Profile of Beloit, "Wisconsin Communities"

[Voice of auctioneer]

SALESMAN: Listen to me, but don't look unless you want to be the owner of a nice fat hog. Listen, a glance in my direction when I sound like that signifies your willingness to buy at the price I'm chanting; or perhaps I can interest you in something else, say an artificial cow. She looks and milks better than most genuine cows but some of the strongest things in her family line are test tubes. If you can't use livestock, here's a somewhat different line. Try a paper-maker machine, a good sized one. You can carry it home with you in one trip if you've got a hundred and twenty-five empty railroad freight cars. For power to pull the cars, here are a few 8000-horsepower locomotives. The paper-maker machines and 00:01:00the locomotives are manufactured within a few blocks of each other. In the same neighborhood you'll find shoes. You may not run a farm, or make paper, or run trains, but you do wear shoes. And here's a factory that can make ten thousand pairs in one day. Or how about a college basketball team, one of the best in the nation. You can't buy the team, but for the price of one small ticket, you can share the team victory. If you've got the necessary qualifications, your best bargain might be--

[voice of auctioneer]

ANNOUNCER: The State Broadcasting Service presents a profile of Beloit, another in a series about Wisconsin people and places, a recorded series designed to show how people live in the cities, towns, and counties of our state. The programs are prepared by state network production teams and documented by tape recordings. Here is your narrator-producer, Carl Schmidt.

SCHMIDT: Before we go back to our imaginary salesman who'll introduce the more tangible elements of Beloit, let me introduce you to some Beloiters. And while we're at it, let's listen to what they're saying about the world situation, the free enterprise system, and about what's right and wrong with Beloit. First, Chaplain John Rodman Williams of Beloit College.

WILLIAMS: Bring peace, O God, to our weary and war-torn world.

SCHMIDT: And Theodore Lake, who's worked for the Yates American Machine Company for fifty-one years.

LAKE: I believe we--we'll never have peace as long as we have a government that is bent on acquiring the whole world. I really don't want to mention any government but you know which government I mean.

SCHMIDT: And Ronald Dugan, dairy farmer near town.

DUGAN: With increasing populations in Europe and the United States, we'll get more state controls of the individual. As wants and pressures increase, these 00:03:00state controls will dry up the sources from which we can hope to expand our knowledge and adjust ourselves to nature and modify nature to our needs.

SCHMIDT: For a word about Beloit, here's G. Taylor of the Bentley Company.

TAYLOR: I could probably talk to you for hours about the advantages of the city of Beloit. I'm a fanatic on the subject. I've incidentally just returned from a rather extended trip through some of the countries in western Europe, and it was difficult for me to form opinions of those countries because I was making a comparison continually with the city of Beloit.

SCHMIDT: Let's go to a meeting of the Rotary Club now, where Walter Strong, editor of the Beloit Daily News, talks about the city.

STRONG: Beloit is the best city in the Middle West, not just one of the best cities in the Middle West. For my money, and I mean it, it's the best city in the Middle West.

SCHMIDT: But later on in the same speech, he told some of the things he thought was wrong with Beloit.

STRONG: One of the cops stopped me on the street the other day and he said, "I just had a very unpleasant experience." He said, "A man came along and asked me where the City Hall was." I said, 'Well, pardon me, sir, but what division of the city government do you wish to see?' He looked at me and he said, 'None of your business.'" So he said, "I had to go into a song and dance and tell him, well now, if you wanna see the court you go one place; if you want to see the city manager and others you have to go to another place; if you wanna see the engineer you have to go in another place." He said, "I felt kind of silly." That illustrates a point that I want to make, that a city our size ought to have a city hall.

SCHMIDT: A city without a hall and an editor with a concrete suggestion for doing something about it.

STRONG: Unless my spies are--hear wrong, the school board is going to dump in the city's lap the problem of what to do with the old high school building. Well, we need a city hall, so it seems to me that the city might well take under 00:05:00advisement moving all the city functions over there.

SCHMIDT: Finally, here is Cora Ross, who's lived in Beloit for ninety-one years. What does she think about life midway in the twentieth century?

ROSS: Well, I don't know. I think they're going pretty swift nowadays but I may be old-fashioned and I don't care if I am.

SCHMIDT: Voices from Beloit - commentary on the state of the world, commentary on Beloit, people in various walks of life reacting to the past, the present, and the future. These excerpts were chosen as what people talk and think about when they're not thinking about their jobs. Job talk is what you'll be hearing during most of this program and it'll concern three main areas in this order: industry, agriculture, education. In each of these fields, Beloit offers 00:06:00something which you'd be proud to have in your own community.

[voice of auctioneer in the background]

SALESMAN: ...woodworking machines. Come up and take a good look. Now when it comes to woodworking machines, Beloit makes good woodworking machines, machines like you never saw before. They work wood and they work it hard, any kind of wood, any way you want it worked. Now here we have a planing machine. It planes wood on all four sides, just like that. Once you have a machine that planes wood on all four sides, you'll never be without it again, mostly because the machine will last longer than you ever had one last yourself. And take a good look --

[sound of wood surfacing machine]

SCHMIDT: A wood surfacing machine on the testing floor of Yates American, one of Beloit's outstanding industries, and billed as the world's most complete line of 00:07:00woodworking machinery. Every machine goes through the testing floor, where it performs under observation, until its [unintelligible] is perfect. Yates American has a sixty-three year history in Beloit. At first it manufactured only woodworking machinery, but since then, complete facilities have been added for the manufacture of refrigeration units and engine cooling radiators. A company as old as Yates American, if it's a good company to work for, has many employees whose terms of service are measured in decades. Meet three of these veterans:

GRAHAM: Bud Graham.

SCHMIDT: And how long have you been working here?

GRAHAM: Very nearly twenty-eight years.

SCHMIDT: Would you give us your name please?

BAILEY: Earl Bailey.

SCHMIDT: How long have you been with Yates American?

BAILEY: Thirteen years.

SCHMIDT: Would you give us your name, sir?

LAKE: My name is Theodore Lake.

SCHMIDT: And what's your position here?

LAKE: Why, I'm foreman of the tool room.

SCHMIDT: The memories of these men go back beyond the clean and comfortable shops in which they work today.

LAKE: I've worked here twenty-eight years ago with overshoes and a sheepskin jacket and gloves on all day long and we don't do that now.

SCHMIDT: The management has a memory, too. Last year Ted Lake was honored with a trip to Europe. With him he carried a gold watch. He reads now the words inscribed on the back.

LAKE: "1899 to 1949, Theodore A. Lake, In Recognition Of Your Fifty Years Of Service, Yates American Machine Company, Beloit, Wisconsin."

[sound of wood surfacing machine]

[organ interlude]

ACTOR: Ready Miss [unintelligible]? Will you take a letter please: "Gentlemen: I 00:09:00have never met a man who was not fascinated by the feel of fine leather, and the artistry of the handcraftsmanship displayed by our bootmaker guild shoemakers."

SCHMIDT: That's a portion of the soundtrack from a movie about shoemaking, one of the few industries where the hand and the eye still do more work than machines. The movie was made in Beloit in the factory of America's largest exclusive maker of men's shoes, the Freeman Company. The company started out in 1921, making about 600 pairs a day. Today they make ten thousand. Not only have the shoes increased in number but styles have branched out in new directions to meet a more diversified taste.

CARROLL: For instance, when we started this business, we made ten styles of shoes and those ten styles, a relatively short time ago in 1921, seemed to cover the basic requirements of most men and most shoe dealers. Today we have probably 00:10:00350 or so styles.

SCHMIDT: Styles for many tastes and sizes for many feet.

CARROLL: Take one particular style I have in mind. We make that one style in 155 different sizes, that's sizes from five to fourteen and widths from triple A to triple E.

SCHMIDT: Pairs in the thousands, styles and sizes in the hundreds, numbers that look even bigger when you realize how long it takes to make a pair of shoes.

CARROLL: I suppose we must have a quarter of a million pair of lasts around here, don't we, to make these shoes, and the shoes have to stay on those lasts from two to three weeks.

SCHMIDT: Leather, plus cotton, plus skillful workmanship equal a job done successfully. The voice you heard was that of Max Carroll, vice-president of the Freeman Shoe Company.

ACTOR: Thank you for your interest. I hope your visit will be an unforgettable 00:11:00experience. You will leave with a keener appreciation of the art of fine shoemaking. Sincerely yours, H. T. Carey.

[Voice of auctioneer in background]

SALESMAN: Don't be afraid. Take a little handful. It's just a little snack. Now that is the best little snack you ever tasted. The aristocrat of snacks. Just taste it. Crunch your bicuspids down on it. Get that flavor, just the right flavor of that good old Wisconsin cheese, just the right amount of salt, and just the right amount of corn. Taste one, yes sir, yes sir!

SCHMIDT: Korn Kurls, they call them, the principal product of Adams Corporation, one of America's most fabulously successful manufacturing concerns. As a 00:12:00coincidence here, the idea which launched the Adams Corporation was born on the same farm where our persistent auctioneer was recorded. Where did the idea originate?

ADAMS: That originated with a man by the name of Clair B. Matthews, who was a Beloit man and at that time was a dairyman and employee of the Dugan Dairy Farm here in Beloit, and he conceived the basic idea of the machine and the process which was to be used in producing a flake animal feed rather than a mere ground feed. 

SCHMIDT: That was Harry W. Adams, Chairman of the board and general manager of the Adams Corporation. Mr. Adams was practicing law when two men came to him with the idea that made the industry possible.

ADAMS: Well, originally, it started about seventeen, eighteen years ago when Mr. Matthews came to my office with just the crude idea, and asked me to take a hold 00:13:00of the matter the legal way, and also to try and finance it and see if I couldn't promote the idea and create a business for them.

SCHMIDT: The business was called the Flake-All Corporation, and for many years used the machine invented by Matthews, to make the basic corn meal product. The Adams Corporation, acting as a licensee of the Flake-All Corporation, now processes the original corn meal product into Korn Kurls.

ADAMS: This plant that we're now in started operating three years ago next January. At that time there was only a small amount of product being made in their very small building here in Beloit. The last fiscal year, this particular corporation, the Adams Corporation, showed that sales had reached about four and a half million dollars, and the business has spread out throughout all the 00:14:00United States, in every state.

[Voice of auctioneer]

SALESMAN: --automatic unloading winder, high speed condensate remover, calendar paster, sheet liner--

SCHMIDT: This is the terminology of paper-making. Production of paper in America is about three hundred pounds per person per year. And much of it is made with machines built in the Beloit Iron Works.

SALESMAN: Paper, paper, newsprint, writing, magazine, bond, tissue, roofing, and wrapping paper! Boxboard, Bristol board, coated board, shipping boxes, candy boxes, strawboard, milk bottle, [unintelligible] and wax paper!

SCHMIDT: Products are made by the gigantic machines constructed in Beloit.

SALESMAN: Here we have a high speed board [unintelligible] paperboard machine. 00:15:00Five million pounds it weighs! And every pound is built to stay built, and to keep on making paper!

SCHMIDT: A five million pound machine capable of making five million pounds of paper in four days.

SALESMAN: Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Hawaii, Australia, China, Japan, England, Russia, Germany! 

SCHMIDT: A few of the countries where Beloit Iron Works Machines are setting new standards in papermaking. In twenty-four hours, one of these machines can make a strip of newsprint nineteen feet long and three hundred and fifty miles wide.

SALESMAN: Just what ya need, just what ya need - one hundred twenty-five empty freight cars, three tons of nails, and two carloads of lumber!

SCHMIDT: For shipping of paper machines overseas, a hundred and twenty-five railroad freight cars to ship it to the coast, two carloads of lumber to make crates for the pieces, and three tons of nails to fasten the crates. Some of the parts are so large that the trains carrying them have to be routed around tunnels. In a trip to the West Coast from Beloit, a flat car carrying the 00:16:00largest cylinder used in a paper-making machine has to travel a thousand extra miles to avoid the tunnels it cannot get through. Staggering statistics! They thrive on statistics in the Beloit Iron Works. They'll tell you so. When you walk through the Iron Works, dwarfed by both machines and numbers, you, well, you might feel pitifully insignificant. But the insignificance grows to pride when you realize that the machines were made by men of Beloit, and that the machines will be used by other men to manufacture civilization's most useful commodity.

[voice of auctioneer]

SALESMAN: --yes sir, mighty useful indeed! Now folks, we come to the biggest one 00:17:00of all. What am I offered for the biggest of all big paper-making machines? It covers ninety-two and a half acres, including thirty-eight acres of floor space. One floor is big enough to hold two football fields including end zones, goal posts, and press photographers. Now I don't have to tell you how a machine like that can make paper. Why you can make paper with a machine like, no other paper and no other machine -

SCHMIDT: Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Whoa, hey, hey! Wait a minute, that's not a paper-making machine you're talking about.

SALESMAN: It isn't?

SCHMIDT: No!

SALESMAN: Well, it's big enough to make paper.

SCHMIDT: Well, I'm afraid you're making hay with it. It's too big to make paper. That's a factory you're talking about. It's the biggest factory in Beloit: Fairbanks Morse. If a man lives in Beloit, chances are he works for Fairbanks Morse. If he doesn't, his neighbor does.

UNIDENTIFIED: At this time, slightly over five thousand people. Right now we're at one of the highest levels we've been since 1945, since the close of the war. 00:18:00One person out of every two families works at Fairbanks Morse.

SCHMIDT: Newell Fogelberg of the Fairbanks Morse Company. The Fairbanks Morse factory is a city in itself with its own utilities. Diesel generators furnish more than four million kilowatt hours of electricity per month. A butane system supplies gas, and turbine pumps draw water from deep wells. Three carloads of fuel oil are used each day, and two hundred and fifty million cubic feet of compressed air each month. An iron foundry covering seven acres has a capacity of three hundred tons of cast iron per day. That's a sketch of Fairbanks Morse in Beloit. The company has factories in six other cities from Vermont to California, but the Beloit plant is by far the largest, large enough to be classified as an industrial giant, not only in a city of 30,000, but in any city in America. This is far from being a complete picture of Beloit industry. 00:19:00There's the Warner Brake Corporation, manufacturing electric brakes; the Gardiner Machine; and C. H. Besly Company, making grinders, taps, and abrasives; also many smaller industries making paper, commercial refrigeration, x-ray equipment, dairy supplies, punches and shears, railway signals, concrete products, hosiery, chemicals, tools and dyes, and travelling ovens. The total effect of these industries on the economy of the city is probably best expressed in the five words we saw above the license plate of an automobile, "What Beloit makes, makes Beloit."

[sound of machinery]

KEEFER: The United Steel Workers of America presents on paid time Steel on the Hill, bringing you news, views, and announcements from the organized employees of the various plants and factories that compose the United Steel Workers of America in this area. This program is designed to shed more light and less heat 00:20:00on the vital labor questions of the day which affect the public welfare of the community and the nation.

SCHMIDT: That announcement is heard by many Beloiters every week when Leo Keefer, district representative of the United Steel Workers Union, goes on the air to talk to members of his organization. Mr. Keefer's union is by far the largest in Beloit, and it goes beyond contract negotiations in its dealings with members of the community.

KEEFER: For instance, our Christmas party for all of the children in the city of Beloit. Naturally our organization is built on no discrimination because of race, color, or creed, and we would be unwise to start, and discriminate against any child in the community. So we throw open our Christmas party to all of the children of Beloit, and in so doing everyone that goes there is assured of a fine time and a Christmas gift, and of course we have other big prizes that 00:21:00everybody who attends these shows can get if they have a lucky ticket.

SCHMIDT: An example of a union's extracurricular activity. But the primary reason for the union's existence is to take the worker's part in contract negotiations. Currently the union is working with Fairbanks Morse on one of the clauses in a recent three year contract. Here's Leo Keefer's account of the project.

KEEFER: In speaking of this job evaluation program that employees have agreed to do jointly, I'd have to take you back a few years to the World War number two. During that time numerous piece work prices were established, and by piece work I mean employees working on an incentive pay, and were being paid at a piece 00:22:00work rate for those particular jobs that they were doing. The rates were arrived at by guess work and so forth, and the company has always brought this to the attention of the union, and felt that there was a need for a better rate structure in the plant located at Beloit of the Fairbanks Morse and Company. The company's desire was to eliminate the present piece work system, which would have eliminated a great number of the earnings of the employees. Now, the employees could not afford to have their wages cut, so in order to get this program underway, the parties agreed that for the year 1950 till 1951,that the 00:23:00wages of these piece workers would be froze at their average hourly earnings earnings for the twelve month period ending June 18, 1950. During that time, the company and the union will engage on this joint program of evaluating jobs to develop a rate structure that both parties feel will be the ultimate elimination of the greatest number of evils that exist in the present rate structure.

SCHMIDT: This story indicates what many people outside of labor and management circles fail to realize: that a wage contract does not merely draw a line over which the signers agree not to step for a prescribed length of time. Rather, it's often a stepping stone for action that will make the next contract easier to sign.

[voice of auctioneer]

SALESMAN: Quiet please. Quiet, quiet everyone. Kindly give me your undivided attention. Now we've got a real treat for you folks, the most unusual, the most important, the most spectacular part of our show. I'm about to present for your breathtaking edification the star of our show, the feature attraction. She has people all over the country jumping up and down again with expectation. Believe me, this little lady has everything it takes. Now, step right up. Don't be afraid. Step right up. Crowd in a little closer, my friends. You don't want to 00:25:00miss a thing. Now, in just a moment, folks, I'm gonna introduce to you this ravishing beauty, the feature attraction, the star of our show. But first, I want you to listen closely to something I have to say. This show is strictly educational. This show is strictly high type stuff. When you leave this show, I guarantee you, you'll know more about the world in which you live. All right then, all right, you heard enough from me. You're eager to get on with the show. So without any further ado, I'm gonna introduce ya to this lovely little lady, this lovely little lady right here. I've got to say one more thing though, folks. The star of our show is sensitive. She's very, very sensitive like all great artists, she's sensitive. So please be quiet. Be very quiet and give her your undivided attention. There she is, ladies and gentlemen, the pride of Wisconsin, the star of our show!

SCHMIDT: The pride of Wisconsin, the star of our show: the dairy cow. Well, perhaps you dislike the flamboyance of our auctioneer friend, but actually you can't accuse him of exaggeration in a place where there are practically as many cows as people. You can't condemn his enthusiasm for the animal responsible for more than 50% of Rock County's dairy income. But he has another justification, even more important. It concerns a theory evolved in 1798 by Thomas Robert Malthus. It's perhaps the most depressing theory ever committed to print.

MALTHUS (voice actor): Populations will always increase faster than food supplies. There'll always be more people than the land can feed. War and disease are therefore necessary to kill off excess population.

SCHMIDT: Taken in terms of one man, this theory has a double implication. First he is hungry, and second, civilization is deprived of that which he might 00:27:00accomplish if well fed.

DUGAN: This old saw about necessity being the mother of invention is one of the most foolish adages that mankind ever swallowed. No hungry man ever created anything of any great interest or benefit of the race. It's mankind with a little leisure on his hands that can turn his thoughts to contemplation and his hand to invention. It's out of leisure that we get progress and all that we know of this civilization.

SCHMIDT: That was Ronald Dugan, a Rock County farmer. Now what does this theory about hunger mean to the farmers in Rook County, or for that matter, in any agricultural county in America? It means that he has a responsibility beyond making an adequate living for his family, beyond making himself a useful member of his own immediate community. America's land is now producing a surplus, but 00:28:00the land in most cases is giving up more than it gets in return. The farmer is responsibility, then, is to give back to the land enough to keep it alive and still produce a surplus. To a dairy farmer, the responsibility is exactly this: to raise a cow that will produce more milk on the same amount of feed. Now that doesn't sound very easy. Tell us my friend, how do we go about that?

SALESMAN: Well folks, it's like this. Unlimber your ears. Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to look right here and see what I got in my hand. I want you to see this little tube and I'll tell you what I'm going to do. Out of this test tube I'm gonna make the best cow you ever saw. She'll look like a cow, walk like a cow, and talk like a cow. But ladies and gentlemen, she'll milk like two cows.

SCHMIDT: That was a roundabout way of saying that artificial insemination is the 00:29:00answer to the question, "How can you get more milk production with the same amount of feed?" By this process, a good bull, a bull who is known to sire superior offspring, can travel by test tube to hundreds of farmers in a single day. Thus, any farmer can breed his cows with a champion bull at a smaller price than he'd have to pay for the cheapest bull available. Let the farmer himself describe what artificial insemination can do for a herd.

DUGAN: In my own herd, I see vast improvement over the range of animals we have had in years past. As the heifers come into the herd, I can be quite confident that at least two out of three will be superior animals, and will stand in the herd and I'll be proud of them.

SCHMIDT: Ronald Dugan, who's been using artificial insemination almost since the day it came to Wisconsin. Rock County farmers should have a head start on other 00:30:00dairy men in the state in artificial insemination. Theirs is a pioneer county.

DUGAN: In 1938, in the spring of 1938, the first artificial breeding association in the United States was formed in New Jersey. In August 1938, a second organization of like nature was incorporated in Rock County, Wisconsin. Our first year, we bred only a few cows from a bull stud located halfway between Beloit and Janesville. The next year we bred a few more. This year we are breeding about 10,000 cows in Rock County to bulls which are genetically superior animals, and whose offspring are appreciably better than their mothers.

SCHMIDT: In spite of the proven value of artificial breeding, many people as yet are unconvinced. There is a big selling job to be done. Only ten percent of the 00:31:00national dairy herd is now being artificially inseminated. However, the process is expanding continually, and it's now feasible perhaps to glance at the possibilities ahead. Here is J. R. Prentice, president of the Wisconsin Scientific Breeding Institute.

PRENTICE: The possibilities for our own organizations, and for that matter for anyone in artificial breeding, are almost limitless. The average production of dairy cows in the United States is five thousand pounds of four percent milk, with about 200 pounds of butterfat. World record cows will produce forty thousand pounds of milk.

SCHMIDT: Forty thousand pounds. Eight times more than the average. Somewhere between five and forty lies the goal.

PRENTICE: Of course, a good part of that forty thousand is good feeding and management. We are thinking not in terms of what you can produce under 00:32:00artificial conditions, but could be produced under commercially possible conditions, and I think that there's little question but that we might expect to double the national average production.

SCHMIDT: Artificial insemination will not be the only factor in the doubling of American's milk production. The Wisconsin Scientific Breeders Institute is a non-profit organization. It operated for many years in a deficit, but now it shows a profit, and this profit goes into research. A current research project is egg transplanting. This will multiply the number of calves a good cow can produce. The process is described by Harlan Cook, an extension representative of the Scientific Breeding Institute.

COOK: In egg transplantation, the eggs are taken from a host cow, I mean from a 00:33:00cow, and transplanted to a host cow after they have been fertilized. In other words the cow which actually bears or produces the calf has no, makes no contribution to the genetic makeup of that particular calf. By this means it would be possible to get as many as fifty, a hundred, we don't know, offspring from a particularly valuable cow by collecting eggs from her and transplanting them to host cows, whereas in the ordinary lifetime of a cow, you could hope for no more than three or four heifers or daughters of this cow at the most.

SCHMIDT: When this process is perfected, the average farmer will be able to raise a calf from some of the best cows and bulls in the nation.

[Sound of milking machine]

SCHMIDT: That's the sound of a milking machine: a sound that will be amplified by the genetic miracles wrought by egg transplantation and artificial insemination. It's a steady, rhythmic, reassuring sound, and in farms of Rock County, a common sound. When added to the optimism voiced by Rock County farmers, it seems to chant increased milk production in a casual way. In such a casual way that Mr. Prentice's prediction of a double production means a conservative estimate.

[sound of milking machine]

SCHMIDT: Our contact with farming so far has been scientific, and well, perhaps a trifle inhuman, or at least unnatural, which is an injustice to a business which thrives on nature. Perhaps there is communion with nature, a sensitivity for other forms of life that makes a farmer.

DUGAN: Well, my early remembrance of my father was his tremendous love of the land. He felt a compunction to leave the land in better shape than he found it. Oh, I can remember so many things in a general way, his finding of a meadow lark nest, or discovering a mother mouse with a half a dozen suckling young being dragged behind her. Her nest was disturbed. We just thought she was wonderful, to look at this wonderful little mother. He'd pick her up gently and put her back into her nest and cover her up so she wouldn't be scared or disturbed.

SCHMIDT: Here are other boyhood memories getting a little closer now to working and earning a living.

DUGAN: I can remember the start of 4-H work in Rock County. I had an acre of corn when the first 4-H Club was formed in the community. And this acre of corn 00:36:00I hoed by hand. That was the biggest field of corn I ever saw. I'm surprised I'm still a fanner.

SCHMIDT: Hard work? Yes, but the memories are pleasant, because the work was man's work, done by a boy. A boy on the farm is actually helping his dad at an age when a city boy hardly knows how his dad makes a living.

DUGAN: I think that a child on the farm develops much more normally than a city child. I think that they learn to use their hands and their heads at a much earlier age. A country child is riding a pony at four and milking cows at seven, and helping to feed the calves as soon as they can trudge. And it isn't a chore with them. For the most part, they are anxious to do a man's work and be 00:37:00considered a man.

SCHMIDT: This desire to be associated with the grownups and their occupations is likely to disappear in the shadow of a microphone, however. Before a microphone a youngster feels just like an adult. The only difference is , he admits how he feels.

CHILD: I don't remember much about nothing.

SCHMIDT: That's an unfair quotation. Actually, it's taken out of context. Here it is again, coupled with the original question. What do you remember about California?

CHILD: I don't remember much about nothing.

SCHMIDT: Well, how old were you then, do you remember?

CHILD: Three.

SCHMIDT: And how old are you now?

CHILD: Four! I mean five.

SCHMIDT: Five. And do you like living on a farm?

CHILD: Yeah.

SCHMIDT: Do you like the woods?

CHILD: Yeah.

SCHMIDT: What kind of games do you play?

CHILD: Kitty cat.

SCHMIDT: What kind?

CHILD: Kitty cat.

SCHMIDT: What else?

CHILD: And doggie.

SCHMIDT: Do you have a dog?

CHILD: Sure! And his name is Blackie.

SCHMIDT: What kind is he?

CHILD: He's a black dog.

SCHMIDT: Ages three and five, the sons of Marshall Miller, who came to Rock County from California to run a farm which has been in his family for a hundred and five years. Here's Mrs. Miller.

MRS. MILLER: Well, we feel that we're very fortunate in having had a farm to bring our two small boys up on. They apparently thrive on it. They're healthy, and most of their time is spent outdoors; whereas in the city it was, there weren't the outdoor opportunities that they have here. We feel very fortunate in being able to have them have the experience of living on a farm.

SCHMIDT: Marshall Miller was manager of a flight training school in California, so farming to him is quite a change--and quite a challenge. His farm is conspicuous in Rock County for the number of trees it contains. His place looks like a forest preserve. And Mr. Miller plans to keep it that way, thus, making a 00:39:00unique contribution to Rock County conservation.

MR. MILLER: Along with our farming operation, we are going to be pretty closely tied in with tree farm work and forest management. If we have our wish here, we'd like to make our woods into what we consider a model timber tract for this part of the country. And show by example to other farmers that have timber as part of their farm land, that a woodland can be a desirable part of a farm and profitable, too. 

[choir singing]

CRONEIS: The concept of the institution was developed on the old steamboat Chesapeake, as it moved westward from Cleveland in the summer of 1844. In 1845, the first Board of Trustees was selected, and the charter of the college was granted by the Territory of Wisconsin on February 2, 1846. A strong group of Presbyterians and Congregationalists were instrumental in the founding, but the college has always operated as a private corporation.

SCHMIDT: That private corporation is Beloit College. 1,050 students from about thirty-five states and about fourteen foreign countries. A faculty of a hundred, thirty-five buildings on a forty acre campus in the heart of town. President Carey Croneis is the speaker.

CRONEIS: In the early days, Beloit was known as the Yale of the West. It was a 00:41:00pioneer in Midwestern education. It was instrumental in setting up certain sections of the University of Wisconsin, and that great institution, indeed, borrowed some of the original Beloit chemistry equipment for its first laboratory.

SCHMIDT: Beloit College, a pioneer in Midwest education. Here's one of the qualities a college must have to be a pioneer.

RICHARDSON: Another characteristic of Beloit that has constantly remained has been an extreme individualism in its faculty, and a thorough zeal in the teaching and in working for the aims and goals of the college. It is questionable if Beloit has ever failed constantly to reexamine its mission, and in soul-searching fashion, undertaken to realize it. In the Civil War, for 00:42:00instance, there was no commencement in 1864, the entire class of that year having gone to the war.

SCHMIDT: That was Professor R. K. Richardson, who has been at Beloit College since 1901. Two generations of students can testify that Professor Richardson never ceased to be an inspiring teacher, because he has never ceased to be an inspired scholar.

[choir singing]

SCHMIDT: Like industry and agriculture, Beloit College has won an almost indispensable place for itself in community life. But it hasn't done so by providing large numbers of jobs and dollars, or really, by educating Beloit 00:43:00citizens. The College has made its biggest impression on the community by giving Beloit something to get excited about.

[voice of auctioneer]

SALESMAN: You'll really get excited about this. It's the finest, fastest, fleetest bunch of bunch of fellers that ever flicked a ball through the hoop. Man, what a team! Small, but fast, and they really handle that ball. Ever see a kid hit the bucket like that Bontemps? Dumps 'em in like it was eight feet wide. And they've all got speed. That's what counts! You take your ten foot centers and I'll take the speed. Run the big boys' feet flat, I always say...

[band playing]

STANLEY: Basketball is a religion with me. I think it has its place in a community as much as any other agency that we sponsor. Now we sponsor basketball for the benefit of the people who participate, but I am one who believes that those who follow the team get as many thrills and as much inspiration out of watching as they would if they were playing,

SCHMIDT: Dolph Stanley, athletic director and basketball coach at Beloit. What is the inspiration the fans get? Well, for one thing they are used to winning basketball games at Beloit.

STANLEY: These young men here at Beloit have won the Midwest Conference five years in a row. 

SCHMIDT: And how long have you been here, Mr. Stanley?

STANLEY: Five years.

SCHMIDT: Here's the story of what happened when the team started winning championships.

STANLEY: When I first came here, we were using the Fairbanks Morse gymnasium and 00:45:00that soon became too small for the problems that attempted to come. Second year, we moved down to the Armory, remodeled it a little bit but that was too small; so we felt that we should have something much larger. And as the result we have this field house seating 4,200 people. We have wonderful support from the town and the community. We have people coming many miles to watch these fellows play, and we are very happy that we have been able to be a part of a winner program that can interest so many people.

SCHMIDT: Take note of the fact that just a few years ago, the basketball team played in the Fairbanks-Morse gymnasium. Now, listen to Harold Wood, vice president of the College, describing some of the present uses of the fieldhouse.

WOOD: This past year, we had the Pittsburg Symphony in the Fieldhouse. It was also used for a meeting of the employees of Fairbanks Morse to decide whether or 00:46:00not they would accept the contract which was offered them. It's been used by the Chamber of Commerce for their banquets. We have had flower shows, and we even had a mink show here, although we are inclined to feel that we wouldn't continue that, because animals in a fieldhouse are not especially conducive to the best other use.

SCHMIDT: Now Fairbanks Morse employees hold meetings in the house that basketball built. That perhaps is the most graphic illustration of the change basketball has made in Beloit.

[band playing] 

SCHMIDT: This music was recorded on the evening of October 7 during a football game between Beloit College and Lake Forest. Between halves of that game, the tape recorder picked up something which perhaps has never before been recorded. 00:47:00The half ended with the score 0-0. The players are entering the dressing room. Coach Bill Nelson stands at the blackboard. And concealed behind a sweatshirt is a microphone. Listen now to a sample of what a half-time pep talk really sounds like.

[sounds of the locker room]

NELSON: Don't you know that [unintelligible]. And something you can't guess until it hits the ground. [unintelligible] You can't tell how a football will bounce. [unintelligible] Time after time, especially in that first quarter 00:48:00[unintelligible] I wouldn't even see one of you fellas on the ground, much less one of them. [unintelligible], don't get me wrong on that. On the other hand you guys aren't getting out there [unintelligible]. And we've had men in the open, if you fellas [unintelligible] bread and butter out there and it should be. On that semi spread, where there's too many wide you got covered. All right now gang, let's keep rushing their path. You're gonna squelch out the end, you gotta keep it up, you're gonna block for [Keith?], and you ball terriers run for [Keith?]. [unintelligible] blocking in this half. Now we'll have to start the 00:49:00defensive team, and there'll be two bucks on the tackle. [cheering]

[band playing]

SCHMIDT: The visiting team evidently got the same kind of medicine between halves. The final score: Lake Forest nothing, Beloit nothing.

[band playing]

UNIDENTIFIED: Do you fully understand, Brandon, what we've done?

MCGUIRE: Do I know what I've done? Yes, I know quite well what I have done. I have done murder.

DENMARK: Now, McGuire, just a minute. When you go back, take a longer pause after, "I know quite well what I have done."

MCGUIRE: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED: OK, take the speech, "Do you know what I have done."

MCGUIRE: Do I know what I have done?

SCHMIDT: The place is a small auditorium on the Beloit campus. The stage is 00:50:00almost dark and empty except for a table. Two students sit on the table facing a third person who looks young enough to be a student himself. The third person makes an explanation.

DENMARK: What we are rehearsing is a scene from "Rope," a drama by Patrick Hamilton, which we are going to do on the Dad's Day weekend in the middle of November.

SCHMIDT: Not until you ask him does he tell you who he is.

DENMARK: My name is Kirk Denmark, chairman of the department of speech and dramatic arts.

SCHMIDT: Kirk Denmark is one of the young men who are adding vitality to the Beloit curriculum. In Art Hall, you find another member of the young faculty.

CHARLES: My name is Clayton Charles. I'm chairman of the art department; and Franklin Boggs is artist in residence.

SCHMIDT: Others have described the Beloit College art department in superlatives. You expect the same story here, only perhaps with more artistic superlatives. You are impressed when the reply is completely unassuming.

CHARLES: Art at Beloit is something like a case study of art in many Midwestern communities, because it is a development now which is rather sizeable, where twenty years ago there was relatively little.

SCHMIDT: What is the object of an art department in a liberal arts college? Is it to teach the student to be a professional painter?

CHARLES: This is a professional arts school. It follows a pattern of most liberal arts colleges in that we believe a student must know many things to become a successful artist, a successful doctor, or a successful scientist.

SCHMIDT: Mr. Boggs:

BOGGS: I think that's one of the strong things in the department is that we pride ourselves on being different from other departments of the college, from the fact that the student's emphasis is placed on his becoming conscious of his individual ability, and the ability is not in a technical aspect but being able 00:52:00to express himself. 

SCHMIDT: The last voice was that of Franklin Boggs, artist in residence, who was recently chosen by Life Magazine as one of the seventeen outstanding young artists in the nation. So much for the art department in relation to the student. Where does the department stand with the community? Here is Clayton Charles again.

CHARLES: Oh, we are having a show, it'll be the first of its kind in the art hall, called "Rock County Painters." We're making a survey of art produced by amateurs, and Sunday painters, as well as professionals in Rock County.

SCHMIDT: A young department with young ideas for college and community alike.

[organ music and choir]

CRONEIS: Beloit College seeks to make her graduates at home in the world of thought through the study of the history of ideas; and by quickening the interest in creative thinking, she equips young men and women to solve more 00:53:00completely the ever-changing problems of everyday life. Beloit College trains her students in accurate serving and inquiry. She would have them be scientific in the sense that they learn to understand and to face squarely the facts of the world, and respect intellectually all truth insofar as we now know it. Beloit College aims also to inspire its graduates in noble ideals in the sense that religion is deeply involved in the organization of life into a whole, and that many truths include not only factual content but great hopes and faith, Beloit College would have her students no religion.

CONGREGATION: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily 00:54:00bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory forever.

[choir singing]

SCHMIDT: It is four-thirty Sunday afternoon, and the students of Beloit College are brought together by a tradition of strength and beauty. Vesper services. They come to Eden Chapel, they enter through doors that open wide without discrimination.

UNIDENTIFIED: No religious opinions or tenets shall be requisite to entitle any 00:55:00person to be admitted as a student to Beloit College. No such tenets or opinions shall be required of any professor. No student shall be required to attend religious worship in any particular denomination.

SCHMIDT: Section Seven from the charter of Beloit College, granted by the Territory of Wisconsin a hundred and four years ago.

[choir singing]

SCHMIDT: The sounds and voices of Beloit--the sounds and voices of a community 00:56:00straddling the Rock River on the southern border of Wisconsin's Rock County, and reaching over the border to include about 4,000 people in South Beloit in the state of Illinois. Our story has concerned three main areas: industry, agriculture, higher education. These areas were chosen because Beloit contains some of Wisconsin's most fascinating industries, because the farmers around Beloit have been pioneers in dairy herd improvement, and because Beloit College is one of America's outstanding small colleges. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Of this we hope you are convinced.

ANNOUNCER: This has been the Beloit Profile, another program in a recorded series on Wisconsin Communities. Production by Carl Schmidt. Technical direction by Ben Rosse, and the script by Les Nelson. The narrators were Carl Schmidt, and 00:57:00Myron Curry. Our sincere thanks to Reg Whitson and Jud Allen of Beloit for their assistance in the preparation of this program. This is the Wisconsin College of the Air.