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The Agrarian Tradition and Its Meaning for Today

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The Agrarian Tradition and Its Meaning for Today Mr. Fite, who grew up on a South Dakota farm, is research professor of history at the University of Oklahoma and one of the country's leading agricultural historians. This essay was delivered as the McKnight lecture at the 118th annual meeting of the Minnesota Historical Society. The AGRARIAN TRADITION and Its Meaning for Today GILBERT C. FITE ONE of the most notable developments in today. Although wealthy former Senator American history during the last hundred Robert S. Kerr of Oklahoma used to picture years has been the rapid decline in the eco­ the log cabin of his birth and distribute jugs nomic, political, and social position of of good old country sorghum during cam­ American farmers. Not many years ago, the paign forays, neither Averell Harriman nor most idealized man in American life was the Nelson Rockefeller — both multimillion­ hard-working, independent son of the land. aires— found it necessary to have his pic­ He was viewed as the prototype of every­ ture taken hauling hay or milking cows thing good and worthwhile. As Thomas Jef­ during the 1958 election in New York. ferson proclaimed, farmers were "the chosen So great has been the impact of industrial­ people of God, if ever he had a chosen peo­ ization upon our culture that Christ's par­ ple." 1 But history has a way of being fickle, able of the sower is in danger of losing its and in her unfaithfulness Clio has produced meaning to modern young urbanites, who a new national idol far different from the neither sow nor reap, but who spend a life­ self-reliant yeoman of earlier generations. time on asphalt or concrete. Many of today's The farmer has been replaced by the image children know cows, horses, sheep, and hogs of a prosperous business or professional man only as animals that stand idly and sleepily who works in a white collar, who lives in beside bears, elephants, monkeys, and gi­ the suburbs, and who is more likely to spend raffes in the city zoo. James Whitcomb his early evenings with a cocktail glass than Riley's "When the Frost Is on the Pumpkin a milk pail. and the Fodder's in the Shock" is meaning­ The declining importance of agriculture less to a generation which hardly recognizes and the weakening of the agrarian tradition pumpkins outside a can and which thinks is perhaps best reflected in our national po­ that fodder may be a new breakfast food. litical life. No longer is it necessary to boast Indeed, the rural imprints have been rapidly of a rural background or of agricultural fore­ blurred by factories, shopping centers, air­ bears in order to run successfully for public fields, apartment houses, and suburbs. office. During the presidential campaign of Only recently, however, has the secondary 1924, Calvin Coolidge was shown in the field place of agriculture been recognized and ac­ pitching hay, but this would look ridiculous cepted in American national life. And even yet many citizens espouse the idea that there ^ Quoted in Everett E. Edwards, Jefferson and is something particularly desirable and mor­ Agriculture, 23 (Washington, 1943). ally good about farmers and farm life. In a Summer 1967 293 book written in 1960, Ezra Taft Benson, sec­ "Farmer George." Benjamin Franklin, one retary of agriculture in the Eisenhower ad­ of the best known and most highly respected ministration, wrote: "We have always had a citizens in Colonial America, held that agri­ feeling that there is something basically culture was the most valuable economic pur­ sound about having a good portion of our suit, much to be preferred over industry. people on the land. Country living produces Although a town dweller all his life, Frank­ better people. The country is a good place lin deplored the social evils associated with to rear a family. It is a good place to teach manufacturing and exalted the joys and the basic virtues that have helped to build moral values he thought were connected this nation. Young people on a faiTn learn with agricultural enterprise. how to work, how to be thrifty and how to The development of a strong agricultural do things with their hands. It has given mil­ orientation should not be surprising when lions of us the finest preparation for life."^ we consider the fact that during the ma­ The sentiments and ideas expressed by Sec­ jority of man's existence he has been a retary Benson have been prevalent through­ farmer or herdsman. The shift to industrial­ out American history; agriculture has always ism and urban living in Western Europe and been praised both as a business and as a the United States is almost a current devel­ way of life. opment and has no parallel in the broad sweep of history. Many people still living IN TAKING this position, Americans have can remember when the nation was pri­ simply continued and fortified a strong marily agricultural. In 1790, when the first agrarian tradition which went back to the United States census was taken, over 96 per time of Greece and Rome. Centuries before cent of the people were considered rural. Thomas Jefferson became this country's Only five towns had a population of 8,000 most outspoken and influential purveyor of or more. Philadelphia and New York, num­ agrarianism, Plato, Cato, Seneca, Cicero, bering only 42,000 and 33,000 respectively, Diocletian, and other ancients had estab­ were the largest cities. The vast majority lished the tradition. Agriculture, it was said, of the people actually lived on farms, and was the most noble of all employments; it according to the best estimates, agriculture was useful, enjoyable, righteous, healthful, was responsible for nearly 40 per cent of the and even blessed of God. private production income, compared to less The idea that peculiar and highly de­ than 5 per cent for manufacturing. The sired virtues were associated with tilling the country's exports consisted almost exclu­ soil was strengthened and solidified in sively of farm products. Under these condi­ the Medieval and Early Modem periods tions it is not surprising that the nation's throughout Western Europe. Indeed, by the leaders saw the greatness of America in her eighteenth century reverence for farming soil, in the people who tilled it, and in the and farm life had become nearly a cult. In institutions which grew out of a rural way both England and France numerous treatises of life. praising agriculture were written and widely Many of the founding fathers were strong read. Arthur Young, one of the best known agrarians. George Washington loved farm and most prolific writers on farming and life and each time he left Mount Vernon, agricultural reform in England during the where he settled in 1759, he departed with late eighteenth century, declared in his book. greater reluctance. Moreover, unlike many Rural Economy, that "perhaps we might, without any great impropriety, call farming the reigning taste of the present times." ^ ^ Ezra Taft Benson, Freedom to Farm, 109 (New York, 1960). Even King George III operated a farm and ' Arthur Young, Rural Economy: or. Essays on seems to have taken delight in being called the Practical Parts of Husbandry, 173 (London, 1770). 294 MINNESOTA History of those who praised the virtues of farming, ground was considered a definite political Washington was a successful agriculturist asset. in his own right. In 1786 he wrote to Ar­ Moreover, by the 1820s and 1830s agricul­ thur Young that "agriculture has ever been tural journalism had become well estab­ amongst the most favourite amusements of lished, giving farmers and their spokesmen my life."* additional opportunities to express the ideas The most influential and articulate spokes­ which composed the agrarian tradition. man for agrarianism in the late eight­ Among these spokesmen were John S. Skin­ eenth and early nineteenth centuries was, of ner of Baltimore, Thomas G. Fessenden of course, Thomas Jefferson. In his Notes on Boston, Jesse Buel of Albany, and scores of Virginia Jefferson argued that the main ef­ others. As might be expected, farm editors forts of American citizens should be in de­ filled their columns with praise of agricul­ veloping the soil. "While we have land to ture. labour then, let us never wish to see our Yet long before the Civil War, it was ob­ citizens occupied at a workbench, or twirl­ vious to a great many people that farming ing a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, paid small dividends and that the sources are wanting in husbandry; but, for the gen­ of real wealth were to be found in com­ eral operations of manufacture, let our work­ merce, industry, or trade. Complaints were shops remain in Europe." Jefferson declared widespread that returns from agriculture that he had never known "corruption of were small. A farmer near Hillsdale, New morals in the mass of cultivators,' but "the York, wrote in 1849 that farming might be mobs of great cities add just so much to the the most happy pursuit of man, but it cer­ support of pure government, as sores do to tainly was not the most profitable. It must the strength of the human body." To Jeffer­ have been discouraging to farmers and plant­ son the cultivators of the land were the most ers to read Moses Yale Beach's Wealth and valuable citizens; they were the most "vig­ Biography of Wealthy Citizens of New York orous, the most independent, the most vir­ City, published in 1845. Beach found that tuous, and they are tied to their country, there were 962 men or women in New York and wedded to its liberty and interests by City alone who were worth $100,000 or the most lasting bonds."'' more, a sum which seemed astronomical to most farmers.
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