From Prairie To Corn Belt

Farming on the Illinois and Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd Edition

Allan G. Bogue

Beginning in 1820, settlers broke the tall grass prairies of mid-America. By the 1870s they had begun to use the term "Corn Belt" to describe much of the region. In From Prairie to Corn Belt, Allan G. Bogue chronicles this remarkable transformation and challenges the view that the post–Civil War period constituted thirty years of unrelieved agricultural depression. His book remains the only study of Midwestern agricultural development that focuses on the farmers themselves, the entire range of production problems they had to solve on their land, and the diversity of their responses.

Ivan R. Dee

Pages: 328 • Trim: 6 x 9¼

978-1-56663-879-1 • Paperback • September 2011 • $42.00 • (£35.00)

Subjects: History / United States / 19th Century, History / General, History / United States / General

From Prairie To Corn Belt

Farming on the Illinois and Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd Edition

Paperback

Summary

Beginning in 1820, settlers broke the tall grass prairies of mid-America. By the 1870s they had begun to use the term "Corn Belt" to describe much of the region. In From Prairie to Corn Belt, Allan G. Bogue chronicles this remarkable transformation and challenges the view that the post–Civil War period constituted thirty years of unrelieved agricultural depression. His book remains the only study of Midwestern agricultural development that focuses on the farmers themselves, the entire range of production problems they had to solve on their land, and the diversity of their responses.

Details

Ivan R. Dee

Pages: 328 • Trim: 6 x 9¼

978-1-56663-879-1 • Paperback • September 2011 • $42.00 • (£35.00)

Subjects: History / United States / 19th Century, History / General, History / United States / General

Author

Allan G. Bogue became a professor emeritus in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991, after serving since 1968 at that institution as the Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History. His other publications in agricultural history include Money at Interest: The Farm Mortgage on the Middle Border and many articles and book chapters. He is also the author of The Earnest Men: Republicans of the Civil War Senate, Clio and the Bitch Goddess: Quantification in American Political History, and other books and articles in American history and historiography. He has been president of the Organization of American Historians, the Agricultural History Society, and the Economic History Association. He was honored with a life membership in the Western History Association for his scholarly contributions to that field of history.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Reprint Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Introduction: The Land Lies Waiting
Chapter 1: The People Come
Chapter 2: They Take the Land
Chapter 3: "Free Land" Is Not Free
Chapter 4: Farms on the Breaking
Chapter 5: The Passing of the Lean Kine
Chapter 6: The Lesser Beasts and Draft Stock
Chapter 7: The Crops in the Field
Chapter 8: How to Farm Siting Down
Chapter 9: Three Production Costs: Money, Labor, Taxes
Chapter 10: Some Are Innovators
Chapter 11: They Call It the Corn Belt
Chapter 12: Farmers in the New Settlements
Chapter 13: The Farmer in the "Old" Community
Conclusion: The Threshold of the Golden Age

Reviews

A masterpiece. (Previous Edition Praise)
— Agricultural History

It's not exaggerating to call this book the classic scholarly study of pioneer farming in the Corn Belt.
(Previous Edition Praise)
— Robert R. Dykstra

From Prairie to Corn Belt deserves to be on the shelf of every rural and agricultural historian. . . . The book is unsurpassed for readability and accuracy.
(Previous Edition Praise)
— Steven D. Reschly, University of Iowa