GREGORY, Clifford V.

GREGORY, SPRINGER

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 11/11/2014 at 00:54:13

The Globe Gazette
Mason City, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa
Saturday, June 22, 1940, Page 16

THEY STARTED HERE
No. 14 in a Mason City Series of Success Stories

CLIFFORD V. GREGORY, Farmer Leader and Editor

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Agriculture and journalism are two entirely dissimilar subjects, but as Clifford V. Gregory, former Cerro Gordo county farm youth and correspondent for the Globe-Gazette can testify, they can be entwined to make a most successful career.

For Mr. Gregory is one of America's outstanding farm leaders and farm paper publishers. Not associate publisher of Wallace's Farmer and Iowa Homestead, he has blazed a conspicuous trail in his field since leaving his Cerro Gordo county home nearly 35 years ago for Iowa State college [present-day Iowa State University].

Today Clifford Gregory is not only associate publisher of Wallace's Farmer, but also holds the same position with the Wisconsin Agriculturist and Farmer, another giant farm publication. He holds prominent posts in governmental farm organizations and is a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

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Clifford V. Gregory was born on a Cerro Gordo county farm about 10 miles southwest of Mason City and near Burchinal Oct. 20, 1884, the son of Elmer O. and Millie E. Gregory.

Following his grade school and high school education he went to Iowa State college [present-day Iowa State University] at Ames, where he quickly showed the abilities and capacities that have marked his rise since. He was prominent in college affairs and showed an interest in journalism. His first contact with newspaper work had come when he was the Burchinal correspondent for the Globe-Gazette. The liking for journalism never left him. With completing only two years toward his bachelor of science degree in animal husbandry, Iowa State made him a one-man department of journalism in 1908.

Being graduated in 1910 from the animal husbandry course at Ames, the youth was offered a position as an instructor in journalism at the college and served in that capacity for the following year. Before school was out, however, he received an offer to go to Chicago as editor-in-chief of the Prairie Farmer, one of the first farm periodicals in the middle west. It was founded in 1841.

The Prairie Farmer at that time was a far cry from the giant enterprise that is is now. In 1937, the year that Clifford Gregory left it to come to Des Moines, it was a bi-weekly publication with a circulation of well over 300,000. This fact is a tribute to the 26 years the one time Cerro Gordo county farm boy put in at the head of the publication.

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During this period Mr. Gregory was also becoming interested in the Prairie Farmer Publishing company, the parents organization of the farm paper, and served as vice president of its company from the time he joined the Prairie Farmer group until he left in 1937.

After World War I, Clifford Gregory's editorially defended the Chicago Milk Producers' Association and is credited with the authorship of the Illinois statute legalizing cooperative marketing.

And in 1928 he became vice president of the Agricultural Broadcasting company, operator of Chicago's famed radio station WLS. Thus he proved his ability in the fields of agriculture, journalism, business and radio, making a name for himself in all of them.

Just after graduation from Iowa State, Clifford Gregory married a Clear Lake girl, Edna L. Springer. That was on June 27, 1910. They are now the parents of six children ranging in age from 27 to 6 years and recenlty became grandparents.

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Although the better than a quarter of a centry in Chicago was devoted to a large extent to bringing more agricultural news and information to hundreds of thousands of middle western farmers via the Prairie Farmer and WLS, Mr. Gregory was far from inactive in agricultural fields disconnected with the publishing and radio businesses. The former North Iowan is credited with having helped write much of the important farm legislation of the last two decades.

He was one of the organizers of the Illinois Agricultural association and of the American Farm Bureau Federation. In 1936 President Roosevelt recognized his prominent place in American agriculture by appointing him to a commission which investigated consumer and farm co-operatives in various European countries.

And today he is a member of the agricultural advisory council of the United States department of agriculture, of the Iowa advisory committee of the farm security administration and is chairman of the committee which sponsors the annual National Farm Institute at Des Moines. The National Farm Institute is recognized as the outstanding meeting of its kind in the country - unique in its aims and its functions.

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Clifford Gregory is also a trustee of the Farm Foundation, founded by the late Alexander Legge, whos name is familiar to all farmers. He has been a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve bank since Jan. 1.

All of these honors - and many of them are more than just honors in that they call for real ability and understanding of the problems and situtations of farmers today - are testimony to the position Mr. Gregory holds among the leaders in agriculture.

In 1937 the former North Iowan sold his interests in the Prairie Farmer Publishing and the Agricultural Broadcasting companies and returned to his native state to become associate publisher of The Wallace's Farmer and Iowa Homestead.

This publication has a circulation of 275,000 and is said to be read in nine out of every 10 farm homes in Iowa. The circulation of the Wisconsin Agriculturalist and Farmer, of which he is also the associate publisher, is approximately 135,000, most of it in Wisconsin. This paper is published at Racine.

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Mr. Gregory is president of the Mid-West Unit of Farm papers, a member of the Field Museum of National History Society, of the famed Union League and National Press clubs and the Masonic lodge.

Just to prove his versatility, business acumena nd ability to keep abreast of the times, he is principal owner of the Des Moines Flying Service, Iowa distributor of one of the finest and most widely used makes of small airplanes.

And now, 30 years after his graduation from college, Clifford Gregory has attained the stature in his field - a great one - that can come to few men. He is a leader in agriculture in the great middle west, probably the finest and greatest farming area the world can boast. Certainly it is the leading industry of this country, for the riches it produces are equal to the combined wealth of many of the country's other large industries.

And it would certainly not be wrong to say that Clifford Gregory has had a great deal to do with bringing that industry to its present advanced state. For it is only through the dessemination of knowledge that progress can be made. And that has been the keynote of his career.

NOTE: Clifford died November 18, 1941, His epitaph reads, "After Night - Eternal Morn." Edna L. (Springer) Gregory was born in 1889 and died in 1980. Her epitaph reads, "Joy Cometh In The Morning." Clifford and Edna were interred at Wheaton Cemetery, Wheaton, Illinois.

Photograph courtesy of Globe-Gazette

Transcription and note by Sharon R. Becker, May of 2014

Cerro Gordo Biographies maintained by Lynn Diemer-Mathews.
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