With Congress coming back from recess (or ‘State Work Period’ in the Senate side, and ‘Constituent Work Week’ in the House side) it’s time for the usual contests that congressmembers hold. Today, this means baseball matches, or bets on their states’ sports teams. In the past, it has also meant other contests as well– including hog calling.
The contest originated after Otha D. Wearin, Democrat representing Iowa’s seventh district, disparaged the hollering tournament to be held in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. According to the Washington Post, Wearin claimed that “hog-calling in the corn belt is an art vastly superior to Louisiana dawn-whooping.” The Louisianan in charge of the tournament claimed that, “Iowa yells are attuned to the ear of a hog, and are appreciated only by a hog.”
Wearin, originally elected in 1932, was the youngest member of Congress at the time. However, he did have four and a half years of legislative experience under his belt when he disparaged Louisiana hog calling. Robert L. Mouton, Representative from Louisiana for just six months, refused to accept Wearin’s denigration, and thus challenged him to a hog-calling contest.
Mouton went so far as to order a couple of pigs from back home as a stake in the match. He had himself photographed in front of the Capitol with said porkers, as well as showing off his hollerin’ form.
Representative Mouton and pig. (LOC)
Mouton showing his form. (LOC)
The contest grew even more bitter after the whispers in the cloakrooms of Congress began: “Wearin and Mouton are phonies! Neither one could call a hog across the street, even with corn-cobs hidden in their pockets.” NBC requested that they show their form, and the Post reported that Mouton’s “mouth resembles a gaping satchel” but that he has a “warm alluring bellow which must be highly attractive to any sensitive hog.”
Meanwhile, Wearin has “unexpected physical reserves, with a window-rattling roar that makes his whole frame shimmy while he produces it.” This, in spite of his “slight, almost fragile build,” and his “bespectacled and studious … appearance.”
A few days later, the contest was over and Wearin was the winner– or so it appeared after Mouton had suddenly withdrawn. Wearin made some effort to collect the pigs that Mouton had put up, but they had gone missing, and Mouton’s clerk “denied any knowledge of their whereabouts.”
About ten days later, there was an actual contest. In the course of a Democratic meeting on Jefferson Island in the Chesapeake Bay, a hog-calling contest was held. Wearin and Mouton both took part, as did a Representative O’Connell. (The Post does not say whether it was the one from Rhode Island or Montana, though the latter seems more likely.) While this one was successful in the fact that there was a third contestant, it didn’t prove whether the Louisianan or the Iowan was actually better: it was, again in the words of the Post, “a no-decision bout.”
Hog-calling thus ended its run as Congressional sport; if you want to see what it’s all about, you’ll have to go to the Illinois State Fair, where it remains one of the many competitions.