AS YOU SOW: CULTURE, AGRICULTURE, AND THE NEW DEAL by JASON MICHAEL MANTHORNE (Under the Direction of James C. Cobb) ABSTRACT This dissertation reinterprets the New Deal for agriculture, arguing that USDA New Dealers were primarily occupied with revitalizing rural life rather than with simply raising farmers’ income. More than anything, agrarian New Dealers thought that a thriving rural life would come from modernizing rural cultures. In the 1910s and 1920s, rural sociology emerged to critique the prevailing orthodoxy of “productionism,” the idea that greater agricultural efficiency was the singular solution to the “farm problem.” Rural sociologists subverted productionism and argued that the problems of rural life were largely social and cultural. Factory farms would hollow out rural communities when strong and well-populated communities were what rural people needed most. Agrarian New Dealers came out of this earlier tradition, a fact reflected in their interest in rural life and their commitment to a style of participatory democracy that harkened back to the rural communities of the nineteenth century. USDA New Dealers developed two distinct sets of programs, one for America’s “cultures of commerce” and another for its “cultures of poverty.” In the cultures of commerce—those places where farmers produced almost exclusively for the market—these experts wanted to rationalize and not simply reduce agricultural production so that most farm families could remain in agriculture. But they also wanted to rein in the cultural excesses that they believed led to soil mining and overproduction. The New Dealers’ programs for the “cultures of poverty” were more problematic. For the most part, rather than attacking the causes of poverty in places like Appalachia and the Cotton South, the USDA treated poverty as a cultural malaise. This explains what historians have missed about the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration. These were not agencies, as has been so commonly assumed, dedicated to giving land to the landless. These were “rehabilitation” agencies dedicated to alleviating the alleged cultural pathologies that perpetuated poverty. As the factory farm became dominant after World War II, the kind of rural life that USDA New Dealers tried to foster disappeared. Even today, we have hollowed out rural communities, pervasive rural poverty, and an exploited class of rural proletarians—all of the things that agrarian New Dealers warned were poisonous to a healthy rural life and a sound agriculture. INDEX WORDS: Rural Sociology, Social Science, New Deal, Agriculture, Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Resettlement Administration, Farm Security Administration, Poverty, Rural Poverty, Sharecroppers, Arthur Raper. AS YOU SOW: CULTURE, AGRICULTURE, AND THE NEW DEAL by JASON MICHAEL MANTHORNE A.B., The University of Georgia, 2004 M.A., The University of Georgia, 2006 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2013 © 2013 Jason Michael Manthorne All Rights Reserved AS YOU SOW: CULTURE, AGRICULTURE, AND THE NEW DEAL by JASON MICHAEL MANTHORNE Major Professor: James C. Cobb Committee: Kathleen Clark Timothy Cleaveland Shane Hamilton Melissa Walker Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2013 Dedication For Katherine Farrell Manthorne And to the memory of Joseph Parker Manthorne iv Acknowledgements A number of institutions and archivists have helped me enormously in the course of the research for this dissertation. I would like to thank the staffs of the Southern Historical Collection, the National Agricultural Library, Special Collections at the National Agricultural Library, and the National Archives branches in both College Park, Maryland, and Atlanta, Georgia. In College Park, Tab Lewis and Joe Schwarz were especially helpful as I tried to navigate the USDA labyrinth, even taking me back into the stacks occasionally when the finding aids offered no clues as to what a particular series of boxes contained. Wayne Olson made my time at the National Agricultural Library especially productive, retrieving literally truckloads worth of material from the stacks on my first day in Beltsville. The UGA Interlibrary Loan Department kept me supplied with books and documents from libraries all over the country and frequently pointed out when something I needed was hiding somewhere in our own collections. Under both Robert Pratt and John Morrow, the History Department at the University of Georgia was especially generous in funding my travel to various conferences. UGA’s Graduate School provided me with a Summer Doctoral Research Fellowship and, most crucially, a Dissertation Completion Award that allowed me an incredible year to dedicate myself full time to research and writing. I would also like to thank Tina Anderson for providing me such an inviting place to stay while I did my research in College Park and Beltsville in the summer of 2010. There is no question that the best thing that I got out of graduate school is the many friendships that I formed while completing my degrees. Sam Crowie and Rhiannon Evangelista made our first- and second-year happy hours a lot of fun and helped to take the edge off the otherwise difficult transition to grad student life. Jim Gigantino kindly became one of my truest v friends even after I defeated him (crushed him, really) in our epic first-year battle over desk space. I became such good buddies with Steve Nash that we seemed to start speaking a language intelligible only to us – and all our other friends seemed grateful for that fact. Jenny Schwartzberg is one of the funniest people I know. Zac Smith has always been there to give fist bumps and to generally lighten the mood of things. Jennifer Wunn did our gang the favor of insisting that we have regular social occasions and was such a good officemate that we sometimes struggled not to interrupt each other’s working time. I shared many late-afternoon talk-sessions in Le Conte with Song Min, which must have been how she got so good at telling me when I do not know what I am talking about, which is often. Kilungu Nzaku never set foot in the History Department, but his friendship and our conversations were an important part of my time in Athens. La Shonda Mims is the closest and most supportive friend I have ever had; Tammie Rosser and Copeland Byars haven’t been bad either. Jim Nehls was unfailingly generous and kind to all the weird historians who invited themselves into his life. I have probably shared more of the trials and tribulations of graduate school with Kathi Nehls than with anyone else. She tolerated the towering and tottering mess on my desk and bucked me up (often with the welcome aid of food and beer) when I was getting down. The last couple years would have been a lot more difficult without her. I even managed to encounter a few people in Athens with whom I connected primarily as we shared ideas, critiqued each other’s work, or simply because I admired their scholarship. In this regard, I would like to thank Barton Myers, John Hayes, Tom Okie, and Ichiro Miyata. Bert Way and Chris Manganiello have always been especially friendly and encouraging. I do not think I could have chosen any better in putting together my dissertation committee. Shane Hamilton generously read and commented both on early drafts of chapters and the final product. Kathleen Clark offered ideas on how to connect my work to broader historiographies. Melissa Walker truly went above and beyond the call of duty in serving on my vi committee. She provided perceptive and helpful feedback on a number of chapter drafts. Alone among the readers I have encountered, she manages to convey not just when you have gotten something wrong, but also when you have managed to get something right or to say something interesting. Although I cannot say that I ever actually had my feet up on Tim Cleaveland’s desk, I would usually leave his office with the sensation that that’s where they had been. Conversations with him are always easy and freewheeling even as he challenges your assumptions and your arguments. Professor Cleaveland is more generous with his time and the amount of feedback that he gives on written work than any person with whom I have had the privilege of working. I could not have asked for a better advisor than Jim Cobb. He encouraged me through early chapter drafts that were rough in the extreme. He gave me a generous amount of his time and attention despite the incredible workload that he gives himself through his teaching, research, and committee responsibilities. His sense of humor always leavens his criticisms, and his own scholarship provides an example to which I can only aspire. Dr. Cobb’s greatest gift as a mentor is his ability to recognize what you are capable of doing, which he couples with his insistence that you not settle for anything less than exactly that. The members of my family are the only people of whom it would be true to say, “I could not have done this without you.” Norma Unruh always expressed an interest in my studies and cheered me every step of the way, which meant a lot. On more occasions than I can remember, Shauna and Mike Howe lifted my spirits with fun and friendship. Jay and Sherry Manthorne encouraged and supported me with words and love and more. All of them graciously tolerated the distracted and occasionally absent person that I sometimes had to be. It feels so inadequate that all I can say in return is, “Thank you.” This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of Joseph Parker Manthorne, who taught me so much about the importance of being engaged with the world, and to Katherine Farrell Manthorne, who gave me my love of reading.