Ernest Hemingway, hoping to take an artistic retreat and write another “Great American Novel” has purchased a sizeable estate just outside of San Juan in Puerto Rico. Naming it Colina Rubí or “Ruby Hill” the estate will be designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and will have 10 bedrooms and a sizeable library and trophy room. It is rumored that Mr. Hemingway paid somewhere in the region of $2,000,000 for the property and construction.

In other news, Mr. Hemingway announced a book tour in France this January which will take him from Normandy, to Paris, and as far south as Marseille. During this tour, he will be meeting with French dignitaries, authors, and local leaders while he promotes the French translation of A Farewell to Arms.

Columbia University, New York City

A monumental work of recent historical scholarship published by the Columbia University Press and written by Merle Curti and his doctoral student Richard Hofstadter levied scathing criticism of the Hoover administration and Federal Government as a whole. Titled The Harvest of Souls, it recounted the ways in which the Federal government and, in particular, the Hoover administration pursued a policy of classicide with the intention of stamping out the Western individualism and very concept of “western American culture” as outlined by the great and incomparable Frederick Jackson Turner. They argued that the rise of a western consciousness, and of capital shifts to the west and especially California, on top of major labor victories of the region such as those won against Colorado Fuel & Iron after the Ludlow Massacre posed a legitimate threat to American economic interests.

Shortly after stock markets crashed, Federal documents reveal that the government deliberately botched the reports from the west, and withheld food aid from great plains and western states. As the dust bowl only exacerbated the crisis and a wholesale famine set in, the federal government deliberately persecuted those who attempted to provide food for the starving workers, especially those of negro and Mexican descent. It quoted one junior government worker, who quoted his supervisor, a senator, as saying:

Our intention was to root out the negro, Mexican, Chinaman, and Indian and ensure that the white man got the food that was due him.

Policies directly targeting these ethnic groups caused massive suffering, though the white worker was affected too. Using data gathered from state records, pre-depression birthrates, and official sources, Curt and Hofstadter estimate that between 5 and 7 million were killed by the government in this time. Policies such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act purposely destroyed food which was farmed and paid farmers not to plant crops. Aside from those that sold out their people by taking this devil’s money, five million farmers had their farms expropriated by the banks. Curti elaborates:

The government’s policy of “defarming” was used to satiate the so-called free market. Surplus foodstuffs were deemed as redundant and were destroyed, so as to ensure that farmers prices were not undercut. However, when five million farmers found themselves with no farms and no work, this surplus foodstuff (often produced by the banks that now controlled their farms) would have been lifesaving. In addition to the expropriation of farmlands from five million farmers, we estimate that ten million hectares of land was plowed over before the harvest and six point five million livestock were slaughtered, all in the name of the so-called free market and in order to protect agri-business against the dreaded possibility of doling out excess production to the working man.

Of the 5-7 million killed, Curti estimates that roughly half that is made up of “national minorities” including Natives, Blacks, Asians, and Mexicans. The book has already been translated to French and will be published widely in the United States, United Kingdom, and France in Q1 1937.

The Great Mississippi River Moving Picture Boat Show

In an effort to bring more entertainment to communities along the Mississippi river, a number of concerned artists and patrons of the arts from Chicago and Missouri have organized the above mentioned excursion, a steamship that will travel down the Mississippi regularly stopping to bring aboard passengers who will then be treated to a projector and screen on the ship that will play films. Each of the films will nominally deal with labor topics and will be accompanied by speeches given by local labor leaders. After reaching New Orleans, the ship will return up the Mississippi stopping and playing films as it returns north.

A young Elia Kazan is slated to appear as Louis Tikas in a film entitled O Ludlow! - a dramatization of the Ludlow Massacre directed by Edward Dmytryk and written by Lester Cole. The film is set to premier in May of 1937