David B. Danbom
The Resisted Revolution: Urban America and the Industrialization of Agriculture, 1900-1930
1979
Synopsis: Danbom portrays the Country Life Movement as an urban-led crusade to save rural America, but he argues that the leaders were frequently hostile to rural people and their interests. Ultimately, the goal of the reformers was to ensure steady supplies of cheap food to support urban growth and low-wage industry.
Danbom uses a wide array of primary sources, many of which are now available online via Google Books. His narrative tends to see good guys and bad guys, when the reality (even in primary passages he quotes from) is clearly more layered and complex. But apparently Hofstadter and others have done the same with the Progressives. It’s a contentious period (I’ll need to find out why).
Danbom’s concludes that, although there was a net loss in farms in the 1920s, medium sized farms fared worst. Tiny and gigantic farms both increased in number. An inference that might be drawn from this is that the “farmers” Hofstadter rails about may be different from the rural people Danbom writes about. A change in what we define as farmers in this transitional period would explain a lot!
Critics: Of seven or eight reviews, several were positive, a couple called attention to flaws in his characterization, and one (Paul Conkin in Ag. Hist.) blasted Danbom for shoddy and ideologically tainted work.
References:
Primary:
Bailey, The Country Life Movement in the United States
Bailey, The Training of Farmers
Bailey, The Country Life Movement in the United States
Bailey, New York State Rural Problems
Bailey, The State and the Farmer
Bailey, New York State Rural Problems
Bryan, Farming as an Occupation
Blackmar, Social Degeneration in Towns and Rural Districts
Boyle, Agricultural Economics
Butterfield, A Campaign for Rural Progress
Butterfield, The Farmer and the New Day
Butterfield, Chapters in Rural Progress
Cance, Immigrant Rural Communities
Carstens, The Rural Community and Prostitution
Carver, Principles of Rural Economics
Carver, Selected Readings in Rural Economics
REPORT OF THE COMMISSION ON COUNTRY LIFE
Coulter, Influence of Immigration of Agricultural Development
The Craftsman, Why Back to the Farm?
The Craftsman, Getting Back to Our Base of Supplies
Danielson, The Hill Folk (Hereditary Defectives)
Devine, Misery and Its Causes
Dugdale, The Jukes
Dillingham, Recent Immigrants in Agriculture
Fiske, Challenge of the Country
Forbes-Lindsay, The Rural Settlement
Galpin, Social Anatomy of a Rural Community
Galpin, Rural Life
Gathany, What's the Matter with the Eastern Farmer?
Gillette, Constructive Rural Sociology
Gillette, Rural Sociology
Goddard, The Kallikak Family
Groves, The Rural Mind and Social Welfare
Hall, Three Acres and Liberty
Hall, A Little Land and a Living
Harger, Middle West's Peace Problems
Harmon, What's the Matter with the Pennsylvania Farmer?
Harris, Health on the Farm
James Jerome Hill, Highways of Progress
Hill, The Natural Wealth of the Land and Its Conservation
Hill, Addresses by James Jerome Hill
Holmes, The Passing of the Farmer
Holmes, Movement from City and Town to Farms
Jenks, The Immigration Problem, “Recent Immigrants in Agriculture”
Knapp, Causes of Southern Rural Conditions and the Small Farm as an Important Remedy
Kolb, Rural Primary Groups
C.L., Two Views of the Back to the Land Movement
Lighton, "The Riches of a Rural State"
McKeever, Farm Boys and Girls
Mills, What's the Matter with the Farmer?
Northrup, Rural Improvement (1880)
Nourse, The War and the Back to the Land Movement
Phelan, Rural Economics and Rural Sociology
Ross, Agrarian Changes in the Middle West
Spillman, Farming as an Occupation for City-Bred Men
Steiner, Our Recent Immigrants as Farmers
Strong, The Challenge of the Country
Twitchell, Outlook for New England Agriculture
USDA 1940 Yearbook: Farmers in a Changing World
Vandercook, Rural Delinquency
Vincent, “Countryside and Nation”
Waugh, Rural Improvement
Wilson, “Country Versus City”
Secondary:
Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920
Conkin, Tomorrow a New World
McConnell, Decline of Agrarian Democracy
Mentioned in:
Lovett, Conceiving the Future
