Agriculture: How to Shoot Santa Claus

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Illinois College of Agriculture at Urbana in 1928, went back next year to take a master's degree in agronomy. Then, with a $4,000 bank loan and a hired hand, he started farming by renting his father's land. They were hard years for farmers, but Shuman got by.

Onward & Upward. In 1933 Shuman married Ida Wilson, an Indiana-born math teacher. By that time, he was climbing the ladder in the Farm Bureau, which he joined in 1929. By 1945 he was the $7,500-a-year president of the statewide Farm Bureau. Its offices were in Chicago, but Shuman decided it was best for his four children to grow up on the farm. After nine years, Shuman moved into the top spot of the national organization in 1954. Ida, whom he credits with having provided much of his drive, died four months before his election.

A year after he became Farm Bureau president. Shuman was making his regular weekend trip home on the Panama Limited, and sat down in the dining car next to a grey-eyed blonde. The train lurched, the blonde headed for the floor, and Charlie caught her. They got to talking. Romance blossomed. She was Mabel Ervin, a farm girl from 90 miles north of Sullivan who was working as a legal secretary in Chicago and was also headed home for the weekend. They were married a year later, have a son, Freedom Fighter (j.g.) George, 8, a carbon copy of his father.

Everything in the Catalogue. For Charlie, their eight-room, 55-year-old farm home is a weekend haven of peace and quiet. When he gets home from Chicago on Friday nights and dons his old clothes, Shuman goes out to look over the crops or attack the weeds that infest the vegetable garden behind the house. He grows nearly every fruit and vegetable* in the seed catalogue. Mabel, who can hardly use one-fifth of what he grows, has a surplus problem of her own. She has a big freezer and a cellar room for her preserves, but the bounty from Charlie's garden overflows both.

Shuman believes that "it's important for a fellow to keep his ability to communicate with farmers," makes a point each Saturday of going into town on errands and "talking to fellows who've come in, just like me. It restores me." If the weather and the season are right, he and George go fishing for bluegills on a lake on the farm, and on Saturday nights they sit in the comfortable Shuman parlor and watch Gunsmoke and Charlie's perennial favorite, Lawrence Welk.

Sunday church is an all-family affair. On one recent Sunday at Sullivan's Methodist Church, the ushers were Charlie, Sons Charles, John and Son-in-Law Roger Roney; Daughter-in-Law Mary played the organ. Until recently, Mabel was the church's membership secretary, and Daughter Janet often sings in the choir. Shuman teaches Sunday school after the service, as he has for 25 years.

A large part of Shuman's weekend is spent looking over the 1,013-acre mixed farm (corn, wheat, hogs, Aberdeen-Angus beef cattle) that Shuman owns in partnership with his three older sons. Like father, like sons. The Shuman boys are hotly against government in agriculture. "I don't see why the Federal Government should support me," said Charles. "Dad wouldn't accept a green check—from the Government—and neither would we."† Weekend over, Mabel drives Charlie back to Mattoon on Monday morning in time to catch the 7:06 back to