Defining the Boundaries: Family Farmers, Migrant Labor, Industrial Agriculture, and the State in the Rural Midwest, 1898--1938
Mapes, Kathleen Anne
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/84766
Description
Title
Defining the Boundaries: Family Farmers, Migrant Labor, Industrial Agriculture, and the State in the Rural Midwest, 1898--1938
Author(s)
Mapes, Kathleen Anne
Issue Date
2000
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Barrett, James R.
Department of Study
History
Discipline
History
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
History, United States
Language
eng
Abstract
This dissertation explores the creation of the sugar beet industry in Michigan and the new relationships and conflicts it engendered. Rural Michigan offers an excellent place for analyzing how one part of the rural Midwest experienced many of the social and economics changes historians usually associate solely with urban industrial America. By focusing on industrialization, class relations, and ethnic diversity in a rural context, this dissertation questions the holy triptych of modernization that links urbanization, immigration, and industrialization together as the measurement of progress and relegates rural America to the status of traditional standard bearer. When we revisit the rural Midwest in the twentieth century, we find many signs that fail to conform to the modern/traditional dichotomy, including the expansion of modern industrial capitalism, the proliferation of class conflicts, the growing use of migrant workers in lieu of traditional farm labor, increasing ethnic diversity and hierarchy, and a burgeoning army of rural reformers and government officials. We find a world that was not being left behind but rather one that was being transformed.
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