Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America

394 Pages·2000·23.157 MB·English

by  Ronald R. Kline

TECHNO L 0 GY AN D SOCIAL CHANGE
IN RURAL AMERICA

CONSUMERS IN THE COUNTRY
REVISITING RURAL AMERICA
Pete Daniel and Mary C. Neth, Series Editors
Mary Neth, Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the
Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900-1940
Sally McMurry, Transforming Rural Life: Dairying Families and
Agricultural Change, 1820-1885
David B. Danbom, Born in the Country:A History of Rural America
David Vaught, Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops,
and Labor, 1875-1920
Ronald R. Kline, Consumers in the Country: Technology and
Social Change in Rural America
Consumers
in the Country
Technology and Social Change in
Rural America
RONALD R. KLINE
The Johns Hopkins University Press * Baltimore and London
© 2000 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2000
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
987654321
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu
Kline, Ronald R.
Consumers in the country : technology and social change in rural America /
Ronald R. Kline
p. cm. — (Revisiting rural America)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8018-6248-5 (alk. paper)
1. Technology—Social aspects—United States. 2. Country life—United States.
I Title, TI. Series:
T14.5-k578 2000
303-48'3°0973091734—de21 99-045676
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
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The silence of the Plains, this great unpeopled landscape of
earth and sky, is much like the silence one finds in a
monastery, an unfathomable silence that has the power to
re-form you. And the Plains have changed me. I was a New
Yorker for nearly six years and still love to visit my friends in
the city. But now I am conscious of carrying a Plains silence
within me into cities, and of carrying my city experiences back
to the Plains so that they may be absorbed again back into
silence, the fruitful silence that produces poems and essays.
—Kathleen Norris, Dakota
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