Vintage Polio Babyboomer Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance Ink Blotter/Card Pandemic

Description

Long before the current pandemic, polio panicked millions of American parents. First reported in the United States in 1894, there were at least three major polio epidemics in the first half of the twentieth century. An outbreak in 1949 scared the post-war generation, who had survived a Depression and two world wars. Their concern was that the disease could be spread by flies and mosquitoes, and newspapers routinely printed pictures of child polio victims (it mostly affected children) in the late summer months of the 1940s and early 1950s as a warning to keep doors and windows screened if not closed. Swimming pools and movie theaters were also closed. Two vaccines, one a job and the other oral, became available in the late 1950s and saved perhaps millions of baby boomers from the serious and occasionally deadly disease.
Insurance companies got into the act beginning in the 1930s, offering polio insurance for infants only. The policy advertised on this ink blotter went up to ,000 and was offered by Farm Bureau Insurance, a primarily American Midwestern company founded in 1919 that served farmers and their families. The blotter measures 6.5 x 3 inches (17 x 8 cm). It is in very good to excellent condition with the rubber-stamped address of a Goshen, IN insurance agent on the front along with a little excess stamp pad ink on the front and back. Blotter has not been used. A true MCM decoration (it would frame well) and a reminder that epidemics and pandemics are nothing new.
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DI01070