"Bug" station scene of Ag-aviation
beginnings
Modified from August 14, 1975 Centennial Edition Madison Journal
A Mexican emigrant crossed the Rio Grande into southern
Texas in 1892. The land he found was lonely, friendless, the natives inhospitable
to an indigent illegal alien. But, like so many impoverished foreigners who
came to this country to begin a new life, he found a rich new land
"flowing with milk and honey," at least to him. He was, like the
"sons of Anak" already inhabiting the land,
in cotton, so to speak.
He was a boll weevil. You could not find a more vigorous,
enterprising young immigrant. His beginnings were humble, certainly, but he
worked hard and had many, many children. His descendents scattered across the
south; wherever there was a cotton crop, there their duty lay.
They were not greedy, certainly not, but they taught
their children not to be wasteful. When they did something, they believed in
doing it right.
Meanwhile, the sons of Anak
began to get worried.
The boll weevil and Madison Parish—it was a marriage made
in heaven. Madison had a lot of nice cotton, certainly, but it had much more.
Fifty per cent of its land was not cultivated, which meant that the boll weevil
had plenty of room to hibernate during the winter months. The climate and
environment were perfect—the boll weevil could feast in comfort.
But before the boll weevil came to Madison, the Federal
Bureau of Entomology was at work in Texas trying to come to grips with the
growing problem. They soon learned that it would not be easy. The weevil had no
natural enemies; furthermore, it could produce several generations of weevils
in a single season.
The entomologists needed a place to work where climate
and crop conditions were as favorable to the weevil as in any other area in the
South. They found such a place in the delta land of Northeast Louisiana. There
was plenty of cotton and plenty of boll weevils in Madison Parish.
The Delta Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture's
Bureau of Entomology came to Tallulah in 1909. It set up shop in an old school
building on the corner of South Chestnut and East Scott Streets, where the
current school board building is located. A Mr. Cushing was its first director.
The purpose of the laboratory was to make experiments in an effort to find an
effective means of combating the boll weevils.
To the cotton farmers of Madison Parish, the station
didn't come a day too soon. They had found the first holes in their cotton buds
in 1907, showing that the boll weevil had arrived in their territory. The next
year, the cotton farmers produced 60 percent less cotton than they were
accustomed to producing, and they were faced with ruin.
Cotton lands were abandoned and negro
labor was forced to leave the plantations for lack of work. The farmers of
Madison Parish had been told for years to diversify their crops, but hadn't
done so. Now, faced with complete destruction of cotton as a major crop, it
seemed to many farmers that nothing else could be
done. They turned their attention to the growing of rice, corn, oats, and
alfalfa.
Across the South, many farmers were turning to crop
diversification, and were using some of their lands for raising cattle, hogs,
and chickens. They became more prosperous than when they raised only cotton.
After the destruction of the 1916 cotton crop forced planters around
Enterprise, Ala. to turn to peanut farming, they erected a monument to the boll
weevil in the Middle of Enterprise. The inscription on it reads, "In
profound appreciation of the boll weevil, and what it has done to herald
prosperity."
But Madisonians have a long
tradition of stubbornness which has helped them progress and gotten them in
trouble in about equal measure. The majority of planters refused to diversify
their crops. They had always grown cotton. They would continue to grow cotton. No
doubt many reasoned that, with such a fine laboratory right in Tallulah, it
would only be a matter of time before the boll weevil was licked.
But it was completely new field; every theory and invention
had to be tried out, and many were flat failures, G. D. Smith, who succeeded
Mr. Cushing as director of the laboratory, believed that all the boll weevils
came out of hibernation before cotton started fruiting, and could be destroyed
if all of their food was removed then.
The weevils' food was the cotton squares, or buds, so
during that period Smith published editorials in the Madison Journal urging the
planters to send their labor into the fields and pick cotton squares.
Smith's plan failed because many boll weevils did not
come out of hibernation until the middle of July. Smith was transferred to
Florida around 1916 and continued to push this method which came to be known as
the Florida method. He was succeeded by B.R. Coad,
who began developing machinery and using poisons to fight the weevils. Coad brought
chemists and engineers as well as entomologists to Tallulah. Gradually they
began to find ways to kill boll weevils without killing the cotton plants.
Some farmers distrusted the new machines, and especially
the poisons. They became suckers for entrepreneurs and quacks with
"sure-fire" ways to kill boll weevils
One man in Georgia advertised that for a dollar he would
send a device guaranteed to kill boll weevils. What he sent was a tiny hammer
and anvil, with instructions on where to place the weevil.
Some companies operated totally within state boundaries
to avoid federal prosecution. They would come to an area selling "weevil
killer," which contained a secret ingredient (molasses, etc.) that did
nothing to boll weevils. A couple years later they would return and sell the
same product under a different name. Also sold to gullible farmers was a weevil
remover which the Delta Laboratory proved was worthless.
After hundreds of experiments the laboratory concluded
that the only way to control boll weevils was by the use of poisons. The entomologists
tried London Purple, which they found wouldn't kill weevils; Paris Green, which killed some weevils, but injured the cotton
plant, and lead arsenate, which had been used to kill apple moths.
Finally lead arsenate was replaced by calcium arsenate,
another arsenic mixture, which was so powerful and long-lasting that the fields
it was used on had to be plowed under after the cotton was picked to keep it
from killing farm animals. Nicotine sulfate was later added to the calcium
arsenate to prevent aphid buildup.
The use of poisons has always been a complex matter
because the killing of one insect may allow another type of insect to take over
the plant. For this reason a variety of chlorinated hydrocarbons and phosphate
compounds is used to control the various types of pests which may attack a
crop.
Just as important as the poisons were the machines used
to spread the mixture. Here again, the Tallulah laboratory tried out various
contraptions, some of which were never used. Dusters were invented for hand
use, some to be carried on the backs of mules
like saddles, or carried by men on horseback; there were dusters powered by
gasoline engines, hand cranks, bellows, or by their own moving wheels as they
were hauled by a horse or mule team.
Some of the machines invented at the Tallulah station
are still in production. But though they were useful and effective for small
farms, something still was needed to dust quickly and on a large scale.
Limited experiments had been conducted in Ohio on aerial
dusting of Catalpa trees in an attempt to control the Catalpa Sphinx. Director
Coad was quick to grasp the possibilities of using airplanes in his own
program. He asked the Army Air Service for equipment and personnel, and chose a
100-acre plot of ground three miles from Tallulah for a landing field.
On this tract of land, which was on the Shirley
Plantation, then owned by the estate of William M.
Scott, was built the first municipal airport in Louisiana.
Construction of "Scott Field" and the equipment
for it cost over $100,000. The parish contributed a small portion for grading
and drainage.
The airport had a hangar with space for eight planes,
machine shops, storage buildings for fuel and poison, and a weather observatory
which was one of 79 such weather stations in the U. S. and Canada. A Standard
Zenith airway beacon on a 51 foot tower, revolving six times every minute,
could be seen al a distance of 45 miles.
The old service
station and administration building presently at the airport was built by
the Standard Oil Company in 1930. According to a January, 1930 Madison Journal it contained "the most
modern electrical equipment a full-time mechanic, and the last word in airplane
servicing." It was intended to provide passenger service facilities, but
the field was closed shortly afterward.
The Army Air Service sent two "Jennies" and six
men from the Army air depot at Montgomery. The Jennies proved to be inadequate,
and in 1923 three DeHaviland 4-B's and necessary personnel were sent to
the field.
The DeHaviland was the mainstay
of the military, being America's prominent fighting plane in World War I. It
was a two-hole biplane with a 400 hp, V-12 Liberty engine. In an article in the
November, 1972 Private Pilot, Alan L.
Morse, an aeronautical engineer assigned to the program in 1923, described her
thus:
"She wore her military insignia proudly, but otherwise
was a sorry sight. Her stick-plywood fuselage had been chopped away to accommodate
the hopper, air scoops stuck out on top and a six-foot tunnel arrangement was
strapped underneath. She was plastered with powdered calcium arsenate and her
elevators drooped dejectedly. But, she hadn't quite; she was in there doing her
job.
"As I watched, a three-man crew prepared to swing
the prop. Numbers one and three faced the airplane while number two, in the
middle, faced away. Then each man grasped his neighbor's wrist and they were
ready. Number one then pulled the prop down and through and, as 400 horses came
to life, the other two jerked him clear of the whirling blades. The Liberty had
no starter. Then the DH wobbled away to the end of the field, headed into the
wind and took off out over the trees. She was bad news for the boll
weevil."
Bad news, too, were the men sent to fly it. They had learned
how to fly by fighting Germans in fierce air battles. Now, just as much was
required of them in the low-level flying of crop dusting.
And with no precedent or former experience to go by,
there was much to be learned. The first experiments were performed simply by
throwing dust overboard and noting its action in the air. Later a lever-operated
hopper was developed. Airscoops were used to put air
pressure on top of the powder to push it out of the tunnel, or venturi, underneath the airplane.
It had been learned in experiments with ground equipment
that calcium arsenate had to be continually agitated to be manageable, and in
the air it was no exception. The powder would bridge just above the exit,
resulting in a very anemic dust cloud. Then the bridge would collapse and a
great puff would all but smother the cotton plants. Various agitating devices
were flight tested, including rotating paddles and sword-like blades that swept
back and forth like windshield wipers across the sloping bottom of the hopper.
The old DH's went through many alterations as one idea
after another was tested in the air. Brainstorms sprouted into tinware to be later incorporated into the first commercial
duster, built by the Huff
Daland Company in 1924 under Department of Agriculture specifications.
But before the duster could be commercially used, other
questions had to be answered by the Army pilots: Could dusting be done while
the ground mists lay on the fields? Could a pilot flying above the mist level
orient himself in relation to the field? At what altitude and speed should he
fly to best discharge the dust into the cotton: what patterns of flying would
be required to do the job best? Could an airplane stand up under the excessive
wear on its engines that daily dusting flights would inflict?
Answering these questions was as hair-raising a job as
shooting down a German Fokker over St. Mihiel.
Acrobatics at 50 feet and within the contours of a cotton patch is rugged
business, as any modern-day dusting pilot will tell you. With the weak engines and
slow maneuverability of those World War I planes, it was even more difficult
and dangerous.
The Army pilots were up to the challenge. They used to
prove it by running the landing gear of their jennies
across the roofs of the tenant cabins on the Scott's plantation.
One pilot was told that he had leukemia, which back then
was an untreatable disease. Realizing he would be grounded as soon as his
superiors learned of his condition, he decided to fulfill a long-time wish to
fly down Washington Street in Vicksburg.
The street being narrow with tall buildings on each side, the pilot flew his DH
sideways, just above the streetcar cable.
All of the employees
of the Delta Lab were loved and respected in the community; some made
permanent homes in the parish. Lt. John B.
Patrick married Arwin Scott, and hosted during this period important
future figures in the world of aviation, such as Vandenburg,
Doolittle and Arnold. The aviators loved the fine hunting in Madison Parish and
frequented Mike Morrisey's Windmill Club at Delta.
Mrs. Francis Robinson vividly remembers being taken for
airplane rides by the friendly pilots as a young girl. Of course when
government officials heard that children were riding in the dusters they
quickly put a stop to the practice. Anyone who went up in the planes had to
sign an agreement releasing the government from any responsibility should an accident
occur. It is a tribute to their skill and care in flying that, though there
were many forced landings, there was not one serious accident involving a
military or government pilot in the whole program.
The Delta Lab did not confine its work to crop-dusting.
All through this period it continued to develop dusting machines for ground
use. Dr. Coad, William McConnell and Lionel Jones are credited with borrowing
aerial photography from war experiences and applying it to agricultural
estimates of crops in cultivation. The lab also pioneered in using airplanes
to rout the malarial mosquito.
FIRST DUSTING COMPANY
The Huff Daland Company, a New York-based airplane manufacturer,
formed a separate crop dusting division called Huff Daland Dusters. Its
headquarters, first located in Macon, Ga., were later moved to Monroe. C. E.
Woolman, a farm agent who had been assisting Dr. Coad at the Tallulah boll
weevil station, joined the division as vice president and field manager.
In a few years the Monroe company
had accumulated the largest fleet of privately-owned aircraft in the world.
Then in 1928 Woolman returned to Monroe from dusting operations in Peru to find
that his parent company was trying to sell Huff Daland Dusters out from under
him. He aroused the interest of a group of Monroe businessmen who bought out
Huff Daland's dusting division.
They renamed the company Delta Air Service after the
Mississippi Delta it served. The next year it initiated passenger service
between Dallas and Jackson, and grew into the present company, Delta
Air Lines. It is believed locally that the huge airline began at Scott
Airport, but that is not true. But employees at the experimental station were
influential in the company's beginnings.
The first commercial dusting company at Tallulah was
established in 1925. The Southern Dusting Co. was organized by Eugene Stevens,
Arthur C. Gray, pilots, with Jack
and Marmaduke McCaffrey owning most of the stock. The
company was marred by fatalities and terminated in 1929, when general manager
Stevens went into the army.
During this period it was a practice of the agricultural
aviation trade to go into an area and contract for large blocks of acreage in
order to reduce the expense of aerial application and make the venture
economically feasible.
The Southern Field Crop Insect Division was broken up in
1925 following the death of its director, Dr. W.D.
Hunter, and the Division of Cotton Insect Investigation was created, with headquarters
at Tallulah. Some years the division hired more than 100 people to work in the
cotton fields around Tallulah. It was known around the world and was yearly
visited by prominent entomologists.
The bulletins it issued were followed by the cotton interests
of the whole country. To handle the increased output, the division rented
office space at the present site of Phil's grocery, while retaining its offices
at the old school building and at Scott Airport.
The old service station and administration building presently
at the airport was erected by the Standard Oil Company in 1930. According to a
January, 1930 Madison Journal, it
contained "the most modern electrical equipment, a full-time mechanic, and
the last word in airplane servicing."
B. R. Coad left the Department of Agriculture in 1931
and was replaced by R. W. Harned. In that same year
the headquarters of the Division of Cotton Insect Investigation were moved to
Washington.
The use of Scott Field was discontinued by the Delta Lab,
which lost its Airplane, Chemistry, Photography, and Mechanical Engineering
Departments. It retained only its Entomological Research Department under the
direction of R. C.
Gaines. It moved in 1934 to buildings a mile and a half south of Tallulah.
There it remained until its dissolution in 1973, which was due to
reorganization and curtailment of certain phases of the U.S. D.A.'s
activities.
Tallulah Airport was unused until 1938 when Cecil
Smith and Jimmy
Yeates bought the property and formed the Smith and Yeates Dusting Co. They
offered flying instruction in addition to crop dusting services. The company
suspended its operations in 1942.
During World War II, the airport served as a practice
field and cross-country reference point for Army Air Corps trainees from the
base at Greenville, Miss.
Jimmy Yeates returned after the war and operated Yeates
Flying Service for a year, then sold it to R. N.
Graves in 1946. Graves ran the Little Southern Dusting Co. in partnership
with Carol Presley in 1946. He became sole owner in 1947 and changed the name
to Graves Flying Service.
The runway was unpaved until 1967, when Robert Graves
donated the land to the Police Jury in a 50-year lease. The Jury, intending to
use the land as a municipal airport, received funds from the Department of
Public Works to blacktop the runway and put in lights. An air show and
ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrated the opening of the 3,000 foot lighted runway
in November, 1969.
The Police Jury subleased the runway back to Graves in
1970, giving him the exclusive right to operate a flying service on the
property. The runway is still open for public use, and Graves cuts the grass,
repairs lights and does other maintenance on the facility.
Graves Flying Service does all types of air work on
farms, including dropping pesticides and herbicides. His planes (he uses Stearman dusters) fertilize fields, seed soybean, wheat and
rice crops, and drop desiccants--drying agents which dry up the sap in weeds
making them easier to cut. Graves once operated an air ambulance service.
Of course the primary function of the airport in the past
has been to serve agriculture, but it soon may add passenger transportation to
its services. Benny Mays is in the process of setting up a charter air taxi
service and is fixing up the old service station. Mays
teaches flying every day from four until dark and on weekends.
POSTSCRIPT-‑
The agricultural
aviation and Chemical insecticide industries, both of which were born at
Tallulah, are multimillion dollar businesses today, employing tens of
thousands of agplanes and pilots. Yet the boll weevil
still runs up to a quarter of a billion dollars of losses every year. Over
one-third of all agricultural insecticides used in the entire U.S.A. is used to control the furry insect
