Driver James Neal with overturned milk cans (Courtesy State Journal-Register)
With negotiations at a standstill in November 1938, militant farmers ambushed four dairy delivery trucks and dumped thousands of gallons of milk on Sangamon County highways.
The protest lasted only a day, squelched by court action and lack of support from the farmers’ own milk cooperative. A couple nights in jail also did wonders for the memory of one protest leader.
Milk is a perishable commodity, so the dairy business at the time was largely local. Springfield had 11 commercial dairies in 1938. The milk they processed came from cows pastured on hundreds of nearby farms.
According to the farmers, the dispute began in August 1938, when the dairies cut the price paid farmers by 40 cents per hundred pounds of milk. (A gallon weighs about 8½ pounds.)
Several days later the officers of the major dairies, the Illinois, the Sangamon and the Producers, refused to even meet and discuss the price of the farmers’ milk. Because of this the farmers of this community decided it was time to form a cooperative for their protection.
At a meeting in Chatham in September, several hundred farmers formed the Sangamon Farmers Milk Cooperative to represent them as a group. Membership grew to almost 500 farmers by the start of November. Co-op members “have been supplying, we believe, over 90 percent of the milk to the dairies of this community,” the co-op said in a statement Nov. 2.
By then, the co-op had reached agreements with six Springfield-based dairies. Under the deals, farmers were to receive uniform prices for milk. The dairies also pledged to allow access by a milk check tester, paid by the co-op, “to assure farmers fair prices for their products.”
However, the remaining five dairies, which included the three biggest operations, still refused to meet with co-op leaders. The holdout dairies seem mainly to have opposed bargaining collectively with the co-op rather than with individual farmers. They also objected to deducting a checkoff fee, meant to support the co-op, from farmers’ milk payments.
Co-op members responded by refusing to sell raw milk to the five dairies. The dairies, in turn, started buying milk produced elsewhere.
“The farmers of this community are proceeding in the spirit of fair play,” the co-op promised in its Nov. 2 statement. “There will be no violence or force of any kind.”
But the co-op didn’t speak for all its members, and the dissenters struck the morning of Nov. 22. From the Illinois State Register:
Violence flared in Springfield’s milk war today when irate farmers halted four incoming milk trucks carrying milk shipments to Springfield’s major dairies and dumped upwards of 3,000 gallons of milk. In at least one instance a state police officer, who was following a cargo of milk, was ordered to one side and forced to stand helpless while the milk was poured on the ground.
In each case, farmer flying squads pulled their vehicles in front of the milk trucks and forced the drivers to stop. The biggest incident happened near Williamsville, when several dozen farmers stopped a truck from the Peoria-based Roszell Dairy. Watched by the overmatched state police officer, the farmers dumped 2,000 gallons of Roszell milk on the road.
The other three stops took place on Sangamon Avenue east of Springfield, west of Camp Butler and south of Athens. During the Sangamon Avenue ambush, truck driver James Neal said he was hit in the face by one of the farmers, suffering a bloody nose and bruises. He was driving 700 gallons of Beatrice Farms milk from Champaign.
A total of 75 to 140 farmers took part in the incidents, according to later estimates.
The action was immediately disavowed by the co-op’s secretary-treasurer, Frank Roberts.
“No member of the association was authorized, advised or permitted … to take any action in regard to stopping incoming milk supplies,” he said. “I hope it will appear than no member of the association participated in such conduct.”
The dairies under boycott nonetheless hauled the association and several suspected protest leaders into court. In their injunction request, the dairies said the idea of dumping milk had been discussed in a public meeting of the co-op and that even some co-op directors had voiced support for the plan.
Judge Charles Briggle found that the co-op couldn’t be held responsible for members’ independent actions. However, he did issue a restraining order against two of the protesting farmers, Harry Pfeiffer (1901-70) of rural Dawson and Henry Cline (1890-1966) of rural Athens.
“The hearing … was considerably bogged down by the vague memories of a majority of the sixteen witnesses who were called to the stand,” the Illinois State Journal reported.
Briggle wasn’t having it. He threatened to send forgetful witnesses to jail for contempt of court – and did so in Pfeiffer’s case. At that point, the Journal said, “the remaining witnesses … showed more evidence of having proficient memories.”
Pfeiffer spent two nights in jail. Returning to court, he blamed his vagueness at the earlier hearing on illness and a nervous condition.
In his own behalf, Pfeiffer said he was so nervous he could hardly walk up to the witness stand Monday and that he couldn’t seem to say the things he really wanted to.
In releasing Pfeiffer, Judge Briggle said he had fully intended giving Pfeiffer at least six months in jail if it appeared he had willfully perjured himself.
“Perjury is one of the worst things that can happen,” the court said. “You can’t expect a judge or jury to act intelligently if they have to contend with falsehoods.”
The dispute faded out of the news following issuance of the restraining order, but the co-op continued to successfully represent local dairy farmers. A 1941 Journal article, for instance, reported the co-op had won higher milk payments from nine Springfield dairies.
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