Charles F. Class Papers

The span years for this collection are 1931-1934; 1951-1956, with the vast majority of the material in the 1931-34 years. During this three year span, Charles Class had three different jobs. He began as Warren County Agricultural Agent in 1918 and was still in that position when this material begins. He resigned as agent April 30, 1932, to become Federal Inspector of Seed & Crop Loans. Initially, his area was quite large, but eventually he supervised loan operations in an 18 county district in south-central Ohio. On April 28, 1933 he was furloughed because of New Deal reorganization. The small amount of political material in this collection dates from this period. It consists primarily of newspaper clippings giving the candidates position on the agricultural issues of the day. Soon after, likely within a month, he secured a position as loan appraiser for the Federal Land Bank of Louisville. This job also lasted only about a year.

In the intervening years, for which there is a gap in the material, 1934-1950, Class kept a dairy farm and raised his family. In 1951 he became editor of The Miami Valley Farmer, Fairborn, a local farm periodical. By 1954 he had left the newspaper, likely because it was in financial difficulties.

Because of the three job changes in a three year span, it seemed best to divide the collection along those lines. Each series contains the same type of material, organized in roughly the same order within each series: correspondence, which includes federal bulletins, memos, and regulations intermixed in the correspondence; appraisals of farms; and Class' reports and expense accounts.

Series 1 contains material from 1931 to April 1932 when Class was Warren County Agricultural Agent. Rather than try to separate the federal bulletins and memos from the correspondence, the materials were left intermingled, exactly the way Class filed them. The folders are also labeled according to Class' designations. Any errors of inconsistencies are his [See note below, File 14, Box 2, Series 2]. The only exception is Correspondence File 1 which was originally labeled "Daily Reports from Thurs. March 29, 1934 to Mon. June 18, 1934." Processing revealed that none of the documents in the folder dated from 1934 and that all of them pertained to Seed and Fertilizer Loans in 1931.

There was only one file folder pertaining to Ohio Tobacco Farmers. Since the majority of the material dates from 1931, it was placed in this series. There are, however, some materials from 1933. The correspondence in this series, as in all the series, consists of letters from Class to fellow workers, supervisors, or loan applicants. Letter to Class are of the same nature. The memos are usually from his supervisors, although he occasionally wrote them as well.

Series 2 dates from May 1932 to April 1933, the year Class was Federal Inspector of Seed and Crop Loans, a position he likely acquired through the assistance of Senator Fess of Ohio. Of special interest in this series are Class' daily reports which date from July 1, 1932 to April 30, 1933. They contain information on how counties responded to the government effort to aid farmers and provide an in-depth look at the types of activities Federal Inspectors were expected to perform. Federal Inspectors were not only expected to process loan applications. They were also federal loan collectors. There are 3 tablets of Collections Registration in this series dating from July 28, 1932 to April 27, 1933.

File 1 and 2 of Box 2 in this series were loose in the original container between the envelopes Class used to file his papers. During processing, the material was arbitrarily divided in half and placed in two file folders because of its size, but the original order was maintained. Both folders contain correspondence from 1932 and 1933. Note: Despite its designation, File 14 of Box 2 contains no information on Payments to Washington.

Series 3 dates from May 1933 to June 1934, Class' position as appraiser with the Federal Land Bank of Louisville, Kentucky. The series includes appraisals of the field inspectors which was part of Class' responsibility, along with his co-worker, Forest G. Hall. The two men were responsible to train, supervise, conduct meetings, and report on the activities of 28 (possibly as many as 36) field appraisers. There are 17 individual appraisals.

Thomas T. Neely was the Reviewing Appraiser at the federal Land Bank. Class kept all correspondence to or from him in a separate folder. There is additional information and assessments of the field inspectors in this folder which clarifies much of what is contained in the appraisals. This folder should by read first before the individual appraisals.

Series 4 covers 1951-1956. It contains two items of special note. The first is a group of letters which Class clipped together. The cover letter is from his friend, Charles Waggoner to Mrs. Katherine Kennedy Brown, Republican National Committeewoman for Ohio in which he requests that Mrs. Brown consider Class for an appointment. Included in the group of letters is "My Autobiography - Briefly Sketched" by Charles F. Class, probably written at that time (1954).

The other items of note are multiple copies of The Miami Valley Farmer, a farm paper published in Vandalia. Class became the editor in 1951, but left in 1954. The issues are from 1952 and 1953. They are folded and remain in the file with the material with which they were originally filed. A full set of The Miami Valley Farmer from 1947-1956 is available on microfilm upon request. They were filmed as part of the Ohio Historical Newspaper Collection in Microforms.

Series 5, which is contained in the oversized box 5, is miscellaneous. It includes photographs, farm house plans, and maps. Class used the maps on his supervisory travels. The house plans are for a typical farm house and gate hinges. There is no indication in the material of how the plans were used. The photographs are black and white varying in size from 2"x 3" to approximately 4"x5". According to his Autobiography, Class was an accomplished amateur photographer. It is likely that these were taken by him. Except for one photograph, none of them are titled nor dated. The ones of the tent community are likely from the Summer Field Course in Farm Management he took in 1914.