Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T19:25:12.022Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

New Deal Regulation and the Revolution in American Farm Productivity. A Case Study of the Diffusion of the Tractor in the Corn Ielt, 1920–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Sally Clarke
Sally Clarke
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, the University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Based on the cost savings of tractors relative to horses, nearly twice as many farmers in the Corn Belt should have invested in tractors as actually did so in the 1920s. During the Great Depression, however, the proportion of farmers owning tractors jumped from 25 to 40 percent. I argue that financial barriers explain farmers' reluctance to buy this expensive invention during the 1920s, while two New Deal regulatory agencies altered farmers' investment climate and spurred the adoption of capital equipment.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 101 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Ackerman, Joseph, “Factors Influencing Farm Lending Experience in Coles and the Six Adjoining Counties, Illinois, 1917–1933” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1937).Google Scholar
Alston, Lee J., “Farm Foreclosures in the United States During the Interwar Period,” this JOURNAL, 43 (12 1983), pp. 885–903.Google Scholar
Ankli, Robert E., “Horses Vs. Tractors in the Corn Belt,” Agricultural History, 54 (01 1980), pp. 134–48.Google Scholar
Baker, Gladys L., Rasmussen, Wayne D., Wiser, Vivian, and Porter, Jane M., Century of Service: The First 100 Years of the United States Department of Agriculture (Washington, DC, 1963).Google Scholar
Brodell, A. P., and Pike, R. S., “Farm Tractors: Type, Size, Age, and Life” (U.S. Department of Agriculture, F.M. 30, February 1942).Google Scholar
Burroughs, Roy J., “Experience of Michigan Rural Banks with Short Term Loans to Farmers” (Michigan State College Agricultural Experiment Station, Special Bulletin No. 311, August 1941), pp. 1–80.Google Scholar
Case, H. C. M., Wilcox, R. H., and H. A. Berg, “Organizing the Corn-Belt Farm for Profitable Production” (University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 329, June 1929).Google Scholar
Cooper, Martin R., Barton, Glen T., and Albert P. Brodell, “Progress of Farm Mechanization” (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous Publication No. 630, October 1947).Google Scholar
Clarke, Sally, “Farmers as Entrepreneurs: Regulation and Innovation in American Agriculture during the Twentieth Century” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1987), pp. 54–222.Google Scholar
David, Paul, “The Mechanization of Reaping in the Ante-Bellum Midwest,” in Rosovsky, Henry, ed., Industrialization in Two Systems: Essays in Honor of Alexander Gerschenkron (New York, 1966), pp. 3–39.Google Scholar
Farm Credit Administration, Second Annual Report of the Farm Credit Administration (Washington, DC, 1935).Google Scholar
Farm Credit Administration, Third Annual Report of the Farm Credit Administration (Washington, DC, 1936).Google Scholar
Hopkins, John A. Jr, “Horses, Tractors and Farm Equipment” (Iowa State College Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 264, 06 1929).Google Scholar
Horton, Donald C., Larsen, Harald C., and Wall, Norman J., “Farm-Mortgage Credit Facilities in the United States” (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous Publication No. 478, 1942), pp. 17–241.Google Scholar
Iowa Department of Agriculture, Thirty-Fifth Annual Year Book of Agriculture (Des Moines, 1934).Google Scholar
Johnston, P. E., “Reducing Costs of Corn Harvesting” (University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station, Circular No. 396, 08 1932).Google Scholar
Johnston, P. E., and Myers, K. H., “Harvesting the Corn Crop in Illinois” (University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 373, 09 1931).Google Scholar
Johnston, P. E., and Wills, J. E., “A Study of the Cost of Horse and Tractor Power on Illinois Farms” (University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 395, 12 1933), pp. 282–322.Google Scholar
Jones, Lawrence, and Durand, David, Mortgage Lending Experience in Agriculture (Princeton, 1954).Google Scholar
Kendrick, John, Productivity Trends in the United States (Princeton, 1961).Google Scholar
Kendrick, John, “Productivity,” in Porter, Glenn L., ed., Encyclopedia of Economic History (New York, 1980), vol. 1.Google Scholar
Kendrick, John, Improving Company Productivity (Baltimore, 1984).Google Scholar
Lindert, Peter, “Long-run Trends in American Farmland Values,” Agricultural History, 62 (Summer 1988), pp. 45–85.Google Scholar
McGraw, Thomas K., Prophets of Regulation (Cambridge, MA, 1984).Google Scholar
Melvin, Bruce L., “Rural Youth on Relief” (Works Progress Administration, Research Monograph No. 11, 1937).Google Scholar
Nelson, , Aaron, , “Experience of the Federal Land Bank with Loans in Four North Central Iowa Counties, 1917–1947” (Ph.D. diss., Iowa State College, 1949), pp. 38–81.Google Scholar
Regan M. M., “The Farm Real Estate Situation 1936–37, 1937–38, and 1938–39” (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Circular No. 548, October 1939).Google Scholar
Reynoldson L. A., Humphries, W. R., S. R. Speelman, E. W. McComas, and W. H.Youngman, “Utilization and Cost of Power on Corn Belt Farms” (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Technical Bulletin No. 384, October 1933).Google Scholar
Rucker, Randal R., and Alston, Lee J., “Farm Failures and Government Intervention: A Case Study of the 1930s,” American Economic Review, 77 (09 1987), pp. 724–30.Google Scholar
Saloutos, Theodore, The American Farmer and the New Deal (Ames, 1982).Google Scholar
Sargen, Nicholas, “Traciorization” in the United States and its Relevance for Developing Countries (New York, 1970).Google Scholar
Saulnier, R. J., Halcrow, Harold G., and Jacoby, Neil H., Federal Lending and Loan Insurance (Princeton, 1957).Google Scholar
Stauber, B. R., “The Farm Real Estate Situation, 1935–36” (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Circular No. 417, October 1936).Google Scholar
Schuyler, Michael W., The Dread of Plenty (Manhattan, KS, 1989).Google Scholar
Studley, Lucy, “Relationship of the Farm Home to the Farm Business” (University of Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 279, 07 1931).Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, various editions (Washington, DC, 1932, 1934, 1936, 1938, 1940).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Statistics, various editions (Washington, DC, 1941, 1945, 1952).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Costs and Returns to Commercial Family-Operated Farms by Type and Size, 1930–1951” (Statistical Bulletin No. 197, November 1956).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Crops and Markets I Supplement 6 (June 1924).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Yearbook ofAgriculture 1929 (Washington, DC, 1929).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Income Parity for Agriculture (Washington, DC, 1940).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Crops and Markets 19 (July 1942).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930 (Washington, DC, 1932), Agriculture, vols. 2, 3, 4; Population, vol. 3.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940 (Washington, DC, 1940), Agriculture, vol. 1, parts I, 2.Google Scholar
Vance, John W., “History of Credits and Collection Policies” (International Harvester Archives, Document No. 959, 1941), pp. 1–16.Google Scholar
Whatley, Warren C., “Institutional Change and the Mechanization of the Cotton South: The Tractorization of Cotton Farming” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1982), pp. 92–207.Google Scholar
Wiecking, E. H., “The Farm Real Estate Situation, 1928–29” (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Circular No. 101, 12 1929).Google Scholar
Williams, Robert C., Fordson, Farmall, and Poppin' Johnny: A History of the Farm Tractor and Its Impact on America (Urbana, 1987).Google Scholar
Wilcox, Robert, “Appraisals and Other Practices Associated with Farm Mortgage Financing through Local Agents, 1910–1939” (M.S. thesis, Iowa State College, 1940).Google Scholar
Works Progress Administration, Changes in Technology and Labor Requirements in Production: Corn (National Research Project Report No. A-5, Philadelphia, 1938).Google Scholar
Works Progress Administration, Workers on Relief in the United States in March 1935 (Washington, DC, 1938), vol. I, pp. 334–71.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin, The Political Economy of the Cotton South (New York, 1978).Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin, and Kunreuther, Howard, “Cotton, Corn and Risk in the Nineteenth Century,” this JOURNAL, 35 (09 1975), pp. 526–51.Google Scholar