"Improving" the middle landscape: Conservation and social change in rural southern Michigan, 1890 to 1940.

详细信息   

• 作者：Britton ; Glenn Worth.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2005
• 导师：Aron, Stephen
• 毕业院校：University of California
• 专业：History, United States.;Geography.;Urban and Regional Planning.
• ISBN：9780542221996
• CBH：3181743
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：24952810
• Pages：451

文摘

This dissertation examines rural transformation in the northern U.S. at the turn of the twentieth century, and it presents a departure from the usual portrayal of social change as being the result of urban/industrial forces. Up to now, historians have largely overlooked the vital connections between agricultural methods employed by farmers and the crucial changes that occurred in rural society. Rather than urban influences coming from without, farmers and rural leaders themselves were the key figures in the transformation of agriculture during the Progressive Era. Southern Michigan was a seedbed of agricultural reform at this important turning point in U.S. history. During the region's settlement period prior to about 1890, farmers relied on extensive wheat culture that combined minimal cultivation with foraging in an undeveloped commons in order to achieve freehold status and a comfortable independence. Faced with a crisis of the late settlement period characterized by overproduction, declining wheat prices, and soil exhaustion, farmers intensified production by means of improvements adopted from Europe's Agricultural Revolution. They helped usher in what E. P. Thompson describes as the "new political economy" with higher capital investments, a deeper commitment to commercial production, changing labor relations, and an emphasis on efficiency. New farming "cultures" centered on soil conservation were intended to help bring about a sustainable agriculture, and farm leaders accommodated rank-and-file farmers in these developments as much as the other way around. By employing mixed strategies, farmers reclaimed wetlands through artificial drainage, purchased purebred livestock, and helped spread horticultural practices to mainstream farming. In the process, they contributed to the enclosure of the commons and radically transformed the rural landscape. Increasingly specialized production resulted in the creation of new standards and the formation of powerful new special interest groups. The general-purpose family farm that had balanced household and market production was torn between highly competitive and specialized cultures. As land that failed to produce according to the new standards became marginalized, and as successful farmers consolidated their holdings in the countryside, the gap between rich and poor widened and social dislocations ensued.