PEORIA MAGAZINE July 2022

P E O R I A R E T R O

POLITICAL CLOUT GAVE PEORIA ITS AG LAB Ev Dirksen delivered, and the dividends keep coming

BY CHRIS KAERGARD

W hen federal of f icials decided 85 years ago to build four state-of-the art research laboratories, three ended up in or near big cities close to the coastline: NewOrleans. Suburban Philadelphia. Suburban San Francisco. And the fourth? Peoria. How did we beat 240 other cities for this plum – today’s Ag Lab – and get it built here rather than by a major rail hub, port or population center? Call it a right-place, right-time inter section of what one Peoria newspaper called “political pressure” alongside community activism. This is the tale of the political muscle flexed by then-Rep. Everett McKinley Dirksen. Despite being in office only five years, the Pekin congressman had built an across-the-aisle relationship with then-Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace, had been an advocate for research done at the lab, and had a seat on the committee that steered the construction funds. In his autobiography, Dirksen wrote that among Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet

“With the creation of a huge laboratory in Peoria, in the very heart of the corn belt and in close proximity to the world’s finest commercial distilleries, it is expected that alcohol gasoline will receive increased attention,” Dirksen told the Peoria Journal-Transcript at the close of 1938. In his first few years in Congress, Dirksen proved himself a workhorse, ultimately winning a prime spot on the House Appropriations Committee. Just a year before the labs were created, he landed a spot on the panel’s agriculture subcommittee, which he’d already used to secure more funds for ethanol research. He told scientists at the lab in the late 1940s it was a “rather enviable position” to be in for steering money to the project. Newspaper records from the time indicate Dirksen’s role – alongside Illinois’ at-large Rep. E.V. Champion, a Peorian – in campaigning for Peoria as the lab’s home. It was Dirksen who sent a telegram to Journal-Transcript publisher Carl Slane themorning of Dec. 14, 1938, to inform him of the victory. In a separate letter that same day to wife Louella and daughter Joy, he

members, he was “probably closest” to Wallace because the latter’s department was most critical to his Illinois district’s interests, including what to do with enormous crop surpluses that were hurting farm prices. Wallace later praised Dirksen for his dedication to agriculture issues. While Dirksen was highly critical of crop control and quota policies, documents show he was an early proponent of using research to find uses for surplus agricultural goods – a key goal behind establishing the laboratories in farm legislation in 1938. He’d pushed for more federal funds to research “alky gas” for cars, the precursor to today’s ethanol and biofuels.

64 JULY 2022 PEORIA MAGAZINE