Region and Nation: New Studies in Western U.S. History

Canadian Review of American Snid1es/ Revue cmwdiemze d'hudes americames Volume 28, Number l, 1998, pp. 121-128 Region and Nation: New Studies in Western U.S. History David Peterson del Mar 121 Hal S. Barron. Mixed Haruest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Pp. xiv + 286 and note on sources and illustrations. Catherine McNicol Stock. Main Street in Crisis:The Gre11t Depressiona11d the Old Middle Ch1ss011 the Northern Plllins. Ch,.1pelHill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Pp. xiii + 261 and bibliography and illustrations. Dee Garceau. The Important Things of Life: Women, Work and Fllmily in Su.1eet1Dater County, Wyoming, 1880-1929. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Pp. x + 201 and selected bibliography and illustrations. Not so long ago, conventional wisdom held that doing a dissertation on a topic that might be construed as western U.S. history was risky. To study one of the towns ringing Boston was to do national history (Thernstrom 1964; Dawley 1976). To study a western county, city, or even a state was to do regional history. In practical terms, this meant that one would have trouble finding a job or a publisher east of Lincoln. Those interested in studying places west of the Mississippi should therefore be encouraged that two of the three books reviewed here are published by the University of North Carolina 122 C.11ud1,m Review of Amencrn SmJ1e~ RPuue c1111wiie1111e d'hudes ,m11•11c1m1Ps Press and that the authors of dissertations on Wyoming and the Dakotas could end up teaching in Tennessee and Connecticut, respectively. Academics , it seems, are taking western history seriously. But defining western history and its relationship to the history of the United States and the world rem,lins problematic. Each of the three books reviewed here is good. But only one of them, Catherine McNicol Stock's stimulating study of the Great Depression in the Dakotas, SLICL'.eeds at setting western history in its broader context. It is somev,1l1c1t unfair to identify as western history lfal S. Barron\, synthetiL ~study of the rural North's reaction to industrialization in the late 111neteenth and e,1rly twentieth centuries. Barron states that he is studying the North, not the West. Bur his definition of North is odd. It indudes the Northeast and the Midv,.rest, but not the Nortlnvest. lhrron is presum<1bly interested in agricultural areas, and much of Oregon and Washington consisted of lumber camps. Yet these states also induded m,rny farmers by 1870, by which date not m,my Caucasi,m settlers had made their way to the Dakotas. Yet Barron generally treats rural people stretching from ~fassachusetts to Nebraska as a single cultur21l unit ,md is not sensitive to ethn1c1ty or duration of settlement. Mi:red H,m•est not only fails to compare these variables, it hardly acknowledges them. Its actors are almost wholly m1ddledass .md native-born residents of communities established before the Civil War. Yet this is an excellent book. It resides in the fruitful spal~Cbetween the challenging abstrnL~tions of Robert Wiebe's Sei1rch/or Order (1967) ,rnd the fascinating details of Lewis Atherton's A1ilill Street 011 the Middle Border (1954). Wiebe and Atherton describe rural culture being ovef\vhelmed by the economic, political, and cultural forces of the modem, industrial world. M1:x:ed Hi1ruestdoes not dispute this larger story, but it looks closely and seriously ,lt the reactions of rural and small-tmvn people to these profound L'h,rnges, and at the extent to which farmers and their neighbours both acL 'epted and sluped modernity. B,lrron's answer to this question is miarKed, as his book's title suggests, and he does an excellent job of tracing these people's complex ,rnd at times L~ontraJictory responses to economic and cultural innovation. DaurdPete1so11 def Mm I 123 Barron makes man,1geable the unwieldy question of rural people's rcaL'tton to modernity by selecting six case studies: road reform, educ.uion reform, dairy organization, grain elevators, mail order catalogues, and consumer culture . Urban critics of rural roads claimed that centralization would create more passable surfaces and a more efficient overall system. But rural people coveted the autonomy and economy granted by small road districts. Technological advances offered ways in which local people could both improve and keep control of their roads, and auto registration fees and gasoline taxes undercut their objections to expensive improvements. Opposition to education reformers who sought to centralize and professionalize rural school districts was more determined, for rural people perceived these changes as eroding key aspects of their culture. Hence one-room schools rem,1ined common across the North well into the twentieth century, long after professional educators had begun denouncing them as anachronistic. But profound cultural changes could arise in unlikely places. The D,1irymen's League of New York state began as producers' attempt to resist middlemen, but the organization became more centralized and authoritarian as it became more powerful and effective. Grain elevators began as local cooperatives. They grew rapidly in the early twentieth century, and many were successful both 111 longevity and in raising grain prices. But, the cooperative, grass-roots nature of these businesses faded as farmers prospered. Barron's chapters on consumerism are particularly effective at pointing out the ironies and complexities of rural people's reaction to modernism. Montgomery Ward succeeded in large part because the company clothed itself in traditional rural values of honesty, quality, and economy. But by the late 1880s, the catalogue was already shedding its homespun image for a more cosmopolitan one that many farm families found attractive. Local merchants resisted Wards and Sears by emphasizing community loyalty, but they also formed centralized organizations of their own to fight the businesses, as well as employing more effective advertising and nationally manufactured goods. Hence farmers wondered aloud why they should support local merchants who refused to buy local farm products. Few rural people objected to automobiles once Henry Ford started producing the humble Model Tin 1908. Barron argues that the auto corroded community values much lessthan many scholars have thought. Cars often brought farm families together for com- 124 Canadian ReVIew of American Studies Revue canadie11ne d'etudes ame, 1c11mes munity meetings, band concerts, and Saturday nights in town. Radios may have been more consequenti,1I, as they undercut more traditional forms of entertainment , even as many programmes cast themselves as purveyors of rural culture. Radios and magazines alike spre,1d national brand products, and Barron's analysis of farm women's reactions to these products and their advertisements is one of the most interesting sections of his book. Not surprisingly , younger farm women were more susceptible to store-bought food and clothing. But farm wives of all ages commonly asserted th,._uhomemade was better. They shopped more frequently than their grandmothers had, but they shopped selectively. In sum, rural people were not simply pawns at the mercy of modernization. Mt1i11 Street in Crisis is a useful companion volume to Mi:x.:ed H,1ruest inasmuch as it takes up where Barron leaves off and comes to similar conclusions . Stock's monograph appears to be narrow; it assesses how the Great Depression affected North and South Dakota's middle class. But this 1san outstanding book, one with implications that go far beyond its chronological and geographical borders. Stock presents respectable, early-twentieth-century residents of the Dakotas as quintessential members ofthe "old middle class," as small property owners -people who owned their own farms, stores, or other businesses. Making a living in the Dakotas had never been easy, and those who succeeded were staunch defenders of the American dream. They championed a blend of hard work, self-sufficiency, and cooperation. Neighbourliness tempered individualism . But those who made good deserved to make good and viewed tenant farmers, wage labourers, and clerks as somehow flawed. The 1930s confronted all Dakotans with a string of unprecedented disasters: crop prices that had begun declining in the 1920s plummeted, and there were several years of drought, suffocating heat, and relentless d1rt storms. Stock writes very well, and her descriptions of dust that sifted itself into the tightest homes, children who went hungry, and towns that folded dre especially evocative. The Depression brought latent social and cultural tensions to the surface. Most fundamentally, the decade's profound economic hardships shocked hard-working, respectable Dakotans who had taken pride in asserting that they were masters of their own destinies. But this was not all. The Depression Davui Pete1.,011di.'!Mm / 12S also revealed self-interests and class conflicts that had been denied and papered over. It also forced the old middle class to come to terms with the new middle class, the educated and urban professionals who ran the New Deal, the social workers, social scientists, lawyers, and academics who sought to transform and reform the lives of rural, tradition-minded people through programmes like soil conservation and electrific,nion. Stock points out that Dakotans could not simply reject the New Deal. Roosevelt's economic programmes offered precious financial assistance to people who were fighting for their economic survival as well as to mamtain their traditions. Their reaction was therefore complex. Farmers wanted the federal government to establish fair crop prices without taking control of production, a desire that government agents learned to be sensitive to. Many Dakota women resumed making household items like soap and fabric, bur they also participated in a burgeoning consumer culture that stressed the importance of personality and appearance. The Freemasons, an elite fraternal group, compromised some of its exacting membership standards as its numbers shrank, but emphasized its traditions by focussing on Masonic history and rituals and by maintaining core values such as its opposition to gambling. In sum, the Depression forced Dakotans to change, but, like Barron's rural residents, they retained substantial agency. North Dakotans were unable to keep the Chicago architects who designed their new state c,1pital in the 1930s from creating a very modern building, but they emphasized their own traditions in the capital's opening ceremonies and in its art. This engaging book deftly utilizes a wide variety of sources. Its documentation includes not only oral histories and newspapers, but numerous photographs and cartoons. These illustrations are not simply included to break up the text. Stock is one of those rare historians for whom images are central to her argument, who uses images to advance her analysis. Best of all, Stock seldom neglects the big picture. Although she focuses on the 1930s, she spends considerable time treating pre-Depression developments in the Dakotas. Dakotans have generally viewed the 1930s as an aberration , but Stock argues that the decade brought to the fore trends that had long been in the making. Nor does she overstate the difference between Dakotans and New Deal experts, between the old middle class and the new middle class. Dakotanswere often enthusiastic participants in modernization, 126 Canadian Review of American Studies Revue canadtenne d' etudes amerrcames and many of the bureaucrats who sought to reform rural life had deep agrarian roots. This study, then, is sensitive to both place and region and to larger historical developments. Dee Garceau's The Importm1t Things of Life sets out to accomplish much of what Stock does. Her topic is broader in its chronology but more narrow in its subject matter: women's lives in a Wyoming County from 1880 to 1929. She, too, uses a variety of sources, including oral histories, memoirs, newspapers, the census, and folk songs and stories. She, too, tries to set a particular place in its national context. Her chapter on women's work in Wyoming towns, for example, weaves in national trends. But this study is more provincial and less useful than Stock's or Barron's. The first of Garceau's eight brief chapters surveys the history of Sweetwater County, an area that featured a mix of isolated ranches and mining towns. The former were largely populated by native-born members of the middle class, the latter by a wide range of immigrants, many of them transient. Subsequent chapters treat family networks, courtship, marriage, women's ranch work, women homesteaders, and women's work in town. Garceau relates a number of interesting findings. The attenuated kinship ties among Croatian immigrants, for example, meant that young wives had more authority in Wyoming than in Croatia, where their mother-in-laws exercised considerable authority over them. The reader also learns that ranch wives-at least in retrospect-were more interested in their roles as producers than in their housework. When it came to homesteading, however, Garceau demonstrates that single women rarely ranched on their own. Those who filed for land generally did so either to provide additional land to fiances, parents, or brothers, or as an investment. Stories of highly independent women homesteaders constituted a compelling metaphor for women's autonomy in the early twentieth century, but actual women seldom imitated these heroines. Other findings are not so useful. For example the courtship chapter concludes that immigrants closely supervised their children's relationships with prospective spouses and that ranching parents opposed premarital sex by their daughters. This book is good in many respects. It advances our knowledge of western women, and the juxtaposition of middle-class ranching and immigrant min- Dav1dPete1so11 de!lvfa, I 127 ing women is intriguing. Garceau's interpretation of evidence is typically sensitive and nuanced. The prose is serviceable. The study lacks a strong interpretive thrust, but Garceau's conclusion that larger community obligations constrained Sweetwater County women's development of autonomy provides some coherence. The Important Things olLifehas two significant flaws. First, it is thinly researched. Garceau does not spell out the demographic history of Sweetwater County as fully as she might, but she notes that it had only 5,000 residents in 1890. Her relatively scant notes reflect the area's scant population ; many of her generalizations rest on the recollections of one or two people. This book would have been much stronger if it had addressed the history of a broader area. Given this paucity of documentary evidence, it is surprising that Garceau does not make fuller use of the manuscript census to establish residential persistence, for example. Second, Garceau's analysis is burdened by defining its subjects as frontier people. Garceau defines the frontier as a place where people from various cultures interacted. By this definition , late-nineteenth-century New York City was more of a frontier than much of the trans-Mississippi West, including the ranching portions of Sweetwater County. Garceau also points out that frontiers were typically characterized by isolation and labour-intensive work. But her treatment of the term "frontier" is too attenuated to convince this reader, at least, of its utility. In any event, Garceau 's emphasis on the frontier vari,lhle leads her to neglect factors that were more global and consequential. For example, her chapter on courtship and ethnicity cites only three secondary works on immigrant families. In sum, Garceau pays too much attention to region, Barron too little, and Stock gets it just right. Yet all three of these books are, at the very least, useful studies of places and peoples too often relegated to the margins of historical study in the United States. Works Cited Atherton, Lewis. 1954. Main Street 011 the AfauileBorder. Bloomington: Indi:uu l 1niversity Press. Dawley, Alan. 1976. Class and Community: 'I7u.• Industrial Rt.•110/11tio11 i11L:v1111. C1111bndge: Harvard University Press. 128 Canadian Review of American Studies Revue ca11adienne d'etudesameric11i11es Thernstrom, Stephan. 1964. Poverty and Progress:SocialMobility in a Nineteenth Centu1y City. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wiebe, Robert H. 1967. T1Je SearchforOrder: 1877-1920. New York: Hill and Wang. ...