Sowing the American Dream: How Consumer Culture Took Root in the Rural Midwest

Review of: Sowing the American Dream: How Consumer Culture Took Root in the Rural Midwest. Blanke, David

Sowing the American Dream: How Consumer Culture Took Root in the Rural Midwest

Review of: Sowing the American Dream: How Consumer Culture Took Root in the Rural Midwest. Blanke, David

Review of \u3ci\u3e Farms, Mines, and Main Streets: Uneven Development in a Dakota County\u3c/i\u3e by Caroline S. Tauxe

Anthropologist Caroline Tauxe\u27s Farms, Mines, and Main Streets is a study of the impact of energy development in Mercer County, North Dakota. Mercer County\u27s rich deposits of lignite became the focus of attention by energy companies and policymakers during the energy crisis of the seventies. Already the site of several mines and power plants-lignite begins to lose its potency soon after it is taken out of the ground-the county was the focus of intense energy development, the most important facet being the Great Plains coal gasification plant, which converted lignite into natural gas

Review of \u3ci\u3eHarvesting the High Plains: John Kriss and the Business of Wheat Farming, 1920-1950\u3c/i\u3e By Craig Miner

Craig Miner uses the life and career of Cobly, Kansas-based megafarmer John Kriss to make two points. He argues first that, far from being the forbidding desert suggested by the Dust Bowl experience, the High Plains is an area where productive dry-farming of wheat can be undertaken profitably by intelligent and alert producers. And second, he contends that farming is a business to which planning, efficiency, and economies of scale can and should be applied, regardless of romantic notions about the mythic family farm. Kriss is the right sort of farmer to illustrate these points. Starting but as a farm laborer in the 1920s, he caught the attention of Ray Garvey, a large absentee farmer looking for an intelligent junior partner to manage his domain. Kriss and Garvey survived the thirties, largely because both were hard-headed businessmen who focused on the bottom line. The forties, when rain and high prices returned, rewarded their patience, making Kriss rich and Garvey richer. Their postwar expansion into eastern Colorado, at a time when moisture was abundant and land was cheap, was especially fortuitous. By the time their partnership was dissolved in 1947, Kriss was a substantial agribusinessman in his own right and Garvey a walking conglomerate. Unfortunately, Miner goes far toward spoiling a good story by relying too heavily on Kriss\u27s sources and accepting his opinions too uncritically. For example, Miner\u27s unapologetic admiration of Kriss leads him to recount as fact Kriss\u27s opinion that New Deal farm programs helped small producers and harmed large ones, a notion agricultural historians would agree is wrongheaded at best and bizarre at worst. Further on he approvingly quotes Kriss\u27s cranky denunciations of income and estate taxes; self-pity is not an attractive quality generally, but when demonstrated by the rich it is downright repulsive. The book is also marred by non-sequiturs, confusions, and factual errors. Most are rather trivial, but shouldn\u27t a Kansas historian know better than to suggest that Alf Landon carried the state in 1936? Jim Farley famously remarked, As Maine goes, so goes Vermont. Kansas went for Roosevelt. Miner\u27s main points are well taken, and some readers, this reviewer included, will agree with him. Unfortunately, a book with the flavor of an as-told-to biography is unlikely to convince those who are not already members of the choir

Early History of the Experiment Station

A brief history and background of the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station is given. The article takes into account both successes and failures including founders vision for such organization

Why Americans Value Rural Life

Rural America has traditionally been valued in our society less because of what it is than because of what it is not. The Founders valued rurality because it set us apart from England, giving us a separate identity. By the mid-19th century we were valuing rural America because it was not urban America. In this century, celebrating rural America has served as a means of criticizing our urban industrial society and its values. We will probably always celebrate rural America, both because doing so allows us legitimately to criticize our society and because it provides a blank screen on which we can project our hopes and dreams