Good Farming-Clear Thinking-Right Living

“Good Farming-Clear Thinking-Right Living”: Midwestern Farm Newspapers, Social Reform, and Rural Readers in the Early Twentieth Century Author(s): John J. Fry Source: Agricultural History, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Winter, 2004), pp. 34-49 Published by: Agricultural History Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3745089 Accessed: 16-02-2017 23:32 UTC
REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3745089?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

Good Farming-Clear Thinking-Right Living
Just from $10/Page
Order Essay
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
Agricultural History Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Agricultural History
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
“Good Farming?Clear Thinking?Right Living”
Midwestern Farm Newspapers, Social Reform,
and Rural Readers in the Early Twentieth Century
JOHN J. FRY
Between 1895 and 1920 technological, economic, demographic, and cultural changes transformed American rural life. This article argues that historians should not take agricultural newspapers as is and assume that they expressed the farmefs point of view. Because most of the publishers and editors of farm newspapers lived in cities and were influenced by progressive reformers,
farm newspapers often reflected urban reform ideas. At the same time, farm
newspapers provided space for opposing viewpoints by publishing letters to the editor. The coverage of agricultural education and rural school consoli- dation in four midwestern farm newspapers provides an illustrative case study of this interaction. While publishers and editors promoted reformers’ recommendations, many farmers did not agree with orfollow their advice. As
a result,farm newspapers are better seen not as expressing the ideas of farmers,
but providing a forum for reformers and farmers to debate proposed changes to country life.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, technological, eco?
nomic, demographic, and cultural changes transformed American life.
Immigrants swelled the population of cities, and urban culture diverged
from that of the countryside. Walter Nugent somewhat flamboyantly
JOHN J. FRY is an assistant professor of history at Trinity Christian College in Illinois. This article originally appeared as a conference paper presented at the Popular Culture As? sociation Conference, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, March 14,2002. The author thanks David
Blanke, Paula Fry, Daniel Murphy, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous drafts.
Agricultural History, Vol. no. 78, Issue no. 1, pages 34-^9. ISSN 0002-1482; online ISSN 1533-8290. ? 2004 by Agricultural History Society. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.
34
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Midwestern Farm Newspapers / 35
described the period as a “great conjuncture” when rural and urban ways
of life competed for supremacy. Richard Hofstadter more succinctly noted
that “the United States was born in the country and has moved to the city.”1
The countryside reflected this dramatic change. As cheap land dwin-
dled, farmers adopted more capital-intensive agricultural methods, such as the use of fertilizer, silos, additional machinery, and better livestock
breeds. High prices for both farm land and farm commodities provided
rural Midwesterners with new opportunities to decrease their cultural
isolation. The arrival of rural free mail delivery, parcel post, the tele-
phone, and eventually the automobile, generated great optimism among
rural families and communities. Country people were finally able to share
many of the amenities town and city people enjoyed. Optimism was mixed with uneasiness, however, for more and more country people were
leaving the country, and by 1910 the migration of rural Midwesterners to
towns and cities was unmistakable. Even though farm life was improving,
few remained to enjoy it.2
The midwestern farm press chronicled these changes. Farm news?
papers across the country heralded the adoption of new farming methods
and trumpeted the availability of cultural amenities, while responding
to the uneasiness felt by country people in the face of outmigration.
Farm newspapers were extremely popular among country people at the
turn of the twentieth century. Researchers estimated that the total cir?
culation of farm newspapers nationally increased from seven million to over seventeen million between 1900 and 1920. In Iowa, Illinois, and Mis?
souri over seven hundred thousand farms received one of the four major
general farm newspapers. A 1913 survey by the United States Depart? ment of Agriculture revealed that many more farmers received farm
newspapers than received government agricultural bulletins, attended farmers5 institutes, or made use of a government demonstration agent.
When surveyed as to which source of information was most helpful for
their work, farmers reported farm newspapers twice as often as all other sources eombined.3
As a result, farm newspapers have been seen as an excellent source for
studying rural change. Some historians asserted that the farm newspaper
was a major reason that farmers adopted new agricultural methods, while
authors of the “new rural history” saw farm newspapers as doeumenta-
tion for changes in rural life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
36 / Agricultural History
centuries. Still others consulted the farm press to determine the attitudes
of farmers toward these changes.4
However, farm newspapers need to be used carefully as sources for
several reasons. First, farm newspapers were rarely published or edited
by farmers. Farm newspaper publishers and editors generally lived in cities
or large urban areas and were removed from the daily work of agricul?
tural life. Second, as a result of their location, publishers and editors often communicated the advice of urban reformers to their rural readers. The
editorial content of farm newspapers did not necessarily originate from
the farms. Finally, rural people simply did not follow all of the advice
given in farm newspapers. Farmers’ correspondence with farm news?
papers and their actions show that they selectively adopted and adapted
any advice. Due to these reasons, historians must not take agricultural
newspapers as is and assume that they solely reflected the farmer’s viewpoint.5
During the nineteenth century, farm newspapers experienced a time of
continual growth, expanding from about sixty in 1860 to over one hun-
dred and fifty in 1880 and just over three hundred by 1895. The total cir?
culation of all of farm newspapers increased from just over 1 million in
1880 to almost 5.5 million in 1895, with most published in cities sur-
rounded by a significant agricultural population. Farm newspapers were
generally printed on a weekly or monthly basis, although some were pub?
lished semi-monthly and a handful came out daily. A typical subscription
ranged in cost from fifty cents to four dollars a year; most weeklies cost
about one dollar a year at the end of the century.6
According to most historians of the farm press, the American Farmer,
which began publication in 1819 in Baltimore, was the first American
farm newspaper. Nineteenth-century farm newspapers initially sought to
disseminate information about new agricultural methods, but by the mid?
dle of the century, they included reports of national news and special de-
partments for farm women and for young people. With the turn of the
twentieth century, farm newspapers broadened their material and in?
cluded areas of importance outside of the farm, including public policy, recreation, and home life.7
Farm newspapers were popular with country people mainly because of their information about farming methods. Sally McMurry, in a study of a
subscription list for the Cultivator, a mid-nineteenth century New York
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Midwestern Farm Newspapers / 37
farm newspaper, noted that farmers at all economic levels received farm
newspapers and that the subscription base expanded out to include store-
keepers, ministers, and physicians. She also suggested that farm news?
papers were distributed via local and kin networks. A second analysis of
a similar club list for an Iowa farm paper during the 1920s agrees with
McMurry’s conclusions. Most subscribers on this particular list were
farmers from all economic levels, with the group split almost equally between renters and those who owned their farms.8
During the early twentieth century, the farm press expanded even more.
Between 1895 and 1920 the number of papers nationwide increased from 303 to 405, and their circulation increased from 5.5 to over 17 million.
Farm newspaper publishers reacted to the increasing subscription rate
with aggressive marketing techniques. By 1900 farm newspapers shifted
from a reliance on subscriptions for revenue to a reliance on advertising.
Larger subscription lists enabled a paper to charge its advertisers more,
and therefore, publishers kept the cost to subscribers low. In addition,
farm papers extended special promotional rates to club-raisers who gath-
ered subscribers from among relatives and neighbors. Publishers also of?
fered premiums and contests as incentives to subscribe. Finally, some farm newspapers used subscription agents to sell subscriptions.9
This article examines four midwestern farm newspapers between 1895
and 1920: the Iowa Homestead and Wallaces’ Farmer, both published in Des Moines, the Prairie Farmer, published in Chicago, and the Missouri
Ruralist, published sequentially in Sedalia, Missouri; Topeka, Kansas; and
St. Louis, Missouri. All four were general, regional farm newspapers cov-
ering and serving the Midwest. Table 1 lists the publishers and editors of
these farm newspapers. Previous historians concluded that a small sample
of important papers can be representative of a larger selection of publica-
tions, such as a region’s farm newspaper output or mass-market maga-
zines at the turn of the twentieth century.10
The publishers of these midwestern farm newspapers all lived in cities
and most had never farmed, such as Burridge D. Butler, publisher of the Prairie Farmer from 1908 to 1948. His father was an itinerant minister
who moved his family in and out of a number of small midwestern towns
during Butler’s childhood. As an adult, Butler worked for several small-
town newspapers before taking a job in sales for the Scripps-McRae newspaper publishing organization. In 1899 he and two other investors
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
38 / Agricultural History
Table 1. Owners and Editors of Selected Midwestern
Farm Newspapers, 1895-1920
Source: Fry, “Reading, Reform, and Rural Change,” 29-39,63-85. * The Missouri Ruralist was founded in 1902.
started a chain of midwestern daily newspapers, and at its height, the
“Good Luck League” owned newspapers in Duluth, Des Moines, Minne-
apolis, Omaha, St. Paul, St. Joseph, and Sioux City. By 1908 the chain had
bought the Prairie Farmer, a farm newspaper published in Chicago. Tired
of the long hours and travel necessary to run so many papers, Butler left
the Good Luck League in 1909 and took over sole ownership of the Prai?
rie Farmer as a major part of his settlement. Butler owned and operated
the paper from Chicago for the next forty years.11
Other publishers grew up on the farm but did not remain farmers as
adults. Perhaps the most colorful farm newspaper publisher was Henry Wallace, the founder of Wallaces’ Farmer, (“Uncle Henry,” as he was known,
was the grandfather of Henry A. Wallace, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s sec?
retary of agriculture and yice president.) Wallace was born on a farm in
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Midwestern Farm Newspapers / 39
western Pennsylvania but pursued a career as a Presbyterian minister.
After pastoring churches in eastern Iowa for fourteen years, he left the
ministry after contracting tuberculosis. Told by his doctor to spend more
time outdoors, Wallace moved his family to a small town in central Iowa
to manage several nearby farms. His health greatly improved within three
years, allowing him to start a third career editing a small town newspaper.
In 1883 he was hired to edit the premier farm newspaper in Iowa, the
Iowa Homestead, but after a falling out with a subsequent publisher, Wal?
lace left in 1895 to start his own paper, Wallaces’ Farmer. He served both
as publisher and editor for the next twenty years. Though he was the only
publisher to have managed a farm as an adult, Wallace and his family lived in downtown Des Moines while he edited both farm newspapers.12
Unlike the publishers, all of the editors studied grew up on a farm. For
instance, Clifford V. Gregory, editor of the Prairie Farmer from 1910 to
1920, was born and raised on a farm in northern Iowa, and only after he
graduated from the Iowa State Agricultural College did he move to Chi?
cago to edit Butler’s paper. The editor of the Missouri Ruralist, John F.
Case, grew up on farms in Minnesota, South Dakota, and Missouri. Case left the farm for a career running a small-town newspaper in Missouri,
then moved to Topeka to edit the Ruralist in 1913, but for several years he
returned to a farm in Missouri during the summer. Among the papers
studied, Case was the only publisher or editor to live in the country while
being involved full-time with an agricultural newspaper.13
In sum, all of the publishers of farm newspapers came to farm journal-
ism from general newspaper journalism, had adult careers other than
farming, and lived in the cities where their papers were printed. While a
few were born and raised on farms, only one farmed as an adult (Henry
Wallace), and he had lived in town primarily managing tenants and farm
hands rather than farming. Among editors, all were born and raised on
farms, but most left for work in small-town journalism before coming to
farm newspapers and only a few worked as farm managers as adults. While editing their respective publications, almost all of the editors lived
in the city where their paper was published.
By being located in cities?such as Des Moines and Chicago, the me- tropolis of the Midwest?publishers and editors were exposed continu-
ally to Progressive reformers, a group who was keenly aware of the anxiety
experienced by farmers. Agricultural college professors, USDA employees,
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
40 / Agricultural History
and religious leaders attempted to reach farmers with a new vision of
rural change, a program that came to be known as the Country Life Movement. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed the Commission on
Country Life in August 1908, and the Commission presented its report to
the president early the next year. The Report of the Country Life Com?
mission gave form and organization to ideas that reformers had advo?
cated since the turn of the century. The report also energized Country Life leaders, who became more active and insistent in their calls for the
reform of rural life. During the next two decades, they sponsored confer-
ences, published books, and enlisted both bureaucrats and journalists to
take their message to country people.14
In response to the challenges that rural people faced, publishers and
editors turned to the answers Country Life reformers proposed, and farm
newspapers became the most popular means for reformers to communi-
cate their ideas to country people. But farm newspapers also provided a
space for farmers to respond to those ideas. As a result, on many issues,
farm newspapers were not merely organs expressing the preference of
country people for country life reforms but were forums where these re- forms were debated.15
Farm newspaper editors and country life reformers were especially
concerned about the rural church, the country school, and the farm family.
As one author put it in the Missouri Ruralist, “The youth of the rural dis?
tricts have been educated to leave the farm and three great institutions
are responsible: ‘the school, the church, and the home.’” Of the three is?
sues, education and farm newspapers’ recommendations for the rural school provide an excellent opportunity to examine the relationships be?
tween farm newspapers, their publishers and editors, their readers, and
Country Life reformers.16
The neighborhood school was vital to midwestern rural society. At the
turn of the twentieth century, Iowa had over twelve thousand one-room
country schoolhouses, and Illinois and Missouri had close to ten thousand
each. Almost every rural neighborhood featured its own one-room school, and in most cases, one person was responsible for teaching read-
ing, writing, arithmetic, spelling, and history to all eight grades. Pupils
could be as young as six years old and as old as twenty. In 1900 teaching
methods were much the same as those used fifty years earlier, with pupils
memorizing their lessons and reciting them for the teacher. Generations
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Midwestern Farm Newspapers / 41
of farmers, town leaders, and even national figures attended such one- room schoolhouses.17
But by the early years of the twentieth century, rural schools were ex-
periencing a crisis. Outmigration from rural areas led to falling enroll-
ments in many rural school districts. In Iowa in 1910, three thousand one-
room country schools?almost one fourth of the total number?enrolled
fewer than ten pupils.Ten schools had only one pupil each. As the debate
in the farm press shows, it was expensive for a rural community to hire a
teacher for so few students, and the reformers’ perception was that neigh-
borhood schools were inefficient and likely to have poor teachers and poor facilities.18
Educational reformers made two recommendations for one-room
schools: agricultural education and rural school consolidation. Agricultural
education involved the teaching of agriculture in the classroom, such
as “nature study” and elementary biology for lower grades, and in later
grades?especially in high school?scientific agriculture. For rural school consolidation, reformers advocated the creation of a single school district to serve the same area as four or five one-room schools. This called for
building a large, multi-room school in a central location, with children from
as far out as seven or eight miles brought there by wagon. Consolidated
schools employed several teachers, divided students into grades, and pro?
vided a high school education. Reformers supported consolidation as a way
of achieving efficiency in supervision of schools, establishing their control
over country schools, and equalizing education in rural and urban areas.19
In order to stimulate these changes, leaders of the Country Life Move?
ment added a note of urgency to the debate over rural school reform by
linking poor schools with poor farmers. The Report of the Country Life
Commission asserted that “the schools are held to be largely responsible
for ineffective farming, lack of ideals, and the drift to town.” Some Coun?
try Life leaders believed that farmers moved to town to obtain a better education for their children, while others said that rural schools educated
children away from the farm by stressing skills necessary for success in
town jobs. Reformers argued that agricultural education would prepare farm children for farm life, and consolidation would provide educational
advantages to keep farm families in the country.20
Farm newspapers were central to this debate by communicating re? form ideas to their rural readership, and they enthusiastically supported
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
42 / Agricultural History
the teaching of agriculture in rural schools. In 1895 Henry Wallace wrote
in Wallaces’ Farmer that “there should be a line of teaching in the public
schools that will inculcate a love of farm life, as well as a knowledge of the
thousands of valuable facts which [the farm boy] should comprehend.”
Farm newspapers gave instructions for teaching such classes, detailed complete agricultural courses of study, and described successful efforts to
teach agriculture. Editors promoted agricultural education for the same
reason as Country Life leaders: it would help to keep farm children on the farm.21
Farm newspapers also promoted school consolidation, especially dur?
ing the mid-1910s when some midwestern states made it easier for schools
to consolidate. Writers reiterated the Country Life Movement’s argu? ments that consolidated schools would bring improvement to rural edu?
cation. Editorials asserted that consolidated schools were cheaper and more efficient than one-room schools and that consolidation made edu?
cation in agriculture possible. Authors attacked the one-room school,
arguing that consolidation would pull the country school “out of the val?
ley of desolate despair in which it has been allowed to remain all too long.” Farm newspapers publicized the successful consolidation of schools
throughout the territory they covered. Most of all, these newspapers ar?
gued that fewer country people would move to towns or cities for educa- tional reasons.22
The support that farm newspapers gave to educational reform and the
Country Life Movement only covered one side of the issue. What did country people think of these recommendations? Did readers share farm
newspapers’ vision of the rural school? Did rural Midwesterners think
that the one-room school should teach agriculture and consolidate in order to offer a quality education? The ideas of readers are difficult to
trace, especially before the advent of polling and survey data during the 1930s. But letters to the editor and social histories of rural America can
give the contours of reader response.23
While potentially beneficial to historians, letters to the editor must be
used with care. Since the editor of a newspaper determined what was
printed, often letters that did appear reflected the editor’s vision and sup-
ported the stances taken in editorials and articles. However, when used
carefully, these letters can provide some glimpses of readers’ responses, and letters written to farm newspapers about agricultural education were
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Midwestern Farm Newspapers / 43
mixed. Some readers backed agricultural education, asserting that teach-
ing agriculture would keep farm children in the country. Furthermore,
supporters provided stories of how agriculture was included at their local
country school, and school superintendents or teachers wrote letters describing their successes.24
Opponents of agricultural education argued that the purpose of school
was to teach the basics and not unnecessary subjects such as agriculture.
One letter in 1907 stated that “country children should go to school to
study, to train the mind, [and] to acquire information they cannot find at
home.” These correspondents asserted that agriculture could be better
taught at home. Eight years later, one farm wife maintained that “there is
a time and a place for everything, and the country school?below the ninth grade?is not the place for [agricultural education].”25
By 1920 the results of educational reform were mixed, as the work of
social historians suggests that agricultural education was taught in some
districts but not in others. It was implemented where farmers believed that
it would help keep their children on the farm. Some farm families, how?
ever, continued to believe that schools should teach basic subjects and
leave agriculture to be taught at home. Others desired the best academic
education possible for their children and wanted them to attend an agri?
cultural college or state university. Some enthusiastic school personnel suc-
ceeded in integrating agriculture into their curriculum. Many failed.26
School consolidation generated even more debate. Both supporters
and opponents realized that the consolidation of country schools would
dramatically change a central institution of rural life. The proposal, there-
fore, stirred deep emotions from both sides. Each group wrote letters to
farm newspapers, especially during the mid-1910s, with supporters of con?
solidation mainly repeating the arguments of farm newspapers, educa?
tional reformers, and Country Life leaders.
Opponents cited four arguments against consolidation. First, they de?
scribed the problems of transporting children to consolidated schools.
Writers complained about rides that were too long, wagons that did not
provide sufficient protection from bad weather or germs, apd drivers who
might corrupt the character of their charges. Opponents also complained
of the higher cost of the consolidated school. A janitor, drivers for the
wagons, and often a principal had to be hired, in addition to the higher
wages paid to consolidated school teachers. The cost of a new, large school
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
44 / Agricultural History
building usually required a bond issue, and as a result, district officials often
raised property taxes. Third, opponents argued that town people sought
consolidation to improve their schools at the expense of country people.
While farm newspapers seldom addressed the town versus country im-
plications of school consolidation, rural Midwesterners saw this as a cen?
tral issue. Finally, many opponents concluded that rural schools were good enough for their children and did not need to be changed. One writer cited Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, and Diogenes (!) as ex? amples of successful rural-educated men. Furthermore, correspondents
asserted that their teachers were well-paid and highly-qualified and that
their schoolhouses were in good repair.27
As a result of the debate, consolidation was not implemented in the
rural Midwest before the middle of the twentieth century. In 1920 there
were over 29,000 one-room schools in Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri, and
only 534 consolidated schools. Scholars are divided on why this was the
case. Some suggest that rural Midwesterners were opposed to outside in-
terference and prized local control, attitudes that were legacies of an at-
tachment to Jeffersonian democracy. Others argue that anti-intellectualism,
an anti-foreign sentiment, and the desire of wealthy farmers to protect their
power over land led rural Midwesterners to oppose consolidation. Geog-
rapher David R. Reynolds suggests that opposition to consolidation in the Midwest was a “place-based class movement.” The evidence from farm
newspapers supports a conclusion closest to Reynolds’s interpretation.
Such decisions were intensely local, and that opposition was for intensely local reasons. When rural Midwesterners sat down to write about their
reasons for opposing consolidation, they wrote about practical local con-
siderations: transportation, money, and suspicion of towns.28
These interactions suggest that there was significant opposition to the
program of farm newspapers, educational reformers, and Country Life
leaders among the readers of farm newspapers. While it appears that rural Midwesterners supported agricultural education more than school
consolidation, many country people rejected both reforms. Consolidation did not come to the Midwest until after the Second
World War. By the 1960s, however, consolidation was called “reorganiza?
tion,” and it was required by law. In Iowa, the state mandated that all districts that did not have a high school must consolidate with a district
that did. Rural population loss was also more acute by this time, and rural
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Midwestern Farm Newspapers / 45
Midwesterners also had an additional forty years experience with large, bureaucratic institutions.29
Farm newspapers since 1920 have continued to be published by non-
farmers. The agricultural depression of the 1920s and the Great Depres?
sion put many farm papers out of business. Hard times forced Wallaces’
Farmer into receivership, but it continued publishing. The Prairie Farmer
Publishing Company weathered the storm, mainly because Burridge Butler had purchased the Chicago radio station WLS in 1928. The Amer?
ican Broadcasting Company (ABC) purchased the company from But?
ler’s heirs in 1959 along with many other farm publications. ABC was
subsequently purchased by Capital Cities in 1986 and then by Disney In?
corporated nine years later. Disney sold its agricultural publishing con- cerns to Rural Press Limited, an Australian publishing conglomerate. Today,
Farm Progress Incorporated (the American subsidiary of Rural Press Limited) publishes over twenty state-based farm newspapers in the United States, including Wallaces’ Farmer, Prairie Farmer, and the Mis? souri Ruralist.30
The study of early twentieth century farm newspapers and analysis of
their coverage of rural school reforms provides insights about farmers,
about progressive reform, and about farm newspapers themselves. First,
it is clear from this project?as well as from many recent works of the new
rural history?that rural change during the Progressive era was not an in-
evitable process; farmers chose to listen to some of the recommendations
of progressive reformers and not to others. The motto of Wallaces’ Farmer
was “Good Farming?Clear Thinking?Right Living,” but it appears that midwestern farmers were more interested in farm newspapers’ informa?
tion about “Good Farming” than they were in their prescriptions for
“Right Living.” Their careful weighing of the benefits and costs of reforms
reveals their “Clear Thinking.”
Finally, farm newspapers are an excellent source of information about
rural life, but they need to be used carefully, as they often expressed re?
formers’ ideas rather than facts. Farm newspapers are better seen not as
expressing the ideas of farmers, but providing a forum for reformers and
farmers to debate proposed changes to country life. Historians should
choose carefully the articles and letters they use to support their argu?
ments. Scholars must exhibit as much “Clear Thinking” as the country
people that they study.
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
46 / Agricultural History
NOTES
1. Walter Nugent, Structures of American Social History (Bloomington: Indiana Univer?
sity Press, 1981), 87-120; Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to E D. R.
(New York: Vintage, 1955), 23.
2. Hal Barron, Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); R. Douglas Hurt, Amer?
ican Agriculture:A Brief History (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994), 165-286; David B.
Danbom, Born in the Country: A History of Rural America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni?
versity Press, 1995), 132-86; James F. Evans and Rodolfo N. Salcedo, Communications in Agriculture: The American Farm Press (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1974), 6-29.
3. Evans and Salcedo, Communications in Agriculture, 171; John J. Fry, “Reading, Re?
form, and Rural Change: The Midwestern Farm Press, 1895-1920” (PhD diss., University of
Iowa, 2002), 23-65; N W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual (Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer & Son, 1920); United States Historical Census Data Browser, http://fisher.lib.virginia. edu/collections/stats/histcensus/; C. Beaman Smith and H. K. Atwood, “The Relation of
Agricultural Extension Agencies to Farm Practices” in Miscellaneous Papers, Circular No. 117, Bureau of Plant Industry, USDA (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913).
4. Gilbert M. Tucker, American Agricultural Periodicals: An Historical Sketch (Albany:
Privately Printed, 1909); William Edward Ogilvie, Pioneer Agricultural Journalists: Brief Biographical Sketches of Some of the Early Editors in the Field of Agricultural Journalism
(Chicago: Arthur J. Leonard, 1927); Alan Fusonie and Leila Moran, eds., Agricultural Liter?
ature: Proud Heritage?Future Promise (Washington, D.C.: Associates of the National Agri? cultural Library and the Graduate School Press, USDA, 1977); Mary Neth, Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest,
1900-1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); Ronald R. Kline, Consumers
in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2000). The most sweeping synthesis of the New Rural History is Barron,
Mixed Harvest; the field’s only comprehensive narrative is Danbom, Born in the Country.
See also David Vaught, “State of the Art?Rural History, or Why Is There No Rural History of California?” Agricultural History 74 (Fall 2000): 759-74.
5. Stuart Shulman comes to some of the same conclusions from a different point of view.
Stuart Shulman, “The Progressive Era Farm Press,” Journalism History 25 (Spring 1999): 26-35; and “The Origin of the Federal Farm Loan Act: Agenda-Setting in the Progressive Era Print Press” (PhD diss., University of Oregon, 1999), 193-229.
6. Albert Lowther Demaree, The American Agricultural Press, 1819-1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 41-195; Jack Van Derhoof, “Eastern and Mid-western Agricultural Journalism, 1860-1900” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1951), 131-271.
7. Tucker, American Agricultural Periodicals; Evans and Salcedo, Communications in Agriculture, 170-71,178.
8. Sally McMurry, “WHio Read the Agricultural Journals? Evidence from Chenango County, New York, 1839-1865,” Agricultural History 63 (Fall 1989): 1-18; Fry, “Reading, Re? form, and Rural Change,” 134-41,345-53.
9. Evans and Salcedo, Communications in Agriculture, 10-12; Van Derhoof, “Eastern and Mid-western Agricultural Journalism,” 71-78; Fry, “Reading, Reform, and Rural Change,” 39-51.
10. Richard T. Farrell, “Advice to Farmers: The Content of Agricultural Newspapers,
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Midwestern Farm Newspapers / 47
1860-1910,” Agricultural History 51 (Winter 1977): 209-17; Christopher P. Wilson, “The Rhetoric of Consumption: Mass-Market Magazines and the Demise of the Gentle Reader, 1880-1920” in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880- 1980, ed. Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 39-64.
11. James F. Evans, Prairie Farmer and WLS: The Burridge D. Butler Years (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969) and “Clover Leaf: The Good Luck Chain, 1899-1933,” Journalism Quarterly 46 (Autumn 1969): 482-91.
12. The most recent biographical work on Henry Wallace is Richard S. Kirkendall, Uncle Henry: A Documentary Profile ofthe First Henry Wallace (Ames: Iowa State Univer?
sity Press, 1993). Previous biographies include Russell Lord, The Wallaces oflowa (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947) and Henry Wallace’s memoir, Uncle Henry’s Own Story of His Life: Personal Reminiscences, 3 vols. (Des Moines: Wallace Publishing, 1917-1919). An un- published biography by his daughter is Harriet Wallace Ashby, “Uncle Henry Wallace,” typescript biography, Papers of Henry Wallace, Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Main Library, Iowa City, Iowa.
13. Evans, Prairie Farmer and WLS, 60; Billy Clyde Brantley, “History of the Missouri
Ruralist, 1902 through 1955” (master’s thesis, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1958), 76- 82; John F. Case, “From the Farm to You,” Missouri Ruralist, May 20,1916; John F. Case,
“Fm On the Firing Line,” Missouri Ruralist, June 20,1917.
14. Report ofthe Country Life Commission, Senate Document No. 705,60th Cong., 2nd sess., 1909; David B. Danbom, The Resisted Revolution: Urban America and the Industrial?
ization of Agriculture, 1900-1930 (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1979); William L. Bowers, The Country Life Movement in America, 1900-1920 (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kenni-
kat Press, 1974).
15. Fry, “Reading, Reform, and Rural Change,” 159-289. Another way of saying this is that these institutions were “contested terrain” and that the midwestern farm newspaper
became a “site of contestation,” presenting conflicting constructions of their purpose and nature.
16. “To Check Rural Population Loss,” Missouri Ruralist, April 13,1912. 17. William H. Dreier, “A Brief History of Iowa’s One-Room Schools,” in Iowa’s
Country Schools: Landmarks of Learning, ed. William L. Sherman (Parkersburg, Iowa: Mid-Prairie Books, 1998); Wayne E. Fuller, The Old Country School: The Story of Rural Education in the Middle West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); David B. Dan? bom, “Rural Education Reform and the Country Life Movement, 1900-1920,” Agricultural
History 53 (Apr. 1979): 462-64; Richard J. Jensen and Mark Friedberger, Education and Social Structure: An Historical Study oflowa, 1870-1930 (Chicago: The Newberry Library,
1976), 7.1-7.5. 18. Joseph Frazier Wall, Iowa:A Bicentennial History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978),
186-87; A. C. True, “Some Problems of the Rural Common School,” in Yearbook of the
United States Department of Agriculture 1901 (Washington, D.C.: Government Publishing
Office, 1902), 133-54. 19. Fuller, Old Country School, 218-31; True, “Some Problems of the Rural Common
School,” 143^48; David R. Reynolds, There Goes the Neighborhood: Rural School Consoli? dation at the Grass Roots in Early Twentieth-Century Iowa (Iowa City: University of Iowa
Press, 1999), 46-52; Paul Theobald, Call School: Rural Education in the Midwest to 1918
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995), 159-63; Danbom, Resisted Revolution,
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
48 / Agricultural History
57-58; Keach Johnson, “Roots of Modernization: Educational Reform in Iowa at the Turn
of the Century,” Annals oflowa 50 (Spring 1991): 912-13; Richard C. Barrett, Report ofthe
Superintendent of Public Instruction, State oflowa, 1901 (Des Moines: Department of Pub?
lic Instruction, 1902), 30-45.
20. Report of the Country Life Commission, 17-18, 53-56; Danbom, Resisted Revolu? tion, 14-15,57; Bowers, Country Life Movement in America, 79-80.
21. “Agricultural Education in the Public Schools,” Wallaces’ Farmer, September 13, 1895; C. C. James, “Agriculture in Schools,” Iowa Homestead, March 8,1900; “Rural School Agriculture,” Iowa Homestead, January 7, 1904; W. J. Spillman, “Teaching Agriculture in Public Schools,” Wallaces’ Farmer, December 25,1908; “Agriculture in High Schools,” Wal? laces’ Farmer, October 28,1910;”Starting a Country School Nursery,” Prairie Farmer, March
15, 1911; “Agriculture in the Rural Schools,” Wallaces’ Farmer, May 4, 1917; H. A. Crafts, “Study of Agriculture in Public Schools,” Iowa Homestead, October 26,1911; “Agriculture in the Rural Schools,” Wallaces’ Farmer, March 26,1909; “Raising a Crop of Young Farmers,”
Iowa Homestead, July 22, 1909; “Real Country Schools,” Iowa Homestead, June 23, 1910; “Making Rural Schools Practical,” Iowa Homestead, November 3, 1910; “Improving the Country Schools,” Iowa Homestead, January 22,1914; A. J. Jewell, “Agriculture in Common
Schools,” Iowa Homestead, January 22,1903; “The Rural Schools of the Corn Belt,” Wal? laces’ Farmer, October 17,1913; Rex Beresford, “Give the Farm Boy a Chance in the Country
School,” Prairie Farmer, April 1,1912.
22. “The Education of the Farmer Boy,” Iowa Homestead, November 5,1903; “Reform in Rural Schools,” Iowa Homestead, December 8,1904; C. F. Curtiss, “The Rural-Education
[sic] Problem,” Iowa Homestead, January 5,1911; “An Illinois Consolidated School,” Wal? laces’ Farmer, May 31, 1907; “Model Country Schools of Winnebago County, 111.,” Prairie Farmer, May 1,1911; Lulu G. Parker, “Giving the Country Children an Up-to-Date Educa? tion,” Prairie Farmer, July 15, 1912; J. A. Woodruff, “Success With Consolidated Schools,”
Iowa Homestead, January 30,1913; L. J. Haynes, “Solving the Rural School Problem,” Wal? laces’ Farmer, December 17,1915; F. B. Nichols, “Farm Children Schooled at Home,” Mis?
souri Ruralist, May 20,1917; Arthur A. Jeffrey, “Grayson’s Folks All Go to School,” Missouri
Ruralist, February 20, 1918; “A School that Meets Community Needs,” Wallaces’ Farmer,
May 7,1920; “The One-Room School Menace,” Iowa Homestead, June 5,1913. 23. The three most common methods cultural historians use to investigate readers’
opinions of subjects addressed by mass media outlets are: examining the content of the pub?
lication, looking at letters to the editor, and consulting social history studies of target popu?
lations. Ellen Gruber Garvey, The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880s to 1910s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Michael Den-
ning, Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America, Rev. ed. (Lon?
don: Verso, 1998, first published 1987);Thomas C. Leonard, News For All: America’s Coming-
of-Age with the Press (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
24. Joanne Passet uses letters to the editor extensively to track reader response; Joanne
Passet, Sex Radicals and the Quest for Women’s Equality (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003); Letters to Wallaces’ Farmer. Jessie Field, July 31,1908; Alice Leech, February 3,
1911; M. A. Chary, March 15,1918.
25. Letters to Wallaces’ Farmer. John G. Osborn, September 27,1907; Ada B. F. Parsons, February 19,1915.
26. Fuller, Old Country School, 224-26; Danbom, Resisted Revolution, 76-80; True, “Some Problems,” 148-51.
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Midwestern Farm Newspapers / 49
27. Letters to Iowa Homestead: “Hardin County Farmer,” January 6,1916; “A Reader,”
Marshalltown, Iowa, January 6,1916; W. A. Estes, January 27,1916; B. E. Bigelow, February 24,1916; “An Old Subscriber,” March 9,1916; “A Mother,” March 23,1916; “A Subscriber,”
March 30, 1916; “E. E. M.,” June 1, 1916; “Mrs. L. L. L.,” February 24, 1916; “A. W. A.,” March 16, 1916; H. G. Gast, March 30, 1916; “A Mother Taxpayer,” April 20, 1916; John Bock, Jr., February 24,1916; Mrs. R. E. James, April 27,1916; G. A. Hunter, May 11,1916; “A Reader,” January 6,1916; C. R. Riley, January 20,1916.
28. J. F. Abel, Consolidation of Schools and Transportation of Pupils, Bulletin No. 41,
Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1923), 56;Timon Covert, Rural School Consolidation: A Decade of School Consoli? dation with Detailed Information from 105 Consolidated Schools, Pamphlet No. 6, Office of
Education, United States Department of the Interior (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1930), 3.
For those who point to Jeffersonian freedom see James H. Madison, “John D. Rocke- feller’s General Education Board and the Rural School Problem in the Midwest, 1900-
1930,” History of Education Quarterly 24 (Summer 1984): 181,191-95; Danbom, Resisted Revolution, 76-81; Fuller, Old Country School, 234-44; and Barron, Mixed Harvest, 56-60,
66-73. Paul Theobald opposes this “traditional account,” see his Call School, 153-83 and “Democracy and the Origins of Rural Midwest Education: A Retrospective Essay,” Educa? tional Theory 38 (Summer 1988): 363-67; Reynolds, There Goes the Neighborhood; Fry, “Reading, Reform, and Rural Change,” 251-55.
29. Barron, Mixed Harvest, 76-71.
30. Evans and Salcedo, Communications in Agriculture, 65-87,195. In 1959 the apostro-
phe that followed the “s” on Wallaces was removed. “A Brief History of Wallaces Farmer,”
Pamphlet distributed by Farm Progress Companies (Des Moines: n. d.); Working Press ofthe
Nation, 51st ed. (New Providence, N.J.: R. R. Bowker, 2001), Vol. 2, 5-19. “About Farm Progress,” available from http://www.farmprogress.com/ME2/dirsect.asp7sid = lCC7F100AE244FA7AA2F839DA4788984&nm=About+Us; “Agricultural Publishing,” available from http://www.ruralpress.com/publications/listmag.asp; Internet.
This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:32:09 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Contents
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
Issue Table of Contents
Agricultural History, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Winter, 2004), pp. 1-130
Front Matter [pp. 117-118]
Improving Agricultural Practices: Science and the Australian Sugarcane Grower, 1864-1915 [pp. 1-33]
“Good Farming-Clear Thinking-Right Living”: Midwestern Farm Newspapers, Social Reform, and Rural Readers in the Early Twentieth Century [pp. 34-49]
Dead Beef and Live Soldiers: Lyndon Johnson, Keith Holyoake, and U.S.-New Zealand Relations in the 1960s [pp. 50-77]
“Perils of Prussianism”: Main Street German America, Local Autonomy, and the Great War [pp. 78-116]
Book Reviews
Review: untitled [pp. 119-120]
Review: untitled [pp. 120-121]
Review: untitled [pp. 121-122]
Review: untitled [pp. 123-125]
Review: untitled [pp. 126-127]
Review: untitled [pp. 127-128]
Review: untitled [pp. 128-129]
Back Matter [pp. 130-130]