco Light plant and such
worthies as the Chairman of the County Commissioners and other politicians
have joined our moving caravan. The crowds turn out at every point, the string
band alone being enough to draw the crowd. One more meeting remains and
then the wee small hours will know us no more. (James G. McClure, Jr. to
Harriet McClure Stuart, February 25, 1922)
The entertainment was a crucial element in the education of the mountaineer.
Jim explained his methods as part of a slide presentation on the Federation:
We have some subjects to talk about with our farmers that are very dull in
many points of view, like spraying. When a farmer has worked all day in the
fields, and particularly when he can't read and write, a lecture on spraying is
pretty tough on him. It is hard to get them to come out to a lecture on spraying
and if they do come, most of them fall asleep. So we decided to give subjects
�The Farmers Federation
257
of that type with the aid of clowns. We have the Farmers Federation clowns.
We always have the old-fashioned fiddling and people come out to the meetings. This clown here [he is showing slides] is the superintendent of the State
Test Farm. He can shout out a spray formula at the top of his lungs about forty
times during the evening. We are getting them sold on the idea of spraying.
There is the opportunity to get away with a lot of jokes, which make a hit. The
clowns will come on with a hand-spraying machine and one of the clowns will
take another's hat off and pick up a large bug from under the hat and spray it
and it will drop dead on the floor. A few jokes like that popularize the idea of
spraying.18
Could the Farmers Federation survive as a business? Trying to raise capital
from struggling farmers in order to sell their crops in a sagging market might
seem to be a foolish waste of time. Yet each year, the Federation sent out to its
stockholders, both preferred and common, dividends of 6 percent. Most years,
members were also paid a dividend of 5 percent of the amount of business they
did with the Federation. But the Federation was cramped by the problem of how
to raise money for capital improvements. For several years Jim convinced the
membership to allow the Federation to keep the 5 percent dividend on business,
in order to build up financial strength. Teaching men to vote against money in
their pockets was not easy. Yet even these measures provided only meager
funds. In the summer of 1921 Jim and Elizabeth were in New York, and he
asked the Russell Sage Foundation for money to help the Farmers Federation
expand. The request was turned down.
In November, the Federation faced a severe financial crisis. Jim notes in
his diary that he and Elizabeth went into town together in the pouring rain to
meet with Church Crowell, an active director. "... [H]ad to get $2000 more for
Fed & felt bank closing in on us. Do not know where next cash will come from.
Met at Proffitts [early leader who helped to edit the Federation News] at 11—
Lunch with . . . Dr. Grove [who] took 2 shares... ,"19 Dr. Grove was the
builder of the Grove Park Inn, and a millionaire from the profits of his patent
medicine tonic, Fletcher's Castoria. He became an enormous supporter of the
Federation in this early period, but his two share purchase on this occasion put
only a small dent in the $2,000 debt. So three days later Jim McClure went back
to the bank, and drew a rather humorous picture of himself seeking out a loan.
"Dressed up in old black suit, with a shine, & jaunty air entered the Bank and
breezed thru an interview securing promise of a line [of credit] to 15000 [dollars] with Battery Park [Bank]."20 Next he tried to talk Buncombe's wealthiest
citizen, Mrs. George Vanderbilt, into donating to the Federation. The entry for
July 8, 1921, reads: "Fruitless call on Dr. Wheeler hoping for entree to Mrs.
Vanderbilt for $2000.00
"21 How he got an introduction is unknown, but
in October he made this entry in the diary: "Petsie and I to town, shopping
about. At 4:30 with quavering hearts slipped thru the Vanderbilt gateway . . .
Stopping in front of Mrs. V's we made a pass at the main entrance, which was
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We Plow God's Fields
barred, & doubled barred. Retrieving ourselves we rang at the proper place . . .
Entering had a very pleasant tea with Mrs. V. & Cornelia [her daughter],
holding our own... ,"22
This was the beginning of Mrs. Vanderbilt's considerable interest in the
Farmers Federation. Jim McClure quickly realized that the Farmers Federation
would never be able to satisfy his visions for Western North Carolina if he relied
only on the money of the farmers themselves. The Federation's first task was
to try to renovate the economy of the region, but that was only to provide a
sound basis to build up other areas of life. The educational system of the
mountains was woefully inadequate, and would remain so until there was a tax
base from which to draw and people who properly appreciated the importance
of the endeavor. He supported vocational education in the high schools, and
wanted to set up his own Federation Training School that would give promising
young farm boys some technical training. He worried about the little country
churches, too. He saw them propagating ignorance, fear and superstition; in
short, a blighted vision of the possibilities of life. Hymn books, preacher's
salaries, Sunday School literature and building repairs were almost always beyond the means of the little congregations. Jim McClure felt strongly that the
cornerstone of American civilization was the little country church. When these
churches suffered, the American dream of freedom and prosperity took on a
tarnished look. So in the back of his mind he wanted to work out a scheme to
strengthen the religious institutions of Western North Carolina. Moreover, he
wanted to be able to test new crops and procedures, to try out ideas to see if
they might fit into mountain agriculture. But none of these visions could be
realized without outside money, and in fact he was strapped even to pay the
promotional expenses involved in the geographical spread of the Federation. In
March 1922, he made a loud plea in the News for financial help. "Wanted: A
Promotional Fund! Requests are coming in to the Federation from other sections
and counties to come and help them organize. We have to reply that we cannot
do it as we have no one to send."23
Jim had some success building support in Asheville by the sale of stock.
His early contact with Dr. E. W. Grove bore fruit when, in the summer of 1922,
Dr. Grove offered to buy $5,000 in stock if $15,000 worth of the same could
be sold in Asheville. "He thinks Asheville should be aroused to helping the
Federation get financed and so made the offer. We already have $20,000 paid
in but the more it [the Federation] grows the more capital we need" (James G.
K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, July 2, 1922). The next issue of the
News announced the proposition, and quoted the letter Dr. Grove had written
to Jim McClure: "This is an investment that promises to pay dividends not only
in the form of interest, but in the form of the development of the life of Western
North Carolina."24 In the next issue, Jim could proudly announce that "Asheville clinches Dr. Grove's offer. In three weeks from its opening the campaign
to sell Federation stock in Asheville closed, having been oversubscribed $1900.
Thus the provision on Dr. Grove's offer to take $5,000 worth of stock has been
�The Farmers Federation
259
met, and the working capital of the Federation doubled."25 The next year Dr.
Grove made the same offer, and the goal was met in only three days. Clearly,
Jim McClure had won the faith of the local business community. Then in 1925,
Dr. Grove again made an offer, this time $25,000 if the community would take
$75,000 worth of stock, an enormous sum that would give the Federation great
strength. Jim McClure threw himself into the campaign to raise money, lining
up some of the influential citizens of Asheville, and doing joyous battle. The
results were astounding and thrilling for Jim McClure. " . . . [I]t is something
out of the ordinary for a community to contribute over $165,000 to an undertaking where the returns will be largely measured in improvement of rural life,
encouragement of better farming methods and good-will between farmer and
city dweller."26
The good will of the Federation drew in Mrs. George Vanderbilt as well,
and the McClures came to enjoy the festivities of the Biltmore House after the
trepidations of their first visit. Mrs. Vanderbilt was intensely interested in farming, and as early as 1922 was commended by the News for her financial support
of the County Extension service.27 At about the same time, she and Jim appeared at the podium of the Civitan Club, one of Asheville's leading civic clubs,
with the Federation's own Mr. Clay of Fairview, for a farmers' luncheon. In a
letter to his sister Hetty, Jim described the event as "quite an affair. The Asheville businessmen each asked a farmer to attend. Mr. Clay led off the batting
list and made a tremendous hit by telling an apt story and ending up in three
minutes. Mrs. Vanderbilt attended the luncheon and followed me up, being
given the fourth or clean up position on the batting list" (James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, May 14, 1922). Her batting record is left incomplete, but she in fact became one of the Federation's principal local supporters,
buying quantities of stock and encouraging her own Biltmore Dairy to join up.
Jim's sister Hetty and her husband Douglas Stuart were contributors during
these crucial years. In response to a contribution, Jim wrote to Hetty: "You are
a brick-the letter with $300 enclosed was received with the wildest acclamations. The Federation will have to raise a statue to the Stuart family" (James G.
K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, May 14, 1922). Douglas Stuart was
an executive for Quaker Oats Company, and helped the Federation by providing
them with feed at a reasonable rate. Moreover, he sent down a variety of experts
to help educate the mountain farmer. On one such occasion, this report appeared
in a letter to the Stuarts:
We have had with us during the past week the celebrated expert of the
Quaker Oats Company, Mrs. Florence Forbes, and we have kept her busy with
meetings afternoon and night and demonstrations during the morning hours.
The Quaker Oats Company furnished moving pictures exposing all the inner
secrets of the poultry kingdom and placing the modest, unsuspecting hen
entirely in the power of the onlooker. The hens in this country from now on
will have to forswear their life of ease and get down to Full-O-Pep and shelling
out the hard boiled egg.
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We Plow God's Fields
For these meetings the Federation provided a string orchestra that made the
most staid citizens and matrons shuffle an involuntary foot. The week is
always a little wearing on the participants. My good wife if she attends any
meetings after the first has acquired a nasty habit of falling asleep and losing
control of her center of gravity. This necessitates a body guard who constantly
shoves her back into an upright position. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the
Stuarts, April 20, 1922)
Through these early years, Jim kept his sister and brother-in-law informed
on the progress of the Federation, and through these letters one can read some
of his thoughts and a great deal of his enthusiasm.
The Federation announced its dividend for the year 1921 . . . We had a
good year and will pay 6% on paid up stock and 5% on business done. This
is quite a dividend and everyone is pleased. We also will add about 1500
dollars to our surplus fund. Our business keeps growing at a good pace and
with our third warehouse opening up in a few days it keeps us moving lively.
Our main difficulty is lack of capital as with almost all joiners coming in on
the ten dollar down plan the total is not large. Our volume of business is quite
large for the amount of capital we have, and I am trying to invent some way
of increasing our working capital.
So endeth this chronicle and with love to each and every member unto the
third or fourth generation. . . . (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts,
February 19, 1922)
The Federation is still growing and leading us a merry dance. Our great and
crying need is for more capital and yesterday we were all elated because
$840.00 came in. Every Saturday the solicitors report their success during the
week and $840 is our high water mark . .. We are now turning over our capital
twice a month and this takes frenzied finance as well as all our capital is tied
up in buildings and equipment. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts,
March 19, 1922)
The Federation keeps moving along and yesterday we indulged in a Reo
speed wagon. This makes our delivery equipment consist of a ton and a half
truck, a one ton speed wagon, a one ton Ford truck, a half ton Ford truck and
a Ford passenger car.
On Thursday I addressed a great and high spirited crowd of Rotarians and
received a free lunch for my efforts, which is more than I have received for
my vocal efforts in many a long day. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts,
May 21, 1922)
. . . The Federation keeps coming along strong though I hear that at any
time the tide may set in the other direction and I may be run out of the county.
The populace are very fickle. Yesterday our 600th stockholder plunked his
money down. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, July 23, 1922)
Those who have recently been among us will be interested to know that we
had our proposed meeting of the Federation on Friday and authorized an issue
�The Farmers Federation
261
of $500,000 Common stock and $250,000 Preferred, the first issue of $50,000
Common Stock being already subscribed. The same evening a meeting was
held at Mills River, which is one of the sections contributory to Fletcher and
the people decided to erect a warehouse at Fletcher . . . The redoubtable Mr.
Crowell will move his seat of operations to Fletcher next Monday and start to
burn up the country. The Federation now has a balance in banks of over ten
thousand and bank presidents openly flirt with it. This bank account will soon
be raided by the Q[uaker] 0[ats] Company who takes our money as fast as we
gather it together. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, August 27, 1922)
The opening of the Federation Warehouse at Fletcher on Wednesday was a
conspicuous success. All County officials from both Henderson and Buncombe Counties were present and a big crowd of ordinary citizens. The affair
went off peaceably. A car of Quaker Oats Feed arrived the day before the
opening and the sacks made excellent seats for those who drank in the flow of
Southern oratory. Fourteen speakers mounted the rostrum, seven before dinner
and seven after dinner, and seldom has such a feast of wit, wisdom and
exhortation been poured upon an audience. The crowd, replete and somewhat
jaded broke up about four thirty. The capacity of the mountain farmer for
successfully absorbing hot air is only equaled in the annals of America by the
attendants at the early camp meetings where three and four hour sermons were
successfully weathered before and after dinner. The crowd here breaks up,
looking slightly gassed and with somewhat sagged jaws but otherwise apparently none the worse.. .. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, January
21, 1923)
Jim's jaws may have sagged a bit that week too when his hustle was foiled
by Asheville's new "speed officer."
The week has seen me caught in the toils of the law. The attached clipping
will explain one fall from grace. ("McCLURE TAXED BY NETTLES LAW:
HIS HURRY COSTS HIM HEAVY FINE James G. K. McClure, famous in
Farmers Federation circles, is a hustler. But his hurry cost him in the neighborhood of $60 today when he ran afoul of the enactment of that other friend of
the farmers, Harry L. Nettles, chosen from the rural precincts to give the
agriculturists an even break in the state's legislative halls. McClure is the
second man to be brought before Judge Wells under the Nettles Act . . . for
speeding on Biltmore Avenue.
The farmers' organizer has a boy's band, of which he is particularly proud,
under his direction. He was anxious Tuesday afternoon to transport the juvenile musicians from one part of the county to another and he made no denial
of that fact when arraigned. He thought he was going about 40 miles an hour
when Lawrence Trexler, speed officer, drove his motorcycle behind him and
trailed him . . . The policeman was sure 50 miles was the registration.
Regardless of who was nearer right as to the speed's computation, the
Nettles bill was broken, and Judge Wells announced there was but one thing
for him to do: Impose a fine of between $50 and $500 for going over 30 miles
an hour . . . there was no indication that any lives were endangered by
McClure's driving.") The others were two suits instituted by a woman who
lost her head and ran into one of the Federation trucks. I was served with
�•',
�The Farmers Federation
263
papers on two counts by this woman and had to wage legal war before the
magistrate. Our truck was not in the least to blame but in spite of this judgement was found against us on both counts ...
Tomorrow I start on a flying trip to St. Petersburg, Florida to have an
interview with Dr. Grove [who was helping arrange financing for the growing
Federation]
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, February 18,1923)
The week of the Quarterly meetings is a fearful thing. One of our number
seems to fall from grace every round. Last time I had my police court experience and this time our fiddler had the misfortune to get in a fight and sentence
was imposed on him for three months on the chain gang . . . However in spite
of this occurrence the round was a howling success. Crowds attended our
meetings everywhere, local jokes were developed and a spirit of great jollity
prevailed...
My muffler dropped off last night and I came home at 1:30 a.m., the car
roaring like a lion. All along the road people moved uneasily in their beds
thinking that Rumbling Bald (a local mountain known to experience earthquake tremors) had "broke out" again. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the
Stuarts, May 20, 1923)
Clearly, with all of the work Jim McClure faced he loved the Federation
and the mountain families it served. On a daily basis, however, the success of
the Federation depended on each warehouse, and how well each manager treated
his customers and ran his business. In the mountains, a man or woman would
"trade" with the store where he or she felt at ease and welcomed. Customers
felt strong loyalties to their shopkeepers, and often if a man left one store to
work in another, he took those loyal to him along. Jim McClure quickly grasped
these mountain habits, and tried to supply his warehouses with men not only
capable of running an efficient operation, but also with personalities that attracted customers. The old Fairview siding was his first experience in learning
how to manage a successful store, and several suggestions survive from notes
he sent to R. T. Merrill, the manager there and the first employee of the Farmers
Federation.
Private Attention R. T. Merrill
Suggestions: for use in running the Business.
(1) Spend some time in studying how to organize the force to best advantage.
Give certain men certain responsibilities, i.e. one man to sweep up the first
thing every morning, another man the responsibility for the outside picking
up, another man the duties of shipping clerk, etc. (2) Make a list of wet day
and slack time jobs such as sewing up torn sacks; putting up Growing Mash
in ten pound packages etc ... (5) Keep lists of everything. By this I mean lists
of those who want lime, potatoes, prospects for stockholders, growers of
vegetables etc. Our business has reached the stage where it has outgrown the
Opposite: Directors of the Farmers Federation, 1923-1924. Left to right: S.C. Clapp,
director; G.L. Clay, Secretary-Treasurer, James G.K. McClure, Jr., pres.; R.C. Crowell, vice pres.; Claude B. Wells, director.
�264
We Plow God's Fields
possibilities of the memory and we will have to make more and more use of
lists.28
Ride hard after old collections and get security or something for the accounts
. . . Keep the clerks on their toes . . . Put up signs to help move things.29
One of the most successful store managers in the Federation system was
Bill Francis, who took over the Hendersonville warehouse. His affability was a
sure drawing card, and he remembers with fondness the men swapping stories
around his pot-bellied stove, leaning over from time to time to "let fly" with a
perfectly aimed projectile of tobacco juice into his sand pit. He understood well
that the Federation store had to serve a social role, or fail altogether as an
enterprise. On the business side, he recalled that managing debt was always
difficult. The nature of agriculture includes borrowing on supplies, seed, tools
and machinery in the spring with the promise to pay when the harvests came in
next fall. To the credit of the mountain farmers, despite the long periods of hard
times, Bill Francis never had much trouble collecting his debts. "I did have to
go in early to work for a while and milk a herd of cows grazing out behind the
store, when a man failed to pay up." Bill Francis remembers his first store in
Tryon, organized to serve Polk County. "The back of Polk" has always been a
producer of moonshine, and he recalls the big selling items there were sugar,
shorts and yeast. To serve his customers, "we would deliver in the middle of the
night to keep out of the Revenue Officer's way."30
The Hendersonville stock drive began in the spring of 1924, and when the
new warehouse was completed it meant that the Farmers Federation had six
warehouses located throughout the two most prosperous mountain counties,
Henderson and Buncombe. All were built in four years by money raised locally,
during an era of depressed farm prices. The Hendersonville News stood behind
the drive, cajoling the local businessmen to support the enterprise.
The financing of the Farmers Federation appears to be on the last lap of its
journey in Hendersonville. The businessmen let the farmer get the jump on
them and it was difficult to catch up.
The campaign and the Federation should serve to knit businessmen and
farmers, the city and county, closer together.
For years we have heard Hendersonville civic bodies discuss ways and
means of helping the farmer. The first real opportunity has arrived and Hendersonville though slow to move has measured fairly well up to the most
singular opportunity ever presented it. Our efforts will give the farmer more
confidence in us. He has been shown that the businessmen have his problems
at heart.
But we must not pose as philanthropists. We have given the farmer nothing.
We have made no real sacrifices. We have helped him on his journey to more
profitable agriculture but in this we could assume a very selfish attitude,
knowing that when the farmer has money to spend the business man is to get
a good share of it.
�The Farmers Federation
265
Top: Fairview Warehouse of the Farmer's Federation; Bottom: Early Federation truck
hauling milk and cream.
�266
We Plow God's Fields
Next comes the opportunity of the farmer to produce more with assurance
of better markets. The time has come for him to change his ways, plant and
cultivate more scientifically and use both county agent and Federation to every
possible advantage.31
Hendersonville proved to be a strong link in the Federation chain, and by
1925 James McClure could boast a total sales of nearly a million dollars a year.
The fifth anniversary issue of the Federation News, August 1925, told of the
rise of the Federation in an article by an admirer.
And so the rise of the Farmers Federation reads like a fairy story. Just five
years ago the organization was a small group of neighboring farmers in
Fairview township.
Today the Federation is the progressive farmer element of Henderson and
Buncombe Counties. . . .
Madison, Jackson, McDowell and Haywood counties may soon feel the
touch of the Federation.
The rapid growth and development of the Farmers Federation owes much
to its guiding spirit. In fact, the tireless efforts, the sacrifices and steady nerve
of James G. K. McClure, Jr., have weathered the ship over rough seas to easy
sailing.
In the handful of farmers at Fairview, five years ago, Mr. McClure was the
guiding spirit. Today and every day since the first handful of farmers cast their
lots together, he has had his strong hand at the wheel.32
On the front page of this issue was a picture of "The six-story fireproof
warehouse on Roberts Street, Asheville."
It was here that the Federation sought security behind walls of steel and
concrete . . . now housing the marketing department, the executive offices, the
Federation News office and the poultry department.
This modern building costing around $75,000 has become Asheville's trade
center for the farmer. On busy days trucks and wagons line the street for some
distance on either side of the Federation building.
At one time during the tomato season in 1924 so many farmers brought their
tomatoes to the Federation at one time that traffic became hopelessly blocked
for over an hour, and it required a traffic officer to straighten out the traffic.33
Jim McClure was very proud of this building, a tangible result of his
unselfish devotion to his vision. He went to Roberts Street every day. In some
of the excess warehouse space, he stored his wife's very soul, all of her finest
paintings. Aunt Frederika's priceless furniture and family heirlooms were all
on Roberts Street, protected from catastrophe by steel and concrete.
The third morning after Christmas 1925, the weather in Western North
Carolina was a bitterly cold O° F. Those who braved the elements to obtain a
morning paper were greeted with large headlines across the front page. "HALF
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267
MILLION DOLLAR FIRE IN DEPOT SECTION. Farm Federation and Three
Other Buildings Are Complete Losses. Wintry Weather Handicaps Force of
Firefighters," The article continued, " . . . The Farmers Federation . . . also lost
heavily, several carloads of beans, much poultry and several hundred turkeys
being burned .. ,"34
The next week, Jim wrote to Hetty and Doug:
. . . We have been through quite a week. Last Sunday morning word was
brought that the Marketing Department was burning down, and on rushing in
to Asheville I found the condition of affairs that is shown in the attached
newspaper...
As good luck would have it we were buying out the wholesale produce
business of Hayes-McCormack on Jan. 1st. These people were one of the
largest wholesale concerns here. I got hold of them last Sunday afternoon and
arranged to take over their stock and building Monday morning so that we
were open for business with a fairly complete line at seven o'clock Monday
morning and we have done over $5,000.00 worth of business this week at our
new quarters.
We could not get to our safes until Friday afternoon, as the wreckage kept
burning and was badly piled together. The safe from my office we found with
one side out from its fall and everything burned completely up. The office safe
was intact but when opened everything in it was so charred as to be practically
undecipherable. My safe contained the records of the stockholders, now over
two thousand and also the subscription cards from our last summer's drive . . .
You can imagine what a mess it will be to adjust.
The worst personal feature of the loss was Aunt Freddie's furniture, every
bit of which was stored in the warehouse and every bit of which was destroyed.
This included all the portraits, letters, laces, papers, trunks and furniture of
every kind.
It is almost incredible to find no mention of the loss of Elizabeth's paintings. It speaks to the kind of person she was. Certainly she made an immediate
decision to say nothing about her private loss. Jim continued to Hetty and Doug:
We had a total of $46,500.00 Insurance which has been admitted by the
Adjuster . . . We had a considerably higher proportion of insurance than the
owners or occupants of the other buildings, as every one had considered the
building semi-fire-proof and thought that even if a fire started it would not go
far without being controlled. The insurance companies had just made us another cut in our rate a few weeks ago.
The loss will be a heavy one but we will try to win it back in a couple of
years. We had a Directors meeting yesterday and decided to rebuild at
once
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, January 3, 1926)
Never a mention was made by Elizabeth of a loss so personal that her inner
grief must have touched her deepest chords of despair.
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We Plow God's Fields
Dearest Hetty,
. . . Poor Jim is simply engulfed in affairs. The fire was a horrid blow as
everything was running so smoothly & of course this means months of bother
and extra work. Nobody understands what in the world caused the fire as there
were only a few coals in the furnace when they left the building on Saturday
but that night was a fearfully cold one & there was a terrible wind, so much
so that the wretched watchman whose job it was to patrol the building every
hour never appeared at all! If he had been on the job, of course it would never
have gained headway . . . However, the Federation opened up promptly on
Monday morning not having lost an hour of business & has been going at their
usual full steam ahead ever since with more business than ever before. None
of the other three burned-out concerns have done a single stroke since the fire
. . . (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Harriet McClure Stuart, January 8, 1926)
Jim McClure was deservedly proud of the ability of the Federation to
reopen the day after this terrible burn-out of the central warehouse; adversity
never numbed him, but always stimulated his energies and boosted his determination. The probable cause of the fire was determined to be bananas. In the
basement there was a room with straw on the floor where all the bananas were
stored, and kerosene stoves were used to keep this area between 75°F.and 80°F.
in order for them to ripen properly.35
The Federation recovered rapidly, and by the beginning of the Depression,
had strengthened itself for the economic doldrums to come. By its tenth anniversary in August 1930, the cooperative could boast a growth in the poultry business from $5,000 annual return the first few years to more than half a million
dollars.36 The first chickens were boiled in an old black pot in front of the
Fairview Warehouse. By 1930, a special railroad car moved through Western
North Carolina, stopping at regular intervals to purchase poultry. In a later
speech in New York, Jim McClure recalled the early effort of the Federation to
create a poultry market in the mountains using a railroad car.
.. . We ran the enterprise at a loss for three years because the tonnage was
never great enough to make the car pay . . . We had a great deal of excitement
working up interest in the first car we shipped. We went all through the
mountains and held meetings and the car was ordered and the farmers at each
station brought in their poultry and finally the car was started rolling to New
York.
Well, I don't know whether you gentlemen know the poultry business in
New York. It was my first experience with it. We shipped the car up here and
about three days later the telephone rang and I thought static had broken loose
all the way from Asheville to New York. I have never heard a more excited
telephone conversation in my life than there was on the other end. This gentleman assured me—I could see his hands moving—that this was the worst car
of poultry he had ever seen, there had never been anything like it come to New
York, it was just terrible . . . I looked into the matter and I found that our
people, who have much sporting blood, had taken this opportunity to get rid
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269
of their defeated game roosters and other poultry of that kind. Now, the game
rooster is not a particularly toothsome thing to serve on the dinner table.37
More "toothsome" were the vegetables grown and canned in Henderson
County. Jim McClure reasoned that the only way to encourage farmers to grow
vegetables on a commercial level was to be able to assure them that the Federation could buy all that they grew. The only way that assurance could be made
was to set up a cannery, so that the vegetables could be preserved during slack
marketing times. In the early years, canning apparatus was fitted onto a truck
and driven to the various farms. The rig was given by Henry Ford and stimulated
such production, especially of tomatoes, that a large-scale, permanent cannery
was eventually built by the Federation. Henderson County became well known
for produce, even to the present day. The cannery could not pay a high price,
but it could accept an unlimited quantity. Jim explained in the News that the
farmers had learned it was "better to sell 1000 bushels of tomatoes for 600 per
bushel than 10 bushels at $1.50."38 He always hoped to be able to supply Florida
with tomatoes during the late summer, and Bill Francis remembers once, when
he was managing the Hendersonville warehouse, being sent south with a load
of two hundred bushels of green tomatoes. He recalls with a laugh travelling
up and down the state looking for a buyer. Even in the hot Florida sun those
tomatoes would not turn red.39
The Federation continued to push for sales of its original concern, the Irish
potato, and added the sweet potato as a sideline. Irish potatoes were rolling out
of the mountains by the train load, and by 1930 Jim McClure could claim that
the Federation had paid out over $600,000 for that humble tuber. Down in
Rutherford County, where sweet potatoes were perfectly adapted to the soil and
climate, the Federation built a curing plant to keep them off the market at harvest
time in order to enjoy better prices during the winter. This experiment was a
successful venture of the Federation and sweet potatoes proved to be a wonderful cash crop for the farmers of that section of the mountains. Apples, corn,
wheat, mountain rye, and almost anything else the farmers could raise were sold
by the Federation, and simultaneously the men and women of the North Carolina
mountains were learning scientific agriculture and good citizenship.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, a flue-cured, yellow leaf tobacco, used primarily to wrap cigars, enjoyed many boom years. Asheville
became a large tobacco marketing center, and warehouses sprang up along with
curing facilities and small processing factories. But during the 1890s the demand petered out. Jim McClure knew that in Kentucky burley tobacco had
become a fine cash crop, and he reasoned that his mountain farmers could do
as well. Jim got experts from the Department of Agriculture to analyze the area.
They found it was well suited for tobacco. In 1926 he began promoting the idea,
and 4,500 acres of mountain land were devoted to the "noxious weed" by 1930.
Most of it was grown in Madison County, where the land was so rugged little
else could be raised profitably. In 1930, the directors of the Federation voted
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We Plow God's Fields
Mountain farmer with his tobacco. (McClure Fund Photograph Collection.)
to raise $2,500 to build a tobacco warehouse in Asheville. This building made
money for the Federation in the years to come, and burley tobacco has been the
most dependable cash crop in Western North Carolina ever since.
The more the Federation rolled along, gathering momentum, the more new
projects Jim McClure's fertile imagination conceived for the region. But there
was just not enough investment capital locally to finance them all. In 1927 he
began to fit into the puzzle of the Federation the final pieces of his organizational scheme. It occurred to him that the people he had left behind to come to
the southern mountains, the wealthy men and women of the northeastern cities,
would be interested in the plight of the mountain men and women. He was a
member in good standing of an American elite that controlled the strings of a
capacious purse. Moreover, he knew the minds of those men and women, their
prejudices and their ideals. He possessed the personality, the sincerity, the
speaking ability and the handsome features to present the problems of the people
he was trying to help in a most appealing way. He hit on exactly the right phrase
for these men of the business world who valued independence and individualism—"Helping the mountain farmer to help himself." Jim McClure would draw
�The Farmers Federation
271
together people with his charm and wit, with his genuine concern for his mountain neighbors and with his gift as a speaker. With a little book to note pledges,
he would head off for the cities of the North each fall. The "campaign" was a
battle plan for altruism.
In time, his skill at raising money gave him the freedom to pursue many
of his more expansive ideas to improve life in the mountains. That money, held
today in the James G. K. McClure Educational and Development Fund, is still
at work educating hundreds of mountain young people each year in technical
institutes, nursing schools, colleges and universities throughout the state and
helping rural ministers to further their education. The creation of this development fund must be considered one of Jim's great achievements.
The "Educational and Development Fund of the Farmer's Federation, Inc."
[the original name] was begun in 1927 to provide money to launch new ideas
and programs. As he pursued this work Jim discovered, or was discovered by,
a most remarkable man. Arthur W. Page, the son of the Ambassador to England,
Walter Mines Page, came to Asheville to speak at the Rotary Club. His speech
emphasized how important "cranks" were in pushing forward ideas and programs most thought unreasonable or impossible. After the address, Jim's friend
Dr. W. P. Herbert went up to Mr. Page and said, "I know a 'crank' who thinks
the mountain farm can make money." Off to Fairview went Arthur Page, and a
partnership resulted that grew in strength in both personal friendship and good
works accomplished. Arthur Page's father was a North Carolina native and
journalist. Too progressive to be accepted in his home state at the end of the
nineteenth century, he headed north, became editor of the Atlantic Monthly and
was named Ambassador to England by President Woodrow Wilson. He worked
vigorously for his vision of an Anglo-American position of world leadership,
even trying to thwart President Wilson's neutrality rules prior to American
intervention in World War I. He often wrote of the possibilities for the South.
His book, The School That Built a Town, was an inspiration to Jim McClure,
especially as it stressed the importance of giving a chance to the mountain
woman. Nurtured by his father's ideas, Arthur Page felt strong ties to North
Carolina and a strong conviction that America's purest population of AngloSaxons needed assistance to bring themselves more in line with the prosperity
of the other brethren of their race.
Back home in the mountains Jim McClure kept these money-raising efforts
in the background. He never wanted to make his friends in the Federation feel
that they were objects of some sort of charity. To those in the cooperative who
knew about and appreciated what their president was doing on his trips it all
seemed at times to be a new wrinkle on the old game of "skinning Yankees."
Hendersonville manager Bill Francis laughs and gives what was no doubt the
prevailing potbellied stove opinion in his store, when he said that Jim McClure
would take "two or three of these cross-eyed boys, a banjo or two, and come
back with thousands of dollars."40
One of his first fund-raising efforts took place in the ballroom of the Colony
�WHAT
WE ARE DOING ABOUT THAT
MOUNTAIN FARM
PRELIMINARY 1928 REPORT
EDUCATIONAL AND DEVELOPMENT FUND
OF THE
FARMERS FEDERATION
ASHEVILLE, N. C.
DECEMBER FIRST - 1928
�NEW YORK-COMMITTEE
A NEW YORK COMMITTEE COOPERATING WITH AN
ORGANIZATION OF MOUNTAIN FARMERS
OF NORTH CAROLINA
ARTHUR W. PAGE, Vice-Pres. American Telegraph & Telephone
Company - Chairman
MORTIMER N. BUCKNER, Chairman - The New York Trust
oiaMfcCo., Treasurer
JAMES T. BRYAN, Logan & Bryan
GEORGE ADEE, Reynolds Fish & Co.
MAGNUS W. ALEXANDER, Chairman - National Industrial Conference Board
HERBERT L. BODMAN, Milminc, Bodman & Co.
PIERPONT V. DAVIS, Vice-Pres. National City Co.
FAIRMAN DICK, Roosevelt & Sons
W. W. FLOWERS, Vice-Pres. Liggett & Meyers Tobacco Co.
F. B. KEECH, F. B. Keech & Co.
R. H. KRESS, Treas. S. H. Kress & Co.
DEVEREUX MILBURN, Carter, Ledyard & Milburn
WHEELER McMILLAN, Crowell Publishing Co.
HAROLD PHELPS STOKES, New York Times
LANSING P. REED, Davis, Polk, Wardwell, Gardiner & Reed
FOSTER H. ROCKWELL, Smith, Graham & Rockwell
JOHN SLOANE, W. and J. Sloane
THOMAS J. WATSON, International Business Machines Corporation
VANDERBILT WEBB, Webb, Paterson & Hadley
B. F. YOAKUM, Chairman - Empire Bond & Mortgage Corporation
MRS. HENRY P. DAVISON
Chairman Women's Committee
TRUSTEES OF THE EDUCATIONAL
AND DEVELOPMENT FUND
ARTHUR W. PAGE, Vice-President American Telegraph & Telephone Co.,
105 Broadway, New York City.
MORTIMER N. BUCKNER, Chairman of the Board, The New York Trust Co.,
New York City.
J. G. STIKELEATHER. Member North Carolina State Highway Commission.
Asheville, N. C.
JAMES G. K. McCLURE, Jr., President Farmers Federation, Inc..
Asheville, N. C.
GEORGE STEPHENS, Publisher, Asheville, N. C.
Contributions to this fund are used in the Educational & Development
Work necessary to the building up of permanent agricultural industries
in the mountains.
Make checks payable to Mortimer N. Buckner, Treasurer, 100 Broadway.
For information write to James G. K. McClure, Jr., Asheville, N. C.
�274
We Plow God's Fields
Club in New York City. The announcement read: "The New York Womens
Committee of the Farmers Federation of North Carolina cordially invites you
to spend an afternoon with the North Carolina Mountaineers." Ballads were
heard, and a movie shown with the unlikely title "Stark Love." The invitation
contains sketches of the popular symbols of mountain life: a log cabin, a spinning wheel, the long Kentucky rifle and an old grist mill. The sketch of a wild
boar seems to be stalking the names of the women listed inside, names familiar
in American history for their power and influence: Roosevelt, Vanderbilt, Coffin, Gerry, Root and, of course, Page. Mrs. Henry P. Davison was the original
chairman. She worked tirelessly to help Jim raise money for many years. By
1928, she won publicity in all of New York's major newspapers, and "Stark
Love" was replaced by the live drama of a Miss Lucile Laverne. The Evening
Post described the centerpiece of that year's campaign:
Mrs. Henry P. Davison, whose time is taken up almost entirely by multitudinous charities, of which the general public has no conception, heads the
women's committee of the educational and development fund for the Farmers
Federation . . . which is sponsoring the revival of "Sun-up," the play of the
Southern mountaineers, at the new Lucile Theatre . ..
The first two performances . .. will be special benefits. Miss La Verne,
who has become deeply interested in the lives of the mountaineers, will give
a large share of the profits of the engagement to further the constructive work
that is being done. Mr. James G. K. McClure, Jr. president of the Farmers
Federation, Inc., has been in New York some weeks engaged in the undertaking of raising funds to develop the tremendous possibilities of the agricultural
resources of the Southern mountains and is meeting cordial interest.
There are 450,000 of the finest pioneer stock of America living in the
mountains of North Carolina and yet their standard of living is today probably
lower than that of any similar group of people in the United States. The
Farmer's Federation, an organization of mountain farmers, started seven years
ago with the purpose of changing this condition by means of finding and
creating markets. Limited in its finances, this organization is pointing the
way, but cannot as yet take care of the situation.41
The revival of "Sun-up" was a smash hit, and helps to point out the
fascination felt in the North for the folk of Appalachia. One reviewer, Pierre
de Rohan, described the show:
MISS LA VERNE SUBLIME IN 'SUN UP' REVIVAL
Set in the backwoods fastness of the Carolina hills, the play turns its searching spotlight on the households of the Widow Cagel, her son Rufe and their
neighbors, the Todds.
Widowed by a revenue officer's bullet, Mom Cagel is a sworn enemy of the
law, and is puzzled and resentful at Rufe's willingness to obey the ukase of a
draft board.
Previous pages: Early promotional material for the Educational and Development Fund.
�The Farmers Federation
275
But Rufe has had 'larnin.' He can read a little, and write after a fashion.
Of course, he believes France is 'somers 'bout 40 miles t'other side of Asheville,' and that * Huns' is but a nickname for the Yankees his father fought
against in '63. . . .42
New York had its own vision of mountain life, and Jim McClure found
enough worthy people there to listen to him, and contribute to the Fund. He
could tell stories and entertain his contributors with tales of the mountaineer.
The Fund spread to other cities: Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Detroit. His own
enjoyment of the "victories" of the campaign show through often enough, as
he kept his family informed of his movements. To Hetty he wrote, "Well-my
dear-I have had good luck this day-the engagement with Edsel Ford which I lost
by staying that extra day in Chicago I had almost despaired of as he has been
in New York . . . , but I saw him today and he came on our committee & also
subscribed $10,000.00. Doesn't that make you giddy?" (James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, exact date unknown).
If Jim McClure ever allowed himself the opportunity to reflect back over
the first ten years of the Federation, "giddy" would have been an appropriate
emotion. Against all adversity—dismal farm prices, unscientific agricultural
techniques, lack of working capital, an independent-minded population, transportation difficulties, and the disastrous fire on Roberts Street—he prevailed.
By 1930, the Federation was financially strong and just beginning to tap resources in the North, and to expand operations into new areas of mountain life.
Jim McClure's dream of ministering to a region rather than just a church had
been fulfilled by the Farmers Federation, and with all of the hard work and
responsibilities he shouldered his physical difficulties did not flare up again.
The compensation Jim McClure received must have been spiritual, because for
the first seven years he received no salary for his efforts and thereafter his pay
was only nominal. He wanted to fight this war for the people, to serve the men
and women of Western North Carolina. He once explained his ambitions in a
speech to potential contributors in New York, and he never wandered from the
purpose here expressed. "I am quite a crank, as I think you can see, on trying
to develop people's self-help," he said. "I believe that the way to cure real want
is to stir people's ambition and stir it with something definite in mind whereby
they can really attain that ambition."43
And so it was that the Farmers Federation offered opportunity and hope to
the farm families of Western North Carolina, and the sense of purpose for which
Jim McClure himself had been striving.
1. John C. Campbell, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland (New York:
Russell Sage Foundation, 1921) p. 257.
2. James G. K. McClure, Jr., speech on the Farmers Federation given September
10, 1935. In "Proceedings of the New York Farmers, 1934-35 Season," New York,
1935, p. 9.
�276
We Plow God's Fields
3. Interview with Miss Ora N. Nesbitt.
4. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "Help Yourself," editorial, FairviewFarmers' News
Sheet, July 15, 1920.
5. Selected passages from the Fairview Farmers' News Sheet, July 15, 1920.
6. Clarence Poe, How Farmers Co-operate and Double Profit (New York: Orange
JuddCo., 1915), p.23.
7. Ibid., p. 62.
8. Ibid., p. 117.
9. Ibid., p. 129.
10. "Hammer the Farmer," Farmers Federation News Sheet, November 1920.
11. "Throw Away a Nickel Once in a While," Farmers Federation News Sheet,
November 1920.
12. Headlines, Farmers Federation News, March 15, 1921.
13. "Mr. Buncombe County Farmer . . . ," Farmers Federation News, March 15,
1921.
14. "Buncombe County Farmer Robbed," Farmers Federation News, June 15,
1921.
15. Farmers Federation News, June 4, 1921.
16. Farmers Federation News, February 1922.
17. Interview with Mr. Guy Sales.
18. 0pC*f.,"New York Farmers," p. 15.
19. James G. K. McClure, Jr. diary, November 19, 1921.
20. Ibid., November 22, 1921.
21. Ibid., JulyS, 1921.
22. Ibid., October 13, 1921.
23. Farmers Federation News, March 1922, p. 4.
24. Farmers Federation News, August 1922, p. 1.
25. Farmers Federation News, September 1922, p. 4.
26. Farmers Federation News, October 1925, p. 4.
27. Farmers Federation News, June 1922.
28. James G. K. McClure, Jr., memo to R.T. Merrill, March 15, 1922.
29. James G. K. McClure, Jr., memo to R.T. Merrill, April 14, 1922.
30. Interview with Mr. Bill Francis.
31. Hendersonville News, March/April 1924 (exact date unknown).
32. Farmers Federation News, August 1925, p. 1.
33. Ibid., p. 6.
34. Asheville Citizen, December 28, 1925, p. 1.
35. Interview with Guy Sales.
36. Farmers Federation News, August 1930, p. 2.
37. Op Cit., New York Farmers, p. 10.
38. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "Cannery Acreage Signing Up," Farmers Federation
News, April 1930, p. 4.
39. Interview with Mr. Bill Francis.
40. Ibid.
41. "Mrs. H.P. Davison Heads Committee Sponsoring Benefit," New York Evening
Post, October 15, 1928.
42. "Miss La Verne Sublime . . ." New York American, October 27, 1928.
43. Op Cit., New York Farmers, p. 16.
�Chapter Fifteen
Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
"... [I was] greatly surprised to have a Pierce Arrow appear in [the] barnyard." (Diary, October 29, 1920)
"I ain't goin' to clean your young 'un's dirty britches no more." The parting
words of a mountain neighbor as she left the employment of Elizabeth
McClure. (Interview with Mrs. B. S. Colburn)
The old Sherrill's Inn, perched just on the Buncombe County side of the
Blue Ridge, enjoyed a renaissance during the twenties. Not only did Elizabeth
and Jim continue to renovate the house and its environs, but they also brought
in a new order of social life. Jim's Federation work made it an important focal
point for various encounters and entertainments. For her part, Elizabeth joyfully
pursued her vision of beauty. Flower borders, boxwood hedges, flowering
shrubs, spring bulbs, grape arbors and John Shorter's vegetables all thrived
under her caring eye and energetic hand. There was an upstairs maid and a
downstairs maid, a cook and a nurse for the children, but Elizabeth herself was
the flower gardener. She was not a harsh taskmaster, but the housework was to
be done efficiently and correctly. She might put on a white glove looking for
dust, even taking samples from the recently installed electric light bulbs. She
considered her thoroughness to be an example to the mountain women working
for her. Beyond the inner circle of house servants were the farm hands, many
of whom lived in houses on the McClure property that had to be built and
maintained. She wanted these simple frame structures to blend in with the rest
of the buildings on the farm, and even went to the extent of a planned sag in the
roof on a new tenant house to give it a look of age. The men, women and
children who inhabited these dwellings were typically mountaineers without
land, many of whom spent their lives moving from farm to farm with their large
families. For Elizabeth, who possessed a kindly spirit of noblesse oblige, there
were always births and measles and petty disagreements to sort out. She never
wanted to appear condescending. A neighbor's comment, "I like Mrs. McClure.
She's so common," startled Elizabeth, until she learned that "common" meant
not putting oneself above anyone.1 But it was hard for her not to be appalled
by many of the unhygienic habits common in the mountains.
The patterns of life at Hickory Nut Cap were determined by the intermingling of two distinct and rather incongruous cultures. But the mix took hold in
a wonderfully rich way, in part because the brittle formality of Lake Forest had
277
�278
We Plow God's Fields
View ofMcClure home from the driveway.
already been tempered by a strong dose of the Social Gospel. While the ways
of the mountain people frequently exasperated Jim and Elizabeth, the reverse
was just as true. What could fancy city folks know about farming and gardening
in North Carolina anyway? Elizabeth's drive for perfection must have been
viewed as frivolous by the more pragmatic tenants. Her standards had to be
met, even if it left her laborers grumbling about the extra work. In fact, she
quite admired her tough neighbors at Hickory Nut Gap, who knew how to make
do with almost nothing; and in turn they came to admire her and her ways.
Elizabeth became a vision of elegant civility to the farm women, at least most
of them.
Jim McClure relished the inevitable incongruities that popped up from time
to time on his farm. He was a story teller, and took with him wherever he went
an entertaining collection of anecdotes. These proved most useful in engaging
the interests of his northern patrons. One of the real characters among the farm
hands was Zeb McAbee, who never could quite make sense of the ways of the
McClures. During the early years when help was plentiful, each afternoon, with
guests or alone, Elizabeth had tea. She particularly liked to dress up for this
ceremony; to bathe and put on a long gown to signal the end of the working
day. One afternoon during her tea break, Zeb was sent up to the big house on
business, and was rendered quite speechless by the appearance of Mrs.
McClure. He returned to the barn shaking his head, and confided to one of the
other hands, "I don't believe Mrs. McClure had quite finished dressin'."2 On
another occasion, old Zeb came up to borrow some vinegar. Elizabeth asked
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
279
him, "Well Zeb, how much do you think you need?" He replied, "Oh, 'bout
three or four gallon, I reckon'." "But Zeb, why so much?" "My old woman has
got the rheumatiz, and I want to give her a bath."3
Whether the pickling of Mrs. McAbee was carried out or not, Jim and
Elizabeth enjoyed learning about the country cures. Once in a while, an employee would turn on them seeking revenge, and then the humor was more
macabre. For a short period of time during the twenties, Esther and John Shorter
left Hickory Nut Gap to work their own land and care for Esther's mother Aura.
Elizabeth struggled to find replacements for them. The position was a difficult
one, not only because Esther and John had been so devoted, but also because it
required that both a husband and wife work and live alongside Mr. and Mrs.
McClure. One couple, the Babbs, were hired during this period and Elizabeth
thought them quite suitable at first. She described them to Aunt Freddie as "...
most promising. However one never knows and time will show but they seem
very nice people and are most eager to please" (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to
Frederika Skinner, May 14, 1923). Time did tell on the Babbs, and they had to
be let go. A few weeks hence, complaints began to surface about the taste of the
spring water piped into the house. An investigating party was organized, and
found a dead sheep floating in the spring, a parting gift left by the Babbs.4
A more tragic story involved Emory McAbee and his family. Emory's farm
was a losing battle, and about the only cash he raised was by "stilling" white
corn liquor. Jim would sometimes get wind of one of Emory's operations back
on his property, and try to search him out. In 1922, the revenue agents caught
up with him, and he was subsequently thrown in jail. Jim took a special interest
in the case, first going up to check on his wife and her children. On May 30th,
he found "Mrs. Emory McAbee . . . with 4 children (oldest 8), two cows,
molasses, corn meal for 3 days & flour for 6, and without one cent, facing a
year without her husband."5 Emory worked through the summer on the chain
gang, but was returned to his jail cell in the fall suffering from fits of insanity.
Jim "visited Emory McAbee in his bleak, bare room at the Jail and found him
out of his mind—Puzzled conference with [the] Commissioners as to what to
do—"6 He served out his term, and was returned home still suffering spells of
madness. He would get the idea that there was oil leaking out of the ground on
Ferguson's Peak, the mountain behind the McClure's house, and every so often
he would have a "fire fit" and set fire on the mountain in an effort to get rid of
the oil.
The newcomers to the country side of life never failed to respond to the
local calamities around them. When Porter Sinclair, from over the mountain in
Gerton, shot himself accidentally while crossing a fence on a hunting trip, it
was Jim McClure who volunteered to go to town to buy the coffin. He recorded
in the diary in September 1920, "To town with Mr. Huntley for [a] coffin for
Porter—[We] were run into by [a] Canadian soldier in a Ford who was going
[the] wrong way on [a] one way St. To police court... each waiving damages
. . . To undertakers—cheapest coffin $90 & [I was] assured [there were] no
�280
We Plow God's Fields
cheaper [ones] in town—To Police Capt. & with him to another undertakers and
got one for $35. To Gerton . . . picking up a lovely aster wreath the Petsie had
made."7
Bargain coffins and aster wreaths were visible expressions of Jim and
Elizabeth's conception of their role as mountain neighbors. The sharp lines of
social class were a part of this world, too, despite their easy ways and ability
to pierce its walls with acts of kindness. Jim and Elizabeth wanted to be friends,
but they did not want to compromise what they understood to be the superior
quality of their upbringing. Part of their role here was to maintain the highest
ideals of manners, beauty and virtue in order to exhibit before the local folk the
fruits of progressive Christian civilization. And yet, Jim and Elizabeth could
never be smug aristocrats on their mountain, lording it over their neighbors in
Fairview. They might have accepted the superiority of their own values, but
they knew too that these values came out of a training and education that was
handed to them as the result of the struggles of former generations. The Farmers
Federation and Elizabeth's pursuit of grace and beauty at Hickory Nut Gap were
both meant to initiate the same respect for civilization that infused their own
lives with purpose. Jim and Elizabeth tried to drop the social barriers between
people without dropping their high standards of personal behavior and their
impatience with shoddy work.
In organizing the little society of Hickory Nut Gap, they tried to put into
practice their ideas of social justice. The Federation was organized as a cooperative in order to involve the people emotionally and financially in the work. It
was an organization to be owned by the farmers themselves. In the same way,
Jim set up the Hickory Nut Gap Farm Company to involve the workers as
participants in the business rather than hired hands. Company meetings were
held to decide farm procedures. Shares of stock could be earned or bought. The
first such meeting occurred in April 1918 in Jim's study. James Davidson, the
farm manager, was present, along with John Shorter. The proposal was made
by Jim, and the company was duly formed.8 Two years later, Elizabeth notes
in one of her letters a new development in the Company. "Jim is enormously
busy as ever. There are six renters this year in addition to the men working by
the year so he is deep in contracts and shares. Last week the Hickory Nut Gap
Farm Co. was incorporated so Jim is now actually trying out his scheme for
letting all the hands have a share of the business. It is an experiment but so far
it seems to be working" (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Harriet McClure Stuart.
January 12, 1920).
A month later, however, a financial cloud hung low over Hickory Nut
Gap, and the experimental mood of January was just about to evaporate when
the Valentine's Day mail arrived. "Big conference with the Pet about financesboth very depressed, decided to cut everything—both very low—Decided to
write and try to sell Rathmore [Although Mr. Cramer still lived in Rathmore,
he had given it to his two children. Presumably, Jim and Elizabeth were here
considering selling their share in the house to someone else within the fa-
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
281
mily.]—Mail came with letter giving the Pet and Ambrose Mrs C[ramer]'s share
of her mother's estate—Enormous relief."9
Jim had overcome his qualms about spending his wife's inheritance. Not
wanting to draw a salary from the Federation, he reasoned that her money was
enjoying its highest possible use by providing indirectly for the benefits of
cooperative farming in Western North Carolina. After the Valentine's Day financial scare, Jim sat down and made a thorough inventory of his and his wife's
financial records. Their assets were considerable, mostly in the form of Chicago
area real estate. In all, the annual income from rents and securities was just
under $8,000, a sizable sum in those days. This money was sufficient for the
management of Hickory Nut Gap Farm in 1920, and the other assets gave Jim
the power to borrow more money in order to increase the size of the farm and
make necessary improvements. Financial security also gave him the freedom to
take an active part in community affairs.
Jim McClure continued throughout the twenties to preach his gospel of
hope and courage to any gathering his schedule would allow, and to join in the
leadership of worthy organizations. In 1921 he became a member of the Civitan
Club, one of Asheville's leading service groups, and became its president in
1926. The local country churches continued to invite him to their simple pulpits,
and he continued to preach the words of social salvation. "The blighting curse
of country folks is jealousy, backbiting, distrust & gossip . . . Drive off evils
as your fathers fought Indians,"10 he told the congregation of the Fairview
Baptist Church. Jim was quite fond of these country congregations. He liked the
informality, the enthusiasm and especially the robust singing that was so full
of the spirit of the mountains.
Dear Hetty & Doug,
This is a fifth Sunday with all the attending excitement in the mountains.
Though a pouring rain set in at daybreak we repaired at eleven to "Emmas
Grove" where plans were afoot for a "Singing" and in spite of the deluge found
a house packed to overflowing. Singers from far and near had foregathered. I
had the privilege of doing the exhorting. The crowd was large, three sitting
on the preacher's seat as I was on my feet, two worthies leaning against the
pulpit and one brave fellow in a bright green sweater standing at the foot of the
pulpit savagely eyeing the crowd. The singing was exceedingly good. Dinner
was served on the grounds during a break in the storm and Siddy plied her
basket through the crowd with all the abandon of a street vendor. (James G.
K. McClure, Jr., to the Stuarts, April 29, 1923)
Jim's specialty was the graduation speech. "Go out with courage and seek
God's highest purpose for your life," he said on many different occasions and
in many different ways. His light-hearted description of this particular event,
written to Hetty and Doug, belies the seriousness with which he worked to relay
his message to the young graduates: "... I had the chance of a lifetime to give
tongue on the flapper problem which seems to be the most vital subject now
�282
We Plow God's Fields
before the public. The affair was the Commencement of Fassifern, a girls school
at Hendersonville, with some twenty of the much discussed graduating. The
thermometer was down to fifty and a cold wind blowing and the girls in the
most summery of costumes so I let them down easy ..." (James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to the Stuarts, June 4, 1922).
These girls were the daughters of old families from Charleston and other
southern cities. Jim was stumped by some of their names. He pronounced Miss
Huger (U-gee) as Miss Hugger and Miss Talifaro (Tolliver) exactly as it was
spelled, causing considerable giggling in the audience. One young lady was
afraid she would not graduate. Her diploma slipped under the table and when
her name was not called she fainted dead away!11
The message delivered at the Fassifern School for Girls was likely to have
stressed the same themes as the following example of Jim's oratory, delivered
at the Asheville School, amidst calmer proceedings: "Behold I show you a
mystery-a spiritual world. [The] hosts with you are stronger than the hosts
against you . .. Seek ye first His Kingdom, and all the forces of the Universe
will be behind you and the Lord God himself will be back of you to guide your
fighting arm."12 Jim made these speeches a call to heroism and self-sacrifice,
and he always guaranteed self-fulfillment in return, knowing from experience
that this was no vain promise.
Despite the puritan temper of many of his exhortations, Jim's life was filled
with fun and the love of great entertainment. He and his charming wife became
popular participants in the grand social life of Asheville in the twenties. During
the summer "season," evenings were as gay as anywhere in the country. Celebrities of one kind or another were commonly present for these parties. The competition for prominence among the leading hostesses was keenly felt, even though
it was Mrs. George Vanderbilt who held the keys to social respect. When one
was invited to the Biltmore House, it meant acceptance by the highest powers
in the realm. Jim and Elizabeth broke through to the top during the 1923 season.
He feigned loneliness for his farm hands while describing a gathering one night
at Mrs. Vanderbilt's mansion. "We have been quite gay this week as on Friday
night we went to a dance at Mrs. Vanderbilt's and Siddy and I had the good
luck to be seated at supper at a small table with our hostess, the Spanish
Ambassador and wife, the governor of North Carolina, the Head of the U. S.
Secret Service and two other notables. I felt ill at ease without the companionship of Zeb Nix and the other worthies. However we had a very gay evening"
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, July 8, 1923).
The widow of Biltmore House was eventually wooed by and married to
Senator Peter Gerry, and thereafter she wasn't in Asheville as much. During the
Christmas Season of 1925, however, she and the Cecils of England, members
by marriage of her family, filled up Biltmore House again for a festive round
of parties.
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
283
Senator and Mrs. Peter Gerry [the former Mrs. Vanderbilt] came down for
the holidays and have given us quite a gay week. On Tuesday night we dined
at Biltmore House with the Cecils House party and Senator and Mrs. Gerry
and the next night we again dined with the Gerry's and attended a gypsy dance
at Biltmore House which was the best party I have ever attended. Jack Cecil's
older brother, wife and son were part of the house party and spent three weeks
before the dance painting the cellar of Biltmore House. They painted scenes
of every description around the walls, mainly taken from the Russian Chauve
Saurie and had all kinds of gypsy atmosphere such as cauldrons and pots and
glowing fire under them all around. As usual Siddy had the best costume of
the evening. She is acquiring a great reputation along that line and everyone
now expects her to set the standard. She had a guitar and I carried the old
accordion which made a great hit. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts,
January 3, 1926)
The following summer, at the height of the season, they attended one of
the year's most famous parties.
Friday night the Bachelors Club staged their annual fancy dress ball. It was
about the most entertaining affair I have ever attended. It was staged this year
in the form of a circus, IThere were pop corn stands, pink lemonade booths,
hot dog stands, shooting galleries and some twelve side shows. Before entering
the circus grounds guests had to go to the Bank of Buncombe and get fake
money. Each side show had a barker and ticket taker. It gave great scope to
the local talent to shout themselves hoarse and the whole business was great
fun. I had the pleasure of barking for the Fortune Teller. Some four or five
hundred were present and the costumes were very good and very amusing.
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, August 29, 1926)
Asheville society provided for Jim and Elizabeth a close facsimile of the
familiar world of their Lake Forest upbringing. The mountains had not isolated
them from the people and the parties, the clubs and activities to which they
were accustomed. Then* fifteen miles of distance from the town and their deep
involvement in the lives of the mountain people provided for them a rich blend
of characters from both worlds. The two of them would never have been able
to lead conventional, predictable lives. But neither could they turn their backs
on their own heritage. Jim and Elizabeth cultivated many friendships that enhanced their lives and were useful to the work of the Federation. They were
able to balance themselves quite uniquely between the customary world of
Asheville, and the new mountain world of Hickory Nut Gap.
Their close friend and physician, Dr. Pinckney Herbert, descendant of the
famous South Carolina Pinckneys, and his wife Frances, shared with the
McClures an interest in the lives of the mountaineers. Dr. Herbert spent much
of his own time and money serving these people, who could never have afforded
decent medical care. Frances Herbert, a member of a grand old Virginia family,
remembered first meeting Jim and Elizabeth back in 1916, when both couples
were renting cottages near the Manor Inn in Asheville. With great wit and
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eloquence, she explained that the two women would forsake the accustomed
grandeur of their respective youths to lead the comparatively "sketchy" lives
necessary in the mountains. "But of course, we did it for love!"13 Frances and
Elizabeth became great friends. They helped to found the French Broad River
Garden Club, an active group of ladies who not only "studied beautiful and
useful plants, but also took real and effective interest in local conservation
issues. As a leading figure in the Trench Broads,' Elizabeth helped to satisfy
her own curiosity and stimulate the interest of others in the secrets of the
botanical kingdom. As an affiliate of the Garden Club of America, Elizabeth
greatly enjoyed exchanging ideas with other gardeners at regional and national
meetings. She wrote articles on the medicinal herbs of the southern mountains
and on the care of boxwoods for the Garden Club of America Bulletin. Perhaps
her greatest contribution was a series of slides of mountain wild flowers. She
and Ewart Ball, a talented Asheville photographer, roamed the area to get shots
of flowers growing on dripping rock ledges or by sunny streams. This was
before the days of color photography, so Elizabeth sent a plant of each variety
in full bloom to New York by any trusted hand that was going up at the right
season. There two expert ladies painted the slides in exactly the right shades.
The slide show was rented to garden clubs all over the country until all expenses
were paid.
Unfortunately for us all, Elizabeth found little time to paint in the midst of
her duties at Hickory Nut Gap Farm and in the community. She told her daughter Elspeth years later that when she began a painting project she became so
absorbed that she couldn't keep her mind on the daily routine. She said she
became what the Scotts call "hag ridden," that is, carrying a witch on your back
who won't get off until your project is finished. But Hickory Nut Gap Farm
became her canvas, where she painted with the colors and shapes of the natural
world. The gardens she created attracted many gatherings and luncheons during
her tenure, and she greatly enjoyed sharing the place she loved so much and
worked so hard to make beautiful.
The Herberts and McClures became friends for life, raising their children
together and enjoying their mutual companionship. Frances Herbert was one of
the first people who drove out to see the "Old Tavern" in 1916, and recalled
that "It looked like the wrath of God."14 The Herberts customarily came out to
Hickory Nut Gap for quiet Sunday outings. Everyone would carry a "pocket
lunch" and hike back into the mountains to find a peaceful creek bank or glade.
They would all return in time for the McClure's traditional sparse Sunday night
supper of crackers and milk and soft-boiled eggs.
Relatives on both the McClure and Cramer sides also made surprisingly
frequent visits to Western North Carolina. On one occasion, in 1922, a large
contingent of McClures including the family patriarch were on hand when word
reached the farm that brother Arch had become the father of his first son. Jim
described the scene to Hetty as the news spread about the house.
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
285
This morning the embarrassed voice of Western Union gave us the great
news of the arrival of Archibald, Jr. The word spread through the house like
wildfire. Mother and Dinto [brother Nathan] on the porch, Father in my study,
Siddy in her room with Louise [Nathan's wife] upstairs, ... were moved to
immediate and delighted—ejaculations. We all went to church wreathed in
smiles. At the Fairview church Father preached and completely dispelled the
cloud which had hung heavy upon him since the worthy brother had denounced
the theological Seminaries and especially the heads of theological seminaries
two years ago.
Yesterday we took a spin to Spartanburg and Greenville and return[ed].
Father set foot upon South Carolina soil, a state in which he had never been.
The day was perfect for the run and after we got out of the mountains we went
through the cotton fields for miles. We had breakfast at home and had dinner
at home, and between these meals traveled 180 miles in the 6 year old car [the
Honeymoon Hudson!]. At times we reached a dizzy speed but to Mother we
never went fast enough, and she always felt that we might have gone a little
faster
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, August 20,
1922)
Nathan McClure, known as "the General" for having been in the American
army during World War I, especially enjoyed his time on the farm, and pitched
in with great enthusiasm. He had always admired Jim immensely, and felt
satisfied when he could please him. Nathan, his wife Louise and little son
(whom everyone called "Nainie") spent most of that summer with Jim and
Elizabeth. In Jim's correspondence with the Stuarts, he described how much
Nathan became involved in his projects:
Yesterday Louise, Nathan and I accompanied by John and a colored organizer left in the morning for Rutherford County where we attended a meeting
of colored farmers who had up for discussion the subject of forming an auxiliary to the Farmers Federation. The meeting developed along the lines of a
revival, hymns, prayers, Amens and Hallelujahs were interspersed at the
proper moments and we all got well roused up. Even Nathan rose from his
seat and made a speech. Needless to say that after such a warming up the
auxiliary was formed. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, June 25, 1922)
The General is becoming the chief back door figure of Asheville. He has a
way with him that makes his peaches and plums irresistible to the housewives
and stewardesses of Asheville, Black Mountain and other nearby centers. I
do not know how I could have made it this summer without him. (James G.
K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, July 23, 1922)
The General is keeping up his back door popularity and moving stuff off the
farm in hilarious fashion. This last week he started to sell off my calves as the
price of veal got up high. He is now taking Nainie with him on his trips to act
as "side kick" or to "scotch" for him ...
Zeb Nix was up yesterday to borrow three dollars which he gives me his
bond he will repay when the General engages his hog for him. (James G. K.
McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, August 6, 1922)
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Monday was a sad day In the chronicles of Hickory Nut Gap Farm. Father
and Mother first entrusted themselves to the uncertainties of railroad travel and
an hour and a half later Nainie, heavily guarded by his parents stepped boldly
"into a Pullman, shaking the dust of Buncombe County from his trilbys. It
was a grievous day for the natives. Zeb Nix arrived at 5:30 a.m. and knocked
at my door . . . to fare well Nathan who had sold his hog for him so well and
on Wednesday as I took up The Generals route in Asheville and environs I
found every back door flag at half mast. . .. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the
Stuarts, August 27, 1922)
The following spring, Hetty and Doug themselves came down, only to
discover that Jim's Federation work had taken its toll on his golf game. Jim
wrote, "As a final parting shot Hetty did me up on the Biltmore Forest Golf
Links, and though beaten by a woman, I will say for her that she displayed a
brand of golf seldom seen in these parts, holing out fours and fives with the
regularity of [a] hardened pro" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Doug Stuart,
August 8, 1923). The Cramer clan were avid golfers as well, as were most
residents of Lake Forest. Ambrose Cramer, Sr. purchased for Jim a charter
membership at the Biltmore Country Club, which opened on July 4, 1922.
Membership in this readily accessible course, Jim joked, might have unforeseen
consequences.
"Mr. Cramer has made E & myself members so I expect that I have seen
the last of my wife & I am now planning an extra room in which to house the
probable golf trophies. If Siddy should ever put her mind on the game I believe
we would all lose her" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart,
April 20, 1922).
Ambrose Cramer, Sr. took a lively interest in the life of his daughter and
son-in-law, and was quite generous in helping to pay for projects that were
beyond their reach. He offered to renovate the old inn by building a large
addition to add a bedroom and make over the kitchen. The work was completed,
following the advice of Ambrose, Jr., the family architect, and the result was a
success that not only satisfied the needs of a growing family, but blended so
well with the old structure that the entire effect of the house was greatly enhanced. Mr. and Mrs. Cramer became so enchanted with Western North Carolina that they bought a home in the new residential town of Biltmore Forest,
which was growing up around the Country Club golf course.
The Skinner aunts, Bessie and Freddie, were also frequent visitors, along
with their nephew, Ambrose, Jr. The Aunties contributed a new upstairs bathroom and many more touches of civilization to the old house. Ambrose, Jr.,
[Bowser], came regularly to Hickory Nut Gap to visit his sister and Jim.
Along with the relations, who were certainly curious about how one managed to live in rural Western North Carolina, many other travelers of various
distinctions and peculiarities passed through Hickory Nut Gap. The old house,
just as if it were still an inn, successfully brought together all sorts of these
guests. Family members, odd visitors, employees, tenants and broken down
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
287
automobile owners all became part of a group of people that could scarcely
have been thrown together anywhere else on earth. Jim McClure loved this great
mixing of people, at least most of the time. Genuine characters, such as this
ancient specimen, seemed to be drawn to the place. "This day we were called
on by an aged colored gentleman who said he was 114 years old ... He was
an old slave, is a relative of John Shorter's, and told us great tales of the old
days. He remembers when the Indians were moved out of this country to their
reservations which was sometime ago [about 90 years]" (James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, July 2, 1922).
If the old men talked, the young boys worked. Jim and Elizabeth made a
point to hire many of the children living around the farm for odd jobs around
the house. Lawrence Huntiey remembered his boyhood at Hickory Nut Gap
with great sentiment, and credits the McClures with providing him with a strong
moral example that influenced his life enormously. He usually worked alongside
John Shorter and under the direction of Mrs. McClure. In the summer, he kept
the grass clipped and the gardens weeded. In the winter, the wood box always
needed refilling as the fires kept up a fearful appetite for wood. Lawrence
recalled what it was like to work for Mrs. McClure. "If the work you did didn't
suit her, she would say: 'Oh, I can hardly believe my eyes: that's the finest
work in the world. Let's change it that way to see how it looks.' It had to be
right . . . She had the prettiest garden in front of the house. If any weed got in
there, I had to get her out." And for Lawrence, working with Mr. McClure
"was just like a boy working for his father . . . He sent me off to school . . .
[and] bought me a baseball glove. He'd take me with him everywhere he
went. . . ." John and Esther Shorter stand out in his memory for their kindness
to him. "Esther was in charge of the kitchen. She could really cook . . . [Each]
night, [for] an hour or two . . . Esther would school me in my lessons." Two
sisters, Minnie and Freenie Early, worked as maids during this period, and
Lawrence remembers joking around with them. "John put me up to run and kiss
'em, kiss them girls-then take off. Fight you just like a dog . . . It would tickle
John—that great big old fat belly—I can see him—would just shake all over."
John also taught Lawrence to drive, in nothing less than the old Honeymoon
Hudson. That automobile " . . . was something unusual . . . to be around here,"
and it sure made him feel proud for his friends to spot him sitting in the driver's seat.15
Lawrence Huntley's most vivid memory began with a squirrel hunting
expedition:
Olson Sumner was a boy about my age. He was the one that caused that
scar in my head right there. [And quite a scar, or really indention, it is!] We
were after a ground squirrel in a hollow log and he was at one end of the log;
we were splitting it, and I was at the other end with an ax. We were splitting
that log to get the ground squirrel o u t . . . and I stooped down to pick a chip
up, . . . and the point of it [the ax] hit me ... Mrs. McClure—that was the
first place I went. My shoes were full of blood—I mean it really bled. And
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Mrs. McClure, she dressed it. Mother put soot in the cut to keep it from
bleeding, and the doctors "raised the dickens." . . . It split the skull. It's a
wonder it didn't kill me.16
Lawrence Hundey's parents boarded the first farm manager, James
Davidson, with them as long as he was a bachelor. The farm manager occupied
a position of authority in the hierarchy on the farm, and was the daily operator
of the business. James Davidson woke up with the rooster crows each morning,
and began the day by milking the cow. Jim McClure liked to run down and talk
to him during this chore if there were any pressing problems to size up. After
breakfast, at 7 a.m., all hands gathered at the barn. Here, the tasks of the day
were explained and divided up, and the working day began.
When James Davidson married, a new house was built for Lawrence's
family, who left the farm soon afterwards. They were replaced by another set
of Huntieys, David and Nannie, who remained on the farm for years and years.
Mrs. Davidson can recall these early patterns of life with a vivid eye for detail.
It was the Shorters, John and Esther, who again stand out. Esther, or Eddie,
would take little Jamie out for long walks every day. "She always carried a
hymn book, and sang wherever she went." One of her favorites was the song
"Life is Like a Mountain Railroad." She also had a predilection for praying out
loud as she wandered along. "Once little Jamie asked her, 'Who are you talking
to, Eddie?' and she replied, Tm just talking to the Lord, Honey.' A few days
later she caught him muttering to himself, 'talking to the Lord.'" Mrs. Davidson
said that the two old oxen that belonged to John and that had first pulled the
Hudson up the mountain back in 1916 went by two names. To Mr. and Mrs.
McClure, they were "Red" and "Brown," simply because John could never
bring himself to tell them that really their names were "Hell" and "Fire."
Mrs. Davidson remembers as well sitting on her porch and watching the
wagons coming over from Rutherford County on their way to Asheville. The
halfway camping spot was just across the road from her house, and there the
teamsters would unharness their horses, build a little fire and fry up some
fatback, corn bread and beans. The farmers were usually hi groups of three or
four, so that on the return trip, when they were carrying their money, they would
be less likely to be robbed by thieves along the way. She recalls these wagons,
many of them covered, passing through in the fall of the year carrying their
harvests and hopes for the year. Mr. McClure would often stop and hear what
these men had to say around their campfires, and if there was something suspicious about them he wouldn't hesitate to send them on their way. But he would
usually let the farmers stay, especially if they showed some interest in the
Farmers Federation. These were the people he wanted to help.17
Elizabeth and Jim were gradually putting the old house into shape. There
was a room behind the living room with windows looking out to the mountains
across the valley, which had not yet been renovated. The idea of recording life
at the old inn on the walls of this room had been in Elizabeth's mind.
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
289
They had the register of guests of the Inn starting in 1850. Each had
unknowingly bid against the other to get them as a Christmas present (Jim had
won). Elizabeth could visualize the travellers coming through the gap: judges,
political figures like President Andrew Johnson, who was Governor of Tennessee at the time of his visit; travelling ministers; hog and cattle drovers; fancy
Charleston folk on their way to Flat Rock to escape the summer heat of the
lowlands. She listened to the stories of neighbors who remembered the stage
coach days, which had lasted well into the nineties, and studied historical
records and drawings to get the make and measurements of the coach that was
used. She began to piece together the visual remnants of the past—the past and
present were not far removed from one another in this isolated region. As scenes
slowly began to take shape in her mind, she started the "cartoons," or preliminary drawings in charcoal, directly on the beaverboard panels of the wall.
She knew the loose impressionist style she had studied in France was all
wrong for the scenes of mountain life she envisaged. She wanted the panels to
look like English water-color wall paper; yet oil paint was the medium she
preferred to work with. To express the simplicity of life in the mountains she
settled on a realistic, genie style, each little group of figures presenting an
anecdote of life at or near the inn. To her credit she resisted including the
stereotyped moonshiner with his still. She wanted to paint the more enduring
themes of the mountains. She worked with oils, but used a medium that flattened
the finish to resemble water color.
An old gentleman who had worked at the inn as a boy, catching chickens
and chopping wood, took up the position of special adviser to the artist. He
spent hours sitting in the doorway between rooms, making suggestions as Elizabeth painted and spitting tobacco juice a good ten feet into the living room
fireplace. At first each spit made her nervous, but she soon learned that he never
missed. Panels were planned for three sides of the room. One by one she filled
each with life and motion—bear hunters, rattlesnake killers, pretty young gentlemen guests trying feebly to push the coach out of the mud she knew so well.
She painted animals: bears; deer; razor back hogs; chickens; and in the foreground, the exquisite mountain wild flowers. She learned the type of coach used
by Bedford Sherrill and wrote for pictures and measurements to the Boston
Museum. She checked the details of costumes for accuracy. Only the dashing
white horses, with bobbed tails and flowing black manes, were an imaginative
touch that, along with the flowing contours of the local mountain peaks, unifies
the diverse panels.
Jim reports in the weekly epistle of his family that "Siddy made a brave
start at painting her panels but the collapse of the household put a sudden stop
to that activity" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, March 19, 1922).
By the first of April, Jim returned from a trip to find that"... the Pet had done
a lot on the first panel & had painted the wheels of the coach red."18 Jim tried
to help her, not with mere praise but as a rather harsh critic. She writes in her
diary that "Cricket [was] displeased with my mountain. Have to find some way
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of doing it more in the feeling of the period."19 She struggled through her next
session. "Spent an awful day trying to paint the mountain like an old fashioned
one. Nearly killed me."20
In the first panel on the east wall, she painted the primeval forest. The
scene depicts the moment of climax for a hunting party of Cherokee Indians. A
pair of bucks and a doe are leaping out of the underbrush at the same moment
that two strong braves draw their bows. Behind a rock outcrop hide the main
body of men, watching expectantly as the scene unfolds. Moving to the right,
the middle scene is a view of the courtyard behind SherriU's Inn. The spring-fed
dairy, the old smokehouse and the inn itself are all arranged to best display the
architectural lines of the buildings. The smokehouse is thought to be the oldest
structure standing today in Buncombe County, and the only one left constructed
with the rifle slots needed in the event of an Indian attack. In the center of the
picture, emphasizing its importance and grandeur, is the stage coach itself, a
true copy of the one that traveled through Hickory Nut Gap. On its side the
words "Sherrill's Flying Cloud" are painted. Four white horses with docked tails
are being unhitched for feeding and watering while the coachman with his top
hat leans back to have a word with a gentleman unloading a trunk. To the right
of the coach, two men with coonskin caps carry in a bear cub they have just
shot, flanked by four hunting dogs leaping up and running around the carcass.
In the recesses of the scene, a little boy trying to lead a pig by a string tied to its
hind leg is being dragged around the courtyard while a man slops a hog near the
house. And there are other figures going about their business, old and young,
all amidst the spring blossoms of the fruit trees. The scene, like the others,
portrays the variety of the mountains, especially the variety of people.
On the same wall, further to the right, is a portrayal of an historical event.
A small contingent of Stoneman's cavalry, with their blue union uniforms, is
riding up the gorge toward Sherrill's Inn. Chimney Rock Mountain rises up in
the background. These Union soldiers were coming to pacify Buncombe
County, whose citizens on the whole had been staunchly loyal to the Confederacy. They set up their headquarters in the inn before moving on to Asheville.
Moving to the south wall of the room, the "Flying Cloud" begins its ascent
up the mountain to the inn. One gentleman, riding with the driver, blows a horn,
an old tradition on this line. The number of blasts will give Mrs. Sherrill the
count of the travelers that day, and she will still have time to add more food to
the table if necessary before the coach can "pull the mountain." Nearby, next
to the road, a mountaineer and two well-dressed city men gather around a coiled
rattlesnake, shotguns in hand. The mountain man looks distrustful of the city
fellows' aim. Elizabeth has added to this panel many of the flowers that are her
joy, including the rhododendron Maximum in fiill bloom.
On the west wall, the central panel is flanked on either side by two separate
groups of travelers passing through the Gap. On the left, four covered wagons,
each pulled by a team of oxen, lumber up the grade, preceded by a herd of hogs
being kept in line by a mounted drover and a young boy. Wagons such as these
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
291
were still to be seen in the early twenties passing by Jim's and Elizabeth's home.
On the right panel, a mountain family has once again pulled up stakes and is
on the move, a surprisingly common occurrence in the mountains. Two mules
pull an overladen wagon, while members of the family either ride along or walk
beside the entourage of people and animals, which includes a flock of sheep and
two leashed hounds.
The central panel of this grouping represents another masterpiece of anecdote, full of characters and action. "The Flying Cloud" has just pulled to a halt
in front of SherriU's Inn, and as the passengers unload their jolted physiques,
their mountain host comes out to greet them with a tray of "cordials." The
painting is full of little touches of mountain life: Mrs. SherriU's fine bonnet, a
quilt drying on the roof, a little boy fruitlessly chasing after a chicken (the
chicken drawn by Jim because he thought Elizabeth's was not running fast
enough!), bees streaming in and out of the old-fashioned bee skeps, and a pretty
young maiden with a billowing skirt and dainty parasol shyly being introduced
to two nattily dressed young dandies. A boy holds the horses as they stamp and
paw, eager to get to the barn after the long pull up to the inn.
These paintings are among the very few that remain as a testimony to
Elizabeth's extraordinary talent. Her vision in these panels indicates a great
deal about her attitudes; she loved the common poses and activities of life
around her, its variety, humor and essential beauty, if only one took the time
to see it. These pictures show her gifts as an artist, her ability to compose scenes
that are both balanced and beautiful, and yet alive with activity. It speaks too
for her appreciation of all people, high and low, her uncommon mountain
neighbors along with her dandified friends from town. These pictures are a
secret treasure of the Southern Appalachians, bringing together a time, a place
and a gifted artist.
By May, Jim proclaimed to Hetty and Doug that "Siddy has her second
panel almost completed and the room is going to be a wonder" (James G. K.
McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, May 21, 1922). By the fall of 1923, the word was
out that a unique project depicting mountain life had been created by Elizabeth
McClure, and Jim described in his distinctive manner the reception of these
panels by the local critics. "We had quite a day yesterday for Cornelia Vanderbilt spread the news of Siddy's pictures on her return home & the Vanderbilt
house party then commenced to arrive in relays during the afternoon. I plan to
charge admission & also to wear a guard's uniform & stretch out an itching palm
as sightseers depart" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, no date).
The autumn of 1922 marked not only the triumphant completion of Elizabeth's "painting fit," but many other changes in her life. Her second child was
growing within her, while at the same time she felt the loneliness and melancholy of being without Jim, who was away on a long and difficult errand. Her
brother Ambrose had been suffering through some personal and marital difficulties. He and Grace had been living in France while he worked on his architectural degree at the Beaux Arts in Paris, and with Jim he returned there to work
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through his problems. Jim's long absence was a sad and lonely time for Elizabeth, but produced more of her moving literary expressions of love. She and
Aunt Freddie, little Jamie and Esther, all went up to New York to see Jim and
a very depressed Ambrose off for France.
Dear Cricket & Bowser off for France . . . As the ship sailed slowly off I
rushed to find a tall coloured porter who could hold Jamie up in the air to
wave at Daddy .. . Auntie [Freddie] quite cheerful & [I] felt most cheerful
myself to realize that Ambrose had really left & with my darling to cheer &
strengthen him (Can't help worrying about that letter to G[race]). Jamie it
seems raised the dickens while I was downstairs, yelling, & saying he didn't
have to behave now [that] Daddy was gone . . . I miss my darling terribly &
find myself thinking of him almost continuously. I hope he is sleeping well
tonight & that [Ambrose] is more cheerful. There is an occasional fog horn
sounding & it makes him somehow seem near! (October 16, 1922, New York
City)21
.. . longing for Cricket & anxious as to how things are going. Hope he will
think to send me a cable with some hint. (October 19, 1922)
Another lonesome night without Cricket. I miss him more every single
night. Bowser's letter so pathetic but there is one line in it that makes me
hopeful. (October 20, 1922)
Such a lovely autumn day, almost hot, with here & there cosmos, dahlias,
chrysanthemums in bloom & such lovely subdued colors in the leaves. How I
wish Cricket could see them. The mountains are just the way he loves them
. . . I would have given anything to have been with him, to see all that lovely
French land again for the first time together after so many years away. It is
very hard not to hear from him—if I could only have letters he would not seem
so far away . . . I kept thinking of Cricket & Bowser & Paris & longing to
know how things were with them. It is very lonesome without Cricket & gets
worse all the time! . . . (October 29, 1922, Asheville)
. . . a letter from that dearest Cricket telling me everything I wanted to know
. . . His letter was such a comfort & delight & Ferderkins [Aunt Freddie] was
greatly heartened & cheered by all he said about the Bowser.... (November
3, 1922)
On November 7, when election day arrived, Jim was still away and Elizabeth had the opportunity to exercise her new privilege at the polls. Her response
to women's suffrage is quite curious, considering her family's political interests
and her own independent life before her marriage, but it was still a new responsibility.
Mr. Davidson called . . . it was voting day. Very much irked at the thought
of voting but felt that perhaps Cricket would want i t . . . Cast my vote (after
first calling Mr. P
on telephone to ask if there was any
specially good man I should vote for) & Just put my mark on a straight
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
293
Republican ticket. Also voted for increase in pay for legislators. Hurried back
home after first having dispelled the usual crowd that had gathered about Puny.
(November?, 1922)
Despite Jim's and Elizabeth's flirtations with socialism prior to the Great
War, by the time of Calvin Coolidge they were both safely in the Republican
camp, and there for good. Jim had voted for Warren G. Harding and his "return
to normalcy" in 1920, as did Elizabeth in what would have been her first chance
to vote.
The next evening Elizabeth wrote:
Spent evening sorting Cricket's mail & systemizing it. Miss my darling
terribly but had the joy of finding a letter from Rouen in today's mail & 2
postcards. The Rouen letter took me right back to that thrilling old town.
Cricket sounded in the letter exactly as though he had been affected by it in
just the same way I was when I first saw it. I am counting every hour to my
dearest's return. I miss him every minute & his dear letters are such a comfort.
(November 8, 1922)
Next day, with the woods filled with dry leaves, their neighbor Emory
McAbee had one of his "fire fits." Elizabeth described the scene.
This has been a day of excitements. Rushed out to post a letter early &
smelled smoke. Clouds of it pouring over Ferguson & Rocky Point. Smoke
pall descending all over [the] mountain. [I] learned . . . that a bad fire was
raging in around Emory McAbees & was part on our land. They thought
Emory had let the fire o u t . . . Mr. Davidson had sent hands up to fight the fire,
but Mr. Early [who was there shingling the garage] feared wind & thought if
it got going nothing could stop it. I felt much worried . . . Flew down to the
barn and interviewed Mr. Davidson .. . Men came down about noon from
fighting [the] fire. [They] had been obliged to start some sort of back fire about
halfway up the mountain to head [the] fire off & some fire back of Rocky Point
along [the] Ridge I believe. [I] felt that [the] danger had been averted. Mrs.
Huntley came over about 9 & said that a lot of our timber had been burned a
short time ago in one of Emory's crazy fire fits . . . It seems that Emory had
built a fire . . . one day & Mrs. McAbee according to Mr. Davidson was
terrified of him . .. Mr. Merrill . . . told me to tell Mr. Davidson that he had
seen the sheriff in town & sent him out that afternoon & that Emory had been
taken off. [I] Arranged with Mr. Davidson about sending some one up tomorrow to see about Mrs. Emory . . . Very "jumpy" this evening. Queer sounds
in the cellar & disturbing noises. Scared of everything. Thank goodness only
two more nights without Cricket. (November 9, 1922)
It was high time for Jim to come home! Elizabeth met him at the train in
Biltmore on his return from France. As she rushed to embrace him he hastily
warned her back. His suit aiid overcoat pockets were bulging with antique
octagonal plates, each with a different French scene—his present after his long
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We Plow God's Fields
absence. Seven years later, the "Bowser" episode culminated with a surprise
twist. Jim and Elizabeth were summoned to Washington to witness his second
marriage, to Mary Meeker, his first wife Grace's younger sister.
While Jim was away, Esther Shorter felt a need to go home and take care
of her old mother. The trip to New York as Jamie's nurse had been difficult for
her, and despite all her virtues she could be rather temperamental on occasion.
She was a proud and sensitive woman and had a bad heart that perhaps made
her quick to anger. After six years of devoted service, in November 1922, there
was "Much hurried packing & the two [Esther and John] . . . departed for good.
No tears shed but such general good feeling."22 Soon afterwards Esther died and
John returned to the farm to remain a loyal pillar of the establishment until his
own death in 1955.
Elizabeth struggled to find a replacement for Esther, with her second child
expected in a few months. A nurse was hired, known simply as "Hawkins."
With such a name, one would expect a military sort of figure. Elizabeth explained to her Aunt Freddie that "Hawkins is ... more powerful than ever and
I am sighing with contentment. She talks through her nose & squeaks & Jamie
is beginning to talk just like her but she is such a tower of strength I could not
manage without her for the present, anyway" (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to
Frederika Skinner, June 29, 1923). Hawkin's powerful tendencies eventually
overreached Elizabeth's bounds, when she learned that the woman had thrashed
Jamie with real vengeance when the family was away. Elizabeth fired her on the
spot and took over the nursing duties herself.
Soon after Jim's return from France preparations got under way for the
birth of Elizabeth and Jim's second child, expected early in 1923. Childbirth
brought out the most cautious instincts in Jim and Elizabeth, which is only to
say that the lives of mother and child were given the highest value. But the
contrast with today's recuperation schedule is startling. The whole family
moved into Asheville in mid-January to be nearer the hospital. With the arrival
of Wiggywags (Martha Clarke), all signs of the imminence of the great event
were present. Yet, in all the correspondence, the exact nature of the details of
the appearance of the new baby is discretely avoided, as if to mention childbirth
itself was a bad omen that somehow might threaten the new life. In such a
manner, Hetty and Doug, and the rest of the family, were kept informed.
We plan to move to 306 Chestnut St., Asheville on next Thursday where
we will be installed at the boarding house of Miss Elizabeth Bernard. It seems
a most comfortable establishment. We plan to put Jamie in kindergarten so he
may not grow up a social recluse. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts,
January 14, 1923)
Our entourage moved into Asheville for the season . . . we are now awaiting
the dinner gong before marching in to dinner . . .
Jamie is proving a great mixer and already has an intimate acquaintance
with every fellow boarder. He has introduced himself to them in whatever role
he happened to be playing at the moment so that there is great confusion as to
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
Esther Shorter and Jamie McClure.
his name, some calling him George, some Tobey, some Mac, some Jinks and
some Uncle Wiggly. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, January 21,
1923)
Letters and telegrams from all the readers of this weekly have put me in
very close touch with you all this week. I can plainly see that the surest way
to get a reaction from my faithful readers is to send out telegrams similar to
the ones dispatched last Sunday night.
Elizabeth and Elspeth are doing famously. I have just come from the hospital where I said Goodnight to the pair of them. Dr. Millender is highly pleased
with them both and says he has not had a patient do so well in years. Elspeth
has been on her good behavior and everyone is charmed with her. Elizabeth
will keep right on at the hospital for some time, in fact we are planning for a
stay of four weeks, for we are exponents of the slow and easy school. We will
have to be thrown out of the hospital as we were last time before we take the
plunge into the cold hard world.
295
�296
We Plow God's Fields
Miss Clarke is taking the most beautiful and loving care of the pair and it
is a piece of rare good fortune to have such a devoted friend. (James G. K.
McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, February, 4, 1923)
Elspeth's cold hard world out at Hickory Nut Gap would be the same rich
blend of aristocratic values mixed with strong democratic intentions that marked
off the struggles of her parents. It would be a world of cooks and maids, and
the tough mountain children who were also growing up on the McClure farm.
Her world would include the great cast of characters that called Jim and Elizabeth McClure their friends. It would also include a membership in the wider
McClure clan, so aptly explained by the Dominie just after his granddaughter's
birth.
My dear Elizabeth,
I am just as proud of you as I can possibly be. I rejoice with all my heart
in the birth of little Elspeth. She has a very big place in my love already, and
the place grows bigger every day. How wonderful it all is, that a life comes
to us, and it isn't a stranger at all—it seems perfectly at home—as though it
belonged to us—and we love the life devotedly from the instant of its arrival!
I never have felt all this so much, as since word came that Elspeth was here.
Yesterday I spoke of this to Arch . . . and Arch said that this is exactly the way
he feels.
Well, Elizabeth, you always were a queen in my judgement (and it is a
sober, thoughtful but enthusiastic judgement) and now you are more a queen
than ever. If that husband of yours . . . is not proud of you and doesn't say
that you are the dearest,. . . loveliest woman in all the world, I will not believe
he is in his right mind.
Please put that question to him—and let us know what his condition of mind
is.
Grandfather McClure
(James G. K. McClure, Sr. to Elizabeth Cramer McClure, January 31, 1923)
The Dominie's wife, Annie Dixon McClure, wrote happily that the arrival
of Elspeth "completes the round dozen of our grandchildren" (Phebe Ann Dixon
McClure to James and Elizabeth McClure, January, 29, 1923).
Elizabeth's father took the opportunity of Elspeth's birth to sing again the
praises of his own daughter. "Darling Bios," he wrote, "We received the splendid news . . . Now you will know like myself the joy of having a daughter. If
your daughter brings unto you one half the love and affection and dearness of
my daughter, she will fill your life with happiness, and never give you a thought
save congratulations for a name. You and Jim can settle that, but do not call her
after local peaks or Hickory Nut Gap" (Ambrose Cramer, Sr. to Elizabeth
Cramer McClure, January 29, 1923).
"Elspeth" was neither peak nor gap, but a Scottish name that suited Elizabeth. Neither was the little child encumbered with a middle name, even if it
meant passing up the opportunity to honor a relation. Elizabeth's painting
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
297
friend, Mildred Burridge, welcomed the child with this exuberant return telegram. "Your telegram received with flourish of Trumpets Cornets Hauteboys
Bassoons Bass Drums Triangles Display of Fireworks Pine Wheels Skyrockets
Roman Candles Embrace Elspeth fondly for me I long to see her Am Telegraphing from St. Frances Hotel gaily decorated in her honor."23
The formality of "Elspeth" fell away to "Elfie," and that became the family
name of their little girl. Jim McClure was keenly aware that each child was born
into this world deeply in debt. There were the debts of history: political freedom,
religious tolerance and scientific progress. There were the family debts: the
struggling Covenanters, the trekkers of the new world, the hardships and the
successes. All of these circumstances placed little Elfie in a distant world unlike
the one her neighbor children knew. Jim wanted his progeny to grow up aware
of these debts, and aware that the process must continue. His view was that the
real leaders of each generation were those men and women who followed their
highest calling, sacrificed their own pleasures for a better world. And, as the
theory went, self-sacrifice would yield self-fulfillment.
The rock on which Jim and Elizabeth raised their children consisted of
these same heroic virtues and strivings. Service was held up before them as the
highest calling of life. Education was the cornerstone of ability. Like all parents,
the McClures wavered between mercy and justice, but the values themselves
were clear-cut and unassailable. Certain activities, such as card playing of any
sort, were forbidden. Of course, this encouraged the youngsters to hide away
in closets to play an illicit game of Lindbergh cards. From birth, Jamie and Elfie
were carefully monitored so that their intellectual progress could be nurtured.
But they were not lock stepped through youth, especially with the opportunities
of a mountain farm. Besides, Jim and Elizabeth were too much fun to let their
Victorian habits grind down the frivolous nature of youth. But these two children did grow up to be disciplined, each in his own way. Jamie was a seeker
of truth, who would not abide sloppy thinking in either man or child. Elspeth,
the more literary of the two, tried hard like her parents to appreciate people, to
overlook the faults in others, and to stand ready to help them along.
Little Elfie and brother Jamie grew up in a changing world. Henry Ford's
mass produced automobile revolutionized transportation during the twenties and
ending the picturesque wagon trips through Hickory Nut Gap. Even back in the
mountains of North Carolina, a surprising number of cars and trucks were on
the road. Around Fairview, Jim McClure was known as much for his Hudson
automobile as he was for founding the Farmers Federation. The fascination for
the mechanical miracles of Detroit struck the farm boys of the mountains deeply.
The big switchback curves going through Hickory Nut Gap became, and continue to be, the scene of dramatic automobile crashes. One of the earliest
occurred back in the spring of 1922 when Elizabeth was painting her panels,
and gives some indication of the carefree attitude that overtook a group of
people with a flivver and a little gas money. To Hetty and Doug, Jim wrote,
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We Plow God's Fields
This day opened with a crash on the road at 6 a.m. which proved to be a
party of young riders turned over in a Ford. On extrication none proved
seriously hurt. How they do it in a Ford I fail to see unless Henry has some
special arrangement with the special Saint detailed on motor accidents. This
party drove straight over a bank turned completely over, all ended up in or
under the car and none seriously hurt. The party had been out all night and
slumber had gotten the better of them. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the
Stuarts, May 26, 1923)
New cars meant new roads, and in 1923 the state began to pave the old
sand road up the mountain with concrete. If there were great hopes for a fine
road in the future, the present driving conditions were absolutely atrocious.
Elizabeth described to Aunt Freddie the process of road building during the early
twenties.
. . . never have I imagined anything much worse than the sand clay road.
It is ploughed up in great tracts & the mud & stones & ruts something incredible. They say that [they] are going to start the cement work on the 15th of
June starting at the Fairview bridge & working toward Asheville. A camp of
25 men are located at the very top of the Gap where they are quarrying rock
for the macadam part of the process & the stone crushing. They have to pay
us so much a square yard of rock & will be there perhaps a year, so we shall
get something out of it, anyway. Jamie is of course tremendously excited.
(Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Frederika Skinner, May 26, 1923)
Little Jamie was fascinated by machines. He was four years old now, and
loved to run down the pasture to watch all the road building activity. Men and
mules worked together hauling rock and driving drag pans. Building a road by
hand was a laborious project, but many a man worked whatever political pull
he had to get hired onto the crew. The men and animals camped on the job
during the week, going home only on the weekends. A few shacks were built
to accommodate the workers. One crew of laborers was made up of all black
men, and they loved to sing to while away the hours. Young Jamie was leaning
up on the fence watching this particular group one day, utterly lost in fascination
by the implements and processes of this working outfit. The negro gang fell into
a slow rhythmic song to match their work, but one prepared especially for the
little McClure boy. Jamie's presence was carefully monitored from the kitchen
window up the hill; he suddenly turned and raced up towards the house crying.
He was met quickly and comforted by his mother. When he calmed down, he
explained. As he listened to the workers singing in spiritual rounds, he had
suddenly caught the words of the chorus that ended each verse: "Little white
boy, sittin' on the fence. Ain't got nothin' to do."24
The prospects for a new road worried Jim. The engineers were keen to
eliminate the numerous switchback curves, cutting through an entirely new
route. Jim dreaded the further desecration of his farm, as the road had already
been changed several years before. He traveled down to Raleigh to plead his
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
299
-,\
"
:
l«*lP%l>«i^-d
Left: Baby Elspeth, Elizabeth, and Jamie McClure, 1923. Right: Jamie and Elizabeth in
the garden below the house, June 1923.
case in the matter, and returned with the good news that "The decision to have
the new road come up following the old road has greatly eased our minds"
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, July 8, 1923). The same
road is still in use, and the picturesque curves provide today a scenic route for
the tourists who can be seen almost year round enjoying picnics and taking
pictures of each other as they travel through Hickory Nut Gap. But the work
back in the twenties was painfully slow, and by late fall of 1924, Jim was
thoroughly exasperated by the lack of progress. He wrote, "We are in the depths
of misery over our road. It will be next June before the wretches are through
and meanwhile we are hundreds of miles from town on a wet day" (James G.
K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, November 4, 1924).
Throughout this period a whirlpool of activity swirled about Jim McClure:
problems like the new road, the management of his farm and the Federation,
and increasingly, the appointments that give public men and women even more
duties. At the same time, in the eye of the storm, his family was growing up.
Despite the demands on his time, Jim could always arrange to be with his wife
and children. Like his own father, who had taken him along when making
pastoral calls, Jim loved to take Elspeth and Jamie with him on his jaunts into
the countryside. They loved the excitement of all the Federation activities, and
children make a wonderful topic of conversation in a crowd of strangers. When
they were older, Jim McClure would work them into the entertainment. Most
�300
We Plow God's Fields
of all, he wanted his children to be nurtured by the same rich Christian tradition
and idealism of his own youth.
Jamie was in many ways a difficult child to raise. He was extraordinarily
intelligent and was for four years an only child in a large household that must
have seemed to him set up to revolve around his needs. There were no children
with his background at Hickory Nut Gap, and he grew up a self-assured and
completely fearless child. Jamie McClure inherited his father's strong tendency
to question the comfortable assumptions, and he did not hesitate to speak up to
correct his own contemporaries, or even his elders, if he became convinced that
they were wrong. Perhaps it is fair to say that he was as "cranky" as his father,
but had not as a boy acquired Jim's tact as a counterbalance. One Sunday, Jim
preached a sermon at die Fairview Church. Surprisingly, his keen son was
paying close attention to the message, and when the word "demolish" turned
up, he immediately demanded a satisfactory definition. With great warmth, Jim
explained that he would have to pause to clarify this point with a member of the
congregation.25
Jamie's forthright nature and precocious intellect, fed by an endless curiosity and stimulated by his parents' wide interests, added to his courage. At three,
while in New York City, Aunt Freddie and Elizabeth took him to the Bronx
Zoo. His mother described the expedition in her diary. "We got a gorgeous
Pierce Arrow to come for us at 9:30 ... Jamie adored the park & especially the
monkey, laughing immediately at their antics. In the Elephant house the keeper
took an immense fancy to him & before the envious eyes of other astonished
children took him behind the separation and let him feed the elephant hunks of
bread. Jamie was very bold & Delighted the keeper by not being afraid."26
Jamie's quick mind made it difficult for him to hold his tongue among his
Mends, and he rarely felt the same ease with boys his age that had so distinguished his father. He spent a lot of time with adults, and was perhaps more
comfortable in their presence. Usually he possessed a courageous soul, but a
Halloween Party given in Asheville by the Perry family would have been a test
for any child.
Puny and I taxied over to the Perrys stopping on the way for a pillow case
in which to array Puny at the Palais Royal. Puny [was] terribly interested at
the prospect in store. We arrived at the Perrys and found several other little
spooks waiting on the steps— Puny somewhat reluctant to descend when he
saw them but clutched my hand & we entered boldly. We all wended our way
to the barn where with many ghostly noises each child was ushered singly into
the dark barn. They all seemed to enjoy it though Puny again clung to me like
mad & when we got inside was somewhat terrorized by a shaking corn stalk
(colored man concealed within) as the children's shrieks of excitement were
rather appalling. The poor lamb started to weep but when he realized it was all
fun he laughed & shouted with the rest though he stuck to me like a leech. The
children bobbed for apples in a big tub which again he declined to participate
in explanation of which he said "there is no room for Jamie" & when we played
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
301
another game in a circle he declined to come in the middle because "there was
too much of a crowd." I was rather ashamed of him but considering that it was
his first party he did pretty well & looked like a little Prince. When it came to
refreshments to my horror I saw him wash down a ham sandwich with three
cups of cider & crunching salty almonds & cake & candy! I knew he would
be sick & after he got to bed tonight a doleful voice summoned "Mummy"—1
rushed him to the cabinet & all his supper upchucked! Poor little darling—27
The following spring Jamie was big enough to hike with his father to the
top of Ferguson, the mountain behind the house. Jim recorded the event. "Jamie
and I climbed Ferguson's Peak this afternoon. I carried him on alternate
stretches and we had a grand afternoon, getting a view from South Carolina to
Tennessee. Jamie was much troubled because he thought the Peak was in the
sky and on getting to the top found the sky was still out of reach. He also
marvelled that the mountain went down on the other side."28 At about the same
time, the curiosity of the little boy overtook him, and he disappeared completely
from under the watchful eyes of his nurse. "At noon Puny can not be found—
Dragnet out & report comes in that about 10:30 he had appeared in bottom &
been sent home on Mr. Ben Nesbitt's wagon—Following up this clue ... I
drove to Gerton & on foot to the saw mill when we found the fellow gay as a
lark & having had a glorious time with Mr. Nesbitt."29
Jim and Elizabeth's progressive notions made them at first reluctant to
spank Jamie. But one night he refused to stay in bed despite all the cajoling and
stern lectures his parents could muster, and so his father finally "Had to paddy
whack Jamie as he was unmoved by any other force of punishment & got out
of his bed by night & by day when supposed to stay in—He was greatly startled
but reformed at once."30 Two weeks later, Jim tried a more innovative disciplinary tactic. "Jamie has suddenly become very unruly, getting out of bed on all
occasions . . . but my impersonating the Sheriff and having him formally summoned, sentenced and immediately dealt out a summary punishment, we seem
to be getting the upper hand of him without drawing upon ourselves any of the
rancor that a child should feel for a stern parent. The Sheriff and the writer are
two distinct persons" (James G. K. McClure, Jr., to Harriet McClure Stuart,
April 16, 1922).
Jamie grew up as a boy filled with ideas and projects, stimulated by his life
on the farm. One of his first contacts with the animal world, however, taught
him the value of prudence and caution. "Jamie has twice been butted by the
sheep, each time being knocked off his feet and his dignity seriously hurt, as
the second time it occurred he was trying to placate another sheep by sprinkling
her with his water pot. He now moves through the pasture heavily armed with
a stick with which he hopes to successfully defend himself (James G. K.
McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, April 22, 1923). At five years old, he became
consumed with the mysteries of egg laying. "Jamie is delving into everything
on the farm and his questions are legion. He has succeeded in taming a rooster
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We Plow God's Fields
and secreted him in his closet a few nights ago. Hoarse crowing from this closet
about 6 a.m. startled the sleeping household. Jamie had secreted him in the
hope that he would lay an egg for breakfast and as he failed to do what was
expected of him, Jamie asked me at breakfast 'Why don't roosters have egging
powers?'" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, January 5, 1925)
Jamie's father, in the pose of Saint Nicholas, thrilled his own children and
all the children on the farm at Christmas. The first performance of the day was
scheduled strictly as a family affair, and was described here by the impersonator
himself. ". . . Santa himself appeared at five o'clock on Christmas Eve. All the
family were on hand to meet him dressed in fancy dress. Mr. Cramer as a naval
officer, Aunt Freddie as an 18th Century lady, Miss Patterson as the Queen of
Scotland, Jamie as a white rabbit and Elfie as a Gainesborough child. The event
was the most happy one" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart,
December 27, 1925). The following day, Santa made his public appearance for
the benefit of all the children living on the farm. Despite the season, ice cream
always provided the glorious finale to this occasion. "After [Christmas] dinner
we turned and again sped back to Hickory Nut Gap where Santa Claus again
appeared to the startled tenants. Ben with his seven children and Zeb with his
seven held the family attendance records. As this is the closed season for bathing
down here it took some days to air the room out" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to
the Stuarts, January 4, 1925). The McClure Christmas was Elizabeth's production. Presents, for her family and the tenant children alike, were judiciously
chosen and wrapped with the exquisite taste of an artist. She made the season
special at Hickory Nut Gap, and all with an effortless appearance.
An appearance of another kind occurred when Elspeth was just six. A
legendary and famous disembodied creature appeared to Ben Owenby's daughter Christine, who was helping at the house.
Christine, Ben's oldest daughter . . . came out of the Dairy, where she had
been pouring the milk and started for the house when she heard someone
stumble and looked up and there was a 'hant.' She was dressed "in an old
timey sweep tail white dress and her black hair hung in ringlets to her waist."
She walked across the court yard and melted into the old kitchen chimney!!
This was at once taken as a sign that something was going to happen. The
next day Ben was taken with acute appendicitis and rushed to the hospital!!
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, February 3, 1929)
Elizabeth was familiar with spirits from the time she had spent with her
Somerville relatives in Southern Ireland and always enjoyed discussions about
them. She vowed it was old Mrs. Sherrill herself who banged doors or knocked
on windows on windy nights. Her daughter Elspeth would have found it easy
to believe in these spirits, for she loved the kingdoms of the fantastic. Her
brother was more interested in machines and airplanes.
Although Elspeth found it easier to play with the farm children than her
brother did, he was the leader of the group. When she grew older, she resented
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
303
•B
I
•fit!
HI
Mi
Ker Boone, a farm resident, oversees the harnessing of his dogs for Jamie and Elspeth
McClure, July 1925.
her nickname "Elfie" because she wanted the Boone children to think she was
tough (Mr. Boone was the current farm manager). Elspeth loved nothing so
much as building dams and water wheels in the several little streams that started
above the Boone's or playing house in the nearby woods. There she was free
from the constraints of her upbringing and the more circumscribed behavior
demanded of her at home. Both Jamie and Elspeth enjoyed rather unique childhoods, surrounded as they were by all varieties of people. They were able to
partake of both the pleasures of the rural life, and the elegance and refinement
of their other world in Asheville and beyond. They were also able to enjoy a
father and mother who constantly concocted new and remarkable schemes to
create fun. Jim was a very popular father in his children's eyes. Elfie was about
three when he wrote: "We are enjoying a blanket of snow and today Elspeth
went out in her Grandfather's little sleigh and after she had a long ride, she met
us at the foot of the mountain as we came home from church. There a shift was
made and Jamie was proudly pulled by the car all the way home on his Grandfather's sleigh . . . It is a surprisingly well-made affair" (James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to the Stuarts, January 10, 1926).
By his tenth year, Jamie had moved up to the larger members of the animal
kingdom on the farm.
The Spring fever has got the best of Jamie and he has decided to feed two
calves to sell this fall. Each calf weighs 200 Ibs. and neither have had a halter
on, so the last week has been a hectic affair. In order to tame them, Jamie
�304
We Plow God's Fields
I
Left: Jamie and Elspeth on the pastures behind Ferguson, Spring 1929. Right: Mathilda
Shorter.
keeps them tied and leads them to water night and morning. We never knew
whether a calf will shoot out of the barn with a muzzle velocity of 40 miles
an hour with Jamie at the back end of the rope or whether Jamie will slowly
emerge, pulling with all his might on a balky calf. It is a regular circus
performance. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, March 19, 1929)
Elspeth remembers one summer afternoon when her brother Jamie came
running around the corner of the porch shouting, "John's got a new wife! John's
got a new wife!" They ran through the courtyard and there was Mathilda, all
smiles, sitting on the bed in John Shorter's tiny house by the woodshed. Mathilda was from New Orleans. She had met John while working for a family
summering in the mountains, and she could cook like a dream and care lovingly
and dependably for children. She brought joy to Elizabeth. The couple were
promptly set up in a little place down below the Huntleys, a rather sketchy house
left over from the road builders that Mathilda soon made into a charming
cottage. She was a natural artist and was blessed with an imagination to match
Elizabeth's. She and John earned a position of greatest respect in the McClure
household. Respect for people was one of the strongest of the virtues taught to
Jamie and Elspeth by their parents. It was natural and easy for these children
to grow up free of racial prejudice with men and women like John, Esther and
Mathilda a part of their daily life.
All through the twenties Jim was becoming more and more involved in
community activities, first in Fairview, then in Asheville, and before long at the
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
305
state level. All his life he was loyal to the Republican party of his class and
upbringing, despite moving into the Democratically "Solid South" and despite
managing a Farmers cooperative that depended on the help of local and state
government. Over the long haul, it was the politicians who would begin courting
him, with his influence and, most of all, with his ability to draw a big crowd.
Jim made light of his Republican affiliations when he fell into a serious political
discussion on the train to Raleigh during President Harding's administration.
"... I had a most interesting trip for a political dissension in the Democratic
Councils had sprung up and was at white heat. The gentlemen with whom I
went to Raleigh were in the thick of this and even tho I am known as a black
Republican I sat in with them at their grave and warm councils" (James G. K.
McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, April 22, 1923). In the 1924 election, the Progressive Party was led by the highly respected Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin. Jim's
conservative swing was complete as he joked about his brother Arch's predilection for the more left-wing candidate. "[Ejection day is not far off. I still fear
that Alec [Arch] will secretly cast his ballot for LaFollette and I believe he ought
to be watched at the Polls" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, October
19, 1924).
Jim tried always to take the higher view of politics. His real opponents
were the corrupt and ignorant people who had, by deception, graft or whatever,
come to hold offices of public trust. No one could demoralize the population
more easily than crooked or selfish politicians, and therefore, in order to promote the Kingdom of God, a more altruistic political order would have to
assume power. When Jim first came to Fairview, the local Republican party
offered to support him in a local election. He was tempted, giving the matter
considerable thought, but he declined, wisely, in that it might have jeopardized
his ability to organize the Federation.
He did enter the shifting tides of Fairview politics, however, by becoming
appointed to, and then actively seeking a seat in the powerful local school
committee. His commitment to progressive education never wavered despite
having to constantly wade against the strong current of self-interest. "The
Fairview School year is now at the Commencement state and it is resting somewhat heavily on me as I am now a School Committeeman and the School
Committee has to pick the teachers. In a community like ours where everyone
has an ax to grind and everyone has a brother, daughter or niece who is a school
teacher it is a riotous job" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, May 6,
1923). Two months later, elections were being held. Jim went into the community to stand squarely behind his proposal to centralize the primary and secondary education in the township into one consolidated school building. "In
Fairview we are in the midst of a school election." he wrote to the Stuarts, "The
campaign is becoming heated and I put in Friday and Saturday electioneering.
Our voting day is not until Aug. 6th but we are in the midst of registering at
present. Opposition develops on the most surprising grounds, one large faction
being opposed because the new school will be on the highway and at least one
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We Plow God's Fields
hundred children per year will be killed by passing cars" (James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to the Stuarts, July 15, 1923). His electioneering tactics were successful, and
he became a committee member. The following June he reported a peculiar act
of larceny carried on by him and the Committee on behalf of the school children
of Fairview. "The Fairview School Committee executed a well planned raid into
Yancey County during the week in an effort to run off with a particularly able
school principal who is located in the fastness of Yancey. We made our getaway
without having a shot fired at us and hope to get our man in the next week or
two" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, June 8, 1924).
Although he remained a Republican, he was often appointed by the Democratic powers of the state to serve on committees for the public benefit, and Jim
took these responsibilities quite seriously. By 1925, he became the natural
choice to join the staff of the Bureau of Markets for North Carolina. The job
entailed developing markets for the state's agricultural products, and was a paid
political appointment. A year later he reluctantly resigned. "I hate to lose the
salary," he wrote to Hetty and Doug, "but inasmuch as I have so much Federation business and so much personal business, and inasmuch as political jobs are
very open to criticism, I feared that the Federation might be hurt by my hanging
on longer to the salary" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, July 4, 1926).
Jim was willing to sacrifice almost anything for the Federation.
Soon, however, he was appointed to the State Board of Conservation, a
volunteer post he greatly relished and for which he worked hard. His first
meeting, in January of 1926, was held in Raleigh.
We met yesterday in the Governor's Office, the Governor being Chairman
of the Board. The Board has under its jurisdiction the State Department of
Forestry, the State Department of Geology, Water Powers, & the Development of Manufacturer's, Mines & Minerals. As the Governor is keen on the
Development of the Resources of the state we have a big job on our hands &
you will have to expect more hot air on North Carolina when next we get
together. Out of the seven on the Board, three are Mac's so we should be able
to look after the finances. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, 1926)
Jim was a sports hunter himself, as well as something of a conservationist in
the Teddy Roosevelt mold of scientific soil and water management. He personally worked hard to create better hunting conditions by setting up game refuge
areas and wild bird propagation projects. In two years, he could proudly show
these concrete results of his work: "We created another game refuge in Macon
County in the Nantahala National Forest of 10,000 acres, which is the project I
had been working up ... We also voted to operate a small quail farm in
Randolph County . . . we will have something like $50,000 to spend on game
propagation . . . this will enable us to do some good construction work" (James
G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, January 8, 1928).
By the end of the decade, Jim McClure's selfless efforts began to gain
wider recognition. For once he received an honor that carried no new responsi-
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
307
bilities or requirements on his part. A small Kentucky college, uniquely tied to
the education of the Appalachian people, invited him to their graduation in
1929.
James Gore King McClure, Jr., son of the Manse, student in the school of
Christ: who, joining the seekers of health in the southern mountains, saw the
poverty of our people, refused to be content with maudlin pity, romantic
contemplation, pauperizing doles; who, with careful statesmanship, began to
lay the broad foundations of a better economic life, and of a cooperative
commonwealth among the individualistic farmers of the mountains:
By the authority conferred upon me by the Trustees of Berea College, I
bestow upon you the degree of Doctor of Science, with the certification and
the hood appropriate to the degree.
President Hutchins31
Of all the many accolades that would in time come to Jim McClure, this
honor from Berea College always possessed special significance for him. The
trustees of the school were the first to recognize the value of his work, and
moreover, they held a special vantage point: the hope of the Federation's goals
illuminated the very region to which Berea College had dedicated itself. The
Appalachian people, with their traditions of resourcefulness, wanted to be able
not just to endure, but to progress and to escape from inhibiting stereotypes. Jim
McClure wanted to minister to a region, not only by preaching the gospel of
progress, but also by building a new foundation for prosperity.
The twenties were such flush times that Jim, like many of his contemporaries, felt that modern economics had unlocked the secrets for a steady growth of
wealth in the United States. His assurance in modern business practices gave
him the confidence to start the Federation in the first place. With the door to
wealth unlocked, the great challenge for America was to maintain its drive for
spiritual excellence. Jim worried less about financial collapse than the swamping
of the nation's moral fibre in the high waters of prosperity. He understood, like
the brilliant writers of the age, that material success leaves one with an empty
victory. But unlike Thomas Wolfe, Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald, he
did not respond with bitterness or cynicism: he refused to satirize Homo Americana.
In 1926 Jim McClure gathered his thoughts about the destiny of his country, and wrote a paper that he delivered before a distinguished group of intellectuals in Asheville known as the Pen and Plate Club. Dr. Pinckney Herbert had
proposed him for membership, and throughout his life he made use of his
opportunities to speak there to formulate his deepest convictions. The club's
purpose was to stimulate and sharpen the intellect of the members and each
paper was followed by a series of penetrating questions from the floor. To Hetty
and Doug he confided his struggles in piecing together his first presentation.
"My week has been miserable as I have to read the paper next week at the Pen
and Plate Club, and I have had to snatch at it when I could. My subject is 'Has
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Democracy fulfilled its economic purpose?,' and I am daily growing sorrier and
sorrier for the poor Pen and Platers" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts,
February 14, 1926).
The following excerpts from the paper show the direction of Jim's ideas
during this period:
HAS DEMOCRACY ACHIEVED ITS ECONOMIC PURPOSE?
The impelling forces in human history have almost always been unconscious forces, and it has usually been decades or centuries after an event before
these unconscious forces could be rightly analyzed. In this paper I want to
make a study of those fundamental forces and hopes of mankind which have
created our American Democracy; of the realization of the promise of the
creators and of the future possibilities of this great experiment in human
co-ordination . . .
The great hope which has brought men to our shores can be divided into
three chief motives—the hope of Religious Liberty, the hope of Political
Liberty, and the hope of Economic Liberty.
Of the first, Religious Liberty, it is enough to say that it has been realized
to a surprising extent, considering our human frailties and prides and suspicions, and it is with reverence and gratitude that we realize that this hope of
religious liberty . . . [has] brought to our shores, as its first permanent settlers,
a type of man and woman of such strength of character that they fixed on this
great country a tradition of idealism, of fair dealing, of enduring morality and
of a God-given destiny which is, perhaps, its chief source of strength and hope
for the future . . .
The second great hope, Political Liberty and Equality, has also been realized to an extent almost beyond the dreams of the founders of this country.
Every man stands equal before the law, and casts his independent vote. The
people decide the issues and policies which their representatives carry o u t . . .
We have our political defects, so serious and so dangerous, that some voices
among us appear to be on the verge of despair, but we have achieved in theory
the political liberty and equality for which our forefathers fought.
The third great hope which has peopled our shores has always been the
hope of economic liberty and equality. And it is with our realization of this
dream that my paper will be concerned. Even those who first came to America
to achieve religious and political freedom, seem to have had also the hope of
economic betterment. And the great bulk of our immigrants have come with
this single purpose. The Promise of America has been a promise of economic
independence and prosperity.
"Neither race nor tradition," says Professor Hug Muensterberg in his volume on "The Americans," "nor the actual past, binds the American to his
countrymen, but rather the future which, together, they are building." From
the beginning the Americans have been cemented together by a vision of a
future. Most nations have their national tradition, built around the past of glory
or struggle, but with us in America it is, and has ever been, our future that
appeals even more strongly to our loyalty and imagination. And the dominant
note in this projected ideal is a future in which economic prosperity will be still
more abundant and still more accessible than it has ever been. It is this hope
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
309
Elspeth standing on south side of McClure home, 'with bleeding heart and narcissus
planted in the myrtle." [Elizabeth McClure's note.]
which invites the native American and the alien immigrant. Men come here
because they hope to have a better chance and a fairer opportunity than the Old
World can afford . ..
Our democracy, with its practical and proven faith in the equality of political and religious opportunity, has released the people of America from the
millstone of social inhibition that has hung round the neck of all peoples of all
times. This social inhibition has deadened ambition, stifled hope, and smothered energy. Ambition and hope are the parents of energy. Put ambition and
hope into the heart of a young man, and they will drive him fast and far. He
will extend himself. His power will develop as his pace increases. Energy will
keep generating within him.
And the releasing of this chief driving power of human progress in the
hearts and minds of these, the people of the United States, has given a momentum to social progress that can never stop.
The people of America are making more rapid progress toward this goal of
economic equality and prosperity than they realize. Wealth is increasing at a
rapid rate, and prosperity is becoming more and more diffused. We are approaching equality among occupations. The wages of manual labor have been
going higher and higher, and as between the manual jobs and the white collar
jobs of the mediocre sort, there is practical equality now . . .
.. . We all know that the carpenter and the plumber, and now even the
unskilled laborer, rides to work in his car. The manufacturer recognizes this
diffusion of wealth. His vision is to make goods that are universally used—to
make goods so well and so cheap that they will be used in every home. Our
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manufacturers do not advertise "Purveyors to His Majesty," but instead, "A
Million Satisfied Users. ..."
. . . They say that we are so strong financially that the entire wealth of the
Roman Empire could be passed through our bank clearing in a single day and
only the statisticians would notice the bulge. This tremendous economic prosperity has come, I believe, because the democratic form of government which
we have created has called forth the ambitions and hopes and energies and
talents of the people. Democracy has fulfilled its economic promise, and its
economic momentum is gathering strength each day.
This diffused prosperity has come to us, as we held to the ideal of economic
freedom and liberty. It came to us as we were following the ideal. We can
only retain it as we continue to follow the ideal. Wealth, when sought for
itself, eludes the grasp or turns to bitterness when grasped. Unless America
keeps her aims vitally idealistic, her doom is sealed. There is no life except
as spiritual ideals are held to. We must carry out this idea of a more equable
division of wealth.
And further, we have been so busy creating this wealth that we have had
no time to think why we wanted it. We must now set ourselves to alchemize
our newfound wealth and leisure into spiritual and intellectual gains; into those
things that permanently satisfy the soul of mankind.32
The man who penned these words was describing the bedrock on which
he based his optimism for the American future, the same future that he envisioned as the source of American national unity. Four years later, that faith
would be severely tested by the Great Depression. As Jim advised here, each
man or woman must constantly check his or her personal motivations and
adherence to ideals. Asheville and Buncombe County in 1926 were the scene
of the beginning of a colossal hysteria, a money-mad binge that would eventually leave both entities bankrupt. Real estate values increased so rapidly that
nearly everyone who had a little money could join the delusion and create a
paper fortune. The whole tottering structure would blow away like smoke in
1930, leaving behind countless examples of financial devastation. Soul searching would become the order of the day. Jim McClure did not escape this tragedy,
but he understood what happened to men when their souls had lost their idealistic moorings.
By the end of the twenties, his own life had become a marvel of variety, a
circus of activities and projects. His powers of inspiration and judgement were
being constantly tested. He discovered, thankfully, that his own sermons were
prophetic. If one but gave himself up to the powers of God, his maker would
grant the wisdom and strength to accomplish the task. Jim's God had given him
a wife who shared his ideals, and two children who gave his life a center and a
refuge from all the pressures he had created for himself. He had learned how to
relax, when to enjoy the restorative entertainments that came his way. The end
of the decade, though, proved also to be the end of an era. Not only would the
style of entertainment shift, but the very faith in progress and democracy that
had helped to fuel the American economy, and the Farmers Federation, would
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Twenties
311
be sorely tested by the ensuing depression. Jim's own financial stability would
be sorely threatened as well, but his vision of a better future failed to crumble
into cynicism. On the eve of this particular national disaster, the Federation was
thriving, his family was bursting with enterprise, and he and his wife remained
healthy. Even in the worst of times, these are gifts worthy of a man's thankfulness.
1. Interview with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
2. Interview with Mrs. James E. Davidson.
3. Ibid.
4. Interviews with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
5. James G. K. McClure, Jr., diary, May 30, 1921.
6. Elizabeth Cramer McClure, diary, September 26, 1921.
7. James G. K. McClure, Jr., diary, September 26, 1920.
8. Ibid., April 30, 1918.
9. Ibid., February 14, 1920.
10. James G. K. McClure, Jr., sermon given at Fairview Baptist Church, August
6, 1922.
11. Interviews with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
12. James G. K. McClure, Jr. Graduation address, Asheville School, date unknown.
13. Interview with Frances Herbert.
14. Ibid.
15. Interview with Lawrence Huntley.
16. Ibid.
17. Interview with Mrs. James Davidson.
18. James G. K. McClure, Jr., diary, April 1, 1922.
19. Elizabeth Cramer McClure, diary, April 21, 1922.
20. Ibid., April 22, 1922.
21. Ibid., November 9, 1922.
22. Ibid., Novembers, 1922.
23. Telegram from Mildred Burrage to Elizabeth and Jim McClure, February 4,
1923.
24. Interview with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
25. Interview with Mrs. James E. Davidson.
26. Elizabeth Cramer McClure, diary, October 18, 1923.
27. Elizabeth Cramer McClure, diary, October 31, 1922.
28. James G. K. McClure, Jr., diary,May 6, 1923.
29. James G. K. McClure, diary, April 23, 1923.
30. James G. K. McClure, Jr., diary, March 31, 1922.
31. Honorary Degree from Berea College, conferred June 1929.
32. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "Has Democracy Fulfilled its Economic Purpose?"
paper given before the Pen and Plate Club, Asheville, North Carolina, February 18,1926.
�Chapter Sixteen
Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
Whether Siddy and I can keep our place is a question—tho at present we
can not sell it and as we are down to a cook only, we will live there as cheaply
as anywhere .. . We will keep our house if we can but will try to sell any part
of the farm that we may get an offer for. (James G. K. McClure, Jr., to the
Stuarts, no date)
By 1929, Jim and Elizabeth McClure had become deeply involved in
Western North Carolina. The Farmers Federation was expanding. Jim had begun
his trips north to raise money for the development of new enterprises to help the
mountain people. Elizabeth had put her heart and artistic gifts to work fixing
up the old inn, planting boxwoods and flowering borders, and entering into the
lives of her neighbors. As suddenly as a bolt of lightning the financial crash
that heralded the Great Depression threatened everything they were working
for. It was the real estate boom and bust that did the most harm to the economy
of the mountains in general, and the McClures in particular.
Ownership of land had always been important in Western North Carolina,
ever since the first settlers came over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Like those
pioneers, Jim and Elizabeth had come with an independent spirit, seeking land
of their own and freedom from outworn ideas. For the early settlers land and
wealth were synonymous, for so it had been for as long as memory served back
in their old countries.
There had been two mild land booms before and after the Civil War, but
nothing in the past could have prepared the local citizenry for what happened
during the twenties. A fit of real estate covetousness took hold in Western North
Carolina, especially in Buncombe County. By the latter part of the decade, this
fit had grown into a full-fledged delusion. All up and down Asheville's Patton
Avenue real estate offices were scattered, each one filled with enthusiastic and
urgent salesmen generating a faith in the never ending upward spiral of land
values. Oftentimes the realtors would hire bands to play out on the sidewalks,
creating a carnival air that promoted the general hysteria. Inside a realtor's
office, one might enjoy a free lunch in exchange for glancing through a few
brochures. Sharp real estate dealers, known as "binder boys," had poured into
the mountains after a hurricane had wrecked their game in South Florida. They
knew how to bind an imprudent person to one of their contracts, and Buncombe
County seemed to have the right mix of wealthy tourists and beautiful undevel-
312
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
313
oped property to suit them. After all, Asheville was to the summer tourists what
Miami was to their winter counterparts. The binder boys wanted to exploit the
wealthy and glamorous people who had been attracted to the cool, beautiful
mountains of North Carolina.
Author Thomas Wolfe, in You Can't Go Home Again, described the setting
for this land boom and its focal point, Asheville, as he saw it when he returned
after a long absence.
The sleepy little mountain village in which he had grown up—for it had
been hardly more than that then—was now changed almost beyond recognition. The very streets that he had known so well, and had remembered through
the years in their familiar aspect of early-afternoon emptiness and drowsy
lethargy, were now foaming with life, crowded with expensive traffic, filled
with new faces he had never seen before . . .
But what he noticed chiefly—and once he observed it he began watching
for it, and it was always there—was the look on the people's faces. It puzzled
him, and frightened him, and when he tried to find a word to describe it, the
only thing he could think of was—madness . . . The faces of natives and
strangers alike appeared to be animated by some secret and unholy glee . ..
The real estate men were everywhere. Their motors and busses roared
through the streets of the town and out into the country, carrying crowds of
prospective clients. One could see them on the porches of houses unfolding
blueprints and prospectuses as they shouted enticements and promises of sudden wealth into the ears of deaf old women. Everyone was fair game for
them—the lame, the halt, and the blind Civil War veterans or their decrepit
pensioned widows, as well as high school boys and girls, Negro truck drivers,
soda jerkers, elevator boys, and bootblacks.
. . . And there seemed to be only one rule, universal and infallible—to buy,
always to buy, to pay whatever price was asked, and to sell again within two
days at any price one choose to fix. It was fantastic.1
This fantasy world was built on easy credit, and encouraged the collusion
of men who should have known better, but had neither the will nor even the
desire to try to break the momentum of such wild speculation. Wolfe's description continued:
The town was burgeoning rapidly and pushing out into the wilderness,
people were confident of a golden future, no one gave a second thought to the
reckless increase in public borrowing. Bond issues involving staggering sums
were being constantly "floated" until the credit structure of the town was built
up into a teetering inverted pyramid and the citizens no longer owned the
streets they walked on. The proceeds of these enormous borrowings were
deposited with the bank. The bank for its part, then returned these deposits to
the politicians or to their business friends, supporters, allies, and adherents—in
the form of tremendous loans, made upon the most flimsy and tenuous security, for purposes of private and personal speculation.2
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One example of the boom spreading into the "wilderness" around Asheville
occurred in the valley just below Hickory Nut Gap Farm. A development known
as "Hollywood" was being platted and sold there by the quarter-acre. Busses
came from Asheville, hauling prospective buyers to walk about on fields covered with the stubble of last year's corn crop. And yet the grandiose visions of
lakes and golf courses, as described in the sales pitch, made believers of many.
During the late twenties, Asheville's real estate market began to resemble
a large scale poker game, as the frenzied buying and selling took hold of the
local psychology. Nearly everyone with a little money counted himself in on the
stakes. People proudly bragged of their winnings, spurring on others to jump
into the action. What was to happen to all this prosperity, and why?
By the late twenties many an American had made his bundle of money.
The rich citizens of the era were able to glut themselves on the trinkets of the
age—fine automobiles and grandiose homes, along with the new mass-produced
gadgets that were the source of so many of these fortunes. Asheville itself had
become something of a trinket, a place to enjoy a lavish summer at a resort hotel
in the cool of the beautiful mountains. George Vanderbilt's choice of the area
to build his great house, and the continuing presence of his widow in the
exclusive suburb of Biltmore Forest (developed from a portion of the Vanderbilt
estate), lent an aura of credibility to social Asheville.
But even these conspicuous consumers could not find enough goods and
services to buy, and so turned increasingly towards investment as a haven for
their cash. Inevitably, the market for stocks and real estate became dangerously
overinflated. During the summer of 1929 the stock values began to sag, foreshadowing the collapse of a nation's investment portfolio. Investors, money
managers and business executives began to feel concern, followed by desperation, then by panic. By late fall, the soaring values of stocks and bonds came
crashing down and stayed down. On cue, like the midnight stroke in Cinderella,
just as the decades shifted, the glitter of the twenties ball was turning into the
rags of the Depression.
For Buncombe County the fantasy ended the morning the Central Bank and
Trust Company failed to open its doors, November 20, 1930. The previous day
Jim was on the train travelling towards Raleigh, perhaps to a Conservation and
Development meeting. From some of his fellow passengers he heard a rumor
that the Central Bank was in trouble, and even might close soon. The train
always made a short stop in Greensboro. He jumped off and hurried to call
Elizabeth. The next morning she set forth for town with John Shorter at the
wheel of the Hudson. At the top of Coxe Avenue, they saw the line of cars
reaching a mile down Patton Avenue to Pack Square, where the bank's doors
were already shut forever.3
Behind the doors was not only an insolvent bank, but also almost all the
financial assets of the City of Asheville and Buncombe County. Both had to
default on their interest payments. A long line of people were filing past the
bank as if viewing the open coffin of a close relative. Nearby, the mayor of
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
315
Asheville put a gun to his head, not willing to endure the shame of the disclosure
of his illicit dealings with Central president Wallace Davis, who would himself
spend time in the penitentiary. The mess was left for lawyers and the courts to
sort out. But these events affected people all over the region. Only a few weeks
before Elizabeth had persuaded their cook, the widow Edith Williams, to take
her savings out from under her mattress and put them in the bank for safekeeping.
As the house of cards came tumbling down in Buncombe County, the
universal rule became: "Sell, sell at any price." But no one was buying now.
The Hollywood development below Hickory Nut Gap grew up in scrub pines
and blackberries. The unfortunates who had bought lots there would never see
a golf course, and could hardly afford to build a house. As the chain reaction
of failed banks spread through Western North Carolina, counties and municipalities, businesses and individuals were ruined.
Months rolled into years and the situation worsened. Jim's lawyer explained to him that Buncombe County owed more than $50 million, making the
debt per $100 valuation work out to about $46, effectively reducing the market
for local real estate to the vanishing point. To buy local property meant also to
buy a portion of that debt. There is no doubt that this area was one of those
hardest hit in the entire country. A number of responsible, community minded
citizens, among them Jim's young Mend, Julian A. Woodcock, Jr., set up a
sinking fund to begin paying off this debt. He was in charge of the final
liquidation party, celebrated in 1979.
Before the crash, Jim's assumption that his wife's share of the Skinner
fortune would provide amply for the family's future was reasonable. As the two
aunts, Elizabeth (Bessie) and Frederika (Freddie), declined in health with the
years he had figured that future material needs would be cared for by their
estates and that, as a good steward, he should invest the money at his disposal
to bring the greatest return. Jim McClure believed in the local land game, and
he jumped in with the hope that he could develop an investment income sufficient to allow him to work for the Federation without salary. And besides, he
couldn't resist the excitement. He used Elizabeth's money, swelled by her
legacy from Aunt Bessie, who died in 1923, and the money Aunt Freddie gave
him to invest, to form the North State Corporation (Aunt Freddie had come to
live in Asheville). By 1929, the company had amassed a long list of holdings.
Lots in Asheville were a very liquid asset during the twenties, and Jim and his
North State Corporation were fairly floating in this particular commodity. There
were Amboy lots, Ardmion lots, Forest Hill lots, Roberts Street lots, Kimberly
lots, Biltmore Avenue lots, and Takoistie Trail lots; not to mention three houses,
three farms, and a store.
Outside of town, Jim owned an interest in a large tract of land in the
Wayehutta section of Jackson County, an interest in 36,000 acres along the
upper Pidgeon River in Hay wood County known as Sherwood Forest, and a
share in 14,000 acres along the headwaters of the Tuckasegee River in Jackson
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County. Up in Yancey County, Jim invested $6,000 in a cyanite mining company. By the end of 1930, Jim and his company owned, or had an interest in,
twenty-eight pieces of property, with taxes due in January of 1931.4
Jim McClure's motives for buying all of this property might have been
more idealistic than some of the other local schemers, but the disastrous financial results of the crash hit him just as hard when the doomsday bell sounded.
North State collapsed in the real estate debacle.
During the thirties, it was all Jim and Elizabeth could do to keep Hickory
Nut Gap Farm. The figures tell the plight of the McClure family. At the end of
1931 the value of their assets still maintained a healthy lead over their liabilities,
but a year later their assets were sinking much more rapidly than their liabilities.
Moreover, the assets they had were mostly Buncombe County properties that
were almost impossible to sell at any price. By 1933 the minus column surpassed the plus column by more than $10,000, creating great gloom up at
Hickory Nut Gap. Elizabeth's inheritance, locked up in the Northern Trust
Company of Chicago until the last of Ambrose Cramer, Sr.'s children should
die, had ceased paying dividends.
Jim began taking a small salary from the Farmers Federation, as he could
no longer afford to contribute his services as he had been doing, and he made
every possible economy on the farm. He wrote soberly to Doug Stuart, "I know
you are right about the necessity of my clearing up our situation, but it is a
complicated matter to work out. I now wish I had taken your advice four years
ago and let all the properties go" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Doug Stuart,
exact date unknown). The number of farm hands was trimmed and those who
remained received lower wages. For most of these families, cash was still
something of a luxury and as long as they had a house and a garden place they
could "make it." Jamie must have been eleven years old and Elspeth about eight
when the financial troubles reached their depths. Elizabeth faced the necessary
changes in their way of life squarely, with her customary humor and gallantry.
One morning she made a special time to explain to her small daughter that she
would be counting on her to help with many household chores. Elspeth remembers listening quietly, knowing this was serious business for the grown-ups. But
secretly she was thrilled at the prospect of making beds and sweeping floors
with her delightful mother, who always made a shared task fun. Jamie was
equally eager to take on more farm chores; but being children they doubtless
wearied of their duties soon and sometimes forgot them.
Mr. Will Boone became farm manager when James Davidson left. He was
a direct descendent of Daniel Boone and a representatives of the independent
tradition of the mountains. He had two daughters close to Jamie's age, Adeline
and May, and a son, Richard, just a few months younger than "Sis," as Elspeth
now liked to be called. Jamie was the intrepid leader of these children's many
adventures. Elspeth remembers the joys of playing hide and seek in the old barn,
prisoner's base in the special soft grass that grew in front of the Boone's house,
and dodge ball in the dry, dusty backyard. With great labor, under Jamie's
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
317
direction, they dug a pond in the pasture between the big house and the Boone's
that actually filled with muddy water deep enough for swimming. One of the
most distressing days she can remember was when a doctor, who had come to
see her mother about occasional severe headaches, condemned the pond as a
hot-bed of typhoid fever germs. Elizabeth was always careful about matters of
health, and swimming in the pond was thereafter forbidden. After that it was
remarkable how frequently people fell in.
The Huntley family moved to the farm several years later. Jamie used to
go down to play the banjo with Frances, who played the guitar, while his little
sisters Evelyn and Betty sang. Theirs was a musical family. It was whispered
that Rev. David Huntley had been the best fiddler for miles around in his youth,
but when he was called to preach he put his fiddle away and never touched it
again. Now he wrote hymns, complete with music, to be sent off to the Stamps
Baxter Company, which published the Paperback hymnals widely used in the
country churches. When he drove Elizabeth to town he always put on a sober
suit and composed hymns while he waited for her to do her errands.
Life went on happily at Hickory Nut Gap Farm, in spite of the loss of the
upstairs and downstairs maids. Elizabeth never complained and made everyone
around her happy with her enthusiasm for new ventures. They were "down to a
cook only:" as Jim wrote to Hetty and Doug, but there was another figure in the
household who helped Elizabeth hold it all together. Miss Agnes Paterson was
a Scottish lady who was nurse, governess and dear friend from about 1928 right
through the worst years of the Depression. Miss Pat was, as she herself put it,
a "bright Christian," incredibly thin, a mere wisp of a woman, conscientious,
thoughtful and gentle, but brave as a lion if she felt one of her charges was in
danger. Elspeth remembers her rushing up the lawn and through the rock garden
to stop the headstrong Shetland pony Neddy, who was running away with her
down the steep gravel road to the barn. This in spite of the fact that she was
physically fragile, and given to spells of lumbago (a dire pain in the back).
Miss Paterson was able to take responsibility for the complicated household
when Elizabeth had to be away during Aunt Freddie's last illness. Under Elizabeth's direction, she taught Jamie and Elspeth. She was a gentle influence in the
rough farm world.
Miss Frederika Skinner lived gamely on through the first months of the
debacle of the North State Company's fortunes, spending much of her time in
bed recovering from a broken hip. She had given Jamie an electric train, which
he had set up in the attic with an elaborate system of tunnels under magazines
and loops around family trunks. Elspeth remembers Aunt Freddie riding proudly
up in the dumbwaiter to the attic to witness the train in action. Aunt Freddie
died in the fall of 1930. Jim was on a money raising expedition in Philadelphia,
but rushed home when he received word that she was failing. He and Ambrose
were the executors of her estate.
Miss Freddie's death marked the transfer of the Skinner estate from one
generation to another. Elizabeth received the bulk of its worth, but it quickly
�318
We Plow God's Fields
Left: "Preacher" David Huntley
Right: Miss Agnes Patterson
became apparent that this inheritance would prove a burden rather than the
source of financial freedom for the McClure family. From the time Aunt Freddie
died in 1930 to November, 1932, her estate lost $471,155 in value. It was in
fact an empty treasure chest, and Jim and Ambrose had to spend long hours
corresponding with institutions and individuals to whom Aunt Freddie had left
legacies, including aged household helpers and a heroic Vermont poetess, Miss
Salley Cleghorn. Finally they simply had to divvy up the list of worthless
Buncombe County properties and send deeds to the various recipients. It would
be one more lesson for Jim, as the whole affair settled in his mind, of the
foolishness of putting one's faith in the material world.
When he saw how matters were going Jim wrote to Doug Stuart a letter,
part plea and part apologetic explanation:
Dear Doug,
. . . Elizabeth and I had always "figured" that when Aunt Bessie's and
Aunt Freddie's estates were divided up that her share would pay up all our
indebtedness and that there would be about $250,000.00 principal left for
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
319
income. Due to the tremendous shrinkage of the two estates, the cash legacies
took almost all of Aunt Bessie's. What was left for Siddy was applied on our
debts with a few stocks of very little value still on hand. By the time some
stocks . . . reached Siddy they were valueless.
Aunt Freddie's estate ended up with no cash at all but some properties came
to Elizabeth and me, and also some debts come with some of them.
The final windup of the estates instead of leaving us out of debt and with a
good income, finds us with a large indebtedness and a lot of property for which
there is no market . . . As to your suggestion of letting properties go, this is
just what I should like to do but it also presents difficulties . . .
If I can pledge the Cyanite stock and the Sherwood Forest stock in friendly
hands, I can then let one or two of the creditors take a judgement and when
they find they can get nothing, I think I can settle . . . at a low figure, provided
I have the cash from the pledged stock to make the settlement. As to the Banks
there is nothing to do but keep trying to sell some property and try to do this
before interest and taxes eat us up ...
I am doing everything I know how to do to get rid of this debt, and if you
have any suggestions, I shall be only too glad to have them. (James G. K.
McClure, Jr. to Douglas Stuart, no date)
This letter to Doug Stuart, asking him to become the "friendly hands" of
his financial salvation, was difficult to write. Doug, who was financially secure,
would help him out of course, because he and Harriet were loyal relations and
friends, but not before questioning Jim's business judgement. The Quaker Oats
executive had listened over the years to his brother-in-law's many social theories
and his youthful anti-capitalist sentiments. Now Jim was financially prostrate
and struggling to avoid the economic ruin that the collapse of land values had
brought on. His investments must have seemed reckless to a competent and
hard-nosed businessman like Doug Stuart. He thought Jim McClure's business
notions tended to be over-optimistic; that his belief in the steady progress of
prosperity was too sanguine. He loved and respected the man of vision, and he
and Harriet backed him up from first to last. Nevertheless the present circumstances justified Doug's cautious business sense, and made Jim feel irresponsible. They both lived in a business culture, where every man stood before the
world as a commercial success or failure. The pride of many men was based
on their personal success in the marketplace. It was a mask worn at all the social
functions of their kind. The shock of the Depression stripped many of these men
naked; too often suicide became the alternative to facing up to one's contemporaries in the new role of "failure." Jim McClure's life was built on more enduring values, and although he faced a desperate financial situation, his faith
carried him through. His identity was too rooted in the spiritual world to be
shaken by material difficulties. But he must have been deeply worried about the
future of his family. Doug Stuart did come to the rescue, by buying one-half
interest in the Tuckasegee property and interests in some of the others, thus
helping Jim and Elizabeth through this difficult period.
The education of Elspeth and Jamie became another burden for Jim and
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We Plow God's Fields
Elspeth riding the "airplane" on the porch, February 1930.
Elizabeth during these years. They were both determined to give them "the
advantages" that had meant so much in their own lives when they were growing
up. Jamie was bright and tended to be opinionated, and they worried that life
on the farm provided him too little companionship and left him too much by
himself reading in his room. Dr. Emerson, a child specialist whom they respected, assured them that a slightly truculent son who did not want to take
suggestions was quite natural and recommended a summer at Birch Rock Camp
in Maine. He assured them that such an experience would give him an entirely
different point of view, especially about home. Jamie did spend two summers
there, soaking up the New England atmosphere his parents prized and learning
to get along with boys his own age. He played baseball, learned to swim, which
was difficult to do on the farm as there was no deep water for miles, and fought
and made friends with other campers. At home on the farm two of Doug and
Harriet Stuart's daughters, Anne and Margaret, were spending the summer, and
he wrote to his sister: "How are you getting along without me? I am wishing I
was with you every minute. From Mummy's letters I have heard that you and
the Stuarts are having a fine time. Have you had a wrestling match with Margaret: If so, who won . . . ? There's a sailboat race in August, and several of us
are engrossed in boatmaking" (Jamie McClure to Elspeth McClure, June 1930).
His interest in sailing, begun at camp, would be a lasting one for this
land-locked mountain boy. The next year, on his way to camp, the indomitable
Aunt Wiggy, now dean of women at Simmons College in Boston, met him
between trains and sent back to Elizabeth a perceptive account of his short visit.
She wisely took him to see an exhibit on engines, where she left him for a time
to do an errand.
"Jamie, will you stay just here if I go down & telegraph?" "Why, Aunt
Wiggy! What do you think. You couldn't get me away from here."
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
il
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Jamie McClure.
... always he was most absorbed. I always had to talk to him to make him
aware of my presence. At the Hudson (20th Century) interior I would find him
consulting the chart, and then nipping back to the engine, simply enraptured—
I never saw such a perfect—"dead to the world."..! succeeded in getting him
away from the trains by getting him to come to select a model of the engine
in which he was so interested . . . We would be walking along and he would
put his arm "round my shoulder and saunter on talking, talking oblivious . . .
We got up to the Claremont [Hotel] a little ahead of time to his joy! as he
wanted to watch "the shipping." I could scarcely get him in. It was boiling and
he, at once, before one could wink, started to take off his coat. It was so funny!
The waiter said you can't take off your coat and Jamie said "I should think
comfort came before beauty!" but he kept his coat on. He ordered just the
things he wanted and enjoyed supper hugely in both senses of the word. He
321
�322
We Plow God's Fields
did seem to be very happy watching the ferries and eating at the same time.
(Martha Clarke to Elizabeth Cramer McClure, Summer of 1931)
The camp experience certainly served to smooth some rough edges for this
most enthusiastic and outspoken young man. He added his interest in sailing to
his fascination with Charles Lindberg's flight across the Atlantic to France.
Elspeth remembers the flying school he conducted with herself as pupil. At the
green table on the porch, where the family ate their meals all summer, she
learned the parts of a plane and learned to "fly" a tricycle made to look like an
airplane by pushing it up to the top of the rock garden and driving it fast down
the sharp angles of the path, to crash land in the box bushes at the foot of the
lawn. In the courtyard Jamie began building an airplane as large as the Spirit
of St. Louis out of beaverboard. She was as convinced as he that someday it
would soar over the farm.
School was of course an even more important question for these children.
Elizabeth herself had taught Jamie at first, using the Calvert method. The
Calvert School in Baltimore carried on a correspondence course that reached
worldwide, and was used by families in lonely areas. The emphasis was on art,
history and literature. Miss Paterson took over the daily teaching, but Elizabeth
always kept close to the school room.
Home teaching was not a permanent solution. Jamie was sent to a small
private school in Asheville, the Grove Park School, for fourth and fifth grades,
then to public school in Fairview. On the first day in public school he came
gleefully home announcing, "Eighteen boys in the class and I had a fight with
seventeen." He enjoyed his year, made some Mends and was fortunate to have
an excellent teacher, Miss Sally Merrill. But his parents, sensitive to the mountain accent and determined on the best possible education for their precocious
son, sent him the next year to the Asheville School for Boys, a private boarding
school on the far side of Asheville. He had a scholarship and to save paying
board and keep Jamie in the family for a little longer, he lived at home. Father
and son left the house at 6:45 a.m. six days a week. Saturday was a school day.
This made such a long day for Jamie that the next year they let him board. Jamie
was growing up to be as inquisitive a young man as he had been as a boy.
Machines, engines, ships, locomotives and the rest continued to enthrall him.
He was neither a great athlete nor a smooth ladies' man, but remained enthusiastically bookish. He spent hours studying Jayne's Fighting Ships, the famed
authority of the navies of the world, and could recognize the profile of every
American naval vessel. Jane Raoul Bingham, then a young Biltmore Forest
belle, recalls attending a dance at the Asheville School that she had been anticipating for some time. The McClures and Raouls were old friends, but Jane's
heart sank when she met up with Jamie, who was several years younger. He
insisted on taking her over to view a room full of science exhibits, which he
thought much more stimulating than the fearful constraints of a boys' school
dance. Poor Jane dutifully followed her little friend, to see what were to her the
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
323
dullest objects imaginable. While he explained the beautiful order of science,
she would hear the tantalizing strains of the dance music.5
As we have seen, the educational and religious traditions of New England
meant much to both Jim and Elizabeth, so they decided the Hotchkiss School
in Lakeville, Connecticut, was the place they wanted Jamie to go for high school
if possible. They liked the values the school stood for and they respected the
headmaster, George Van Santvoord, known to the boys as "The Duke." Jim
wrote to him in November 1932, asking if the school could offer some scholarship aid.
When this work [the Farmers Federation] first started in 19201 contributed
my time and this I was able to do for seven years. The Farmers Federation
then started to pay me a small salary. Business conditions have swept away
our entire income and resources except for this salary from the Farmers Federation. This salary is not sufficient to send Jamie to a good school and in fact
it is with great difficulty that we are able to live at all. He is on a scholarship
basis at The Asheville School.
I feel that the work here must be carried on irrespective of financial inducement elsewhere and I shall not leave it. We are very anxious to have Jamie at
Hotchkiss. Mrs. McClure and I were brought up in the North and tho the
excellence of the Asheville School is unquestioned, we are eager that Jamie
whose whole life has been spent in the Southern Mountains shall have the
standards and influence of Hotchkiss and New England.
I trust that Jamie will dedicate himself to a life of usefulness. It has been
the tradition of our family and I hope that if you can see your way clear to
granting him a scholarship that he may be of value and use to the school. I
know that it will mean everything to him. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to
George Van Santvoord, November 1932)
Jamie was accepted at Hotchkiss with a scholarship and worked hard
throughout his four years. At that time scholarship boys waited on tables,
cleaned bathrooms and did other chores while paying students did not. He loved
the school, and greatly enjoyed working on the newspaper. He made some good
friends, especially Jack Butler, who spent his summers sailing on Cape Cod,
an opportunity that he generously shared with his mountain roommate. Jamie
loved everything about the ocean and sailing more and more. At Hotchkiss he
was well prepared for his father's college and won the Yale Hotchkiss scholarship for his freshman year. But this is getting ahead of the story.
Back at Hickory Nut Gap, Jamie's pleasures continued to be his books,
hunting and fishing, helping out with the farm work and, as he grew older,
taking part in the work of the Federation. He was a fearless fellow, who entered
into any activity from pitching hay to dancing at the country club with boundless
enthusiasm. He was learning to play the banjo from "Pistol Pete" Taylor of the
Farmers Federation String Band and loved to sing the mountain ballads, which
were a delight to his mother, especially.
Some of the family's happiest times were spent at Tuckasegee, the one
�324
We Plow God's Fields
land interest saved from the crash. It was a glorious retreat. There the head
waters of the Tuckasegee River gather together and are forced through gorges
and over waterfalls to create spectacular sights. The property lies in one of the
most remote and beautiful parts of Western North Carolina, in the recesses of
Jackson County. It can be reached only by a narrow road, which was so bad in
those days that if it rained you couldn't get back until the mud dried. The river
was a paradise for trout and for fishermen. The churning, tumbling waters fall
from 4,000 to 2,500 feet on this property alone, making as dramatic a landscape
as North Carolina has to offer. At intervals tributary streams come rushing down
the steep sides of the gorge. The lower gorge, called the Shut In because it is
so difficult to pass through, begins where Bonas Defeat Cliff rises 500 feet from
the stream bed. The cliff was named for a fabled hound named Bonas who
chased a deer for three days until both were so exhausted they could only walk.
Reaching the top of the cliff the deer gathered his strength for a final rush,
whirling back to safety at the cliffs edge. Old Bonas matched the deer's rush,
but was unable to stop and fell to his death on the rocks below.
The Tuckasegee property had been purchased in August of 1926 by four
Asheville men, including Charles A. Webb, P. H. Branch and Jim Stikeleather,
Sr., the latter a trustee of the Educational and Development Fund of the Farmers
Federation. They bought the nearly 14,000-acre tract for a little over a quarter
of a million dollars, or about eighteen dollars an acre. There were several small
interior holdings, including a seventy-acre farm, along the most level section
of the stream, above the old mill dam where the river plunged into a narrow
defile. The owner, John Hamp Smith, lived in a simple two-story frame house
that was suitable for a club house. He had no faith in a man's personal check,
so George Ward of Waynesville, acting as agent, went up with $6,545.82 in
gold and silver and counted it out to Mr. and Mrs. Smith as they sat by their
hearth.
Jim Stikeleather interested Jim McClure in buying a share of the property.
Cameron Morrison, a former governor of North Carolina, and others soon joined
the group. These men dreamed of creating a retreat from the strains of civilization that many men endured in their pursuit of wealth. The Tuckasegee Rod and
Gun Club brochures were printed early in 1929. One hundred memberships
were to be paid at a stiff price of $7500 each. The bottom dropped out of land
values just as the brochures were ready, and not even Jim McClure could sell a
membership in this scheme. He and the others were saddled with an enormous
property and its debts, at a time when it was hard to sell mountain land to anyone
at any price.
Fortunately the headwaters of the Tuckasegee River lie in one of Eastern
America's rainiest districts, and consequently the trees grow very rapidly. After
Doug Stuart took over his half interest, Jim, acting as agent for the remaining
owners, was able to arrange a long-term timber sale to the Gennett Lumber
Company. A pall of gloom descended at Hickory Nut Gap at the thought of
cutting the great trees, but careful arrangements were made with the company
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
325
to stay 300 feet from the banks of the Tuckasegee and its major tributaries.
Later, Jamie and his Mends got a tremendous thrill out of riding the old engine,
called the Black Satchel, which pulled the logging train, and the remains of the
railroad lines served as walking and riding trails to remote parts of the property
long after the rails were pulled up and the ties and trestles rotted away. The
most important benefit was that the timber sales paid the taxes and the salary
of the wardens for many, many years.
Both Jamie and Elspeth loved weekend trips to Tuckasegee, and their
parents encouraged them to take their friends. Hetty and Doug Stuart did make
a few a visits there, but they were soon absorbed in a ranch in Wyoming where
they would spend all available free time.
Two of their daughters, Anne and Margaret, spent three summers at Hickory Nut Gap Farm. Harriet must have been pleased to have the girls come under
the happy influence of her friend Elizabeth, and the McClures were delighted
to have the girls and some other young people as well to be playmates for
Elspeth and Jamie. Jim wrote to Hetty describing some activities of the first
summer, 1930:
Yesterday they spent the morning riding on the hay wagon which was
hauling in the oats—and the day before they had a treasure hunt which was the
most amusing thing I have ever seen. Siddy had instructions for them at
different points, dragons had to be slain, a princess was found gagged and
bound to a tree, invisible coats were worn during part of the hunt and all in
all—I have never read more absorbing directions or seen a hunt carried out
with more fervor—It took all morning and they came in exhausted but with the
treasure in hand. Siddy even hid marbles in the sand pile, and the entire
sandpile had to be dug over by hand before the requisite number were found.
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart July 27, 1930)
One summer two of Arthur Page's sons, Arthur and Johnnie, and Jim's
nephew, Nate McClure, joined the gang. The family employed a college student
to lead the boys on camping trips and in farm work projects. Elizabeth gave art
lessons, and wrote and directed a play about SherrilTs Inn in Civil War days.
Anne, Margaret and Elspeth almost undermined a foundation wall in the basement trying to make a fireplace for the stage, until Elizabeth discovered them
and showed them how to make a better fireplace with the cardboard boxes that
had held canning jars. Nate McClure, an impulsive young man of good heart,
sliced his finger in the bean frenching machine and had to have stitches. One
Sunday he put all his summer's allowance into the collection plate when the
extended family attended John and Mathilda Shorter's colored church on Brush
Creek for a special preaching day. Miss Paterson somehow lived through these
summers when her "little Elspie" became unruly with the support of her Stuart
cousins. The children fought, teased each other, and had many beneficial experiences.
After the last and most exciting summer of visiting cousins and friends, it
�326
We Plow God's Fields
was discovered that Elspeth was "anemic." Her mother kept her in bed for
breakfast and stuffed her with iron pills. Both she and Jamie used to have bouts
of "acidosis," a childhood malady that no longer seems to exist. This was cured
by spending a day or two in bed eating delicious chicken broth and rice. Her
mother made staying in bed so delightful that Elspeth developed a taste for it.
Elizabeth was a careful mother where health was concerned, but a firm family
rule was that you never talked about illness outside the family, just as you never
discussed money or the lack of it.
Hickory Nut Gap Farm was fairly isolated from the social doings of Asheville for two young people growing up during the Depression. Trips to town
were expensive. Elizabeth did not drive and John Shorter or Rev. David Huntley
had to be snatched from some necessary project to make such a journey possible. The bus could be flagged down at the top of the driveway, but the bus
station was far from the houses of their friends. It cost ten cents to telephone
Asheville and only necessary calls were made. Elspeth had school at home with
Miss Patterson until fifth grade. It is not surprising that socializing did not come
naturally to either of the McClure children. Fortunately they both enjoyed solitude, but Elizabeth kept encouraging their social life because she thought it was
an important part of a person's development.
The McClure's friends the Heywoods, the Herberts and the Izards had
children who remained faithful friends in spite of distance. Beckie Herbert and
Mary D. Heywood, and later Mary Eleanor Smith, often came to stay on the
farm for weekends. Beckie and Elspeth made up a game of "Brownies." They
would sneak down to the kitchen even before the early-rising, ponderous Mrs.
Williams came in, and attempt to make breakfast and do other household chores
secretly, pretending to be invisible. Sometimes the invisible game went on all
day, which meant rushing past any grown ups encountered, especially guests,
so fast that they would not see you.
A great delight was joining the Boone girls and Richard at the fruit stand
they operated for the farm, beside the famous spring on the curve of the road
just below their house. Here they sold summer apples, cider and grapes. Beckie
and Elspeth charged five cents to show off the Scotch Terrier Chug's tricks.
Once they dressed as gypsies and offered to tell fortunes. This was frowned
upon by their parents, but buying watermelons from passing trucks from Polk
County for a nickel and selling them for a dime, or even a quarter, was encouraged. One summer Beckie and Elspeth, who both loved horses, formed the B.
and E. Health Department and attempted to clean up the horse barn. Once again
germs were suspected and the project was squelched. The Raoul family had
given the McClures their black and white cob pony Circus, and Elspeth and
Beckie or her friend Richard Boone could ride over the country and have
memorable races with Circus and Neddy, the Shetland pony.
It was about this time that Elizabeth again had one of her painting fits. She
decided to surprise Jim for Christmas with a portrait of Elspeth. The only place
where Elizabeth could hide the project from Jim and have the necessary north
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
327
Elspeth, riding "Circus," and Becky Herbert with the two dogs "Wags" and "Chug/
summer of 1933.
light was the basement; so amidst cobwebs and canning jars she set up her easel,
with a big green door open to the little garden below the house. Elspeth, who
was trying hard to be a tomboy, had to stop playing with her constant companion
Richard Boone, dress in a white organdy dress, and spend hours sitting in a
chair placed on a table. Fortunately Aunt Wiggy was visiting and read aloud
during the sessions. As you look at the portrait, hanging today in the dining
room at Hickory Nut Gap Farm, there is little to suggest an energetic little girl
enduring long hours of posing. The child, sitting firmly but naturally, wears a
summer dress so light that a hint of her shoulder is visible through the short
sleeves. She holds a bowl of flowers and her dress is tied with a wide blue sash.
Elizabeth wanted the portrait to fit in with the ancestors already hanging in the
dining room of her Grandmother Skinner and Jim's great-grandfather Dixon,
so she left off her daughter's freckles because, as she said, "Ancestors never
have freckles." The young model was spared much posing time when Elizabeth
did the finishing touches with a large pillow stuffed inside the dress and tied
firmly with the sash. One can imagine Jim's delight at this surprise present.
During these years when Elspeth and Jamie were growing up, older members of the family were falling away from this world. Aunt Freddie's name lived
on at Hickory Nut Gap. Ben Owenby, herdsman for the Herefords, named his
twins Fred and Frederika after the grand old lady from Chicago. On the McClure
side two devoted sons of Christ were taken home. Jim's beloved brother Arch,
whose career in the Presbyterian Church was as full of promise as his father's
�328
We Plow God's Fields
was full of accomplishment, died unexpectedly in 1931 while undergoing an
appendectomy. Arch and Jim were the closest of brothers, full of mutual admiration and his death struck Hickory Nut Gap with terrible sorrow. Within the year
the family gathered once again to mourn the passing of Jim's able and widely
beloved father. James G. K. McClure, Sr. was buried in Lake Forest in the
winter snows of 1932. He left his children and grandchildren a challenge to
Christian manhood as exemplified by his belief that Christ did not come to
make life easy, but to make men great. His life had shown that putting ideals
into practice often depends on long acquaintance with a community and the
confidence and trust that friendships built over the years bring. Annie Dixon
McClure, who had always been a loyal and gracious partner in his work, spent
many of her remaining years in North Carolina with Dumont and Annie Clarke.
Elizabeth and Jim continued to take their family to Lake Forest for vacations. As well as the Stuarts, "Granny" Cramer was still living at Rathmore,
Elizabeth's childhood home, although Ambrose Cramer, Sr. had died years
before. Elizabeth's step-sister, Isabella Ryerson, and her children, Joannie and
Tony, were great favorites with the McClures. Isabelle was always called "Aunt
Ginty," and was a thrilling figure: she rode to hounds, wore glamourous clothes,
and had a mischievous sense of humor. Her husband, Donald Ryerson, was a
brilliant man and had been a special friend of Jim's in Lake Forest. It was a
great tragedy of the Depression when he committed suicide. Joannie and Tony
often came with their mother to the farm and were adventurous pals for Jamie
and Elspeth. In the summer of the Chicago World's Fair, the McClures drove
to Lake Forest. The trip, complete with gas, meals and an overnight stop in a
motel that boasted a restaurant shaped like a giant coffee pot, cost $14.50.
Attending the World's Fair, with Aunt Ginty discovering the most exciting
exhibits, was a thrill for the farm children. Jamie McClure was particularly
excited by the submarine on exhibit. He took issue with the guide on a technical
point, insulting that gentleman properly. After the tour they went together to
some source of infallible information and Jamie, who was about fifteen, was
proved right, which delighted his father. Jim and Elspeth were most inspired
by the transportation pageant, "Wings of the Century." It was as dramatic as the
Buffalo Bill Show he had seen as a boy, with whole Indian tribes moving across
the stage, engines from east and west meeting for the driving of the golden stake
when die transcontinental railroad was completed, and finally the appearance
of the airplane. Surely this drama proved his theories of progress.
When the Ryersons came to visit the farm there were many adventures for
the children. Once Jim and his brother-in-law Donald Ryerson staged a battle
for the hayloft. The four children manned the fort in the old grey barn below the
garden, spending days building tunnels in the hay and barricades at the front.
Hay was then stored loose in the barn instead of in bales as it is today. When
the day of battle came Jamie McClure and Joannie Ryerson had stirred up a
secret weapon, a mixture of cotton seed meal and water that looked just like
soft manure. But the men had a surprise, too. The farm truck filled with snow
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
329
dug from the late-lasting snow bank at the top of the gap. The barn fight raged
fast and furious until Miss Paterson, stationed where she could watch over the
picket fence at the bottom of the garden, was suddenly stricken with lumbago
and had to be carried from the field!
The children spent hours with sledge hammers and wrenches gradually
taking apart a rusting rock crusher abandoned in the quarry at the top of the gap
by the road paving crew. Jamie was planning to make a fortune from scrap
metal. Other welcome visitors were Elizabeth's half-brother Corwith with his
wife Laura and young son Cory, who was several years younger than Elspeth.
After struggling to tag along with older cousins, Elspeth remembers it was fun
to have someone younger to show around the farm. The two became great
friends. Young Cory would spend many summers on the farm as he grew up
because his father was a yacht salesman and the family lived on a succession
of boats.
The Dumont Clarkes moved to Asheville in 1930, and there were frequent
get togethers of the two families. Led by Jim, they all enjoyed vigorous outdoor
activity, followed by voracious feasting. Elizabeth described one of these clan
gatherings to Hetty. "Thanksgiving was a grand day as it was deliciously mild
and the young climbed the peak in the morning & played touch foot-ball in the
afternoon in spite of having cleaned up two twelve pound turkeys and 28 small
mince & pumpkin pies not to mention drinking five gallons of cider. I truly
expected them all to die of apoplexy" (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Harriet
McClure Stuart, December 2, 1934).
To this rising generation Jim McClure was both a man who loved fun and
a stern model of moral rectitude. His example, both of self-discipline and of
working idealism, brought him a natural respect from both his own children and
his nieces and nephews. They all wanted to earn Jim's accolades.
Christmas on the farm often brought visitors from Lake Forest. One year
both Aunt Ginty with her children and Uncle Ambrose ("Bowser") and his
young wife Mary were on hand. Right after Christmas everyone, including
Elizabeth was struck down with the flu, everyone except Jim. First he would
don an apron and appear with trays for all hands, then slip into his Harry Lauder
outfit, a pair of plaid undershorts with a tweed jacket, and come into each sick
room with his concertina to cheer up the patients with Scottish songs. Later he
would don a white coat and appear with thermometer and black bag to check
on their progress. He managed to turn a disaster into a good time. Aunt Mary,
who was so protective of her new husband that he called her his Banty Hen,
spent hours chinking the open cracks of the "green room" with tissue paper.
When Elizabeth recovered enough to creep out of bed and check on the comfort
of her guests she looked in on the Cramers, saw a bit of paper at a window and
began to pull, exclaiming that the room must not have been cleaned properly.
Aunt Mary vows she pulled out every bit of the caulking before she finished
cleaning up!
Midway through the Depression years there was a sad farewell for Miss
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Paterson. She went to live with a family in Lake Forest, highly recommended
by Elizabeth. Elspeth loved her dearly and it was a difficult parting, but the little
girl was now nine years old and she was to go to Grove Park School in Asheville. Miss Pat had taught her at home for four years. The school, where Jamie
had gone before her, was run by two high-minded maiden ladies whose great
interests were moral instruction and dramatics. She remembers what fim she had
driving to school with her father. He taught her many songs, including "Abdul
Abulbul Amer," "Clementine," and "The Cowboy's Prayer," which he had
learned on the roundup in Texas. She loved to hear stories of his days on the
range and often wished he had taken up the old nester's offer to stay in Texas,
so they could have worked on a ranch together. They used to plan a long
camping trip by wagon, which never actually took place. Jim had never gotten
the gypsy yearnings out of his soul. He had taught her to ride and now that the
pony Circus was growing old they used to go out on one or another of the three
farm horses when they were not occupied in the field. At last Jim bought a
Tennessee Walker named "Adam." Elspeth promptly changed his name to
"Fleetfoot," although Mr. Hunfley stubbornly continued to call him "Adam"
because he thought it was unlucky to change a horse's name. Then the three
farm mares produced colts, a wonderful delight. Gypsy was Elspeth's own, and
with her father's help she trained the little horse. When riding with her father,
Elspeth remembers burying her fears with pride, for he was a man whose
admiration you worked to gain. This eliminated the possibility of whimpering
or complaining.
Education was such a high priority for the McClures that when several
Asheville families started the Asheville Country Day School, which offered a
conventional college preparatory curriculum, they joined with the Pinckney
Herbert family to employ a teacher for their daughters, Beckie and Elspeth, who
were in eighth and ninth grades respectively. The school only went as far as the
seventh grade, but they arranged for a room in the building, an old house on
Victoria Road, and the two girls took part in all school activities. Their teacher
was Mrs. Millard Ward, a sensitive, intelligent New Englander. The McClures
had hoped to send Elspeth to New England for high school, but after visiting
around Elizabeth decided that Chatham Hall, in Virginia, was inspired by the
traditions she respected and had the warmth and loving spirit she had missed as
a girl at St. Timothy's. They were not disappointed and came to love the
headmaster, Dr. Edmund J. Lee, and his wife Lucy, who had been missionaries
in China. Jim even brought up the Federation's string band and put on a square
dance for the girls, along with a talk about the Farmers Federation. Elspeth, after
suffering terrible pangs of homesickness during her first year, loved the school
so much that she later sent her two daughters there. The only thing that troubled
Jim was that Chatham Hall was an Episcopal School. He arranged to have his
daughter become a member of the Lake Forest Presbyterian Church one summer, just to make sure she didn't get any ideas in her head.
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
331
Going off to school, helping her parents entertain many visitors, and,
especially for Elspeth, helping her father at the Federation picnics that he was
now holding every summer, helped to cure her social shyness. Jamie was driving, and he soon taught his sister so they could join their Mends more easily.
By Christmas 1937 Elizabeth was writing to Harriet Stuart that " . . . Tryon,
Flat Rock and Biltmore were all full of parties & Jamie—once the recluse, has
now become the most pronounced kind of partyhound! He was resplendent in
Doug's 'tuck' and 'tails' ..." (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Harriet McClure
Stuart, January 11, 1938).
Jim described for his sister one of his son's first successful forays into the
social domain, accompanied by his slightly older cousin. Jim McClure was a
senior at Hotchkiss and his cousin Jamie Clarke was at Princeton. "We have had
great fun this Christmas. Jamie McClure has picked up sufficient interest to
attend three dances! He goes arrayed in Uncle Dumont's tuxedo and Jamie
Clarke arrayed in mine. The first dance they attended Jamie Clarke split his
pants in the middle of the dance floor and had to be escorted off the floor by
an encircling body guard. The rest of the evening he had to move with the
utmost caution ..." (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart,
January 1, 1937).
Perhaps the contradiction as to the origin of Jamie McClure's "tuck" came
because a mother is usually the arranger of borrowed tuxedos. The activities of
all, Grandmother McClure as well, are recounted in this letter written by Jamie
McClure to his Aunt Hetty.
In spite of unpleasant weather, the vacation has been a lively one. Bert
Lewis [husband of Phebe Ann Clarke], Jamie Clarke, and I have been together
a lot, and the result is that much wood has been cut, to say nothing of the
dissipations of the society whirl. The Clarkes have been in great force, and
Grandmother is her usual amazingly lively self. She has become quite a figure
in Asheville's older circles; is referred to quite solemnly, I believe, as Madame
McClure! Jamie [Clarke] has just gone back to Princeton. He has to cover a
couple of hockey games for the Prince [the college newspaper] (he's hockey
Editor), as well as considerable studying to make up for time lost through
journalistic activities. The new board of the Prince for 1938 has just been
elected, and Jamie was named Secretary. This post goes to the Sophomore
who leads the field on his board, and it puts him right in line for the chairmanship if he keeps up his present high standards. I hope he gets it. (Jamie
McClure to Harriet McClure Stuart, January 2, 1937)
The work Elizabeth did for everyone's happiness at Christmas, quietly,
almost secretly, was remarkable. Santa continued to appear for all the farm
tenants and their children and there was always a beautiful Christmas Eve
supper. One year Jim wrote to his parents "Siddy does get up the finest affairs
with the table wonderfully decorated & old photographs as place cards. After
dinner we sang Christmas carols, Jamie Clarke leading on his violin" (James
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Jamie McClure and Jamie Clarke "Offfor
Mt. Mitchell/' March 1935.
G. K. McClure, Jr. to his parents, December 26, 1930). On Christmas morning,
when the family opened the door to the study, the spirit of her generosity
emanated from every corner of the room, centered on the bulging stockings,
each with a bright card or a tempting package decorating its top. There might
be mostly new toothbrushes, nuts and oranges inside, but there were always one
or two specially desired items in the pile of gifts.
The most triumphant Christmas surprise she ever arranged was a present
of a new study for Jim. There was a little room off the main study, which opened
only onto the porch and had no entry into the house itself. While Jim was away
raising money for the Fund, Elizabeth directed Mr. Huntley in the construction
of a secret book door connecting these rooms. Ambrose Cramer supplied the
plans. When Jim came home the door was in place. For years this room had
been used to keep potted plants in the winter and for the family's boots and
overshoes. Elizabeth blocked the one window with an old garden hat and a lanky
geranium plant so that the work in progress could not be seen from outside. One
morning there was snow and Jim tried to open the locked door from the porch
to find his galoshes. Elizabeth told him she had locked the door so no one would
open it by mistake and let her plants freeze, and that she had lost the key. Surely
she would find it by evening. Jim threatened to break the door down to find the
missing overshoes, but somehow she dissuaded him and had a pair out for him
when he came home. Each morning Jim would set some task for Mr. Huntley
to accomplish that day, and each evening when he came home the task was not
completed, because Mr. Huntley was spending every available moment making
shelves and cupboards in the secret room. Finally he told Elizabeth, "Mrs.
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
333
McClure, we've got to tell him. I can't stand this deception no longer." Elizabeth had her work cut out for her to persuade the honest preacher to continue
the deception a few days longer. Finally it was Christmas Eve. She still had to
tack down the red checked oil cloth on the new shelves and she was afraid Jim
would hear her hammering; so she asked Elspeth to turn on the record player.
Jim was horrified with the loud jazz on such a sacred evening and reprimanded
his daughter sharply. On Christmas morning all was in readiness. A letter from
Santa Glaus was sticking out of the book shelf, Mr. Hunfley himself was in the
"little study" jingling sleigh bells, and when Jim followed the instructions in the
note to push on the wall he beheld a cozy little room with his father's high
backed desk all ready for him.
Needless to say Elizabeth did not have much leisure for painting in the
midst of all her other activities, but fortunately she did take time out to paint a
special gift for Jamie on his seventeenth birthday—a portrait of his father. It
hangs in the dining room of the old house today, opposite the portrait of Elspeth.
Elizabeth said she could not paint Jim in the style of the "ancestors" as she had
her daughter, because "he is such a modern man." Jim sits as though ready to
speak, and step out into the room to take part in a family gathering. Old John
Shorter put it best when he said, "When I build a fire in the dinin' room, I have
to build it just right 'cause Mr. McClure's eyes - they follow me." Jim wrote
to Hetty that "Siddy had painted my portrait during the past few weeks and gave
it to him [Jamie] as a birthday present. Everyone thinks the portrait a masterpiece and I consider Siddy a genius" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet
Stuart, March 22, 1936).
Elizabeth painted only three portraits professionally after she married Jim.
One was of her friend, Frances Herbert, commissioned by her children, one of
another close friend, Harvey Heywood, and a third of Elizabeth "Ibby" Elkins,
at that time married to Harry Hollins, who had come down from the North to
run the Federation uniform plant as a service job. Each is an excellent likeness
and a decorative success. "Ibby" adored Elizabeth and used to pounce on Jim
to tell him he must make a place for her to paint and allow time for her. Perhaps
partly because of this Jim did build a studio for Elizabeth at the back of the
courtyard, beyond the spring house and the old fort. She was very excited about
the prospect of a place to work where she would have a large north window and
would not have to be constantly putting her painting paraphernalia away. But
by the time it was built the second World War was coming on, in all its horror
and tragedy. It was not to be a time for painting.
Throughout the thirties the McClures continued to enjoy the Asheville
social rounds despite the hard times and the changed attitudes toward extravagance. Jim was asked to be the "general" of the Rhododendron Brigade of
Guards, organized in 1934, and each year he donned his regalia as commanderin-chief during the Festival Week. He looked like something out of a Sousa
band, with a tall hat and oversized golden buttons. He carried off his role with
mock seriousness and felt that this gave him a good contact with Asheville's
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young businessmen. Elizabeth almost balked at being called the Countess of
Pisgah, but the Rhododendron Festival was a civic event Jim relished. All the
details were reported in the local newspaper:
All members of the Rhododendron Brigade of Guards, including the 29 new
ensigns to be commissioned at the annual Ensign Ball at Grove Park Inn
tomorrow evening, have been ordered to report at the inn ...
An elaborate ceremonial will attend the commissioning of the new ensigns
and Queen Myra [Lynch] in the Rhododendron throne room . .. Hod Williams
and his orchestra have been engaged to play for the ball . . . Major-General
James G. K. McClure, Jr., commander of the Brigade, will lead the ceremonials and will officially present the King's commission to Queen Myra, naming
her honorary Colonel-in-Chief of the First regimen of the Guards . . .
The Rhododendron Brigade of Guards . . . is colorfully uniformed and is
considered one of the most important units of the general festival organization.6
For her part, Elizabeth gained a reputation as Asheville's most accomplished mimic during these years. At one party, given by a club known as the
Bachelors and Benedicts, she dressed Jim up to look like Chief Justice Hughes.
She knew one trick that made a Person unrecognizable, and so Jim remained
throughout the evening. She raised his height with little lifts on his shoes. The
party took place during the furor over Franklin Roosevelt's attempt to pack the
Supreme Court with sympathetic New Dealers, and so she made a sign for him
to carry that read "ain't they mean to the Court Supreme." But Elizabeth herself
stole the thunder at that particular ball. She transformed herself so that she not
only looked like Charlie Chaplin, whom she adored, but she adopted his mannerisms as well. She could shuffle and jerk just like the master. At one point, a
young man who knew the McClures well, Pruden Smith, felt duty bound to give
her a swift kick in the rear and a lecture for hanging about the entrance of the
ladies' room. He was enormously embarrassed when he learned her identity. A
few years later he took over a division of the Federation and the story was the
subject of many jokes.
Much of Jim McClure's social life revolved around encouraging contributors to the Educational and Development Fund. During the mid-thirties, the
tobacco heiress Mrs. Benjamin Duke became interested in his work. Jim wrote
to Hetty: "Mrs. Duke is up here and threw a party for me and the fiddlers last
night. It went big—I brought Jamie along and he played and sang with the
fiddlers" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, July 25, 1936).
Jim nursed her interest in the Federation along to the point where she was ready
to donate a million dollars to the Fund. The papers were all written up, awaiting
her signature, when her sudden death ended this dramatic possibility.
All this time Jim was carrying a heavy load, directing the growth of the
Federation through a difficult economic period. Yet he was also carrying on his
father's tradition of public service, along with his full-time job. He had been a
member of the State Board of Conservation and Development for some years
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
335
and in Buncombe County his influence was broad, stretching across all sorts of
social boundaries. Offers of committee positions frequently came his way, and
he devoted himself to each one as a practitioner of the Social Gospel. He found
time to serve as a trustee for Asheville's Mission Hospital, a director of the
Blue Ridge Milk Producers Cooperative Association, a member of the Board
of Directors of the Federal Home Loan Bank, and vice-president of the North
Carolina Cooperative Council. In his own community he remained a member
of the School Committee. In the twenties he had helped to consolidate the six
small one-room structures in Fairview township into one larger building, and
to start a high school. Previously only a few boys and girls had been able to
continue their education beyond seventh grade by going to other towns. There
were no politics quite as serious as school politics, and keeping public education
on an even keel in the thirties was no easy task, since Buncombe County was
bankrupt.
Jim became the subject of a minor controversy in the state when the governor failed to reappoint him to the Board of Conservation and Development in
1932. He had been a hard-working and useful member of this group and was
influential in setting up game preserves and focusing the state's attentions on
the conservation problems of its too often neglected western region. He took a
keen interest in the responsibilities of his position, as a letter from an engineer
he had worked with testifies. Mr. Thorndike Saville of Winston-Salem had
heard that the governor was planning to appoint a member of his own Democratic party to the post. He wrote to Jim, "I have many times expressed to the
Director and to other members of the Board that there was no member of the
Board who had taken the trouble to inform himself and to evidence as intelligent
an interest in the several activities of the Board as you have done ... I am firmly
convinced that it would be a calamity to the State if you were not reappointed
for another term ..." (Thorndike Saville to James G. K. McClure, Jr., July 16,
1932).
Governor Ehringhaus found this position too valuable a political appointment to fill with a "Black Radical," as Republicans had been called in North
Carolina since Reconstruction days, no matter how conscientious and effective
he might be. It must have been some consolation to Jim that the local papers
stood up for him. W. K. Beichler wrote the following letter to the Asheville
Citizen, which was printed in A. L. Banister's column, "Hunting and Fishing
in Western North Carolina:"
Editorials in both Asheville papers of this past week have supplied very
excellent and pertinent comment upon the loss of Mr. James G. K. McClure,
Jr. from the State Board of Conservation . . . Figuratively speaking, his has
been for years a "voice crying in the wilderness" for the cause of conservation.
He has done more than any other man in the western half of the state to
overcome our sadly apathetic and do-nothing attitude toward the possibilities
of this state as a commercial forest land and recreational area. For years he has
advocated and worked for a comprehensive system of state-owned forest,
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parks and game refuges. Not only that, he has presented definite plans to show
that such a system can be acquired as a distinct investment, and not merely as
a disbursement of public funds. It is n o t . . . generally known that he is directly
and almost solely responsible for Western North Carolina's four great game
refuges on National Forest lands. His was the idea for them, and his the
accomplishment of working out with the Federal government the cooperative
arrangement.7
Santford Martin, editor of the Winston-Salem paper, who had served with
Jim, wrote a personal note to him during the controversy.
Of all the members of this Board, I think the State could have spared any
of them better than it can spare you. I have many times said behind your back
that you were by all odds the best informed and best fitted for this type of
service to the State of all the members of the Board. It is a tragedy . . .
The more I see of the type of politics in the ascendancy in North Carolina,
the more firmly I become convinced that the old mountaineer up in your
country was right when he said, "Politics are a ass!" (Santford Martin to James
G. K. McClure, Jr., August 8, 1933)
Jim wrote to Hetty, "The Governor did not reappoint me to the Board of
Conservation . . . I have been on the Board for eight years and have enjoyed
keeping in touch with the Resources of the State" (James G. K. McClure, Jr.
to Harriet McClure Stuart, August 10, 1933). An Asheville Citizen editorial
written in his behalf said, "Conservation work cannot prosper except as it is
kept out of politics as far as possible. Experience is worth something. Zeal in
the public service is not as common as to count for nothing when it is encountered."8 The writer was an astute observer of Jim's work. His zealous promotion
of the public good, in the face of an often overwhelming effort to push along
partisan or regional interests, set this man apart. His combination of warmth and
charm, his quick mind, his persistence and insistence on seeing results, made
him ideally suited to the constraints of the board room. He actually liked meetings. Whether small and intimate or large and noisy, they usually brought out
the best in him. Another trait that helped Jim was his skill, in making a disparate
group of people first trust one another as Mends, so that when it came time to
make decisions, personal rivalries and competitions could be minimized.
As Jim continued to involve himself in local and state affairs, he was also
asked to head up a national organization capable of considerable influence.
Forestry was a science he pursued relentlessly during the thirties, both as the
overseer of the Federation's Forest Products Division and as a private owner
responsible for cutting timber on large tracts of mountain property. As a result,
he first became a director of the American Forestry Association, and then served
a term as president of the North Carolina branch for three years. In 1937 he was
elected president of the national association. During his tenure, the efforts of
members were directed by its president to support the Cooperative Farm For-
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
337
estry Act of 1937, which authorized a federal appropriation of $2.5 million to
assist the states in advancing farm forestry. At the end of his term as president
of the association, Jim continued as a director for two years and then became
vice president. His pursuit of good citizenship had involved him in politics,
from Washington to Raleigh to Asheville and back home to Fairview. At each
level, he brought a large vision and the courage to act.
As president of the American Forestry Association, Jim was in a position
to observe the New Deal government at close range. Here was a government
made up of people with a commitment to their convictions that Jim could
admire. But his Republican outlook kept him from becoming swept up in the
excitement. In a paper for the Pen and Plate Club, he sorted out his various
reactions to the rapid political and economic changes brought in by Franklin
Roosevelt. Jim McClure's views were quite astute for a man living in the midst
of the era, and represent a critique that flowed directly from his own experience
and philosophy.
Here we come to March 1st, 1933, with our political creeds unchanged but
with the country's industrial economic life paralyzed. The new administration
takes charge in Washington. In one hundred days bills are passed in Congress
that revolutionize the government of the United States . . . It almost seems as
if the Senate and the House had been anesthetized. It almost seems as if they
were not conscious of what they were doing. A revolution, perhaps the greatest
revolution . .. that has ever occurred and yet ... without the gathering of a
single mob, or without the pressure of a single soap box orator, or a single
riot, or a busted head . . . A program was put through Congress putting collectivism into action. In a world where individualism seemed to have failed a new
national planning was inaugurated. The government is put in full control of
agriculture, industry and business . ..
. .. [As] I have thought about this new program, I must confess that from
the idealist's point of view it has a strong appeal. One interesting fact connected with it is the almost religious fervor of the men who have worked out
these ideas. They feel and believe that they are engaged in a crusade for the
rights of the average man . . .
This step, it seems to me, marks an era in the development of mankind. It
is a step where mankind has adjusted himself to new conditions without a
bloody socialrevolution. . .
As to the outcome of these changes, no one knows. We do not even know
whether these changes are temporary or denote a permanent change in our
manner of Government. I happened to be in the gallery of the Senate the night
the National Recovery Act was passed and the compelling argument for its
passage was "Gentlemen these are desperate times and require desperate remedies." When we attempt to pass judgement on these great changes we must
temper our idealistic hopes with practical experience. We have no precedent
to guide us ...
The control of industry will involve an immense bureaucracy—and the hand
of bureaucracy will deaden business . . . Let Federal agents go about inspecting the affairs of business men, and you will have a multiplication of the evils
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and abuses, including bribery and blackmail, that we see in our municipalities
enforcing building codes, tenement house regulations, and so on.
We have failed to develop in this country a tradition of public office that
inspires us with any confidence . ..
Men go to any length to get into office and accumulate political debts which
they must pay out of the government pork barrel. My experience in government and state agencies has been that petty political considerations come first
in almost all decisions—and there even arises an inability to see or think
clearly on questions of efficiency and public good.
Our experience with Government Regulation of the railroad has not been
an inspiring one. The Interstate Commerce Commission has cost us millions
of dollars, . . .
Today we are faced with tremendously increased government control. It is
no longer a debatable question, it is an accomplished fact. . .9
Meanwhile, the Depression did little to dim the social life at Hickory Nut
Gap. Jim never needed frills to have a good time. He had his Santa Claus suit
for Christmas and he could always pick up a few firecrackers for the Fourth.
Jim's antics and parlor games never failed to entertain his guests. He could talk
the best dressed young man into placing a glass of water on his forehead, and
trying to rise from a prone position to a standing one in front of the howling
guests at a party. He could always feel when a certain heaviness began to hang
over a group of people and liked to take it upon himself to dispel the deadening
influence. He did this for his own family, too. Elspeth remembers him livening
up breakfast at a hotel one morning. He whispered to her that he would give her
a dollar if she could get a whole waffle into her mouth at once. Poor Elizabeth
was horrified, but it certainly lifted the family spirits. He still loved to play his
concertina, especially on trips; and this made Elizabeth quite nervous about the
possible effect on other guests!
Elizabeth continued to surround the old house with beauty. She and Aunt
Wiggy, who was a frequent summer visitor, and Elspeth formed the "groundhog
club" and spent happy hours uncovering rocks to enlarge the Rock Garden above
the house where several boulders already protruded. They planted snowdrops
and daffodils and blue Chinodoxia under the cherry trees, which made the place
a fairy land in the spring. Mathilda Shorter replaced Mrs. Williams in the
kitchen when the latter went off and got married (much to everyone's amazement). Mathilda would pack up a lunch in beautiful baskets, with fried chicken
and other delights, and Elizabeth and perhaps some guest would meander up
into the orchard and set up a picnic on Turkey Rock, where in April they could
gaze across a sea of apple blossoms to the Fairview valley below. During the
spring, when the smell of apple blossoms drenched the whole farm in their
subtle scents, her appetite for beauty came alive. She never failed to be renewed
by the appearance of the first snowdrops and crocuses, and then the forsythia
and daffodils that served their eternal notice that the harsh domination of winter
had once again passed.
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
339
Jim did not have Elizabeth's almost religious love of beautiful surroundings, painting and music; but he truly appreciated all she did. He wholeheartedly
shared her passion for boxwood, and they were thrilled when they learned of
an old couple living far up on a mountainside in a cabin who had several English
box bushes they wanted to "get shet of." When they arrived with the farm truck
and crew the old man had just chopped down the biggest bush to make it easier
to get his first cook stove in the door. The McClures planted the remaining
beauties along one side of the rock garden to screen it from the dirt road that led
dowi to the barn. The bushes grew and grew until they are now a solid mass
of green humps and bumps. Elizabeth carefully trimmed the American box and
the hedges she had grown from cuttings, but English box never needs to be
sheared, unless you want to get a new stove in a door. Its natural growth is close
and slow.
In 1937, Jim found himself on the same podium as Roosevelt's Secretary
of State Cordell Hull. Both men had come to New Haven to receive honorary
degrees from Yale University. Hull, a native Tennessean, would have been
much interested in Jim's work with the Federation. For Jim, the occasion was
something of a triumphant homecoming. He probably made use of his time there
trying to interest prospective contributors to the Fund, and he enjoyed the
companionship and good will of a graduation ceremony. The New Haven paper
recorded the event.
Prof. William Lyon Phelps, university public orator, presented the candidates for honorary degrees, and President [James Rowland] Angell conferred
the degrees. Professor Phelps: [said of Jim McClure]
Farmer, Yale B.A. 1906. After graduation he studied theology at Edinburgh, Chicago, Tubingen, Jena, and Berlin. Thus being thoroughly
grounded, he became a dirt farmer . . . In earlier days he worked with such
vigor as pastor of a church in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that his health
gave way and he was required to rest. This breakdown, tragic as it seemed at
the time, was beneficial; for in the mountains of North Carolina he became
interested in working out plans to aid people to make a better living. He
became the first president and general manager of the Fanners Federation . . .
Mr. McClure is a multitudinous blessing and a first-rate illustration of applied
Christianity. President Angell:
Throughout long years of devoted toil, you have translated the spirit of the
Gospels into a happier and richer life for thousands of your neighbors. In
grateful recognition of this invaluable service your Alma Mater confers upon
you the degree of Master of Arts, admitting you to all its rights and privileges.10
Along with Jim McClure and Cordell Hull, two other notables received
honorary degrees that day: author Stephen Vincent Ben&, and the Minister of
Finance for China, H. H. K'ung. Mr. K'ung was a lineal descendent of Confucius, in the seventy-fifth generation, making Jim's claim to be descended from
travelers on the Mayflower seem pretty insignificant. All of these men, the
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We Plow God's Fields
Secretary of State, the patriotic writer, the Chinese official, and Jim McClure,
sat together during the formalities of the occasion, enjoying each other's conversation. All of them were on the brink of a life shattering world-wide cataclysm
that would alter each life markedly.
In the spring of 1939, when Elspeth was in her junior year at Chatham
Hall, her family planned an operation to complete the straightening of her
"turning eye." She had had the first operation several years before in Asheville,
and the skilled Austrian ophthalmologist Dr. Sprinza Weizanblatt, a special
friend of Elizabeth and Jim's, had succeeded wonderfully. But both she and
Elizabeth thought it would be wise to have the final delicate work done at Johns
Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore by Dr. Alan C. Woods, an outstanding specialist.
This must have been a terrible expense for the McClures to face, but as usual
there was no complaining. Elippeth's account of the trip follows.
We arrived from the train at "The Little Inn," just across from the hospital,
which "Aunt Jane" Heywood had recommended. When we were shown upstairs to our pretty room, my mother was so appreciative, as always, that she
charmed the proprietor completely. Then he told us the rates. It was too much.
She knew we couldn't swing it! But she hated to hurt his feelings so she went
down to the desk and told him she had changed her mind and planned to stay
with friends, called a taxi and had the driver go off round the block, then come
slowly back so she could make discreet enquiries where she had seen a sign
for boarders. She was good at spotting cheap places, for she had had so much
practice on family trips. My father used to call us the "boarding party" when
he sent us in to check out a place.
The one we found was pretty dingy and down at the seams. The walls were
painted pale green coated over with Baltimore soot and there was one bathroom for the floor. Those row houses stretched down the street opposite
Hopkins—dingy brick with short steps going down to the street, where people
sat on those hot summer evenings. It cost something like $2.00 a night—no
meals. Next morning we went to see Dr. Woods. He wasn't keeping his
appointments and we were told to return next day. Again he wasn't there. We
were told it might be a day or two before he could see me as he had a fall from
a horse. We would just have to wait. The days stretched to a week or more.
My mother didn't want to tell my father she needed more money so she
made a wonderful game of stretching it. We located a restaurant in the next
block called "Bilgers," where we could get a plate of fish and boiled potatoes
and beans for thirty-five cents. Breakfast was even less. We bought bread and
tomatoes for lunch. We called our restaurant "Bulgers" and we looked forward
intensely to each meal, for not only were we hungry but it was air conditioned!
My mother was disappointed that her cousin Mark Skinner Watson and his
family were away in Vermont. She and Cousin Mark had been great friends
when he was a young man working on the newspaper in Chicago and now he
was an editor of the Baltimore Sun. But she soon found the Baltimore Museum, and was delighted by the way the paintings and tapestries were shown,
with large, open wall spaces and excellent lighting. It was so interesting and
such fun to see the beautiful paintings and statues with my mother. We both
forgot all about the absent doctor, our shrinking treasury, and the heat, and
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
341
were both carried away into a fascinating world. There were evtnfree conceits! I learned that in any large city the museum is the place to go to have a
perfectly splendid time for almost nothing.
For a very special treat one night we went downtown to a cafeteria and then
to see a movie, "Four Feathers." But when we got to the ticket window we
found the tickets cost a few cents more than we had with us! I'm sure my
mother could see my disappointment. Extravagantly we got on the trolley back
to Hopkins, got the extra quarter needed. I can never forget the excitement of
the rush back to the theatre, or the wonderful movie with Errol Flynn as a
dauntless cavalryman who proved he was not a coward.
As I think back now on the complete material comfort and the many advantages my mother had been surrounded with when she was growing up, I
appreciate more and more her making these ten days when we were stuck in a
dreary boarding house in a hot city, with evaporating funds, waiting anxiously
to see a mythical doctor, one of the most interesting and happy times I can
ever remember. She was a magic person.
When Dr. Woods appeared at last he was gruff and bearish. He put off the
operation for a year, and directed me to wear a patch over first one eye and
then the other, alternating every two weeks, and taking Sunday off, for the
entire coming year at boarding school. The strange thing was that I did really
well academically at Chatham that year. It was a struggle to read during the
two weeks when I could use only my "lazy eye" and perhaps it was because I
had to concentrate extra hard that my grades were better than ever before. The
next June I was accepted at Vassar without having to take the last two college
boards. I was especially happy at graduation for I had made my parents and
Jamie proud. My mother and I went to Baltimore right after graduation for the
scheduled operation. My mother was an angel about reading aloud to me while
I had to lie still for several days with eyes bandaged. But we also listened to
the radio. This was June 1940, and what we heard was stark news of German
tanks rolling across France through the broken Maginot line as the French
soldiers retreated before them. This was terrible news for my mother. It was
good that she was staying with the Watson family, who were understanding
friends.
Dr. Woods disappeared again and the hospital bill kept increasing. Finally
my mother decided it was time to go. I got dressed and we just paid the bill
and walked out and took a taxi to the Watson's with no ill consequences! My
mother took the train home while I stayed a couple of weeks longer with the
wonderful Watson family so that I could have checkups and eye exercises at
the hospital. She was so glad to see Cousin Mark again. He was humorous,
kind, very intelligent, and a first rate writer. Cousin Susan, his wife, was a
hospitable, wise Southern belle and their daughters, Ellen and Susan, were
wonderful friends for me.11
When Elspeth returned from Baltimore, bringing the two Watson girls with
her for a visit on the farm, there was a tinge of sadness there. The terrible news
of the war affected both Jim and Elizabeth. They had both spent considerable
time in Europe and they felt anguish for the people torn by the war. Jim no
longer had any illusions about pacifism. Both of them had a vast admiration and
sympathy for Churchill and the British in their uphill battle against the horrors
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We Plow God's Fields
of Nazi Germany. Jim was asked to head up the isolationist movement in North
Carolina "America First," but he turned it down before Elizabeth even said a
word.
He backed up the President in his aid to the British, but as the decade ended
he had turned against Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal. The notion that a
government could spend money way beyond its revenues was abhorrent to him.
Deficit spending by a nation was the way to court disaster, he was sure. He also
wondered how such an unwieldy conglomeration of programs could be wellmanaged, knowing full well that many of them that he had dealt with were not.
The fact that so many of Jim's northern friends and contributors to the Fund
were wealthy and very conservative may have influenced his feelings about the
New Deal. When Roosevelt ran for his third term, Jim began to think the man
was simply power hungry. He compared his habits with those of Hitler and
Mussolini. The McClure family dog, Trixie, expressed Jim's political views as
well as any of his Pen and Plate Club papers. As a regular part of the Hickory
Nut Gap visit, Jim would mention to Trixie rather casually, "Did you know
Roosevelt was elected again?" The little white dog would immediately throw
up her head and let out a series of mournful howls. He loved to tell New Deal
jokes. One of his favorites came as the result of a scientific breakthrough—the
cure for gout was discovered to be a medicine whose secret ingredient was the
sweat of a WPA worker. A call went out immediately that a reward would be
offered of one million dollars for each drop of that precious commodity. But the
drive had to be abandoned, so the story went, due to the lack of donors. Perhaps
Jim's best epitaph for the New Deal was scrawled in the margins of one of his
papers. (NRA stood for the National Recovery Act).
NRA'S PROGRESS
1933—Nuts Running America
1934—No Recovery Anticipated
1935—National Ruin Accomplished
1936—No Roosevelt Again12
Although Jim's personal life during the decade prior to World War II was
marked by financial difficulties, he remained steadfastly on course. His leadership capabilities made him a powerful influence in all the varied facets of life
that he touched. He translated the respect and confidence he had earned into new
accomplishments, but with all his achievements he never became vain. Like his
mountain friends, whom he realized had a great sense of a power above, he
gave God the credit. People listened to him because his words squared up with
his life.
He liked to speak of the present evils in the world: crime, the rackets, and
the political illusions of communism and fascism. Repeatedly he stood before
graduating seniors and a great variety of congregations delivering his message,
especially to young people, of the importance and the joy of the useful life. "If
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
343
Jim McClure (right) and "Old Man" Parker, hunting at Sunburst, November 1935.
you catch a vision of usefulness—follow it as a hunter follows a bear. Track it
to its lair and capture it—make it yours." "Pick out [a] place where you can
best serve God & man—[your] powers will increase and develop." "Every
compromise with the infinite value of the human soul leads straight back to the
jungle." "If we are to build a better America—we must have better Americans."
"How, the skeptic asks, can one weak man do anything against odds which are
so overpowering? The amazing thing is that when we try to accomplish something beyond our ability, some power from above flows through and gives [us]
strength." "God gave die children of Israel the promised land, but they had to
take it themselves." "Communists 'are' ahead of us today in their teaching to
endure hardship." "Let each man think himself an act of God. His mind &
thought, his life a breath of God and let each try, by great thoughts and good
deeds, to show the most of Heaven he hath in him." "If God is your master
make your plans big." "Follow God's will and He will reveal His creed." Jim
believed this last idea was very important for people who had trouble in accepting Christianity.13
To Jim McClure, faith was not a small and mean affair built on self-
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We Plow God's Fields
righteousness, but rather an act of courage that liberated one from fear and
insecurity. Jim's seeming platitudes rang true because of the life that stood
behind them. Prior to 1920, he had not been sure what God's purpose was for
him, but by the outbreak of the second World War, the Farmers Federation was
twenty years old and a testimony to one man's courage and devotion to an idea.
He described for the graduates of Haw Creek School the same life of service
that had fulfilled his own ambitions. "I am offering you a greater & more
important call," he said. "I am calling you to dedicate your life to building this
Commonwealth. It will take more patience, more hanging on, more dogged
determination & more real grit & nerves than it would take to reach out tonight
& fight an attacking army . . . If you are to carry on the torch, you must so live
that your character is preserved not for your self but for your country. Give
your life and your job to serve the Commonwealth."14
He spoke for the highest order of political integrity and individual behavior
based on the Christian promise of freedom as the result of the submission to
God's will. God's will, to Jim, meant pushing and shoving mankind along the
way pioneered in the United States, where the ideal of individual liberty before
the law had reached its greatest development. Jim wanted to add a strong dose
of community involvement to balance against the American individualism that
was so strong in the mountains. Over and over he asked in his sermons and
speeches, why cannot men and women create a Christian movement with the
impact of the Nazi Party or Bolshevism? How is it that these movements wield
so much power over individual lives and can be so effective in remolding their
societies, while Christians backed by the supernatural power of the Almighty
and of the forces of goodwill in the Western World appear so impotent? It is a
question worth pondering, and one that James McClure tried to answer. He
wanted to inspire young people with Christian ideals to translate their idealism
into bringing a better economic life to people in the mountains. In spite of all
discouragement, he never ceased to believe this was possible.
1. Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again (New York: Signet Books, 1966),
pp. 90-91. The book was originally published by Scribner's in 1934.
2. Ibid., p. 281.
3. Interview with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
4. Information about real estate holdings from family papers.
5. Interview with Jane Raoul Bingham.
6. Article in the Asheville Citizen, April 1934.
17. W.K. Beichler, letter to the editor, Asheville Citizen, August 13, 1933.
8. Editorial, Asheville Citizen, August 10, 1933.
9. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "The Recent Amazing Changes in our Government
and Some Pros and Cons," paper given at the Pen and Plate Club, Asheville, North
Carolina, March 1, 1933.
10. Article in the New Haven Register, June 23, 1937.
11. Interview with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
�Hickory Nut Gap in the Depression
345
12. Comments written in the margin of early draft of paper written by James G. K.
McClure, Jr. for the Pen and Plate Club, "Remaking Western North Carolina," 1939.
13. James G. K. McClure, Jr., excerpts from sermons, 1930-1939.
14. James G. K. McClure, Jr., Commencement address, Haw Creek High School,
Asheville, North Carolina, May 1932.
�Chapter Seventeen
The Farmers Federation
and the Depression
At a business meeting soon after the onset of the Depression former General
Manager Guy Sales remembers: The President reported that the employees had
a meeting immediately after the collapse of the Central Bank, in which they
voluntarily agreed to reduce their salaries. Those receiving over $100 per
month reducing their salaries by 20% . . . This action of the employees was
commented upon most favorably by the directors, it being pointed out that it
showed not only loyalty but a keen sense of sound business judgement, in
sensing the situation and acting immediately.
(Interview with Mr. Guy Sales)
Dear Mr. McClure,
I like to tell you about the federation has meant to me. In 19301 was about
to lose my farm but the federation helped me sell enuf rhododender to pay off
the Morgag and I have supported my family of 7 chilerden with out going on
relief and helped my nabors by giving them work getting out rododendum this
year. I have sold rodadendum and subbry thru the federation whiten brought
me in $995 so you see why I will stand by the federation thru thick and thin
Yours truly
J. G. Taylor
(/. G. Taylor to James G. K. McClure, Jr., exact date unknown)
When the Central Bank and Trust Company of Asheville failed, three of its
depositors were the Farmers Federation, the Educational and Development Fund
and James G. K. McClure, Jr. The Farmers Federation did not collapse under
the economic pressures of the Depression because member farmers and employees stood loyally behind it, while the President and directors could turn to the
Educational and Development Fund for help in the worst times. As the chain
reaction of failed banks spread through Western North Carolina, counties and
municipalities, businesses and individuals were ruined. The Federation lost
money in eight bank accounts and had to be tided over by loans from the Fund
to stay in business.1 Jim McClure's faith in progress would be sorely tested by
the greatest adversity the Federation and his family had yet faced. Although
farm prices had been weak throughout the twenties, no one could have guessed
what would happen during the early thirties. As the banks tried to collect as
many of their loans as they could, mortgages were foreclosed and businesses
shut down. Jim's personal debts were considerable at the end of 1930 and
346
�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
347
included $129,000 he had signed for loans to the Federation.2 Just after Christmas, he wrote to Hetty and Doug that "conditions thru the country here are at a
low ebb. Eight banks in our Federation territory have sunk to the bottom of the
sea, and as one native put it 'the people are raving'" (James G. K. McClure, Jr.
to the Stuarts, December 28, 1930).
With so many local governments, banks and businesses busted, how could
an idealistic farmers cooperative hope to survive? But the Federation not only
weathered the storm, but spread to new counties, offered new services, opened
new departments and initiated a program to reinvigorate the spiritual life of the
area, the Lord's Acre Plan. The Federation kept going and the cooperative's
vigor helped lift Western North Carolina out of the Depression. With the average mountain farm at least half in forest, Jim McClure reasoned that with proper
management this asset could be turned into enough annual cash to at least pay
the taxes, so in 1930 Forest Products and Shrubbery Departments were added
to the Federation. Appalachian farmers could then more easily take advantage
of the demand for pulpwood, acid wood (for tanning leather), locust for insulation pins and fence posts, or dogwood for cotton mill shuttles. They could cut
logs for building and veneer, for telephone poles and railroad ties, and there
was a growing market for all varieties of mountain shrubs. Big, burly Harry
Rotha of Waynesville, an experienced forest products man, was hired to manage
this enterprise. At the onset, in January of 1930, Jim prophesied in the Federation News that the Forest Products Department "will mean untold wealth for all
W.N.C."3
At the same time, the Federation committed itself to managing a large-scale
poultry business, opening three hatcheries, one each in Spindale, Sylva and
Asheville, with a total capacity of 73,400 eggs. They were opened with typical
McClure fanfare early in 1930, when other businesses in the area were struggling to stay solvent. Eggs and broilers had accounted for almost half of the total
sales figures in 1929, and expansion of a successful venture seemed the logical
move. The cool summers and limited cropland in the mountains made poultry
a reasonable choice. Unfortunately, spreading financial troubles depressed the
poultry market during the year, and the Federation found itself battling with
large competitors at each stop of the railroad car. Jim explained the problems
to readers of the Federation News in August 1930:
Our poultry car business is $148,133.23 below last year's record. This is
the only department of the Federation to report a reduction in business, and
this reduction is due to three causes: First, the price of poultry has been so low
during the year that we have advised fanners to hold their poultry and build
up flocks. Second, the low price of poultry has reduced the dollar value of our
shipments about thirty per cent. Third, the large poultry business we have built
up has become known and large Poultry operators have come in and tried to
take our business. For months these large operators placed a car beside ours
whenever we started a car, taking advantage of our advertising and buying
days. As we were building up this business for the farmer, we decided to hang
�348
We Plow God's Fields
on. This competition cut our volume and also caused this Department to
operate at a loss, the only department which operated at a loss last year. Our
fear was that if we dropped out of the poultry marketing game, these large
operators would then drop prices and this would discourage poultry production. We have, therefore, hung on and maintained our poultry car service . . .
At this writing this competition has withdrawn from the field, and we are
operating over a wider territory than ever before, offering a market for poultry
to the farmers in twenty five counties.4
Even though commodity prices continued to fall, each warehouse made a
profit during 1930. Jim felt that, if the Federation could remain solvent, it would
help the mountain area to weather the Depression. Agriculture in Western North
Carolina had been depressed for at least a generation. Most of the families were
quite used to "making do" on meager incomes. As long as they held title to their
own land and could keep up with the taxes, they were probably better off than
their blue-collar counterparts in the cities who had no way to garden or feed
their families. Maybe the years were leaner than usual, but most mountain
families would have noticed little difference. To most, the cataclysm in New
York seemed as far away as China. Many farmers were actually able to improve
their financial lot during the thirties as the Federation spread into new areas,
bringing with it new markets, information and reliable farm supplies.
The Federation was Jim's destiny, his calling, and he had no intention of
ever abandoning it. He never measured his success in profits, but by obstacles
surmounted and people helped. Jim McClure summed up his reasons for keeping
the Federation going, in spite of all discouragements, in an article for the "Yale
Alumni Weekly."
The Federation markets chickens, eggs, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes,
corn, wheat, rye, vegetables, forest products . . . and other mountain farm
products such as pottery and baskets.
It has survived fires, bank failures, and depressed business conditions. It
has learned how to run the farmer's business successfully . . . The experience,
gained in this way, is worth many thousands of dollars to the mountain farmers
Some mountaineers have been able to pay the mortgage on their homes,
others have put running water into their houses, women have been able to have
a doctor at childbirth, many have been able to earn tax money, and particularly
during the drouth year of 1930, many, through our forest products department,
were able to have bread and meat in their houses and keep their children from
starving. The people have earned every cent they have received. The Farmers
Federation is building character and initiative and permanent self support.
.. . We believe that we are developing the economic and spiritual resources
of the people themselves.5
The year 1932 brought new problems. When President Roosevelt declared
the Bank Holiday, closing banks nationwide from March 6-10, the Federation
printed up its own scrip, with a picture of Jim McClure in the center of each
�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
349
paper certificate.6 At this time of crisis, Mr. Jim Cole, a loyal member farmer,
came to see Mr. McClure in his office. When the door was shut he quietly
handed Jim four thousand dollars in bills, to use while it was needed. Years later
Jim would preach at Mr. Cole's funeral service, stressing the importance of the
independent spirit of the mountaineer. Mr. Cole was a legend. No one knew
quite where his money came from or where it went when he died, but it was
pretty well known that his main source of income was corn liquor, manufactured
in the recesses of his vast mountain tract.7
Despite all the facts and figures, and talk of new business ventures, Jim
McClure maintained the point of view of a pastor tending his flock, a minister
of the social gospel. His congregation met, most of them, in their own little
churches, usually of the simplest construction. Often the fare served up behind
the old fashioned altar each Wednesday evening and twice on Sunday was a
fiery exhortation rivaling the best of Jeremiah. When Jim preached in these
churches, as he was often asked to do, he preferred to stress good citizenship
and community building. He preached the healing of Nehemiah.
It is essential, he reasoned, to build better schools and better churches, to
make better homes. But it is also important, while doing so, not to stray from
God's higher laws. The history of the Hebrew nation provided him with many
texts and examples on which to build his themes. But religious preaching, he
thought, was all too often just a veneer, a coating for the sake of respectability.
For him, Christianity meant effective action.
Thomas Wolfe dreamed of a new America, "the real America," merging
purified from the materialism of the Twenties.8 Jim McClure, too, saw the hope
of renewal rising out of the ashes of despair of the Depression. In the early
1930s Jim felt that the "real America" must come both from the entrepreneurial
spirit that was nourished by American liberty, and the spiritual striving of a
people who claimed the inheritance of the Christian church. The tension between these must be kept in balance. Without the spiritual influence he knew
that selfish materialism would flourish. Without the business-like approach, he
saw that hopes would die out, churches would decay, and education would be
forgotten. He tried to pursue both goals, making every effort to increase the
productivity of the mountain farms and at the same time emphasizing spiritual
progress as an equal in importance.
Therefore, during the same months in 1930 when the financial pyramids
of Buncombe County were teetering and the Federation was branching out into
new endeavors, Jim McClure launched a bold new program that backed up his
talk about the spiritual resources of the region with an agency designed to help
them; the Lord's Acre Plan.
Jim had heard of the Lord's Acre Plan some years before. Back in 1927
he had broached the idea in the Federation News:
An acre of potatoes, or corn for the Lord, on every farm in this section!
What a spiritual awakening this would bring . . . A few years ago the members
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We Plow God's Fields
of a church in Georgia all agreed to plant an acre of cotton for the church. The
Lord's Acres of cotton did well, and brought in a rich harvest to the church,
not only in money but also in enthusiasm and power . . . the pastor is the most
important man in any community. His salary must be increased. He must have
the money to get around and see people.
An acre of potatoes, or an acre of corn, or perhaps a steer to be fed for the
church, or a tenth of the eggs, and the proceeds brought in to a church Harvest
Day in October, would wonderfully help to raise our church budgets, and
wonderfully bless the life of our churches.9
This early call for the Lord's Acre resulted in a small response that quickly
petered out. There had to be someone to promote and sustain the project; to go
to the churches, sell the idea, build up morale, and then push hard to maintain
the momentum. Jim knew just the man for the job. The success of the idea was
assured when he persuaded his old Mend and brother-in-law, Dumont Clarke,
to move to North Carolina and take on the work of building up the country
church. Spearheaded by Dumont's unflagging determination and missionary
zeal, the Lord's Acre Plan not only answered the needs of impoverished rural
churches in Western North Carolina, but also came into use in many parts of the
United States and even spread to the mission field world wide. The Religious
Department made the Farmers Federation unique among American cooperatives. For Jim McClure it was a characteristic follow-up of a visionary idea with
an organization to implement it. Dumont Clarke's career in the ministry had
been continually frustrated by poor health, and Jim thought he knew why.
Dumont needed, as he himself had, a project that would call forth all of his
energy and devotion. Dumont's previous experience had been as the school
minister at Phillips Andover Academy and the Lawrenceville School. He then
became Assistant Pastor of the Mount Vernon Heights Congregational Church
in Mt. Vernon, New York. In each position, bad health had demoralized him
and interfered with his work.
Like Jim, Dumont had planned to devote his life to mission work, and had
actually gone to India as a YMCA Secretary, but his health had broken in the
Indian climate. Now both he and his brother-in-law felt Western North Carolina
was in need of mission work. In the Depression years country churches in the
mountains had very little money. Often they could afford to pay a preacher for
only one or two Sundays a month. Dumont accepted the challenge without pay
and made the Lord's Acre work something of great and lasting importance. The
Educational and Development Fund underwrote the salary of a secretary and
office expenses. He threw himself into the work, with the result that the Lord's
Acre Movement spread like a mountain fire "let out."
Jim announced the new Federation program for the country church and
endowed it with a statement of purpose in the Federation News in February
1930.
�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
351
The Federation has opened up another department, the Religious Department. Rev. Dumont Clarke of Manchester, Vermont is the Director .. .
The country church is, in the opinion of many people, the most valuable
institution in America. The country church has been the nursery for many of
the most constructive movements of the past five hundred years and it has
been a large factor in developing the strength of character of many of the
leaders of the Anglo-Saxon civilization . ..
The Present period of re-adjustment in the country church is difficult. Today
in our mountains cash money is scarce. It is increasingly difficult for the
country church to pay an adequate salary to the preacher, and the spiritual life
of the communities is in danger . . .
The fanner cannot subscribe much cash to the church, but he can subscribe
an acre of corn or an acre of potatoes. He can subscribe a pig and grow it up
or a calf and grow it up and his wife can subscribe a hen and raise a brood of
chickens, and every child in the family can undertake some project; perhaps it
might be to raise a few baby chicks. In this way it will be possible to quadruple
the income of the country church.
The Federation . . . is now in a position to offer [its marketing] service for
the churches and for the first time the churches can look to a farmers organization that is capable of handling just about anything the church members will
raise. 10
There was nothing like the whiff of a new project to rekindle the inner fires
of Jim McClure. He could not help but tell people about it, and throw himself
into the promotional fray. Jim wrote to his sister Hetty about the progress of the
Lord's Acre. "Dumont has stirred up so much excitement amongst the churches
that it broke out into a movement to have a 5:30 a.m. meeting this morning in
the Gap. At this I was scheduled to make a "talk." Jamie supported me. We
arose at 4:30 a.m. I dropped in on Jamie to see how he was getting on with his
dressing and found him leaning on the radiator fast asleep in his pajamas. All
the rest of the family remained snoring in their beds. Well we had a fine sunrise
meeting."
Jim went on to describe Dumont's Easter sermon and a Lord's Acre picnic
beside the Pigeon River near Waynesville, and to list his many callers in regard
to the new project. He finished Hetty's letter with: "How is that for a full day
for the Director of the Religious Department? Remember that this followed a
Saturday when he left at 8 a.m. for his office and then made a round of his six
churches in the afternoon seeing all the preachers. He is doing a huge lot of
work and seems to me better than ever" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet
McClure Stuart, April 20, 1930).
One of Jim's first converts to the Lord's Acre Plan had been a neighbor,
Mr. Millard Edgerton, who rode into town with him one winter's day. He
described the incident to Hetty:
Yesterday morning I drove in with Millard Edgerton . . . & asked him how
big a family he now had—He replied fifteen young 'uns but the Lord had
blessed him and every time meal time came around there was something to
�352
We Plow God's Fields
Dumont Clarke, Jim McClure's brother-in-law, promoting the Lord's Acre Plan.
�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
353
eat. He said, however, that he was behind with his church dues, and had been
fifty cents behind for some time and could not seem to pay it—I suggested D's
scheme of setting aside an acre, putting all fifteen hoes to work & giving the
proceeds to the church & told him I wanted to be present when each member
of his family marched into church seventeen strong, each with a bushel of corn
on his back. He was carried away with the idea and yesterday came to tell me
that he had had it up with the family and every one was in for the idea. I think
I will tell D of this 100 percent conversion to the idea. (James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, January 24, 1930)
At one of the first churches Dumont visited, the Tweed's Chapel Methodist
Church in Fairview, five boys signed up, each agreeing to raise a hog for their
church. Jim explained later that: "These boys would not have been able to put
10 or 15 pennies in the collection plate during the course of the year, but by
some hook or crook they fed their pigs, and you know, if any boy feeds a pig
for the Lord twice a day, all summer, it is going to have a lasting effect on his
character . . . And those pigs brought from $12 to $15 apiece, and that made a
huge difference in the spirit and energy of the church superintendents."11
The six churches that signed up in 1930 were Tweed's Chapel Methodist,
Avery's Creek Baptist, Fairview Baptist, Mills River Presbyterian, Avery's
Creek Methodist, and Mill's River Methodist. These churches proved the plan.
It really worked, raising both money and morale. The second year forty
churches joined, and in 1932 the Lord's Acre Movement was one hundred
churches strong. Jim liked to point out that very often it was the children and
young people who shamed their elders into committing themselves.
Mr. Clarke went up to a church away back in the mountains which had a
budget of $80 a year, but for three years had been unable to meet their budget
and they were very much discouraged. He presented the idea of the Lord's
Acre Plan of raising their budget. They took it up with enthusiasm and were
going to present it to their church membership the next Sunday. Well, the next
Sunday was rainy, so they put it off another week, and the next week they had
arranged for some kind of a picnic so they put it off another week, and they
gradually put it off until the planting season was pver. Well, one day last
August, the teacher of the primary department came in with her primary class.
She had taken up the idea herself and begun it for her class, a class of
thirty-three of these small children, and given each one of them a baby chick.
Five of the baby chickens had died, but twenty-eight of the children appeared
with a grown chicken, and they sold the chickens for enough to buy paperbacked hymn books for the adult members. That so shamed the adult members
that they set to work and painted their church and built new seats for it. And
that stirred them up.12
Dumont never resented Jim's leadership. He was a determined team player,
who made his own way into the hearts of the mountaineers. He made friends
with the preachers and their families, often having dinner with them after
church, or spending the night. For the young people he had riddles and tricks,
�We Plow God's Fields
354
JESUS CALLS US
Jesus calls us. o'er the tumult
Of our life's wild, restless sea,
Day by day His sweet voice soundeth,
Saying, "Christian, follow Me."
Jesus calls us from the worship
Of the vain world's golden store;
From each idol that would keep us,
Saying, '^Christian, love Me more."
In our joys #,nd in our sorrows,
Days of toil and hours of ease,
Still He calls, in cares and pleasures,
"Christian, love Me more than these.'
Jesus calls us: by Thy mercies,
Saviour, may we hepx Thee call;
Give our hearts to Thy Obedience;
Serve and love Thee best of all.
I WOULD BE TRUE
I
I
I
I
would
would
would
would
be true, for there are those who trust me;
be pure, for there are those who care;
be strong, for there is much to suffer;
be brave, for there is much to dare.
I
I
I
I
would
would
would
would
be friend of all, the foe, the friendless;
be giving, and forget the gift;
be humble, for I know my weakness;
look up, and laugh, and love, and lift
HOWARD ARNOLD WALTER.
Above and following page: Early promotional material for the Lord's Acre.
like moving a penny from one finger to another. And he was a gifted speaker.
His slide shows of Lord's Acre projects were a hit all over his circuit.
He drove many miles visiting churches throughout the mountains, and his
well worn car became a welcome sight. Dumont believed in the power of
memorized Bible verses. He had a special book rack built under the steering
wheel in his car so that he could read passages and commit them to memory as
he drove along. Some of his family questioned the safety of this practice, but
Dumont's driving record remained unassailable. He would never pass a hitch-
�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
355
He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful
also in much; and he that is unjust in the least is
unjust also in much.—Luck 10:16
Fairview Baptist Church,
Rev. N. B. Phillips, Minister.
Tweed's Chapel Methodist Church,
Rev. F. L. Setzer, Minister.
Mills River Presbyterian Church,
Rev. W. S. Hutchinson, Minister.
Mills River Methodist Church,
Avery's Creek Methodist Church,
Dr. O. B. Mitchell, Minister.
Avery's Creek Baptist and Union Church,
Rev. Charles F. Owen, Minister.
Farmers Federation,
Rev. Dumont Clarke, Director of Religious
Department.
hiker, but demanded of each one a Bible verse from memory as payment for his
ride. If the passenger failed the test Dumont determinedly taught him a verse.
Jim often preached on the Lord's Acre himself. At the height of the New
Deal, he explained to a congregation: "In all [the] confusion of Gov't chaos one
thing is certain—permanent civilization [is] only possible if built on the character of people—[The] country church [is the] great training ground of character—
Most important institution in America .. ,"13
He continued in this sermon to describe what he considered were two
fallacious theories: first, if an individual is changed nothing else is necessary;
�356
We Plow God's Fields
and second, that society can he saved without changing individuals. In the first
instance he felt a person must get into action as well as having a change of
heart. The second, he thought, was the philosophy behind the New Deal and
socialism; that by social management and holding all property in common, by
sharing the wealth, society will be changed. He argued that there would be no
new society built by political and economic measures alone. There did have to
be a change in the hearts of individuals. Jim felt the Lord's Acre could change
hearts and involve people in the work of the church and of society. "Every time
the Lord's hen and chickens come strutting through the yard they preach a little
about the Lord."14
Jim McClure's vision was not unlike the one that had filled Thomas Jefferson with hope years before. Both of these men saw great moral fiber and
strength in the lives of the small yeoman farmers: independent, close to nature,
and undefiled by the temptations of urban life. Jim's symbol of corruption was
Chicago. His notebooks were filled with reports of political payoffs, bossism
and the evils of urban gangsters. Everyone who lived in the midst of such a
world, he argued, found it difficult to maintain the highest moral standards.
There were just too many daily degradations in the city. Like most of his
contemporaries, he blamed the recent flood of southern and eastern European
immigrants for the situation, and indeed Chicago was a checkerboard of such
ethnic neighborhoods. He felt that these men and women had to be rescued from
their own histories, and envisioned no group more capable of raising the moral
climate of the United States than the thoroughly independent, Anglo-Saxon,
Protestant Appalachian mountaineer. As they migrated to the cities, these internal immigrants could help to counteract, according to Jim, what he felt to be
hypocritical in the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. His Covenanter
Presbyterian upbringing set his mind, and he fully believed the ideals of democracy were subverted by the authority of the priest and subservience to the Pope.
For him it was the issue of indulgences all over again. How could the likes of
Al Capone assuage the pangs of conscience with a few Hail Marys and regular
confession? Jim argued that the country church was the source of strength in
America, and the mainspring of democracy. When the country church faltered,
the roots of liberty were threatened.
All of these thoughts Jim worked through in a paper he wrote during the
early thirties, entitled "Rackets and the Public."
One startling thought is that many city people seem to like [the rackets.]
Capone is a modern Robin Hood. He is kind hearted, gives liberally to charity.
The mixed population of our great cities, never Americanized, many of them
brought up in European countries where things have always been more or less
this way—seem to think it is the normal way of living. They do not recoil in
horror from this racketeering. It seems to them a necessary evil and all they
need do is adjust themselves to it ... "American ideals! Can that stuff," is
about all you get in the cities . . .
The struggle for freedom is not as easy as that and unless we arouse our
�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
357
people to a consciousness that the struggle is still on, we will wake up some
fine day to find our free institutions gone and our American Government in the
hands of people who knew not Joseph and who know and care not at all for the
things of the spirit. . .
And while our native sons are busy piling up money, playing golf, riding
to hounds and sending then* sons to swell schools and colleges and bringing
out their debutante daughters, who is running our cities? As an Englishman
put it, "Just the usual hardboiled American gang of grafters, gamblers, bootleggers, vice merchants, police superintendents, friends of theirs, shyster lawyers and political bums ..."
.. . The black hand, and the black shadow of graft, corruption and terrorism
is stretched out over our great cities.
This is something that the finest American tradition can never tolerate. If
America is to fulfill her promise, and if we are to cherish and develop the inner
things of the Spirit, we must declare war to the death of this philosophy of the
Rackets and all its brutalizing offspring.
We must clean them out, or they will clean us out!15
These words are vintage McClure, but moral indignation begs for actions.
Jim felt that the Lord's Acre Movement, by strengthening the influence of the
country church on young people, was a positive force for combating the "Philosophy of the Rackets." "Something is moving in the countryside," he asserted.
As Jim pointed out over and over again, the rural districts, especially in the
South, were producing nothing if not children, and today's youth were tomorrow's America. Influence these young people through their churches, he argued,
and future moral strength would be greatly enhanced. The rackets could be
cleaned out by the infusion into the cities of confident men and women, willing
to stand their ground with force of character.
But for this job to be done, the country churches would themselves have
to be greatly strengthened to handle the task. Members of congregations would
have to start working together. Preachers would need to be better educated, be
more effective community leaders, and rely less on emotional froth to arouse
their people. Sunday Schools would need good quality instructional materials.
Most of all, though, Christians everywhere would have to be infused with a
sense of purpose, a sense of destiny. In Jim's view, the need for Christian
soldiers was never greater. Until a man or woman, boy or girl became dedicated
to a larger cause or movement, Jim believed, he or she had not fully tasted the
richness of life. The same human craving for belonging drew men into the
rackets as into the church, and it was therefore the responsibility of Christian
leaders to provide the bonds of identity, cemented with urgency of purpose, to
draw the strength of America for good rather than evil.
By the fifth anniversary of Dumont Clarke's work, it was time for a special
celebration. The practice of the Lord's Acre had succeeded in creating new
excitement in hundreds of churches. For this special occasion, Jim and Dumont
really wanted to beat the drum, and so they went after one of the great political
celebrities of the day, Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace, and brought
�358
We Plow God's Fields
him to Western North Carolina. Predictably, his appearance generated large
headlines in the Asheville newspapers and stirred Jim himself to heights of
excitement. Wallace had presided over some of the most controversial government farm programs in American history. Trying to decrease farm surpluses to
raise the price for the farmer, his department had supervised the destruction of
huge quantities of grain, paid farmers not to grow, encouraged the slaughter of
piglets, all in the midst of the unprecedented hunger of the Depression. Although Jim had not approved these practices, he admired the man. Henry Wallace, standing behind the pulpit of Asheville's Central Methodist Church, spoke
of the spiritual wealth in Western North Carolina. His address was entitled,
"The Necessity of a Socialized Spiritual Life in the Countryside."
Great Spiritual power will eventually emanate from these mountains of
Western North Carolina, which will influence the whole of the United States
. . . You farmers here are, perhaps, among the poorest as to material wealth,
but you have a very rich life, a life that is teeming with vital potentialities.
Some of the most profoundly moving spiritual forces have had birth in very
small and harassed areas.
You people of this mountain section, who have not been affected by the
capitalistic influences of industrial areas may have a fundamental influence
upon the lifting of the shadows flung far and wide by capitalistic potentates.
Progress has meant to many People in our country—more especially to
nations across the sea—the building up of a faith in material things that is so
intense that it borders upon the side of worship. This belief, this devout,
materialistic movement, spawned Communism, Fascism, Socialism and all the
other "isms" now overlapping their purposes.
Capitalism has influenced people to divorce their minds from spiritual
things. Many city churches are under capitalistic rule. The Lord's Acre Plan
carries us back toward pre-capitalistic days, to days when we had sympathy
with better things.16
Out in the audience, absorbing this barrage of New Deal rhetoric, sat
Douglas Stuart. He was now Chairman of the Board of the Quaker Oats Company, and Chairman of the Industrial Advisory Board of the National Recovery
Administration. It was he who had actually persuaded Mr. Wallace to come.
The next day, Wallace, Jim and Doug attended the Laurel Pines Baptist Church
in Fairview, for a Lord's Acre rally. The Agriculture Secretary spoke and then
the men climbed up Ferguson's Peak behind the McClure home. One can only
wonder at the provocative discussions that bounced around between them along
that trail. Elspeth McClure, who went along on the climb, was twelve and
doesn't remember what they said, but she does remember cracking walnuts with
Secretary Wallace on the living room hearth. Henry Wallace, Jim McClure and
Douglas Stuart were confident men with strong ideas. Jim had also invited Mr.
R. W. Freeman, a local farmer and one of the founders of the Federation, to add
spice to the gathering. The next year, Dr. Toychiko Kagawa was the featured
speaker for the Lord's Acre annual meeting, and Jim used the occasion to
�OUR CHURCHES
WITH THE LORD'S ACRE PLAN
IDEAL: THE SPIRIT OF JESUS IN OUR LIVES
THROUGH HIS WORDS AND HIS WORKS
TEND FAITHFULLY THAT WHICH YOU HAVE
DEVOTED UNTO THE LORD.
KEEP THE WEEDS OUT.
KEEP THE
ALSO.
WEEDS
NO MAN HAVING
PLOW . . . . .
OUT
PUT
OF YOUR
HIS
HEART
HAND TO
THE
Carry this folder with you — Memorize and
THOUGHTFULLY repeat the verses.
April-May, 19SO.
Front of folder promoting the Lord's Acre Plan.
�360
We Plow God's Fields
THE
LORD'S ACRE
COVENANT
PLEDGE CARD FOR ALL PROJECTS
CLASS OR CHURCH GROUP
Recognizing God's goodness to us and His claim upon us and especially upon our farm life,
because without His sunshine and His showers all our efforts would be in vain,
WE HEREBY AGREE TO BEGIN, TO DEDICATE TO THE LORD, AND TO TEND FAITHFULLY IN 193
, THE PROJECT LISTED OPPOSITE OUR NAMES, AND TO GIVE THE
PROCEEDS FROM EACH PROJECT TO
CHURCH
Name
Project
Goal
Started
Inspected
Yield
Suggested projects: potatoes, corn, cotton, chickens, a pig, a calf, Sunday eggs, etc. Those
working for wages may give dedicated hours of earnings; or, special business or craft projects
may b* carried out.
Extra lines on other aide
Pledge card for the Lord's Acre Plan.
evaluate Secretary Wallace in a letter to Doug Stuart. "This year Uncle Dumont
had a tremendous crowd out. The freak value of a real life Jap proved a better
drawing card than the Secretary of Agriculture—tho I think anyone who knew
them both would give the freak award to the Secretary" (James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to the Stuarts, March 22, 1936).
At the same time that the Lord's Acre Movement was becoming established
the Federation, with the aid of the Educational and Development Fund, spread
to new towns and counties: Franklin in Macon County; Morganton in Burke
County; Marion in McDowell County; Sylva in Jackson County; Tryon in Polk
County; Murphy to serve Cherokee, Clay and Graham Counties; Bryson City
in Swain County; Brevard in Transylvania County; Burnsville in Yancey
County; and Lenoir in Caldwell County. The area serviced by the Federation,
Jim McClure never tired of pointing out, was larger than the three states of
Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware combined. At seven of the Federation's warehouses, the Federation operated feed mills to grind the farmer's corn
and add the correct ingredients for whatever feed the grower needed. All of
these warehouses had to be linked together by an efficient transportation system,
and the State of North Carolina's highway building program was a key factor
in making this possible.
The expansion process created its own color, lore and heroes. Whenever
enough interest seemed to justify organizing in a new location, sufficient stock
would have to be sold to capitalize the new business and to interest the farmers
in the Federation operation. No one could sell stock like "Uncle Church" Crow-
�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
361
Left to right: James G.K. McClure, Henry Wallace, Dumont Clarke, and Doug Stuart.
Photo property of the McClure Fund.
ell. He had joined up with Jim McClure during the early days of the Federation,
and stuck with him. He was prominent in mountain politics, having represented
Buncombe County in the State legislature. He genuinely loved being thrown
into a new section to sell stock to strangers. His humor and charm produced
results, and a great many tales. He said he liked "to live off the land," stay in
the homes and eat off the tables of those people he had come to sign up.
Describing the organization of one new county, Jim McClure wrote in the News,
"The year 1936 saw the Farmers Federation again expand. In the Autumn our
Vice President, R. Church Crowell, together with a committee of McDowell
County farmers campaigned in McDowell County and more than three hundred
stockholders joined the Farmers Federation. It is said that Mr. Crowell gained
twenty pounds during his stay in McDowell."17 In a speech in New York, Jim
McClure described in more detail the difficulties of selling stock in the mountains, and then told a story famous in Federation circles about Mr. Crowell.
When we expand into an additional county, we have a selling campaign to
sell stock in our cooperative. We try to see every farmer in the county. It is a
slow job selling the farmer stock. You have got to visit each one. It is a harder
job to sell a fanner $10 worth of stock than to sell a $1,000 bond in New York.
You have to go and talk with him the first time and he will tell you he will think
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�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
363
about it, then you have to go back and remember the names of his children,
his dog and his pig. It takes three or four visits. We have one man who is
extremely good at talking to the farmers—our vice president, Mr. Crowell—
and I want to say that all the people running this enterprise are mountain people
who have grown up with it. Three or four months ago, a woman, a widow,
came to my office. Our people had been out on a stock-selling campaign in the
county in which she lived. She said, "Mr. McClure, I have brought ten dollars
to buy a share of stock and I want to get it right now. Mr. Crowell came out
about three weeks ago and came to my house about eleven o'clock in the
morning and started talking about the Farmers Federation. He stayed until
dinner time and I had to ask him to sit down to eat dinner and he ate the biggest
meal I have ever seen." Then she said, "He went away, but he came back
about a week later and wanted to know if I had had time to study about it, and
he again talked about an hour about the Farmers Federation. Then it got to be
dinner time and I had to ask him to take dinner again, and he ate another
tremendous big meal/' and she said, "I want to pay my ten dollars before he
comes back another time."18
After this speech, someone asked Jim a very pertinent question, "Can you
succeed in getting practically all the farmers in?" He replied:
No, we get about 300 members in each county. Out of perhaps 1,500
farmers in a county, we get the best farmers. A great many of our farmers
simply cannot get up ten dollars. We let them pay in eggs, chickens or any
kind of produce. We deal with non-members as well as members, because the
ones we want to do the most for are the ones that can't get up the ten dollars.19
But if a man had the cash, chances were that "Uncle Church" would get it
for his Federation. Another story that circulated about him took place during the
drive to sign up stockholders in Swain County.
[Uncle Church] . . . had a black Ford that used a quart of oil a day . . . He
was driving along by himself one rainy day when he spotted a big fire burning
by the side of the road. There were men working nearby, and Uncle Church,
thinking that it was one of Swain County's WPA road improvement projects,
stopped to warm himself and to inquire if there were any good prospects living
nearby.
The Foreman greeted him cordially, "Step right up and take all the fire you
can stand," he urged. "We'll be having lunch directly. Be glad to have you eat
with us."
This sounded pretty good to Uncle Church, who was a big eater. "I don't
want to take away you boys' dinner," he said. But the foreman was strong in
his invitation.
"No, sir, we got a-plenty. You just wait about fifteen minutes."
Pretty soon the men came in from their various tasks, and they ate lunch
Opposite: Members of the Lowell Pines Baptist Church (Fairview, N.C.) plant l'/4 acres
of potatoes for their Lord's Acre Plan, 1938.
��The Farmers Federation and the Depression
365
and drank coffee around the fire. It was a dark day, and Mr. Crowell was
unable to see clearly many of the four around him, but he decided to try selling
a little stock to the group anyway.
"I've eat dinner off you boys," he said. "Now I'm going to give you
something in return. I'm going to make you a speech about the Farmers
Federation.
"Fine," said the Foreman. A speech about anything would brighten up life
in this remote corner. So Mr. Crowell turned lose with a burst of oratory about
the Federation. When he finished he said,
"Now, I want you boys to take some stock in the Farmers Federation. It'll
be the best investment you've ever made. $10 a share, and its the only stock
in North Carolina paying 6 percent."
"You can put me down for five shares," said the foreman.
"I'll take ten dollars worth," chimed in a man who looked like the assistant
foreman.
"Give me two shares," came a voice in the back.
"That's fine boys, Fine," exclaimed Mr. Crowell. "Let me have your names
and I'll put you down on this list.. . Now when are you going to pay me for
this stock? I'll be glad to take it now, and that will leave you plenty of time
to make more before Christmas. Your dividends begin as soon as you pay for
your stock. On January 1st you'll get a green check from the Farmers Federation, Incorporated."
"Here's fifty dollars for mine," said the foreman, fumbling in his overalls
for his wallet, which had a rubber band tied around it.
"I'll pay you my ten first of the month," the assistant foreman declared. "I
just got through paying my taxes, and that likes to break a man."
"How about you, my good man?" Uncle Church asked the man at the rear
of the circle who had subscribed for twenty dollars.
"Well," the man replied, "The state's got me for thirty years, but I'll pay
you as quick as I can after that."
Uncle Church had sold to a member of the Chain Gang.20
Once the money was in hand on a stock drive, the warehouse was constructed, and a grand opening planned. In a letter to his son, Jim McClure
describes the opening of the Brevard warehouse.
Yesterday was a big day—Hitting Asheville about 8, the General Staff of
the Federation including the high powered mayor of Bee Tree [Allan Coggins],
the fiddlers, the Redoubtable Rotha, Senator Browning, Uncle Dumont and
Guy Sales all entrained for Brevard, where at ten o'clock we had a rousing
opening of our 17th warehouse. The place was crowded, and some 250 stood
up under the barrage, the Senator pulling his well tried stories out of the
bag—and all meeting with success—We elected a committee of 10, had lunch
with them at 12 o'clock, loaded up again and set out for Fairview Siding.
(James G. K. McClure, Jr., to Jamie McClure, date unknown)
Opposite: "Uncle Church" Crowell and a group of boy scouts. They raised an acre of
tomatoes which brought $145.45 to the Acton Church in Buncombe County in 1942.
�366
We Plow God's Fields
The purpose behind all of these efforts was, to use Jim's apt slogan to
"Help the Mountaineer Help Himself." When raising money for the Educational
and Development Fund he never failed to contrast his own programs, which
created new wealth, with those of the federal government during the New Deal,
which he felt were designed only to divide up existing wealth. His appeal to
successful businessmen and their wives in the Northeast for contributions always
stressed the independence and the hard-working nature of the mountaineer, traits
that held a high place in the values of the American business community. Jim
also emphasized the ancestral bond between the Anglo-Saxon Protestants of
Western North Carolina and their counterparts up north. He implied that both
groups had inherited the same qualities. Anglo-Saxon Protestants believed in the
supernatural power of the Creator and in the ability of representative government to protect personal freedom. He convinced his audiences that if the mountaineer was only given the education and the opportunity he, too, would create
an economic miracle. Jim was incredibly successful at raising money to develop
productive schemes in the region, and to educate the farmers in the new agricultural ways of the twentieth century.
The Federation News remained Jim's primary educational tool. With time,
the information became increasingly technical and complex, as the farmers
learned the vocabulary of their occupation. 0. J. Holler of Union Mills contributed a well-informed column for several years, one he unabashedly called "Master Farmer of Rutherford County." For more than thirty years, Professor S. C.
Clapp of Buncombe County, originally the director of the state test farm in
Swannanoa and later an officer in the Federation, contributed a knowledgeable
column in each issue. After leaving the test farm, he was hired by the Federation
as head of its Seed Department. Always, the information stressed scientific
management, and the latest in agricultural studies. Reliable ideas were scarce
in Western North Carolina, and the Federation aimed to make such knowledge
readily accessible. The News also promoted the programs of the Federation, and
included a column devoted to women and home economics by Tillie Rotha, a
daughter of the Forest Products Department Manager. Elizabeth McClure contributed an anonymous column called "Garden Notes."
In 1935 a new and more direct form of education was launched by the
Federation. Jim McClure had always wanted to operate a vocational school to
train the most promising young men in the region in the business of cooperative
agriculture. In many ways, the Farmers Federation Training School was a forerunner of the technical colleges the State of North Carolina would develop much
later. The Training School could educate only a few boys at first. They received
a thorough and practical education in both agriculture and business. In January
of 1937, the members of the third class of the Federation Training School
gathered to begin thek year's course.
The courses of study include business law, salesmanship, bookkeeping, and
a study of the Farmers Federation and the farm cooperative movement.
�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
367
In addition to these courses of study, the boys have lectures on many
subjects, such as the ones listed below.
(a) Seeds, dealing with germination, purity, and sources of different kinds
of seeds . ..
(b) Insecticides, covering a study of the insect pests, blights, and plant
diseases.
(c) Marketing of different farm products.
(d) Demonstrations in setting up and servicing farm machinery.
(e) The religious aspects of the farm cooperative, with practical work in the
Lord's Acre Movement.
In addition to these lectures, the boys will have practical work all during the
year in the different departments of the Farmers Federation, half the time being
devoted to study and half the time to securing practical experience . . .
This school is attracting wide attention, as it appears to be the first school
in the State to train young men in the practical workings of a community
service organization like the Farmers Federation.21
One of the young men in the class of 1939 was Don Ramsey, from Cherokee County, the western-most section of North Carolina. He remembers graduating from high school, and finding out that there just were not any jobs for an
unskilled eighteen-year-old. He had heard about the interviews for the Training
Schools and went down to the Murphy warehouse to find out if he qualified.
All the candidates had to be farm boys with superior high school records. Don
made the grade, and went to Asheville the following fall. The school was
located in the Federation headquarters on Roberts Street, and all the boys
roomed at "Ma" Ramsey's place nearby. Bed and board was $7 a week, which
gobbled up most of the Federation check of $40 a month each received for the
work that was part of the curriculum. The Federation hoped to train young men
who would stay with the cooperative after graduating from the training school.22
Don Ramsey became one of the most outstanding warehouse managers, and
eventually took over the Federation operation in Murphy.
Each of the Federation warehouses competed directly with other feed, seed
and hardware businesses. There was always a push to increase volume and
profit. The Federation tried to maintain a price edge on the local competition,
but oftentimes was out-maneuvered and lost customers. The Federation was
well known for its quality seeds and liberal credit as well, and tried to make use
of the yearly patronage refund for each customer's business total as an incentive
to shop with the Federation. Don Ramsey felt that the reputation of fine seeds
helped to draw in loyal customers. Jim McClure had worked with the North
Carolina Extension Service and the State Department of Agriculture to make
sure that the cooperative handled only the best seeds. Many times farmers were
tempted to purchase shoddy seeds for a bargain price, and Jim McClure warned
his readers about such false economy in the News.
There is only one kind of seed that it pays the farmer to sow and this is the
best seed, with the highest germination and free from obnoxious weed seeds.
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Low grade seed . . . will not only be followed by a poor and scattering crop
but may so infest a field with damaging weeds that it will take years of work
to remove the pests.
. . . Whenever seed prices are high, there always comes out of old cellars
and old storehouses a lot of low-grade seed which is offered cheap on the
market...
It has been our observation that the best farmers, the farmers who make
money year after year, are very particular to hunt for and buy the best seed
obtainable .. .23
It was not until 1937 that the Federation once again felt strong enough to
pay a patronage dividend to its customers. Jim McClure hoped that the resumption of these payments would boost sales through the warehouses, and so asked
the farmers to redeem the coupons they had received at the time of each transaction during the past year. Rather than pay out cash, the Federation gave each
customer credit towards a $10 share of stock. These patronage refunds had been
dropped after 1923, when the organization was facing a severe credit squeeze,
which was exacerbated by the central warehouse fire of 1925. With the announcement that the patronage refund rate would be 2 1/2 percent on business
done in 1937, Jim reminded everyone to keep their coupons.
No matter what incentives were offered to the customers, the balance
between success and failure at each warehouse was determined by the ability
of each manager and his assistants. The Federation had to push hard to make
use of its large buying power, its economy of scale, while at the same time
making each warehouse outlet as friendly as a family-owned feed and seed store.
A change of personnel was often a touchy operation. The management had to
gauge not only the business acumen of an individual, but also his popularity
among the patrons. The store in Hendersonville was one of the strongest links
in the business chain, and in 1938 its longtime manager, Mr. C. H. T. Bly,
decided to retire. Jim McClure worked out an advisory position for him in
Tryon, so that the Federation could give him a place to live and a small income
to live on. But among Mr. Ely's old customers, the plan did not sit well at all.
A groundswell of protest erupted until he was returned to Hendersonville to
placate those men and women who were accustomed to "trading" with him. The
results were explained in an article in the News. "When Mr. Ely's many friends
and customers in Henderson County learned of this proposed move they put up
a tremendous outcry against it. Requests that Mr. Bly remain in Henderson
County were so numerous that the Directors arranged to retain him at the
Hendersonville Warehouse. He will be relieved of the responsibilities of management, but Mr. Bly will be at the Warehouse and ready with his advice and
counsel, on which the people of the territory depend."24 One could never underestimate the fierce loyalty the mountaineers felt for their favorite storekeepers.
In 1938, Jim McClure was relieved of his duties as general manager of the
daily operations of all the Federation warehouses by the appointment of Guy
Sales, a carefiil businessman, to this important position. He had been working
�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
369
for the Federation since 1922, when he was first engaged as a bookkeeper. Mr.
Sales was a thorough man who relied less on morale boosting and good will,
and more on disciplined policies carefully carried out. No one understood the
inner workings of the cooperative better than he did, having been the sole
auditor for most of its existence. He watched as the poultry business grew from
a black pot at the Fairview Siding into a million dollar enterprise. He understood
the financial weaknesses and strengths of the Federation. For instance, he knew
that money was to be made in selling feed to broiler producers, even if money
was lost when the birds were marketed. The profits justified the losses. He knew
the importance of cash management. Cash flow was often preserved, for instance, by delaying the payment of bills outstanding to the fertilizer and feed
companies. "They'd holler a lot of times," he recalls, but the Federation account
was one that was too large to drop. Guy Sales also had to try to hold down the
flow of credit out of each store, and finally began charging excess amounts
against the paychecks of the managers. He hounded the managers to collect
those overdue bills from the customers. These hard-nosed policies made the
Federation a healthier business enterprise, and Jim McClure was able to devote
more effort and time to fund-raising, promotion and expansion.25
Jim's business abilities ran in the direction of creating incentives and devising innovative approaches. He loved contests and prizes, and each year would
offer $100 in gold to the manager who could increase his sales percentage the
most over a year's time. He also concocted little contests to keep up employee
morale, such as the hot competition that grew up over which warehouse could
unload a boxcar of fertilizer the fastest.
Jim had another vision for helping mountain people to a better life. He
wanted to bring industries into Western North Carolina, so that one or two
members of every family could earn some cash to supplement the farm income.
He wrote men like Henry Ford, urging them to build plants in his district.26 Two
very large plants built by Champion Fibre and American Enka, were built and
became the beginning of the industrialization of the mountains. Jim decided
there was a need for small manufacturing projects and pushed ahead to start
some, on his own, in order to create wages where they could not otherwise be
earned. At the Fairview Siding, women were hired to make blouses, shirts,
uniforms and even rag dolls in what was known as the Federation Sewing
Room.27 Later the "sewing room" spawned a uniform company known as "On
Duty Clothes," under Federation management.
In Henderson County, the cannery operation came to employ between 50
and 150 people, nearly all women, during the harvest season (from July to
October). Under the Carolina Sunshine label, the Federation marketed its most
unique product, yellow tomato juice, along with canned beans, tomatoes and
okra. There was even a brief attempt to can grits, but that product went the way
of all bad ideas. The Educational and Development Fund helped to promote a
small toy shop in Tryon for a brief period. Most of these projects straggled to
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We Plow God's Fields
show a profit, especially during the Depression. But Jim McClure kept trying
to devise schemes for making money in the mountains, and his imagination and
courage left few opportunities untried. His goal, largely realized today, was to
provide enough opportunities to earn wages so that the families of Western
North Carolina could remain on their farms, proud and independent.
By design, most of his employment ideas involved women. He felt great
pity for them out on their little farms, trapped by the drudgery of their subsistence lives. Jim liked to explain the plight of the mountain woman with a story
he told often and well.
We are trying to find something that the mountain women can make in their
homes and sell, because if these mountain women can earn a little money it
will change their whole outlook on life . . . In certain ways, there is no more
tragic figure on the American scene . . . The average mountain woman has to
cook something like one thousand and ninety-five meals a year, and then when
January 1st comes around she has to start right over again and cook another
thousand and ninety-five meals. They never get away from home. We thought
if we could get a little money in their hands it would mean a great deal to them.
They tell a story about the mountain woman that illustrates better than I can
tell you the condition of things. A mountain family received a letter from a
lawyer stating that the family had been left a legacy of eight hundred dollars.
They all gathered around the fire in their log cabin to decide what they would
do with that money. The old man thought he would buy a new rifle, the oldest
boy thought he would buy a bicycle and one of the boys was going to buy a
victrola, the daughter thought she would take a trip to Asheville, she had never
been there before; and when they decided what each member of the family
would do, there was a pause. They heard the dishes rattling in the kitchen and
they remembered their mother, who was doing all the work and washing up
all the dishes, and they said, "What will we get for Maw?" They commenced
to think, and finally one of the sons had a bright idea, and he said, "Let's get
Maw a new axe."28
He liked to calculate not only the number of meals cooked, but also the
number of miles a mother travelled in a year to carry water for her family. These
figures spoke eloquently enough of the hard lives these women led. It was
usually the mother who yearned for a more civilized, more prosperous life for
her children. Jim felt that creating work for these mothers, outside or in the
home, would open up new possibilities in the lives of the women and their
families. He began, like many Northerners before him, to encourage the production and sale of mountain crafts. Knitters, basket weavers, hooked rug producers, and others, were brought together, given quality control guidelines, and
put to work. These items usually brought in precious little money for the hours
of work that went into making them, but at that time any money was better than
none at all. More important, perhaps, was that these women came in touch with
other people, both other craftsmen and those living far away who bought what
they had made. Moreover, the money received represented self-esteem, and the
�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
371
chance to buy something for themselves more fitting than a new axe. The
Federation eventually set up a Home Industries Division that would market
everything from sorghum molasses to picnic baskets to corn meal to handknitted bed jackets. Jim wrote to Hetty urging her " . . . to buy sweaters from
the English Knit Shop in Lake Forest. This is Helen FarwelFs Shop. They are
giving us a very nice business and I am suggesting that you go in and demand
North Carolina sweaters and buy till it hurts, and then keep on buying!" (James
G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, February 3, 1937). Jim had once
more brought his old world and his new one in touch with one another.
In 1939, Jim steadied himself to gather together his thoughts. What were,
realistically, the possibilities for future life in Western North Carolina? Armed,
as usual, with reams of statistics, he argued in a paper for the Pen and Plate
Club for the "remaking" of his mountain region. He believed that from the
potentials of manpower and resources a new basis for civilization was possible
in the area. He began by complimenting his fellow Pen and Plate Club members
on their intellectual prowess, while simultaneously warning them that his address would be a great deal more prosaic than poetic.
The subject I have selected for your attention this evening is "Remaking
Western North Carolina." I bring this subject to your attention because it
presents not only a local problem, but the type of problem that is facing all
communities in the United States . . .
In the development of America the time has come when we must turn to the
improving or building up of our own communities. As we hear so frequently,
the frontier is gone . . . Opportunity was unlimited, but it was always found
by moving on. A pioneer could take up land, kill off the fish and game near
his cabin, skim the fertility off the soil and then move on to the frontier again
and homestead another tract of land .. .
The frontier dominated American thinking and now the frontier has gone,
and America finds herself faced with an entirely different task. That task is to
develop our own communities with the same drive and energy and determination and daring, with which we have developed the unexplored frontier . . .
To bring this matter right home to us I want tonight to talk about our own
community—Western North Carolina . . .
The people of Western North Carolina are chiefly rural people. The population of the 18 counties in 1930 was 390,359, of whom 73,516 were urban,
which means that 81% of the population is rural. ..
. . . During the past twenty years, changes have come . . . Excellent roads
have opened up the entire territory, penetrating and connecting up even the
most inaccessible sections. Tremendous improvement has been made in the
State school system, and High School opportunity has been placed within
reach of nearly all the boys and girls. Some new industries have come into this
territory, bringing their life-giving pay rolls and followed by a higher standard
of living . . . we really need thirty or forty times as many as we have.
I also want to point out in considering our subject that we have in this
mountain territory one asset of very high value. A few days ago I had the
privilege of having lunch with General Wood, of Sears Roebuck, and Henry
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We Plow God's Fields
Ford. General Wood spent some time in telling Mr. Ford that America's most
precious resource was in the South. He referred to the young people under 21.
North Carolina has roughly twice as many young people—under 21—as Illinois in proportion to population. And this mountain region is particularly rich
in this precious asset of the human race—children . . .
Lest we think that good roads, industries, and schools have solved this
problem [of farm income] during these years, I want to present to you recent
figures. [1937]. These figures of income and outgo [are] an average of 59 TVA
demonstration farms in one of our counties. These are taken as average farms,
and careful accounts kept . . . the average of these 59 demonstration farms is
54 acres . . .
Of the 54 acres—11 will be in crops, 5 in meadow, 15 in open pasture, 21
in woods pasture and 2 in buildings, garden, roads, etc. The average livestock
will be 1 horse or mule, a pig, 40 chickens . . .
The total income is $486.81. The total farm expense is $437.25, leaving
net cash of $49.56 for the cash needs of a family of six for one year. Gentlemen, let your mind rest on that figure a moment, $49.56, for a family of 6 for
a year. Why, a sickness, or a burial, would wipe it out in one day. What about
books? What about subscriptions to a paper? What about a winter coat for the
wife? What about a few toys for the children at Christmas? They are out,
gentlemen, completely out.
May I remind you, in posing this problem, that these people in this territory
are practically 100% the old American stock. It is one of the only areas in the
South where there are few negroes—less that 10% of our population being
colored and in the rural districts very much less than that. . .
Jim McClure proceeds to sort through the bewildering list of New Deal
programs and their impact on Western North Carolina. By 1939, he was quite
disillusioned with Franklin Roosevelt, and the federal debt that he had built up
paying for his "alphabet" projects. But he was fair to point out the benefits of
new roads, agricultural loan programs, low-cost fertilizer from the TVA, and
the bold thrust to promote soil and water conservation. He then concluded with
these remarks.
And now I want to revert to my subject, "Remaking Western North Carolina," and to the question I posed. Reminding you of our low income farmer
with a net cash income of $49.56 per year, and reminding you of a lack of
income so general that in Swain County 82% of the population are certified
as needing relief. What can we do about this problem? How can it be solved?
How can civilization be remade and opportunity of development created?
In the first place we must note that many of these Federal expenditures are
only of a temporary nature. They cannot continue because they are expenditures of debt, not of income, and regardless of their merit they cannot continue
on this scale. Those that are worth retaining can only be retained if we balance
our national budget. This spending spree will be stopped by the people of the
United States voluntarily and with courage, or it will be stopped involuntarily
by our credit giving o u t . . .
In the second place the farm activities described are building up the soil,
improving practices and improving conditions.
�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
373
In the third place the emergency government programs are not building any
permanent income. The money runs off as fast as the rain runs off our mountains.
In the fourth place in a section like ours, of low incomes and no capital,
we must create markets, develop industries, and develop services for which
money can be received. For these things we must accumulate capital. We
must save up capital and invest it in our own enterprise and in our own
communities. We have the population, but we have very few constructive
enterprises being developed.
And what we need above all is men and women who will spend their lives
developing our communities or developing a small industry—who will make
that their life work.
And we must not forget to conserve the spiritual resources of this territory.
No word of that in [the] Federal program, everything [is] on the material basis.
In all this gigantic machinery of Federal spending in all its roar and confusion,
we can hear scarcely a note of the spiritual, and it will always be true that
"man cannot live by bread alone." It will be out of spiritual development and
insight and motive that new life will come to this community.29
Despite Jim's personal ambivalence about many aspects of Roosevelt's
New Deal, the Federation certainly benefited from the favorable climate for
cooperatives that existed during these years. Public attitudes toward the idea of
cooperatives swung back and forth, from the notion that anyone promoting such
enterprises was tending toward socialism; to its opposite, that cooperatives
provided a much superior business model when compared with traditional profit
capitalism. After 1930, the pendulum swung decidedly towards the latter opinion. But general public acceptance was only one of the results that benefited
Jim's work. Legislation on many levels provided specific aids and incentives
to cooperatives. A bank was organized with government capital, designed specifically to loan money to operations like the Farmers Federation. The branch
that served Western North Carolina, the Columbia Bank for Cooperatives, became a willing source of cash, and strengthened the financial position of the
Federation immeasurably. Another institution, the Farm Credit Cooperative
Bank of Washington, lent money as well. The crown jewel of the New Deal,
the Tennessee Valley Authority, encompassed a large part of the Federation
territory. The TVA assisted farmers through demonstration projects using low
cost, high analysis fertilizers. These fertilizers are now widely used on a commercial basis. The Soil Conservation Service was one more federal agency that
helped mountain farmers improve their land during these years. Jim McClure
helped organize the Soil and Water Conservation District in his area.
Because farm commodity prices remained low during the thirties, the Federation's profits were scarce. Moreover, many of his Fund contributors were hit
hard by the stock market crash, making that source of capital more uncertain.
But Jim didn't quit trying. He wrote to Hetty, "Dumont and I are trying to take
money away from the tight fisted money barons and economic Royalists of
Wall St. D is a huge help, he has a campaign spirit on him that bids fair to high
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We Plow God's Fields
pressure Wall St. just as he has high-pressured the mountaineer" (James F. K.
McClure, Jr. to Harriet McClure Stuart, October 10, 1936).
With help from these sources, the Federation did expand into new counties,
and with new services. The tobacco and forest products projects remained
healthy operations through the thirties, while Jim McClure worked to improve
the income of dairymen through the Blue Ridge Milk Producers' Association.
By the end of the Depression, the Farmers Federation's sales began to approach
the million dollar mark, a figure that had been reached only once before, in
1929. Volume had increased steadily through the Depression years, but soft
prices kept the dollar total low. Despite all the discouragements, year in and
year out, Jim McClure never wavered in his determination to push the organization to the limits of its capacity in order to fulfill its destiny of "Helping the
mountain farmers to help themselves."
1. Minutes of the Farmers Federation, Meeting held January 21, 1931, p. 95.,
Book no. 1, "December 9, 1926 through April 18, 1934."
2. James G. K. McClure, Jr., personal financial statement, January 1, 1931, his
personal account book.
3. James G. K. McClure, Jr., Farmers Federation News, January 1930.
4. Farmers Federation News, August, 1930.
5. James G. K. McClure, Jr., Yale Alumni Weekly, December 30, 1932.
6. Interview with Mr. Guy Sales.
7. Interview with James McClure Clarke.
8. Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again (New York: Scribners, 1934).
9. Farmers Federation News, March 1927.
10. James G. K. McClure, Jr., Farmers Federation News, February 1930.
11. James G. K. McClure, Jr., speech on the Farmers Federation, given September
10, 1935, and transcribed in "Proceedings of the New York Farmers, 1934-1935 Season," New York, 1935, p. 14.
12. Ibid., p. 15.
13. James G. K. McClure, Jr., sermon, "Something is Moving in the Countryside."
14. James G. K. McClure, Jr., speech on the Lord's Acre, date and place unknown.
15. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "Rackets and the Public," unpublished paper written
in the early 1930s.
16. Henry A. Wallace, quoted in the Asheville Citizen-Times, Sunday, February
24, 1935.
17. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "The Seventeenth Year," Farmers Federation News,
August, 1937, p. 7.
18. Op Cit., New York Farmers, p. 16.
19. Ibid., p. 18. Question asked by Mr. James Henry Hammond.
20. James McClure Clarke, anecdote written in personal notebook.
21. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "News from the Front," Farmers Federation News,
February 1937, p. 4.
22. Interview with Mr. Don Ramsey, March 20, 1981.
23. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "News from the Front," Farmers Federation News,
February, 1937, p. 4.
�The Farmers Federation and the Depression
375
24. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "News from the Front," Farmers Federation News,
September 1938, p. 13.
25. Interview with Mr. Guy Sales.
26. letter from the Ford Motor Company to James G. K. McClure, Jr. 1922 (exact
date unknown.)
27. Interview with Mrs. Ethel Williams, February 2, 1982.
28. Op Cit., New York Farmers, p. 13.
29. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "Remaking Western North Carolina," speech given
at the Pen and Plate Club, Asheville, 1939.
�Chapter Eighteen
The Picnics*
How do you do everybody, How are you?
It's the Farmers Federation greeting you.
Now we hope you're feeling fine,
And we'll have a great big time.
How do you do- do- do- do- do- do-?
(Written and sung by Gaither Robinson)
For more than twenty years, the Farmers Federation picnics were a joyful
mixture of entertainment and education for countless people in Western North
Carolina. A picnic was a day of friendship and goodwill, held once a year in a
high school or courthouse in each county served by the Federation. The purpose
of these gatherings was twofold: to educate people about the programs offered
by the Federation, and to encourage the musical talent of the mountains, both
string players and choirs and quartets from rural churches. Here was an outlet
and an audience for many talented local performers in the days before organized
recreation and television.
The idea for the picnics doubtless grew out of the Federation stockholders'
meetings, which were held at night in each warehouse during early spring, just
before planting time. Jim McClure and Guy Sales, the general manager, reported on the progress of business, and the Farmers Federation String Band
played a few numbers. Usually only farmers who were seriously committed to
supporting the cooperative attended, often with wives and children. These were
small, cozy meetings, with chairs drawn up near the heater among the shelves
of groceries, and baby chicks chirping from stacked up cages in the corner of
the warehouse. Chicks were given as door prizes and made a great hit. After the
business there was often a little buck dancing by male members of the audience
before coffee and doughnuts were handed round. Jim wanted this kind of program available to larger audiences. Buck dancing was a traditional dance in the
mountains done exclusively by men (at least in public). The steps have evolved
into what is now called clogging.
The first picnic occurred in the early thirties. They gradually became large
gatherings that anywhere from 800 to 1,000 people might attend, sometimes
*This chapter is written in cooperation with and with the invaluable assistance of James
McClure's daughter, Elspeth McClure Clarke.
376
�The Picnics
377
Gaither Robinson (banjo), Johnny Rhymer (fiddle) and "Panhandle Pete'1 playing for a
Farmers Federation Warehouse meeting. Photo property of the McClure Fund.
even more. The Farmers Federation String Band was the mainstay of entertainment, but an amazing array of local performers always showed up. Every
summer there would be three or four especially good acts, and these performers
would be asked to attend some or all of the picnics the next year, while receiving
a small stipend to cover expenses. Jim often talked about "the great reservoir
of musical talent in the Southern mountains" and loved both the string music
and the church singing with which he had become so familiar as he attended
many different country churches. He used to say you never heard a sour note
in the mountains.
A picnic began officially at ten o'clock. To reach places at the eastern edge
of the Federation territory like Morganton and Lenoir, or far to the west like
Murphy and Hayesville, the McClure family had to leave home by five thirty
or six. Elizabeth was not an early morning person, but she got up gamely and
Jim would cheerfully make breakfast, urging everyone all the while to hurry.
The McClures usually carried a performer or two with them. Gaither Robinson,
banjo picker and lead singer of the Farmers Federation String Band for many
years, used to sit sideways on the back seat of the car and play and sing to while
away the hours on the road. Jim would call for one number after another. It was
a wonder Gaither wasn't hoarse before he ever reached the picnic.
There were always people gathered on the school grounds and even a few
expectantly sitting in the auditorium or court room when the McClure's arrived.
Two or three daughters of Federation employees greeted people as they entered
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We Plow God's Fields
the building, pinning on yellow picnic tags and urging them to come right up
and take a good seat. In later years Jim's two granddaughters would help, too.
Jim mounted the stage dressed in white shirt and "ice cream pants," his picnic
uniform, to start the program. He was never late, except twice. Once he had
two blowouts on the way over Soco Gap to Bryson City. And once he arrived
at the Burnsville picnic, always held on the fourth of July to open the season,
both a few minutes late and wearing dark pants. His four-year-old granddaughter
Annie (now the wife of the author of this book), had been sick in his lap on the
way. Her birthday was July third and the combination of birthday cake, firecrackers, mountain roads and the first picnic was hard on the digestion of such
a small trouper.
Different musicians played in the Federation Band over the years, but
Gaither Robinson was always there. Jim began the day by introducing the band
and calling on Mr. Robinson to greet the audience with a song called "How Do
You Do?" Gaither had springy white hair and wore steel-rimmed spectacles.
He always looked newly scrubbed and earnest. His voice was high and distinct
and he dead-panned the funny lines in such a way that all his songs became
comic. The audience felt relaxed and cozy the minute he began to sing:
How do you do everybody, How are you?
It's the Farmers Federation greeting you
Now we hope you're feeling fine,
And we'll have a great big time.
How do you do- do- do- do- do- do-?
The morning program featured string music interspersed with talks on
farming and programs of the cooperative. Jim McClure and Dumont Clarke
always spoke, as well as other officers of the cooperative and usually a local
representative of the State Agriculture Extension Service. The Federation band
started the program off with several numbers and remained in the wings ready
to fill in if necessary, but many local performers always turned up in the course
of the morning to register with Jim as he sat at a table on one side of the stage.
As local worthies arrived he would interrupt the program to recognize them.
"Here comes Mr. Winslow Burgin, one of our Farmers Federation directors,"
he would say. "We're all glad to see him and we want you to come right up
here and sit on the stage." Or "Sheriff Hines, we know we'll have a good picnic
today with you here to keep order. Step right up on the platform with us!" If he
could not remember some name he would send out a runner to find out. Soon
everyone in the audience felt they were a personal friend of Jim McClure's, and
part of the show.
The membership of the string band changed occasionally. Fender Rector
was fiddler until the early forties, a stocky little man with a big grin who always
encouraged young performers. Johnny Rhymer followed him, himself one of
the young performers Fender had encouraged, and he became a legend in the
�The Picnics
379
mountains, playing as fast in 1989 as he did in 1943. He played old English
fiddle tunes like "Bonaparte's Retreat" or the latest tune from Nashville and he
always got an audience into the swing.
Jim understood how important it is to keep a program moving, and since
the possible performers were an unpredictable group, changing from picnic to
picnic and from year to year, this required an imaginative approach and a sure
feel for the mood of the audience. When Elspeth began to help at the picnics,
her job was to line up performers and speakers in the wings of the stage ready
to appear when he called them. In later years, when Jim's nephew Jamie Clarke
ran the picnics, he, too, understood how important it was to keep speeches
short. Once he surreptitiously sent one of his small sons, Dumont, to offer a
speaker a cookie, which effectively checked him in the midst of an oratorical
flight.
The picnic audience was a fluid mass. Everyone felt perfectly free to leave
the auditorium when the spirit moved. People were constantly arriving to swell
the crowd, while others were going out, not to leave the picnic, but to cool off
outside, or talk with a friend perhaps not seen since last year, or to try to find a
family member temporarily lost in the confusion. As people left their seats
others came in to take their places in the hot, stuffy auditorium. Little girls
would sit obediently with their mothers; but little boys moved in independent,
unpredictable groups. Often they were dressed up in white shirts and clean bib
overalls— "mean little oF boys," Max Roberts, picnic director, and head of the
Federation Training School, called them.
If people sensed the least threat of boredom in a speech, an exodus would
begin. First a group of "little oF boys" in the front row would leave, then a
woman with a baby, soon followed by a mother with several children. A portly
man would rise in the center of the hall and push his way out to stride up the
aisle toward the doors, soon followed by a whole group of men and women,
until the house was half empty. The unfortunate speaker droned hopelessly on,
almost drowned out by the tread of heavy feet. Jim was a natural showman and
he quickly learned to intersperse the educational parts of the program with
audience-riveting entertainers.
"Next we're going to hear Johnny Rhymer play 'Home, Sweet Home' on
the balloon," he would announce. "But just before he comes on we're going to
hear a few words from Professor Smith, who knows more than any one in
Western North Carolina about this new hybrid corn." The crowd squirmed a
little, but no one wanted to lose a seat just before Johnny Rhymer came on. A
"walk out" was always a threat, keeping the maestro on his toes.
When Jamie McClure, Jamie Clarke and later Elspeth were away serving
in the Navy in World War II Elizabeth wrote letters to them describing the
picnics. She could write very fast, describing the performances just as it was
happening.
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Audience at the annual Yancey County Picnic of the Farmers Federation, July 4, 1942.
"Darling Elfie," she began one such letter,
It's a lovely day—cool and crisp with floating whipped cream clouds and
the countryside fresh and green after a good shower yesterday.
Corwith [Cramer] and Corwith's friend John Compton, . . . are here for the
picnic season as lemonade boys," We are packed into the Buick with Betty
Huntley, Daddy and I. Betty is playing, "Oh, what a Beautiful Morning," and
the day looks promising, with picnickers streaming along the road towards
Burnsville school house . . . I shall try to give you a running account of the
picnic as the events of the day move along.
Mr. Wilson Edwards, who is the Chairman of the Farmers Federation in
Yancey [County], has just opened up by turning the meeting over to "Mr.
McClure." "Mr. Clarke [Rev. Dumont Clarke] is making a very fine prayer
and now Daddy is introducing Norman Barnett [manager of the Burnsville
warehouse] and the other members of the warehouse [team] . . . Now! Mr.
Robinson [is] singing, "How do you do?" (He looks more immaculate than
ever—simply shining).
Mrs. Elizabeth Anglin, a very sprightly young blonde on the plump side,
is swirling through "The Old Age Pension Check Comes to Our Door."*
*Here are two verses of the song, very popular that summer:
When the old age pension check comes to our door
Then Grandma won't be lonesome any more
They'll be waiting at the gate,
Every night she'll have a date
When the old age pension check comes to our door.
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. . . [Next] the Drake [Sisters] four teenage girls, part Indian, with black
eyes and flashing smiles, always escorted and accompanied on the piano by
their father. They were a "hit" [last year] and so were invited to attend several
picnics with us ... A little speech from Joy (the oldest) who is introducing the
different members. Joy has put up her hair and looks quite different but the
singing is just as much of a knock-out as ever. Little Bunny's voice is even
more tremendous! I think they sang a hymn but it was all expressed in very
fine jazz time to which the ever ready toe of the audience lent instant tapping
response. They are now giving an encore of "Comin' in on a Wing and a
Prayer" with perfectly super harmonies and much feeling, a good slow tempo
and much dragging of the key words. The audience is sitting pop-eyed. Now
they are changing the tempo and doing some very complicated harmonizing,
very fast and effective. (Mr. Drake at the piano is really something to see—
slick and jaunty. He always has a slight air of the race track about him, to me!)
Betty Huntley in a green and white striped dress . . . is singing, "Oh, What
a Beautiful Mornin'." She has a truly, lovely voice and the song "suits it."
Next we are going to have the "Wabash Cannon Ball" sung by two Yancey
County performers. The boy has sandy hair and a penetrating, tight mountain
voice. Fender Rector is "helping" with the fiddle and the Cannon Ball is really
going to town. People are coming in in streams. The building is already
full—and the day only starting.
[Now] little Gene Boone is singing "Gro-u-nd Hawg"—a most wonderful
version mat he undoubtedly learned from his grandfather as he sings it in the
traditional half singing—half talking fashion of the pioneer, with a wonderful
drag and slur and melancholy whine to Gr-aa-o-und Haw-g that is just inimitable.**
Betty Huntley is at it again, singing "The San Fernando Valley" hi the best
radio style.
Mr. Bailey for the Farm Security organization is about to speak. There is a
menacing movement from the rear which may or may not be a "walk out."
Mr. Bailey is struggling to get en rapport with his audience. So far no luck.
It's all copy book stuff. Yancey County is definitely bored. But it's over now.
I'm afraid his message didn't grip. Now another Mr. Bailey is giving another
message from the Farm Security organization which turns out to be a series
of remarkable animal noises: an old hen, a superlative midnight cat, baby
chicks at all stages of development, a rooster that was absolutely triumphant
in his crowing. The crowd is just amazed. Now, Mr. Bailey is getting in a little
farming stuff. He's good. Very direct and clear. "Produce more, on less
All the drug stores will go busted on that day,
And cosmetics they will all go out to stay,
Faded cheeks will be the rage,
And old maids will tell their age,
When the old age pension check comes to our door.
**Here comes Sal with a giggle and a grin,
Here comes Sal with a giggle and a grin,
Ground Hawg grease all over her chin.
Gr—o—u—nd Haw—g, Gr—oo—uu—nd Haw—g.
381
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We Plow God's Fields
Claude Boone, Betty Jean Boone and Eugene Boone, Caldwell County Picnic, Kings
Creek School, August 7, 1943.
ground." Now he's doing Bob White and Lady Bob White, the Song Sparrow,
the Cardinal and now a Turkey hen calling her young, an old "house dog"
greeting strangers, hunting a rabbit and "raring up bayin' at the moon" and
now a few words urging us to "keep the birds and let them kill the insects and
so save insecticides and money." Now, a Whip-poor-will followed by a squirrel and the most amazing whinny of an old horse out at pasture —wild applause
.. . Uncle Dumont brought a sailor boy—a young man named McCurdy
who is just about to speak on his experiences in Salerno . . . an impressive and
interesting talk and should help the [war bond] sales. (Daddy announces) "All
you singers come up and help us sing America," and now "All you singers
break right into this—'When the Roll is Called up Yonder' —There's a few
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383
people in the house not singing!! Sing! Sing!—'When the Roll is called up
yonder, I'll be there.'"
Daddy is now paying a tribute to the singing of Yancey County and Western
North Carolina in general.. . (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Elspeth McClure,
My 4, 1944, from Bumsville, NC)
The picnics were a good combination of sacred and secular music. There
was always a slight rift between the gospel singers and the string players. Some,
like Betty Huntiey, a preacher's daughter herself, were beginning to bridge the
gap, accompanying both hymns and ballads on the guitar, but the gap was
there—some lingering feelings that dance music and drinking went together and
promoted sinful activities. Max Roberts, head of the Federation Training School
and a devoted churchman, had to spend a lot of time making arrangements with
string performers in his capacity of picnic director. Sometimes he found them
undependable and often he could be heard muttering under his breath, "Musicianers are all low down and lazy." One string band that filled in for the
Federation band one summer, when Johnny Rhymer was in the army and Fender
Rector was working full time in a pawn shop, lived up to Max's worst fears.
Sometimes they would not appear at the picnic until after noon, and then drag
in looking pallid and hung over. But when they stepped onto the stage their
smiles lit up like electricity, and the lead singer, Elmer, would belt into "Blessed
Jesus, Hold My Hand." Every old lady in the audience would be wiping away
tears by the time he finished. Gaither Robinson disproved all Max's theories
about "musicianers," with his exemplary employment record as a bus driver and
his solid life. The combination of both kinds of music at the picnics helped to
dispel prejudice about string music. Elspeth remembers a minister who opened
the afternoon session with prayer saying, "Thank you, Lord, for allowing us to
forget ourselves." One of the most remarkable things about the picnics was that
they brought all elements of a community together. The man who was known
to take a drink too often would sit faithfully listening to a church choir. Solid,
respectable farm families would be crowded cheek by jowl with the drifters and
ne'er-do-wells. The socially approved and those they disapproved all seemed
happy together for one day. Segregation or integration never came up. Who
could be more eloquent than the Black preacher at Hayesville who always said
the blessing over the truckload of watermelons?
To keep the audience attentive to his report on the various departments of
the Federation and the new programs he wanted to emphasize, Jim adopted a
plan of getting well known local figures to stand up in a line on the stage, each
wearing a large placard labeled with the name of one of the departments. As he
made his report on the progress of the cooperative he would have each man step
forward to be introduced. Then he would speak about the activity his placard
represented.
Elizabeth included snatches from Jim's talk in her letter from Bumsville
in 1944:
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385
We now have 13,000 members . . . All we did when we started out was to
establish a beach head. We soon found we must develop specialists in all
branches of farming. Little by little we have done this ... We've developed
a bunch of boys .who have come up through our training school . .. Hard to
get feed [This was because of wartime scarcities], but we've managed to keep
feed . . . The biggest business ever this year—over three million dollars . . .
want to remind you that you are now beginning to get control of your own
business . . . When you trade with your own stores, every sale goes back into
increasing the service of the Farmers Federation. Here, the egg price has never
dropped below 27 cents. In many other parts of the country eggs dropped to
15 cents. Tennessee asked us to come over there and take charge of the egg
situation which was desperate. We were able to do this in the Eastern section
of the State . . . We need our own feed mills, our own sawmills, freezer
lockers .. . Have a little patience . .. It's a tough time to do business . . .
surely stick to the Farmers Federation as it is the one hope of your doing
business:
The letter continued:
Mrs. Elizabeth Anglin is now singing, "I'll Die for the Red White and
Blue," a dreary little song sung at top speed. Jack Gattis [head of the Federation Hatchery] is now at the loud speaker. There is something about the look
and sound of him that makes for confidence. "Our incubators have a capacity
of 462,000,900 chicks per week. We have resources here for growing the best
poultry in the United States . . . Your money is staying right here at home
when you trade with the Federation." [Now] Daddy is summoning the cacklers
[hen imitators]. Frank Reed [manager of the Fairview warehouse] is in top
form and [there is] a wonderful old guy who swoops and crows and must have
spent his life in a hen house. "Now Mr. Harry Love will give a talk on
tobacco." (The back of the room has 7 rows deep of people standing) . . . (a
very interesting and quite astonishing statement on the possibilities of making
money with tobacco [follows]). Mr. Love has impressed everyone.
While the audience is taking this in, a group of 4 young men have appeared
with guitars and a part-song with wonderful slurs and harmonies and repeats.
Thunderous applause. "We'll have them back again."
"How many of you read the Federation News!" Daddy inquires. (A big
show of hands.)
'That's a good number. Now I shall introduce the Editor of the Federation
News. Bob [Brown] is very dashing in a palm beach suit with a new hair cut.
We have some post cards here with a picture of a picnic truck." [Bob Brown
tells the audience. The truck is crammed with people.] "The cards will he
passed so that everyone can write a message to a boy or girl in the service.
Then you may drop them at the Bond Booth and they will be stamped and
mailed free.."..Some very fine yodeling is going on right now while the
postcards are being passed. (Never fear, you will receive one!)... Mr. Nor-
Opposite: Jamie Clarke, "Freezer Lockers"; Dumont Clarke—"The Lord's Acre"; and
Jim McClure speaking, Burnsville (Yancey County) picnic, July 4,1947.
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man Barnett [warehouse manager] is giving forth a ... welcome to the picnickers and is telling the glad tidings of the watermelon feast in store.
And now, [a little grey speaker is rising to give some expert agricultural
advice.] The poor dear man has not uttered three words but the tramp, tramp,
is starting and there is a vast progression toward the door . . . The end has
come at last. We are now all stampeding toward the watermelons.
The noon hour, as far as we were concerned, was notable for the fact that
nobody had brought anything to eat so that our sandwiches and tomatoes just
melted away. Except for Mrs. Greenwood who had a superb pie and cake and
delectable sandwiches. No one else seemed to have brought anything . . . The
place was a complete shambles from the watermelon orgy and Corwith and
John and a crew of little boys toiled for a long time cleaning up; the races [sack
races, relay races] were "run off and it was at length time to begin the
afternoon events.
Perry Green [head of the Poultry department] opened up with a lengthy
discourse on chickens. Five fair maids of uncertain age were introduced as the
"egg handling crew" and received enthusiastic applause. (At this point, the egg
crew returned having to clamber over me ... both exiting and entering.)
They were swiftly followed by a very active [buck] dance given by a
number of old timers and "Little Bob Brown." [eight-year-old son of the editor
of the News.] Then four young men engaged in a very clever harmony-there
is a basso-profundo . . . "Kneel at the Cross" was wonderful . . . The bond
chairman has just reported $1600.00 in bond sales. Much enthusiasm.
Now a Navy petty officer is speaking—a funny little guy from N. J. who
said a great many words all of which boiled down to a general appreciation of
the region. A little boy about 7 or 8 is singing "There's a Star Spangled Banner
Waving Somewhere." He has a piercingly true little voice, with a lovely cool
quality and the crowd liked him. It was his first [Public] appearance and he
was completely calm and unruffled.
Little Cleo Owenby is now at the piano and Frank [Reed] is assembling his
cohorts for a big general sing. "We want to sing 'Revive Us Again'" (The
hymns and songs of the afternoon have been typed on sheets of paper distributed around for all to use.) Daddy is asking for "I Shall Not be, I Shall Not
be Moved." (How many great, good times that brings to mind.)
Now Daddy is saying that if we want to maintain our freedom and liberty,
it must be done by maintaining the spiritual atmosphere of the rural home and
the rural church . . . Mr. Clarke is now being introduced and is making a fine
address. Everyone listens intently. (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Elspeth
McClure, July 4, 1944)
Dumont Clarke attended every picnic to report on the progress of the Lord's
Acre Plan, which was spreading far and wide in the United States and even into
the mission field. He was tall and straight, with silver hair and a kind and
commanding presence, and the audience always gave him rapt attention. Although he spoke quietly, he was an orator and he was greatly loved by people
all over the mountains. He had probably spoken in every church from Murphy
in the west to Lenoir in the east, had dinner at someone's house afterwards, and
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Left to right: Charlie Ownby, Broadus Morrow, Boyce Moon, Lewis Kirstein and "Little"
Cleo Ownby—The Fairview Quartette [sic], first prize winners at the Buncombe County
Picnic, July 15, 1943.
photographed young people of every church with their pigs, chickens, calves
or crops dedicated to the Lord.
The contest for best choir and quartet followed Dumont's talk. Jim was
very interested in the traditional "shaped note" singing of the mountains. The
shape of the note, whether a square, a triangle, a circle, etc., indicated the pitch
rather than its position on the staff. These hymns were fun to sing, with complicated parts and a fast tempo. The prizes offered at the picnics were new hymn
books. Singers liked to get a new paperback set every year or two and learn new
hymns.
We return to Elizabeth's letter as the singing contests followed Reverend
Dumont Clarke's talk:
The Swannanoa quartet is assembling—all older men. (While they are being
introduced, all the members of the Big Ivy Choir are coming up to the stage
-a huge crowd of all ages and sizes.) The Swannanoa quartet is doing a grand
job, "Keep a Little Sunshine in Your Sky." Now, an encore, something very
gay and foot-tapping—with a great emphasized rhythm.
[Now the choir:] There are a vast number of girls singing—the men are all
concentrated on the back line and there must be at least 16 or 18 girls. Now
they are off again. "There's a Mansion up Yonder Just Waiting for Me."
The Roberts family are now singing—two very pretty girls and a professional father who has a big bass voice. The song is one of the most compli-
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cated—part-singing in the chorus dominated by the soprano—extremely clear
and true. Loud applause from the crowd and an encore in prospect. A wild
scurry at this point when the microphone took a stagger and almost fell into
the expectant arms of the audience, but Mr. Drake (father of the singing
sisters), by a sort of ju-jitsu caught it before it took a final spin. The Roberts
never batted an eyelash but launched right into "The Cabin on the Hill"—very
well done with a fascinating rhythm and a sort of counter point performance
on the part of the singers.
"Next, I am calling on all the singers to come up and sing under Frank Reed
in a big song."
Uncle Joe Pressley and Preacher Riley Corn are assembling their chorus.
Now they are off, Uncle Joe's white head focussing the picture. Daddy is
almost into the choir—just hanging onto the fringe! Frank is in his element and
Uncle Joe can be heard all over the hall. A little bit of a girl is singing with all
she's got. "I'm so happy singing Halleluyah, halleluyah! (I must say I've
always thought Halleluyah was a lovely musical word, no matter what you do
to it!)
Another quartet of four is now singing. Two long, lanky boys, a pretty girl
with yellow curls and a little short, stumpy man. Two good songs from diem,
no piano accompaniment which is much the nicest with this kind of singing, I
think.
Now a solo by Miss Bunny Drake, a wonderful song, "When they ask about
you." Huge applause. Now all 5 sisters are singing, "Coming in on a wing and
a prayer." (I miss Joy's curls terribly!) Deafening applause, shouts, yells, cat
calls of enthusiasm. They will have to come back. Here they are, singing
"Swing Low." Joy has the lead and Bunny replies. I should think that they
might be snapped up by a Broadway Producer. "It's the only song we know
how to sing backwards—would you like to hear us?" With that they all turned
their backs and sang the last verse. The audience yelled! . .. (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Elspeth McClure, July 4, 1944)
The picnic at Bryson City had a special character because a large part of
the Cherokee Indian Reservation lived in Swain County, and many Indians
attended. In July 1945, Elizabeth wrote about the Bryson City picnic, this time
to Jamie Clarke and Elspeth when they were in the Navy in Washington, D. C.
According to her report the family rose at the usual early hour, and
. . . Betty [Huntley] was waiting for us at her mail box and we picked up
little Jean Kennickel at Fairview. She is a little bit of a thing—weighs about
90 Ibs. and looks 12, with golden hair, lovely little features . . . She is 17 but
so tiny that her accordion almost covers her up.
The picnic is now officially opening with a welcome from Frank Bird who
is in charge of the warehouse here.
Now comes Frank Reed leading the "Old Rugged Cross" and then a good
but very long prayer by a local "preacher." Daddy is reminding everyone that
the Federation picnic today in Swain County is to be dedicated to friendship
and goodwill. Now he is giving a brief recognition to all the boys in the
fighting forces "whose wonderful achievements maintain the things we believe
in." Uncle Jim is now urging everyone to keep in mind the need for food
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Shirley andlrma Styles, 11 and 12 years old, daughters of Mrs. Ted Styles, who accompanies them on the piano, 1947.
production. The moment is come for Gaither [Robinson] to mount the rostrum
and after the usual stupefying introduction he is singing "How do you do?"—
He looks if possible even more dapper than usual.
. . . Betty [Huntley]... 'There's a Happy Land Somewhere" . . . She looks
very sweet and sings really beautifully
. . . The crowd likes it so she's at it again with "Don't Sing Aloha When I
Go.."..Billy Owl, a small 8 year old Indian boy, is now singing "In the Halls
of Montezuma." Mr. Robinson is helping with his banjo and the little Owl is
a lusty singer, with more vigor than melody. Mrs. Leila Smart with a five
year old and a six year old are now up to bat. The little girls have the softest
little voices and are singing in perfect harmony, "Don't Fence Me In," while
their mother accompanies them with the guitar—huge applause. As usual, the
smaller and younger you are, the more the crowd loves the performance. A
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We Plow God's Fields
little 12 year old girl and two small brothers are now playing and singing a
complicated, fast mountain hymn, with long drawn out wailing harmonies.
Guy Sales is up now looking very solid and impressive. His speeches get
better and better—very direct and to the point and everyone seems to want to
listen. He is explaining the cooperative movement and its significance—"A
movement framed up out of necessity." He is explaining the assets in the co-op
and the meaning it has for the people—how they can go to work and buy
stock—just what services can be worked up that will make life easier and
more abundant. Good applause. No walk outs . . .
A harmony trio, all "Breedloves," are at the microphone—two girls with
white blouses and short black cotton skirts with white ruffles,—and a younger
brother. They appear to be triplets—all the same size and shape—all redheads.
It's surprising how much red hair and red gold hair there is in the mountains.
I suppose it's the Scotch ancestry.
[Now Jim:] "We are very fortunate in having with us your County Agent"—
a very warming little introduction by the President. The agent looks like a
friendly, likeable person. [He boosted the seeds and fertilizer sold by the
Farmers Federation and ended with an encouraging report of REA (Rural
Electrification Administration)] .. . many benefits may be anticipated. Electricity for everyone. [Many farm families did not have electric power at this
time.] (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Elspeth McClure Clarke and Jamie
Clarke, July 8, 1945)
Reverend Dumont Clarke was hi charge of the next event—"Musical
Chairs." He would call a group of well known local citizens up to the stage to
take part. The Federation band provided the music. Johnny Rhymer was, and
still is, a master of the sudden stop—it sent participants tumbling into the
available chairs. The incongruity of large, serious men playing this children's
game on stage never failed to delight the audience. Dumont's daughter, Phebe
Ann Lewis, had suggested the game and it became a perennial hit. Elizabeth
described how it went:
A group of solid leading citizens including the Sheriff [come on stage]. Mr.
McClure with a most impressive manner is turning the program over to Uncle
Dumont and "Musical Chairs" is now in progress with 10 Swain County
worthies, a little dazed—The crowd is asked to "pick a winner"—The band
starts up and the leading citizens are parading solemnly round! Casualties are
beginning;— "Walt Jenkins is out!" Eight are left. The audience is loving it.
The Sheriff is still hi. Round and round they go to the strains of "Sourwood
Mountain." Two more are left out. The situation grows more tense. Several
more casualties. "The Sheriff is out!" Only two are left—Harry Breedlove
wins—"the best looking man in the audience!"
The game is over but many of the players have joined the group sitting on
the stand, making a lively back drop for the performers. Now Slim Nanny is
singing "Rosy" to the sturdy and somewhat monotonous accompaniment of his
band. It's a combination wail and yodel—a "lonesome" plaintive melody.
After a pause to discuss the tobacco market, the show went on.
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Alex Houston, the little ventriloquist, is now about to appear—[This talented boy with his talking dolls, Elmer and Katy, was a regular picnic performer for several years] . . . He is a frail creature looking scarcely more man
ten though I believe he is actually twelve. He has a new line that is very snappy
and delights the crowd. Elmer is more convincing than ever and Alex seems
even more extraordinary . . . Katy sings a duet with Elmer in a high soprano
. . . Elmer whistles like many wild birds and does a little puppy dog that brings
down the house.
Now, "Mr. McClure" is about to give a little talk on the poultry program—
inheritance, livability, etc.—a slight tendency to walk out—Suddenly from
behind the scenes emerges . . . the finest rooster and hen you ever did see ...
[Frank Reed and Bob Brown] The hen lays an egg-ostrich size—yells of
delight—the few who walked out are hurrying back . . . "Look at what big
eggs and then think about the Farmers Federation baby chicks." . . . I am still
agog myself over the costumes. Some genius in Asheville made them. They
would do justice to the Russian Coq d'Or—immensely effective and realistic
and hugely decorative . .. "This kind of hen will make money for you."
.. . The Harmony Trio is now up—Then a talk about a big turkey program
that the Fed is going to launch next year . ..
"The next number will be Miss Neil Anne Allen of Canton who will do an
acrobatic act"—a pretty little slim thing—tall—incredibly lanky—immensely
graceful, is now performing in the most startling .. . manner—"fish flops"—
somersaults and unbelievable bends and gyrations. The crowd is goggle eyed
with surprise and amazement—Never have they seen anything like thisl
. . . It's a lovely day—the mists have all risen and its cool and delicious—
Time now to close the morning session and get to the business of watermelons
and lemonade. Many Indians on hand standing around in little knots. The
strange [white] preacher to the Indians—"Mr. Smith," is on hand, looking
more of an anomaly than ever. One Indian woman has a huge fat baby strapped
on her back, papoose fashion—The lemonade boys are very smart and efficient
this year . . . Betty Jean and I sliced tomatoes and made sandwiches under the
big trees at our usual stand and fed dozens of little grabbing boys who looked
half starved and would have eaten joyfully pieces of blotting paper if we had
buttered it.
. . . In front of me is an Indian family—an old Indian in a very clean white
shirt and his old wife in a snappy black and white print—a great contrast to the
other old Cherokees who all have bright red and yellow turbans around their
heads, vivid blue and orange scarves and a gaiety of prints . ..
Jim McClure made a point of recognizing anyone present from the armed
forces at the picnics during World War n, and there were usually some account
of the war from an officer or two, and some patriotic songs included in the
program.
At Bryson City the singing contests had their own special quality, according to Elizabeth's account.
Now for the choir contest—
Echota and Rock Hill—with no piano—A group of eight Indians—The
Rock Hill Choir, singing a strange mournful melody—almost a chant with
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Corbert Reed as the Rooster, Frank Reed as the Hen, Clay County Picnic, Hayesville,
N.C., July 11, 1947.
queer minors and a background of repetitive singing that is a little like the
music in the Russian Church. Very restrained and all in Cherokee—beautiful.
Now they are doing another one, faster and very rhythmic—the voices are
softer and fuller than the white chorus—with a fine depth and resonance in the
bases and a very pleasing balance and unity of effect.
Now for the Echota Choir—four Indian [men] and two old Cherokee
women. A long drawn out, solemn cadence with great stressing of the harmonies and a lot of almost antiphonal singing. Very dignified and impressive—
Lots of minors—and really beautiful harmonies—unexpected and surprising—
Another song in exactly the same key—more antiphonal singing—a lovely
background of harmony that has almost an organ quality. I don't see how the
judges will ever decide!
Now the Cold Spring Choir led by Elspie's friend "Mr. Smiley." (Uncle Jim
at this point has suddenly decided that a well known agricultural expert should
be recognized.) This expert is now somewhat hurriedly making his little talk
with a nervous eye on the advancing choir and on the audience that is weighing
a speech against their yearning to listen to the singers.
. . . Another quartette—Soco Valley—No piano, which makes it so much
more effective—Rather slow impressive harmonies and a nice tenor who is the
leader . . . These people are good,—all Indians except for the strange preacher
Smith who is part Cherokee anyway. Soco Valley wins the prize for the "best
quartette.."..A burst of good congregational singing, "Farther Along" and
"When the Roll is Called up Yonder"—Then a startling change in tempo as the
young acrobat comes on [again] she leaps and plunges and twists in serpentine
gyrations—a bent whalebone could not be more pliable. She looks just like
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an animated long legged rag doll— the kind that debutantes used to twist
around bed posts . . . Shrieks, cat-calls, yells— particularly from the masculine element.
The afternoon program always ended with "the contests"—for the largest
family present, the most recently married couple and the couple married longest,
and at the end, the bald-headed contest. Sometimes a man would attend several
picnics to win this coveted honor.
Mr. Roberts is calling for the youngest married couple—so far no responses
to his pleas which have been unavailing— "Evidently, people around Bryson
just don't get married." Finally a pair married three years have been discovered. Now for the oldest married—a neat, tidy little pair, married forty years,
have come forward. The old gentleman at the mike says he hopes he "will live
to see another picnic."
A family of eleven is now approaching the stage. Mr. Roberts is proposing
that they all sing a song—(one boy is in the service making twelve)—Bob is
about to take their photographs—The three girls are embarking on "Don't You
Cry Over Me"—This dreary ditty for some reason brought down the house—
another one about "Remember I Died for the Red, White and Blue." The girls
have piercing voices—"Keep your chin up and be brave for me, little darling"— More whistles and howls of pleasure—Wow-w!
Frank is announcing that "Echota Choir" is first, "Coldspring" next, and
"Rock Hill" last. Truck drivers are counting their loads [of people]. One man
brought eighty-five—oh boy! Another truck carried seventy-two.
The bald headed contest is on—The judges will decide by the fervor of the
clapping as to who wins. Elspie's friend Mr. Smiley is up—he seems to have
plenty of admirers as the racket is prodigious. Other contestants in order—so
far, Mr. John Breedlove seems to draw forth the most blood curdling yells—
but even more deafening is the roar that greets [a] Mr. Marr who brought the
largest truck load—A tie between Mr. Marr and Mr. B.— the clapping and
shouting is terrific; Times Square on election night could not possibly equal
the din for Mr. B.— forty seconds of uproar. Mr. Marr steps up—his supporters out do themselves—the testimonial to Mr. B. fades to nothing in comparison—I only fear that it will quicken the sluggish Cherokee blood and produce
the hidden tomahawk! Mr. Man* wins!! And the 1945 Bryson County picnic
is over.
Well, my pets, if you have gone this far with me I congratulate you—I
don't think you can read a word but I really had to "step on it" as things move
fast here.
... I forgot to say that many Indians asked for Elspie and sent messages
of greeting.
Elspeth and her father had worked up a "fox chase" act, managing between
them to sound like a pack of hounds and a little yipping Feist dog. The Indians
particularly liked this number and a man asked Jim once, "When your daughter
bark?"
After the Bryson City picnic the troupe moved even further west for more
�Top: Truck leaving the Haywood County Picnic.
Bottom: Elspeth and Jim McClure performing their "fox chase" act.
�The Picnics
395
picnics, spending the night in Murphy, county seat of Cherokee County. In
1942, when Elizabeth was writing to Jamie, there was a tornado in Murphy just
before they arrived. Two cars had been demolished, the electric power was out
and picnic director, Max Roberts' hat blew away just as they stepped out into
the street. She wrote,
Nothing daunted, the Federation "Talent" gathered in the living room of our
small lodging house and sang, played and danced until all hours to huge
pleasure of the landlord. All done by the light of one feeble and expiring lamp!
Next morning we were off again to Hayesville . . . where a crowd of some
four or five hundred gathered. The great event of the day was the group of little
girls—nine sisters from 21 years to 18 months—the "Martin sisters," who
appeared all dressed alike, all pretty and all more or less the same size except
for the baby who was carried by the oldest sister and who was as good as gold
and dressed just like all the rest in cute little flowered organdy dresses with
black velvet ribbons. The mother had died of pneumonia last winter and the
father was in attendance to chaperone his crowd, in addition carrying one very,
very small baby brother and shepherding another about 4 years old! Eleven
children! It was spectacular though I am mindful of the man with 24 at the
Burnsville picnic who knew he had "2 sons in the Navy" but didn't know how
many "might be in the Army." And the nonchalant old boy who said to Daddy
"T'ain't no surprise to have 24 children, I done got 22 myself." (Now how's
that!)
Daddy made a special plea to have the Martin sisters come to the Franklin
picnic next week but Mr. Martin was a little doubtful. "I ain't sure as I can be
there," he said, "Seems like they cain't make it iffen I cain't be there to fight
the young 'uns (by this he meant the two small boys, who definitely had to be
beaten down at intervals). Mr. Martin didn't seem to regard himself as unduly
burdened with responsibility. He just coped with what came along as best he
might!
We had dinner at Dillsboro at the hotel there and were much entertained by
mine host who had a huge red nose and was a character out of Dickens. We
ate enormously—wonderful ham and other delicious country tit-bits. Home
by midnight and never did bed seem more desirable. (Elizabeth Cramer
McClure to Jamie McClure, 1942)
As a true artist Elizabeth had a deep appreciation for the picnics. Every
year new performers would turn up and some you had hoped to see again would
have disappeared. One of the greatest entertainers at the picnics was "Pan
Handle Pete," who first appeared several years after Elizabeth's death. A big
man, with a broad red face, he stomped into a picnic one day with an enormous
drum strapped on his back, a pair of cymbals lashed to his ankles, his guitar
hanging around his neck, and a harmonica somehow wired in place. Altogether
he carried seventeen different instruments, including a horn form a Model T
Ford, and he was singing "The Chew Tobacco Rag," with appropriate spitting
noises. The audience went wild and they continued to go wild as long as Howard
Nash appeared.
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We Plow God's Fields
Panhandle Pete (Howard Nash).
He was a natural clown as well as a gifted musician and his fierce exterior
covered a gentle heart. With his side kick Steve Ledford, an old time mountain
fiddler from Little Rock Creek on the side of Roan Mountain, he would spellbind the crowd with "The Audience Song."
"I see a lady a sittin' by the aisle—" He and Steve would stop playing and
peer into the crowd.
Then Pan Handle would leap from the stage and walk around staring at first
one lady and then another.
"I see a lady a sittin' by the aisle—" Many giggles and much blushing.
Finally he would sit down beside the chosen woman, always of mature years
and solid figure.
�The Picnics
397
"If she'll stick around I'll see her after awhile. There'll be a hot time in the
old town tonight!"
The next verse might be "I see a lady, her teeth so pretty and white—"
Loud laughter from Pan Handle and Steve.
"Just like the stars, they come out every night. We'll have a hot time in the
old town tonight!" Shrieks erupted from the audience!
To focus attention on the poultry program he, Pan Handle, would lurk
about in the rear of the auditorium in the policeman's uniform until everyone
was looking uneasily over their shoulders, then rush toward the stage to arrest
the innocent Gaither Robinson in mid banjo chord, and triumphantly drag him
off as a "chicken thief." Corny stuff perhaps, but it was real audience participation and brought joy to people whose days were filled with toil. Pan Handle's
humor, like that of all true comedians, was always kindly.
Jim would announce a fiddling contest. Pan Handle and Steve would leap
forward, each claiming to be the best. Each tried to out do the other's tricks
until at the end Pan Handle was half lying on the stage, playing his enormous
"bull fiddle" under his back. When he was acclaimed the winner amidst the
shouts of the crowd, Steve would protest angrily that the prize should have been
his and a fight would erupt. Steve would get hold of Pete's shirt and start to
pull, and pull and pull until the shirt extended right across the stage, like a
banner, with Farmers Federation emblazoned in large letters.
The entire picnic program, over all the years, had the charm of the unexpected, both for those who watched and those who ran the show. You never
knew what might turn up. There was the cowboy whose rope tricks sometimes
failed, but still left little boy's eyes popping. A bag piper was so foreign to our
mountains that a Federation director at Franklin called for another number on
"that Italian instrument." And there were countless others.
What was it that made the day special? The joy of the music, of old friends
meeting over the watermelons and lemonade at the noon hour, of singing "The
Old Rugged Cross" together in the packed auditorium after lunch, of thumping
your feet to the strains of Pan Handle Pete's One Man Band? Whatever it was,
the appeal was universal,for the program seemed to be as much of a hit at the
Waldorf Astoria in New York as in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Thomas J. Watson, founder of the IBM Corporation, was much interested
in Jim McClure's work and sponsored Federation picnics at the Waldorf. Picnic
troupers went north for several of these occasions. Sam Queen and his famous
Maggie Valley square dance team, the Federation String Band, Pan Handle
Pete, Herman Jones from Sylva, singing "I'm on the Battlefield for My Lord"
at the top of his voice. Jamie McClure sang at the first New York picnic. He
came down from Yale to sing "John Henry," the ballad of the old steel driving
man, in the old mountain way his mother loved to hear. One year Betty Huntley
sang "Silver Haired Daddy of Mine" in honor of Jack Bierworth, President of
National Distillers, who was a staunch supporter of the Federation.
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We Plow God's Fields
Jim McClure was a master at reading the mood of an audience and adjusting the program accordingly. He also had the trouper's conviction that the show
must go on. He told Jamie Clarke that just before the first picnic at the Waldorf
he lost his voice completely. He went into a small room and sat quietly for ten
minutes, and it came back in time to start the program.
Jamie Clarke helped Jim run the North Carolina picnics for ten years after
World War n. As his family grew he even began to win the prize for largest
family present occasionally. Jim got a great kick out of having his grandchildren
attend picnics. Once he stepped outside the Columbus Courthouse, where the
Polk County picnic was always held, to get a breath of fresh air and was
surprised to see a toddler tied by a long string to a tree. He took a close look to
see if the little fellow was all right, and found it was his own grandson (and
namesake) Jim! He was a very active crawler and his mother had secured him
temporarily while doing some errand.
Because Jamie Clarke was familiar with the picnics he was able to carry
right on after Jim died in 1956, continuing as long as he was with the Federation.
These gatherings brought together the finest elements of the Appalachian tradition in order to promote the progressive development of the region. But no
matter how they were justified, the picnics were about as much fun as people
are allowed to have in this world, and entertained an entire generation in an age
when recreation was scarce.
�Chapter Nineteen
The War Years
When the Farmers Federation was born in 1920, the neighbors said he was
a weak child and couldn't be raised.
But the child has grown by leaps and bounds. He has now grown to be a
real giant embracing twenty counties of Western North Carolina, waving his
magic wand . . . influencing, for good, the economic, political, moral and
religious thinking of the best people on earth, who grace the hill-tops and
valleys of the God favored country of ours. (John Henry Biggs of Mill Springs,
N.C., quoted in Farmers Federation News, August, 1943, p. 5)
This terrible war reaches its fingers right into our hearts. (James G. K.
McClure, Jr. to Harriet Stuart, May 1, 1943)
What fascinated Jim McClure about war was its power to change people.
Here was an enterprise that could draw together whole nations of individuals
into a spirit of common purpose to risk everything for abstract loyalties and
beliefs. Vast amounts of untapped human energy would be brought to bear
against the common foe, and men and women stood willing to sacrifice for a
cause much larger than themselves. And yet all of these energies of war were
marshalled with the intent to kill and destroy, to demolish the basis of the
enemy's civilization. The spiritual fruits of war demoralized whole generations
of people. It was all too easy to be corrupted by army life, and all too difficult
to respect life after one had grown bored with death. For Jim, the question was
always the same. What was the source of this power of war to redirect and
motivate people? Why could not the compassionate and constructive potential
of Christianity draw out the same dedication and persistence in men, to build
rather than destroy? There had been moments in the history of the church when
this force gathered strength. It was the potential for the power of God, unleashed
in the world, that had originally drawn Jim into the ministry; and the search for
its motive force that moved him through the struggles of his life.
In 1920 Jim McClure had declared war not only on poverty, but also on
apathy, hopelessness, poor education, weak churches, and deficient stewardship
of the land. He thrived on a sense of purpose. He wanted to lead men and
women on toward a promised land, to infuse their lives with a sense of intention
that brought out in them efforts and satisfactions that would surpass any material
gain that might have been won along the way. The Farmers Federation promoted
change, progress, and purpose as an approach to living. It opposed lifeless
399
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We Plow God's Fields
routine, habits of superstition, and spiritual death. Although the means toward
the end were in the realm of the material—fertilizer applications, corn clubs,
erosion control, sweet potato yields and so on—what Jim McClure was working
towards was the spiritual regeneration of a demoralized region of Appalachia.
For him, the fruits of the spirit were measured, not just by the fervor of Sunday
worship, but by the sense of self-esteem felt by the farmer and his wife as they
sat together on their front porch after a week of hard work.
Jim wanted each family in the mountains to sense that a better future was
possible, and to motivate them to self-sacrifice in order to pursue that hope for
their community.
He understood that the basis of the American democratic faith rested with
the morale of each of these families, and that this faith in the political and
economic ideals of the nation were sorely tested during the Depression. Franklin
Roosevelt's political gifts enabled him to prop up this faith, but it was not until
militant fascism began to march across Europe and Asia that the American spirit
escaped from the doldrums of self-doubt and launched a war machine that
surpassed any other in the history of man. The war stimulated a sluggish economy as well, and set in motion forces that would transform Western North
Carolina.
The Second World War, much more than its predecessor, drew out of the
mountain cove, and hollows young soldiers who would meet people and see
places that would change their view of the world. Thrown in barracks and ships
with blue-collar workers of the North, Califormans, prosperous farm boys of the
Midwest and their brethren from across the South, these mountaineers would
return home, if in fact they did return, much different people than when they
left. These were the same men that Jim McClure had been grooming to reignite
American democratic faith. He had kept his eye on the large population bulge
that had been growing up in the mountains and had designed the Lord's Acre
primarily for the benefit of these young people. He had strengthened their
schools, and spoken at their graduations. Now they were sent out to become a
part of the American war machine, and Jim McClure knew that many of them
would exhibit the same strength of character as the great mountain hero of World
War I, Sergeant York.
Long before Pearl Harbor, the European war began to stimulate the economy of the United States, especially the agricultural markets. The Farmers
Federation felt the push of new prosperity after 1938. Beginning in 1939, the
number of dollars that passed through the organization expanded rapidly. The
figures speak for themselves:
Year
1939
1940
1941
Dollar Volume: Federation Business
Volume*
$1,077,991.58
1,261,506.26
1,501.858.52
�The War Years
1942
1943
1944
1945
401
1,940,306.33
303958
,6,5.6
3,588,137.04
3,967,641.08
(These figures do not include the hatchery operation and the tobacco warehouse
receipts, both of which were managed by the Federation.)
When the government began ordering food for the troops, the Federation
was in an ideal position to benefit. Its marketing operation had become efficient
and its department heads were trusted. The New Deal administration was sympathetic with cooperatives in general, and the Federation in particular. The
farmer was in a position to plant and harvest all he could grow, and to find a
good market for nearly everything. Army life even helped to stimulate the
cigarette industry, increasing the demand for burley tobacco. By 1945, the
Federation had built a new tobacco warehouse, complete with special lights to
show the leaf to its best advantage. The shady practices endemic to this market
made the dependability of the Federation operation all the more appreciated by
growers.
The expansive financial outlook encouraged Jim and the other directors to
try out several innovations during these years. Genetics had always been one
of Jim's favorite farm subjects, and so the program to build up the quality of the
local mule and horse population continued. Walter Jeffords of Philadelphia, a
contributor to the Fund, sent down Warcraft, son of the racehorse, Man O'War,
from his own farm. This fine stallion joined the Percherons and jacks already
employed to service the mares of Western North Carolina. The cross of a
thoroughbred with an ordinary mare often produces a work animal of size and
stamina. But after the war, horses and mules would give way to tractors, and Jim
was studying other projects for the Fund that would have a more lasting impact.
One of these, artificial insemination of dairy cows, would have to wait until after
the war.
Another was the sexing of baby chicks. This practice, too, was affected
by the coming of war. Male and female chicks look just alike for the first weeks
of life to the untrained eye, so a farmer who purchased day old chicks could
expect roughly half of them to be roosters, to be sold as broilers, and half to be
pullets, to be raised for egg production. But the Japanese had developed the
ability to identify male and female birds as soon as they were hatched. This skill
was a great advantage for the poultryman, as he could concentrate on the kind
of production he chose. When war came between Japan and the United States,
Japanese chick-sexers went home. But Jack Gattis, hatchery manager, announced in the Federation News that he had American experts who had learned
to perform this complex job and there was a good supply of sexed chicks ready
for sale.
The war created other scarcities Jim tried to turn into opportunities for
Western North Carolina. He even promoted the cultivation of silk worms, an
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We Plow God's Fields
idea that failed to appeal to the mountaineer. Mica and feldspar, two locally
abundant minerals, were used extensively in the war industries, and Jim asked
farmers to bring samples to the picnics to be inspected by experts. One unusual
shortage that had little to do with the war effort sent mountain folk out into the
woods looking for old and gnarled mountain laurel bushes. It was announced
in the Federation News: "A plant to manufacture pipe blocks is being started
by the Farmers Federation in the cannery building at Hendersonville. Nearly the
entire supply of briar, which was formerly imported from Europe, has been cut
off; and pipe manufacturers find that the close grained mountain laurel is the
best substitute available.1
Before Jim realized what was happening he was in trouble with many of
his wife's garden club friends. Staunch conservationists that they were, they
were horrified at the prospect of thousands of large laurel shrubs being uprooted
to support a questionable habit. Criticism began to pour in, and he set out to
answer the accusations in the following issue of the News. Only in rare instances, he explained, a lumpy growth called a burl is caused by disease on the
root of a laurel bush. Such shrubs are usually found in remote, boggy places,
and when roots bearing burls are removed, fresh growth quickly springs up.
Federation horticulturists had studied the matter thoroughly and felt that the
beauty of the mountains would not be affected if the burls were secured under
supervision . . . and there is the opportunity to bring in income that will be a
blessing to many mountain families."2
The pipe block enterprise was a part of the Federation's effort to bring
small industries into Western North Carolina. For the eighteen months of its
existence, ninety people drew wages there. Jim wisely thought that such industries would offer employment to one or two members of a farm family, which
would supplement the small income from mountain farming and enable the
family to continue living and working on their place. He explained, in the News
some of the specific enterprises the Federation had implemented.
The great objective of the Farmers Federation is to develop facilities and
services that will enable the farm people of Western North Carolina to increase
their own incomes and in this way build a finer civilization. Part of our
program is to encourage and develop small industries. The Farmers Federation
will be glad to work with individuals or groups in any county toward this end.
We have a dream of helping to establish one or two small industries in every
township in Western North Carolina.
The Fanners Federation has an active interest in the Biltmore Company, the
Appalachian Textile Company, the Swannanoa Textile Company, the Treasure
Chest Mutual, Inc., and die Fanners Federation Handicraft Mutual, Inc. This
last is a cooperative of knitters. All these enterprises are creating new wealth
in Western North Carolina. We trust that our members and committees will
keep constantly working toward the end of creating more wealth in this section.3
�The War Years
403
The war had reverse effect on one project. The Hendersonville Cannery,
the first Federation small industry, suspended operations because the demand
for fresh produce left no need to preserve a surplus. As the Federation expanded,
the Lord's Acre was keeping pace. By the fifteenth anniversary of the plan,
Rev. Dumont Clarke was making tours throughout the United States and Canada
promoting the idea. He often spoke on radio programs and in 1941 enjoyed a
big promotional windfall, which he described in his regular column in the News:
"Wide publicity, entirely prepared by publishers interested in constructive activities of our time, has been given the Lord's Acre Movement," he wrote. "The
April issue of Christian Herald, which is read largely by church members,
carried an illustrated article ... entitled 'Harvesting the Lord's Acre.' This was
reprinted in the "Readers Digest" with its 4,100,000 circulation."4 From
Dumont Clarke's office in Asheville, all sorts of Lord's Acre packets, buttons
and pamphlets were mailed across North America and various foreign mission
groups. For a congregation with a persistent pastor and lively members, the
Lord's Acre Plan brought in both material and spiritual fruits. Of all the
churches who were helped by the program, the Dana Baptist Church of Henderson County became the standard by which all other programs were judged.
The Lord's Acre program of Dana Baptist Church for 1940 was brought to
a close with a remarkable total of $2,071 in hand. The largest single item was
$553.75 from the group potato project. A second large item was $117 from
an apple project. There were many individual projects, and the total includes
gifts of labor on the new parsonage and some cash donations.
In four years time the Lord's Acre program of the Dana Church has yielded
$8,000. A beautiful brick veneer church has been erected and a parsonage
adjoining the church is nearly complete .. .
The Lord's Acre plan has made it possible for a comparatively small congregation to achieve really great things. The members of the church and
Sunday School have been engaged almost 100 per cent, year after year, in
substantial Lord's Acre projects. This has developed a very strong spirit of
cooperation and has made possible results which otherwise could not have
been attained.5
The Federation picnics also created cooperation and a positive spirit. Attendance kept growing, and although the purpose was education, the results were
spectacularly entertaining. Perhaps people needed the picnics more than ever
during these tragic and serious times. As always the program was dominated
by Jim McClure's canny showmanship. During the war he used these great
gatherings to sell war bonds and stamps. Jamie McClure, Jamie Clarke and
Elspeth all pitched in to help out. In 1941, after graduating from Yale, Jamie
McClure wrote to his Aunt Harriet Stuart that he had made lemonade and cut
watermelons " . . . for crowds that have ranged from 800 to 2500 . . . you never
know just what sort of 'musicianers' or other forms of entertainment are likely
to turn up, and the way Daddy runs his meetings make them the big event of the
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We Plow God's Fields
year to most of the people who attend" (Jamie McClure to Harriet Stuart, July
23, 1940).
Jamie looked forward to the time when he could work with his father in the
Federation. While at Yale he had investigated the theory of cooperatives and
for a senior paper wrote a description of his father's work, entitled "Frontier
Civilization in the Blue Ridge Highlands." The conclusion echoed Jim
McClure's thoughts: "The most effective way of helping these people toward a
higher level of income is to give them a means of working out their own
economic salvation. The practical possibilities of this approach are already
being demonstrated in Western North Carolina, and it is my firm belief that with
careful long range planning the co-operative exploitation of mountain farming
holds promise of a new future for the Southern Highlander."6 Another of Jamie's
Yale papers traced the history of cooperatives, going back to the origins with
the Rochdale Pioneers in England. He wrote, "Thus from a dingy basement
hole-in-the-wall sprang the English Consumer Cooperatives, the largest single
business in the British Isles."7
After working his way through Yale in the Student Pressing Agency, which
he managed his senior year, Jamie went with the Yale Glee Club on a tour of
South America. Elizabeth sold the pearls the Skinner Aunts had left her to help
finance the trip. He returned to Hickory Nut Gap, only to set out on a hitchhiking adventure to California and back. After years of school the freedom of the
open road felt wonderful. In the fall he started work in the tobacco warehouse.
The Federation had been assigned to administer the government's price support
program and a majority of farmers selling tobacco on the Asheville market had
to contribute a dollar to the program. Jamie McClure and his cousin Jamie
Clarke were assigned the task of signing up farmers. It was a tough job to locate
and make friends with a man, then persuade him to part with a dollar in the cold
and confused atmosphere of a tobacco warehouse. But the boys succeeded.
Jamie Clarke, Dumont's son, had been as impressed as his cousin with his
Uncle Jim's work in the Farmers Federation. Jim McClure began to train both
young men for eventual leadership in the organization. These two cousins and
friends, raised in the atmosphere of Christian service, stood ready to carry on
the McClure tradition of a life of usefulness. Neither sought to become ministers
as their fathers had done, but both of them nonetheless were willing to devote
themselves to a lifework that pursued the larger vision of brotherhood. Jamie
Clarke graduated from Princeton in 1939, two years before his cousin finished
at Yale. He, too, had worked hard, as chairman of the Daily Princetonian, and
he went off for a well-earned trip to Europe with his roommate Fred Fox, who
would become an influential Presbyterian minister. It was the eve of war,
August 1939, and they were lucky to get safely back across the Atlantic on the
Athenia. Her sister ship was sunk by a German submarine. Early in 1940 he
went to work at the Hendersonville Federation warehouse, relinquishing the
glories of college leadership and accepting his new lot as a store clerk. His uncle
Jim wanted him to learn the business of the Federation from inside out, and put
�The War Years
405
him under the charge of Bill Francis at one of the biggest volume warehouses
in the Federation system. He later joined the Navy, and had time to write down
some of his experiences on the job, creating a vivid picture of the daily pace of
a Federation warehouse.
The first day I went to work an old employee named Cecil Jones and I were
sent to deliver a new power sprayer to a hardbitten old landowner, "Old Man
Hill" of Edneyville. liie sprayer was heavy, and we had a good deal of trouble
unloading it. I wasn't being of much use, which was brought home sharply
when Old Man Hill said, "You've never done any work before. You must
have been raised in the city."
The work really got tough after the first week. Spring planting season was
upon us, and carload after carload of fertilizer rolled in to be unloaded at our
storage warehouse across the tracks. Fertilizer is packed in 200-pound bags,
which are difficult for one man to lift by himself. My chief fellow worker was
a 225-pound Carolina boy, Lloyd Rhodes. He had been working at this job for
a year and was a powerful chap.
The procedure was to roll our two-wheeled warehouse truck into the box
car and then each man would pick up one end of a bag and we would load it
on the truck . . . Most people wheeled only four bags, but Lloyd always
wanted to take five, which made 1,000 pounds.
This was a heavy load for one man to wheel on that type of truck and at first
I had a hard time. Bridging the gap between the boxcar and the unloading
platform was a heavy fiat piece of steel which served as a sort of gangway.
The second time I tried to wheel 1,000 pounds of fertilizer over the flat plate
1 slipped and the truck went skidding out of my hands . . .
Seed potatoes were being shipped into our warehouse from Prince Edward
Island in Canada . . . I remember one morning having to wheel about 100 of
these sacks from a commercial truck . .. there had been a party in Asheville
the night before . .. and at 7:30 a.m. my strength had not returned. The trucker
was a loud-talking fellow named Jim and with mouth loaded with tobacco.
He was in a hurry and was impatient. All of this made for a rough two hours.
Bill Francis, the manager, was a dandy storekeeper. He was on the job at
7 a.m. and never left before 7 p.m. He never walked—he always ran. Farmers
and fanner's wives from far out in the country appreciated his friendly "Hello,
Mrs. Hooper, be with you in a minute."
The trust these people had in him sometimes made it hard for us to put
through sales.
"Where's Bill. I want to talk to Bill," was often asked us.
This experience of having to wait on people, humoring them and being
friendly no matter how you felt inside was good for me. I believe that it would
be helpful to thousands of our college boys and girls who tend to get the idea
that the world should wait on them. After going through it you begin to
understand the feelings of the other man behind the counter and become more
considerate of him.
Charley Drake, a ... colored man of remarkable sense who used to clean
up the warehouse for us, admired Bill Francis' skill in dealing with people.
He once told Lloyd Rhodes and me that "Mr. Francis he'll sell it to them
whether he's got it or not."
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We Plow God's Fields
Family bringing chickens to sell at a Federation Warehouse.
North Carolina is a hay importing state. Our Federation warehouse at Hendersonville handled ten or 15 [raikoad] cars of hay a year. The bales weighed
between 40 and 60 Ibs. and were usually handled by sharp hay hooks. One
afternoon when Charlie Drake and I were piling the bales up high in a dark
part of the storage warehouse, my hook missed the bale and went through the
loose skin underneath Charley's chin. "You nearly got me that time, Mr.
Jimmie," he said good humoredly. It bled rather badly and worried me ...
An old, old couple, Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard, used to come in every week
or two from Jumpoff Mountain on a sled pulled by steers . . .
We had a mill next to the Hendersonville warehouse. Farmers brought in
their corn on Saturday morning and left it at the mill to be ground up.
The miller would take out one-seventh of the resulting corn meal as our
"toll." Big Rob, the assistant miller, surprised me one day by telling me that
his stomach had been cold for the past 20 years! He let me feel it and sure
enough, it was really cold. He attributed it to a case of double pneumonia he
had had without, apparently, being able to get to a doctor . . .
The first big rush at Hendersonville came at Irish potato planting time. Then
there was a short lull, followed by heavy activity as the corn planting time
drew on. I never expect to be with a harder working group of men. In three
months we unloaded 35 cars of fertilizer alone, which is over two million
pounds . . .
I sold some nails to a gentleman from way back in the hills and as I was
wrapping them he said "You'd better double-poke them, son."
�The War Years
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What he wanted was a real mystery until he came behind the counter himself
and carefully took two paper bags and placed one inside the other . . .
We had our fun at the warehouse every day. Boys of the age of Troy
Downs, the bookkeeper, Lloyd Rhodes and myself, would call into us as they
went by, "Farmers Ruination."
Lloyd was easily perturbed, and Troy and I used to make out charge tickets
for him for things he had never bought. Bill Francis would collaborate in this
and tell Lloyd he must hurry and pay up. Lloyd retaliated by always picking
his end of the fertilizer sack up first.
This makes it much harder for the man on the other end than if both ends
came up simultaneously.
When pretty country girls came in to sell their eggs, Troy used to count
them out one by one taking as long as possible. The girls loved it. Troy was a
very good looking boy anyway. One of the girls at the Fassifern School in
Hendersonville used to escape at night, jump the fence and go to the movies
or to one of Hendersonville's numerous dances with him.8
Jamie Clarke remembers his time at the Hendersonville warehouse as a
chance not only to learn the Federation business, but also to learn about and
appreciate his fellow workers and the patrons of the cooperative. Later, as the
editor of the Federation News, he learned more about the art of salesmanship
from the Federation's star feed salesman, Blake Greenwood of Leicester. In
order to meet Federation customers and get pictures of their farms and livestock,
he would occasionally spend a day traveling with Blake in his yellow truck.
Blake taught Jamie that you never went directly into your sales pitch. First he
would greet his prospective customer cheerfully, spend time talking about his
particular concerns, admire everything on his farm and eat anything that was
offered to him. Only then would he get out his pad and pencil to take down the
order, which never failed to come through.
One day they stopped to see Blake's Aunt Lily, on her farm up on Big Ivy.
The water system was out of order, but she asked them to dinner and Blake,
knowing there was no water to be had, urged Jamie to "try some of those fine
peppers." These were red hot peppers, which Jamie had never seen. Blake kept
watching him but his pupil kept right on eating politely and praising the food.
He didn't get cooled off until they stopped at a spring!9
Blake really entered into the lives of his customers. Once he stopped to see
Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Shepherd, who had a dairy at Democrat. Mr. Shepherd
had the flu. He had come up to the house after milking without cleaning the
barn and he told Blake he had felt too bad to clean it the night before as well.
As Blake stepped onto the porch he saw the dairy inspector, Miss Chick, who
was one of the first woman inspectors and very tough, driving into the barnyard.
He rushed back in the house and told Mr. Shepherd to jump into the bed quick
and pull the sheets up over his clothes. Then Blake talked to Miss Chick. The
little lady was persuaded to overlook the sick dairyman's dirty barn since he
was so sick; but Mrs. Shepherd never forgave Blake Greenwood for the manure
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from Mr. Shepherd's boots on her clean sheets. It was people like Blake who
made the difference in developing business.10
By 1940, the Farmers Federation was successfully entering its third decade,
primarily as the result of Jim's persistence and idealism. As new honors and
recognition came to him he liked to think that these honors helped to certify in
the minds of potential supporters that the work was worthy of their interest. In
1941, he received an honorary master of arts degree from his college rival,
Harvard University. He was still able to wear his wedding morning coat, and
the porter asked him as he stepped off the train if he was going to be married!
The following June, the University of North Carolina invited him to Chapel
Hill for a similar honor. He found that the solemn event could become the
highest entertainment when the vagaries of nature gave his afternoon of honor
the drama of uncertainty. He wrote to his son Jamie:
This finds Mummie, Elspie and me in a crowded day coach on a hot ride
back to the mountains . . . All the graduating class, their girls, their mothers,
and a large sprinkling of army and navy boys made a simultaneous rush for the
two coaches as they came into the station—Elspie & Mummie with their
famous ability somehow snared a seat and here we sit surrounded by mounds
of baggage. We had a big day yesterday—We first were taken [on] a tour of
the University, then we attended the Alumni Luncheon which was a huge affair
and most interesting. A state University (or maybe it is just North Carolina)
has a sense of mission or responsibility for the state that is missing at many
private institutions . . .
Mummie was a knock out & Elspie was in great form . . . We all went to
President [Frank] Graham's for an early supper & thence to commencement
which was in the stadium. The stadium is a sunken bowl with trees and woods
all around it, and a beautiful place—
Clouds were gathering and growing bigger & blacker as the exercises began—the college & post graduate degrees are given out individually—and it
takes hours for the 800 or 900 to file by, have their names read & get their
sheepskin & Bible. They are all given a $3.00 Bible!
Well as they kept filing by, it got more threatening, and then drops began
to fall. The result was that by the time the Honorary degrees came along, it
was a soggy downpour,—and so as the last act on the program, the five
Honorary Degrees were conferred in almost a deluge-Mummy & Elspie stuck
it out to the end & were soaked— . . .
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Jamie McClure, June 10, 1942)
Two years later, in 1944, the National Institute of Social Sciences awarded
him their gold medal. "Siddy and I are going to New York to attend the dinner
which I told you about of the National Institute of Social Sciences," he wrote
to the Stuarts. "The other recipients are Bernard Baruch and Mrs. Henry P.
Davison. It is a huge pleasure for me to be there at the same time as Mrs.
Davison because she has been such a tower of strength in our whole enterprise"
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, sometime in 1944). In receiving the
award, Jim spoke of his own life, the work of the Federation, and his thoughts
�The War Years
409
about the importance of providing opportunities for the low-income citizens
within a democracy.
Mr. Chester, Mr. Hall, Members and Guests of the National Institute of
Social Sciences.
I am quite overwhelmed, and just about rendered speechless by the presentation of this medal. What I have done in the Appalachian Mountains has been
made possible by those who have supported our educational fund and by the
people in the mountains who have enthusiastically supported our cooperative
movement.
This award is a very great honor, and I accept it with gratitude and much
humility, as I do not at all feel that I deserve it. I am, however, particularly
happy to have the type of work in which I am engaged recognized in this
outstanding way. It is, in a way, a new approach to one of the basic problems
of Democracy.
. . . Some 25 years ago, because of overwork, the doctors advised me to
get out of doors for a few months. We took this opportunity to locate a spot
that might become a permanent vacation headquarters. We bought a farm in a
gap of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, N. C. The countryside is
beautiful and as we were fixing up the farm, we got acquainted with the
people. One man on the farm was a lineal descendent of Daniel Boone. The
people sang the oldest of English ballads, used Elizabethan and even Chaucerian English, and had the characteristics that enabled the pioneers to conquer
the wilderness; resourcefulness, independence and humor, and they also had
the qualities which have created liberty and freedom, the consciousness of a
power above and outside themselves and a reverence for individual human
personality . . .
The idea with which we started our enterprise was a very simple one. The
idea was to try to create markets for the things the people could raise so that
they could increase their income by their own efforts. Our idea was to enable
the people in the mountains to create wealth. In other words we acted on the
theory mat if a good market was available the people would respond by greatly
increasing their production. To create such markets was a rather slow and
laborious procedure and I can best illustrate it by the difficulties encountered
in the development of a poultry industry . . .
The mountain country is ideally adapted to the growing of poultry and if
every mountain farm could have a flock of a 100 hens it would tremendously
increase the income of the region. When we started out there was practically
no poultry production in the mountains. The poultry population averaged 12
or 15 chickens per farm. There was no market for poultry. We had the idea
that if [we] should create a market the people would respond by greatly increasing poultry production, so we started operating live poultry cars stopping
at each point in the mountains and paying cash at the car door and then running
these poultry cars up to the great markets in New York and Philadelphia. In
other words we created a cash market for poultry every day in the year. After
operating these poultry cars for some years we discovered that the poultry
population was no larger than when we started and that our theories just had
not worked. We analyzed the situation and found the difficulty to be that the
quality of the poultry in the mountains was so poor that it did not pay to
increase that kind of poultry. The average hen in the mountains lays only 60
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fc;:
IE;
Top: Elspeth, Jamie and Elizabeth McClure in front of the porch at Hickory Nut Gap.
Bottom: Annual dinner of the National Institute of Social Sciences. Left to right: Bernard
Barucht Mrs. Henry P. Davison (early Fund supporter) and James O.K. McClure, Jr.
Waldorf-Astoria, New York City, May 1944.
�The War Years
411
or 70 eggs a year. This is not enough to pay for her feed, consequently the
more hens a man had the poorer he became, so we turned around and started
on an entirely different tact. We decided that we must make available and
distribute a type of hen that would lay a lot of eggs. We got incubators, we
persuaded farmers to have supply flocks for the hatchery and we maintained
rigid requirements for these supply flocks. The hens had to be individually
blood tested to eliminate inheritable diseases. The chief requirement was that
every cockerel must come from a hen with a record of laying 250 eggs a year.
That is, the chickens which we distributed would have the inheritance to lay a
lot of eggs. It took some time to get this idea accepted—it took a great deal
of patient field work first to start and oversee the supply flocks, then it took a
great deal of patience, [and] personal field work to persuade individual farmers
to venture into establishing a flock of one or two hundred hens, but little by
little this has grown. When the great demand for war production of poultry
came following Pearl Harbor we were like a runner poised and ready to go ...
It seems to me that one of the great problems which we face in our Democracy is the problem of the low income group. In a Democracy we must
somehow offer equal opportunity to all ... Neither a dole nor public works
solves this problem. The creative way, the American way, is to create the
opportunity for these people to help themselves, to somehow develop the
productive capacity of the people in the low income group so that they can
increase their own earnings by their own efforts. This is the task to which we
have set ourselves, translating as well as we can the findings of science, such
as genetics in the practical action on the farm, discovering new uses for the
products, discovering new outlets for the things people can make and thereby
calling forth their own creative efforts. In this way we are trying to develop
the capacity and the ability of a people in this low income bracket. . .
I cannot close without saying a word here about our Lord's Acre Movement.
As we were organizing our cooperative we hoped to develop improved material conditions. We felt however that improved material conditions are not
worthwhile unless spiritual improvement comes at the same time. We have
seen so many examples of material improvement with no spiritual development
and we always find that this material development ends up in a smash so we
decided to try to back up the one organization in the mountains which concentrates on Christian character, which has been tough enough to survive, and
that is the country church. We organized a Religious Department in our work
and we suggest to the churches in the mountains that each member of the
church and of the Sunday school have some kind of a project for their own
church. A boy or a girl could set a hen and raise chickens, could raise a pig,
could raise a calf, a man could set out a patch of potatoes or an acre of corn
and we called it the Lord's Acre Movement. The greatest thing we did was to
secure Dumont Clarke to head up this Movement. He has worked untiringly
. . . It has kept on rolling along until today there are some 2500 churches in the
mountains and some 2500 churches outside the mountains using this method
to supplement their budget. It has spread to every state in the Union. It has
given new life and vitality to country churches everywhere.11
Jim never missed an opportunity to preach his message. Mrs. Davison had
listened since 1926 to the McClure gospel of the Farmers Federation, and one
only wonders about the thoughts entertained by Bernard Baruch, the world
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renowned economist, after hearing about poultry production in Western North
Carolina. Jim himself was the proud father of his Federation. He had realized a
dream of putting his ideas to work, and what he had to show for his quarter
century of struggles was an organization that allowed a region's people to hope
for a better future.
Jim McClure became more and more caught up in the web of his community. His many interests each made demands on his judgement and time. He
remained an executive of the American Forestry Association. He was also once
again elected to the advisory committee of the Farm Security Administration.
He wrote to his son,
I was on this Committee when the F.S.A. started, we drew lots for the 1
yr., 2 yrs., and 3 yrs. term and I drew the 1 yr. term, and as members cannot
succeed themselves I was out in a year—July 1st my 2 yr. exile was over and
I was reappointed, and this A.M.I was elected Chairman of the Committee. I
am quite pleased as it gives the Farmers Fed high standing with all the Farm
Security people in Western North Carolina—and Farm Security has a supervisor and ass't supervisor in every county about like the county agents.
Well, we met all day, and it is very interesting. It is almost like a well
trained farm management and financing corporation for the very poorest farmers, and it is putting them, a lot of them, on their feet. James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to Jamie McClure, September 4, 1942)
Jamie Clarke left the Hendersonville warehouse to become the editor of the
Farmers Federation News in 1940. A hard working young man, he wanted to
please his uncle by making the most of the News. He ran contests and games to
increase reader interest, and made much more use of pictures than any previous
editor. Despite an unassuming and quiet nature, young Jamie Clarke made a
strong impression on his Uncle. But in December 1941, the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor broke harshly into the lives of all Americans. In February of 1942
Jamie left his desk at the Federation to join the U.S. Navy. Elizabeth wrote to
her son, Jamie McClure:
Daddy asked Mr. Searle at the Miller Press [which printed the Federation
News] how things were going without Jamie Clarke. He answered, " . . . I
never saw such a fellow as that Jamie. He always got what he wanted done
but in such a way that nobody minded change or criticism on his part if you
could call it that . . . Jamie always seemed to keep perfectly relaxed and to
make everybody else stay that way. He was always so simple and unassuming
and unpretentious about everything he did, that I didn't really half realize
what immense things he accomplished."
Knowing Jamie, I thought mis would interest you . . . Jamie never came
worrying Daddy with anything . . . no fuss or feathers anywhere .. .
I really think that Jamie is a natural for politics. I think he has the vote
getting quality. He somehow inspires confidence. I believe that after the war
if he chooses to continue with the Federation News, he will find it a natural
�The War Years
413
take-off for a political career. It might be very useful to the Fed to have Jamie
in Washington as Senator Clarke for N.C.!!!!
You may think me more or less cracked, but it wouldn't be the first time(!).
Jamie has a wonderful human touch. Great intelligence and a liking for human
beings just as human beings. All that can easily spell success in politics.
(Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Jamie McClure, May 24, 1942)
As usual Elizabeth McClure was a sharp judge of a person's possibilities.
Many years later Jamie Clarke would serve three terms in the North Carolina
Legislature, and then become the U.S. Congressman from the Eleventh Congressional District.
Jamie McClure made up his mind to enter the fight after Pearl Harbor.
Like his father prior to World War I, Jamie had been anti-war, but the unprovoked Japanese attack changed his feelings and he desperately wanted to join
the navy. His love of the ocean and knowledge of naval ships and history made
this a natural choice; but he was very near-sighted, like his mother, and he could
not pass the military physical examination. The best way for him to contribute
to the war effort seemed to be to take a job in an IBM munitions plant. To his
surprise he was assigned to a cannon plant in Poughkeepsie, New York, near
where his sister and several of his friends, including his current girl, were in
college at Vassar. His father had taught him never to complain, never to express
envy or disappointment and he wrote jokingly to his Aunt Harriet Stuart:
I have had a draft classification of 1-B for some time on account of my eyes,
and in spite of excellent connections, it seems absolutely impossible for me to
get into either of the armed services in any capacity whatsoever at the present
time. However, I did find an opening in a small airplane-cannon plant (through
Mr. Watson of the I.B.M. which controls the plant) in which I think I can
make use of such practical experience as I have had to greater effect than
anything I have yet encountered . .. you'll get a laugh out of the location of
the plant—its at Poughkeepsie! I think when some of my friends get wind of
my move, I'm going to hear a lot of cracks about war profiteering . ..
I hope it works out, as I believe the job is as close as I can get to the shooting
without actually using a gun, and perhaps, from a thoroughly impersonal point
of view, I can make my training count far more in that position than in
uniform. At least we can try to think that as long as they won't let me have a
uniform. This current move will not, I hope, have any effect on my plans for
keeping on the Federation, but I feel pretty strongly that winning the war is a
job that must be cleaned up first. (Jamie McClure to Harriet Stuart, January
10, 1942)
Jamie put in long hours, sometimes working an eighty-hour week. Two
maiden ladies, Miss Jennie and Miss Elise Kinkead, already Mends of his sister
Elspeth, befriended him. They fed Jamie many meals, held birthday parties for
him and Elspeth and their friends, and made him feel at home in their beautiful
Victorian house above the Hudson River. They also had a dairy farm outside
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We Plow God's Fields
Poughkeepsie and Jamie could go out on Saturdays to pick apples or plow in the
spring. But life in a munitions plant, lonely meals in the local diner, and
knowing that most young men his age were in military service would often leave
him demoralized. When his girl to whom he was so devoted told him she
preferred a young Navy lieutenant, dashing in his blue and gold, Jamie sank to
a new low. Fortunately he and Elspeth were close friends, and she was nearby
to support him as best she could.
His mother sensed his need for special support at this time and both she
and Jim wrote to him often. Spring had returned again to Hickory Nut Gap.
It has been one of these unbelievable days here-a cathedral blue sky—apple
blossoms everywhere so that each gust of wind from the orchard carried the
most heaven sent fragrance—all the white cherries clouds of white loveliness,
violets in rivers of colour everywhere you stepped and the little rock garden
just overflowing with blue bells and primroses and white snowdrops . . . Just
as we finished supper who should drop in but Ernst Bacon from Spartanburg
(who was on the faculty of the music department of Converse College there).
He said he needed rest and change and just headed this way so we kept him
for the night and were rewarded with Mozart and Chopin and Pappa Haydn
while we listened with only candles and firelight. What a genius the man is,
and what feeling and imagination he has and what supreme modesty. Absolutely unegotistical and a delightful fellow to talk to on any subject.
This afternoon we took cushions and the radio out into the courtyard and
sat there in the midst of wisteria and purple violets and fluttering white butterflies and waving shadows and listened to the Philharmonic and the 2nd Brahms
Symphony. It all seemed incredible and unreal and like people in a dream it
was so beautiful. These ravings will make you smile but it was just one of these
days that you prize forever and ever and ever. The music seemed to come from
the trees or the sky. (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Jamie McClure, April 19,
1942)
In another letter she told him how gas rationing had cut off the usual stream
of spring visitors to Hickory Nut Gap, and surely she would accomplish a great
deal, including extra plantings of vegetables to help supply nearby army camps.
. . . [John Shorter] is much pleased. He is absolutely inspired this year. He
has "patches" out in every direction and is a perfect slave to the business of
keeping down the weeds. I don't think he sleeps nights! His cold frames are
bulging with tomato and celery plants and he has enough lettuce on hand to
feed an army. The "victory garden" slogan has gotten under his skin and into
his fingers and you've just never known such a fury of effort!
. . . We hear little or nothing about the German and Jap Diplomats who are
lodged in the Grove Park Inn. Rumor hath it that the ladies make frequent
shopping pilgrimages escorted by a heavy guard and that Miss Perkinson's and
M. V. Moore's [two select Asheville stores] are just going great guns . . .
(Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Jamie McClure, May 24, 1942)
�The War Years
415
Jamie had decided to join a small Presbyterian church in Pleasant Valley,
near the Kinkead's farm. In two letters Elizabeth told him how happy she was
about this step, and why she thought church membership was tremendously
important. Elizabeth was not a preachy person who vaunted her religious beliefs
before the world, but here she shared with her son her deep conviction that it is
only as we follow the principles of Christ that we can hope to better the world.
I am so glad you are going to join the church at Poughkeepsie. I think it
will make a great difference to you to feel that you are part of a great organization the world over that stands for the Christian way of life and all that it means
in these dark days. The church needs you, needs your support, your keen
mind, your brave outlook, your eagerness to serve. There is no doubt at all
that we each one of us need all the help and strength we can get, and belonging
to the church does give one strength and help. There is something about
sharing in the Communion service (when you have earned the right to share
in it by acknowledging openly, and freely, that you mean to do your best to
live according to Christ's teaching) that is wonderfully uplifting and renewing.
However critical we may often feel about what the church does, or does not
do, there is no getting away from the fact that we need it more than ever
before,—for leadership in the Christian way of life in which we all so fervently
believe, in these terrible times.
I don't think any of us are strong enough to stand alone. We must all march
together, shoulder to shoulder, with a common purpose in our hearts. (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Jamie McClure, May 17, 1942)
And in the second letter she wrote:
I am hoping that this will reach you on Sunday . . . my dearest love and to
tell you how much I am thinking about you especially during the morning
service.
There is an old hymn by George Neumark that was I think Grandfather
McClure's favorite. One verse of it goes like this and I send it to you for today:
If thou but suffer God to guide thee,
And hope in him through all thy ways
He'll give thee strength what e'er betide thee
And bear thee through the evil days.
Who trusts in God's unchanging love
Builds on the rock that naught can move.
These are truly evil and terrible times, but if we can dedicate our lives anew,
each one of us, to carrying out the principles of Jesus Christ, something new
and glorious and fine will grow out of all the misery and horror and I am
convinced that we will be able to build a finer and better world.
I am glad that you have waited until now to join the church. Because, now,
you do so with a full understanding of the responsibilities and privileges that
should come to him who truly and sincerely seeks to live the Christian life.
We have such need now in the world of strong young men who are convinced
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We Plow God's Fields
that Christ's way of life is the only one that makes for service and brotherhood
and permanent happiness
I know that it will be a great source of strength to you and a revitalizing of
your own spiritual life to join with all those who like you have felt a need to
band together to work for the Kingdom of God.
There is a verse in Joshua that I think of so often—"Be strong and of a good
courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed"—(and in these times how
often we are dismayed—"for the Lord thy God is with thee whither so ever
thou goest."
Bless you my darling. And may Christ in his infinite love and majesty guide
you and keep you all the days of your life. (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to
Jamie McClure, June 5, 1942)
As always, May became June and the heat of the summer began to pour
down on Hickory Nut Gap. John Shorter's peas would bear, and then brown
out. The sun would be good for the tomatoes and okra, green beans and corn,
but it sure made the chubby old black man sweat as he cut the weeds with his
hoe. Elizabeth could not be kept from her flower beds, but as she weeded and
planted and nurtured along, her thoughts were quite often carried away to Jamie.
His father tried to keep him cheered up as well, and to keep him abreast of the
Federation happenings. He portrayed his own life as a great adventure, not
wishing the struggle to show through to anyone, even his own son.
This finds Guy [Sales] and myself on a Southern day coach travelling from
Columbia to Asheville . . . As there is no diner on the train and as the News
Butcher has no eats we are slowly starving, but I tell Guy it is good for him
. . . We went down to see the Columbia Bank for Co-ops, as we felt that
additional working capital would enable us to take advantage of cash bargains
in seeds and fertilizers. After explaining our need and suggesting that we had
some properties we could offer as security, the bank President said they were
more interested in our record than in our security, and they asked if it would
be satisfactory if they gave us a line of credit of $200,000.00 which we could
use as we needed!! Guy and I nearly fainted, but they evidently meant it
seriously. So that is how it wound up—interest rate 2 1/2%. In other words
they said they would finance us to the extent that we need financing from time
to time. This certainly is great, and will enable us to buy up lespedeza,
soybeans, clover seed, etc. at harvest time and carry over until the season
comes to sell it. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Jamie McClure, May 27,1942)
In July he wrote to Jamie that things continued to go well:
Hugh Toland [the Federation's accountant] has just about completed our
June 20th statement. The statement looks mighty good with a net profit after
liberal reserves of $48,000. The Hatchery under the fiery leadership of Jack
Gattis shows a profit of $6,000 and we are buying a new 66,000 capacity
incubator giving us a capacity of 237,000. Lexington Avenue [a new warehouse in Asheville] crashed through with a profit. Usually we make our years
profit in the spring months and only hold these gains during the fall and that
�The War Years
417
may happen again this year as we are able to secure less and less hardware and
implements and sales will fall off. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Jamie
McClure, July 29, 1942)
Up in Poughkeepsie Jamie kept hoping to find a way to take a more active
part in the war. He heard that the Coast Guard "Temporary" Reserve was easier
to enter than other services and wrote his parents he was going to try for it. He
also had good news to report on his job. His father replied:
Well, we are all mighty proud of your "raise." You certainly deserve it, but
it is very pleasant to have them spring it on you unsolicited. The Coast Guard
opening seems just down your alley. I trust nothing will come to prevent your
getting in. I expect I.B.M. Plant No. 4 will be sorry to see you go, but you
have found a spot for which you are fitted. I am sure you will make a point of
getting around and saying your Good Byes to all the people in the plant and
elsewhere who have coached you along . . . (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to
Jamie McClure, July 29, 1942)
In August, 1942, Jamie enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve without a
physical exam. Jim wrote to Hetty, "Siddy left by bus Thursday at 7 A . M . . . .
She took a notion that she must see Jamie before he goes into the Coast Guard—
She had saved up her money for a trip up to see him and off she went" (James
G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet Stuart, August 10, 1942). The premonitions of
mothers are a well known if disputed phenomenon, and Elizabeth had a deep
emotional attachment to her son.
His duty was to patrol the coast of Maine on one of the converted sailing
yachts the Coast Guard used for this purpose. They were especially useful
because their wooden hulls could not be picked up by German sonar. The CG-26
was fifty-four feet over all, a tight fit for nine men. Jamie was Boatswain's
Mate 2nd Class, and terribly proud of his sailor's uniform and his ocean-going
duty. The CG-26 had an open cockpit and the Maine winter made their voyages
rugged, but he was an enthusiastic crew member. When the "Temporaries"
were transferred to the regular Reserve several months later, he memorized the
eye chart and somehow managed to squeak through the physical.
Back in North Carolina Jim threw himself into extra war jobs. In addition
to selling war bonds at the picnics, he organized rallies at each school in
Buncombe County, getting the children to go to see everyone. He was district
chairman of the United War Fund of the state, an agency that raised funds for
local social agencies, the USO, the War Prisoners Aid and the United Seaman's
Service. His sense of duty forced him to stretch his limited time to the utmost.
He pushed his farm work force, now headed by Mr. J. R. Riddle, a good boss
and a great trader, to make as much from the land as they could. Farm prices
were up, but he was motivated by patriotism as well as profit, for he was well
aware that war in the Twentieth century had become as much a battle of economics as of armies. German prisoners of war were garrisoned nearby and were
�418
We Plow God's Fields
Jamie McClure in his Coast Guard uniform.
sent to farms when the owners requested help. Several came to help fill the silo
at Hickory Nut Gap and Jim enjoyed trying out his previous grasp of the German
language. One young man was from a town where he had studied years before,
and the boy knew some of his old Mends.
Just before Christmas great news came from Maine. The CG-26 was being
winterized and Jamie was coming home for Christmas! "Talk about your luck!"
he wrote. "We did plenty of griping when we had to stay on patrol through
November with no heat and an open wheel, but it was that very lateness that
kept us under repair through the holidays. You couldn't have held me down
with a lOO-lb. anchor when our C.O. asked me, quite out of a blue sky, if I
wouldn't like ten days over Christmas ..." (Jamie McClure to the Stuarts,
January, 1943).
�The War Years
419
Jamie Clarke, too, had leave from his Navy Photo Interpretation Squadron.
The McClures had a square dance for all the young people. Mathilda made a
cake, crowned by a little sailor-boy and a gold braided officer to represent the
two cousins. Elizabeth always used all her creative powers at Christmas to
provide a meaningful occasion for her family and Mends, never losing the
spiritual quality of the Savior's birth. She made a special effort this year,
although she could not know it would be their last Christmas together.
After Christmas Jamie returned to Biddeford Pool, Maine, and spent the
rest of the winter on the icy waters of the Atlantic. In February the CG-26
encountered a great storm. When the sails had to be brought in Jamie was the
crew member who walked out on the icy bowsprit to tend the ropes. They were
blown a thousand miles off their course and finally limped into Gloucester,
Massachusetts. The little boat was beaten past repair and the crew was reassigned. Jamie was given command of a small patrol boat that was being put in
shape at Biddeford Pool.
Perhaps it was one of those unbelievable April days at Hickory Nut Gap,
with "a cathedral blue sky" and "apple blossoms everywhere," when Jim and
Elizabeth received a telegram that Jamie was in the Biddeford Hospital. He had
been overcome by carbon monoxide gas, from the coal stove, while asleep on
his boat. He died before they could reach Maine, travelling by slow, crowded
war-time trains. Elspeth had come from Poughkeepsie and was at his bedside,
but he never recovered consciousness.
From the hour of birth a parent is frequently reminded by the series of
accidents and near catastrophes that befall a child just how fragile is the grasp
of life over death. At frightening intervals, death seems to jump out of the
shadows to threaten the very ones through whom your own life has been given
meaning, without whom existence would be unimaginable. The senseless, accidental quality of Jamie's death made it even harder to accept. Both Jim and
Elizabeth bore up bravely, supported by Elspeth, but life could never be the
same. Elizabeth's painting friend from France, Mildred Burrage, lived close by
in Kennebunkport. She and her sister "Bob" took the devastated family in. They
had been family away from home for Jamie for the past nine months.
Elspeth has always been glad that she went to Maine twice to see her
brother, once in the fail when she and a classmate, Mel Black, had enjoyed a
rousing welcome from the crew of the CG-26 and a lobster dinner on board, and
again just before Jamie's death. He had had a forty-eight-hour pass and they had
gone skiing at North Conway to celebrate his birthday.
Now Jim and Elizabeth's Lake Forest families closed ranks to support their
brother and sister. In this time of tragedy Lake Forest seemed like home. Jim
telegraphed Harriet Stuart to ask if Jamie could be buried near his grandfather,
and they made the trip to Chicago with their son's coffin. Dumont Clarke
conducted the funeral service in the Lake Forest Presbyterian Church. Summing
up the life of a young man whose full potential would never be realized on this
earth, he said:
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We come together in loving memory of this gallant boy. He was unflinching
in his courage and in his devotion to duty. He was thankful that he could put
all his enthusiasm and ability into the service of his country.
All his life he had responded to the inspirations that had touched him and
he went about the business of preparing for coming responsibilities in a thorough and patient manner. He realized that visions must be translated into
action in a practical way, and he was never dismayed or discouraged by
obstacles or blows. In every new circumstance, he immediately started to learn
and to master the problems involved. He weighed every situation carefully,
concentrating on the best elements and attacking the difficulties with enthusiasm and zest. He went amongst us with gaiety and a glad heart and a great
desire for usefulness.
His young life was lighted from within by ideals of service and he was, to
a rare degree, without thought of self. His independence of action was based
on long and careful consideration of the problems involved. Once his course
was determined he was fearless and unswerving in his allegiance.
His family and friends meant everything to him; he had the strongest loyalty
to all those whom he loved and it was his greatest happiness to serve them in
any way.
In a surprising fashion, he stirred the minds of those with whom he came
in contact, and his eager interest in all manner of subjects stimulated the
imagination and intellects of those about him.
Young as he was, he was a constructive force in the world. He was always
bent on definite accomplishment and in the words of one of his friends,
"Somewhere beyond our ken he will keep right on doing things."
In this time of peril and world disaster, he leaves us a heritage of courage
and high purpose. He lived and worked during his brief years of maturity in
such a way as to add, now, to the store of integrity and valor that we so
desperately need in facing the uncertainties of the future. He would have us
"carry on" and march forward.
There is a verse in Joshua that was to Jamie an unfailing source of strength
and inspiration and guidance:
"Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed:
for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."12
Elizabeth, Jim and Elspeth took the train home the next day. Her mother
quietly wrote something and passed it to Elspeth during the journey. It read:
He who died at Anzim sends
This to those who were his friends.
*******************
Sweet friends, what the woman lave,
For the last sleep of the grave,
Is a hut which I am quitting,
Is a garment no more fitting,
Is a cage from which at last
Like a bird my soul hath passed.
Love the inmate, not the room,
The wearer, not the garment
�The War Years
421
the eagle, not the bars
That kept him from the shining stars.
******************
He who died at Anzim sends
This to those who were his friends.
This poem, here freely remembered by Elizabeth McClure, was written by
Edwin Arnold (1832-1904) and titled "Death in Arabia." It certainly expressed
Elizabeth's feeling about death. She was sure Jamie was on important business
in God's universe. It was harder for Jim to talk about his feelings. Once that
summer Elspeth was with him at Tweeds Chapel Church in Fairview. The
preacher spoke a great deal about Jamie, and it was hard for him to keep back
tears. Afterwards he said, "Well, Pet, it's pretty tough."13 The best way for him
to handle his loss was to keep on the light side. After the funeral he wrote to
thank his sister for all her help.
It was a great comfort to have Elspie with us, and she and Elizabeth have
been wonderful as we have sought to re-establish ourselves. We have been
somewhat overwhelmed by the deluge of letters. It seems as though every one
whose life Jamie touched has written. We are now facing the task of answering
600 letters . . .
You and Doug were so generous about the tickets. It was a huge help to us.
We had sold a mule and a mare and I had the money in my pocket when the
night call reached us—and somehow with this and the help of die Coast Guard,
and the big lift by the Stuarts, we reached home without borrowing. (James
G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet Stuart, April 16, 1943)
Frances Herbert, Elizabeth's close Mend, recognized how thoroughly
jolted she was by the death of her son. As a little girl Elizabeth had been
wrenched by the death and absence of her mother, and now her sensitivities
were strained by another broken bond. A government hospital had been built
on the site of the old State Test Farm, where the early Federation picnics had
been held. The hospital was used to care for the casualties of the war. Elizabeth
decided these young soldiers could use her gift of beauty to aid in their recovery,
and undertook to build up and care for a flower garden there. Frances Herbert
remembers her gathering up hoes, spades and rakes and boarding the bus for
Asheville at the top of her driveway. She hated to take John Shorter or Mr.
Huntley away from duties on the farm to drive her for the day to Moore General.
In Asheville, she lugged her implements to another bus that would carry her out
to Swannanoa. Many times Frances Herbert would meet her out there. "She just
really couldn't stop working," said Mrs. Herbert later. "I used to take my
yardman out with me, and he would be worn out. She worked like a day
laborer."14 She felt there was something obsessional about this gardening project, an attempt to cope with Jamie's death by helping the sons of other mothers.
In one of her "Picnic" letters to Elspeth and Jamie Clarke she wrote: "Gaither
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We Plow God's Fields
Robinson is up singing "John Henry"—(but no one will ever sing it as our dear
Jamie McClure used to do it—with a feeling of suspense and drama and imminent tragedy and yet a kind of coziness about it all that made you think of
covered wagons and camp fires and the vast romance of the West always
opening up). A wonderful haunting melody, with all the queer slides and drags
that make it so completely mountain" (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Elspeth
and Jamie Clarke, July 8, 1945).
Jim, too, was determined "to carry on and march forward." Not only did
he continue all his duties as president of the Federation and community good
citizen, he kept right on raising money for the Educational and Development
Fund. This must have been particularly difficult after the loss of his son because
his success depended so much on his charm and personal magnetism. People
gave to help his projects because they liked and had confidence in him. He had
to be always at his best. Each fall, reluctantly at first, he boarded the train for
the annual campaign. He soon got into the spirit of the effort and mapped out
each year's drive as a grand game, setting his goal almost unrealistically high,
and pushing hard to reach it. He remembered names and a little something about
each man or woman that was of importance to them. His daily tallies were kept
in a little black book, with a running total he could compare with his progress
from the last year. He would carry his cocktail all evening without taking a sip,
moving from one conversation to another, introducing people to each other,
always managing to turn the conversation towards the problems of his friends
in the Southern mountains. He studied the Social Register and even plucked the
names of successful people he hoped to reach out of magazines and newspapers.
Special friends organized luncheons or dinners where he could speak. Sherman
Pratt, of the Standard Oil family, had made a movie of the Federation and the
people it served, and this was very successful in arousing interest.
Many of Jim's innovative projects depended on his money-raising efforts.
During the war years the Educational and Development Fund was pumping
nearly $60,000 annually into the picnics, the Training School, the Lord's Acre,
and projects to improve the genetic quality of the dairy herds and poultry flocks
of the mountains. Jim was so successful as a fund raiser that he could never
replace himself. Each year he worked up a promotional pamphlet "The Forgotten Pioneer, A New Chance for the Mountain People." He included figures such
as, " . . . for each dollar donated to date, the Fund has put $22.84 in the pockets
of our farmers. We are helping the mountaineers to help themselves." He wrote
sister Hetty, "I enclose our new circular. I have to raise my Budget on it—Do
you think it has chex appeal?" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, June
20, 1936).
Each pamphlet had on the cover a large photograph chosen to impress his
contributors with the proud and honorable people of North Carolina who were
trying to pull themselves out of a hopeless economic inheritance. The pictures
exhibited the quaintness of life there: the mules and oxen or the simple log
homes that had earned for the region its reputation for backwardness. And yet
�The War Years
423
Picture of the "Forgotten Pioneer." Jamie McClure took this picture of Dave Sharp.
Jim chose fine faces for these covers, with great strength and fortitude. The
October 1941 issue showed "The Forgotten Pioneer" riding on his ox sled with
a bag of flour. In 1945, a pretty young woman leads two mules out into her
family's pasture. The 1947 issue featured three cheerful bare foot boys, sitting
on the porch holding their hoes. Jim liked to remind his audiences of the great
number of children in the mountains, and how important their lives were to the
future of the United States. He would then introduce the work of the Lord's
Acre, very popular among the Protestants of the North. In 1943, the picture was
a studied contrast between the pride and optimism of a young soldier, and the
mountain cabin he was leaving behind. Of all the photographs, one he used in
May 1941 was his tour deforce. Way up on the side of a high mountain ridge,
a man stands upright and proud next to his field of corn. In the distance, three
mountain ranges, row after row, are plainly visible. The man appears to see
beyond the beautiful landscape at his feet to the better future for his grandchildren. Jamie McClure took that picture of Dave Sharp.
Open up one of Jim's pamphlets, and there were more pictures that give
�424
We Plow God's Fields
visual expression to the work of the Federation. One featured two parents
planting their garden, followed by three small children hoeing and pulling the
dirt back over the seeds, standing over the heading "FOUNDATIONS OF
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The Family." Jim asked rhetorically, in large
print, "Who Are These Mountain People?" and "Are They Worth Helping?"
On the back cover, he would list the prominent citizens who were backing him
up. Mrs. Henry Davison was still with him, as the Chairman of the Women's
Committee in New York. Arthur Page remained a strong captain in the efforts.
Angier B. Duke, Thomas J. Watson, Henry P. Luce, Mrs. J. C. Penney and
several Fords and Biddies were some of the famous names that stood behind Jim
McClure's efforts.
The high point of the Fund drive became the annual "mountain picnic" held
in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Jim McClure
treated his supporters and their friends, a sophisticated crowd, to an evening
unlike any other in the city. The Federation String Band set the tone and rhythm,
performing buck dances, singing old ballads, and playing the Tennessee Waltz.
Jim and Elspeth found that their "fox chase" imitation was as popular in New
York as it was with the Cherokee Indians. Just as in North Carolina, local
performers turned up to take part in the program: Mr. Watson's son "Dick"
(Arthur K.) Watson yodeled; Madame Novatna from the Metropolitan Opera
performed; Jimmy Van Alan, who invented the tie-breaker rules for tennis, sang
a song he had composed about Jim. The song was sung to the tune of "The Old 97."
When Jim McClure hit the Southern mountains
In the year one nine one six,
It was common belief that the North and South land
Could never, never mix.
Then Jim McClure smiled that smile that's loosened purse strings
That never were loosed before . . .
The guests took part in musical chairs with as much enthusiasm as the
players in Yancey County, while the New York audience collapsed with laughter. Dinner was served, and the more adventurous barely hesitated to try out the
delicate and indelicate staples of the mountain diet. One typical menu included
Potlikker soup, wild strawberry jam, cornbread with sorghum molasses oozed
on top, all followed by a slice of blackberry pie. Slices of Federation turkey
would likely as not be the centerpiece of the meal, raised, everyone was reminded, with the help of contributions made to the Fund. Waldorf waiters were
stuffed incongruously into bib overalls, and Jamie Clarke remembers the confusion in the vast basement when he delivered white Southern cornmeal, sweet
potatoes and several lively calves to help create a country atmosphere. Jim was
himself master of ceremonies and IBM's Thomas J. Watson paid for the entire
evening. In 1941, Mr. Watson made this introduction of the evening's principal
speaker.
�The War Years
425
Waldorf-Astoria Federation Picnic, 1954 or 1955. Max Roberts (on far left), Jim
McClure (center) with his famous white pants, and Elspeth McClure on the far right.
You all know that back of everything worthwhile are two things: an idea
and a personality. The idea back of the Farmers Federation is to improve the
conditions and raise the standards of living of the community in Western North
Carolina mountain country. The personality back of this worthwhile proposition is Mr. McClure . . .
The point I would like to have all of you remember in regard to this work
is that Mr. McClure has never given a dollar to a farmer, nor loaned him any
money, but he has given him an educational institution. I consider it the finest
type of agricultural college I have ever seen. He has taught these people how
to produce more from their soil, and he has found markets for their products
15
Jim wooed his audience with an address he had refined and polished over
the years. He liked to begin with a tale or two he had picked up through the
years.
Away back in the Smoky Mountains, a man lived in a small cabin, alone
except for his dog. Well the winters there are long and lonely, and so this man
decided to teach his dog to play checkers. One day he was sitting in front of
the fire playing checkers with his dog sitting in the opposite chair—when he
heard a knock on his door. It was a New Yorker, lost in the mountains, and
he entered when the mountaineer yelled for him to come on in. "Well, what
do you want stranger?"
"Nothing. I just want to watch the game." The dog made a move, the
�426
We Plow God's Fields
mountaineer studied a while and made his move. The dog thought a while and
moved again. In a few more moves the dog won—
The stranger said, "Will you let me take you and that dog to New York.
Why you can get more money in one night in New York than you will make
in ten years on this farm. People will pay big money to see that dog play
checkers.
The mountaineer hesitated and thought it over. "Stranger, he's really not
as good as you might think. I reckon I win somewheres of three games out of
every five."16
With such a story, Jim brought his audience down to North Carolina. The
isolation, the poverty and honest naivete of the mountaineer were described in
a way that would catch the attention of his contributors, and give him a springboard into describing the work of the Federation. Jim always kept his speeches
short and soon brought the Federation band back to liven up the spirits of the
crowd. Several similar events were held at the Barclay Hotel in Philadelphia,
where George Munson and Clare McCoy, publisher of the Evening Bulletin,
steered Jim's fund raising activities. The purpose of the evening was to arouse
the interest of these people, to give them an unshakable curiosity about life in
Western North Carolina, so that their generosity might be cultivated for the
benefit of the work in the mountains. A rousing square dance went on late into
the evening, with occasional breaks to auction baby chickens, a pony or a piglet,
which created a great stir. These picnics were a curious blend of the two worlds
of Jim and Elizabeth, and exhibited once again the skill with which he could
combine fun with purpose in order to enlist the help of all sorts of people.
The best part of these forays to New York, Philadelphia or Detroit was
getting back to Hickory Nut Gap, sometimes as late as December. Jim wrote to
Elspeth at college once at the end of a campaign, "Tomorrow I head back to
Heaven and the Heaven keeper!"17 Back at the farm John and Mathilda Shorter
were still the main props at the house along with Rev. David Huntley, whose
children were fast growing up and moving successfully out into the world. Betty
was the capable and willing secretary to Mr. McClure in his capacity as the
president of the Federation.
Elspeth and some of her Vassar classmates spent the summer of 1943
working on the farm. As in World War I, extra vegetable crops were planted to
help feed soldiers in nearby army camps. Sis Rice received a proposal from her
husband-to-be while weeding the asparagus patch. Jess Rattray almost collapsed
while picking endless lima beans in the boiling heat, and Virginia Osborne
stayed all summer to help tend and dust green beans, hoe corn, and pick
tomatoes with the farm hands and their families. Clinard Settles and his brother
John Scott Settles were the heart of the work force, under the able and humorous
leadership of Mr. J. R. Riddle. Nannie Settles, John's strong wife, was the
fastest bean picker. Several acres of yellow tomatoes were struck by a blight
that was new to the mountains. As the girls and their co-workers washed the red
clay off the fruits in a great tub, it was hard to tell which tomatoes were a ripe
�The War Years
427
yellow and which were rotten. Jamie Clarke's letters from Guadalcanal were
read over and over, but they could give little hint of what was happening in the
far Pacific. The girls also attended every picnic with Jim. Elspeth helped her
father line up the program and wrote the articles for the paper. Virginia Osborne
sat gallantly in the blazing sun, selling war bonds and stamps with Mr. A. C.
Reynolds.
Elspeth planned to follow her brother into military service after graduating
from Vassar on the accelerated plan in the spring of 1944. Her parents came up
for the graduation ceremonies, and while they were having breakfast with the
Misses Kinkead, who had been so good to their children, the telephone rang.
A harassed Vassar official asked for James McClure. President Roosevelt had
been scheduled to make the graduation address, but had to cancel at the last
minute. Could Jim work up a speech in time? Miss Elise remembers his response. "Do you think we can do it in two hours?" he asked Elizabeth. With
her lovely smile she jumped up and "Yes. Jim—let's try!"18
How he loved a crisis. The speech was enthusiastically received. It was
vintage McClure, a call to arms to the best and brightest in the nation. The
Poughkeepsie newspaper reported:
Tracing American ideals, the speaker, whose daughter, Elspeth McClure,
was a member of the graduating class, reminded that "The hope of the world
lies in our purpose to carry these ideas forward. It will take fresh understandings and new research and original effort and keen penetration to discover
afresh the great power that lies in these American ideals .. .
General Smuts has said, "mankind has struck its tents and is on the march."
In the world which is so rapidly changing today there lies ahead of the class
of 1944 a period of unparalleled opportunity.
You are finishing your preparation on the eve of the invasion of Europe, for
which the free people of the world are waiting.
Our success in arms must be followed through by America's entry into
world citizenship. There is no escape from it. It is the destiny of America. The
world is fluid and your generation will make the patterns and determine the
moulds of the immediate course of mankind. Success in a shot in golf depends
on the follow through. The same will be true of our entry into world affairs.
You will be the ones to follow through.
And so today, I want to talk to you of the Creative Power of American
Ideals and of how the ideas which made America can restore us here in
America and promise hope to the world. Freedom and liberty have enabled
mankind to develop abilities in a remarkable way under democracy."19
His speech was an adaptation of one he had delivered before the Pen and
Plate Club in Asheville entitled "The Springs of Democracy." He concluded his
remarks at Vassar by challenging the class of 1944, and their parents and
friends. In so doing, he verbalized the motive force in his own life. He said,
"Everyone here, today, instinctively believes in the things that have made America, we believe so strongly that we will fight for them on every battle front in
�428
We Plow God's Fields
the world . . . It will be a tough assignment to put these ideals into practice. I
am not offering a life of ease but instead a life that will call for all your energy
and all your ability. It is a great challenge which will require a peculiar quality
of mind and spirit."20
In essence Jim McClure believed that it would be possible to export ideas
like the Farmers Federation and the Lord's Acre to foreign lands, and raise up
the incomes and the spiritual resources of developing nations as he had done in
the Southern Appalachians. He actually admired the way Adolph Hitler had
transformed millions of Germans from inertia to action by offering them hope
and pride. But the energy Hitler roused was directed to evil and destructive
purposes. Why could not the energies of the American people be utilized to
conquer the world in the name of human progress? Jim's World War I ethic that
peace could be achieved by nonintervention had been replaced by the belief that
America must actively promote the values of democracy. A few years later he
talked about the possibility of sending out young men and women to Third
World countries to work for a year or two, an idea very similar to John F.
Kennedy's Peace Corps.
Now his own daughter was going into the Navy and he was proud of her.
After graduation she was accepted for WAVE Officers Training School. Soon
she was marching in formation all over the campus of Smith College in
Northampton, Massachusetts, learning Navy communications. There was universal support for the war against the dictators and young people all over the
country were enlisting in military service. The scarcity of manpower in Western
North Carolina put many women behind the wheels of their husband's tractors,
making for delightful cover photographs for the Federation News. To a serviceman overseas, one picture of a pretty girl was worth much more than many
thousands of words. Bob Brown, editor of the News, started a contest for a
Burley Tobacco Queen of Western North Carolina and Miss Ophelia Cole, the
first winner, graced the cover of the December tobacco issue. Barefooted and
smiling, she stands in front of the crop she helped to grow, wearing what
appears to be nothing but a skirt and blouse of tobacco leaves. Pauline Smith,
another candidate, received two trunks full of letters from homesick servicemen
after her picture was in the News. She was shown watching a tobacco bed being
burned near Barnardsville School, wearing the shortest of shorts. One ship's
crew made her their pin-up girl and asked for large pictures. Dumont Clarke
must have been dubious about this promotional stunt. Already he cringed at the
thought of the Federation's support of tobacco. But he was so busy spreading
the Lord's Acre plan far and wide that he hardly had time to complain.
With Elspeth away the farm would have been lonely that summer, but
Elizabeth's nephew, Corwith Cramer, Jr., came to work on the farm and at the
picnics, bringing his school friend, John Compton, son of the nuclear physicist,
Dr. Arthur Compton. Cory had already spent much time at the farm, for his
father's boat business kept him moving about. Elizabeth, Jim and Elspeth all
loved him, and in many ways he was like Jamie McClure. He had the same
�The War Years
429
brilliant mind and energy, and he was learning to play the banjo and sing
mountain ballads. He and John worked on the farm and at the picnics and it
meant a great deal to Jim and Elizabeth to have him there.
Just when Elspeth finished her WAVE training at the end of August 1944,
Jamie Clarke arrived home on leave, after eighteen months in the Pacific, with
long duty on the island of Guadalcanal. Elspeth had loved Jamie for a long time.
She had grown up during the nearly two years since they had seen each other,
and Jamie discovered he felt the same way. They were cousins, so it took some
careful thought and research into the genetics of the situation. The related side
of their families was the strong McClure side, which was in their favor. With
Elspeth stationed at the Navy Yard in Charleston, South Carolina, and Jamie at
the Navy Department in Washington, they had to do some long distance considering, but at last all the obstacles were worked out.
Elizabeth and Jim planned to spend Christmas with Elspeth in Charleston.
They were offered an apartment in the old part of the city by Jim's cousin,
Cornelia Cogswell Sage, and a WAVE friend of Elspeth's helped her set up a
Christmas tree in a pot of earth sneaked from St. Phillips churchyard. Just a day
or two before they were to leave Elizabeth was running down the steps to the
garden to gather some greens for the Garden Club's Christmas wreath project,
when she slipped on the ice and broke her arm. With one arm in a cast she kept
right on with Christmas preparations, tieing up packages with one hand and her
teeth. On Christmas Day Elspeth had "the duty" at the Navy Yard Communications office. That evening she told her parents, who already knew what was in
the wind, that she and Jamie were indeed engaged. They were delighted and
supportive. Elspeth and Jamie had pooled Navy resources to buy her mother a
fur coat for Christmas, something she had not had since she was a young girl.
Somehow, in spite of her broken arm, she cut branches of forsythia and yellow
jasmine ("Spring Candlelight," she always called it) and forced them into bloom
for the February 17th wedding in the Presbyterian Church in Asheville, where
there was room for their many friends. Elspeth had a hard time getting the ten
days leave to be married, which was guaranteed to WAVEs, from her crusty
commanding officer, and reached home the day before the wedding. Young
Corwith Cramer, his father, Uncle Ambrose, and Tommy DeBevoise, son of a
New York supporter of the Federation, who had spent the winter working for
the coop and living at the Clarke's, were ushers. Jamie's contemporaries were
all away in the service. Elspeth's childhood friends, Beckie Herbert and Mary
D. Heywood, were able to take part, and her roommate from Vassar, Farley
Walton, was maid of honor. The day before the wedding Jamie's mother Annie
took Elspeth aside and told her that Jamie had never given her a moment's
worry.
Elizabeth and Jim went to stay with Annie and Dumont after the wedding,
leaving Hickory Nut Gap as a peaceful haven for the new couple. Elizabeth
even arranged to send groceries out on the bus to Mathilda, as gas rationing
limited driving severely. The newlyweds had no cares, save for getting lost in
��The War Years
431
Miss Ophelia Cole, 16, of Newfound, Tobacco Queen for the 1943-44 season.
a fog on Big Bearwallow Mountain above the little town of Gerton. They
wandered down the wrong side of the ridge, ending up twenty miles from home
at a little country store, where they telephoned to John Shorter to pick them up,
along with the three little white farm dogs! While they waited they enjoyed in
silence the muttered comments of an elderly male customer "That boy ought to
be in the army!"
Elspeth and Jamie had been closely observed by neighbors as they started
their walk earlier in the afternoon. When they got back to Gerton they learned
that loyal friends had organized a search party! John dreaded wasting more
precious gas, but Elspeth thought they must try to notify them that the lost were
found.
"That's the—ah worry," the old man sighed wearily as he drove up the
rough Bearwallow Road. Half way up they found Uncle Mouse Freeman's son,
Filmore, Deputy Sheriff of Gerton. At once he blew a tremendous blast on a
siren attached to the roof of his car and answering whistles and shouts came
from the mountainside.
When the ten days were over the newlyweds returned sadly to their posts
in Charleston and Washington. But Elspeth had been scheduled to attend Communications School in Washington in a few weeks, and the WAVE District
Personnel Officer had offered her hope for a transfer to Washington. The EastOpposite: Dumont Clarke prays with a group of Lord's Acre participants.
�Wedding of James Clarke and Elspeth McClure. Left-right: Mary D. Heywood, Farley
Walton, Rebecca Herbert, Phebe Ann Lewis, Dumont Clarke, Annie McClure Clarke,
James McClure Clarke, Elspeth McClure, Elizabeth Cramer McClure, James G.K.
McClure.
�The War Years
433
ern Seaboard Naval installations were dropping personnel as the war with Germany drew to a close.
In Washington Jamie, with brave optimism, answered an ad for a house.
Housing was very scarce, but his sentimental telegram melted the heart of the
landlady. She chose his application over hundreds of others because she was
about to get married herself. Elizabeth's brother Ambrose, who was heading
up Lend-Lease for the United Kingdom, and his wife Mary, invited him to live
with them until Elspeth arrived. The Communications School made a happy
break in their separation, and Jamie had the little house filled with daffodils
when Elspeth arrived. By the end of May the transfer came through and they
were able to get settled. Elspeth worked Navy watches round the clock, changing every two days, in the big Navy code room while Jamie had regular hours
as editor of Naval Aviation magazine, but they were so happy together in their
pretty little house in Georgetown that it didn't matter at all. Elizabeth visited
them and resolutely cooked artichokes in the dish pan, for they had no large
sauce pan. She even sent them rooted boxwood cuttings for their pocket-sized
garden!21
When the war was over the one thing Jamie Clarke wanted to do was get
back to Asheville to help with the Farmers Federation. Late in the fall they both
were out of the Navy and able to move into the cottage behind the spring house.
Jamie went straight to work.
On V-J Day, Jim McClure was sixty years old and the time was coming
when he would have to pass the torch of his work on to the young. Jamie Clarke
was a hard worker, capable and willing. But the founder was a very special
man, most would say indispensable. The Federation was in his head, and it was
hard to learn all the angles.
The war years had been a great mixture of blessings and difficulties. Nothing could compensate Jim for the loss of his son. But the business of the
Federation was making great strides forward. Soon Jamie and Elspeth would
bring back the sounds and duties of little children to Hickory Nut Gap. Jim did
not remove himself from the struggle. He could never retire, because he loved
the working and fighting too much. The Lord had indeed equipped him with the
strength to carry a heavy load.
1. Fanners Federation News, November 1940, p. 7.
2. Farmers Federation News, December 1940, p. 10.
3. Farmers Federation News, August 1940.
4. Dumont Clarke, Farmers Federation News, May 1941, p. 19.
5. Dumont Clarke, Farmers Federation News, May, 1941.
6. Jamie McClure, "Frontier Civilization in the Blue Ridge Highlands, unpublished paper, written for a course at Yale University, no date.
7. Ibid.
8. James McClure Clarke, unpublished recollections, 1947.
9. Interview with James McClure Clarke.
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We Plow God's Fields
10. Ibid.
11. James G. K. McClure, Jr., address given before the National Institute of Social
Sciences, New York City, May 24, 1944.
12. Dumont Clarke, address at the funeral of Jamie McClure, Lake Forest, Dlinois,
April, 1943.
13. Interview with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
14. Interview with Mrs. Frances Herbert.
15. Thomas J. Watson, speech quoted in Business Machines, the IBM company
newspaper, January 16, 1941.
16. Paraphrased from a speech by James G. K. McClure, Jr.
17. Interviews with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
18. Ibid.
19. "U.S. Must Join in World Affairs, Speaker Tells Vassar Graduates,"
Poughkeepsie Afew Yorker, April 19, 1944, p. 1.
20. Ibid., p. 4.
21. Interviews with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
�Chapter Twenty
Last Years
So long as our lives individually strive to embody the spirit that comes of
God, our souls seeing renewal always in the source of all life must then meet,
and of necessity become one, since in God there is no separation. That which
is you and that which is I must then perforce unite and become eternally part
of one another just as two rivers meeting, henceforth mingle and become one
stream that continues on its way until it is merged in the great sea ... (Elizabeth Cramer to James G. K. McClure, Jr., February 8, 1916)
By March, one can expect in the Southern Appalachians a fair number of
the most delightful warm days. All across the region, the sun begins to work its
miracle of drawing out the world's most diverse variety of wild flowers and
blooming shrubs. Each mountain homestead, almost without exception, has its
well-tended beds of transplanted wild azaleas, lady slippers and phlox. In spring
a woman will find time each day to study these sacred little patches, watching
for the first shoots of daffodils or iris. About the same time, her husband
manages to swing by for a look at his bee gums, to see how the colonies fared
over the winter as they respond to the warming rays of sun.
Elizabeth McClure rejoiced each year hi this renewal of spring, and loved
to wander about and rediscover the hidden beauties that lay scattered about her
home in the mountains. Trailing arbutus, the first herald of the new season, is
the shyest of the ephemerals, signalling the pure white drifts of Sarvis trees in
the leafless forest. Quickly come great beds of trillium, showy orchids, dutchman's breeches and blood root, followed by punctatium (the earliest, small
leafed Rhododendron), dogwood, and flame azalea with great splashes of color
in the newly greening woods. For Elizabeth, this seasonal show was holy revelation enough to prove the existence of a loving Creator.
In late March of 1946, Elizabeth and Jim had been married for thirty years,
and had spent almost the entire time at their beloved Hickory Nut Gap. For all
that time Elizabeth had been working in partnership with the fecund Blue Ridge
soil, with proud mountain men who were amazed to find themselves working
with "pretties," and with assorted small boys in faded overalls, to surround the
old house with beauty. Throughout the three growing seasons, native plants and
those chosen with care from her array of catalogues made a succession of
changing colors against the ever growing backdrop of glossy green boxwood.
Many of these she and Jim had planted as scraggly shrubs bought from unappreciative owners. Jim and Elizabeth set some of these at the boundary of the rock
435
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We Plow God's Fields
garden above the house, where they slowly grew into veritable giants, shouldering each other in undulating waves. Elizabeth rooted countless cuttings and set
them out to grow into hedges. She trimmed them faithfully over the years, using
a string line to keep those all important straight lines that she carefiilly planned
to melt into the looseness of a large, untrimmed bush, or to lead the eye into the
green woods beyond the garden. By 1946 Hickory Nut Gap had become a happy
combination of architecture and landscape and a wonderful botanical adventure.
Elizabeth was the conductor of a floral symphony that played a different movement in each season of the year, to the delight of her guests and family.
That spring, the paths and courtyards of Hickory Nut Gap were for Jim and
Elizabeth filled with memories of their children. Twenty-five years before, little
"Punie" would have enjoyed the warmth of March crawling about the lawn
pulling at the dandelions. It would take only a glance at the sandbox to remind
her of the treasure hunts she used to organize for little Elfie and her Stuart
cousins from Chicago. In the spring of 1943, she had lost Jamie altogether to
this life. Now Elspeth was beginning her own family at Hickory Nut Gap.
Elizabeth and Jim were now members of an older generation, and they
wore their dignity with the kind of confidence men and women possess when
their lives have stood for a glorious purpose. With the one exception of their
son's death, the sorrows and disappointments that were allotted them had been
dispelled by the courage and the vision both shared when they were married
back in 1916. Their works had matched their faith, and they were surrounded
by the variety of their friendships.
For March 29, 1946, Elspeth and Jamie planned a surprise anniversary
party, secretly inviting a number of these oldest friends including, of course,
Annie and Dumont Clarke, who had been in on the courtship from its beginning.
Everyone was asked to come in the costume of the time of their own marriage,
and to bring a photograph. Elspeth persuaded her mother to go off with Jim on
an overnight trip to Tennessee, which gave her time to decorate the studio at the
back of the courtyard with the photographs of the guests and to set up tables for
supper with Betty Huntley's help. Meanwhile, Mathilda prepared the feast. Jim
and Elizabeth had only just returned when the first guests arrived. Elizabeth was
even more startled than Jim, but they both entered right into the spirit of this
celebration of friendship and love.
Even at this stage of their lives, though, there was little time for reminiscing. Jim continued to manage the Farmers Federation, whose business raced
along during the post-war period. The summer picnics were now a mountain
tradition, a holiday that thousands anticipated. And Jim continued to make his
autumn pilgrimages up north to gather together loyal contributors and treat them
to his charm and the revised pitch of "What we are doing about the mountain
farm." He threw himself as well behind the great efforts to build new schools
in Buncombe County and to introduce symphony music to Western North Carolina.
The region was changing; industry was building up in the mountains,
�Last Years
437
stemming the out migration of young families to the mill towns of the Piedmont
and elsewhere. Young soldiers returning home brought with them new aspirations, and a hankering for their piece of the American Dream. Fewer would
remain satisfied with the rigors of subsistence agriculture or its meager economic rewards. Everyone wanted an automobile, and many once prim and
well-kept mountain yards became the shrines of a generation of self-taught
mechanics. Petunias and asters had to compete with old transmissions and
discarded bumpers. Very few farms would escape at least one or two junkers
out in the yard, with a V-8 engine dangling from the old oak shade tree. The
jacked-up car of the whiskey runner was added to the moonshine legend. In
fact, the curves through Hickory Nut Gap became the "Thunder Road" for many
aspiring blockaders who liked to refine their road handling skills by squalling
and screeching up and down the mountain on a Saturday evening.
But it was roads such as this one, and new ones besides, that opened up the
region to the national economy. Not only were manufactured goods readily
available in Western North Carolina, but the families themselves enjoyed new
mobility and sources of income. Jim McClure's dream of a wage earner in every
home appeared possible. Manufacturers discovered the capabilities and the willing spirit of the mountain worker, who appreciated his earnings and wanted
nothing more than to go home after work to do a little tinkering, hoe in the
garden or play ball with his children.
The new economic order in the mountains meant a new role for the Farmers
Federation. In many areas farming remained the main source of livelihood, but
in others conditions were changing. With the war over, Jim McClure began to
formulate new ideas and projects for the Federation. In the Twenty-sixth anniversary issue of the News (1946), he laid before the membership a bold new
plan of action.
A GREAT PROGRAM AHEAD
The Fanners Federation is developing a great, constructive program which
will build solid foundations for a better civilization in Western North Carolina
. .. We are planning to build a solid foundation of markets which will mean
the prosperity of the towns.
Poultry and Eggs: We already have started a new modern poultry-processing plant on Valley Street in Asheville. This will have zero storage rooms for
frozen poultry; cold storage rooms for eggs, apples, and potatoes; it will have
lots of space to take care of these farm products. We are planning this building
to be a solid foundation for the marketing of poultry, eggs, apples and potatoes
in Western North Carolina.
Turkeys: We are launching a campaign for turkey production . ..
Freezer Lockers and Frozen Foods: Great strides will be made within the
next few years in the processing and use of frozen foods. The Fanners Federation plans to keep right abreast with this movement. We already have four
locker plants in operation and another one just about to be built at Brevard.
Campaigns for locker plants are going forward at Marion and Spruce Pine.
�438
We Plow God's Fields
The Fanners Federation stands willing to go ahead with any community in the
erection of a locker plant if a survey shows that the installation can be operated
at a safe margin. These locker plants will enable the farmers to get started in
the frozen food business; and also, in the processing of meat...
Milk: We are already at work building a cooperative dairy plant. The directors of the Farmers Federation feel that this will establish a solid foundation
for the marketing of milk and milk products in Western North Carolina .. .
High Production: The program of the Farmers Federation will call for high
production in every branch of agriculture. You all know the standards we have
set in our hatchery: Every baby chick has the inheritance behind it for 250
eggs. We have the Dairy Improvement program, also based on genetics, designed to increase the average production of dairy cows to ten or twelve
thousand pounds a year . . . the bull barn for an artificial insemination program
is now being built.
Spiritual Resources: The Religious Department plans to go even further in
backing up and trying to help strengthen the country Sunday Schools and
churches. The Lord's Acre Movement has given new vitality and strength to
our country churches and Sunday Schools.
We now plan to add to that service a church and Sunday School recreation
service so that wholesome recreation can be used through the Sunday Schools
in developing the kind of Christian character that we need for this new atomic
age into which we are coming. The strength of America has always been in the
country districts. We want to develop the type of strong Christian character in
our rural sections that will keep America marching forward into a better day.1
The first rays of that "better day" were already shining in the North Carolina mountains. In all measurements of economic activity, the region still lagged
behind the rest of the nation, but the opportunities of 1946 were vastly different
from those of 1916 when Jim and Elizabeth first came to the South. The effects
of two wars, the TVA, better highways, more tourists, more industry, and better
access to national markets were remaking the lives of the mountaineers. The
Federation was playing a leading role in the development of the region, raising
up the level of skills and the hopes of the men and women and their children
who lived in its territory. As Jim McClure often said, "A rising tide raises all
boats." By his hammering on the facts of scientific agriculture, in cooperation
with the County Agricultural agents, a generation of farmers had ready access
to the most current techniques of fanning. And with the News and the picnics,
Jim made the information better than accessible, he made it understandable and
downright fun. The habits of progressive farming spread, with the obvious
results that the members who followed these procedures grew more food, and
made more money for their families.
In a less obvious way, these men and women learned to think in a critical,
problem-solving manner. Sociologists have noted the difficulties traditional societies face when trying to mesh with the ways of the modern industrial system.
A large part of the adjustment involves a new philosophical approach, an acceptance of the scientific method of critical thinking. In Western North Carolina,
the Federation helped to promote this approach to problems, and therefore
�Last Years
439
contributed to the remarkably smooth transition the region experienced in shifting away from the habits of its traditional culture.
Jim McClure chaired an endless number of committees and meetings that
involved the farmers in their own business. He taught by example organizational
rules and etiquette, and how to arrive at an acceptable joint decision after several
opinions were expressed. The farmers involved learned about minutes, and
treasurer's reports, and how to elect people to positions correctly and with a
minimum of hard feelings. The policies of the Federation were set by two
directors elected by the membership of each county. These were usually leading
farmers. Warehouse committees helped to manage the policies of each of the
Federation stores. Market news taught the mountain farmers how to think in
terms of supply and demand, world commodity markets, government policies,
and all the other factors that determine crop prices.
If the Federation was something of a large-scale school, its central purpose
remained to put cash in the pocket of the mountain farmer. Jim McClure had
always used his powers of imagination to create money-generating schemes.
With the aid of the Fund he had been able to try out many of them. The
Federation created, promoted and maintained a wide variety of programs. Ironically its very success would eventually contribute to the demise of the organization. After the war, the Federation expanded into new areas such as freezer
locker plants, the sale of home appliances, a modern poultry dressing plant, a
cooperative dairy plant, artificial insemination and other programs. The expertise and energies of the management became more dispersed just at a time when
agriculture nationally experienced a burst of specialization.
For example, the Federation committed itself to building up a modern
poultry business. From the earliest days of the cooperative, Jim McClure had
felt that Western North Carolina was an ideal region for chickens. The cool
summer climate, along with the requirement of mountain farmers to raise a crop
that did not need rich bottom land, made poultry and turkeys very promising.
The business did grow and continue to put cash in the pockets of farmers, from
the days of the black pot out in front of the Fairview warehouse for scalding and
plucking chickens through the era of the live poultry railroad car, and finally to
the building of the Federation's own hatchery and dressing plant. Over the years
the officers of the Federation learned a lot about the fickle nature of the chicken
business, overcoming diseases and fighting a series of marketing difficulties;
but Jim always remained sure that the Federation could prevail and provide for
its region a stable and profitable poultry enterprise.
An improved hatchery was built to ensure a supply of healthy baby chicks,
with the best inheritance for rapid development in the case of broilers or high
production in the case of laying hens. Chicks sold to farmers were repurchased
by the Federation and processed at the dressing plant in Asheville, where they
were scientifically killed, plucked, gutted, packaged and marketed. A modern
plant was begun in 1946 and completed the next year at a cost of $130,000. The
Educational and Development Fund assisted in launching this new project. At
�440
We Plow God's Fields
the May 1948 meeting of the Fund Trustees the completion of the plant was
noted and the immediate support of the Fund requested.
. . . [T]he modern poultry processing plant of the Farmers Federation . . .
is in operation. This plant was necessary as a marketing foundation on which
to build a poultry industry in the mountains, but this plant cannot develop
volume enough to pay its way in the fiscal year .. .
Since these fine facilities were built and put into operation to further the
development of agricultural production in the mountain territory and since time
is needed to develop volume of business to the point where they will be
self-sustaining, a motion was made that the Budget be amended to include an
item to cover interest and depreciation on these buildings . . . amounting to
$36,278.07 .. . This motion was seconded and duly carried.2
Spread over the next decade, over $300,000 of Fund money was spent promoting and maintaining the hatchery, the dressing plant and various other poultry
related enterprises.
It had always been the objective of the Federation to spread the poultry
business out among many small farmers to help them increase cash income.
Fred Moffitt was one of the first to be "in chickens" with the Federation in Clay
County, a sparsely populated and remote county at the far western tip of North
Carolina. He had a supply flock, furnishing eggs for the broiler breeds to the
Federation hatchery in Asheville: Rhode Island Reds and Domineckers. Each
week a yellow Federation truck would pull up to the Moffitt farm, pick up the
eggs, and leave the correct amount and mix of feed. During periods of tight
money, the Federation would allow a dependable man like Fred Moffitt to build
his credit up a bit. For his part, he was sure that the Federation poultry business
was the "best thing going at the time." In truth there were then few other
opportunities in Clay County. All over Western North Carolina chicken houses
began to spring up and there was a feeling of excitement and optimism as the
profits started to come in.
It wasn't long, however, before large feed companies began to see the
advantages of creating their own poultry operations to stimulate the sale of their
products. They would go so far as to build large chicken houses for the farmer,
on credit, advance him the birds, and then pay for raising them. Very quickly,
for both layers and broilers, the scale of profitable operation grew larger and
larger. The tremendous expansion of the broiler business in particular, with
large-scale credit extended by the feed companies, resulted in overexpansion
of the industry and heavy losses to the companies and to the farmers. Many big
chicken houses still stand empty in Western North Carolina as a monument to
this overexpansion and excessive credit.
Fred Moffitt had started out with what seemed a large enterprise at that
time—200 hens and 20 roosters. But he "went out" when the modern, large
scale company-owned birds "came in." He understood that "Today a farmer
must raise seven to ten thousand birds to make it."3
�Last Years
441
Farmers Federation poultry processing plant, built in 1948.
Jim McClure's dream of a poultry industry geared to raise the standards of
living of the small farmer in the North Carolina mountains ran head on into the
post-war drive of big business entering the agricultural field. His 1950 report
in the Federation News reflects the way this development was beginning to affect
business.
Perhaps the highlight of the year just passed, when we look back at it, will
be the development of the broiler industry. This was an instance of turning a
near disaster into a solid achievement. The baby chick business took a decided
slump all during the fall of 1949, and early spring of 1950. Eggs dropped in
price. No one wanted baby chicks. We even had to shut down the hatchery.
Jack Gattis, the manager of the hatchery for some years, resigned and it took
us some time to find his successor . . . There was no market for baby chicks.
It takes a lot of broiler houses on farms to develop a broiler industry in any
section. One of the chief obstacles to developing a broiler industry in our
mountain section has been the individual fanners have had in financing broiler
houses. It takes about one square foot per broiler, and you can readily see it's
expensive to build a 5,000 square foot broiler house . . .
Instead of closing the hatchery, we decided to put on a real campaign to get
out the broilers. If we closed the hatchery, our supply flocks would necessarily
have no market and we would lose all that we have built up in the past few
years . . .
We hope that this year, which has been so tough on the hatchery, will result
in building a solid foundation for a great broiler industry in the mountains.
Our hatchery is coming through the 12 months with a loss. This loss should
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We Plow God's Fields
be a permanent gain to the farm people of Western North Carolina because of
the development of a real broiler industry.4
The "solid Foundation" crumbled four years later, in the summer of 1954,
when disaster struck the Federation's poultry business. Within a six-month
period, the market price for broilers dropped 29 percent, and egg prices dropped
34 percent. The Fund was forced to cover some of these unexpected losses,
helping the Federation through a particularly rocky situation.
Jim was always proud of the multiplication factor by which the Federation
increased the power of the contributor's dollar, but clearly from a business
standpoint he had failed to create a self-sustaining poultry, turkey and egg
industry in Western North Carolina.
The efforts by the Federation to provide freezer space through its territory
faced a similar predicament. Jamie Clarke led the stock campaigns to provide
capital for these freezer locker plants. Patrons would rent lockers to preserve
their meats and vegetables for family use or for sale.
The Farmers Federation has now in operation eight Frozen Food Locker
plants. These plants offer a twofold opportunity for the mountain farmers, first
to develop a frozen food industry in the mountains and second to develop a
better diet through using the potential of the freezing process. Research and
experiment should be carried on to see what fruits, vegetables and meats will
best lend themselves to the development of a frozen food industry. For the
second part of this program, every effort should be made to acquaint the
mountain farmer with the possibilities of saving and of diet improvement made
possible by the freezing process.5
Western North Carolina did not develop a significant frozen food industry for
two reasons. First, large established food processing companies took control of
this business. Second, soon after the freezer locker plants were built, home
freezers came on the market. The entire project gradually became another drain
on the resources of the Federation.
The Skyline Cooperative Dairy, a subsidiary of the Federation, was organized in order to return to the dairy farmer more of the profits he earned in his
barn. Jim McClure had long been interested in the problems of the dairymen of
Western North Carolina. Since the thirties, the Blue Ridge Milk Producer's
Association had worked to secure fair prices and practices for dairymen from
the commercial dairies in the area. In the Craggy section northwest of Asheville
the Association owned a small processing plant, the Dairyman's Creamery. The
objective of the association was to insure that other dairy plants that bought
farmers' milk classified the milk fairly.
In 1946, the Federation merged with the Milk Producers' Association and
took over the operation of the little Craggy plant. The new joint organization
was called the Skyline Dairy Cooperative. Immediately, plans were drawn up
and resources gathered to build a large plant, with the capacity to compete with
�Last Years
443
the other processors in the region. The new facility was built on Tunnel Road,
east of Asheville, and opened in August 1947.6 Jim McClure provided the
fanfare. He described the plant as:
.. . fitted with the very latest and most modern equipment. The equipment
that goes into a modern dairy plant is what might be called a mechanical
miracle. Can washers, bottle washers, bottle fillers operate in an almost miraculous way. After this plant gets a little straightened out, we hope our
members will all visit it. It was all night work for everyone the night the boys
moved into this plant. We saw three of them drink 12 quarts of coffee for
breakfast after this all-night job.7
Ten years later the Skyline Cooperative Dairy was still operating, but on a
starvation diet of profit. The plant proved to be a heavy drain on the Federation's
management and capital resources. Twice Jim McClure sent his assistant, Jamie
Clarke, to run the dairy plant for several months to stop losses. Each time he
managed to turn loss into profit. Competition of larger dairies was growing.
After Jim's death Jamie Clarke arranged for the Federation to sell the plant to
Coble Dairy Products Cooperative, which continued to provide a market for
local dairy farmers.
Innovation was always the strong suit of the Farmers Federation, and Jim
was now ready to use the research that had been carried out by E. Parmalee
Prentice, at Mount Hope Farm in Williamstown, Massachusetts, to implement
the first artificial breeding station in the Southeast. Prentice was a cousin of
Elizabeth's, and the McClures had often visited his farm. He made the amazing
discovery that the genes for increased milk production come not primarily from
the cow, as had been supposed for hundreds of years, but from the bull. To be
certain a bull had this property, the milk production of a number of his heifer
calves must be compared with that of their dams. Once a bull's ability to
transmit significantly higher milk production is established, he is called a
"proven sire." Through the system of artificial insemination, such a bull could
increase the milk production of a great number of cows. Another advantage of
artificial insemination was that it eliminated the need for keeping a bull on
individual dairy farms. Dairy bulls tend to be much more savage that those of
the beef breeds and Jim knew many a dairy farmer who had been severely gored
or even killed by his bull.
Parmalee Prentice was a brilliant man of unwavering principle. He discovered through painstaking research that some crossbred bulls, belonging to no
recognized breed, might have the magic ability to transmit higher production.
He then made up his mind that the entire system of dairy breeds was pointless
and should be scrapped. The production of purebred dairy cattle was big business and his attack on the purebred principle infuriated breeders all over America so much that they discounted the whole idea of the proven sire.
Parmalee's son, Rockefeller Prentice ("Rocky" to his friends), appreciated
�444
We Plow God's Fields
Southeastern Artificial Breeding Assoc., January 9, 1948. Left to right: George Lewis,
herdsman holding Guernsey bull; Dr. Elliott, N.C. State College specialist in artificial
insemination; Joe Wells, Buncombe County Inseminator; Riley Palmer, Buncombe
County Farm Agent.
his father's remarkable discovery, but realized it could only be put into practice
by working with rather than against the purebred breeders. He established a stud
farm in Madison, Wisconsin, with purebred bulls of various established breeds
who were also proven sires. His father was furious at what he considered a
dilution of his scientific discovery by his own son, but Rocky persisted. Jim
McClure had followed the situation, through both the son and his parents. When
Rocky ran short of funds and his father refused to help him, Jim loaned him
money to continue. (The loan came from a gift his mother, Mrs. Prentice, had
given to the Educational and Development Fund!) In time Rocky would repay
every penny to the Fund. After the war Jim visited the stud farm in Madison.
He reported back to the Federation officers that it was a good operation. A
month later, plans for the Southeastern Artificial Breeding Association were
finalized. They included the installation of " . . . a battery of eighteen proven
bulls, six registered Guernseys, six registered Holsteins and six registered Jerseys, on the farm owned by the Educational Fund . . . near the Fairview Warehouse of the Farmers Federation . . . [A] series of meetings is being held to
develop county breeding rings. No bull will be placed in this stud unless it has
�Last Years
445
been proven by the records of his daughters that this bull transmits high milk
production."8 Parmalee Prentice had recently died. Jim went straight up to see
his widow, Alta Prentice, who was a sister of John D. Rockefeller, and suggested that this project would be a fitting memorial to her husband. She agreed,
and the business was set up with her son Rocky in charge. Jim was thrilled with
the results of his negotiations, and wrote to Hetty that "We built the Barn,
Laboratory, sheds, etc. with Fund money which Alta had given—and then by a
wonderful maneuver, we leased everything to J. Rockefeller Prentice trading
as the Southeastern Artificial Breeding Association. Rocky operates the association. The standards are very high and it is the greatest thing that has happened
in the Dairy industry in the South since the first cow was milked in 1760" (James
G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet Stuart, February 1, 1948).
Jim's enthusiastic prediction proved to be true. At that time the average
production of milk per cow in North Carolina was approximately 3,500 pounds
a year. The bulls bought by the new stud farm had the capacity to transmit
production of up to 10,000 pounds a year to their daughters. The Federation and
the Fund promoted artificial breeding in Western North Carolina. Field men
were sent into the barnyards to convince dairy farmers that the offspring from
this system of breeding would have only one head and not over four legs. Many
a stubborn mountain skeptic hung on to his pet bull rather than have his cows
serviced with semen produced somewhere else. But Joe Wells of Leicester set
a record by being the first association technician to breed 10,000 cows on the
first breeding service, having first talked these farmers into trusting him. His
work and that of others like him followed the efforts of Jim McClure and the
Fund to pioneer in the South a procedure that has revolutionized the dairy
industry. When the technology for frozen semen became practical in 1954, the
American Breeders Service closed down the Fairview barn and the entire Southeast was served with semen shipped by air from bulls in Indianapolis.9 By 1983,
the average yearly milk production per cow in Western North Carolina was
more than 14,000 Ibs., quadruple the figure for 1950.
Jim had already helped to bring in burley tobacco, the leading cash crop
in the mountains. Since 1930, when the first warehouse was built in Asheville
for burley, it had been a dependable crop. Demand increased rapidly for tobacco
products during and after World War II. As a result, the Federation opened up
a second warehouse, and both of them were profitable operations set up to offer
the farmer a place to sell where he could be sure of an honest settlement. "Bring
the Children With You—They Will Want to Hear the Auctioneer IMPORTANT
Do Not Sell Your Tobacco . . . to Tin-Hookers' on Your Way to the Warehouse. Display Your Tobacco on the Sales Floor and Get the Highest Possible
Dollar." advised an ad in the Federation News.10 In the parlance of the tobacco
market, a colorful institution that still flourishes in Asheville, the "pinhooker"
was a sly trader who would buy a man's tobacco from him so that he would not
have to wait until the time of the auction for his money. Unscrupulous pinhookers were known to pull off a "hand" of tobacco here or there, drop it on the
�446
We Plow God's Fields
floor, and sweep them up together and sell them for some easy money. The other
tobacco auctions often attracted patent medicine salesmen and other hucksters,
and since the warehouses were usually cold, bottles of spirits were frequently
passed from hand to hand. But Jim McClure made every effort to insure the
honesty of the Federation warehouses, and many farmers traded there because
of the organization's ethical reputation.
Those people who understand the intricacies of this market best remember
Jim McClure above all for one accomplishment: bringing a second set of buyers
to the Asheville market. Having two buyers from each of the tobacco companies
put the Asheville market on an equal footing with its competitors in Eastern
Tennessee. Two sets of buyers made it possible to have sales in two warehouses
on the same day. This shortened the long lines of farmers' trucks waiting to be
unloaded and made it possible for growers to get quick sales. Faster sales meant
not only less waiting by the farmers, but also less chance for the perishable crop
to dry out and change color while waiting in the warehouse. More tobacco sold
in Asheville helped the banks, where the farmers deposited much of their cash;
the local merchants, who made big sales during the tobacco marketing season
at Christmas; and the warehousemen themselves. Jim worked for five years
before the second buyers came to Asheville. In 1949, he enlisted North'Carolina
congressmen and senators for an all-out assault on the problem. He went to
Washington to meet with Secretary of Agriculture Brannon, who promised to
help out. When the latter failed to keep his word, Jim unloaded his frustrations
in the Federation News. " . . . Mr. Brannon went off to South America before
this assistance came through."11 But Jim did not give up. He worked through
individuals in the tobacco companies themselves. The 1954 market had been
open just a few days when a second buyer from one company appeared, next
day another and then the full set. Jim McClure's persistence had once again
paid off handsomely for the mountain farmer.
The Federation was involved in mountain tobacco in two other ways as
well. Each year, the Farmers Federation was designated by the federal government to administer the price support program for the Asheville, Boone and
West Jefferson burley markets. If a man's tobacco failed to bring the minimum
price set for each grade, the Farmers Federation, as the agent for the Commodity
Credit Corporation, would purchase it at the support price. It was then dried and
stored and later resold, hopefully when off-season prices had risen.12 The second effort by the Federation was to promote the growing of Turkish aromatic
tobacco, a high-priced imported variety that was suited to Western North Carolina. This crop was even more labor intensive than burley, because the leaves
matured at different times and were much smaller. But the prices for Turkish
tobacco were high, and farmers were not restricted by government allotments
as to how much they could grow. The Fund hired field men to teach the
mountain farmers how to cultivate this new crop, but in the end Turkish tobacco
proved to be too much work for the return, a sign that the new economic
opportunities in the mountains had raised the value of the farmer's own time.
�Last Years
447
Even though Turkish tobacco did not take hold in the mountains, it showed
that Jim McClure was not allowing his imagination and drive to lapse with his
increasing age. A more successful idea he implemented with Fund money was
to develop a cut flower industry in Western North Carolina. He brought Charles
Tillinghast, a Harvard horticultural graduate, down to experiment with large
scale gladioli culture. Mr. Tillinghast helped prove that there was money to be
made in the business, and gladioli have been grown in the mountains ever since.
For most farms, specialty crops would be the wave of the future. Large
quantities of grain staples could be grown more cheaply in the Midwest, where
the geography was more conducive to highly mechanized and capitalized farming. During the fifties, the average acreage cultivated by the American farmer
skyrocketed, sending ripples of change down to Western North Carolina. At the
same time, industrial jobs became more and more available throughout the
region, and agriculture became more of an after work occupation than a source
of principal livelihood for a family. The Farmers Federation, originally formed
to devise ways to bring cash to the small independent farmer, increasingly found
its traditional role undermined by the new economic world of post-war America.
By the time of Jim McClure's death in 1956, his successor and son-in-law,
Jamie Clarke, recognized the need to trim out many of the Federation's unprofitable operations, and three years later to find a merger partner to place the
business in a viable financial position.
One facet of the Federation absorbed all of these changes in a much different way. Dumont Clarke continued to promote the Lord's Acre Movement,
which after twenty years had now spread around the globe. In North Carolina,
the new sources of wages increased the ability of church members to tithe cash
rather than produce, and so Dumont added a new wrinkle known as the Lord's
Hour to his program. Each worker was to pledge the first hour each week for
his Creator, donating that money to his church. In reporting to the Federation
stockholders at the annual meeting in 1951, Dumont expressed his belief that
the work had "come of age."
More churches than ever before took part in the Lord's Acre work in 1950.
Reports have again come from Maine on the Atlantic to Oregon on the Pacific,
with many fine ones in Western North Carolina . . .
The Lord's Acre Movement... is bound to grow. The need for it has never
been greater. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the only way to overcome the forces which are destroying moral and spiritual life is through a far
more thorough Christian training. By this I mean training our church people,
young and old, really to discipline themselves . . . for the fulfillment of every
Christian duty . . .
One of the most notable comments which was made last year was by the
newly-elected head of one of the important denominations in America, who is
also a missionary about to return to Africa. Upon working for hours with others
harvesting a Lord's Acre field of potatoes in Farmers Federation territory, he
said, "I go back to Africa, where I have spent the last 25 years as a missionary,
�nt • •
11
^•f^V:".* y
£
J
™/^ -Pi;
Top: Lord's Acre Sunday School Project. Bottom: The Lord's Hour.
.'
�Last Years
449
with a new method and a new inspiration. The Lord's Acre will fit like a glove
Africa's need for bringing Christ into all of life."13
In an era where fears of communism set the national tempo, the work of
Dumont Clarke was seen as a constructive bulwark for freedom, democracy and
Christianity. In 1949, "Progressive Farmer" magazine awarded him its highest
honor, "The Man of the Year in North Carolina Agriculture." In 1951 he was
both the "Rural Minister of the Year in North Carolina" and "Man of the Year
in Service to Southern Agriculture." The venerable editor, Clarence Poe, who
had written one of the books on which Jim based the Farmers Federation, wrote
this about Dumont Clarke. "It is our hope that this "Man of the Year" recognition of the incalculable values of the Lord's Acre Movement, so long promoted
by the man whom we now delight to honor, will cause many another Southern
church to start a successful Lord's Acre plan in 1952."14 In 1955, the twenty
fifth anniversary of the Lord's Acre, Princeton University presented him with
an honorary degree for his work. The two brothers-in-law, back in 1930, had
dreamed of an organization that would breathe life into the rural church, raising
a generation of men and women strengthened both by their rural upbringing and
the Christian virtues. The hope was that as these people moved to towns or
cities, or organized their own communities, the values implanted by the Lord's
Acre program would be manifested in their new surroundings.
Dumont's son and Jim's daughter, Jamie and Elspeth, moved out to Hickory Nut Gap when they were released from the Navy in the Fall of 1945. Elspeth
presented her father and mother with their first grandchild on December 3, 1946.
Susie Skinner Clarke, named for Elizabeth's mother, was the first of eight
children born to these two cousins. The sadness of the sudden death of Jamie's
mother, Annie Clarke, came just three days after the joy of Susie's birth. Annie
had been a cheerful and game helpmeet to Dumont, and her going left the big
white house at 392 Charlotte Street very empty for Dumont and Monty, his older
son, who worked at the Federation Garden Shop.
Elizabeth adored having the baby, Susie, in the house and described her
as " . . . jolly and cute and good natured with a dimple in each cheek and very
blue eyes" (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Harriet McClure, February 12, 1947).
In the spring Jamie and Elspeth moved into the house just across the garden,
which Elizabeth had helped them design. The lumber was a gift from Hickory
Nut Gap Farm.
During the winter of 1947 Jim had a hernia operation, his second, at the
urging of his close friend Dr. Pinkney Herbert. While he was recovering, his
ever generous sister Hetty sent along a check to cover all the medical expenses.
He thanked her by replying:
It is the established rule at the Mission Hospital that they will not let a
patient go home until his bill is paid—
Just as I was worrying myself into a relapse, as to how I could ever get out
�450
We Plow God's Fields
of the Hospital, your air mail letter arrived this morning—as a consequence I
have had the best day I have enjoyed at this hospital.
Hetty—it is a huge check—and you never should have done it. But it is
such a welcome check—you just can't imagine. It is not only the immediate
relief but the easing up for some weeks ahead, of Realizing that the horrible
Bill is Paid. I had two operations and have had to have a nurse much longer
than I expected, so my gratitude is very, very keen . ..
It now looks as if I might have to remain at the Hospital until Friday—I
am tip top, but my age is not what it once was, and the Doc wants to take no
chances— (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet Stuart, February 26, 1947)
Not long afterwards, Elizabeth too was laid up in the hospital. She had
been in the attic, and was crossing a platform that bridged the stairway, her
arms full of boxes, when she slipped. Elspeth found her mother in a heap at the
bottom of the steep steps. Jim wrote to Hetty, "Darling Siddy had a bad fall on
Weds the 21st, falling from the attic down those stairs, the result is that she is
still in the Hospital with five cracked and broken ribs. Luckily Elspeth was in
the house at the time . . . [T]here are no internal injuries, they say, and it is just
a matter of time, but she has been very uncomfortable, because every move of
any kind has been painful, even a cough or a laugh" (James G. K. McClure, Jr.
to Harriet Stuart, February 11, 1948).
Again Hetty helped her brother with a check to cover the hospital expenses.
Elizabeth's recovery was quite slow and painful, although the stoic in her rarely
allowed the discomfort to pierce through to worry others. Hetty and Doug sent
another check so that she could spruce up the farm for spring, to lift her spirits.
The first check came to clean up the boxwood nursery. Mr. "Coon" Reed, a
local Fairview favorite, was hired then and there to complete that chore. Then
a second check arrived to redecorate the living room, a project Elizabeth had
been pining to accomplish. "Siddy has already sent for samples—It is many
long years since the living room was dressed up" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to
Harriet Stuart, April 5, 1948). Preparations were also underway for a second
grandchild, due later in the summer. But in spring, Elizabeth had her flowers
as the strongest tonic of all.
The Shorters, John and Mathilda, were slowing with age, but they remained at Hickory Nut Gap as beloved and devoted servants. Mathilda's health
removed her from the kitchen post, a gastronomical disaster for the McClures,
but John toiled faithfully on. Jim and Elizabeth employed a lively young woman
with a fourteen-year-old daughter, Elzina and June Gibson, to take Mathilda's
place. John Shorter kept up his daily round of chores, hand-milking the two
cows down at the barn, weeding the various gardens, and repairing and mending
in the workshop. His presence in the kitchen was so fixed that the table there
was always referred to simply as "John's table." After milking, he would
emerge from the dairy barn carrying the pails of steaming milk, and walk them
up the hill to the spring house. He always wore big boots that were rarely tied,
so that as he passed through the porch to the old kitchen he could slip them off
�Last Years
451
and head for his table in stocking feet. Rev. David Huntley, a most deliberate
and careful man, had taken over John's chauffeuring chores. He, too, was
growing older, but remained a faithful member of the household.
The end of April 1948 loomed ahead as a particularly hectic time for the
McClures. Elizabeth was still recovering from her attic fall of the past February,
but she was not the kind to make any request to curtail their busy schedule. On
May first, the newly created North Carolina Symphony was coming to Asheville
for its spring concert. The idea of a state orchestra supported by both public and
private funds was a novel one, and helped to give credence to the idea that North
Carolina contained the South's most progressive citizenry. Jim stood behind the
symphony with the resources of the Fund, his personal influence, most importantly, with his talent for "chex appeal." No one looked forward more to these
performances than did Elizabeth, who had had her regular diet of fine music
severely curtailed since moving to Western North Carolina. She knew the state
symphony would be a new source of beauty for the people of North Carolina, a
beauty that would be a curative balm to the routine frustrations and calamities
that drained the spirit. The symphony came to play for the school children as
well, so that this particular expression of divinity could become a natural part
of their education. A dinner honoring the orchestra and its local supporters was
largely a McClure arrangement, and was to be held that year on April 30, the
night preceding the concert.
That same evening, two friends of Ambrose and Mary Cramer's were
arriving at the Asheville railroad station. The new kitchen help, Elzina and June,
had chosen this moment to take a vacation, and needed a ride to the bus station.
So on the night of the symphony dinner, David Huntley drove Elzina and June,
Elizabeth and her pregnant daughter Elspeth into Asheville from Hickory Nut
Gap. The schedule was a bit tight, but there was never any hurry to Mr. Huntley.
Once in town, Elspeth switched cars with her father to run June and Elzina on
to the bus station, from whence she was to proceed down to the railroad station
to meet her mother and pick up the Cramer friends. Then there was to be a big
rush over to the symphony dinner. In all the hurry, Elspeth slid through a stop
sign on her way to the station, and another car crashed into her.
Elizabeth, a stanch supporter of the "slow and easy" school of pregnancy,
had her worst fears confirmed when news finally reached the station as to why
her daughter was so delayed in meeting her. Elspeth was virtually unharmed
after the impact, but Elizabeth found it difficult to suppress a growing anxiety
about her prospective grandchild. Her own doctor had, after all, forbade motoring altogether when she was pregnant. Nevertheless, the plans for the evening
were eventually carried out, and everyone returned to Hickory Nut Gap exhausted by all the excitement.
Early the next morning, with her help off on the bus jaunt, Elizabeth
slipped out of bed to prepare breakfast for her brother's friends. She called
Elspeth to see if she was quite all right, and then asked if Betty Huntley, who
was helping on Saturdays with the baby, might come up to give the guests their
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breakfast trays. With characteristic sensitivity she did not want them to think
she had gone to any trouble for them. Betty remembers that morning.
. . . [W]hen I walked into the old kitchen door, she didn't say anything. I
called to her, and I just turned around to hang up my sweater. I heard her
come into the old kitchen, and when I turned around I saw something was
wrong, and I understood her to say, "If I could just get the coffee." She made
it back in the kitchen [where] she slumped over, and I caught her from behind
around the waist. I laid her over the shelf until I could reach out my foot and
pull a chair up.15
Jim was at that moment talking on the telephone, telling someone about
Elspeth's accident. Betty hurried to tell him what had happened. He dropped the
receiver and rushed to his wife's side. She was already unconscious and Betty
ran down to the barn to tell John Shorter, who was milking the cows. He came
hurrying up, as fast as an old man with his boot laces all untied can go. Jamie
Clarke was bringing in the wood for a cheery breakfast fire. He dropped the
wood and ran to the kitchen. They carried Elizabeth into the study and laid her
on the sofa where Elspeth found her, and Mathilda, too, hurried up from her
house. Dr. Herbert was out of town, and Dr. Charles Hensley rushed out to
Fairview. Elizabeth never recovered consciousness and died before the ambulance arrived. She had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that morning in her
kitchen, leaving behind her husband and daughter quickly and painlessly.
Elizabeth Cramer McClure died on May first, the old festival day honoring
the beauty of flowers and the mystery of creation. The grace with which she
infused her life had nurtured Jim's talents for more than thirty years, just as his
own exuberance continually stimulated her imagination. She balanced his impetuous bustle with her calm elegance, reminding him by her presence of the
pursuit of excellence. She was never the stiff society girl, bound up by the rules
and regulations of proper behavior, but nevertheless exhibited in her daily
activities the spirit of grace that is the source of such a code. Her wisdom and
humor, her perception and quest of beauty made her the sort of woman others
are drawn to emulate. Her sudden death was a dreadful shock for Jim.
He and Elspeth went into the dining room to make plans. Both of them
agreed that she should be buried nearby, because they could not bear to have
her grave far off in Lake Forest. The immediate family had to be contacted.
Hetty and Doug left Chicago almost immediately. They offered to purchase the
stone and the plot for Elizabeth, which they did. Rocky Prentice and his wife
Abby drove all night to reach the farm. Hickory Nut Gap soon filled with friends
and admirers of Elizabeth. Her friends in the Garden Club made a blanket of
laurel in bloom for the casket. The funeral ceremonies were the celebration of
the accumulated wealth of one woman's friendships, and her legacy of excellence.
A flood of letters poured into Hickory Nut Gap, and Jim and Elspeth waded
�Last Years
453
into the mountain of replies by trying to describe the qualities that had filled
Elizabeth's life. Jim wrote many variations of a letter that went like this:
Elspie and I thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your kind message
of sympathy. Your letter brings comfort and strength to us.
Elizabeth enlarged our lives with her radiant personality, and opened our
minds to the sources of beauty in the life around us. She had the extraordinary
quality of somehow creating life and warmth wherever she went. She lived
with no retarding thought of self. She lived with such freshness and faith and
gaiety that unconsciously she added to the world's store of courage and steadfastness. What she was and is bears witness to a goodness in life that enriches
it forever.
We have been wonderfully blessed by her life and will strive to go forward
as she would have us ... (James G. K. McClure, Jr., May 28, 1948)
Going forward had always been Jim's reaction to adversity, but after thirtytwo years of marriage, being suddenly without Elizabeth's counsel and without
her eagerness to hear about his daily adventures, the readjustment in his life
was overwhelming. Elspeth and Jamie moved across the garden to the big house
the day the last relatives left, to do whatever they could to keep the place going.
New life continued to replace the old. In August, Elspeth had a son, James
Gore King McClure Clarke. If the name was a bit cumbersome, it nonetheless
honored the memory of a distinguished line of men.
The momentum of Jim's life kept him busy. He remained the president of
the Farmers Federation, continuing to travel north each year on behalf of the
Educational and Development Fund. At home he was asked to come on one
committee after another. Mrs. Edward Dameron, a remarkably capable woman
who had been an executive at Lord and Taylor in New York, had come to
Asheville, and Jim hired her on as a public relations assistant. For many years
following she was a tremendous help to Jim and later to Jamie Clarke.
In 1949, at the request of Governor Kerr Scott, Jim served as Western
North Carolina Chairman for passage of a $20 million State Bond issue for
construction of rural roads. The bond issue passed largely due to the big majority it received in the Western counties. Although Jim was a lifelong Republican,
Democratic leaders frequently turned to him for help.
The same year, the Buncombe County Commissioners asked him to serve
as Chairman of a Citizens Committee for Better Schools. The challenge was
enormous. Ever since the bankruptcy of the county in 1930, school construction
had practically come to a halt. In twenty-two years, only one new school had
been built. Since the county essentially dropped its financial responsibilities for
capital improvements for schools, many local groups had tried to raise money
on their own. The result was a patchwork quilt of tax districts. The school
buildings themselves, for the most part, were crumbling edifices under the
control of highly partisan local committees, which exercised the primary powers
of hiring and firing personnel. The results were predictable. More often than
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We Plow God's Fields
not, bitter factions had grown up vying for control of the school and its patronage jobs. Teachers and principals, even janitors and cooks, were necessarily
caught up in the rivalry and forced to bend to the arbitrary rules of these
committees, or lose their jobs. In 1949, these schools, often with obsolete
structures and poorly qualified personnel, were poised on the edge of the greatest influx of children the county had ever witnessed, the post-war baby boom.
The tasks of public education were enormous, but first the in-fighting had to
be curtailed to permit constructive planning.
With characteristic thoroughness, Jim McClure became absorbed with the
subject of public education. He delivered his Pen and Plate Club paper that year
on the subject, "A Look at the Public Schools of the United States." He began
by tracing the national passion for education back to its colonial roots, and then
challenged his listeners to a new vision of the scope of public education. "It
may be that character education is more important than intellectual education
..." he said. "Almost nothing is being done along the line of character education. There are reservoirs of human strength which, it seems to me, are practically untapped by our educational system. The driving force which is generated
by dedication to a purpose is something that we have hardly commenced to get
hold of in our educational system. The development of character and purpose
and initiative have been scarcely touched."16 Although Jim went to work to
build school buildings, he never lost sight of the ideals and purpose of education. His Citizens' Committee was formed to study the needs of the Buncombe
County Schools. He conscientiously sifted through the muddle of school districts and financing schemes. His committee resolved unanimously to attack the
most glaring problems facing local public education. He announced in his report
that the county should assume all of the outstanding debts in the various school
districts and establish a uniform county-wide tax rate to pay off this indebtedness, and that the citizens of Buncombe county should be offered the chance to
vote in a five and one-half million dollar bond issue for immediate construction.
With one bold stroke, the county could reassert its authority over the schools,
face the expansion that was imminent and place the school system on a firm and
progressive financial base. But would the voters back such a plan?
"Debt" was a word laden with anxieties to the generation who had grown
up during the thirties, as was the notion of increasing the public debt in a county
that was still trying to pay for its failure of 1930. The consolidation of all the
high school students into six schools meant the loss of the older students to
numerous local all grade schools. Shifting community identity would be a severe
jolt to Buncombe's citizens. Opposition to the Citizens' Committee was fierce,
and the political contest created its share of rancor. The "no" crowd had only
to conjure up the old fears. But new schools were desperately needed, and the
PTA, the League of Women Voters, local industries, and the educational community all pulled together with the Citizens' Committee to win the vote.
The Asheville morning paper reported that:
�Last Years
455
The Challenge Is Met
By a decisive margin Buncombe County has voted in a new day for public
education—a new day of safe and sound buildings, more room for more
children and more teachers, school equipment which will equalize opportunity
for every child in Asheville and Buncombe.
This is what the consolidation of the debt and the approval of the $5.5
million bond issue mean .. .
From the very beginning the Citizens' Committee for Better Schools kept
faith with this undertaking. Representative citizens worked long months .. .
on a plan which would be submitted to the voters. No two men worked harder
than Mr. J. G. K. McClure, the chairman, and State Senator Frank M. Parker.
When they became convinced of the worthiness of the program they carried
their convictions to the people in countless forums and in tireless measure.
They . . . are owed a debt of gratitude by the people of Buncombe.17
The campaign in Buncombe County received wide attention across the
country, because nearly every American community faced the same demographic circumstances. As the result of his victory, Jim McClure was invited to
join the National Citizens Commission for Public Schools. This group published
a booklet entitled "How Can Citizens Help Their Schools?" In it the committee
chose to describe the tactics Jim had employed in Buncombe County, right
down to the PTA parade the day before the election.
After the election was over, Jim kept the fire hot. The Citizens' Committee
was made permanent, and invited ninety-two additional people to join it. He
wanted to maintain the progressive momentum that he had helped to build up.
The numerous members were divided up into committees, such as special education, visual and audio-visual aids, spiritual emphasis and character building,
health, corrective speech, and recreation. As the direct result of all of these
efforts, Asheville was named one of eleven All-American Cities for 1951, for
its example of "citizen teamwork in government." The presentation of the award
swelled local pride, and 3,000 people were on hand for the ceremony in the city
auditorium. Jim McClure really enjoyed a good fight, and rarely in his life was
the public acclaim so resounding. Roy Larsen, the president of Time, Inc. and
the chairman of the National Citizens Commission for the Public Schools, came
to present the award. He admitted in his speech that the visit was also " . . . an
opportunity . . . to visit another man whom I have long admired and have had
the privilege of working with for several years, your Chairman, Jim McClure."18
Jim could count many such friendships, and in a real sense the work of his
life was his Mends. From his earliest days in theological school, he knew he
possessed a rare gift of influence, and felt the best use of this gift would be to
draw people together to pursue worthwhile goals. As a leader, he would define
the purposes, design a promotional appeal, and then seek out the most influential or "strongest" men and women, as he liked to put it, to carry out the plan.
Whether it was building a warehouse in Clay County, or raising money in New
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We Plow God's Fields
York, he built his work on the basis of friendships. These relationships were
important to him, and he worked hard to keep them sincere. Each of his efforts
was built up by a sense of camaraderie not unlike the esprit de corps he admired
in a successful athletic team. To him, success was the result of the spiritual sense
of unity that develops in a group of people who have a shared purpose. Jim lived
for that sweet emotion of shared victory after the struggle that comes when men
and women are committed to each other to endure and win.
In 1954, Jim McClure turned seventy. The same year, one of his oldest
friends and supporters, Thomas J. Watson, turned eighty. Jim's letter to him
on that occasion reveals this sense of friendship.
Dear Tom:
Your 80th birthday presents an opportunity to me to tell you how much
your 80 years has meant to the world and to me personally. The world is a
better place because you have lived in it, and I personally have tried to be a
better man because of the inspiration of your life.
At all times and everywhere you have eternally kept on striving to improve
the material and the spiritual condition of mankind. You have done this in a
big and organized way, and at the same time in a remarkable way you have
kept a constant realization of the individual needs of thousands of people whom
you know. Your influence has always been for good. You have carried your
immense responsibilities and burdens lightly, and at all times have added a
creative touch for the solution of any problem presented to you.
Your leadership has brought blessings in many, many different fields. I just
want to point out that your willingness to back up and sponsor our movement
here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina has brought a new power
of accomplishment and a new strength of purpose to thousands of mountain
people whom you have never seen and whom you do not know. This is the
kind of contribution which you have made in many areas.
Your generous, creative, staunch life has added to the reservoir of good in
the world and helped lift mankind to a higher level.
I send you my warmest congratulations on your 80th birthday. (James G.
K. McClure, Jr. to Thomas J. Watson, February 2, 1954)
In Tom Watson's simple reply, one senses the importance of friendship in
the methods of Jim McClure.
Dear Jim:
Your deeply touching and cordial letter on the occasion of my eightieth
birthday helped to make the day a very pleasant one, and I send my best thanks
to you for this thoughtful expression of your friendship.
Your letter prompted many happy memories of our friendship during the
past 30 years and the many pleasures which this friendship has brought to the
members of the Watson family.
Yours has been a life of Christian endeavor which has benefitted countless
numbers of people. In the unselfish devotion you have given to the cause of
underprivileged peoples, you have erected a monument which will stand for
all time.
�Last Years
457
The members of the Watson family are grateful for your friendship and we
join in sending you our affection and warmest wishes. (Thomas J. Watson to
James G. K. McClure, Jr., March 8, 1954)
Jim's new status as a widower, a very charming and handsome one at that,
made him a much sought-after companion. There are never enough widowers
to go around and Jim enjoyed the close friendship of several women. Elizabeth
Izard, a lovely woman and a longtime family friend, understood and appreciated
the people of the mountains as he did. She arranged for the Federation's Handicraft Department to be largely taken over by the Biltmore Country Market,
which she had founded with the help of other members of the French Broad
River Garden Club. This business brought together talented mountain women,
standards of high quality, and a successful marketing outlet.
Helen McDonald, in New York, had helped generously in the work of the
Fund. As Jamie Clarke was able to take over more of the day-to-day operations
of the Federation Jim had a little more time for vacations, and Helen enticed him
down to the Bahamas several times. Peggy Hitchcock, widow of the noted polo
player Tommy Hitchcock, was another friend with whom Jim had great fun.
Once he visited her at Beaumaris in Canada, and they drove down to visit the
American Ambassador in Ottawa—the Honorable Douglas Stuart and his wife,
Harriet. Jim was very proud of the recognition given to his brother-in-law, and
the way his sister managed her new responsibilities.
Both Helen McDonald and Peggy Hitchcock visited Hickory Nut Gap Farm
and attended Federation Picnics. They were good sports travelling in crowded
cars with Elspeth and the children, and riding the farm horses.
Occasionally Jim had to dodge an admirer. The summer after Elizabeth's
death Harriet and Doug Stuart invited him to go on a European trip. They looked
up a Belgian lady who had been kind to their son Bob during the war. She was
reported to be enormously wealthy and Jim thought she might be a prospect for
the Fund. He turned on the charm and Madame DuBosque took a great fancy
to him. Before long she turned up in America and came to visit "Jeem" on his
farm. A dark, striking woman, she wore rustling black taffeta, cinched at the
waist by a money belt. Jim drove her around to see the Federation enterprises,
always taking care to have Jamie's brother, Monty, accompany them as chaperone. Whenever Mr. Dave Snelson, a director from Leicester, saw Jim after that
he would mockingly drawl, "How's that Belgian woman?"19
Jim had intended in his life to forgo the pleasures of wealth, and he was
left in his last years with only a small salary from the Federation and the Fund.
Elizabeth's inheritance had begun to pay dividends, but this money was willed
to Elspeth and she used it to keep house at Hickory Nut Gap. Doug and Hetty
Stuart, understanding the situation, sent him a monthly check to help defray his
personal expenses. He confided to Jamie Clarke that he gave this money regularly to the Federation to reimburse the cooperative for a loss its hatchery had
sustained in a disputed settlement with the Quaker Oats Company relating to
�458
We Plow God's Fields
diseased hatching eggs. Of course Doug and Hetty had no idea that he was doing
this. Doug Stuart always remained a loyal friend and after Jim's death he made
a generous addition to the Lord's Acre endowment. Jim's letters arrived frequently in Lake Forest full of tales of mountain life, to be savored by the Stuarts.
"We have a skunk under the house and the country people tell us that when a
skunk takes up with you under the house—no one in the house has a cold. For
that reason we are debating whether to try and trap him or keep him, and all at
the moment favor being hospitable to our winter visitor" (James G. K. McClure,
Jr. to the Stuarts, February 18, 1954).
The redoubtable Dottie Settles (Clinard's sister) had returned after many
years away to manage the kitchen at Hickory Nut Gap, and her husband Claude
Hall took over many chores that John Shorter could no longer perform. Dottie
and Claude approved of the skunk. They had once kept a deodorized pet skunk
in their house, and loved all their animals—dogs, cats and goats. But they loved
Elspeth and Jamie's children, too, and put their best efforts into entertaining
guests at Hickory Nut Gap.
Jim's public life remained full and varied during these last years. He wrote,
"Yesterday we had our 17th picnic and last county picnic of the season—
Tomorrow we have an employees' supper and picnic—This is employees &
families and last year over 700 turned up. Then Tuesday a chicken supper for
the school principals & their families & then we are through our schedule"
(James G. K. McClure, Jr. to the Stuarts, August 15, 1954). Each fall, in
cooperation with the North Carolina Extension Service, Jim hosted a 100 Bushel
Corn Luncheon for the most successful corn growers in Western North Carolina.
The next month he was entertaining a large crowd at the Waldorf Astoria
farmer's picnic.
.. . [A]t the moment we have 104 tables reserved so it looks like 900-1000
people. Also we decided to have a Picnic at Philadelphia as the Fiddlers will
come up that way—so on Friday, Nov. 10 we have the Philadelphia Picnic at
the Barclay Hotel and that appears to be a sell out—all this is a lot of trouble
to raise some money, but since I have no alumni it seems about the only way
. . . Marjorie Lloyd-Smith has suddenly decided to get a pony and give it as a
floor prize. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet Stuart, October 29, 1950)
In the meantime his daughter's progeny had increased to five, two girls and
three boys. Susie, nine, and little Jim, eight, were special allies of their grandfather. All these children kept Hickory Nut Gap lively, and Jim enjoyed teaching
the two oldest to ride horseback. Though he was now seventy, he urged Jamie
and Elspeth to take a January trip to England and Scotland, just the two of them.
He volunteered to look after the children, with Mathilda and John's faithful
help. He gloated about his success to Hetty. "I had the greatest luck with the
children. They kept well the whole time—25 days times 5 children—125 child
days and not a sniffle!" (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet Stuart, January
31, 1955). As these children grew older the McClure era of Hickory Nut Gap
�Top: 100 bushel corn lunch, 1956. Bottom: Family Christmas card, 1953. Left to right:
Jim, Annie, Jim McClure; Dumont, Elspeth, Susie and Jamie Clarke.
�460
We Plow God's Fields
began to fade away. No one single man epitomized the old order more than
John Shorter. It was during the summer of 1955 that his enlarged heart finally
gave out.
John Shorter died last Thursday afternoon, passing away peacefully with
no pain after a heart attack about noon. Fortunately—Elspie called me—and I
got home about a half hour before he died. The funeral was Sunday afternoon
at 2 o'clock and what a funeral: Preacher Huntley made an extra good talk. I
paid a tribute to John, as you know he was the finest kind of man—honest
through & through—no short cuts—kind, good—all Christlike qualities—the
little church was jammed with colored and white—It was very touching—John
had been with us 39 years. (James G. K. McClure, Jr. to Harriet Stuart, June
22, 1955)
Earlier that spring Jim had made the decision to slow down a little himself,
and one afternoon in May he started home early to go for a ride with his
granddaughter, Susie. On the way, he thought he must have dozed off for a
minute. Whatever the cause, his car ran off the road, and although it did not
overturn it struck a boulder with such violence that some vertebrae in Jim's
back were broken. Dr. Herbert put him in a cast from his hips to his neck. In
the hospital Jim confided to Elspeth that Dr. Herbert had found a weakness in
his heart years before, when Jim was in his thirties, and had advised him then
to slow way down and take care of himself. Even now, in his cast, Jim hardly
slowed down. He insisted on attending all the picnics, only conceding the
afternoon program to Jamie Clarke so that he could rest half the day. Betty
Huntley, his secretary, drove him to and from the picnics and remembers how
painful the curving mountain roads were for him. In the fall he went north on
his campaign and raised the largest total ever, with some help from Jamie
Clarke. The Educational and Development Fund was now well endowed.
Back home for Christmas with the family, Elspeth was expecting a sixth
child, and early in January the doctor told her it would be twins. This news
considerably startled the prospective parents and they decided to keep it a secret
from all but the family until the safe arrival of the babies. A few days before the
due date Elspeth went to Asheville to buy some last supplies. Every other person
she met exclaimed about the expected twins! The news was too exciting for Jim
to keep! He loved to tell people that Elspeth and Jamie had moved in to keep
him company and now he "was hanging on by his eyelashes!"20
Ambrose and William ("Bobo and Billy") did arrive safely, brown eyed,
healthy and identical. Jim went off to the Bahamas, minus his brace, and
returned refreshed to a new round of meetings. Luther Hodges, the governor of
North Carolina, was coming to address the annual Federation stockholders meeting and Jim was putting on a dinner for him afterwards. The big yearly meeting
of the Citizen's Committee for Better Schools soon followed. Then Jim went
to New York to attend a dinner given by Arthur Page, for so many years
Chairman of the Trustees of the Educational and Development Fund, for the
�Last Years
461
"people he worked for." When Mr. Page had retired from the Bell Telephone
Company, he had opened a consulting office and many famous people availed
themselves of his remarkable wisdom. This was Jim's last trip. When he returned to North Carolina it was Dumont Clarke who first noticed that there was
something different—something wrong with him. He sent out the alarm to Hetty.
My dear Harriet:
You will wish to know this, I am sure . . . Jim has been looking badly;
especially following his recent visit to New York and to you in Canada (although he has since received some very encouraging contributions . . . his
condition seems physical rather than one of mental anxiety).
He had planned to go to the Mission Hospital for his third operation for
hernia on this Wednesday the 9th, but he has come down with a rather severe
case of bronchitis and was sent to the hospital this morning. It looks as though
he would be there—recovering from his operation till the 26th or 28th [of
May]. We are much concerned for him, and trust that he will regain a full
measure of strength. (Dumont Clarke to Harriet Stuart, May 7, 1956)
A week later, Dumont's prognosis was even more discouraging.
Dear Harriet:
This is strictly confidential so far as Asheville people, or others outside of
the family are concerned. I saw Jim this morning for one minute with regard
to a possible successor. He looks very badly. His vision is blurred. He can
speak only with great difficulty. Notwithstanding this, Elspie says that Dr.
Crow states that Jim's heart is in "good" condition. I think you will wish to
know this, and to be kept posted. (Dumont Clarke to Harriet Stuart, May 14,
1956)
Jim suffered a series of small strokes on the following day at the hospital.
Elspeth spent all possible time with him and loyal friends, among them Elizabeth Izard, Mr. H.A. Haseltine, principal of a private school, and Claude Hall
from the farm, came to read to Mm. Harriet and Doug Stuart hurried down to
see him after Dumont's second letter. Everyone tried to keep up an optimistic
front but Jim was failing fast. As his heart wound down, he slowly lost the
remarkable powers of his personality, those powers which he had used to faithfully serve his Creator and to build up a whole region in a way that emphasized
the highest spiritual values.
Jamie Clarke took his three oldest children to Riverdale, New York, for the
exciting wedding of his father, Dumont, to Elizabeth Dodge Huntiiigton, a
friend from his youth, whose husband had died some years before. Just after
Jamie returned Jim McClure died, June 6, 1956. Dumont and his bride, honeymooning in Maine, hurried south so that he could conduct the funeral service
in the Presbyterian church in Asheville, attended by throngs of people from all
over Western North Carolina. His death was a shock. He had always seemed
younger than his years.
�462
We Plow God's Fields
Jamie Clarke was elected president by the Directors of the Federation and
wrote in the News:
Mr. McClure spent his life in building the Farmers Federation. It was his
single-minded devotion to the interests of the Federation which, more than any
other one factor, was responsible for its growth and the wide range of its help
to the people of the mountains.
The great message he would leave with us—leave to employees, directors,
members and patrons—is to carry the Farmers Federation forward . .. "Others
have labored, and ye have entered into their labors."21
An editorial in the Asheville Times concluded by proclaiming, "All who were
privileged to know Mr. McClure honor and mourn him today for his many great
achievements and for his noble character."22
These statements were public acknowledgements of the devotion of Jim to
the good works of citizenship. But the real mourning took place in the hearts
of many people, of all social standings: black, Cherokee, mountaineer, and
privileged, who counted Jim as their friend. One of the latter, Charles
Goodyear, sent this eloquent testimony to Hickory Nut Gap on hearing of the
death of a very old friend.
When Jamie's telegram was received Sunday afternoon it was such a shock
that it is still hard for me to realize that Jim is no longer here. That is because
he was such a definite personality and meant so much to me. I have lost my
best and dearest friend whom I have known for half a century.
Jim and I not only had many happy times together, beginning when we
were roommates at Yale, but he always was such a help to me as he was to
others during times of trouble. / never knew a more loyal friend. He was
tolerant of the frailties of others. He never made it obvious that his character
and Christian life had influence on so many people. I have often said that Jim
was my ideal of a true Christian. (Italics in original) (Charles Goodyear to
Elspeth Clarke, June 19, 1956)
Jim's character had been developing through his nearly seventy-two years
on earth. That character and its power to influence other people is what Jim
always meant when he complimented others for building up the stores of courage within the human community. Character is achieved through personal struggle, and Jim had won this spiritual battle. As Jim had said of others, he, too,
built up the stores of courage within the human community. But he would have
been the first to admit that the strengths of his own family, the Dixons, the
McClures, and most of all the influence of Elizabeth were all greatly responsible
for whatever he might have accomplished. He hoped to pass on to others in his
family and community the historic strengths he had inherited and that had so
inspired his own life. Jim McClure always believed men and women should be
judged by how they managed their own birthrights, and whether they had, in the
accounting procedures of life, accumulated or squandered the spiritual resources
�Last Years
463
given freely by the grace of Almighty God. Death is never a neat, clean separation from life, and with Jim many loose ends and emotional connections were
rudely severed, but in the larger matters of his own conscience, the peace of Jim
McClure's death reflected the victory of his life.
1. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "A Great Program Ahead," Fanners Federation
News, August 1946, p. 6.
2. Minute book of the Farmers Federation Educational and Development Fund,
May 10, 1948, p. 72.
3. Interview with Mr. Fred Moffitt.
4. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "The Farmers Federation's 30th Year," Farmers
Federation News, August 1950, p. 5.
5. Minutes of the Fund, December 12, 1949, p. 4-5.
6. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "The Farmers Federation's 26th Year," Farmers
Federation News, August 1946, p. 10.
7. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "News from the Front," Farmers Federation News,
September 1947, p. 4.
8. Minutes of the Farmers Federation, August 7, 1947, p. 210.
9. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "News from the Front," Farmers Federation News,
April 1954, p. 3.
10. Advertisement in the Farmers Federation News, December 1955.
11. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "News from the Front," Farmers Federation News,
December 1950, p. 3.
12. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "News from the Front," Farmers Federation News,
December 1954, p. 3.
13. Dumont Clarke, presentation made at the annual meeting of the Farmers Federation, Farmers Federation minutes, March 31, 1951.
14. Clarence Poe, "Clarke is Recognized for Lord's Acre Work," February 1952,
p. 23, quoted from "The Progressive Farmer," January, 1952.
15. Interview with Mrs. Betty Huntley Beard.
16. James G. K. McClure, Jr., "A Look at the Public Schools of the United States,"
speech given at the Pen and Plate Club, Asheville, NC, August 18, 1949.
17. Asheville Citizen, April 20, 1950.
18. Roy Larsen, "The Importance of Schools to a Community," speech given in
Asheville, NC, April3, 1952, reprinted in pamphlet form.
19. Interviews with Elspeth McClure Clarke.
20. Ibid.
21. James McClure Clarke, "News from the Front," Farmers Federation News, July,
1956, p. 3.
22. Editorial, Asheville Times, June 18, 1956.
�Epilogue
The Shorters, the Huntleys, the Davidsons, along with the McAbees, the
Boones and the Riddles no longer inhabit the cottages of Hickory Nut Gap Farm.
Their children and grandchildren live in a vastly different world, where the
opportunities for making money, for spending it, for entertainment and education divide the generations from one another. Few of them farm, except on the
side, although most retain a fascination for the soil, hoeing faithfully during the
hot summer months between their rows of corn and beans.
The Farmers Federation died with the passing of the age. The patient
remained terminally ill into the sixties, generating in its weakening condition a
fair share of vindictive hatred. It was not a painless death. But the passing of
the Federation was a victory. The dream of Jim McClure had been fulfilled.
There was no need for the farmers to band together for survival anymore. He
had helped steer an entire region through the rocky straits of underdevelopment
into the larger waters of economic integration with the nation. His efforts helped
to transform Western North Carolina almost painlessly from one economy to
another, a remarkable sociological case study. Jim McClure appreciated the
traditional culture while building for progress, and that, simply put, was the
secret of his success.
When I talk with the grandsons and granddaughters of Federation members, most tell of a sense of nostalgia for the old ways described by their
grandparents, but most are realistic enough not to miss the drudgery and poverty
that were endemic to that life. The federal government and the private business
sector have worked together to create favorable conditions for the hundreds of
manufacturing plants that are scattered now throughout the old Federation territory. The Appalachian Regional Commission has financed a fine system of
roads that has ended, finally, the isolation of Western North Carolina. Federal
money has helped to build the water and sewer systems that are a prerequisite
to industrialization. American businessmen have discovered that the "independent" mountaineer can be as fine a workman as there is anywhere in the country.
The Southeastern United States has enjoyed the benefits of a rapidly burgeoning
economy since the early sixties, and this time the Southern Appalachians were
not left out. So, for better and for worse, the American cultural heroes of sports
and television, fast foods, and consumerism are found as readily in the mountains of North Carolina as they are in Southern California.
All of these factors contributed to the cause of death for the Farmers
Federation. With the passing of Jim McClure in 1956, Jamie Clarke was elected
464
�Epilogue
465
president by the directors. He was determined to place the Federation on a sound
financial foundation. He began to prune out unprofitable enterprises, trying to
discover a mix that could save the business. He continued to go north each year,
and succeeded in getting contributions for the Educational and Development
Fund. He knew, though, that the Federation had to be weaned from its dependence on contributions. For the cooperative to survive into the future, it would
have to be built on the same business values as any other commercial organization. The spirit of desperation that had pushed his uncle in 1920 into forming a
cooperative was now gone, and with it the values of self-sacrifice and unity.
There were other problems for the new president as well. With the death
of Jim McClure, the founder and president for thirty-six years, management
infighting broke out. Some of the older employees had hoped that they might
be promoted to the top, and so resented Jamie Clarke's new stature. There were
rumors of contrary death bed commitments from Jim McClure, which made the
rounds of the Federation's central office. These festering resentments helped to
sap the creativity of the management during these last years, just when the
challenge for survival was greatest. In June of 1957, Guy Sales resigned as the
General Manager. He had worked for the Federation almost from its birth. He
had been a tireless taskmaster under Jim McClure, emphasizing always the need
to tighten up the business practices of the cooperative. Much of the success
over all of these years can be attributed to the daily efforts of Guy Sales. Charles
W. Davis assumed the position of General Manager. He was an outstanding
poultry farmer who had been involved with the Federation for about twenty
years. He became a capable manager, and remained loyal to Jamie Clarke
throughout all the troubles ahead.1
The foundation of these troubles was economic. After World War II, agriculture began to decline in comparative importance with other livelihoods in
Western North Carolina. What serious farming remained tended to become
more specialized. Many growers of single crops organized their own cooperatives, such as the tomato growers and the apple growers. The Federation had
always been willing to sell or market nearly anything, but increasingly specialized competition was growing up and beating them out. These trends were at
the same time the fulfillment of the goals of the Farmers Federation and the
reason for its demise.
Jamie Clarke spelled out the problems of the Federation in the Farmers
Federation News in February 1959.
For some time, there has been apparent a rapid trend toward bigness of
agriculture. The growth of the broiler business has been accompanied by
large-scale financing and the process called "vertical integration" whereby
large companies own their own feed mills, hatcheries, and poultry dressing
plants, and finance all broiler and turkey flocks and often hogs and cattle in
thefield.. .
Your company has been troubled for some time by lack of operating capital
and increasing competition from all sides. We are also hampered by the condi-
�466
We Plow God's Fields
tion of the freezer locker and poultry business, both of which have become
impossible for us to cany on.
Furthermore, we are at a competitive disadvantage-because we do not own
an adequate feed mill or fertilizer mill.
The difficulty about this is that the record of the Federation's earnings over
the past 15 years is not good enough to justify . . . borrowing.
We know of no banking institution which would lend . . . to us.2
The profits squeeze exacerbated management infighting. Jamie Clarke
wanted to implement a satisfactory pension plan for the workers, but was unable
to do so as long as business suffered. By 1959, he and a majority of the directors
decided bold action was imperative, that the Federation needed a merger partner
in order to survive. The Farmers Cooperative Exchange (PCX), a much larger
North Carolina Agricultural Cooperative, was interested in expanding into the
western end of the state. Negotiations between the Federation and PCX were
completed early in 1959, and then the fate of the Federation rested with the will
of some 7500 stockholders.
Under the laws of North Carolina, a vote to dissolve the Farmers Federation
had to be conducted differently from the Rochdale plan of one man, one vote.
Each stockholder, both holders of common stock and preferred stock, held one
vote for each share he or she owned. In order for the Federation-PCX merger
to be completed, a favorable two-thirds vote of the shares was required. Opponents to the plan had only to persuade the owners of one-third of the stock to
vote nay or not to vote at all. A stockholders meeting was scheduled for February 26, 1959, in a Buncombe County courtroom. For six weeks, the plan was
discussed (and cussed!) throughout the coves and hollows of Western North
Carolina. Opposition to the proposal centered around a group of management
personnel dubbed "the upstairs gang" by General Manager Charlie Davis (a
Clarke ally).3 This group was led by Joseph Higdon, manager of the central
office; Katherine Bach, his secretary; and 0. J. Holler, a director of long standing from Rutherford County. Mr. Holler probably felt disgruntled after being
passed over for the presidency when Jim McClure died. No doubt the jealousies
within the management helped to fuel what became a rancorous battle over this
issue. Unquestionably, many of these men and women thought they might lose
their jobs if the Federation merged with PCX, and they could look forward to
almost no pension for their long years of work.
The "upstairs gang" staged a series of meetings throughout the Federation's
territory, lining up farmers to vote against the merger. They accused Jamie
Clarke and the other proponents of the plan of mismanagement and duplicitous
dealings, while hinting at enormous payoffs from PCX. They exploited the fact
that the owners of common stock would receive PCX stock " . . . only after all
monies due the Federation are collected and all debts paid and would probably
lose some money," while preferred stockholders would receive equal lO-year
four percent debentures in PCX dollar for dollar."4 These preferred stocks had
�Epilogue
467
been purchased at a premium, with the legal requirement that the owners would
have first access to the assets of the cooperative.
By February 26, the emotions surrounding the issue precluded any real
dialogue. A last-minute shift from the courthouse to the city auditorium due to
the unexpectedly large turnout (about 350 stockholders attended) left groups
muttering on the courthouse steps, "declaring the last-minute change in location
disqualified the Auditorium session altogether."5 The following account of the
meeting is taken from an article by reporter Doug Reed of the Asheville Citizen.
The meeting was opened by the Rev. Jack Waldrep who asked that there
be "no discussion out of prejudice and temper." The meeting thereafter rapidly
proceeded into both realms . . .
[The Federation directors] heard themselves branded a "rubber stamp"
board that did the bidding of administrative officers . . .
The furious opposition to the sale, charging large scale mismanagement and
a "sell-out" to PCX, burst into flame as soon as the meeting was called to order
The gathering was, in some respects, much like the famed Federation picnics where everybody had his say. There was no band, but it is unlikely it
would have found a harmonious note to strike in an air thick with accusations.
With Higdon and Attorney Henry C. Fisher bringing sharp rebuke to Federation President Clarke for attempting to limit each speaker to five minutes
talking time, a floor motion overwhelmingly granted Fisher all the time he
wanted to state his case.
Fisher . . . declared that "I can't do it in five minutes and I don't intend to
stop in five minutes and you can put your objection in the minutes."
The plan, he said, is "not a sale, but a giveaway, with a $500,000 gift
wrapped to it."
Value of Federation's assets far exceeds in many instances, he said, the
book value shown . . .
Fisher branded several Federation enterprises in recent years as wild dreams
and charged that poor management was to blame for reported losses . ..
The stockholders, he said, weren't "attending a merger, you are attending
a funeral."
"You've got a good business that's in the hands of management that cannot
and will not make a success of it," Fisher said, adding " . . . all you'll get is
an IOU due in 10 years."6
Federation creditors were on hand, arguing on behalf of the merger. Oscar
Mooneyham, president of Security Bank of Rutherfordton, said he was afraid
common stockholders stood to lose either way, but "if we sell, I think we have
a chance of getting some of our money back. The other way, I doubt if we'd
get a penny."7 Mr. Mooneyham's assessment turned out to be prophetic.
Virginia Dameron, loyal assistant to Jamie Clarke; Betty Huntley, who
grew up at Hickory Nut Gap and was a favorite singer at the picnics; and
Carolyn Frady, Mr. Clarke's secretary, remember well the bitterness of that
meeting. Mrs. Dameron recalls "My sisters were so afraid of what might happen
�ATTENTION
ALL STOCK HOLDERS
In The
FARMERS
FEDERATION!
Don't be muled by the information appearing in an
article in the A s h e v i l l e C i t i z e n on February
20th, 1959 and in the Farmers Federation News Is§ue for February 1959 on the proposed give away of
Farmers Federation to FCX.
There is nothing wrong with our Farmers Federation
except mismanagement or the lack of management
that has allowed us to fall into a poor position with
relation to cash available, to bills payable. We have
the resources to overcome this. Don't let your own
Farmers Federation vanish. "It can survive/* The
Future looks good under a reorganization plan for
the Farmers Federation. We are not poverty stricken
now. We have good farm to market roads, well kept
farms with high quality cattle, and the latest in farm
machinery. We have been civilized and progressive
for more than One Hundred years here in Western
North Carolina. Our children are well clothed and
we are loved and respected by our fellow man. Let's
keep it that yaafcaad J&org^i*^01"1 QWH Farmers
Federation. If you can not attend the meeting on
February 26, 1959, sign the proxy which appears below, cut out and mail to Box 7585, Asheville, North
Carolina. DO IT TODAY!
�' ATTENTION
FARMERS
FEDERATION
STOCKHOLDERS!
BE SURE to attend the Farmers Federation
stockholders meeting on the Fourth Floor of
the Buncombe County Courthouse, Asheville,
N. C, at 10 A. M. tomorrow to get FULL facts
on the proposed sale to the Farmers, Cooperative Exchange.
Since a two-thirds majority of all preferred and
common shares is required to approve the sale,
failure to vote or to send in your proxy constitutes a vote against the proposal
Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of Farmers
Federation Cooperative
James McClure Clarke, President
Charles W. Davis, Vice-President
R. Alex Crowell, Secretary
H. Arthur Osborne
Walter K. Pike
D. M. Snelton
Joe R. Wells
Above and left: Ads appearing in the Asheville Citizen, February 23, (left) and February
25, 1959.
�470
We Plow God's Fields
that they came to the meeting to lend support."8 After the meeting was over,
these three women laboriously counted each vote, one for nearly all of the
133,347 voting shares of stock. For four days they counted, while the voting
box remained under constant armed guard. By the next Tuesday, Jamie Clarke
had to concede that "... the final vote would fall short of the percentage
needed."9 Carolyn Frady remembers being almost in tears as the voting trends
became clear. General Manager Charlie Davis urged her to "Just go ahead and
cry."10 Tears were the only reasonable response to the acrimony created out of
a cooperative Jim McClure envisioned as a bond of brotherhood among the
people of Western North Carolina.
Sixty per cent favored the merger with PCX, just short of the two-thirds
vote needed to carry the sale. On March 7, the Directors, both those who had
supported the merger and those against it, met at the Federation Freezer Locker
Plant to pick up the pieces. They passed a resolution that included the following:
. . . AND WHEREAS, it now appears that the Stockholders and Directors of
this Corporation desire new management. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that James McClure Clarke, President, Charles W. Davis, Vice
President . . . are requested to individually and collectively resign their said
offices forthwith."11
There was nothing else for Jamie Clarke and Charlie Davis to do. Their
resignations were accepted, and a slate of officers was proposed to replace them.
O. J. Holler became the new president and Joe Higdon the vice president and
general manager. Mr. Holler, an elderly farmer, was never more than a figurehead. Joe Higdon ran the business.
Jamie and Elspeth had eight children by this time and he had to find a job.
Julian Woodcock, Jr. (always called Jack) was a loyal friend. He suggested the
Asheville Citizen-Times, and recommended Jamie as an editor. This was a
natural choice, with his considerable experience in journalism. But before he
went to work at the newspaper, he and Elspeth decided a trip was in order. She
had never been to Europe and they decided to take their three older children,
Susie, thirteen; Jim, nearly eleven; Annie, nine; and their friends' son Sandy
Colburn, twelve. The trip included England and Scotland, Ireland (where
Elspeth had Somerville relatives), and as much of the continent as time and
money allowed. They stayed in bed-and-breakfasts, ate picnic lunches, rode
bicycles in Holland, and generally saw so many wonders and had such fun,
along with the normal logistical difficulties of taking such a family through
several countries, that Jamie could not dwell on the problems of the Federation.
But the fight was not over back in Asheville. When they returned the new
administration of the Federation demanded that Jamie turn over the Educational
and Development Fund to them immediately or face legal proceedings. They
argued that Jim McClure had raised the money as an aid to the work of the
cooperative and that the money should be controlled by the officers of the
�Epilogue
2
471
Th« AthevOfc (N. C) Time*. FricUy, Feb. 27, 1959
Ballots Being Counted
On Sale Of Federation
Headlines from the Asheville Times (from top): February 26, February 27, February 28,
1959.
Federation. Jamie Clarke, who had helped to raise this money, knew that it was
to help the people of Western North Carolina. He was convinced that the present
management of the Federation would not use it wisely, was determined that the
Fund should be preserved for the purposes Jim McClure had intended. The new
officers of the cooperative realized that the Farmers Federation was not a viable
business without the aid of that money. Jamie was certain that they would pomall of it into the sinking ship, and he staunchly refused to capitulate. The
trustees, headed by Jim's loyal friend Arthur Page, backed Jamie up. Joe
Higdon wrote him on September 17, 1959: "Since the date of your resignation
. .. you have neglected, failed or refused to resign as a Trustee and Executive
Secretary of the Fund, in favor of Mr. 0. J. Holler, your successor . .." (Joe
Higdon to James McClure Clarke, Sept. 17, 1959).
The letter threatened action after ten days of noncompliance. Jamie Clarke
and the trustees did not hand over the Fund, and in 1961 the whole matter landed
in the courts. It was a bitterly contested suit. The issue revolved around the
pivotal point of whether the Educational and Development Fund was legally tied
to the Farmers Federation, or whether it was a completely separate and independent entity. In actual practice, the two were thoroughly interwoven. Salaries
were commonly shifted from the Federation to the Fund, for example. But
legally the two were just as clearly independent. In 1944 Jim McClure had had
�472
We Plow God's Fields
the Fund incorporated, clearing up any ambiguities that might have left the
contributions of his friends unprotected.
The case dragged on as the Federation's management fruitlessly stalled for
time, trying to figure a way around the legal facts. Finally, in January of 1963,
the plaintiff "announced its desire to submit to the Judgement of Voluntary
Non-Suit. . ,"12 The Fund would survive.
Three weeks later, the Federation went busted once and for all. All through
the mountains, the treasured stock certificates that had been purchased with so
much hope became worthless. For most, it was the only form of business
investment they would ever make. Had the merger with PCX passed, the value
of these stocks would have been preserved. But the James G. K. McClure
Educational and Development Fund, so named in June 1959, continues the
tradition of good works in the name of the man who had a great vision for
Western North Carolina. Thousands of deserving mountain students have attended college as the result of this money. In many instances, the money
received has made the difference between attending college and missing the
chance altogether. Arthur Page remained the President of the Trustees of the
Fund during all the times of trouble, and he helped to map out new directions
for it in light of the faltering state of the Federation. He wrote a personal letter
to all the contributors, summarizing the origins of the Fund and describing the
new circumstances in the mountains:
As President of the Educational and Development Fund I want to report to
you concerning a change your Trustees are making in the spending of the
money you contribute.
The Educational and Development Fund has graduated from its elementary
task to a higher one.
Jim McClure's ambition was to bring opportunity and a good life to the
mountain people.
Now a good life and a good living are not necessarily the same thing, but a
good living is a very handy and helpful base on which to construct a good life.
The mountain fanner didn't make a good living. There were several reasons
for that. But perhaps the most obvious one at that time was that he had no
good market for his products and, therefore, little incentive to exert himself.
If, in the local phrase, a man grew enough to do him and his family there was
little else he could accomplish. And growing enough to do himself provided a
very meager living.
So Jim set about to create markets. He created the Fanners Federation with
its warehouses which could act as collection points for the fanner's produce
and which could in return sell him his blue jeans, fertilizer and so forth . . .
But markets are not the whole story by any means. Some 13% of the
American people grow enough food for our population and enough to create a
serious problem of oversupply. The technological advances and the reduction
of many hours in farming have been as fast or faster than those in industry.
Education—general and vocational—is the basis of this revolutionary change.
There is now far more prospect for improving life in the mountains by aiding
education than there is in looking for new markets. It means that there will be
�Epilogue
fewer people on the farms but greater output—more brains and less muscles,
more chemistry, more apparatus and more profit.
Happily, the excess people who will be displaced from the farms will not
have to leave home, for a considerable amount of industry has come into the
mountains and this provides not only jobs, but a local market for farm produce.
All these changes are behind the decision of the Fund to change emphasis
from markets to education, to hospitals, to nursing and things which directly
add to the good life.
When this decision was made it was apparent that regular commercial
competition not only had grown enough to make more or less adequate markets
but mat it had made inroads on the business of the Federation. The ordinary
operations of the Federation were not doing too well financially. This led Mr.
Clarke to suggest a merger of the Federation with the larger Farmers Cooperative Exchange which operated hi other parts of the State. It has more buying
power and more managerial experience than the Federation.
To consummate this merger it was necessary to have a favorable vote of the
stockholder owners of the Federation. A majority voted for the merger. But
the North Carolina law requires a two-thirds vote. Had everyone voted, there
would probably have been a two-thirds majority. But those who voted "no"
and those who did not vote at all made up more than one-third of the total, so
the merger was lost.
Mr. Clarke resigned as President of the Federation to devote himself entirely
to the Fund.
The Federation is under other management. It has its own program, which
does not include any project financed by the Fund, for the kind of projects the
Fund contemplates, now that marketing is out, do not fit with the Federation's
operations.
At this point I think it is appropriate to recall that from the very beginning
Jim McClure was as interested in the things of the spirit as he was in material
well being.
The Lord's Acre is an example . . .
One of Jim's major interests was education.
He was Chairman of the Buncombe county Citizen's Committee which
persuaded a county that thought it had no money and hadn't built but one
school in 22 years to spend $6 million to tear down many of the old buildings
and create a new consolidated school system, properly housed . ..
There is no question that in this day and tune, good will and good back
muscle are not enough.
Education is opportunity. The valuable part of a man is his brain and it is
better when exercised young by education.
With the coming of better high schools it should be possible to open the
doors of opportunity in the colleges to the bright young boys and girls of the
mountains by scholarships. Mr. Clarke's program this year begins this enterprise . . .
The better part of thirty years I worked on the Fund with Jim McClure. His
enthusiasm for human betterment never wavered. His main objectives stayed
the same. But the means of attainment shifted rapidly as changes hi conditions
occurred.
The changes in conditions which have motivated our change were develop-
473
�474
We Plow God's Fields
ing before Jim died and had he lived, by now, I am clear that he would have
suggested changes, either what we have done or something more or less like it.
And I think he would view the future, as I do, as being as full of good
possibilities as there were at any time in the past.13
While the assets of the Fund would find new and productive use, there
lingered an unmistakable sadness at the death of the Federation. It had always
been more than a business; it was an organization that had stood for high values
of honesty. And it had drawn so many people together for a purpose. Doug
Reed, the Citizen reporter, tried to express the sense of loss felt all across
Western North Carolina.
For nearly 40 years mountain farmers have felt no need to specify.
"The Federation" was enough.
But . . . the dream of a Chicago-born Presbyterian preacher will almost
surely vanish.
And the Farmers Federation Cooperative, the creature of its maker, will be
no more.
It began without capital and so it apparently will end—broke, harassed by
competition and unable to find the money it needs to survive . . .
In 1920, when James G. K. McClure—minister, educator, promoter and
businessman—viewed Western North Carolina he saw quagmire roads, rundown farms, scrawny cattle, lame horses, broken plows, barefoot children and
leather-skinned women. About the only thing standing up for the whole lot
was the dirt farmers who waded the roads, worked the farms, cursed the cattle,
beat the horses, swore at the plow, caned the children and loved the women.
He had no money and no one would lend him any. He couldn't sell what he
grew and he frequently wouldn't grow what he could sell.
He was poverty-stricken, but McClure turned that into an asset, winning the
pity and the purse of influential financiers.
With the kind of talk he understood, McClure showed the mountaineer
farmer how to wipe the tobacco juice off his beard and market it around the
world. He set up stores where a man's produce was taken and cash money
paid. Men stopped sawing pine trees for firewood and started shipping it for
paper.
Over the years, the Federation branched out ... It spread its network of
familiar yellow, clapboard stores into 21 towns in 15 counties.14
And then, all of a sudden, the Federation was gone. But people still remember,
they sure do. Just ask around about the picnics, or mention James G. K.
McClure's name. They remember the Lord's Acre as well, and will tell you
what a wonderful friend Rev. Dumont Clarke was to them and to their children.
The Fund continued to support the Lord's Acre Movement. Dumont Clarke
retired from his post the year of Jim McClure's death. He had married Elizabeth
Dodge Huntington and moved to Riverdale, New York. He chose Reverend
Jack Waldrep as his replacement. Dumont Clarke said farewell in his familiar
editorial space in the Farmers Federation News in the October 1956, issue.
�Epilogue
475
It was nearly twenty-seven years ago, in December, 1929, that God led me
to become director of the Religious Department of the Farmers Federation.
During these years I have had a wonderful privilege of establishing a very large
number of Christian fellowships in North Carolina and in many other States.
Therefore it is with much regret that, having lessened endurance for field
work, I must now sever my active connections with Farmers Federation, and
cease my visits to country churches, with all their cherished associations . . .
To all who have encouraged me with their friendships and cooperation, I
give most hearty thanks. I shall miss the friendly welcome of country church
people in many counties. My prayerful good wishes go to you. May God bless,
everyone.15
Rev. Jack Waldrep worked tirelessly to carry on the spirit of the Lord's
Acre both at home and abroad for seventeen years, until the Trustees of the
Fund decided that there was no longer a need in Western North Carolina for
those methods of raising cash and morale. Now the income from the endowment
for the Lord's Acre is used to help rural ministers to further their education.
Dumont Clarke spent his last years writing a book on Scripture Prayer and
promoting its use. His full and useful life ended in 1960.
The job of Executive Secretary of the McClure Fund is only part-time, and
Jamie Clarke was also editor of the Sunday Asheville Citizen-Times and associate editor of the daily Citizen for eight years. He then became assistant to the
President of Warren Wilson College. His father's old friend, Arthur Bannerman,
was president of the college at that time, and Jamie worked with him until his
retirement. He then continued as assistant to President Reuben Holden. During
this time he also served as Chairman of the Buncombe County School Board for
eight years, and served in the North Carolina State Legislature for three terms.
In 1982 he resigned from Warren Wilson College to run for the United States
Congress. When he was elected, he resigned as Executive Secretary of the
McClure Fund. The author, John Curtis Ager, was chosen as his successor by
the trustees. Virginia Dameron assisted in the many charitable activities of the
Fund until she retired in 1980. She passed away in 1987.
Life at Hickory Nut Gap Farm, still the home of Elspeth and Jamie Clarke,
retains all of the warmth and hospitality with which Jim and Elizabeth McClure
endowed it. Although it is a working dairy farm and apple orchard, it also is
devoted to people, and each summer old John Shorter's vegetable garden feeds
(and works) many visitors, guests and helpers, who arrive from all points and
for a wide variety of reasons. Square dance music, under the direction of one
of the Federation's star picnic attractions, Johnny Rhymer and his Bear Creek
Ramblers, is a frequent accompaniment to a summer evening at Hickory Nut
Gap. Sixteen great-grandchildren (at last count) of Jim and Elizabeth McClure
are growing up on the same farm that cast its spell on the newlyweds when they
first drove the Honeymoon Hudson up the curving mountain road. These children like nothing better than dressing up in clothes from the attic and acting out
�476
We Plow God's Fields
"Mr. and Mrs. McClure plays." Their favorites are the courtship scenes, culminating in the buggy ride around Central Park.
The visitor to Hickory Nut Gap Farm who has a keen eye and ear would
find a great deal of Jim and Elizabeth still there. The gardens and boxwoods,
the landscaping and interior design, are all obvious contributions of Elizabeth's.
Her murals depicting Sherrill's Inn and the portraits of Jim and Elspeth in the
dining room are all works of her genius. Less tangible, but no less real, is the
extraordinary hospitality that draws strangers together there. Throughout his
life, Jim McClure loved nothing so much as being able to orchestrate a diverse
collection of people into a happy gathering. Whether before the warm fire of the
dining room in winter or amidst the summer breezes on the porch, a dinner at
Hickory Nut Gap retains a charming conviviality quite suited to the old mountain inn. The talk is easy and relaxed, full of old stories and the friendly needling
that grows up among the current group of people who have spent the day
working on their tasks together. The serious talk runs to politics, as Jamie Clarke
has devoted himself more and more to public service. The family has retained
its Presbyterian base and one is as likely as not to discuss the tenets of the
Christian faith while picking raspberries in the garden. Sons of Elspeth and
Jamie, especially Mark and Douglas, have spent time working on and managing
the farm. Both their daughters, Susie and Annie (wife of the author), live nearby
with their families and are always ready to help with farm projects. Susie's
husband, Dr. Will Hamilton, is the family doctor for the area. A lawyer son,
Billy, his wife Sinclair, and their four children also live nearby. Another lawyer
son, Dumont, and his wife Shirley Linn, come as often as they can from
Charlotte to keep in touch. The oldest son, called Jim like his great-grandfather,
works in Kannapolis, North Carolina, but he and his wife Francine come when
he can escape the pressures of his accounting work with Cannon Mills.
Dogs and children, kittens, sheep, chickens, horses and pigs all appear to
have the run of the place. Life at Hickory Nut Gap Farm has nothing to do with
the search for a Utopia, and everything to do with the acceptance and enjoyment
and encouragement of people in all their variety. It is a community based on the
family traditions exemplified by Jim and Elizabeth McClure.
At the end of this book, one feels the need to try to somehow pull together
the meaning of Jim's life, but it would be the futile exercise of a biographer's
conceit. By his own reckoning, he would want to be judged by how his spiritual
pursuits translated into tangible results. There was a great courageousness to Jim
McClure, that much is undeniable. Since he was unafraid of other people, he
felt free to befriend them. He also stood ready to make decisions, to choose his
course of action, and then to pursue the results he imagined possible. He also
had the courage to fail, and to admit when his plans faltered, and to go on
undiscouraged. The Christian ethics taught him by his father and mother were
the axis on which his life turned. He sought the spiritual challenge, and rewards,
of Christian service, and as such consciously set himself apart from his contemporaries. Jim McClure devoted his life to creating a business that made profits
�Epilogue
477
for others. His life is a rich mine of ideas and impulses, some fruitful and some
stillborn. But most of all he was a man with many friends, whom he loved to
join together for useful ends. These friends wanted to remember this man, to
be reminded of how much he loved his life, his wife, his children and them.
To all these people, I commend the life of James G. K. McClure, Jr.
1. James McClure Clarke, "News from the Front," Farmers Federation News, July
1957, p. 3.
2. James McClure Clarke, Farmers Federation News, February, 1959.
3. Interview with Mr. Charles Davis.
4. Doug Reed, "Federation's Fate Hangs on Proxy Vote's Outcome," Asheville
Citizen, February 27, 1959, p. 1, 5.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
1. Ibid.
8. Interview with Mrs. Virginia Dameron.
9. Doug Reed, "Votes Need for Sale of Federation FA11 Short," Asheville Citizen,
March 4, 1959, p. 1.
10. Interview with Carolyn Frady.
11. Farmers Federation Minutes Book, March 7, 1959.
12. Farmers Federation Cooperative vs. McClure Fund, Superior Court of North
Carolina, January 21, 1963.
13. Arthur Page, letter to contributors to the McClure Fund, November 1, 1959.
14. Doug Reed, Asheville Citizen, February 15, 1963.
15. Dumont Clarke, "The Country Church With the Lord's Acre Plan," Farmers
Federation News, October 1956, p. 27.
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We Plow God's Fields: The Life of James G.K. McClure
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<span>This biography explores the life of James G. K. McClure, Jr., and his vision for a better life in the mountains of North Carolina. At his prompting, and under his leadership, The Farmers Federation was founded in Fairview, North Carolina, in 1920.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UeXonYdA0pHTiXX55You7b-VE5rPft3H" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469641980/we-plow-gods-fields" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNC Press Print on Demand</a>
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McClure, James Gore King
Farmers--United States--Biography
Farmers' Federation (N.C.)--History
Agriculture, Cooperative--North Carolina--History
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Ager, John Curtis
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