Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
Recovering the Lost Worlds of the Rural South@@@Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Parker, David B. Kirby, Jack Temple |
| Copyright Year | 1987 |
| Abstract | IN A RECENTLY PUBLISHED HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY, CHARLES P. ROLAND NOTED that "agriculture and farm life offer perhaps the most neglected fields in recent southern economic and social history."' Had he written this essay a little further down the road, his assessment might have been considerably different, for the last few years have witnessed the publication of three major works on the broad topic of southern agriculture. The first of the trio was Gilbert C. Fite's Cotton Fields No More.2 Published in 1984, Fite's book was widely acclaimed for its comprehensive treatment of southern farming. Fite began his story by showing how war, emancipation, and other factors combined to create a pattern of agriculture, familiar to all students of southern history, that remained fixed for three-quarters of a century. It was only in the 1940s that modernization came to the southern farm, the result of an influx of capital from high wartime prices, advances in agricultural science, benefits from various government programs, and, more than anything else, increases in mechanization. If Fite was unclear about exactly what "modernization" is, other than the change from King Cotton to "cotton fields no more," his book was nonetheless a solid history of the topic and as such a welcome achievement. Pete Daniel's Breaking the Land3 was published the following year. Daniel concentrated on the South's three great staples-cotton, rice, and tobacco-to show how government aid, especially during the New Deal, and advances in agricultural technology transformed southern farming. The rates and types of change varied among these three cultures, but the transformation Daniel charted was a massive one. Where Fite had stressed changes in agriculture itself, Daniel used oral history and similar sources to emphasize the human element-"the daily and seasonal routines of farm families, the annual cycle of breaking the land, planting, cultivating, harvesting, and marketing."4 Daniel and Fite differed more in focus than in interpretation, but they did have some differences of opinion. Fite found responsibility for modernization in mechanization and other changes in the structure of agriculture itself, while Daniel cited New Deal programs. Both men mourned the passing of traditional ways of agriculture, but they did so for different reasons: Fite because modernization created a large number of "farmers left behind" (agricultural workers displaced by the changes); Daniel because modernization changed the way of life for those who stayed on the land, from the traditional "community life and culture that rural people built to protect |
| Starting Page | 450 |
| Ending Page | 450 |
| Page Count | 1 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.2307/2712888 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9465&context=annals-of-iowa&httpsredir=1&referer= |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.2307/2712888 |
| Volume Number | 39 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
