Congress's Free Seeds and the 1913 Grafton, North Dakota, Test

In April 1913, a high school class in Grafton, North Dakota, did a simple experiment. The students took garden seeds that the United States government had sent out for free, and they counted how many would sprout. E. J. Trosper, the man in charge of the work, did not like what they found. He said the government seed was “nothing but junk that might have some value if sent out in ton lots and used as a fertilizer.”

1913 Grand Forks Evening Times story Free Seeds Are Classed as Junk, about germination tests of government seeds at the Grafton, North Dakota, high school

The Grand Forks, North Dakota, paper ran the story under a big, blunt headline: “FREE SEEDS ARE CLASSED AS JUNK.” To understand why that made news, you need to know about one of the oddest gifts in American history.

A present from your congressman

For more than 80 years, the United States Congress mailed free garden seeds to people all over the country. Every year, Congress paid the Department of Agriculture to buy seeds and pack them into little paper packets. Then each senator and representative got a share to send to the folks back home.

The seeds traveled “franked.” That means the lawmaker’s printed signature went on the envelope in place of a stamp, so the mail was free too.

It was a giant job. In 1902, the Indianapolis Journal reported that Congress had set aside $270,000 for “about 40,000,000 packages of seed, which will weigh about 1,000 tons.” That’s two million pounds of tiny seeds.

1902 newspaper story Free Seed Distribution, about forty million packages of seed weighing about 1,000 tons

How the seeds got packed

The packing was done in big rooms with clever machines. Seed poured down cloth chutes from the floor above. Each machine opened a little packet, filled it with the right amount of seed and sealed it shut. The worker sitting at the machine mostly just had to watch.

Young men and women sit at rows of seed packing machines under long cloth chutes that bring seed down from the floor above, about 1916

Next, the packets went into envelopes, five kinds of seeds to each envelope. The envelopes rode past the workers on a moving belt. Young women sat in a long row, and each one dropped in a single packet from her bin as the envelopes went by.

A long row of young women sits beside a moving belt of seed envelopes, two of them looking at the camera, about 1916

Seeds made votes

Lawmakers loved the seeds for one big reason. People who got a free gift in the mail might remember the name on the envelope at election time.

In 1903, the Topeka State Journal told about Representative Cromer of Indiana. When the other party tried hard to beat him, he stayed quiet and “sowed his district with garden seeds.” Then, the paper said, “he reaped a bountiful harvest at the polls.” In plain words, he planted seeds and harvested votes.

1903 newspaper story They Make Votes, about congressmen sending garden seeds home, with the headline Sent 40,000 Packages

The same story said Congressman Scott of Kansas sent home “between 30,000 and 40,000 of the little packages, each containing five varieties of seed.” His seeds went “to every county in the state, and every town in every county.”

Surprise! It’s a cantaloupe

There was one problem. Nobody could be sure what would come up. In 1917, a Denver paper said many people had complained that the seeds grew into “strange and wonderful mixtures.” Some planters expected a fancy new flower. Instead, “a meek and lowly cantaloupe has raised its head.”

1917 newspaper item saying a planter who expected a fine new flower got a meek and lowly cantaloupe instead

One congressman decided to find out for himself. In April 1916, Congressman Jesse S. Davenport of Oklahoma “donned a pair of blue overalls” and went across the river from Washington to a seven-acre farm. He wanted to grow the government seeds and see. He worried that the packets might “grow turnips instead of early spring radishes.” We could not find a later report on what his garden grew.

1916 newspaper story What Will Harvest Be, about Congressman Jesse S. Davenport putting on blue overalls to test the free seeds on a farm

The Grafton test

That brings us back to the classroom in Grafton. The agricultural botany class tested 11 kinds of government seeds. A germination test is simple. You keep a counted number of seeds warm and damp, then count how many sprout. Out of every 100 seeds, here is about how many came up:

Delphinium (a tall blue flower): 6
Kochia (a leafy bush for flower beds): 17
Lettuce, tomatoes and cosmos: 30 each
Onions, radishes and morning glory: 40 each
Poppy: 45
Beets: 50
Muskmelon: 84

1913 newspaper list of seed test results from the Grafton high school botany class, from delphinium at six per cent to muskmelon at eighty-four per cent

Even the muskmelon fell just short of the class’s own rule. Good seed, they wrote, “should test at least eighty-five per cent good.” They also made a fair point that still holds today: “Seeds grown at home need testing just as much as seeds sent out by the government.”

The next day, the Grand Forks paper wrote an editorial about it. It hoped “the Grafton experimenters will continue their work, and raise some of the plants to maturity, in order to see whether even the seeds that do germinate produce anything worth raising.” We could not find out whether they did.

1913 newspaper editorial Free Government Seeds, hoping the Grafton experimenters would raise some of the plants to maturity

By the numbers

40,000,000: packages of seed planned for 1902.
1,000 tons: what those packages weighed.
5: kinds of seed in each envelope.
6: delphinium seeds out of 100 that sprouted in Grafton.
$360,000: the yearly amount for free seeds in the early 1920s.

The last free seeds

Lawmakers argued about the free seeds for decades. In early 1923, the Senate finally said no. An Atlanta paper reported that the customary “$360,000 for ‘free seeds'” was refused. During the debate, senators said that “all too often radish seeds developed powerful onions, while Government carrot seeds ended in parsley.”

1923 newspaper editorial No More Free Seeds, saying radish seeds grew onions and carrot seeds grew parsley

Not everybody cheered. In Springfield, Massachusetts, backyard gardeners who had gotten free seeds “for the past 30 years or more” were “decidedly peeved.” They said the government seeds were better than the ones in stores.

1923 newspaper story Free Seeds Gone, Farmers Peeved, about Springfield, Massachusetts, gardeners missing the government seeds

That spring, Congressman Addison T. Smith of Idaho sent a supply of seeds to the newspaper in Mountain Home, Idaho, so the editors could hand them out. In his letter he explained that “there will be no seeds available for distribution next year.” The paper put it in plain words at the top: “LAST YEAR FOR GIVING FREE SEEDS.”

1923 newspaper item Last Year for Giving Free Seeds, with a letter from Congressman Addison T. Smith of Idaho

The photo at the top of this story was taken in Washington in 1919 or 1920, near the end. It shows the office of Senator Penrose of Pennsylvania, with a long table buried in seed envelopes waiting to go out. For more than 80 years, envelopes like these landed in mailboxes every spring. Lots of people planted them and hoped. But in 1913, a class in Grafton, North Dakota, did the simplest science there is. They planted the seeds and counted what came up.