Picture this – It’s the early 1930s and you’re a farmer in Iowa. The Great Depression had been raging for two years and things are looking bleak. Sales are down, the banks have closed and drought has made matters even worse. Then you come to discover that the Iowa legislature has passed a law that requires testing all dairy cows in the state to be tested for bovine tuberculosis. That, in a nutshell, was the beginning of the Iowa Cow War of the 1930s.
The match that lit the far for the war would be started by the owner of an Iowa radio station, which prompted mass riots by Iowa farmers, ultimately leading to the deployment of thousands of members of the National Guard to Iowa farms.
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The Iowa Cow War of 1931
The Cow War primarily took place in Cedar County, Iowa in 1931.
It revolved around the testing for bovine tuberculosis on Iowa Farms. Even though a law had been passed, many farmers resisted the testing, fearing that the testing itself would give the cows tuberculosis…