Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Iowa Cow War/archive1

Iowa Cow War

 * Nominator(s): SL93 (talk) 02:23, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

This article is about a series of violent disputes over the testing of cows for bovine tuberculosis in 1931. After distrustful farmers tried and failed to repeal the testing program, they gathered in numbers to block tests from taking place. The farmers believed that the test might infect cows with tuberculosis or make pregnant cows have spontaneous abortions. They also believed that the testing was unconstitutional. SL93 (talk) 02:23, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Image review


 * Suggest adding alt text. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:53, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I added alt text, but I'm not sure if it is acceptable - "Five Iowa National Guardsmen in uniform posing by a machine gun". SL93 (talk) 03:01, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * How did you verify that there was no copyright renewal? It's usually easier to verify no copyright notice. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  03:41, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I didn't upload the image, but did. SL93 (talk) 04:11, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I see that I uploaded the uncropped version. All that I remember is that it was suggested to me during the GA process by someone and it was approved for that status with it. SL93 (talk) 04:18, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think this newspaper is likely under copyright. But to confirm that, either you have to look at the entire issue of the paper and verify lack of copyright notice, or else scan a lot of copyright renewal records. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  05:28, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I will look through the entire issue on Newspapers.com once logging in works again. It currently says "There was an error while loading the form. Please contact customer support". SL93 (talk) 14:28, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I found the issue here, but I now see that Newspapers.com through the Wikipedia Library is being fixed. SL93 (talk) 10:55, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

If.bovine TB was eradicated in 1929, it's definitionally impossible for some cows to have been infected with it in 1931. Compare elimination vs. eradication of infectious diseases. Also see the edits I made to the article. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  03:47, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Driveby
 * The sentence was just poorly worded, and it was not eradicated in 1929. I changed it to "Bovine tuberculosis was an issue in Iowa prior to 1929 when attempts at eradication was approved." SL93 (talk) 04:07, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * What does "was an issue" mean? Was there any time lag for eradication attempts to have results in terms of lowering disease burden? (t &#183; c)  buidhe  04:34, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I am going off of two paragraphs in the source on page 15. SL93 (talk) 04:45, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * The "issue" was in the next sentence. I combined them now - "Bovine tuberculosis was an issue in Iowa prior to 1929 when attempts at eradication was approved, with an Iowa veterinarian in 1894 saying that tuberculosis was the main issue that his office faced." SL93 (talk) 04:51, 5 July 2024 (UTC)


 * Driveby
 * "when attempts at eradication was approved" isn't grammatically correct -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:29, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I changed it to “were approved” which I think is what you mean. SL93 (talk) 13:52, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Comments

 * Bovine TB needs linking in the body as well as the lead
 * Also Iowa needs linking. I don't believe that on a global scale it is well known enough to not need a link.  In fact I would so far as to suggest that you refer to "the US state of Iowa" on first usage
 * "make pregnant cows have spontaneous abortions" - link "spontaneous abortion" to Miscarriage, as I think most laypeople think of an abortion as an active termination of a pregnancy by a third party (i.e. something that can't happen spontaneously) and won't be aware of this usage
 * "The farmers did not receive the market share of their cows after they were slaughtered with the slaughter value being subtracted from the appraised value" => "The farmers did not receive the market share of their cows after they were slaughtered, with the slaughter value being subtracted from the appraised value"
 * Link Des Moines
 * "E. C. Mitchell, who previously worked with four other farmers" => "E. C. Mitchell, who had previously worked with four other farmers"
 * "were at farmer William C. Butterbrodt's farm to test his cows for tuberculosis, northeast of Tipton" => "were at farmer William C. Butterbrodt's farm, northeast of Tipton, to test his cows for tuberculosis"
 * Was the above occurring at the same time as the protest mentioned in the previous sentence? It's unclear
 * "forced off of E. C. Mitchell's farm [....] to review the tests of five cows" - someone forced him off the farm so as to review the tests? This doesn't seem to read correctly to me....
 * "automobiles that were parked to prevent their cows from being tested" - the automobiles owned the cows?
 * "while attacking the veterans" - is "veterans" a typo?
 * "and they put mud in his radiator" => "and mud was put in his radiator" would be more consistent with the rest of the sentence
 * "The advancement of soldiers backed up the testing with drawn bayonets" => "The advancement of soldiers with drawn bayonets backed up the testing" -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 10:32, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I have fixed the issues. Thank you. SL93 (talk) 10:53, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Support -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 16:58, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

HF
I was raised on a farm one state south of Iowa, so I'll take a look at this. Hog Farm Talk 18:19, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

As a starting point, I think you're better off citing Moeller directly rather than thorough Genweb, which is of questionable reliability. Also, the Wikipedia Library brings up a 1953 Annals of Iowa article written by Frank Dileva titled "Frantic Farmers Fight Law". It covers some other agricultural concern areas in the same time frame, but it looks like it has a fair amount of content about the Cow War. This looks like something that should be used in this article. Should pp. 437-441 of Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West be utilized? What about pp. 257-259 of Iowa: The Middle Land? Is One - Armed Bandits and Other Stories of Iowa's Past and Present a high-quality RS? Both the BMJ and the Iowa State University sources cite/refer to this work, but it's not clear that this is actually reliable enough for FAC. I'm struggling to find academic reviews of this outside of the Annals of Iowa; I don't expect that source to be usable for FAC from a reliability standpoint but wanted to see if you had any thoughts on that. For the Cedar County source - is a local musuem journal a high-quality reliable source for FAC? Why isn't the chapter "The Farm Strike" from Patterns and Perspectives in Iowa History consulted? There's a couple relevant pages in [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Arresting_Contagion/nPhoBgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22iowa+cow+war%22&pg=PA293&printsec=frontcover Arresting Contagion recently published by Harvard.

While I don't know how useful or necessary the Harvard source would be, I think without citing the 1953 Annals of Iowa article and several of the other sources above, this article currently fails WP:FACR #1c and is an example of the FUTON bias. As a note, I found the stuff linked above through either quick searching through the wikipedia library and google books and through reviewing what some of the sources cited in this article cite. I sadly have to oppose right now. Hog Farm Talk 00:26, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Withdraw
I will withdraw this. SL93 (talk) 00:29, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
 * - SchroCat (talk) 04:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

FrB.TG (talk) 05:47, 11 July 2024 (UTC)