Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The Land-Grant Mission and a New Agrarian Ideal
Ideals about farming and the place of agriculture run deep within the poli-
tics and culture of the United States. Perhaps no idea is more important
in this discourse than the ideal of the small family farm. Jefferson envi-
sioned a strong rural farming population as the foundation of U.S. democ-
racy: small, self-suffi cient agriculturalists would prevent marked class
distinctions and protect the economic stability of the nascent democratic
system.
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Thus, the small farmer became a cultural icon, a bellwether of
U.S. moral and political sensibility. In the second half of the nineteenth
century, however, attitudes toward farming and rural life began to change.
While Jeffersonian sentiments glorifi ed rural life and the hard-working,
independent agriculturalist, this new view portrayed farm life as a poor,
degraded existence. Many began to speak of a “farm problem” and con-
sider ways to elevate the “mental culture” of farming communities (Marcus
1985, ch. 1).
This rhetoric of farming's decline must be placed within a context of
economic and cultural change that took place in the United States during
the nineteenth century. William Cronon's (1991) work on the rise of
Chicago shows how the development of railroads and the expansion of
commodity markets increasingly tied growers to fi nancial interests in this
period. These connections meant that growers became more vulnerable to
shifts in the economy; downturns in commodity prices, especially in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, drove this dependence home. Many
in the countryside saw urban fi nancial interests as a parasite on the pro-
ductivity of U.S. agriculture and cities as seductive magnets for rural youths.
Farmers acknowledged their fading sense of independence by forming farm
associations such as the Patrons of Husbandry (better known as the Grange)
and the Farmers' Alliance (the Populists). These associations became strong
political players on both the federal and local levels, mitigating the vulner-
able status of agriculturalists but also leading to confl icts with industrial
and fi nancial interests. In addition, this period also saw increasing power
and protest from urban workers and their unions. The rise of unionism
contributed to urban politicians' and capitalists' fears that agriculture
and rural life in the United States lagged behind the development of
nonagricultural industrial production and urban standards of living. With
