When Mules Ruled the Farm BY LONNIE THIELE

When Mules Ruled the Farm by Lonny Thiele

Mules were used for farming in this country roughly 1785 to 1950 or 165 years. Mule numbers peaked in the US at 5.8 million in 1925, but there were still 1.9 million mules in 1940, that included 209,000 in Missouri. Most of the material used comes from stories in the book, “That Son of a Gun Had Sense: Mule Stories From the Bootheel During the 1930’s-1940’s Era.”

This column is taken from Thad Snow’s book, From Missouri, An American Farmer Looks Back. I have done some editing to make it fit the space.

Thad Snow Mules

I have written about hogs, sheep, cattle and my stock dogs. It is even more desirable to write about mules.

I think the plowlands of the Eastern Seaboard States and even of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana were cleared and plowed in the stumps mainly by oxen, because oxen move more slowly than horses and have more patience with all that happens while breaking in stump land. But mule power broke in the Delta. Oxen were too slow for pioneering in this century. In a way mules blend the virtues of oxen and horses. They are fast like horses but patient

like oxen, which made them just right for the Delta.

Mules come in all sizes, shapes and colors. That is because their papas, who are vulgarly called jackasses, come in all sizes and shapes and colors; and their mamas who, of course, are brood mares, are likewise variable. You mix these two more or less alien bloods and you can have anything from a 500 lb mountain pack mule, up to 1600 lb wheel mules like I used to see on dirt-moving jobs such as levee building. You can have them 4-feet high at the withers or 6-feet high, depending on their parentage.

They say that a mule has no ‘pride of ancestry, and no hope of posterity.’ I don’t know about the ‘hope’ of posterity, but it is certainly true that they never have any. I’ve asked why mules don’t reproduce and I’ve been told very wisely that is because they are ‘hybrids.’

Most farmers of the Delta liked to work medium-sized mules that weighed from 1,000 to 1,200 pounds. While the Delta was in process of clearing and up until about 1930 the mule dealer was the biggest businessman in town. We raised no mules. They were all shipped in from the North. In the late winter and early spring thousands were shipped in to replenish the supply, and to increase the supply as more and more acres were cleared for the plow. Also hundreds were shipped out. The old worn-out ones went down farther south where cotton was a one-mule, one-Negro enterprise.

When the mules began to come in, everybody went around to the big sale barn to look them over; for two or three months the mule barn was the center of business and social activity. Mules were practically all sold on credit—nothing down—and one year to pay.

Part II next month