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Originated in Iowa, that technique last week was fast spreading to the rest of the country. Throughout the Midwest auction after auction was held at which a debtor's friends bid in his property for a few cents and then returned it to him while the creditor was being restrained, forcibly or otherwise, from participating in the sale. At Deshler, Ohio, a $400 debt was extinguished last week for $2.15. At Malinta, in the same State, a large noose was ominously suspended from Albert Roehl's barn to scare off outside bidders. Illinois' Governor Horner got a telegram reading "We are face to face with anarchy" from a Monticello mortgage broker who collected $4.90 on a $2,500 claim. At Cherokee, Okla. an attorney for Equitable Life was driven ten miles out of town and dumped from a deputy sheriff's automobile when he started to foreclose on a widow's farm. At Pine Bluff, Ark. a State judge, presented with 500 foreclosure petitions, intoned: "The case against the debtor will be continued for the term. I'm not going to foreclose on any farm where the people . . . have any chance of pulling through." A judge at Magnolia, Miss, likewise declined to force farms to sale; he said it was like "giving away property."
Outside of Pleasanton, Kans. last week a Kansas City realtor who had just foreclosed on a 500-acre farm was found murdered by persons unknown.