Interview
The taping sessions with Swanton were held over a period of more than sixteen months, largely because his calendar was remarkably filled with appointments for one who had reached the age of 80. Illness and inclement weather, including the most severe ice storm since the 1920's, made it necessary to reschedule several other sessions. We [Swanton and interviewer Dale Treleven] held the first session on February 11, 1975, while the final taping (for this series of interviews, at least) took place on July 13, 1976. We taped in the Historical Society's oral history office (Room #448). Typically, Swanton, dressed in suit and tie, would reach the office at 9 A.M. We would spend from fifteen minutes to a half hour discussing historical incidents and reviewing the areas we hoped to cover that day, then tape for several hours, and break off the discussion at about 12:00. Although Swanton generally asked to be reminded of the subjects we had agreed to discuss, before the recorder was turned on, he would usually retrieve a few sketchy notes he had prepared earlier.
The series of interviews on the whole dwells primarily upon Swanton's early life, remembrances of farming and neighborhood activities in the town of Blooming Grove during the century's first two decades, recollections of his education in a one-room school, and later at the Wisconsin Academy and at the University of Wisconsin. His love of history (he is a long-time curator and former president of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin) and careful attention to detail led to many interesting and informative views of Madison and eastern Dane county. He discusses at length various innovations and changes on the farm and in the rural neighborhood, and explains many aspects of his father's (and his own) farming operation, from fattening up and marketing Chester White hogs to the laborious task of growing a crop of tobacco. He comments extensively on social as well as economic aspects of rural life in the first several decades of the twentieth century, and observes how change in the town of Blooming Grove has taken its toll in terms of the togetherness and neighborliness of yesteryear.
Swanton talks about changes on his farm, during the 1920's and 1930's in particular, and discusses the efforts of farmers to form cooperatives and general organizations during the period. He refers to his own experiences to illustrate vividly the effects of the Depression upon neighborhood farmers, and relates the bitterness that arose between supporters of the Wisconsin Cooperative Milk Pool and other farmers during the Milk Strikes of 1932-33. He discusses his work as an appraiser for the federal land bank during the 1930's, a position he held until the directors of the Wisconsin Council of Agriculture offered him the position of the organization's first full-time professional employee. Immediately finding himself in the midst of growing antagonism between organized labor and agriculture, he tells how the Council of Agriculture took the lead in writing and gathering support for a change in the state labor relations act. The labor bill that resulted was probably the most important piece of legislation ever supported by the Wisconsin Council of Agriculture, in terms of the long-range impact on labor, industry, and agriculture. The Wisconsin Employment Peace Act of 1939 later became a model for portions of the national Taft-Hartley bill, passed by Congress in 1948.
Outside of several other Council legislative efforts, such as the ongoing anti-oleomargarine battles and winning support for the “America's Dairyland” license plate slogan, there is little in the series of interviews that dwells upon Swanton's day-to-day activities as a key spokesman for organized agriculture. Such details are for the most part well-documented in the organizational records and papers of the Wisconsin Council of Agricultural Cooperatives, housed in the Historical Society's Archives Division. Questions about specific issues that would augment information contained in the papers will await an opportunity for the oral historian to conduct in-depth research in the collection. Of chief importance would be an examination of those areas where Council positions differed from those of the state's second cooperative group, the Wisconsin Association of Cooperatives (WAC). While the WAC and the WCAC merged in 1969 to form the Wisconsin Federation of Cooperatives, the historical roots and issues as well as personality conflicts during the period Swanton was WCAC's executive secretary led to many differences between the two groups that together represented the interests of most of the state's organized farmers.
Abstract to the Interview
The tapes for this interview have two tracks: a voice track containing the discussion and a time track containing time announcements at intervals of approximately five seconds. The abstract lists, in order of discussion, the topics covered on each tape, and indicates the time-marking at which point the beginning of the particular discussion appears.
Thus, the researcher, by using a tape recorder's fast-forward button, may find expeditiously and listen to discrete segments without listening to all of the taped discussion. For instance, the user who wishes to listen to the topic on “NEW YEARS EVE, 1899” should locate the place on the second track of tape one, side one, where the voice announces the 04:00 time-marking (the voice says at this point, “four minutes”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the discussion. The discussion on “NEW YEARS EVE, 1899” continues until approximately 07:00 at which point discussion of the next topic (“SWANTON NEIGHBORHOOD INCLUDES DESCENDANTS OF EARLY WISCONSIN SETTLERS”) begins.
Notice that in most cases sentences beneath each headline explain more about the contents of the topic. For example, the sentences underneath “NEW YEARS EVE, 1899” give further details on what appears on the tape between 04:00 and 07:00.
The abstract is designed to provide only a brief outline of the content of the tapes and cannot serve as a substitute for listening to them. However, the abstract when used with the index will help the researcher easily locate distinct topics and discussions among the many minutes of commentary.
Index to the Interview
The index, which is keyed to the same time announcement track (second track) as the abstract, gives a single alphabetical listing of all proper nouns., (names of persons, places, groups, organizations, books, periodicals), and distinct historical phenomena (Depression, Milk Strikes) which appear by one or more three- or four-part citations specifying the location (s) where the entry appears. For instance, Blooming Grove Grange (Patrons of Husbandry) is followed by the citation 6:1, 01:05. This indicates that a reference to the Blooming Grove Grange appears on Tape 6, Side 1 within the time-marking beginning at one minute, five seconds of the time announcement.
