It is not surprising that bureaucrats in St. Paul would have targeted local school authorities in a campaign to increase local participation in war activities. Small-town inhabitants and farmers alike looked to their public schools as vital spaces for public activity and interaction. As part of its celebration of building progress in Tracy, the Headlight-Herald proclaimed a special pride "in the fact that we have built this complete educational plant and today it stands without debt." The grade-school building was described as "more modern and in better shape than it was when first built." The high school, erected in 1914, had been remodelled to house a junior college; there was, according to the Headlight-Herald, "but one other town in Southwestern Minnesota that offers so extensive a course as this." (80) Besides attending the schools' official activities, Lyon county inhabitants regularly visited the educational plant' for social and political events. Naturalization classes and fund-raisers for the Order of the Easter Star were both held in the high-school auditorium in Marshall. (81)
Reflecting the liveliness of the school buildings themselves, the local school boards appear to have been the primary arena in which people regularly participated politically in the life of the community. As one Cottonwood resident remembered it, the board meetings aired more controversy than was usual for the community, and people attended in higher numbers "to see the sparks fly." (82) In particular, the issue of school consolidation--the amalgamation of the one-room country schools into village centers--never failed to excite passion on both sides. Within Lyon county, as in most rural areas, tensions existed both within the rural townships whose country schools were under attack as insufficient for modern educational needs, and between the townships and their marketing towns, whose school boards regularly argued for school consolidation. When the Tracy school board advertised for bids on a fourth school bus preparatory to a reordering of the routes, they stated that "the use of busses enables many children to enjoy the better advantages of a large school, and is a development which is rapidly solving the problem of the little red schoolhouse for the older children." (83)
Whatever advantages accrued to students in larger schools, local school boards in Minnesota received per-pupil supplemental funding, so there was some pecuniary advantage in consolidation for the Tracy school board, as well. In fact, although schools have usually been viewed as the most local of civic institutions in the United States, state bureaucracies exerted considerable and growing control as the twentieth century progressed. Financial incentives were the usual instrument of state penetration. The superintendent of the Balaton school district, located at the southwest corner of Lyon county, declared that "it costs you money to keep your boy or girl out of school." Minnesota state school aid, which paid approximately one-third of school costs at that time, was based on per-pupil attendance. When average daily attendance fell, the state grant was reduced, and the local district was required to make up the difference with local tax money. (84) Although the superintendent undoubtedly exaggerated when he stated that the loss amounted to 90 cents per pupil per day, it is suggestive that his message focused on maintaining state aid to reduce local expenditure. Indeed, because Balaton residents paid the state tax as well, the only true pecuniary advantage to regular attendance was to spread the costs across a wider region, a policy which avoided local expenditure but obscured local participation in very real state structures.
The emergence of the public high school as a central institution to small-town life occurred only in the 1920s in Lyon County. That emblematic high-school tradition, the homecoming football game and dance, was held for the first time in Tracy only in 1939. The event was staged "to show appreciation to Mr. Raasch, the coach, and the football team for the conscientious work during the season." The bonfire, assembly program, and election of a Homecoming Queen all appear from their front-page description in the local newspaper, to have been adopted by the journalism students, who first proposed the event, from practices introduced elsewhere. (85) Culturally, the high school modelled its behavior on activities occurring elsewhere on the network chain. From the beginning, the high school curriculum also reflected national practices and reform goals as well as local school-board decisions. State educational leaders and national reformers, governmental and privately funded, hoped that high school education prepare students for good citizenship and a practical education. University extension agents, in school programs as they did in farm life, regularly lectured small-town residents on how to adapt their schools to the changing needs of the modern world. The dean of the School of Education appeared in Tracy to lecture the Home and School association at a time when high school attendance had reached only 284 students. His message: the economic conditions of the 1930s demanded that schools become "a preparatory school for general education, for greater enjoyment of life, and a better appreciation of the things of life." (86) Simultaneous campaigns by the state in the 1930s for more vocational training converged with campaigns by women's clubs to initiate adult education programs and introduce domestic science and manual training into classrooms. (87)
In general, small town residents increased their attention toward public schools because of a perception, driven home by the depression, that market changes demanded a greater public role in the preparation of young people for citizenship and employment. In 1960, one researcher of Minnesota small towns claimed that it was "clear that there must be community action--local, state, national--in order that certain kinds, perhaps most kinds, of recreation may be enjoyed." (88) But this idea, that the state should involve itself even in the leisure activities of young people to ensure their healthy socialization, had emerged much earlier. One Lyon county newspaper editor declared in 1940 that "towns that are up and doing" could be identified in part by their provision of "healthful sports for the younger generations." Informal arenas such as the "ol' swimmin' hole, or the vacant lot with its tin cans and rubbish, [no longer] answer the recreational needs of a modern community." Instead, the community should provide swimming pools and baseball diamonds, tennis courts and football fields, and the paid instructors to accompany them. All of these 'new trends' required a new vision of local expenditure, justified by an exhortation to modernity, especially that gained through "visiting around at other towns." (89)
The realm of education excited considerably more interest and controversy than that of local politics. Meetings of the Tracy city council were considerably more staid than those of the school board. Although the council meeting reports were published in the newspapers, they rarely suggested widespread democratic participation or interest. At one meeting in early November, only the council vice president and two other members were present to hear Judge Friederichs report the collection of $72 in fines during the month of October, to allow and order paid a series of bills for services rendered, to grant construction rights for a bid for the sewer extension on Seventh Street, to approve a special assessment on sidewalk improvements, and to give first reading to a new ordinance for the licensing of poolhalls and bowling alleys. For the fiscal year 1938, the Tracy city council made dedicated expenditures to the administration and permanent improvement funds; the liquor store; the library, cemetery, and park funds; the septic tank construction fund; and the city hall construction fund. The three largest cash receipts came from liquor sales ($29,920.15), a U.S. grant for construction of a new city hall ($28,395.00), and total general tax levies ($24,645.32). (90) In city funding as in other realms of public life, small towns were dependent on larger institutions for their ongoing function.
The absence of controversy in local governance and the tendency to rely on state or federal policies contributed to apathy regarding political participation in elections, as well. Furthermore, under a new city charter in Tracy is the 1930s, only councilmen, the mayor, and one municipal judge were selected by the citizens through elections: the rest of the Tracy city government was appointed. This reform had been elected to increase the sense of responsibility on those who were chosen by election, but it tended to limit popular participation. When only 73 of a potential 1300 voters voted in Tracy's 1939 municipal elections, the newspaper described the unopposed victors' wins as occurring "by voter default. . . . It was a drab day for the election judges." The electorate had clearly disagreed with their newspaper editor's concern for property-tax levies and for the upcoming renewal of the municipal light and power franchise. (91)
Of course, the county government also played a role in small-town political life. Official proceedings of the county board were published monthly in an official county newspaper; the yearly tax assessment was published in another, rotating board-endorsed' newspaper. The board committees revealed the priorities of county government: all board members served on the bills, road and bridge, and county farm committees; three members each served on the courthouse and jail, welfare board, and purchasing committees; and two on schools and extension. (92) The depression greatly affected county government operation: emergency state funds became available first for special bond issues, and then in 1933 a county emergency relief committee was established to administer relief funds received from the state. One victim of this increased government supply was a local welfare program, the aforementioned county farm. This had been established in 1883 to provide crops for the county's indigent. Yearly expenditures on coal, seed, and building maintenance were covered by the county, and a foreman ran the farm. It is not clear whether this foreman was himself considered one of the county poor, but no mention was made of a salary in the governing board history. In 1942, after a decade of experimenting with integration of the county farm into new welfare boards, the county commissioners advertised for bids and sold the farm. (93)
At one typical meeting, the five county commissioners appeared to consider a variety of tax and expenditure issues, and to hear the competing petitions of women's groups and (overwhelmingly male) retailers regarding liquor sales in the county. Even when expending monies, the county board often delegated authority to informal associations in the county: the many public commemorations held throughout the year are emblematic in this regard. When the Grand Army of the Republic withdrew from the Memorial Day services in 1939, the county check was re-issued to the American Legion and V.F.W. of Marshall alone. (94) Just as often, the commissioners would defer projects or resist new taxes by deferring to the policy decisions of state or federal governments. When in 1942 the county commissioners rejected an additional levy to cover expenses for a new county library, they gave as their excuse the U.S. government's desire that local spending be curtailed. (95)
In the face of this policy vacuum, local newspaper editors often became de facto political leaders in small-town communities. During a campaign in northern Lyon County to prevent the intrusion of Northern States Power lines into areas served by the local Rural Electrification Association, the editor of the Marshall Messenger John Garberson advised community activists on how best to garner public support. (96) Garberson was, however, the exception in that campaign: Marshall, with its own municipal power station, was served by a newspaper that did not depend on utility advertisements for revenue. The Tracy Headlight-Herald, for example, featured weekly advertisements for NSP, usually containing advice on the most extensive use of electrical power possible. (97) On the other hand, the political involvement of newspaper editors meant that the newspapers themselves became civic spaces, subject to a form of control that limited any one paper's claim to democratic representation. Editor John Garberson, during the Farm Holidays of the early 1930s, suppressed letters and thereby earned the appellation of "a good newspaper man." (98)
The League of Women Voters was also active in local political affairs, although its focus reflected its progressive origins and tended to derive from regional or national bodies. The League also reflected how state universities worked with local associations to promote community activities: academic speakers played a prominent role in local clubs' pursuit of the national body's three central themes: social welfare, the special needs of women and children, and a concern for efficiency and economy in government." The League modelled its citizenship activities on public school programs, and supported countless "Know Your Town" studies. (99) From these educational activities sprung a variety of political campaigns directed toward the progressive goals of the League's founders. When the Minnesota state legislature considered transferring power in the county welfare boards from lay representatives to the elected county commissioners, the League mounted a state-wide campaign to defeat the reform. Noting that county welfare boards were not administrative but policy-making instruments, the League advocated that decisions on public assistance be made by a "trained executive secretary who deals impartially with cases on basis of need . . . not locality." The League further declared that in its estimation, county commissioners were "a tax-levying body rather than specifically a planning body." Regardless of whether the county commission reflected this estimation through its own actions, the League here actively advocated the substitution of bureaucratic planning for elective democracy. Indeed, the state League went on to claim that "the composition of the [welfare] board must be drawn from diverse fields and according to principles impossible to maintain through usual elective process." (100) The progressive tenor of rural sociologists, by which democracy was established through bureaucracy not elections, clearly had a profound impact on the political climate of small-town association life. One meeting of the Tracy League witnessed a report on unicameral legislatures and the system in use in Nebraska; the speaker, Mrs. Stock, noted that unicameral legislative bodies were being considered in many states "in the attempt to take politics out of government." (101) At the beginning of the legislative session that same year, Mrs. J. D. Owens "pointed out that our legislators in the process of lawmaking are greatly handicapped by the profusion and number of [local, private, and technical] bills with which they must cope." (102)
Women's associations, along with Rotarians and Odd Fellows, thus combined social activities with political action. Predecessors to the League of Women Voters, the many study clubs active in Lyon County had originated many of the progressive reforms of the early twentieth century. One historians has described the origin of midwestern study clubs with dismay at the physical appearance of new-made commercial towns: "rickety buildings, dusty main streets, piles of garbage attracting flies and rats." (103) Study clubs did not, however, become as involved in municipal housekeeping' as vigorously as the national leadership advised. The complaints made by in 1904 by a lecturer on the women's club circuit, that club meetings generated no action, were instead "an infinite process of stimulation and exhaustion," seem borne out by the scant evidence of club activity in Tracy and Cottonwood in the late 1930s. (104) Undoubtedly the Cottonwood Sorosis club and many others throughout Lyon county did indeed serve to differentiate women by culture and acquisition. At the same time, in community affairs and the operation of schools, as well as at state conventions and through national association, these clubs connected small-town and farm women to a female network that extended into communities across the United States. (105) Study clubs and the Federated Club movement manifest in Lyon county one aspect of modern' women's political involvement in community affairs both local and national.
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