Hired Hands and Plowboys: Farm Labor in the Midwest, 1815-1860 (review)

182CIVIL WAR HISTORY Fredericksburg, December 11, 1862 in which soldiers of the 50th Engineers present inviting targets for the Rebel riflemen firing from the city across the river, the smoke from their weapons described by Waud in bright patches of Chinese white. In another drawing, Citizen Volunteers Assisting the Wounded on the Field of Antietam , September 18, 1862, Waud's devotion to pictorial realism proved to be unacceptable to his employers: a brutally accurate portrayal of an amputation in Waud's picture was redrawn by the Harper's engravers so that the folks at home wouldn't have to see a bloody stump. While Ray provides a thorough and interesting account of Waud's wartime work, Julian Grossman includes only a short introduction and accompanying notes to the beautifully reproduced plates in his book on Homer, which is, frankly, a coffee-table groaner, large in format and price, and not very well written or valuable as a contribution to our understanding of that complex man. Grossman brings together the Harper's Weekly pictures based on Homer's drawings (arranged chronologically), the original drawings, and Homer's Civil War paintings. Homer's war pictures are at their best when they deal with human feelings: homesickness, boredom, or the rather manic campfire revelry that Harper's featured so often. An artist to the core, Homer seems to have been less interested in the war than in the pictorial interest it provided. He painted the exotic and colorful Zouaves again and again, probably because, one concludes , they provided Homer the only chance he had to use red. At battle pieces Homer could not match Waud's brilliance. As Grossman corrctly observes, Homer's drawings of cavalry and bayonet charges are his least convincing works, made up as they were out of the artist's head to satisfy Harper's demand for deliberately dramatic battle scenes to maintain public support for the war. Both books, of course, are essentially collections of pictures and both are well designed, but Ray's work on Waud will undoubtedly be more satisfying and useful to Civil War historians. Ben L. Bassham Kent State University Hired Hands and Plowboys: Farm Labor in the Midwest, 1815-1860. By David E. Schob. (Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press, 1975. Pp. vii, 329. $10.95.) This book is very thoroughly and intelligently researched, competently written, and, in its way, is a practical and reasonable response to a plea made in the 1960's that more history should be written from the bottom up. This is the story of the hired hands in the Midwest between 1815 and 1860. These laborers were usually BOOK REVIEWS183 itinerant workers on the lower rungs of the social ladder, who possessed a variety of skills. They were generally employed on a seasonal basis in many capacities and were, on the whole, anxious to earn enough money to purchase their own farms. Regardless of the type of service he rendered, the hired hand was in almost constant demand and in short supply, as the population of the Midwest burgeoned and farming became a larger and more sophisticated operation. Schob uses a variety of sources, including many interesting individual case studies, to describe and analyze the problems and contributions of this important labor force. Hired labor was important and often essential for clearing land to establish new farms, for chopping wood, logging, saw milling, and packing pork, for breaking the tough prairie soil, for providing a myriad of services as teamsters, and for the brief but arduous task of harvesting crops each year. Even boys and girls were hired, and immigrants played an important role in certain occupations. The Irish and English were prized for their mastery of the techniques of digging drainage ditches, and the English, and especially the Germans , were highly respected for their skill in performing the delicate functions involved in horticulture. The author is particularly effective when he discusses the diggers and horticultural hired hands, the systems and procedures they employed, and their various life-styles. Hands would use almost any event in nearby towns as an excuse to leave their work temporarily. Farmers often resented this, but, if they were wise, they recognized...