Stoner’s tale was that
he found the wheat in his garden and nurtured it; it then produced a wonderful
crop, which allowed him to make a lot of money to look after his family. In the
newspaper account, Stoner was backed up by a government report. We will come to
that shortly. However, it should be noted that in examination and cross-examination
in court in 1913, Stoner denied ever makng it a matter of prayer. He also
denied naming it “Miracle Wheat” although he couldn’t remember who did.
Miracle Wheat received a considerable amount of publicity.
Even critics admitted it was a great producer, but
questioned its capacity to make decent flour. Supporters countered with tales
of blending the wheat to come up with – what we might call in modern parlance –
the best thing since sliced bread.
A key selling point in most accounts was the
government report that Stoner mentioned. It was made by one H. A. Miller. Some
have questioned who he really was. What we can say is that Miller really did
exist, he really was a government official and he really did visit the Stoner
farm.
Miller was an Agricultural Economist. He had a particular interest in tales of high yielding crops, as shown in this Farmers’ Bulletin from February 1916.
His visit to the Stoner farm was widely reported. A typical example is from the Hutchinson News for September 26, 1908.
Numerous newspapers
published these positive comments on the wheat, and continued to do so for the
next eight years, up until 1915.
That cut-off date is significent, because in 1916
the U.S. Department of Agriculture finally published its own 28-page report
entitled Alaska and Stoner, or “Miracle”
Wheats. This cast serious doubt on Miller’s report as presented. The publication
dealt with claims made for two strains of wheat and devoted over half its
length to the Miracle Wheat story thus far. What follows is taken from this official
government publication.
One of the first things the paper established was
that Kent Stoner was not quite just a folksy farmer who found a new strain of
wheat. Stoner was a businessman who worked hard to market his wheat. In 1907 he
made a deal with a company in Philadelphia to promote “Miracle Wheat.” The next
year he also made a deal with a seed company in Indiana but this time called it
“Marvelous Wheat.” It was also named “Eden” and “Forty-to-One.” The Department
of Agriculture preferred to go back to basics and called it “Stoner Wheat.”
In fairness to all concerned, comparing varieties of
wheat was not always an exact science. Depending on soil, climate, location,
time of year and seeding techniques employed, the results could be variable. My “miracle” could be your “problem.” After extensive trials
their considered judgment on page 27 was: “It is not as good as some and is
somewhat better than others.”
However, under the subheading “Exploitation in
Philadelphia” on page 17 the report had this to say:
“In the early spring of 1908 the promoter organized
a company to exploit the wheat and a 20-page illustrated circular was issued.
Plausible in most of its language, the circular contained several erroneous
statements. For instance, it contained what was said to be the report of the
Government agent who inspected the fields of Stoner (Miracle) wheat. The
language was so changed, howcver, as to alter entirely the meaning of the
report. The statement that in one field the Miracle wheat had yielded from 3 to
5 bushels more than other varieties on the same farm was made to read “two to
three times the yield of other varieties.” In like manner, the figures for the
average number of heads to each plant in the field and in the breeding nursery
were greatly exaggerated.”
They did not go as far as accusing Stoner of
dishonesty; for one thing, he was still very much around at the time. Nonetheless,
somewhere along the line and quite early on, Miller’s words had been changed. It
seems strange that no-one noticed before (including Miller) and the glowing testimonial
was just accepted and repeated at face value from then on.
When the Watch Tower Society became involved, no-one
could accuse them of dishonesty; they
simply reprinted what everyone else had been saying for some time.
The wheat appears to have come to CTR’s attention in
early 1908. The word “Miracle” probably caught someone’s eye. In line with
hopes of restitution of mankind and the earth being transformed into a paradise
he made a brief comment in The Watch Tower for March 15, 1908. In the “Views
from the Watch Tower” section of the magazine he commented on a current news
item:
The short article had a
few extracted newspaper comments, all positive, along with Miller’s report,
which in the version then in circulation used such expressions as “its quality
seems to be as good as, if not superior to, other varieties of winter wheat,” and
“excellent results.”
Apart from the
“earmarks of truth” comment in the opening paragraph (was that an unconscious
pun?), the only other personal comment CTR made was in the final wrap-up.
That was it. Under normal circumstances, it would
have been an end to the subject, a passing paragraph in a Watch Tower article.
Enter United Cemeteries and the Cemetery Superintendent, John Adam Bohnet.
The land the Cemetery Company owned totalled ninety
acres and only eighteen of them were ever used for the cemetery. This meant
that there was a large swathe of adjoining farmland that could be used for
other purposes. Bohnet had farming experience because he had worked on a farm
until the age of twenty-four. According to Bohnet’s own account (which we will
come to later) an agent for Kent Stoner called on CTR after hearing about the
Watch Tower reference. It wasn’t Stoner himself; CTR and Stoner only met for
the first time at a subsequent trial. The agent showed CTR a sample of the
wheat in the hope that he might give it more publicity. At that time, CTR
didn’t. When the agent shut the sample case, some chaff blew out and apparently
two grains of wheat with it onto the carpet. CTR had no known farming
experience, but he picked up the seeds and later, at Bohnet’s request, gave
them to him. Bohnet then sought permission from Cemetery Manager, Walter Spill,
which must just have been a formality, and attempted to grow it there. From his
personal experience, as he saw it, the yield was exceptionally good. So he purchased
more seed and donated some of the new crop to the Watch Tower Society.
This is where the problems arose. Three years after
the initial reference, Bohnet suggested a fund-raising exercise. Many Watch
Tower readers were small-scale farmers. They could buy the seed on the
understanding that they were really making a donation to the Watch Tower fund. It
seemed like a good idea at the time. Bohnet announced that he had bought more
seed at one dollar twenty-five cents a pound, so he proposed offering it at one
dollar a pound. Other Bible Student farmers including a Samuel J Fleming of
Wabash, Indiana, joined him in this. It was claimed that the same wheat seed
was then being sold by others at this figure or higher.
This announcement was made inside the front cover of the June 1, 1911, Watch Tower magazine.
There was another brief announcement about shipping
inside the cover of the August 1 issue of the magazine, and that was it. There were
no further references to it in any Watch Tower magazine throughout 1911. It was
hardly a big campaign and a casual reader of the paper could easily have missed
it.
Unfortunately, three months after the above announcement
was made, the price dropped elsewhere. In September of that year Stoner and his
business partners found they had a glut of seed, so drastically reduced the
price to five dollars a bushel. (For wheat calculations, a bushel is sixty
pounds). However, in a sense this was irrelevant; the original Watch Tower deal
was simply adherents buying the seed but understanding that in so doing they
were really making a donation to the cause. As the Watch Tower notice
commented, Bohnet would give “the entire proceeds to our Society.”
Then the accusations started.
The basic charge was that CTR had claimed that a
strain of wheat was miraculous, had marketed it at inflated prices to a
credulous public, and then had personally pocketed the proceeds. This had to be
fraud. It was hedged a little more
subtly than that; the lawyers had gone over it first, but that was the basic
drift.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper had a history of
attacking CTR. They attacked the idea of Watch Tower being behind United
Cemeteries and suggested that respected Pittsburgh clergy were “conned” into
supporting it. This is not our subject here, but we should note that the clergymen
in question were never asked for money and frankly must have been rather obtuse
if they didn’t notice who they had signed up with. But the Eagle’s agenda was
quite plain.
The best policy might have been to ignore the newspaper.
Yesterday’s news tends to be ephemeral by nature. People, then as now, read a newspaper
that panders to their prejudices, and generally forget the details when the
next issue appears. The problem with “Miracle Wheat” was that CTR and his
associates didn’t ignore it. The story might have faded into obscurity had they
done so.
The catalyst was a satirical cartoon. Below is from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper for September 23, 1911.
Image taken from trial transcript exhibits (Google Books)
The reference to the Onion bank was a reference to
the Brooklyn Union Bank. It had recently gone bankrupt, and the Eagle had conducted
a campaign against it accusing its directors of fraud.
CTR sued. The transcript of the court case has
survived and the testimony is fascinating. But he lost the case.
The case came to court in January 1913. The trial soon
got bogged down on testimony on how good the wheat was. It was a case of you
call your experts and I’ll call mine. Dozens of satisfied farmers waxed lyrical
about it, a government official was more neutral. The testimony veered off into
other attacks on CTR. His estranged wife Maria came to Brooklyn and turned up
in court, appearing for the Eagle. All she supplied was that CTR held the
majority of voting shares in the Society, which was a matter of public record
anyway.
On its own it was a non-event, but maybe it had a
bearing on why CTR, who was present in court, did not give evidence personally.
One can just picture him and Maria watching each other across the courtroom. As
his counsel J F Rutherford would later note in his booklet A Great Battle in Ecclesiastical Heavens, it wasn’t CTR’s wheat. He
had no first-hand information on it. He didn’t discover it, didn’t name it, and
received no personal benefit from it.
The Society received the donations, and CTR had a controlling interest in the
Society, but these donations were for its religious work.
It was also argued by the Eagle’s lawyers that the
Watch Tower Society’s reputation had not suffered by the newspaper’s attacks because
its receipts, provided by W E Van Amburgh, had consistently risen over the
previous three years. All in all, the argument that CTR had suffered loss as a
result of a cartoon did not go well.
After
the Canadian Ross libel trial, CTR commented in the Watch Tower for October
1st, 1915: "We are not certain that we did the wisest and best thing – the
thing most pleasing to the Lord in the matter mentioned." On reflection, CTR
might have said much the same for the Miracle Wheat case.
The aftermath was that all who had bought wheat were
advised they could have a full refund, and the total proceeds, about $1,800,
were kept in a special account for that purpose. No-one charged CTR with fraud
and no-one asked for their money back. They had been happy to donate in the
same way that John Adam Bohnet had originally been happy to donate the seed.
A few years later, Bohnet wrote up his experiences in
an article in The Golden Age magazine for April 9, 1924. Some of his article is
a polemic against clergymen who had chosen to attack CTR, not on doctrine, but
on a sideline like “Miracle Wheat.” However, by extracting the relevant
paragraphs, this is how he told the story in his own words:
“Facts about Miracle Wheat
Much has been said and written about Miracle Wheat
and its superiority over the more common strains of wheat; and people in
general were thought to be quite well informed on the subject. And not only are
they neglecting to preach the gospel, but they are engaged in evil speaking.
It seems, however, that some ministers are not
informed and are given to misleading utterances to their congregations instead
of adhering to the delivery of the gospel message.
Pastor Russell Had No Wheat
In the first place, Pastor Russell never sold a
pound of Miracle Wheat, and never even had a pound of it to sell. Here are the
exact facts:
Pastor Russell learned that a Mr. Stoner of
Fincastle, Virginia, had some Miracle Wheat, that the original stool had 214
stalks, and that Mr. Stoner was raising this strain of wheat with a view to
selling it for $1.00 per pound. Pastor Russell therefore made mention of it in
his journal, The Watch Tower. When
some time later the agent of Mr. Stoner out of courtesy for the Watch Tower article, called upon Pastor
Russell and showed him a sample of the wheat, two grains of the wheat fell upon
the carpet in Pastor Russell’s study. These grains were picked up by him and on
request were handed to the writer.
I planted the two grains in my garden, and raised
from them 1,312 grains of wheat. These I planted in turn, and raised five and
one-third pounds. I in turn planted the same and raised eight and one-half
bushels. Then I wrote to Pastor Russell, telling him that I wanted interested Watch Tower readers to have each pound
of this wheat for their planting, and suggested that $1.00 per pound should be
charged for it, and that every Watch
Tower reader who had ground space would gladly pay this price to get a
start. “For,” said I, “they will send in a dollar or more, anyhow, for the
spread of the gospel; and thus the wheat will be broadcast fairly well; and
whatever money may be received for these eight and one-half bushels of wheat I
want placed in the general fund of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society for
the spread of the truth.”
To this Pastor Russell readily agreed, and placed in
his journal a notice of Miracle Wheat securable at $1.00 per pound. The wheat was
mine; I, J. A. Bohnet, set the price at $1.00 per pound; Pastor Russell
had nothing to do neither with the price-making, nor with the sale of the
wheat, except at my suggestion to make mention of it in his journal.
I then purchased a peck of this wheat myself and
planted it for other sales which I made; and I paid $1.00 per pound. So I was
not charging others any more than I myself was willing to pay.
The Yield from One Pound
The lowest yield from one pound sown that was
reported to me was eighty pounds, and the highest reported was two hundred and
twenty pounds from one pound sown. Therefore the wheat was miracle sure enough.
Wheat Testimony in Court
When nine of the thirty Miracle Wheat growers at the
court trial had given testimony in favor of this wheat, the presiding judge
stated in substance that the superiority of Miracle Wheat over all other
strains of wheat had been so thoroughly demonstrated that any further testimony
in favor of Miracle Wheat would be superfluous. The other twenty-one Miracle
Wheat growers were therefore not called upon to give testimony.
People do not like the name "Miracle,” Therefore
in various parts of the country this same wheat goes by the name of the man
who introduced it there; as
for instance, in Tennessee
it
is called ''Hobbs wheat"; in Maryland, "Weber wheat"; and in some
places "Stoner wheat."
Nobody has called it "Russell wheat" that I know of; nor has it been called
''Bohnet wheat." But the
preachers delight in slapping
at
Pastor Russell about Miracle wheat, when in reality he had no connection whatever
therewith.
Miracle Wheat of Superior Quality
Wherever Miracle Wheat has been shown in competition
with other strains of wheat at the state and county fairs, it has always taken
first prize and the sweepstake prize. The Webers of .Maryland hold the silver cup
of three successive years of prize winnings with this wheat over all other
wheats.
The chief difficulty with Miracle Wheat growing is
that the farmer sows it too thick. In this case it will not stool. The wheat
must be sown very sparsely. When rightly sown, it stools out wonderfully. I
have frequently found thirty straws from one grain sown. I have found often fifty
straws, all of good heading, from a single grain. I have seen as many as ninety
stalks from one grain, and the same six feet tall.
Mr. McKnight, the wheat expert, who traversed every
wheat district in Europe, testified under oath that in all his life he had
never seen as many as four stalks from one sown grain of wheat, excepting
Miracle Wheat. This testimony the writer personally heard in the court room.
Miracle Wheat is all that Pastor Russell proclaimed
it to be. If anyone is at fault for charging $1.00 per pound for the Miracle
Wheat, it is the writer. Those who paid a dollar for one pound never made a
"kick"; they paid it gladly.”
Bohnet worked hard in his article to take full
responsibility for what happened. Of course, it must be acknowledged that CTR
as Watch Tower editor had published the original story and had also agreed to
the fund raising exercise. But Bohnet claimed it all as his idea; there was no
fraud intended and none established.
Bohnet’s reference to the wheat being renamed by other growers ties in with a news item in the New Era Enterprise newspaper for October 19, 1920. Here the reference is to prize-winning “Weber Wheat” as grown by the H. Weber and Sons Company of Maryland. The company had been founded by Henry Weber, a former vice-president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (although not the first vice-president as the article suggests). This Enterprise article was also written by John Adam Bohnet.
Looking back, CTR probably wished that Bohnet had
kept his bright ideas to himself. As an early reader of this chapter commented,
it would have been far better if Bohnet had just sold the wheat direct and then
made his own personal donation to the Society and its work.
