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8. A Store Almost in Sight
- University of Iowa Press
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8 A Store Almost in Sight Gottfried Duden lived in central Missouri in the 1820s and encouraged the immigration of his fellow German citizens in his book Report on a Journey to the Western States of North America and A Stay of Several Years Along the Missouri. After three years of living on a farm located on the Missouri River west of St. Louis, he wrote of the possibilities available for European immigrants . He glorified pioneer life and emphasized the plentiful natural resources and the availability of cheap land in Missouri. It was “extremely alluring to settle down in regions where one has such complete freedom of choice,” he explained. Americans benefited from the fertility of the land and the plentiful game and fish. River connections were “splendid,” and the Missouri River was “navigable without interruption for over two thousand five hundred miles,” he exaggerated. Communication via steamboat was “exceedingly easy,” and the region’s rivers tied Missouri settlers to the rest of the nation. Briefly stated, Missouri was ideally suited for commerce and farming. It provided outstanding opportunities for European immigrants, he boasted.1 Market participation was one of the opportunities for immigrants. Duden noted, “wherever population had grown to a certain level, there also a market will soon develop for the products of the soil, and no one would be more pleased than the farmer who can leave it to the merchant and to speculators to send goods long distances.” No immigrant or settler could “get along without the intermediary service of a merchant,” he added. Anyone who had something to sell turned to storekeepers, who then sold the goods on commission or bought them from the farmer. In the 1820s, rural residents brought in wax, tallow, furs, 142 chapter eight skins, and minerals and received brandies, flour, and other goods in return. According to Duden, Missouri farmers tried to produce as many of their necessities as possible themselves—this was the “ambition of every farmer”—so no money had to be spent on basic foodstuffs. (This changed in the following decades, however.) He wrote that American farmers “spend their cash with a much easier mind for luxury articles, for things of one’s fancy.” He also noted the interest in commercial activity of local farmers, writing, “some farmers, for instance, use the hours of bad weather for making shoes, for building barrels, and for making other implements. All of this is then transmitted to a storekeeper for sale.” A St. Louis newspaper advertisement provides an example of this. It noted that brooms, whiskey barrels, and hides could be sold to merchants in the city.2 Rural families needed to be able to sell their surplus agricultural produce. General stores, providing a wide variety of items, fulfilled the key role of middlemen for Missouri residents. Farmers preferred local merchants to the more risky and time-consuming use of flatboats to transfer their produce to markets. Fluctuating river levels, possible low prices, transportation difficulties , and distance pushed rural families to use nearby stores. Storekeepers took locally produced agricultural goods for credit, barter exchange, or sometimes cash payments and provided Missourians with access to goods from outside the region. “Commercial markets for agricultural surpluses drew the backcountry into regional trading systems,” wrote geographers Warren R. Hofstra and Robert D. Mitchell. Rural areas were pulled into markets tied to exports and imports, as local consumer demand rose. Population increases, urban growth, and demand for export surpluses stimulated commercial development . Agricultural income allowed farm families to increase the consumption of items they did not produce. For example, families in the Shenandoah valley in the late 1700s owned clocks, teapots, and coffee mills.3 Consumerism linked the countryside to towns, which then tied rural areas to river transportation and larger markets downriver. Town stores, a key part of this commercial system, exported farm products outside the region (fig. 13). Such stores allowed rural residents to take part in the expanding national market and promoted their consumerism. Few farm families ignored the chance to improve their standard of living by selling a portion of their agricultural production. They sold or exchanged their surplus farm goods for things that they chose not to make themselves, or for goods they could not make, such as coffee or tools. The Boonville merchant firm of Walter and Ballantine, for [34.204.3.195] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 19:17 GMT) A Store Almost in Sight 143 example, promised to pay the “highest market rates” for corn, wheat...