Norman Borlaug Interview (page: 6 / 9) Ending World Hunger	Print Interview

So you and your firend from Cresco decided to go to the University of Minnesota. You don't have a lot of money in your pocket, you don't have an acceptance letter, and you get to this big city, right off the farm. What happened when you got to Minnesota?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Norman Borlaug: I thought things were bad in Cresco, the little town. There weren't any industries there, but I saw all the local banks go broke. I saw farmers lose their land -- sheriff sales. I saw the reaction of the farmers. That was later the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota. It was during this period when labor and farmers came together to form the Farmer-Labor Party, of which later (Hubert) Humphrey was a vice president from that background and also (Walter) Mondale. And the third one that came up through that rank that played even a greater role in what happened to me was Orville Freeman. He was a football player and I knew him. We were the same class, and he later became Secretary of Agriculture of the U.S.A. during the worst -- the period when Franklin Roosevelt had to make all of the changes that brought us out of the Depression. Of course, the person who everybody looked to bring us out of the Depression was Herbert Hoover. He had done so much for poor people in Belgium and in a number of European countries. But he took office right when everything collapsed and he couldn't cope with it. When Roosevelt was elected, those were when the big changes took place.

When you got to the University of Minnesota, you had to take an exam, didn't you?

Norman Borlaug: Yes. This was a technicality.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I had good grades. Erv Upton, my close friend had good grades, too. But we had to take this entrance exam because the ninth grade -- first year of high school in Minnesota -- was a junior high school, and so that credit didn't count in math and science. So we had to take this special exam and I flunked it. Erv Upton passed it, and I was scared. I figured if I failed it, I wouldn't have any chance of getting in. So I failed it beautifully. And then George Chamberlain, the organizer, he was a pretty spicy guy himself. It was the first year that they were organizing the general college, which was the beginning of the junior college movement to give people who hadn't qualified for their whole university course or who wanted to get some more education and go back to the farm. So Chamberlain got me, took me over to the new dean -- he had just come back from a scholarship in London -- and he said, "Something's wrong with your testing. This guy is not as dumb as your tests show you. I think you should give him a chance." And so it was the first year of this general college, which gave an Associate of Arts degree after two years, and that was expected to be a terminal course. It turned out it wasn't.

You went into this junior college, but you didn't stay there very long.

Norman Borlaug: No. See, this was new. Nobody knew what the general college was. That's where the people were that had failed to get into the University proper. It was on campus, but it was kind of a no man's land, and it was during the worst of the Depression.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I remember a week before classes were to start, when I had finally been accepted, on my own I went and walked downtown, which was probably three miles from Dinkytown, the University settlement, and I was wandering around like a country boy and I saw a lot of people. This was over in the vegetable and the agricultural section, and I saw all these people milling around, and I went over to see what it was all about, and this was when the milk strike was going on. And I was standing there stupidly seeing this, and the photographer put his tripod up, climbed up on a car that had a canvas roof -- not a metal roof -- and his foot went through. And when that happened, the crowd took that photographer and beat the hell out of him, busted up his camera. And when this was happening, the milk drivers came out of their big, secured place and I suddenly realized I was someplace I shouldn't be, because I saw these people being clubbed with baseball bats and other clubs. And I thought things were bad in Cresco, but it was much worse in the large cities. The unemployed, especially the youth, had no chance of jobs. There were hundreds, just thousands riding the rails looking for jobs.

How did your own family do during the Depression?

Norman Borlaug: They were fortunate in that none of them were deeply indebted. They had paid for their land. So when the banks went broke, they lost their deposit in the bank, but they still had their land. That wasn't taken away. Many of the best farmers had expanded their operations so that they were cultivating hundreds of hectares. They had loans, and those properties were sold at sheriff sales, and those sheriff sales got to a point where they were rigged. This was when the Farmer-Labor Party started. It was a joint undertaking by the laborers from Minnesota and farmers so that this didn't happen, but it happened over a period of three or four years. When a sheriff sale was announced, there would be somebody that would organize all the people in the area that were going to buy this for a small amount and turn it back to the farmer. And if anyone tried to bid what it was worth, they got beat up, too.

Your grandfather was kind of a renegade, wasn't he?

Norman Borlaug: He never got into the action because we were 14 miles out in the country, but his ideas were with the rebels.

So the Borlaug family did not operate on credit?

Norman Borlaug: And that's why we escaped most of the personal problems of the 1930s. I had one uncle who was a bachelor all his life. He was a curious guy also. He was self-educated, but an S and E (science and engineering) economist. He knew what was going on. He bought for himself and for we grandchildren -- I was the eldest, probably 12 or 13 -- a textbook that was used in economics at Cornell University. He predicted the Depression before it happened.

So you're at the University of Minnesota, you were accepted to the general college, but you didn't stay there very long. Very early on, you chose to specialize in forestry. Can you tell us how you got into the University proper, and why you selected forestry?

Norman Borlaug: First I need to tell you about the dean of the program, Fred Hovde. George Chamberlain knew him from football days, because he had been captain of the football team, I think, in '29, and he had gone to London on a scholarship, and he was back. This was his first year back, when they opened the general college, and he was a wonderful person. Later he became President at Purdue University, but that was a long way down the road. He was a chemical engineer by training and a Rhodes Scholar as well as a good athlete. Chamberlain knew him, and he was a guy that even with the bad score on the special exam, he said, "You guys aren't theoreticians. This guy isn't as bad as you think he is." So he got me into the general college.

I suppose it was about a year later, in the spring, I went to see him -- Fred Hovde, the dean -- because I had good grades. And I said, "I'd like to transfer. I don't see anything coming of this Associate of Arts degree." But, of course, I couldn't see the big picture at that time. But he asked me what I wanted to transfer to and why, just like you were. "Well," I said, "I like the outdoors, hunting and fishing, and I know quite a bit about bee stings, the behavior of animals and plants also, especially trees." I had done this on my own. And so he asked me, "Why do you want to go there?" And I told him just what I've told you now. And so after asking a lot of questions, he said, "Okay, we'll give you a chance." That's where it all started.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The summer of your freshman year, you were expected to go to (Lake) Itasca Park, where the University, the College of Forestry, had a hands-on summer training program. But I couldn't go the first year. I didn't have any money. I worked for a local canning company, and then I went the second year. That training course was during the academic year, the spring term of the University. So you weren't losing credits in the University, this was part of your curriculum. So I went through this, and then I didn't have any money, so Margaret I think typed 56 letters asking for summer work. I only got one reply and it was from the Northeast Forest Experiment Station in New Haven, Connecticut, where a very progressive director offered me a summer job.

So I hitchhiked out there, and this was Dr. Berra, and this was unique. His whole summer workforce were students, unlike any other program, and he was concerned about we young students. I have a picture, about six months later, in one of these camps. By that time Bartelma had moved to Minnesota, so Upton, myself and our whole wrestling squad and Dave Bartelma are showing the squadron certain key maneuvers in our wrestling.

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