Prosperous Farmers Research Articles

Arming the Union: Small Arms in the Civil War (review)

BOOK REVIEWS277 Professor Barney has the usual difficulty herding these mobile, individualistic people into neat categories in a society where class lines were blurred. On page 32 he defines the middle class as "relatively prosperous farmers and small slaveowners," but on page 38 he describes it as nonslaveholding yeomen and urban tradesmen. On page 63 he parenthetically defines planters as owners of thirty or more slaves and throughout tends to endow them with a unique patriarchal mentality . How such fellows could reach the higher echelons of commercial agriculture or stay there for long without practicing standard bourgeois virtues is not explained. This reviewer is inclined to think that Professor Barney and many other able historians overestimate the class consciousness and socioeconomic stratification and ideological orientation of the antebellum South. But Professor Barney does not base his entire study on such concepts . He puts much stress on youth as a factor in the secession movement and emphasizes racism even more. In many ways he is at his best here, relentlessly probing primary sources and coming up with some candid quotations more valuable than many statistics. He also mentions political opportunism, but unfortunately only in passing. Some antebellum Southern políticos were great broken field runners always driving for the next election victory no matter what course was required . More coverage of late antebellum party politics in Alabama and Mississippi would have illustrated this expedient bandwagon aspect of secessionism and also added necessary historical depth. Perhaps only more varied Alabama should have been examined in greater factual detail over a longer period of antebellum time. Nevertheless, Professor Barney's book is a fine addition to the vast literature on the coming of the Civil War. It is massively researched, and, given the complexity and duality of the subject, it is clearly and forcefully written. He has adequately handled statistical information which is frustratingly incomplete, especially at the "beat" or precinct level. The footnoting is thorough; the bibliography, informative; the index, satisfactory. At a time when university presses are increasingly reluctant to even consider dissertations for publication, Professor Barney has demonstrated just how readily some can be molded into valuable monographs. F. N. Boney University of Georgia Arming the Union: Small Arms in the Civil War. By Carl L. Davis. (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1973. Pp. xiii, 207. $12.50.) Carl Davis' study of small arms problems of the Union Army criticizes past historians in the field and presents a fairly balanced review of the United States Ordnance Department. Many misconceptions are clarified . Too often scholars, for example, have justified officers, such as Col- 278civil war history onel Hiram Berdan of the 1st Sharpshooters, who successfully defied the bureaucracy despite some questionable actions. Davis also points out that although the rifled musket has been considered only a short range weapon, it actually doubled or tripled the range of the older smoothbore musket thereby forcing tactical changes. Arming the Union is worth reading for campaign students and arms collectors. The reader learns that Brigadier General James Wolfe Ripley, Chief of Ordnance, did communicate with his superiors about the deficiencies of his department. Davis makes a special effort to point out that Congress hamstrung the harried Ordnance Department by failing to authorize the clerical and officer staffs required for minimal efficiency. Bureaucratic -minded Ripley and his successor, Lieutenant Colonel George D. Ramsay, were not incompetent but did lack imagination. In response to the arms panic of 1861-1862, many old foreign weapons were brought to the United States. These were only randomly inspected by non-ordnance officers before being issued, causing early and understandable prejudice against foreign arms. Arming the Union not only describes the problems of the Ordnance Department but reviews the breech-loading controversy and the pitfalls of early American arms manufacturers. The breechloading arguments raged through the war until September, 1864 when the capable Ordnance Chief, Major Alexander B. Dyer, who had expanded the Springfield Armory, took charge and changed policy by ordering the conversion to breechloaders. Although this book is primarily a bureau history, more information about James Ripley, Christopher Spencer, Samuel Colt and Alexander Dyer might have added zest to a sometimes bland text based largely on Ordnance...

Political Climates and Party Choice of High School Youth

P A OLITICAL SOCIALIZATION and political attitudes of young have received increasing attention in recent years. The continuity across generations of political party choice is well documented. Not all youth, however, choose party of their parents. Levin,1 writing in this journal several years ago, attempted assess extent to which political climates of opinion in various social subsystems of which adolescent is a member contribute to his political socialization and his choice of a political party.2 He showed that the nuclear family, high school community, and larger society each plays a part in impelling adolescent to choose political party which represents its consensus.3 This article reports on research which, although not a precise replication of Levin's work, considers same or similar variables in a different national political opinion climate and in communities more insulated from this climate. Levin's data were based on questionnaires from students in ten northern Illinois high schools and from mailed questionnaires to their parents. The schools were selected to obtain community diversity. The sample included prosperous farming or farming and industrial communities, a working-class parochial boys' school in a large city, working-class suburbs, small cities, and an upper-middle-class suburb.4 He

Attributes of innovations as factors in diffusion.

Differences among innovations are important variables in explaining the diffusion process. Data on rate of adoption of thirty-three modern farm practices and farmers' perceptions of fifteen attributes of those practices are subjected to partial correlation analysis. For this sample of relatively prosperous farmers, innovations perceived as most rewarding and least risky are accepted most rapidly, as expected; high costs do not serve as a brake on adoption; direct contribution of the innovation to a major occupational interest enhances adoption, while complexity and the pervasiveness of consequences following from acceptance have no effect. Further studies with different types of respondents and different innovations should yield a scheme for classifying the item which is bein adopted and thus permit better prediction of the diffusion process.

Herbert Brian Squire, 1909-1961

There are records of Squires or Squiers in the counties of Bedford and Huntingdon as far back as the fourteenth century, when in the summer of 1313 the Sheriff of Huntingdon was ordered ‘to pay 12d. a day to Robert Squier the King’s huntsman whom the king is sending into that county to take venison in his forests there during this season of fatness’. A family tree stretching from about 1700 to 1900 shows a concentration of Squires in the districts of Eaton Socon and St Neots. It was of this stock that Brian Squire was born on 13 July 1909, the second son in a family of two of H. E. Squire of Cross Hall, St Neots whose particular branch of the family had been prosperous farmers there for many years. We know little about the early life of this country bred lad of yeoman stock but with a strongly budding intellectual difference. The flat land and quiet waters of the Ouse valley must have planted very early in him the love of lonely country, the need to escape into it, and the necessity of solitude in which to think his own thoughts; characteristics which were part of his lifelong habit.

Indian Removal and Land Allotment: The Civilized Tribes and Jacksonian Justice<xref ref-type="fn" rid="FN1">*</xref>

BY the year 1830, the vanguard of the southern frontier had crossed the Mississippi and was pressing through Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri. But the line of settlement was by no means as solid as frontier lines were classically supposed to be. East of the Mississippi, white occupancy was limited by Indian tenure of northeastern Georgia, enclaves in western North Carolina and southern Tennessee, eastern Alabama, and the northern two thirds of Mississippi. In this twenty-five-million-acre domain lived nearly 6o,ooo Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws.' The Jackson administration sought to correct this anomaly by removing the tribes beyond the reach of white settlements, west of the Mississippi. As the President demanded of Congress in December, i830: What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of civilization, and religion?2 The President's justification of Indian removal was the one usually applied to the displacement of the Indians by newer Americans-the superiority of a farming to a hunting culture, and of Anglo-American liberty, civilization, and religion to the strange and barbarous way of the red man. The superior capacity of the farmer to exploit the gifts of nature and of nature's God was one of the principal warranties of the triumph of westward-moving civilization.3 Such a rationalization had one serious weakness as an instrument of policy. The farmer's right of eminent domain over the lands of the savage

"Corn Belt" Cattle Feeding in Eastern Colorado's Irrigated Valleys

F NOR several years the total value of cattle and calves sold alive in Weld County, (Fig. 1), has exceeded that of any other county in the nation.' The spectacular rise in cattle production in this county, and in other irrigated areas in eastern Colorado, is attributable to the intensive use of farmlands for feed crop production and as feed lot bases. Since the middle 1930's the number of cattle on feed in has increased by over 200 per cent (Table I). Some 15 per cent of this traditional range state's beef cattle were in feed lots on January 1, 1953.2 Only eight states in the nation, all in the Corn Belt except California, exceed in the number of cattle on feed. Moreover, the concentration of the pasture and pen fattening industry within circumscribed irrigated areas, gives these farmlands most of the aspects of a mixed farming Corn Belt economy. Extending from the wheat and range lands of eastern westward along the South Platte River, cattle production on irrigated farms increases until it reaches its maximum on the northern Piedmont (Fig. 1). Here the South Platte River and its eastward flowing tributaries provide abundant irrigation water for the raising of lush pastures and bumper crops of grain and sugar beets used to fatten cattle. Although 88 per cent of the State's feeder animals are located in this northeastern area, almost the entire remaining 12 per cent are found on irrigated farms in the eastern Arkansas River Valley.3 Although not all the dots in the two feeding areas shown in Figure 1 represent feeder cattle, the intensity of cattle raising in these river valleys contrasts sharply with the diffusion of animals on the surrounding ranges. production on Colorado's farmlands is big business. Passing through the two feed lot areas one sees prosperous farms of moderate size, 80 to 320 acres, many of which, however, boast large modern feeding pens next to the farmsteads. Adjacent to a sugar mill a sea of cattle several thousand in number, feeding in acres of pens, may startle the outsider (Fig. 2). Seldom do 1 U. S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture: i950. Vol. V, Special Reports, Part 3, Ranking Agricultural Counties, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1952, p. 8. 2 Derived from data in the following sources: U. S. Department of Agriculture Cooperating with the State of Department of Agriculture, Bur. of Agr. Econs., Crop and Reporting Service, Livestock on Farms: January 1, Denver, January 16, 1953, pp. 1-2; Cattle on Feed: January 1, 1953,1 Denver, January 15, 1953, pp. 1-2; Department of Agriculture Cooperating with the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bur. of Agr. Econs., Agricultural Statistics, 1950, Vol. 1, No. 2, Denver, January, 1952, p. 87. 3 Department of Agriculture Cooperating with the U. S. Department of Agriculture: Colorado Agricultural Statistics: 1950, P. 89.

Music in the Berkshires

Near the western border of the state of Massachusetts, more than 100 miles from the sea, stand the Berkshire Hills, remnants of an ancient and imposing range of mountains. The countryside is dotted with small one-industry cities, with prosperous farms, with relics of iron mining and the heavy industry of 125 years ago, and with the country estates of the wealthy from Boston and New York. In the heart of the Berkshires, about 140 miles from those two great cities of the North-east, lies the town of Lenox, a near-perfect example of what Americans across all our 3,000 miles like to think of as a typical New England community—wide streets, unbroken expanses of green lawn, an old white and gracefully steepled Congregational Church on the highest hill near the centre of the town. For forty-six weeks in the year the population of Lenox is under 3,000 persons, but on a sunny Sunday afternoon early in August it may hold five times as many within its borders. Lenox is the home of the Berkshire Music Centre and the Berkshire Festival.

The Function of Agricultural Training

FOR what purpose are we training agricultural college students? Is not the purpose to prepare students who later shall become prosperous farmers, efficient extension specialists, scientific research workers, devoted teachers, successful business men, and leaders in city and urban life? If so, how may these specific fields be thoroughly covered in the same curriculum in a four year undergraduate collegiate course? This is a problem with which every agricultural college is confronted and a solution must be found if we are to keep faith with the principles under which our agricultural colleges were established.Education in the sciences is new. Previous to the middle of the nineteenth century, universities and colleges in this country and in Europe provided instruction not in the sciences but in the classics, and not for the masses but for the few. With the growth of the natural sciences and their applications in Europe, there developed .

The Food Preferences of Preschool Children A Comparison of Rural Children with Children of the Iowa State College Nursery School

The forty children who served as subjects in this investigation ranged in age from twenty to sixty months. One-half of the children lived in a rural section in Wisconsin; the other half were members of the Iowa State College Nursery School and lived in the city of Ames. On the basis of carefully compiled record forms, the two groups were fairly comparable with respect to health, sleep, amount of play equipment and play activities. The parents of the rural group were eighth grade graduates, with the exception of three, who were college graduates. All were fairly prosperous farmers who owned their own farms. The

A Study of a Commercial Group

is located in a prosperous farming district, from which it draws some of its pupils. Several smaller adjoining towns that support no high schools of their own send their pupils to this school. The town itself is a manufacturing town, having five woolen mills, a machine shop, a woodworking establishment, a clothes-tree factory, and two corn canneries, which furnish employment for about one thousand people. It is also the business and banking center of the smaller towns surrounding it. There is no real foreign population. There are many families of Canadian-French descent, most of whom have lived in the town for three or four generations. Until recently, the children of these families left school as soon as the law allowed, many of them to go to work in the mills. One year after the addition of the commercial curriculum the enrolment of the school had increased to two hundred, and it has remained at this figure with very slight variation. This increase is due largely to the new curriculum, which has tended to hold in school that class of pupils who formerly went into the mills and which has also attracted more pupils from other towns. Other factors which probably had influence in increasing the enrolment were the opening of a new high-school building and the securing of a new and highly efficient principal, with the consequent upbuilding of the standards and reputation of the school. The aim of the commercial curriculum is to prepare the pupils to hold general clerical and stenographic positions and to give some little insight into business which may be of help to them later as proprietors of businesses of their own.

ISOLATED DISEASE OF THE SCAPHOID

A pathologic condition limited to the scaphoid bone of the foot is rarely observed. First described by Kohler in 1908, it has since been known as isolated disease of the scaphoid, or Kohler's disease. Including the three cases described by Kohler, thirteen cases of this condition have been reported in the literature. Having had the opportunity of observing such a case recently, I have found it worth while to report it, incidentally directing attention to certain distinguishing features concerning its pathologic history. REPORT OF CASE A boy, aged 7 years, was brought to see me, Nov. 6, 1917. Lameness was the chief complaint. The family history was negative as to tuberculosis and syphilis. Both parents are living and well. The home surroundings, the rural environment of a prosperous farmer, had been ideal. The child had never had any illnesses, except measles and infected ears the preceding two winters, his health