, , , ,

Thousands Of Spectators Once Thronged To Corn Husking Contests

Vintage Wisconsin: Corn Husking Tested Endurance, Strength

By
Wisconsin State Journal 10/27/38 (Newspaper Archive)

This week in 1938, Dick Post, of Footville, won his sixth county corn husking title and claimed the state championship two days later in front of a crowd of 15,000 people.

Corn husking once drew tens of thousands of fans from around the country. Spectators braved torrential rain, mud, snow and horrible traffic jams to be in the cornfield for the 80-minute event. Newspapers covered the local, state and national events.

Henry A. Wallace came up with the idea of a national corn husking, also known as shucking, contest in 1922 as a way to boost morale in rural America. Wallace, who became the U.S. secretary of agriculture in 1933 and then vice president under Franklin Roosevelt in 1940, was a major proponent of industrialized agriculture and used his editorship of the agricultural magazine, Wallaces’ Farmer, to promote more efficient methods of farming.

Stay informed on the latest news

Sign up for WPR’s email newsletter.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

As editor, Wallace established a variety of contests – state corn yield contests, corn husking contests and Master Farmer Awards. Agricultural magazines like Wallaces’ Farmer became primary sponsors of corn husking contests, which used corn bred by private and public breeders of hybrid seeds.

Husking was strenuous work. The Wisconsin State Journal proclaimed it “no sissy sport.” The most common method was to grip the ear with the left hand, rip off the husk with the right, twist the ear from the stalk and then throw the ear into a wagon. The sharp, dry stalks often cut contestant’s hands and face, leaving them bleeding. To make the task lighter and more social, neighbors had long organized husking bees but this custom had begun to disappear by the 20th century.

The first national corn husking competition was held in 1924. By 1930, about 30,000 people attended the event. By 1936, numbers grew to 140,000 spectators.

Wisconsin was slower to jump on the corn husking competition circuit. While county contests began in the late 1920s and 1930s, Wisconsin held its first state competition in 1936.

The average farmer could husk about 300 ears in 80 minutes. Wisconsin’s Dick Post shucked a record 24.5 bushels at the 1938 county contest. Assuming about 50 ears per bushel, that’s 1,225 ears of corn. Post said he’d only “practiced one or two weeks this year.” After winning, he said he wasn’t tired or sore because husking is “just part of one’s work, you know.”

At the national contest, held that year in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Post came in fourth. No Wisconsin husker ever became national champion.

Wisconsin held five state husking contests before World War II put an end to the competitions. Two men won all of the state titles between them, Post and Omer Koopman. Before the 1938 contest, one observer predicted 38-year-old Post was “too old to beat Koopman,” who was 20 years old.