Interviews
At the urging of Mark Dorman, in 1978 Harvey Dueholm's legislative assistant, I [interviewer Dale Treleven of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin] made an arrangement with Dorman to tape-record many of Dueholm's remembrances about his early political experiences and career in the Wisconsin Assembly. Dorman carried out the taping in a five-week period between early November and mid-December 1978. The tapes reveal a potpourri of such memorable legislative issues as Father James Groppi's march to the State Capitol and takeover of the Assembly chamber; the Black student occupation of the president's office at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh; “right to life”; gun control; oleomargarine; sex education; pornography; “sin taxes”; school aids; corporate farms; Project Sanguine (later Project ELF); reapportionment; and the role of lobbyists. Included also are observations about such politicians as the Knowles brothers, Paul Alfonsi, Willis Hutnik, Alvin O'Konski, William War, Frank Nikolay, Anthony Earl, and a host of other Progressives, Republicans, and Democrats. The interview throughout is spiced with many anecdotes ranging from responding to critical letters and electioneering, to the fellow Danes he knew so well in his neighborhood.
On December 19 and 20, I continued the interview with Dueholm in his Madison apartment to obtain additional information on agriculture for the Wisconsin Agriculturalists Oral History Project. Committed to a love of the land, Dueholm provided many insights and opinions on changes in agricultural practices, livestock, implements, milk and livestock marketing, rural electrification, and comments on farmers cooperatives and general organizations from the 1920's to 1970's. He expressed his apprehension about the future of American agriculture, the family-sized farm, and rural society in general in the midst of a continuing shift from a labor-intensive to a capital-intensive agricultural economy.
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 “DESCRIPTION OF FARM” should locate the place on the second track of tape one, side one, where the voice announces the 07:45 time-marking (the voice says at this point, “seven minutes, forty-five seconds”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the discussion. The discussion on “DESCRIPTION OF FARM” continues until approximately 09:20, at which point discussion of the next topic (“AFFECTION OF MARIUS FOR THE LAND”) begins.
Notice that in most cases, sentences beneath each headline explain more about the contents of the topic. For example, the sentences underneath “DESCRIPTION OF FARM” give further details on what appears on the tape between 07:45 and 09:20.
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 to locate easily distinct topics and discussion 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 proper nouns (persons, places, groups, organizations, books, periodicals), distinct historical phenomena (Depression, Crash, World War II, McCarthyism), and concepts and activities (economy in government, ethnicity, organizing, collective bargaining) which appear on the tape/in the abstract. Each entry is followed by one or more citations specifying the location(s) where the entry appears. For instance, Alfalfa is followed by the citation 12:2, 11:10. This indicates that a reference to Alfalfa appears on Tape 12, Side 2, within the time-marking beginning at eleven minutes, ten seconds of the time announcement. The index includes cross references but no subheadings except where there are a considerable number of entries for a heading that may be easily divided.
