Table Of Content

Born in the Country Revisiting Rural Amer i ca Pete Daniel and Mary C. Neth, Series Found ers Born in the Country a history of rural amer i ca Third Edition David B. Danbom Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 1995, 2006, 2017 Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2017 Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Mary land 21218 - 4363 www . press . jhu . edu Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Danbom, David B., 1947– author. Title: Born in the country : a history of rural Amer i ca / David B. Danbom. Other titles: History of rural Amer i ca Description: Third edition. | Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, [2017] | Series: Revisiting rural Amer i ca | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016052562 | ISBN 9781421423357 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781421423364 (electronic) Subjects: LCSH: Country life— United States— History. | Farm life— United States— History. | Agriculture— United States— History. | United States— Rural conditions. Classification: LCC E179 .D25 2017 | DDC 307.1/4120973— dc23 LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2016052562 A cata log rec ord for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more informa tion, please contact Special Sales at 410- 516-6 936 or specialsales@press . jhu . edu. Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post- consumer waste, whenever pos si ble. For Karen, this time, all of the time This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface to the Third Edition ix Preface to the Second Edition xi Preface to the First Edition xv 1 Rural Eu rope and Pre- Columbian Amer i ca 1 2 The Rural Development of En glish North Amer i ca 22 3 Maturity and Its Discontents 37 4 Agriculture and Economic Growth in the Young Republic 59 5 Rural Life in the Young Nation 79 6 The Unmaking and Remaking of the Rural South 99 7 Rural Amer i ca in the Age of Industrialization 121 8 Prosperity and Its Discontents 151 9 From the Best of Times to the Worst 175 10 The New Deal and Rural Amer i ca 195 11 The Production Revolution and the New Agriculture 220 12 Agriculture and Rural Life in the Twenty- First Century 240 Notes 253 Suggestions for Further Reading 257 Index 275 This page intentionally left blank Preface to the Third Edition History may seem to be fixed and unchanging, but that could not be further from the truth. By the time a book is published, the evidence on which it relies has already been supplemented—or even superseded—by new evidence or new interpretations of old evidence. And in a dynamic and constantly shifting discipline, entirely new areas of study are opened by historians, while traditional ones become scholarly backwaters, at least for a while. These realities pres ent a chal- lenge to the historian, especially if he or she is determined to make a book timely and relevant. This prob lem is especially vexing to me. My desire to bring Born in the Country up to the pres ent by fairly representing changes in rural Amer i ca requires revi- sion on a regular basis. So does the dynamism of American history, reflected in the rise of such relatively new fields as food history and the history of capitalism. I do not expect this edition to be perfectly timely, because the discipline of history will continue to move forward, even as each work of history is frozen in time, and rural Amer i ca w ill continue to change, along with the rest of the country. What I do hope, however, is that this edition will be more satisfying than the second edition has become to teachers who use it in classes, to students who read it, and to general readers who look to it for an overview of rural Amer i ca. In order to keep abreast of a changing scholarly landscape and a changing rural Amer i ca, I have expanded the second edition and revised it significantly in places. Readers familiar with the first two editions will see little change in some chapters and major changes in others. Some of my decisions to revise—or not to revise— respond to reviewers’ and readers’ suggestions, but most are driven by recent work in the field. Readers will see this most clearly in the last two chapters. Chapter eleven, on the post– World War II production revolution, has been shortened and significantly revised. And in place of the afterword that appeared in the second edition, I have written a new chapter on rural Amer i ca in the twenty- first century, which attempts to come to grips with the modern food movement and with a rural Amer i ca that is no longer defined by agriculture. I