Town & Country

Tall and green is the corn grown by the Farmers Hoffman on their Blue Ribbon Farm near Somerville, N. J. Tall and grim are the factories that have grown up there in the last generation, where Johns-Manville Co. makes asbestos products and the factory village of Manville has clustered like industrial fungus.

Broad and white is the twelve-room house where live the stocky Teutonic Farmers Hoffman--florid Craig Hoffman and his dark, big-handed brother Grover.

Narrow and dingy, made of lath and tarpaper, are the shacks where some of Johns-Manville's unskilled immigrant laborers, mostly Poles, live.

In one of the shacks lives the Widow Kolesar, a dumpy little Slav who chars for her living and fills her four children's bellies with vegetables from their scrawny "garden." Her "old man" was killed while working on the railroad. Nearby lives the Klementovich family. Mother Klementovich is virtually a widow; her "old man" is serving a two-year term in jail for beating her. She works in the factory, tends chickens, takes in a boarder. There are four little Klementoviches.

One afternoon last week Johnny Kolesar, 12, suggested to his sister Anna, 10, that they make an expedition to the Hoffman brothers' cornfield. Anna had been there before and told of its glories. Barefoot along the dirt path they rolled their hoops. Passing the Klementovich shanty they stopped, invited Helen and Joe to come too. Some other children joined the party at the Hoffman field but left early. The Kolesars and Klementoviches stayed on; walking through the tall green corn, picking the ears. They were going to make a fire in the nearby woods and cook some "supper."

As Anna told the story later, this is what happened:

"It was still light like the sun was about to go down. We all spread out in the cornstalks. I could not see Joe all the time.

"I heard a gun go off and a bullet whizz. I saw Johnny fall. He didn't cry; he just lay there still. I heard Helen cry out: 'Johnny, I'm shot!'. . .

"I went through the corn and looked out. There was a man with a gun. He had on a hat and brown pants. ... I had a bag with me but I dropped it when I heard the shots.

"I went back into the corn when I saw the man with the gun and hid a while. Then I walked along toward the woods. When I got there I found my brother and Helen lying on the ground. . . .

"Then I started running toward home. On the way I met Helen's mother. I told her 'Hurry up, Helen's shot.' So she and Helen's grandmother went back with me and picked up Helen and Johnny on their backs and carried them home. Then I went and told my mother."

Johnny Kolesar died instantly, his back riddled with a load of No. 4 shot. Joe Klementovich was taken to a hospital, apparently dying. He was ten years old. Helen Klementovich's wounds were less dangerous. Police soon seized Farmer Craig Hoffman, identified by Anna Kolesar as "the man in brown pants." He denied shooting the children. In his house was found a ten-gauge shot-gun.* Police, fearing a lynching, dispersed muttering crowds, locked up Farmer Craig, charged him with murder, assault with intent to kill, atrocious assault and battery.

Farmers of the region viewed the shooting elementally. They said that in defense of his crops, especially prize corn like the Hoffmans', a man is justified in killing, especially when the thieves are "little Polacks" from shantytown. In the town, people cried for vengeance upon brutal countrymen who will shoot children, whether they are "snitam cinching" corn or not.

Few newspapers devoted much attention to the incident or explored its sociological implications. But Bernarr Macfadden's horror-loving New York Evening Graphic sent a man out to pose and photograph the Widow Kolesar lamenting in a cornfield. The photograph was published under the caption: She stood in tears amid the alien corn.

*A ten gauge shotgun will kill an elk.