Farmer's Birthday

Chicago was a muddy little log town on the edge of the plains when 17-year-old John Stephen Wright stopped there with his father in 1832, and opened The Prairie Store to outfit pioneers who were heading west. Two years later young Wright had made a small fortune in real estate, was worth $200,000. At 20 he owned a warehouse, dock, 7,000 acres along the Illinois & Michigan Canal. He knew nothing about farming but he thought farmers ought to learn more about it. So in 1841 he started The Union Agriculturist and Western Prairie Farmer.

Last week the fortnightly Prairie Farmer, 100 years old, brought out a hefty 192-page centennial issue (five times its usual size). Oldest farm journal in the Midwest, Prairie Farmer had many a crusade, many a colorful episode to look back on.

Founder Wright was an infant prodigy. Born in Massachusetts, he was reciting Greek and Latin to Williams College professors before he was ten. When his father took him west to keep the books of The Prairie Store, young Wright spent his spare time taking Chicago's first census, publishing the first lithographed map of the little town. He lost his first fortune (in the panic of 1837) when he was 22, started Prairie Farmer on a shoestring.

On his masthead Wright put up an invitation: "Farmers, Write for Your Paper." He campaigned hard for many a rural benefit (free schools, State fairs, crop rotation, a law to keep livestock from roaming at large) that later became fact. Each year he told his readers what Prairie Farmer had earned, how much he had kept as profit. From time to time wanderlust would seize him, and he would disappear for six months or a year to trade in real estate or dicker with eastern capitalists.

The panic of 1857 wiped him out again, and Wright lost his paper. He finally died in a madhouse in 1874. Meanwhile, Prairie Farmer prospered in other hands. When the Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed its office and equipment, the editors somehow got out a two-page edition, the first paper sent out of Chicago after the fire, included a map of the burnt-out district, pictures of the ruins.

In 1909 a big (6 ft. 3 in.), ink-stained Kentuckian, Burridge Davenal Butler, bought Prairie Farmer from Rand McNally & Co., who then owned it. As a 21-year-old reporter he had covered the Johnstown Flood, by the time he was 30 had turned a down-at-heels Grand Rapids paper into a valuable property. After starting three papers of his own (all called The Daily News) in Omaha, St. Paul, Minneapolis, buying into the Kansas City World, Des Moines News, at 40 he had retired to take life easy. No more a farmer than Editor Wright, he bought Prairie Farmer to keep from being bored.

Back on the masthead went Founder Wright's long-lapsed slogan: "Farmers, Write for Your Paper." Back came Founder Wright's crusading policy. Prairie Farmer has had a hand in every important agricultural movement of the last 31 years, including the Grange (national farmers' fraternity), AAA, dairy cooperatives. From 40,000 readers in 1909, Editor Butler has built up its circulation to 340,000.

Still far from retirement is Burridge Butler, now 72. He also owns Chicago's Station WLS, and KOY in Phoenix, Ariz., a Southwestern farm paper, Arizona Farmer. Prairie Farmer has its own experimental farm. Editor Butler's boast is that he knows the name of every cow on it.

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