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But Iowa is more than corn and hogs and hayseed. It produced Painter Grant Wood (American Gothic); it educated Negro Scientist George Washington Carver; it inspired (at Spillville, in Winneshiek County) visiting Czech Composer Antonin Dvorak. Iowa boasts the highest literacy rate (99.2%) of any state in the U.S. And in recent years the state has become more and more industrial. It has the biggest fountain-pen (Sheaffer) factory in the world; in 1955 the value of manufactured products in the state came to $3.9 billion v. $2 billion for farm receipts.
Despite the industrial boom, the state's economy is still based on the land. More than one-fourth of the factory workers in the five largest urban areas make their living by supplying the farmers; the biggest employer in the state (payroll: 9,500) is still Deere & Co. (farm equipment). When the farmer prospers, almost everyone prospers; when the farmer spends less, there are likely to be cutbacks all along the line.
Troublesome Sum. In the Great De pression, Iowa was not so hard up as some other farm states, e.g., North Dakota. And during the lush World War II years, the mortgages were paid off, the barns were painted, and the bank accounts grew fat to buy freezers and furs and college tuition and Buicks. Then came the inevitable adjustment when war demand for food ended. From 1953 to 1955, Iowa's cash farm income fell 10%. This year, the farmers are doing somewhat better. From a year ago corn is up 17¢ a bu., oats are up 18¢, choice steers $3.60 a cwt. Hogs are about the same as last year, but are well above last spring. This year's greatest problem is drought in the western and central half of the state, which will pull the statewide corn-production average down to 47 bu. an acre (although some farms in the northern part of the state are hauling in 100 bu.). Easing the pain, particularly in the drought areas, will be checks totaling some $54 million from the Eisenhower Administration's soil bank, which were beginning to trickle into rural-route mailboxes last week.
The sum of the economy of Iowa is that the larger urban areas (partly because of increased industrialization) are doing all right, middle-sized places are getting along fairly well, but the small towns are hurting. In a state that likes a comfortable status quo as much as Iowa, such a situation—expanding industrialization, squeezed agriculture, uneven economic conditions and higher state taxes—means political trouble far someone. Mostly, and somewhat illogically, it means trouble, not for Ike, not for G.O.P. Senatorial Incumbent Bourke Hickenlooper, but for the man in the Statehouse, Governor Leo Hoegh.
A Dime for Manure. This is really no surprise to Leo Hoegh, for he is a true son of Iowa, and he knows how the people are likely to feel. His grandfather, Nels Peder Hoegh (Hoegh is Danish for hawk), left a farm in Denmark in 1866 to make a tidy fortune in the Colorado gold boom, and then with good sense invested it in fertile Audubon County land in west central Iowa. He became a patriarch of the Danish community, a leading Republican and a county supervisor, and he gave a farm to each of his 13 children.