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The World Metropolis and the History of American Agriculture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

John T. Schlebecker
John T. Schlebecker
Affiliation:
Iowa State University
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Extract

Since agricultural history first acquired independent status it has been carried forward without much theoretical direction. So much research has been done in the field, however, that possibly a tentative general theory for further work may now be advanced. To be useful, an historical hypothesis should probably center on some common denominator of human experience. One possible common denominator is that all men are located within, or are a certain definite distance from metropolitan unit. All those who live within a certain given zone around the metropolis have at least one common experience: they are all some specific distance from the metropolis. Furthermore, for any given group of people this one common experience may have shaped many of their ideas and actions. Since human events take place in time and space, a theory based primarily on these dimensions might be at least roughly applicable to most history.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , June 1960 , pp. 187 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1960

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References

1 This discussion of von Thiinen is based primarily on several secondary sources, chiefly, Ely, R. T. and Wehrwein, G. S., Land Economics (New York: Macmillan, 1940), pp. 66–71, 120–21, 133–38.Google ScholarBenedict, E. T., Stippler, H. H., and Benedict, M. R., trans., Theodor Brinkmann's Economics of the Farm Business (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1935)Google Scholar is complete in its discussions of economic location. Gras, N. S. B., A History of Agriculture (New York: Crofts, 1946), pp. 128–55Google Scholar, has a partial account of the influence of the metropolis. Wolff, H. W., The Future of Our Agriculture (Westminster: P. S. King & Son, 1918), pp. 71–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar contains an application of the von Thünen thesis to the history of British agriculture. Informative, although not oriented toward von Thünen, is a work on Japan, Smith, Thomas C., “The Growth of the Market,” The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959), pp. 67–86.Google Scholar The current and continuing relevance of the pattern of the isolated state is indicated in Isard, Walter, Location and Space Economy (New York: John Wiley and M. I. T., 1956), pp. 3–6, 15–9, 188–99Google Scholar, and by Barlowe, Raleigh, Land Resource Economics (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1958), pp. 33–5.Google Scholar

2 This point was drawn to my attention by Professor Charles W. Loomer, Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Wisconsin.

3 Warntz, William, “An Historical Consideration of the Terms ‘Corn’ and ‘Corn Belt’ in the United States,” Agricultural History, XXXI (Jan. 1957), 40–5Google Scholar; Roepke, Howard G., “Changes in Corn Production on the Northern Margin of the Corn Belt,” Agricultural History, XXXIII (July 1959), 126–32.Google Scholar Many of these belts are charted in Haystead, Ladd and Fite, Gilbert C., The Agricultural Regions of the United States (Norman: University of Oklamoma Press, 1955)Google Scholar, see especially the maps for vegetables, p. 73, corn belt, p. 142, and sheep, p. 226.

4 Haystead and Fite, Agricultural Regions, shows patterns of intensive and extensive agriculture in 1950. Note the distribution of tractors as an indicator of intensity, p. 154.

8 If this point seems paradoxical, see: Greene, Theodore, Liberalism—Its Theory and Practice (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1957), pp. 81–7.Google Scholar

6 Bidwell, P. W., “The Agricultural Revolution in New England,” American Historical Review, XXVI (July 1921), 683–702CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shannon, Fred A., The Farmers' Last Frontier (New York: Rinehart, 1945), pp. 259Google Scholar; Edwards, E. E., “American Agriculture—The First 300 Years,” Yearbook. (Washington: U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1940), pp. 206–8Google Scholar; Lanier, Raymond S. Jr., The Development of a Specialized Dairy Industry in Montana, 1919–1939 (Mss. theis, Montana State University, 1956)Google Scholar; Brunger, Eric, “Dairying and Urban Development in New York State, 1850–1900,” Agricultural History, XXIX (Oct. 1955). 169–74.Google Scholar

7 States arranged in order of the number of people living in cities of 25,000 or more, from highest to lowest in 1880, are compared with the states arranged according to dozens of eggs per square mile in 1879.

8 Bidwell, P. W. and Falconer, J. I., History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, 1620–1860 (New York: Peter Smith, 1941), pp. 196–97Google Scholar; Reeve, James K., “Report on Truck Farming,” Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, 1888 (Washington: U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1889), pp. 663–66Google Scholar; and recently, Bassett, T. D. Seymour, “A Case Study of Urban Impact on Rural Society: Vermont, 1840–80,” Agricultural History, XXX (Jan. 1956), 28–34Google Scholar; Brunger, “Dairying and Urban Development”; Lanier, Dairy Industry in Montana. A different aspect of metropolitan influence is shown by Woolfolk, George R., The Cotton Regency: The Northern Merchants and Reconstruction, 1865–1880 (New York: Bookman, 1958), pp. 30–3Google Scholar, 141–95, and passim.

9 Gras, History of Agriculture, p. 146; Ely and Wehrwein, Land Economics, p. 68.

10 More on this in Schlebecker, J. T., “Dairy Journalism: Studies in Successful Farm Journalism,” Agricultural History, XXXI (Oct. 1957), 23–33.Google Scholar

11 Herring, Hubert, A History of Latin America (New York: Knopf, 1955), pp. 452–54.Google Scholar

12 That is, agriculturally useful soil. Desert, rock piles, river beds, saline swamps, and the like are not here considered soil. Even these limitations may be subject to change, for as E. A. Norton observed: “Classes of land according to use capaiblity may not be permanent in character.” Norton, E. A., Soil Conservation Survey Handbook (Washington: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous Publication 352, 1939), p. 14.Google Scholar

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14 Tilley, Nannie May, The Bright Tobacco Industry, 1860–1929 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), p. 154Google Scholar; Street, James H., New Revolution in the Cotton Economy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1957), pp. 157–71.Google Scholar

15 Theodor Brinkmann's Economics of the Farm, pp. 27–8. Of course, particularly fertile soil can give fair returns even if misused and eroded, and these returns may weaken the need for the farmers to change crops as zones shift in space. But this effect cannot be felt long.

16 Ball, Carleton R., “The History of Wheat Improvement,” Agricultural History, IV (Apr. 1930), 52Google Scholar; Schlebecker, J. T., “Grasshoppers in American Agricultural History,” Agricultural History, XXVII (July 1953), 90.Google Scholar

17 Philpott, H. G., A History of the New Zealand Dairy Industry, 1840–1935 (Wellington: G. H. Loney, 1937).Google Scholar

18 Philpott, New Zealand Dairy Industry.

19 Cohn, David L., The Life and Times of King Cotton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 141–84Google Scholar; Street, Cotton Economy, pp. 18–34; Woolfolk, Cotton Regency, pp. 76–115.

20 These ideas are derived from a series of lectures on the history of European agriculture which Professor von Dietze gave at the University of Wisconsin in 1952.

21 Sauer, Carl O., Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (New York: American Geographical Society, 1952)Google Scholar, a compact and closely reasoned essay based on the available evidence.

22 On grazing, Sauer, for example, is even more explicit: “The original and absolute pastoralists can scarcely be said to exist or ever to have existed; they derive from a farming culture in which livestock was an original element.” Sauer, Agricultural Origins, p. 97.

23 Information derived in part from a series of lectures on the history of Greece given by Professor Sterling Dow at Harvard University in 1949; also Michell, H., The Economics of Ancient Greece (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1957), pp. 21, 38–88.Google Scholar

24 On the trend toward commercial farming, see Loehr, Rodney C., “Self-Sufficiency on the Farm,” Agricultural History, XXVI (Apr. 1952), 37–41.Google Scholar

25 This and the following paragraphs are a synthesis of United States agricultural history based on a host of sources, secondary and primary, much too numerous to cite here. Throughout I have relied on the factual information contained in these sources, but not necessarily on the interpretations of the several authors. A partial list of a few of the more important sources, not heretofore cited, would include: Nettels, Curtis P., The Roots of American Civilization (New York: Crofts, 1938), pp. 222–75, 412–39, 516–42Google Scholar; Goodwin, D. and Johnstone, P. H., “A Brief Chronology of American Agricultural History,” An Historical Survey of American Agriculture (Washington: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Yearbook Separate 1783, 1941)Google Scholar; Gray, Lewis C., History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (2 vols, Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1933)Google Scholar; Schafer, Joseph, The Social History of American Agriculture (New York: Macmillan, 1936)Google Scholar; Yearbook, of the United States Department of Agriculture, (Washington: U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1900).Google Scholar

26 A few of the sources not previously cited would include: Hedrick, U. P., A History of Agriculture in the State of New York. (Albany: New York State Agricultural Society, 1933)Google Scholar; Channing, Edward, A History of the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1905) IGoogle Scholar; Seaton, G. W., Let's Go to the West Indies (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1938)Google Scholar; Diffie, Bailey W., Latin-American Civilization, Colonial Period (Harrisburg: Stackpole, 1945).Google Scholar

27 Theodor Brinkmann's Economics of the Farm, p. 6; some sources not cited previously are: Taylor, Carl C., The Farmers' Movement, 1620–1920 (New York: American Book Co., 1953)Google Scholar; Schlesinger, A. M., “Food in the Making of America,” Paths to the Present (New York: Macmillan, 1949), pp. 234–55.Google Scholar

28 Craven, Soil Exhaustion; Philips, Ulrich B., Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston: Little, Brown, 1929); Gray, Agriculture in the Southern U. S.Google Scholar

29 Clark, Thomas D., Frontier America (New York: Scribner's, 1959), pp. 32–35, 213–219Google Scholar, passim.; Anderson, Oscar E. Jr, Refrigeration in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press for the University of Cincinnati, 1953), p. 58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 For the British view of this see: Curtler, W. H. R., A Short History of English Agriculture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), pp. 293–322.Google Scholar

31 Genung, A. B., “Agriculture in the World War Period,” An Historical Survey of American Agriculture (Washington: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Yearbook Separate 1783, 1941).Google Scholar

32 Cochrane, Willard W., Farm Prices, Myth and Reality (St. Paul: University of Minnesota Press, 1957), pp. 51, 103.Google Scholar

33 Cocharne, Farm Prices, 41–42, 46, 51–54. Cochrane clearly demonstrates the relations between technology and over-production. He also notes the difficulty of securing new capital, and the conditions under which this capital formation will take place.

34 On the continuing applicability of the pattern, Isard, Location and Space-Economy, 3–6 15–9, 198–9.

35 For example, Brunger, “Dairying and Urban Development;” and Bassett, “Urban Impact on Rural Society.”

36 McDonald, Forrest, We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 358–9.Google Scholar

37 Craven, Avery, The Repressible Conflict, 1830–1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1939). pp. 1–30.Google Scholar

38 Benedict, Murray R., Farm Policies of the United States, 1790–1950 (New York: 20th Century Fund, 1953), pp. 275–401Google Scholar, for some shifting farm attitudes and some internal conflicts. On conflicting interests see: Black, John D., Parity, Parity, Parity (Cambridge: Harvard Committee, Social Science, 1942), ch. v.Google ScholarRobinson, E. E., They Voted For Roosevelt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1947), pp. 18–22Google Scholar for the trends in urban and rural voting, 1932–44; pp. 49–50 for the votes of the midwest by counties, also compare with other regions.

39 Theodor Brinkmann's Economics of the Farm, pp. 52–4.

40 The sequence, but not the interpretation is given in: Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture, 1899, pp. 383–95; Pirtle, Thomas R., History of the Dairy Industry (Chicago: Mojonnier, 1926).Google Scholar

41 Oliver, John W., History of American Technology (New York: Ronald, 1956), pp. 463–4Google Scholar; Schlebecker, J. T. and Hopkins, A. W., A History of Dairy Journalism in the United States, 1810–1950 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957).Google Scholar

42 The near helplessness of agricultural leaders in defying economic realities is illustrated clearly in Carstensen, Vernon, Farms or Forests: Evolution of a State Land Policy for Northern Wisconsin, 1850–1932 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, College of Agriculture, 1958).Google Scholar