So happens I've heard of Le Mars, IA. Tyson and Smithfield operate packing plants and there's a Fed USDA office in that town or nearby.
Anyhow....
...battles over producerist ideology and the rural-urban divide were casually and frequently violent, and — for example — farmers prevented Depression-era agricultural foreclosures by beating the hell out of sheriffs and judges. One of those judges, Charles C. Bradley of Iowa, was dragged out of his courtroom and shoved into the back of a truck. “Carried to a crossroads a mile outside of Le Mars,” a history of midwestern farm rebellion says, “his trousers were removed and he was threatened with mutilation. A rope was thrown across a roadside sign and pulled tight around the judge’s neck as the mob demanded that he swear to authorize no more foreclosures…A hubcap full of grease was dumped on the judge’s head, his trousers, filled with gravel, were thrown into a ditch and the mob departed, leaving the judge besmirched and nearly unconscious in the road.” (The governor soon called out the National Guard, but the local Iowa National Guard units were mostly made up of the sons of the farmers, so.)...
Not very nice.
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