Threshing in the Midwest, 1820–1940: A Study of Traditional Culture and Technological Change by J. Sanford Rikoon

Abstract

178 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE a wide array of new technology. They experimented with different varieties of cotton until they found one appropriate for their partic­ ular soil and climatic conditions. They employed the latest hand tools and animal-drawn equipment, and they harnessed steam power to their cotton gins and presses. Some even attempted to preserve and to improve the quality of their soils by applying fertilizers, practicing crop rotation and contour plowing, and constructing drainage sys­ tems. Slave labor sometimes imposed special constraints on the adoption of new technology because it created the need for additional training in its use and for closer supervision to guard against sabotage. But Mississippi farmers and planters overcame these and other difficulties as they responded to the income-enhancing oppor­ tunities provided by technological developments. Moore’s is a synthetic rather than an empirical study. He weaves together the results of his own work and that of many others to present a comprehensive overview of Mississippi’s antebellum Cotton Kingdom. One might complain that the book is more anecdotal than analytical. This is especially true of the sections on the adoption of technology, which offer example stacked on example without attempting—or reporting on the attempts of others—to assess the results systematically. Moreover, Moore probably overstates the eager­ ness of Mississippians to embrace new technology; most historians see greater resistance to innovation than his description suggests. Moore also exaggerates the South’s dependence on outside sources of foodstuffs. Recent scholarship has all but settled that issue: the region was virtually self-sufficient. But this is quibbling. No one, no matter how well read in the relevant literature, can come away from this book without a deeper understanding of the antebellum South. Donald L. Winters Dr. Winters teaches in the Department of History at Vanderbilt University. Threshing in the Midwest, 1820—1940: A Study of Traditional Culture and Technological Change. By J. Sanford Rikoon. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. Pp. xiv + 214; illustrations, tables, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $35.00. Prior to the mid-19th century, farmers who raised relatively small crops, particularly wheat, customarily threshed their grain with a flail. Those farmers generally postponed threshing to the winter months, because flailing took too much time during the busy harvest and plowing seasons. Large-scale producers, however, used horses or cattle to tread the grain from the heads, often in one operation. By the 1830s, hand-powered threshing machines and grain cleaners sped this agricultural task. In time, horsepowered sweeps and steam TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 179 engines enabled farmers to use large-capacity threshing machines. As farmers adopted machines to improve their threshing efficiency, they also developed new social relationships to help order their lives, now significantly altered by this new technology. J. Sanford Rikoon, research associate in the Department of Rural Sociology at the University of Missouri, has written a perceptive history of technological and social changes in the Midwest relating to the threshing of small grains. He emphasizes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, although his study also has application for Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Missouri. Rikoon particularly notes the manner in which technology changed individual and group relationships and fostered cooperation. For him, threshing is both an agricultural process and a social experience. Rikoon intended to trace the social adjustments that midwestern grain farmers made to coincide with their adoption of new threshing technology from the early 19th to the mid-20th century. Intentionally, he emphasizes cultural rather than technological change, although he has devoted considerable attention to explaining the operational significance of new threshing equipment. More detailed attention to technological change, however, would have made his book more useful to historians of American technology who want to understand the workings of threshing hardware as well as its social and economic significance. In addition, greater emphasis on the technological aspects of this study might have prevented Rikoon from incorrectly explaining the technical principles of horsepowered sweeps and treadmills, an error that knowledgeable readers or editors for the press should have prevented. Rikoon is at his best when he analyzes the changing social relation­ ships among farmers as they adopted new technology to thresh their...