Bull Threshers And Bindlestiffs

Author : Thomas D. Isern
Publisher : University Press of Kansas
Page : 263 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2021-10-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9780700631575

Get Book

Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs by Thomas D. Isern Pdf

Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs is a panorama on a continental canvas: the Great Plains of North America, stretching from Texas to Alberta. Onto this surface the author lays the large features of regional practice in the harvesting and threshing of wheat during the days before the combined harvester—harvesting with binder and header, threshing with bull thresher and steam engine. Into the picture he places the key figures who accomplished the task of gathering the grain--the farm men and women, the custom threshermen, and the bindlestiffs, or itinerant laborers. Affectionately he sketches the small details of folklife that comprised the everyday work and culture of the wheat belt—building shocks, loading racks, constructing stacks, pitching bundles into the separator, hauling water to the engine, drinking deep from the crockery water jug. Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs is a profusely illustrated study of a complex, vigorous regional culture concerned with the production of wheat—a culture that centered around the annual harvest and declined with the advent of the combine. This is an examination of the interaction of culture, environment, and technology with import for the fields of agricultural history and regional history. More than that, with its grassroots research, its descriptions of tools and customs, and its lavish illustrations, it is a re-creation of a proud phase of regional life previously captured only in yellowed albumen photographs.

Author : Thomas Dean Isern
Publisher : Lawrence, Kan. : University Press of Kansas
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 1990
Category : Social Science
ISBN : IND:30000004295287

Get Book

Bull Threshers and Bindlestiffs by Thomas Dean Isern Pdf

Author : Mark Fiege
Publisher : University of Washington Press
Page : 363 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2009-11-23
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9780295989747

Get Book

Irrigated Eden by Mark Fiege Pdf

Irrigation came to the arid West in a wave of optimism about the power of water to make the desert bloom. Mark Fiege’s fascinating and innovative study of irrigation in southern Idaho’s Snake River valley describes a complex interplay of human and natural systems. Using vast quantities of labor, irrigators built dams, excavated canals, laid out farms, and brought millions of acres into cultivation. But at each step, nature rebounded and compromised the intended agricultural order. The result was a new and richly textured landscape made of layer upon layer of technology and intractable natural forces—one that engineers and farmers did not control with the precision they had anticipated. Irrigated Eden vividly portrays how human actions inadvertently helped to create a strange and sometimes baffling ecology. Winner of the Idaho Library Association Book Award, 1999 Winner of the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award, Forest History Society, 1999-2000

Author : Frank Tobias Higbie
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0252070984

Get Book

Indispensable Outcasts by Frank Tobias Higbie Pdf

Often overlooked in the history of Progressive Era labor, the hoboes who rode the rails in search of seasonal work have nevertheless secured a place in the American imagination. The stories of the men who hunted work between city and countryside, men alternately portrayed as either romantic adventurers or degenerate outsiders, have not been easy to find. Nor have these stories found a comfortable home in either rural or labor histories. Indispensable Outcasts weaves together history, anthropology, gender studies, and literary analysis to reposition these workers at the center of Progressive Era debates over class, race, manly responsibility, community, and citizenship. Combining incisive cultural criticism with the empiricism of a more traditional labor history, Frank Tobias Higbie illustrates how these so-called marginal figures were in fact integral to the communities they briefly inhabited and to the cultural conflicts over class, masculinity, and sexuality they embodied. He draws from life histories, the investigations of social reformers, and the organizing materials of the Industrial Workers of the World and presents a complex and compelling portrait of hobo life, from its often violent and dangerous working conditions to its ethic of "transient mutuality" that enabled survival and resistance on the road. More than a study of hobo life, this interdisciplinary book is also a meditation on the possibilities for writing history from the bottom up, as well as a frank discussion of the ways historians' fascination with personal narrative has colored their construction and presentation of history.

Author : Marc S. Rodriguez
Publisher : University Rochester Press
Page : 460 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : History
ISBN : 1580461581

Get Book

Repositioning North American Migration History by Marc S. Rodriguez Pdf

An in-depth look at trends in North American internal migration. This volume gathers established and new scholars working on North American immigration, transmigration, internal migration, and citizenship whose work analyzes the development of migrant and state-level institutions as well as migrant networks. With contemporary migration research most often focused on the development of transnational communities and the ways international migrants maintain relationships with their sending region that sustain the circularflow of people, ideas, and traditions across national boundaries it is useful to compare these to similar patterns evident within the terrain of internal migration. To date, however, international and internal migration studies have unfolded in relative isolation from one another with each operating within these distinct fields of expertise rather than across them. Although there has been some important linking, there has not been a recent major consideration of human migration that works across and within the various borders of the North American continent. Thus, the volume presents a variety of chapters that seek to consider human migration in comparative perspective across the internal/international divide. Marc S. Rodriguez is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University; Donna R. Gabbaccia is the Mellon Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh; James R. Grossman is theVice President of Research and Education at the Newberry Library, Chicago. Contributors: Josef Barton, Wallace Best, Donna Gabbaccia, James Gregory, Tobias Higbie, Mae Ngai, Walter Nugent, Annelise Orleck, Kunal Parker, Kimberly Phillips, Bruno Ramirez, Marc Rodriguez Repositioning North American Migration History is a volume in Studies in Comparative History, sponsored by Princeton University's Shelby Cullom Davis Center forHistorical Studies.

Author : Robert T. Rhode
Publisher : Purdue University Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Farm life
ISBN : 1557532087

Get Book

The Harvest Story by Robert T. Rhode Pdf

The Harvest Story depicts the life of rural American threshermen. This collection of first-person narratives chronicles the eyewitness accounts of people who threshed grain with steam engines. The book selects anecdotes from over 50 volumes of material published in The Iron-Men Album Magazine from 1946 until 2001 and arranges them in a coherent recitation. The result is a story of hard, honest work, of heartfelt cooperation and of triumph not unmarred by tragedy. Readers hear the recollections of those who pitched the bundles of grain onto the horse-drawn wagons, unloaded these bundles into the threshing machine, and saw the stream of clean wheat cascade from the grain auger. Readers encounter the wit and humor that characterized yesteryear's harvests. They learn about the vast industries that supported the agricultural enterprise, and they discover the dangers posed by mechanical equipment. The Harvest Story concludes by examining the birth and development of a movement to rescue the agrarian past from oblivion. This book captures authentic voices from the era of steam-powered threshing and offers readable interpretation and explanation, including detailed appendices.

Author : Earl S. Pomeroy
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 597 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2008-10-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300142679

Get Book

American Far West in the Twentieth Century by Earl S. Pomeroy Pdf

In this richly insightful survey that represents the culmination of decades of research, a leading western specialist argues that the unique history of the American West did not end in the year 1900, as is commonly assumed, but was shaped as much--if not more--by events and innovations in the twentieth century. Earl Pomeroy gathers copious information on economic, political, social, intellectual, and business issues, thoughtfully evaluates it, and draws a new and more nuanced portrait of the West than has ever been depicted before. Pomeroy mines extensive published and unpublished sources to show how the post-1900 West charted a path that was influenced by, but separate from, the rest of the country and the world. He deals not only with the West's transition from an agricultural to an urban region but also with the important contributions of minority racial and ethnic groups and women in that transformation. Pomeroy describes a modern West--increasingly urban, transnational, and multicultural--that has overcome much of the isolation that challenged it at an earlier time. His final book is nothing short of the definitive source on that West.

Author : Allan Kulikoff
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 366 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0813914205

Get Book

The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism by Allan Kulikoff Pdf

Allan Kulikoff's provocative new book traces the rural origins and growth of capitalism in America, challenging earlier scholarship and charting a new course for future studies in history and economics. Kulikoff argues that long before the explosive growth of cities and big factories, capitalism in the countryside changed our society- the ties between men and women, the relations between different social classes, the rhetoric of the yeomanry, slave migration, and frontier settlement. He challenges the received wisdom that associates the birth of capitalism wholly with New York, Philadelphia, and Boston and show how studying the critical market forces at play in farm and village illuminates the defining role of the yeomen class in the origins of capitalism.

Author : Mark Wyman
Publisher : Hill and Wang
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2010-04-27
Category : History
ISBN : 1429945907

Get Book

Hoboes by Mark Wyman Pdf

When the railroad stretched its steel rails across the American West in the 1870s, it opened up a vast expanse of territory with very few people but enormous agricultural potential: a second Western frontier, the garden West. Agriculture quickly followed the railroads, making way for Kansas wheat and Colorado sugar beets and Washington apples. With this new agriculture came an unavoidable need for harvest workers—for hands to pick the apples, cotton, oranges, and hops; to pull and top the sugar beets; to fill the trays with raisin grapes and apricots; to stack the wheat bundles in shocks to be pitched into the maw of the threshing machine. These were not the year-round hired hands but transients who would show up to harvest the crop and then leave when the work was finished. Variously called bindlestiffs, fruit tramps, hoboes, and bums, these men—and women and children—were vital to the creation of the West and its economy. Amazingly, it is an aspect of Western history that has never been told. In Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West, the award-winning historian Mark Wyman beautifully captures the lives of these workers. Exhaustively researched and highly original, this narrative history is a detailed, deeply sympathetic portrait of the lives of these hoboes, as well as a fresh look at the settling and development of the American West.

Author : Brent D. Shaw
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 481 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2013-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781442644793

Get Book

Bringing in the Sheaves by Brent D. Shaw Pdf

The annual harvesting of cereal crops was one of the most important economic tasks in the Roman Empire. Not only was it urgent and critical for the survival of state and society, it mobilized huge numbers of men and women every year from across the whole face of the Mediterranean. In Bringing in the Sheaves, Brent D. Shaw investigates the ways in which human labour interacted with the instruments of harvesting, what part the workers and their tools had in the whole economy, and how the work itself was organized. Both collective and individual aspects of the story are investigated, centred on the life-story of a single reaper whose work in the wheat fields of North Africa is documented in his funerary epitaph. The narrative then proceeds to an analysis of the ways in which this cyclical human behaviour formed and influenced modes of thinking about matters beyond the harvest. The work features an edition of the reaper inscription, and a commentary on it. It is also lavishly illustrated to demonstrate the important iconic and pictorial dimensions of the story.

Author : Nigel Anthony Sellars
Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0806130059

Get Book

Oil, Wheat & Wobblies by Nigel Anthony Sellars Pdf

The Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, a radical labor union, played an important role in Oklahoma between the founding of the union in 1905 and its demise in 1930. In Oil, Wheat, & Wobblies, Nigel Anthony Sellars describes IWW efforts to organize migratory harvest hands and oil-field workers in the state and relationships between the union and other radical and labor groups such as the Socialist Party and the American Federation of Labor. Focusing on the emergence of migratory labor and the nature of the work itself in industrializing the region, Sellars provides a social history of labor in the Oklahoma wheat belt and the midcontinent oil fields. Using court cases and legislation, he examines the role of state and federal government in suppressing the union during World War I. Oil, What, & Wobblies concludes with a description of the IWW revival and subsequent decline after the war, suggesting that the decline is attributable more to the union's failure to adapt to postwar technological change, its rigid attachment to outmoded tactics, and its internal policy disputes, than to political repression. In Sellars's view, the failure of the IWW in Oklahoma largely explains the failure of both the IWW and the labor movement in the United States during the twenties.

Author : Jeanne Williams
Publisher : Open Road Media
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2016-07-05
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781504036306

Get Book

The Unplowed Sky by Jeanne Williams Pdf

An orphaned young woman finds hardship and romance on the Kansas prairie in this “enjoyable” historical novel by the New York Times–bestselling author (Library Journal). It is 1924 and nineteen-year-old Hallie Meredith and her five-year-old brother Jackie must fend for themselves in America’s struggling heartland. Forced to leave a housekeeping job when her married employer, wealthy landowner Quentin Raford, makes romantic overtures, Hallie becomes the cook for a threshing outfit. As she and Jackie travel from farm to farm across western Kansas, they become valued members of Garth and Rory MacLeod’s ragtag crew, which includes a Cherokee, a fugitive bootlegger, and a Mennonite who has been jailed for his stand against fighting. Hallie has finally found the home she desired, but her growing feelings for Garth threaten to set brother against brother at the worst possible moment—when the dangerous and powerful Quentin is ready to take vengeance for his wounded pride. A moving story of integrity, courage, love, and adventure on the Great Plains, The Unplowed Sky captures the beauty and the resilience of the American spirit that prevails against those who would destroy it and confirms author Jeanne Williams’s reputation as “a master novelist” (TheDenver Post).

Author : Jeannie Whayne
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 673 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2024-02-08
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780190924164

Get Book

The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History by Jeannie Whayne Pdf

Agricultural history has enjoyed a rebirth in recent years, in part because the agricultural enterprise promotes economic and cultural connections in an era that has become ever more globally focused, but also because of agriculture's potential to lead to conflicts over precious resources. The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History reflects this rebirth and examines the wide-reaching implications of agricultural issues, featuring essays that touch on the green revolution, the development of the Atlantic slave plantation, the agricultural impact of the American Civil War, the rise of scientific and corporate agriculture, and modern exploitation of agricultural labor.

Author : Mary Neth
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 378 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0801848989

Get Book

Preserving the Family Farm by Mary Neth Pdf

Between 1900 and 1940 American family farming gave way to what came to be called agribusiness. Government policies, consumer goods aimed at rural markets, and the increasing consolidation of agricultural industries all combined to bring about changes in farming strategies that had been in use since the frontier era. Because the Midwestern farm economy played an important part in the relations of family and community, new approaches to farm production meant new patterns in interpersonal relations as well. In Preserving the Family Farm Mary Neth focuses on these relations--of gender and community--to shed new light on the events of this crucial period. (source: 4e de couverture).

Author : R. Douglas Hurt
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 612 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2022-06-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9781119632221

Get Book

A Companion to American Agricultural History by R. Douglas Hurt Pdf

Provides a solid foundation for understanding American agricultural history and offers new directions for research A Companion to American Agricultural History addresses the key aspects of America’s complex agricultural past from 8,000 BCE to the first decades of the twenty-first century. Bringing together more than thirty original essays by both established and emerging scholars, this innovative volume presents a succinct and accessible overview of American agricultural history while delivering a state-of-the-art assessment of modern scholarship on a diversity of subjects, themes, and issues. The essays provide readers with starting points for their exploration of American agricultural history—whether in general or in regards to a specific topic—and highlights the many ways the agricultural history of America is of integral importance to the wider American experience. Individual essays trace the origin and development of agricultural politics and policies, examine changes in science, technology, and government regulations, offer analytical suggestions for new research areas, discuss matters of ethnicity and gender in American agriculture, and more. This Companion: Introduces readers to a uniquely wide range of topics within the study of American agricultural history Provides a narrative summary and a critical examination of field-defining works Introduces specific topics within American agricultural history such as agrarian reform, agribusiness, and agricultural power and production Discusses the impacts of American agriculture on different groups including Native Americans, African Americans, and European, Asian, and Latinx immigrants Views the agricultural history of America through new interdisciplinary lenses of race, class, and the environment Explores depictions of American agriculture in film, popular music, literature, and art A Companion to American Agricultural History is an essential resource for introductory students and general readers seeking a concise overview of the subject, and for graduate students and scholars wanting to learn about a particular aspect of American agricultural history.