The Transition to Capitalism in Rural America

Abstract

I N I904 Max Weber read paper comparing European and American agrarian society at International Congress of Arts and Sciences, held as part of Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. Weber, who had traveled across America for three months before meeting, visiting both cities and farms, contrasted feudal social relations still found in parts of Europe with capitalist agriculture in United States. European peasants had traditionally produced to support seigneurial class and to supply their own needs. past two thousand years, he concluded, did not train peasant to produce in order to gain profit. In contrast, the American farmer is an entrepreneur like any other and had long since become a rationally producing small agriculturist. This was especially true in northern wheat-producing areas, where farmer was a mere businessman who believed in absolute economic individualism. The Civil War had destroyed aristocratic, social, and political centers of rural districts, thereby consolidating capitalist agriculture.' The issues Weber raised have been mainstay in agricultural history for over half century. Early debates revolved around questions of subsistence agriculture and self-sufficiency on northern farms in colonies and new nation and timing of development of commercial