Ohio History Journal

1.

The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly

VOLUME 69 ?? NUMBER 1 ?? JANUARY 1960

 

 

 

Recent Writings on

Midwestern Economic History

 

By HARRY R. STEVENS*

 

 

 

 

ACADEMIC HISTORIANS OF MIDWESTERN ECONOMY have

studied their subject long and productively, but having estab-

lished at an early date certain approaches to their material

and forms in which to present it that were quite satisfactory,

they have continued to make use of them with surprising

tenacity.¹ Soon after they began to work, in the 1880's, they

developed three major forms: first, the monograph, article,

or book centered on a specific topic such as taxation, land

laws, money, or railroads, which could be easily identified in

the source materials they were exploring; second, the regional,

state, or local history in which economic subjects were treated

as fragments interspersed among political, social, religious,

military, cultural, and biographical materials; and third, the

general survey of national economic development and the

survey, nation-wide in geographical scope, dealing with such

broad economic fields as industry or transportation, in which

midwestern material appeared without regional identification

* Harry R. Stevens is associate professor of history at Ohio University. He is

the author also of a bibliographical essay on recent writings on midwestern

political history, The Middle West (Washington, 1958).

1 On midwestern economic history of the frontier periods, see Robert E. Riegel,

"American Frontier Theory," Journal of World History, III (1956), 356-380;

Gene M. Gressley, "The Turner Thesis--A Problem in Historiography," Agri-

cultural History, XXXII (1958), 227-249; Norman J. Simler, "The Safety-

Valve Doctrine Re-Evaluated," ibid., 250-257; R. Carlyle Buley, The Old North-

west: Pioneer Period, 1815-1840 (Indianapolis, 1950).

• 1
 

2    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

as occasional detail in a larger picture. During the same

period the approaches they developed, especially for their

topical articles and monographs, became highly specialized

and distinctive; and their writing on topics such as canals,

steamboats, public-land policies, public finance, and mining

showed in each instance features of research, organization,

and interpretation (romantic and anecdotal, legalistic, sta-

tistical, institutional, or otherwise) that set it clearly apart

and seemed to preclude much breadth of understanding or

integration.²

Since the end of the Second World War historians of mid-

western economic life have continued to make use of the

same general forms and approaches that were devised long

ago. But they have now explored their topics so fully and

often so deeply that the time might seem to be approaching

for a more comprehensive approach and general interpretation

of the entire field.

Most of the work published between 1944 and 1959 may

be assigned to one of six main areas: land, land policy, and

land settlement; agriculture; pastoral economy and livestock

primary industries; transportation, commerce, and communi-

cations; and industry, business, and finance.

 

Land

The story of the public domain, while it is still usually

told in familiar terms, has been broadened and brought up

to date. A picturesque and colorful volume by Havighurst

Wilderness for Sale,³ tells the story of the land rush into

the Old Northwest and Kentucky from 1780 to 1841. The

two main threads tying the anecdotal account together are

the career of William Henry Harrison and the insatiable

appetite of frontiersmen and speculators for cheap land. A

2 Recent surveys covering midwestern frontiers include Ray A. Billington and

James B. Hedges, Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier

(New York, 1949) and Thomas D. Clark, Frontier America (New York, 1959

3 Walter Havighurst, Wilderness for Sale: The Story of the First Western

Land Rush (New York, 1956).

• 2
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY               3

more detailed academic study by Carlson, The Illinois Mili-

tary Tract,⁴ describes legislation concerning a single area,

its geography, and its settlement. It treats of land disposal,

title conflicts, land tenure, population growth, the develop-

ment of transportation, general economic conditions, and

types of farming. An unusual work by Chandler, Land Title

Origins,⁵ concludes on the basis of a careful examination of

evidence that most landholdings were fraudulently obtained

and are therefore legally void.

Gates, in Fifty Million Acres,⁶ examines conflicts over

Kansas land policy from 1854 to 1890. While recounting a

series of spectacular contests over federal land and Indian

policies, he broadens his subject to include military, social,

and political elements as well. In the period before the Civil

War he notes that President Buchanan vetoed free home-

steads, offered public lands at public sales promptly, and re-

fused to buy Indian land reserves in order to sell them below

their fair value to actual settlers. By this course he antagon-

ized those who went to Kansas for lands, and thus alienated

Kansas from the Democratic party. Gates emphasizes the

role of large-scale investors and land speculators and the

treaty method of disposing of Indian lands. With Lynch

and Malin he sees a close connection between land entry and

the slavery controversy. He observes that most of the "small

settlers" were actually petty speculators who had no intention

of making farms. His conclusions are sympathetic to the

"squatter" and trespasser, and severely condemn the ignor-

ance, blunders, and corruption of the makers of federal policy.

For the later years he stresses land grants to railroads, the

sale of those lands, and railroad tax policies, which he con-

siders more important than railroad rates as a source of the

settlers' hostility against railroads.

 

4 Theodore L. Carlson, The Illinois Military Tract: A Study of Land Occupa-

tion, Utilization, and Tenure (Urbana, Ill., 1951).

5 Alfred E. Chandler, Land Title Origins: A Tale of Force and Fraud (New

York, 1945).

6 Paul W. Gates, Fifty Million Acres: Conflicts over Kansas Land Policy, 1854-

1890 (Ithaca, N. Y., 1954).

• 3
 

4 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Settlement of the West as represented by Athearn in his

study of William T. Sherman⁷ centers about the development

of the general's policy for ensuring peace in the trans-

Mississippi region from 1865 to 1885. Sherman's primary

objective was to shield white settlement against Indian raids.

He soon found that his hands were tied. Congress reduced

army appropriations.    Military  forces were diminished.

Pacifist groups in Washington brought pressure on the

bureau of Indian affairs. The war department did not assert

itself; and President Grant did nothing to uphold his general.

Against those obstacles Sherman evolved a plan for accomp-

lishing his mission--the assurance of peace--by giving mili-

tary aid to railroad builders rather than by trying to protect

numerous small, widely scattered settlements. Through this

means he expected that the great buffalo herds would be

broken up. The Indians, dependent on the buffalo, could

then be more easily encircled and forced to abandon their

nomadic life. When the Indians could be settled on closed

reservations, white settlement might proceed in an environ

ment of peace and security.

The story in the twentieth century is brought together by

Peffer in The Closing of the Public Domain.⁸  It was a tug

of war between those who advocated a continuation of the

process of settlement and development and others who were

attempting to conserve resources. An apparent victory of

the "reservationists" was achieved by the Taylor grazing

act of 1934, which "closed" the domain. A public domain

of 557,000,000 acres in 1900 had been reduced by 1950 to

170,000,000 acres. But the contest between 25,000,000 con-

servationists, hunters, and sportsmen on one side and 350,000

cattle and sheep men of the western states on the other

according to Peffer, still continues.⁹

7 Robert G. Athearn, William Tecumseh Sherman and the Settlement of the

West (Norman, Okla., 1956).

8 E. Louise Peffer, The Closing of the Public Domain: Disposal and Reservation

Policies, 1900-50 (Stanford, Calif., 1951).

9 See also Carl F. Kraenzel, The Great Plains in Transition (Norman, Okla.,

1955); Leonard Lux, Vincennes Donation Lands (Indianapolis, 1949); Paul W.

Gates, "Research in the History of American Land Tenure: A Review Article,"

• 4
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY                          5

 

Agriculture

A remarkably rich and illuminating literature on agricul-

tural history in recent years has stressed the tremendous

changes during the past century and a half. Among the

principal topics that have been explored are land utilization,¹⁰

institutional and technical developments,11 the life and experi-

ences of the farmer, his status, and his outlook,¹² agricultural

discontent,13 social, economic, and political organization with

 

Agriculutral History, XXVIII (1954), 121-126; Thomas LeDuc, "The Disposal

of the Public Domain on the Trans-Mississippi Plains: Some Opportunities for

Investigation," ibid., XXIV (1950), 199-204; Rudolph Freund, "Military Bounty

Lands and the Origins of the Public Domain," ibid., XX (1946), 8-18; John C.

Weaver, "Changing Patterns of Cropland Use in the Middle West," Economic

Geography, XXX (1954), 1-47.

10 Mary W. M. Hargreaves, Dry Farming in the Northern Great Plains, 1900-

1925 (Cambridge, Mass., 1957); Margaret B. Bogue, "The Swamp Land Act and

Wet Land Utilization in Illinois, 1850-1890," Agricultural History, XXV (1951),

169-180; Lloyd P. Jorgenson, "Agricultural Expansion into the Semi-Arid Lands

of the West North Central States During the First World War," ibid., XXIII

(1949), 30-40; Mildred Throne, "Southern Iowa Agriculture, 1833-1890: The

Progress from Subsistence to Commercial Corn-Belt Farming," ibid., XXIII

(1949), 124-130, and "Southern Iowa Agriculture, 1865-1870," Iowa Journal of

History, L (1952), 209-224.

11 Allan G. Bogue, "Pioneer Farmers and Innovation," Iowa Journal of History,

LVI (1958), 1-36; Earl W. Hayter, "Seed Humbuggery Among the Western

Farmers, 1850-1888," Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, LVIII

(1949), 52-68; Fred Kniffen, "The American Agricultural Fair: Time and Place,"

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, XLI (1951), 42-57; Mamie

J. Meredith, "The Importance of Fences to the American Pioneer," Nebraska

History, XXXII (1951), 94-107; Walter P. Webb, "The Story of Some Prairie

Inventions," ibid., XXXIV (1953), 229-243; Earle D. Ross, "The Iowa State

Fair," Palimpsest, XXXV (1954), 261-316, and "The New Agriculture," Iowa

Journal of History, XLVII (1949), 119-139.

12 Harvey L. Carter, "Rural Indiana in Transition, 1850-1860," Agricultural

History, XX (1946), 107-121; LaWanda F. Cox, "The American Agricultural

Wage Earner, 1865-1900: The Emergence of a Modern Labor Problem," ibid.,

XXII (1948), 95-114; John D. Hicks, "The Western Middle West, 1900-1914,"

ibid., XX (1946), 65-77; William J. Petersen and Herb Plambeck, "Plowing

Matches in Iowa," Palimpsest, XXXVII (1956), 401-448; Fred A. Shannon, "The

Status of the Midwestern Farmer in 1900," Mississippi Valley Historical Review,

XXXVII (1950), 491-510.

13 Dale Kramer, The Wild Jackasses: The American Farmer in Revolt (New

York, 1956); Chester M. Destler, "Agricultural Readjustment and Agrarian Un-

rest in Illinois, 1880 to 1896," Agricultural History, XXI (1947), 104-116; Frank

D. DiLeva, "Frantic Farmers Fight Law," Annals of Iowa, 3d series, XXXII

(1953-55), 81-109, 171-202, 337-364.

• 5
 

6 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

their objectives and achievements,¹⁴ and the place of agricul-

ture and the farmer in American life.¹⁵ In addition to those

and similar topics, the subject has led to a variety of general

interpretations that have already brought about significant

alterations in the general interpretation and presentation of

American history.16

Drastically redefining "the frontier," Malin rejects the idea

that it was unoccupied space being settled by agricultural

inhabitants. He offers instead the conception of an increas-

ing intensity in the adaptation of land to man's purposes. He

insists that history be concerned both with men in every

aspect of life, their society, economy, emotions, and intelli-

gence, and with a natural environment that includes more

than merely the surface of the earth. The frontier of "occu-

pied land" he asserts is relatively meaningless. The basic

questions are how the land is occupied, for what purposes,

and with what changes in kind and intensity. His subject

has often been the Kansas prairies, where he shows the appli-

cation of his ideas by demonstrating how men who were

originally conditioned to a forest environment and corn

culture, and dependent on water transportation, adapted to

14 Charles M. Gardner, The Grange, Friend of the Farmer (Washington,

1949); Robert L. Morlan, Political Prairie Fire: The Nonpartisan League,

1915-1922 (Minneapolis, 1955); Allan G. Bogue, "The Iowa Claim Clubs: Sym-

bol and Substance," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLV (1958), 231-253;

Louis B. Schmidt, "Farm Organizations in Iowa," Palimpsest, XXXI (1950),

117-164; Roy V. Scott, "Milton George and the Farmers' Alliance Movement,"

Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLV (1958), 90-109; Mildred Throne,

"The Grange in Iowa, 1868-1875," Iowa Journal of History, XLVII (1949),

289-324; Donald F. Warner, "Prelude to Populism," Minnesota History, XXXII

(1951), 129-146.

15 Murray R. Benedict and Oscar C. Stine, The Agricultural Commodity Pro-

grams: Two Decades of Experience (New York, 1956); Russell Lord, The Wal-

laces of Iowa (Boston, 1947); James H. Shideler,    Farm   Crisis, 1919-1923

(Berkeley, Calif., 1957); John D. Hicks, "The Legacy of Populism in the Western

Middle West," Agricultural History, XXIII (1949), 225-236.

16 Paul W. Gates, "Frontier Landlords and Pioneer Tenants," Journal of the

Illinois State Historical Society, XXXVIII (1945), 143-206; Theodore Saloutos,

"The Agricultural Problem and Nineteenth Century Industrialism," Agricultural

History, XXII (1948), 156-176, and "The Spring Wheat Farmer in a Maturing

Economy, 1870-1920," Journal of Economic History, VI (1946), 173-190; Robert

L. Jones, "Ohio Agriculture in History," Ohio Historical Quarterly, LXV

(1956), 229-258; Merrill E. Jarchow, "'King Wheat,'" Minnesota History,

XXIX (1948), 1-28.

• 6
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY 7

a grassland environment, substituting minerals for wood and

railroads for boats, developing ranches, introducing wheat,

contriving machinery, and building cities. In a great variety

of studies he explores the implications of this approach to

such topics as urban growth, dust storms, congressional

politics, the abolition movement, agronomy, and historical

philosophy and methodology.¹⁷ Significant reviews and criti-

cisms of Malin's work have been offered by LeDuc and

Nichols.¹⁸

Farm machinery,19 the development of special crops,²⁰ and

agricultural education21 have been the subjects of special

studies.   According to Wik, in Steam Power on the American

Farm,²² the increasing demands created by the rapid settle-

17 James C. Malin, The Contriving Brain and the Skillful Hand in the United

States: Something About History and Philosophy of History (Lawrence, Kans.,

1955), Essays on Historiography (Lawrence, Kans., 1946), Geology and Geog-

raphy: Grassland Historical Studies; Natural Resources Utilization in a Back-

ground of Science and Technology (Lawrence, Kans., 1950), The Grassland of

North America: Prolegomena to Its History (Lawrence, Kans., 1947), "Dust

Storms, 1850-1900," Kansas Historical Quarterly, XIV (1946), 129-144, 265-296,

and 391-413, "Notes on the Writing of General Histories of Kansas," ibid.,

XXI (1954-55), 184-223, 264-287, 331-378, 407-444, 598-643, and "Soil, Animal,

and Plant Relations of the Grassland, Historically Reconsidered," Scientific

Monthly, LXXVI (1953), 207-220.

18 Thomas H. LeDuc, "An Ecological Interpretation of Grasslands History,"

Nebraska History, XXXI (1950), 226-233; Roy F. Nichols, "Kansas Historio-

graphy: The Technique of Cultural Analysis," American Quarterly, IX (1957),

85-91.

19 Norbert Lyons, The McCormick Reaper Legend: The True Story of a

Great Invention (New York, 1955); Earl W. Hayter, "Mechanical Humbuggery

Among the Western Farmers, 1860-90," Michigan History, XXXIV (1950), 1-18;

Robert L. Jones, "The Introduction of Farm Machinery into Ohio Prior to 1865,"

Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, LVIII (1949), 1-20; Wil-

liam J. Petersen and J. Brownlee Davidson, "The Evolution of Farm Machines,"

Palimpsest, XXXI (1950), 77-116; F. Hal Higgins, "John M. Horner and the

Development of the Combined Harvester," Agricultural History, XXXII (1958),

14-24.

20 Sidney Glazer, "Early Sugar-Beet Industry in Michigan," Michigan History,

XXVIII (1944), 405-414; Earl W. Hayter, "Horticultural Humbuggery Among

the Western Farmers, 1850-1890," Indiana Magazine of History, XLIII (1947),

205-224; Robert L. Jones, "Special Crops in Ohio Before 1850," Ohio State

Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, LIV (1945), 127-142; Neil E. Stevens

and Jean Nash, "The Development of Cranberry Growing in Wisconsin," Wiscon-

sin Magazine of History, XXVII (1944), 276-294.

21 C. Clyde Jones, "Val Kuska, Agricultural Development Agent," Nebraska

History, XXXVIII (1957), 285-293; Mildred Throne, "'Book Farming' in Iowa,

1840-1870," Iowa Journal of History, XLIX  (1951), 117-142.

• 7
 

8     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

ment of the West led, by the 1850's, to the development of

farm machinery that overtaxed the capacity of horse power.

Steam, which was already used in mills, factories, and rail-

roads, was introduced into farm machinery, and a "steam

engine boom" resulted that lasted from 1885 to 1912. Bar-

dolph notes in his Agricultural Literature and the Early

Illinois Farmer²³ that an extensive literature on farming was

available to farmers during the period from 1800 to 1870,

and that it had a profound influence on the transformation

of farming from a primitive and largely self-sufficing occupa-

tion to a business enterprise. He concludes that of the

several agencies for the instruction of farmers from 1820 to

1870 the most influential were the farm journals.

Four broader treatments of agricultural history are those

by Shannon, Jarchow, Ross, and a group of Iowa scholars

In The Farmer's Last Frontier²⁴ Shannon centers the agri-

cultural history of the United States from 1860 to 1897 in

the West. His story is one of the rise and decline of a great

pastoral empire, the "cow country," and the movement into

the prairie West of an agricultural population that had

hesitated a long time at the edge of the area. The migration

was a consequence of crowded conditions in the East, the

homestead act, and the advance of railroads. The rapidity

of conquest was facilitated by railroads and farm machinery

The distress of western farmers that followed it led to

the series of movements known generally as "the agraria??

crusade."

Dealing with a slightly earlier period, Jarchow, in The

Earth Brought Forth,²⁵ explores the history of Minnesota

agriculture to 1885. The struggles, ordeals, sorrows, joys

and achievements of those pioneers who established Minne-

 

22 Reynold M. Wik, Steam Power on the American Farm (Philadelphia, 195?

23 Richard Bardolph, Agricultural Literature and the Early Illinois Farm

(Urbana, II1., 1948).

24 Fred A. Shannon, The Farmer's Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860-1897 (New

York, 1945). Notice has just been received of the expected publication of Paul

W. Gates, Agriculture: 1815-1860 (New York, 1960?).

25 Merrill E. Jarchow, The Earth Brought Forth: A History of Minnesota

Agriculture to 1885 (St. Paul, 1949).

• 8
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY             9

sota agriculture on a firm foundation and adapted it to its

distinctive environment did not end at that date, but the

formative period came to a close then: specialized wheat

farming, typical of a frontier area, came to an end in the

older southeastern part of the state and was succeeded by

diversified farming and dairying.

Ross offers a history and interpretation of Iowa agricul-

ture during the century from 1840 to 1940.26 His story is

largely a record of the utilization of agricultural resources

in accordance with changing demands and techniques, and

the emergence of the resulting society and culture. The

greatest significance of Iowa agriculture he finds in its con-

tributions to the progress of the nation as a whole. In con-

trast to Jarchow's picture of development from specialized

to diversified farming, Ross demonstrates the development

toward a high degree of specialization. "Corn belt farming"

became a complex yet balanced and stable economy, fully

commercialized and mechanized, with light and flexible imple-

ments, refrigeration, hybrid corn, soybeans, clover, and

other special crops, highly developed livestock breeding and

feeding, and extensive participation by farmers in govern-

ment both as individuals and through their own organizations.

A Century of Farming in Iowa 1846-1946,27 a cooperative

work, illustrates (1) environmental adaptation, (2) achieve-

ments and limitations of technology on the farm, (3) the

emergence of the business of farming and its relation to

other enterprises, (4) influences and features of farm associ-

ations from early, crude, and timorous voluntary groups to

modern, highly organized, nation-wide associations, and (5)

successive stages in the extension of government policies of

aid, regulation, and direction. Among numerous suggestive

conclusions of the contributors a general agreement exists

that the tradition of a rugged individualism, and of pio-

neers who had no need or desire for government aid

 

26 Earle D. Ross, Iowa Agriculture: An Historical Survey (Iowa City, Iowa,

1951).

27 Ames, Iowa, 1946.

• 9
 

10    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

is pure myth as far as the Midwest is concerned. The

pioneer and his successors all looked to the government for

services.

A regional study by Malin, Winter Wheat in the Golden

Belt of Kansas²⁸ offers a totally different picture.      In a

transition area and period, between pasture and wheat field,

the common people following their instincts emerge in a better

light than the experts who were offering them advice. At

the close of the Civil War the local economy was that of the

stockman with corn, hay, and cattle. He was followed by the

small-scale pioneer farmer trying to perpetuate the patterns

of agriculture he had learned in the East. Soft winter wheat

was introduced, and in the 1870's came major changes to

hard wheat, new varieties of sorghum and alfalfa, and new

kinds of farm machinery. The decades from 1882 to 1902

completed the transition from soft to hard wheat; and the

advantages of laissez-faire agrarian economy were vindicated

against those of regulation, direction, and control.

Agricultural discontent and its organization, expression,

and results have been examined in detail by Fite, Sharp,

Taylor, Gates, Saloutos, and Hicks, as well as other writers,

in a group of studies that extend far beyond the scope of

economic history.²⁹ Saloutos and Hicks observe in Agricul-

tural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900-193930 that while

economic hard     times were    far  from   being   exclusively

agrarian, they played a central part in agricultural thinking.

Spokesmen of the wheat, corn, livestock, and dairy interests

took a leading part in political campaigns and in congress.

Farm agitation reached a peak in the Middle West, moreover,

rather than in the more distressed South or in other areas. The

 

28 James C. Malin, Winter Wheat in the Golden Belt of Kansas: A Study in

Adaptation to Subhumid Geographical Environment (Lawrence, Kans., 1944).

29 Gilbert C. Fite, George N. Peek and the Fight for Farm Parity (Norman,

Okla., 1954) and Peter Norbeck: Prairie Statesman (Columbia, Mo., 1948);

Paul F. Sharp, The Agrarian Revolt in Western Canada: A Survey Showing

American Parallels (Minneapolis, 1948); Carl C. Taylor, The Farmers' Move-

ment, 1620-1920 (New York, 1953). See also notes 12-14 above.

30 Theodore Saloutos and John D. Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Middle

West, 1900-1939 (Madison, Wis., 1951).

• 10
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY                 11

explanation is found partly in the long experience of mid-

western farmers in their continuous series of farm organiza-

tions, and partly in the tenacity with which those farmers

held to the old idea that their place in the national economy

was fundamental. They were the least willing of all farmers

to accept an inferior economic status. In their efforts they

produced a cooperative movement, the American Society of

Equity, the Nonpartisan League, the Farmers' Union, the

American Farm Bureau Federation, the farm bloc of the

1920's, the farmers' strike movement, and the New Deal agri-

cultural program. They often worked at cross purposes with

one another, divided regionally, vocationally, politically, and

temperamentally; they were led and misled by dirt farmers,

demagogues, academicians, and professional organizers.

Western agrarians were not socialists, but they frequently

advocated socialistic measures. Rivalries among organiza-

tions, and the repudiation of leaders were repeated over and

over; yet eventually they developed and made effective the

idea of government as an instrument for achieving economic

goals. Similar conclusions may be found in the works of

Jarchow, Ross, Fite, and the Iowa group as well as other

agricultural historians.³¹

 

Pastoral Economy

Few fields of midwestern economic history have been

enlarged in so many directions simultaneously as those con-

cerning pasture, ranch, and livestock. Jones, continuing his

intensive examination of pre-Civil War Ohio agricultural

history contributes work on horses, mules, and beef and dairy

cattle.³² Helen Cavanagh and Paul W. Gates write on the

31 Joseph C. Bailey, Seaman A. Knapp, Schoolmaster of American Agricul-

ture (New York, 1945); A. Richard Crabb, The Hybrid-Corn Makers: Proph-

ets of Plenty (New Brunswick, N.J., 1947); Oscar B. Jesness and others, Andrew

Boss: Agricultural Pioneer and Builder, 1867-1947 (St. Paul, 1950).

32 Robert L. Jones, "The Horse and Mule Industry in Ohio to 1865," Missis-

sippi Valley Historical Review, XXXIII (1946), 61-88, "The Dairy Industry in

Ohio Prior to the Civil War," Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly,

LVI (1947), 46-69, and "The Beef Cattle Industry in Ohio Prior to the Civil

• 11
 

12      THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

pre-Civil War cattle kings of Illinois and Indiana; and in

the trans-Mississippi West, the cattle business in Kansas

and Nebraska has been examined by Gates, McCampbell,

Mahnken, and others.³³

Broader treatments of the subject are offered by Wentworth

and Towne in a series of volumes, Shepherd's Empire, Pigs:

From Cave to Corn Belt, and Cattle and Men, that provide

exceedingly detailed accounts in clear and systematic form.³⁴

On the cattleman's frontier, the picturesque and colorful

aspects as well as more sober elements are represented in a

variety of works.³⁵ Brown, in a volume with lavish illustra-

tion, shows the life and work of the men who made the

Kansas cow country in the 1880's.36 Cowboys and Cattle

Kings: Life on the Range Today,³⁷ by Sonnichsen, points

 

War," Ohio Historical Quarterly, LXIV (1955), 168-194, 287-319; Paul C.

Henlein, "Cattle Driving from the Ohio Country, 1800-1850," Agricultural His-

tory, XXVIII (1954), 83-95, and Cattle Kingdom in the Ohio Valley, 1783-1860

(Lexington, Ky., 1959).

33 Helen M. Cavanagh, Funk of Funk's Grove: Farmer, Legislator, and Cattle

King of the Old Northwest, 1797-1865 (Bloomington, Ill., 1952); Paul W. Gates,

"Hoosier Cattle Kings," Indiana Magazine of History, XLIV (1948), 1-24;

W. D. Aeschbacher, "Development of Cattle Raising in the Sand Hills," Neb-

raska History, XXVIII (1947), 41-64; Norbert R. Mahnken, "Early Nebraska

Markets for Texas Cattle," ibid., XXVI (1945), 3-25, 91-103; Paul W. Gates,

"Cattle Kings in the Prairies," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXV

(1948), 379-412; Merrill E. Jarchow, "Livestock in Frontier Minnesota," Minne-

sota History, XXVI (1945), 106-125, and "The Beginnings of Minnesota Dairy-

ing," ibid., XXVII (1946), 107-121; C. W. McCampbell, "W. E. Campbell,

Pioneer Kansas Livestockman," Kansas Historical Quarterly, XVI (1948),

245-273; Ray H. Mattison, "Ranching in the Dakota Badlands," North Dakota

History, XIX (1952), 93-128, 167-206; Elvin Lee Quaife and Arthur L. Anderson,

"The Hog in Iowa," Palimpsest, XXXIII (1952), 193-224.

34 Edward Norris Wentworth, America's Sheep Trails (Ames, Iowa, 1948);

E. N. Wentworth and Charles W. Towne, Cattle and Men (Norman, Okla.,

1955), Pigs: From Cave to Corn Belt (Norman, Okla., 1950), and Shepherd's

Empire (Norman, Okla., 1945).

35 Walker D. Wyman, Nothing but Prairie and Sky: Life on the Dakota

Range in the Early Days (Norman, Okla., 1954); Robert H. Burns, "The New-

man Ranches: Pioneer Cattle Ranches of the West," Nebraska History, XXXIV

(1953), 22-32; Norbert R. Mahnken, "Ogallala -- Nebraska's Cowboy Capital,"

ibid., XXVIII (1947), 85-109; A. C. Huidekoper, "With the Round-Up," North

Dakota History, XIX (1952), 5-23; Donald H. Welsh, "Pierre Wibaux, Cattle

King," ibid., XX (1953), 5-23.

36 Dee Brown, Trail Driving Days (New York, 1952).

37 Charles L. Sonnichsen, Cowboys and Cattle Kings: Life on the Range

Today (Norman, Okla., 1950).

• 12
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY              13

out that the ranchmen of the present day, while applying the

most modern scientific methods to their business, still retain

many of the characteristics of their early forebears. They are

generous, hospitable, strongly individualistic, and staunchly

conservative.

Wayne Gard molds his material into an epic of the West

in The Chisholm Trail.³⁸ Dealing with the Texas-Kansas

cattle kingdom of the period 1850-90, he describes the

physical geography of the land as well as the towns (such

as Abilene, Ellsworth, Witchita, and Dodge City) in a

scholarly, readable account. The trail is measured as the

passage for the greatest pastoral movement in the history of

the world. The effects of this movement on the West are

related to the effects on Chicago, the East, and Europe.

Texas, through this element of its economy, escaped the post-

Civil War poverty that degraded other parts of the South.

Final emphasis is placed on the personal values and rewards

for those who lived along the trail.

Horses of the West have been the subject of books by Roe,

Denhardt, and Wyman. Denhardt writes of the Spanish

horse in the Americas.³⁹ Wyman, in a volume similarly de-

signed for a wide audience, follows the development of the

mustang and broomtail from Indian days to the present.⁴⁰

He accepts Francis Haines's demonstration that the Plains

Indians obtained their horses not as strays from DeSoto or

Coronado but from New Mexican ranches. The original

Spanish stock was inferior, and it did not improve in the

hands of the Indians. Eventually herds of wild horses were

created; and at last, when the ranchers revolted against them

as pests, they were destroyed. Roe, dealing with the Indian

and the horse, offers essays on a wide variety of subjects,

such as the nomadic life, migrations, Indian warfare, horse-

manship, tribal psychology, and the buffalo.⁴1

The cowboy is an ever popular subject. Westermeier has

38 Wayne Gard, The Chisholm Trail (Norman, Okla., 1954).

39 Robert M. Denhardt, The Horse of the Americas (Norman, Okla., 1947).

40 Walker D. Wyman, The Wild Horse of the West (Caldwell, Idaho, 1945).

41 Frank Gilbert Roe, The Indian and the Horse (Norman, Okla., 1955).

• 13
 

14 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

published a collection of source materials in Trailing the

Cowboy: His Life and Lore As Told by Frontier Journalists.⁴²

Frantz and Choate raise the question in The American Cow-

boy⁴³ why this figure has become such a popular hero. Their

answer is that he entered into the scene at a heroic period and

moved across the plains on a horse--and writers such as

Owen Wister and his successors transformed the real cowboy

into a symbol.⁴⁴ The nature of the symbol and its significance

for later generations, as well as its relationship to the histori-

cal reality, are questions that have led to a controversial

literature within the past eight years so extensive and varied

that it is almost unmanageable. Some bibliographical control

and a general review are urgently needed.⁴⁵

The lines of interpretation of this rapidly expanding sub-

ject defy immediate classification. The general tendency

seems to be away from the organization of factual data in

terms of economy, institutions, or even chronology, and to-

ward either entertainment, anecdote, and human interest, or

psychology, cultural symbolism, and value structures.

 

Primary Industries

Among the studies of primary industry, those concerned

 

42 Clifford P. Westermeier, ed., Trailing the Cowboy: His Life and Lore As

Told by Frontier Journalists (Caldwell, Idaho, 1955).

43 Joe B. Frantz and Julian Ernest Choate, Jr., The American Cowboy: The

Myth and the Reality (Norman, Okla., 1955).

44 Philip Durham, "The Negro Cowboy," American Quarterly, VII (1955),

291-301; Marshall W. Fishwick, "The Cowboy: America's Contribution to the

World's Mythology," Western Folklore, XI (1952), 77-92; Warren French,

"The Cowboy in the Dime Novel," University of Texas Studies in English, XXX

(1951), 219-234; Paul Horgan, "The Cow Boy Revisited," Southwest Review,

XXXIX (1954), 285-297; Joseph Leach, "The Paper-Back Texan: Father of

the American Western Hero," Western Humanities Review, XI (1957), 267-275;

Harry Schein, "The Olympian Cowboy," American Scholar, XXIV (1955),

309-330.

45 Warren J. Barker, "The Stereotyped Western Story: Its Latent Meaning

and Psychoeconomic Function," Psychoanalytic Quarterly, XXIV (1955), 270-280;

Levette J. Davidson, "Fact or Formula in 'Western' Fiction," Colorado Quarterly,

III (1955), 278-287; W. H. Hutchinson, "The 'Western Story' as Literature,"

Western Humanities Review, III (1949), 33-37.

• 14
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY                    15

with mining and quarrying⁴⁶ have shown recently a widening

of horizons from their earlier concentration on quantitative

measurements and the chronology of notable events. While

they may broadly be classified as business history, they have

dealt with finances, marketing, technology, science, labor,

social organization and problems, and a diversity of other

aspects.⁴⁷ Batchelor notes in his study of the Indiana lime-

stone industry⁴⁸ that the main approaches previously developed

toward his subject have been the "life cycle," the fundamental

position of transportation and of price policy, the predomi-

nance of technological change, the economic geography of

quarrying, and labor economics. He finds no single one of

them adequate in analyzing the industry, and proposes an

overall delineation of the interaction of the diverse problems

of the limestone industry. On that basis he distinguishes

five periods: first, to 1870, a pioneer stage of local markets

and hand methods of production; second, to 1896, acceptance

of the product and modernization of quarries; third, to 1918,

development of cut-stone mills and emergence of internal

conflicts within the industry; fourth, a period of price control

to 1925, of mergers until four years later, and then the de-

velopment of overcapacity; and fifth, after 1934, a period

of declining importance.

The Michigan copper industry, as represented by Gates,⁴⁹

conforms, however, to the life-cycle pattern, rising and declin-

ing in a succession of four stages. In the first, risks were

great and profits small for all but a few concerns, the influx

46 Harold Barger and S. H. Schurr, The Mining Industries, 1899-1939: A

Study of Output, Employment, and Productivity (New York, 1944); Arthur

Barrette Parsons, ed., Seventy-Five Years of Progress in the Mineral Industry,

1871-1946 (New York, 1948).

47 Howard L. Balsley, "Indiana Iron from Native Ore," Indiana Magazine of

History, XLV (1949), 353-368; Charles S. Gwynne, "Quarrying in Iowa,"

Palimpsest, XXXVIII (1957), 177-204; Jacob A. Swisher, "Mining in Iowa,"

Iowa Journal of History, XLIII (1945), 305-356.

48 Joseph A. Batchelor, Economic History of the Indiana Oolitic Limestone

Industry (Bloomington, Ind., 1944).

49 William B. Gates, Jr., Michigan Copper and Boston Dollars: An Economic

History of the Michigan Copper Mining Industry (Cambridge, Mass., 1951);

C. Harry Benedict, Red Metal: The Calumet and Hecla Story (Ann Arbor,

Mich., 1952).

• 15
 

16     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

of capital was large, and most of it was lost to the individual

investor. Substantial growth in both scale and number of

successful units marked the second period, during which a

flow of capital continued, but as reinvestment of earnings

rather than from new market flotations. During the third

period, which was that of maturity, new investment oppor-

tunities were unpromising, output remained stable, consolid-

ations took place, and earnings were exceptionally high. In

the fourth and last period, the industry was unable to earn

enough to meet depletion or even depreciation charges, and

efforts were made to rescue as much sunken capital as

possible, often through shifting to other stages of the metal

industry: the period is described as one of decline approach-

ing ultimate exhaustion.

Other aspects of the mining industry in Michigan have

been examined by Hybels and Chase;50 and coal mining in

Indiana has been studied by Freytag.⁵¹ Attention should also

be drawn to the monumental and little-known study of Eaven-

son, The First Century and a Quarter of American Coal

Industry, of which six chapters are devoted to midwestern

states.⁵²

The Lake Superior iron mining industry is recounted by

Hatcher in A Century of Iron and Men.⁵³ Emphasis is placed

on pioneering days and the emergence of big business, mining

and transportation, and personalities.  Technology, labor,

social institutions, and community and personal life of par-

ticipants receive little attention.

Among industrial leaders, the pioneer geologist Douglass

Houghton has been the subject of a biography by Rin-

 

50 Robert J. Hybels, "The Lake Superior Copper Fever, 1841-1847," Michigan

History, XXXIV (1950), 97-119, 224-248, 309-326; Lew Allen Chase, "Early

Copper Mining in Michigan," ibid., XXIX (1945), 22-30, "Early Days of Michi-

gan Mining," ibid., 166-179, "Michigan Copper Mines," ibid., 479-488, and

"Silver and Gold in Michigan," ibid., XXX (1946), 255-262.

51 R. C. Freytag, "The Indiana Coal Industry's Part in World War II," Indi-

ana Magazine of History, XLI (1945), 265-286.

52 Howard N. Eavenson, The First Century and a Quarter of American Coal

Industry (Pittsburgh, 1942).

53 Harlan Hatcher, A Century of Iron and Men (Indianapolis, 1950).

• 16
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY                     17

tala;54 and Bridges contributes Iron Millionaire: Life of

Charlemagne Tower.⁵⁵ The latter biography shows a man of

enterprise who took risks, failed, overcame his failure, and at-

tained final success. His greatest triumph was the opening and

development of the Vermilion Iron Range in northeastern

Minnesota and the building of the Duluth and Iron Range

Railroad to transport its ores to Lake Superior.

Study of the history of lumbering, although it is more re-

cent in origin than that of mining, has in certain respects

achieved a greater maturity.⁵⁶ In part this seems to result

from   a fresh access to source materials unimpeded by an

extensive background of literature and points of view based

on secondary accounts; but in larger part it is shown in the

emergence of conflicting interpretations. This may be a

reflection of the intense controversy that has centered about

the industry itself.

Fries presents an analysis of the development of the lum-

ber industry in Wisconsin during the exploitive stage from

1830 to 1900 in Empire in Pine.⁵⁷ His organization is topical:

the first chapters cover the economic and geographic con-

ditions out of which it grew; the rest outline the industry's

internal problems and conflicts, the political, economic, and

social forces shaping its development, and its growing influ-

 

54 Edsel K. Rintala, Douglass Houghton: Michigan's Pioneer Geologist (De-

troit, 1954).

55 Leonard Hal Bridges, Iron Millionaire: Life of Charlemagne Tower (Phila-

delphia, 1952).

56 Frances Caswell Hanna, Sand, Sawdust, and Saw Logs: Lumber Days in

Ludington (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1955); Lewis C. Reimann, When Pine Was King

(Ann Arbor, Mich., 1952); Lyda Belthuis, "The Lumber Industry in Eastern

Iowa," Iowa Journal of History, XLVI (1948), 115-155; Edward Everett Dale,

"Wood and Water: Twin Problems of the Prairie Plains," Nebraska History,

XXIX (1948), 87-104; George B. Engberg, "Collective Bargaining in the Lumber

Industry of the Upper Great Lakes States," Agricultural History, XXIV (1950),

205-211; Harold T. Hagg, "The Beltrami County Logging Frontier," ibid., XXIX

(1948), 137-149; Bernhardt J. Kleven, "The Mississippi River Logging Com-

pany," ibid., XXVII (1946), 190-202; Frederick W. Kohlmeyer, "Northern Pine

Lumbermen: A Study in Origins and Migrations," Journal of Economic His-

tory, XVI (1956), 529-538.

57 Robert F. Fries, Empire in Pine: The Story of Lumbering in Wisconsin,

1830-1900 (Madison, Wis., 1951).

• 17
 

18    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

ence on the life of state and nation. Few lumber companies

are mentioned by name, but much attention is given to the

development of government policy. The industry grew rap-

idly from 1853 to a peak in 1892, and then declined as a shift

to agriculture took place.  Conservation policies began to

emerge as men saw forest resources being depleted. The

contributions of lumbering to the development of the state are

described, as well as the ill effects in the creation of desert

and waste.

The key problem of the lumberman, according to Rector,⁵⁸

was log transportation, which represented three-fourths of

the delivered cost of forest products. It was upon the trans-

portation of logs that the success or failure of any operation

depended. The study covers the period from 1850 to 1930 in

the upper Great Lakes area of Michigan, Wisconsin, and

Minnesota, with special concentration on the years from 1870

to 1907.

Larson's History of the White Pine Industry in Minne-

sota⁵⁹ points out that the basic economy of the state passed

through four main periods, those of fur, lumber, wheat and

flour, and cattle. Fur traders came and went quickly, leav-

ing few permanent traces. Lumber was different: the great

pine reaches were converted to the uses of man, giving liveli-

hood to many, and opportunity to build industry. It led to

the populating of the state, better housing, a market for agri-

cultural produce, the opening of new areas, employment,

and help in the establishment of banks and railroads. The

lumber industry in the pine forests provided materials, men,

capital, and institutions; yet a heavy price was paid in the

destruction of resources. Emphasis is given to the need for

restoring forest industry.

In other studies, attention is paid to conflicting views of

 

58 William G. Rector, Log Transportation in the Lake States Lumber Industry,

1840-1918: The Movement of Logs and Its Relationship to Land Settlement,

Waterway Development, Railroad Construction, Lumber Production, and Prices

(Glendale, Calif., 1953).

59 Agnes M. Larson, History of the White Pine Industry in Minnesota

(Minneapolis, 1949).

• 18
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY                    19

the role of the lumberman, to the divergence or mutual sup-

port of the interests of lumbermen and farmers, and to rival

philosophies of exploitation and conservation.⁶⁰ The con-

sequences of the nineteenth-century industry have been

interpreted broadly as both beneficial, in contributing to the

development of the northern territories and states, and as

costly, through the destruction of resources and opportuni-

ties. While emphasis is placed on the emergence of conserva-

tion policies and the decline of lumbering, notice is taken also

of the problems of redevelopment. Finally it should be noted

that, in common with several other fields of midwestern

economic history, this has contributed its share of person-

alities, both as individuals and as types.⁶¹

 

 

Transportation and Commerce

In comparison with work on transportation and commerce

half a century ago, recent studies have been marked by some

shift in subject, area, and period. Attention generally has

moved away from roads, canals, and steamboats to trails

and railroads. It has also moved to some extent from eastern

and trans-Appalachian highways to those on the western

plains and in the Rockies; and from the eighteenth and early

nineteenth centuries to the middle and later decades of the nine-

teenth and early years of the twentieth. Stories of western

trails, travelers, freight, mail, and passengers, and the busi-

 

60 D. C. Everest, "A Reappraisal of the Lumber Barons," Wisconsin Magazine

of History, XXXVI (1952), 17-22; John L. Harr, "The Rise of the Wisconsin

Timber Baronies," State College of Washington Research Studies, XII (1944),

176-192.

61 Richard N. Current, Pine Logs and Politics: A Life of Philetus Sawyer

1816-1900 (Madison, Wis., 1950); Kenneth W. Duckett, Frontiersman of Fortune:

Moses M. Strong of Mineral Point (Madison, Wis., 1955); Larry Gara, West-

ernized Yankee: The Story of Cyrus Woodman (Madison, Wis., 1956); George

B. Engberg, "Who Were the Lumberjacks," Michigan History, XXXII (1948),

238-246; Marshall W. Fishwick, "Paul Bunyan: The Folk Hero as Tycoon,"

Yale Review, XLI (1952), 264-274; Ruth Stoveken, "The Pine Lumberjacks in

Wisconsin," Wisconsin Magazine of History, XXX (1947), 322-334; and bio-

graphical studies by R. H. Maybee, Carrie E. Mears, and Ida M. Spring in

Michigan History, passim.

• 19
 

20      THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

ness firms connected with trail commerce have been told with

increasingly voluminous detail. Writing has on the whole

stressed the colorful, romantic, anecdotal, and adventurous

aspects of the subject. It contains little of an interpretative

nature. In comparison with earlier work it shows, however,

a deeper and broader research technique, a much greater

wealth of materials with human interest, and a more attrac-

tive literary style and physical presentation.⁶²

Work on canals⁶³ and river transportation⁶⁴ is diminishing

in relative bulk, although a new interest in commerce of the

Great Lakes is evident in the publication of Inland Seas by

the Great Lakes Historical Society.⁶⁵ Writing tends to con-

form to the patterns of research, organization, presentation,

and interpretation established many years ago; but some

important works of synthesis have been achieved lately.

Notable among them is Hunter's comprehensive review of

river steamboat history.⁶⁶ Study of automotive transporta-

tion and highways⁶⁷ is apparently not yet remote enough to

62 Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg, U. S. West: The Saga of Wells Fargo

(New York, 1949); Roscoe P. Conkling and Margaret B. Conkling, The Butter-

field Overland Mail, 1857-1869 (Glendale, Calif., 1947); Edward Hungerford,

Wells Fargo: Advancing the American Frontier (New York, 1949); W. Turren-

tine Jackson, Wagon Roads West: A Study of Federal Road Surveys and Con-

struction in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1846-1869 (Berkeley, Calif., 1952);

Philip D. Jordan, The National Road (Indianapolis, 1948); Jay Monaghan,

The Overland Trail (Indianapolis, 1947); Agnes Wright Spring, The Cheyenne

and Black Hills Stage and Express Routes (Glendale, Calif., 1949).

63 Madeline S. Waggoner, The Long Haul West: The Great Canal Era, 1817-

1850 (New York, 1958); Irene D. Neu, "The Building of the Sault Canal:

1852-1855," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XL (1953), 25-46; John S.

Still, "Ethan Allen Brown and Ohio's Canal System," Ohio Historical Quarterly,

LXVI (1957), 22-56.

64 Richard E. Banta, The Ohio (New York, 1949). On internal improve-

ments, see John H. Krenkel, Illinois Internal Improvements, 1818-1848 (Cedar

Rapids, Iowa, 1958); Carter Goodrich, "American Development Policy: The

Case for Internal Improvements," Journal of Economic History, XVI (1956),

449-460; John Bull Rae, "Federal Land Grants in Aid of Canals," ibid., IV

(1944), 167-177; Mentor L. Williams, "The Chicago River and Harbor Conven-

tion, 1847," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXV (1949), 607-626;

Forest G. Hill, Roads, Rails & Waterways: The Army Engineers and Early

Transportation (Norman, Okla., 1957).

65 See also Marie McPhedran, Cargoes on the Great Lakes (New York, 1953).

66 Louis C. Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and

Technological History (Cambridge, Mass., 1949).

⁶7 American Association of State Highway Officials, The History and Accomp-

• 20
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY                      21

be given full historical consideration.  Only fragmentary

work has been done on communications.⁶⁸

Railroad history, when it has not been clearly in the field

of popularization, public relations, and entertainment, has

been primarily business history. The keynote is achievement.

Various problems, some of them physical and technological,

more of them in the areas of management and administration,

labor, capital, costs, and prices have been carefully investi-

gated. Settlement along railroad routes, and railroad coloni-

zation in particular have brought to notice the divergent

policies of major western lines. Attention has also been given

to the importance of managerial decisions and to the com-

plexity of railroad operations, involving management, labor

organizations, government officials, and civic leaders.

Galloway stresses the engineering achievements of the

builders of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific rather than

the political background or financial arrangements in The

First Transcontinental Railroad.⁶⁹ Hampton provides an

account of the main incidents since 1880 in the history of

The Nickel Plate Road.⁷⁰ The main concern of Corliss in

his Story of the Illinois Central71 is with events that occurred

on the property of the railroad. The story of the Rock Island

Lines offered by Hayes in Iron Road to Empire⁷² is a narra-

tive organized in periods established by successive presi-

 

lishments of 25 Years of Federal Aid for Highways (Washington, 1944); George

S. May, "The Good Roads Movement in Iowa," Palimpsest, XXXVI (1955),

1-64; Merrill J. Roberts, "The Motor Transportation Revolution," Business

History Review, XXX (1956), 57-95; Clinton Warne, "The Acceptance of the

Automobile in Nebraska," Nebraska History, XXXVII (1956), 221-235.

68 Robert L. Thompson, Wiring a Continent: The History of the Telegraph

Industry in the United States, 1832-1866 (Princeton, N.J., 1947). The history

of radio, telephone, and other modern means of communication has been almost

untouched.

69 John D. Galloway, The First Transcontinental Railroad: Central Pacific,

Union Pacific (New York, 1950).

70 Taylor Hampton, The Nickel Plate Road: The History of a Great Rail-

road (Cleveland, 1947).

71 Carlton Corliss, Main Line of Mid-America: The Story of the Illinois

Central (New York, 1950).

72 William E. Hayes, Iron Road to Empire: The History of 100 Years of the

Progress and Achievements of the Rock Island Lines (New York, 1953).

• 21
 

22     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

dencies of the company. Marshall's Santa Fe⁷³ gives great

attention to the colorful side of the story. In another study

of the same railroad, Greever offers a thesis, in Arid

Domain,⁷⁴ that the Santa Fe, contrary to the usual practice

of railways in the Middle West, did not try to attract new

settlers to its lands in the Southwest, but preferred to deal

with resident ranchers who already knew the land and its

problems.

Waters devotes his attention to business problems in Steel

Trails to Santa Fe.⁷⁵ While duplicating in part the earlier

work of Glenn D. Bradley, he carries the story beyond 1887,

recording the mistakes in judgment that led to overexpansion,

financial misrepresentation, and catastrophe in 1893. Mile-

posts on the Prairie,⁷⁶ by Donovan, is railroading seen from

the president's office, the agent's window, and the cab of the

locomotive rather than in terms of its meaning to farmers

and shippers along the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway.

Colorful, adventurous, and picturesque elements in the story

of the Chicago and North Western are elaborated by Casey

and Douglas in Pioneer Railroad.⁷⁷

Among works treating special features of railroad history

is Grodinsky's Iowa Pool.⁷⁸  The author demonstrates the

value of the pool to its members, studying the competition

for through traffic from the railroad's point of view. By

using corporate records he illustrates competitive forces that

produced, maintained, and finally destroyed a railroad pool.

McMurry's Great Burlington Strike of 188879 provides in

 

73 James L. Marshall, Santa Fe: The Railroad That Built an Empire (New

York, 1945).

74 William S. Greever, Arid Domain: The Santa Fe Railway and Its Western

Land Grant (Stanford, Calif., 1954).

75 Lawrence L. Waters, Steel Trails to Santa Fe (Lawrence, Kans., 1950).

76 Frank P. Donovan, Mileposts on the Prairie: The Story of the Minne-

apolis and St. Louis Railway (New York, 1950).

77 Robert J. Casey and W. A. S. Douglas, Pioneer Railroad: The Story of

the Chicago and North Western System (New York, 1948).

⁷⁸ Julius Grodinsky, The Iowa Pool: A Study in Railroad Competition, 1870-

1884 (Chicago, 1950).

79 Donald L. McMurry, The Great Burlington Strike of 1888: A Case History

in Labor Relations (Cambridge, Mass., 1956).

• 22
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY                        23

great detail an account of a major strike as seen from the

perspectives of each of the major participants, the Burling-

ton and Illinois Central railroads, the railway brotherhoods,

and government officials. Hirschfeld in The Great Railroad

Conspiracy80 tells the story of an early revolt against monop-

oly-minded officials of the Michigan Central Railroad who re-

fused to fence their lines or to pay more than half the

appraised value of the livestock their trains killed. Those

twelve works are too few to be called representative of recent

work on railroad history, but they illustrate something of its

variety.81

The major controversy of recent years has been over the

relation of railroads to the government, particularly in con-

nection with federal land grants. Henry has criticized history

textbooks severely for exaggerating the extent of the grants

and failing to show that the policy, whatever its shortcom-

ings, touched off national and individual energies that accom-

plished the greatest engineering, construction, and colonization

project undertaken up to that time.⁸² Comment and rejoinder

from a large number of historians promptly brought forward

a wide range of views, with a preponderance of them in

favor of previously accepted interpretations.⁸³

 

80 Charles Hirschfeld, The Great Railroad Conspiracy: The Social History

of a Railroad War (East Lansing, Mich., 1953).

81 Association of American Railroads, The Development of Railway Trans-

portation in Iowa (Washington, 1947); Thomas C. Cochran, Railroad Leaders,

1845-1890: The Business Mind in Action (Cambridge, Mass., 1953); August

Derleth, The Milwaukee Road: Its First Hundred Years (New York, 1948);

Frank P. Donovan, Railroads of America (Milwaukee, 1949); Stewart H. Hol-

brook, James J. Hill, A Great Life in Brief (New York, 1955) and The Story

of American Railroads (New York, 1947); Edward Hungerford, Men of Erie:

A Story of Human Effort (New York, 1946); F. H. Johnson, The Milwaukee

Road, 1847-1944 (Chicago, 1945); William Norris Leonard, Railroad Consoli-

dation Under the Transportation Act of 1920 (New York, 1946); V. V. Mas-

terson, The Katy Railroad and the Last Frontier (Norman, Okla., 1952);

George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860 (New York,

1951); G. R. Taylor and Irene D. Neu, The American Railroad Network, 1861-

1890 (Cambridge, Mass., 1956).

82 Robert S. Henry, "The Railroad Land Grant Legend in American History

Texts," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXII (1945), 171-194.

83 "Comment," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXII (1946), 557-

576. See also Paul W. Gates, "The Railroad Land-Grant Legend," Journal of

Economic History, XIV (1954), 143-146.

• 23
 

24     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Industry, Business, and Finance

Recent work in these fields has often been technical rather

than popular, narrowly definitive rather than controversial,

conclusive rather than suggestive, and concerned either with

corporate enterprise or with biography. Special problems of

the several industries and businesses studied have been given

greater attention than more general aspects; among the latter,

stress has been placed on complexity, technological change,

managerial problems, and the role of outstanding enterprisers

and innovators. Growth of the individual firm under exam-

ination has shared attention with maturity in relation to state,

regional, and national economy. The special preparation re-

quired of historians in these fields (such as accounting, law,

or engineering) together with the unusual difficulty of obtain-

ing access to private business records has tended to restrict

investigation to a few subjects.

Among major works, Twyman's History of Marshall

Field⁸⁴ offers an analysis of purchasing, sales, and manage-

ment policy from 1865 to 1906. In Standard Oil Company

(Indiana)⁸⁵ Giddens calls attention to many elements in a

record that affected the social and political no less than the

 

84 Robert W. Twyman, History of Marshall Field & Co., 1852-1906 (Philadel-

phia, 1954). On merchandising, see also Gerald Carson, The Old Country Store

(New York, 1954); Boris Emmet and John E. Jeuck, Catalogues and Counters:

A History of Sears, Roebuck and Company (Chicago, 1950); John W. Tebbel,

The Marshall Fields: A Study in Wealth (New York, 1947); Lloyd Wendt and

Herman Kogan, Give the Lady What She Wants! The Story of Marshall Field

and Company (Chicago, 1952); Thomas D. Clark, "The Country Store in Ameri-

can Social History," Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, LX

(1951), 126-144; Joe L. Norris, "The Country Merchant and the Industrial

Magnate," Michigan History, XL (1956), 328-344; Wayland A. Tonning, "De-

partment Stores in Down State Illinois, 1889-1943," Business History Review,

XXIX (1955), 335-349, and "The Beginnings of the Money-Back Guarantee

and the One-Price Policy in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, 1833-1880," ibid., XXX

(1956), 196-210.

85 Paul H. Giddens, Standard Oil Company (Indiana): Oil Pioneer of the

Middle West (New York, 1956); Arthur M. Johnson, The Development of

American Petroleum Pipelines: A Study in Private Enterprise and Public

Policy, 1862-1906 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1956); Ralph W. Hidy, "Some Implications of

the Recent Literature on the History of the Petroleum Industry: A Review

Article," Business History Review, XXX (1956), 329-346.

• 24
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY                          25

economic history of the nation. Cochran sets another story,

The Pabst Brewing Company, in a national frame of refer-

ence, and approaches it from many directions.⁸⁶

 

86 Thomas C. Cochran, The Pabst Brewing Company: The History of an

American Business (New York, 1948). On the history of other industrial manu-

facturing, see Peter Tamas Bauer, The Rubber Industry: A Study in Competi-

tion and Monopoly (Cambridge, Mass., 1948); Arthur Aaron Bright, The Elec-

tric-Lamp Industry: Technological Change and Economic Development from

1800 to 1947 (New York, 1949); Lawrence Oakley Cheever, The House of

Morrell (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1948); Roscoe C. Clark, Threescore Years and

Ten: A Narrative of the First Seventy Years of Eli Lilly and Company, 1876-

1946 (Indianapolis, 1946); Floyd Clymer, Henry's Wonderful Model T, 1908-1927

(New York, 1955); Elsbeth E. Freudenthal, Flight into History: The Wright

Brothers and the Air Age (Norman, Okla., 1949); General Motors Corporation,

Buick's First Half Century (Flint, Mich., 1952); James Gray, Business Without

Boundary: The Story of General Mills (Minneapolis, 1954); Courtney Robert

Hall, History of American Industrial Science (New York, 1954); Alfred Lief,

The Firestone Story: A History of the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company

(New York, 1951); Forrest McDonald, Let There Be Light: The Electric

Utility Industry in Wisconsin, 1881-1955 (Madison, Wis., 1957); William Rupert

MacLaurin, Invention and Innovation in the Radio Industry (New York, 1949);

Raymond Curtis Miller, Kilowatts at Work: A History of the Detroit Edison

Company (Detroit, 1957); Horace B. Powell, The Original Has This Signature

--W. K. Kellogg (New York, 1956); Warren C. Scoville, Revolution in

Glassmaking: Entrepreneurship and Technological Change in the American In-

dustry, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1948); Philip Van Doren Stern, Tin Lizzie:

The Story of the Fabulous Model T Ford (New York, 1955); Stanley Vance,

American Industries (New York, 1955); Harold F. Williamson and Kenneth H.

Myers, Designed for Digging: The First 75 Years of Bucyrus-Erie Company

(Evanston, Ill., 1955).

Among articles illustrating a wide variety of approaches to industrial history,

see Richard N. Current, "The Original Typewriter Enterprise, 1867-1873,"

Wisconsin Magazine of History XXXII (1949), 391-407; Howard Greene and

William T. Berthelet, "The Milwaukee Cement Company," ibid., 28-39; Frederic

Heath, "The Typewriter in Wisconsin," ibid., XXVII (1944), 263-275; Marie

Dickore, "The Waldsmith Paper Mill," in Historical and Philosophical Society

of Ohio, Bulletin, V (1947), 7-24; John W. Merten, "Stone by Stone Along a

Hundred Years with the House of Strobridge," ibid., VIII (1950), 3-48; Edward

M. Noyes, "Granville Furnace," ibid., XIV (1956), 37-49, and "The Window

Glass Industry of Utica, Ohio," ibid., XII (1954), 227-243; A. K. Stiegerwalt,

"Founding of the National Association of Manufacturers," ibid., X (1952), 127-

142; Loyal Durand, "The Migration of Cheese Manufacture in the United

States," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, XLII (1952),

263-282; James R. Irwin, "Michigan's Contribution to the Development of the

Diesel Engineering Industry," Michigan History, XXXV (1951), 275-290;

Charles Jenkins, "The Kearney Cotton Mill -- A Bubble That Burst," Nebraska

History, XXXVIII (1957), 207-219; William A. Mabry, "Industrial Beginnings

in Ohio," Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, LV (1946), 242-

253; William D. Overman, "The Rubber Industry in Ohio," Ohio Historical

Quarterly, LXVI (1957), 278-289; William J. Petersen, "The W. A. Sheaffer

Pen Co.," Palimpsest, XXXIII (1952), 257-288; W. J. Petersen and George S.

• 25
 

26      THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

An often ignored aspect of business history is exemplified

in Belcher's Economic Rivalry Between St. Louis and Chi-

cago, 1850-1880.87 Characteristics of the two cities are de-

scribed, the business leadership of each, their rivalry for

western trade, the impact and aftermath of the Civil War, the

renewal of rivalry, and the victory of Chicago. A vital part

of the contest was the dependence of St. Louis on the river

while Chicago developed rail transportation by a combination

of planning and energy fostered by a favorable economic and

geographic background.

Financial history has been less fully studied than transpor-

tation and commerce, manufacturing, or other forms of

business, but significant work has been done.⁸⁸ Andersen

 

 

May, "Industries of Iowa," ibid., XXXVII (1956), 225-288; Loren Taylor, "The

Colesberg Pottery," ibid., XXIX (1948), 65-75; John B. Rae, "The Engineer-

Entrepreneur in the American Automobile Industry," Explorations in Entrepre-

neurial History, VIII (1955), 1-11; Richard J. Wright, "A History of Shipbuild-

ing in Cleveland, Ohio," Inland Seas, XII (1956), 232-242.

87 Wyatt W. Belcher, The Economic Rivalry Between St. Louis and Chicago,

1850-1880 (New York, 1947); Richard Wade, The Urban Frontier: The Rise

of Western Cities, 1790-1830 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959).

88 Allan G. Bogue, Money at Interest: The Farm Mortgage on the Middle

Border (Ithaca, N.Y., 1955); Marquis James, The Metropolitan Life: A Study

in Business Growth (New York, 1947); Karl Schriftgiesser, The Farmer from

Merna: A Biography of George J. Mecherle and a History of the State Farm

Insurance Companies of Bloomington, Illinois (New York, 1955); Eli Shapiro,

Credit Union Development in Wisconsin (New York, 1947); Herbert O. Brayer,

"Insurance Against the Hazards of Western Life," Mississippi Valley Historical

Review, XXXIV (1947), 221-236; William G. Carleton, "The Money Question

in Indiana Politics, 1865-1890," Indiana Magazine of History, XLII (1946),

107-150; Emory H. English, "Safeguarding Insurance in Iowa," Annals of Iowa,

3d series, XXXII (1953-55), 413-445, and XXXIII (1955-57), 393-439; Henry

O. Talle, "A Century of Banking in Iowa," ibid., XXVIII (1946-47), 195-204;

Gilbert C. Fite, "South Dakota's Rural Credit System: A Venture in State

Socialism, 1917-1946," Agricultural History, XXI (1947), 239-249; Bray Ham-

mond, "Banking in the Early West: Monopoly, Prohibition and Laissez Faire,"

Journal of Economic History, VIII (1948), 1-25; Douglass C. North, "Inter-

national Capital Flows and the Development of the American West," ibid., XVI

(1956), 493-505; Lucile Kane, "Hersey, Staples, and Company, 1854-1860: East-

ern Managers and Capital in Frontier Business," in Business Historical Society,

Bulletin, XXVI (1952), 199-213; Donald L. Kemmerer, "Financing Illinois In-

dustry, 1830-1890," ibid., XXVII (1953), 97-11; Harry R. Stevens, "Bank

Enterprisers in a Western Town, 1815-1822," Business History Review, XXIX

(1955), 139-156; Eugene O. Porter, "Financing Ohio's Pre-Civil War Railroads,"

Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, LVII (1948), 215-226.

• 26
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY                    27

provides in A Century of Banking in Wisconsin⁸⁹ both nar-

rative and topical treatment of his subject. It is "essentially

the story of [Wisconsin's] quest for financial stability." The

banking system was plagued at first by too many enterprises,

operating with too many liabilities and too small cash re-

serves. That situation led to an increasing growth of collec-

tive action, state regulation, deposit insurance, and govern-

ment intervention, which the banks feared and opposed but

accepted in order to survive. Popple devotes great attention

to the part taken by individual bankers in Development of

Two Bank Groups in the Central Northwest.⁹⁰ Centering on

the question of what type of banking organization could best

serve the area of the Twin Cities, he notes the rapidity with

which the financial frontier came into existence and then

disappeared, within seventy years, giving way to a mature

and complete banking system.

Among biographers, Nevins concludes in his Study in

Power91 that Rockefeller's greatest contribution to American

business was his ability to integrate and exercise effective

control over the numerous and widespread functions of his

enterprise. Knudsen's life story is told by Beasley as, in

large part, the story of General Motors.⁹² On Ford, Nevins

and Hill demonstrate assembly-line research undertaken with

a broad perspective.⁹³ The authors make Ford a human being;

giving credit to Winton, the Duryeas, Olds, Daimler, Soren-

son, and many others, they relate their subject to the rise

of the entire automobile industry. Lief's Harvey Firestone⁹⁴

89 Theodore A. Andersen, A Century of Banking in Wisconsin (Madison, Wis.,

1954).

90 Charles S. Popple, Development of Two Bank Groups in the Central North-

west: A Study in Bank Policy and Organization (Cambridge, Mass., 1944).

91 Allan Nevins, Study in Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Phil-

anthropist (New York, 1953).

92 Norman Beasley, Knudsen: A Biography (New York, 1947).

93 Allan Nevins and Frank E. Hill, Ford: The Times, the Man, the Company

(New York, 1954), and Ford: Expansion and Challenge, 1915-1933 (New York,

1957).

94 Alfred Lief, Harvey Firestone: Free Man of Enterprise (New York, 1951).

For other business biography, see T. A. Boyd, Professional Amateur: The

Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering (New York, 1957); Roger Burlingame,

Henry Ford (New York, 1955); Edward T. Heald, Bezaleel Wells: Founder of

• 27
 

28     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

presents the lengthening shadow of a businessman; and it

shows how one man of enterprise planned, took risks,

suffered failures, and achieved eventual success as a supplier

of a large part of the world's rubber goods.

The "rags to riches" story has been severely attacked;95

but the study of those who attained success in the Midwest

frequently sustains it. A quite different picture of the nine-

teenth-century businessman of an earlier period is gradually

emerging from the study of minor figures. They were often

men with a wide variety of economic interests rather than

of single-minded purpose. Land speculation, farming, timber

and mine exploitation, commerce, railroads, industry, and

finance were areas in which many individuals engaged suc-

cessively or simultaneously, and they were still often not

enough to occupy their full attention. Such men became in

addition civic leaders; and by their participation in political

life (sometimes over several decades) they contributed sub-

stantially to the integration of midwestern economy, society,

and government.

Among other special fields, mention must be made of labor

and labor organizations.⁹⁶

Canton and Steubenville, Ohio (Canton, 1948); William E. Smith and Ophia D.

Smith, A Buckeye Titan (Cincinnati, 1953); Keith Theodore Sward, The Leg-

end of Henry Ford (New York, 1948); and a rather large number of brief

biographical sketches in periodical publications.

For more general studies of business and businessmen see Thomas C. Cochran,

The American Business System: A Historical Perspective, 1900-1955 (Cambridge,

Mass., 1957); Sigmund Diamond, The Reputation of the American Businessman

(Cambridge, Mass., 1955).

95 Irvin G. Wyllie, The Self-Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags to

Riches (New Brunswick, N.J., 1954); Thomas C. Cochran, "The Legend of the

Robber Barons," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXXIV

(1950), 307-321.

96 Phillip Bonosky, Brother Bill McKie: Building the Union at Ford (New

York, 1953); Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, Labor's Untold Story

(New York, 1955); Foster R. Dulles, Labor in America: A History (New

York, 1955); Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United

States (New York, 1947); Irving Howe and B. J. Widick, The UAW and

Walter Reuther (New York, 1949); Charles A. Madison, American Labor

Leaders: Personalities and Forces in the Labor Movement (New York, 1950);

Charles Wright Mills and Helen Schneider, The New Men of Power: America's

Labor Leaders (New York, 1948); Wellington Roe, Juggernaut: American

Labor in Action (Philadelphia, 1948); Philip Taft, The AF of L in the Time

of Gompers (New York, 1957). A widely scattered periodical literature on the

• 28
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY             29

In a broad review of the recent work on midwestern econo-

mic history, four features are conspicuous. First is the ten-

acity with which historians have held to the subjects and ap-

proaches established in the thirty or forty years after 1885.

Transportation and agriculture remain at the center. Second

is the broadening and deepening of those subjects, both in

scope and detail of research and in the perception of problems

and implications. Third is the detachment of this work on one

side from general history and on the other from economic

theory. It is evident in the extent to which economic history

remains untroubled and almost untouched by the great con-

troversies and interpretations that have brought about the

reshaping of political history in the past forty years, and in

the extent to which it is insulated from recent developments

in formal economic thought. Fourth and probably most

outstanding is the intensely substantive character of the work.

A down-to-earth quality pervades most of its many thousands

of pages. It is successful to an impressive extent in depicting

a story of economic growth that achieved, in some regions

within less than a century, a transformation from natural

wilderness to one of the most highly developed agricultural,

commercial, and industrial communities in the world.

Beside those impressive achievements some of the limita-

tions of recent midwestern economic history should also be

noted. Those that follow are general impressions; it should

be noted that for each of them exceptions may be found, and

that they refer only to the recent works noted herein, not to

the whole body of midwestern economic history studies.

Most of the work that has been done has worn deeper than

ever the trails that were already well trodden more than forty

years ago. Little has been done in exploration either of new

forms of economic life or of older forms and activities that

had not been recognized and examined before the First World

War.

 

subject is largely episodic or fragmentary, concerned chiefly with strikes, the

origins of particular unions, development of labor policies, and the history of

labor and other social legislation.

• 29
 

30 THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Major industries and trades have been neglected, such as

machine tools, chemicals, non-ferrous metals, textiles, shoes

and clothing, paper, aviation manufactures, construction and

building trades, housing and household equipment, light, heat,

and refrigeration. The economics of professions, law, medi-

cine, architecture, teaching, civil, mechanical, industrial, and

electrical engineering, are largely unstudied. Crafts and use-

ful arts, printing, carpentry, masonry, glazing, tailoring, cook-

ing, and hundreds of others are virtually untouched.

Public utilities and public services, from water and traffic

control to street cleaning and hotel management, have seldom

risen above the horizon. The economics of power and fuels,

water, wood, coal, coke, natural gas, draft animals, steam,

and electricity are still largely unwritten.

Almost nothing has been done on the basic nineteenth-

century forms of business enterprise, the individual business,

the family concern, partnerships, or small corporations. Very

few even among the major business and industrial firms have

received attention. Studies of particular business and in-

dustrial firms are disappointingly few. The internal economy

of almost every major institution, the home, the farm, the

shop, the mill, the tannery, the pottery, the school, the church,

remains to be examined. The economy of social, political, and

recreational organizations remains a blank. The economy of

science, invention, and technology is ignored. The factory

system in the Middle West has yet to find its historian.

The economy of education, even in so controversial a field

as public schools and universities, has received scant historical

consideration. Apart from studies on agriculture, railroads,

and internal improvements, little can be found on the history

of the long and intimate association of government and

economy. The economy of social welfare, philanthropy, waste,

and crime has apparently drawn little attention from the

economic historian.

Psychological problems of economic life have been slighted

--prestige, emulation, competition, cooperation, innovation,

conservatism, success, enterprise, faith, and optimism--and

• 30
 

MIDWESTERN ECONOMIC HISTORY             31

although the terms are freely used, they remain the language

of mystification, evasion, or obscurantism rather than instru-

ments of intelligent analysis or the subjects of serious his-

torical investigation. In other broad areas such topics as stan-

dards of living, income and income distribution, business

cycles, and long-term secular trends have been more talked

about than understood.

A few economic thinkers and critics such as Beard, Veblen,

Commons, and Ely have received attention, but many more

have received none, and almost nothing is known of the

broader basis of midwestern economic thought during the

past century and a half, either of its economic or political

leaders or of such voluble spokesmen as newspaper editors.

Almost every attempt to establish a relationship between

economic history and economic theory has concluded dismally

that none does or can exist.⁹⁷

The opportunities for fresh and exciting work on midwest-

ern economic history are far from exhausted. Indeed, not-

withstanding the great volume of recent work in the field,

most of the problems have scarcely even been identified. While

the economist develops and refines his concepts and produces

his types, models, and alternatives, the economic historian

has seldom come forward to provide evidence for determining

whether they have any relevance to reality; he has scarcely

ever raised the question, "Was it so?" The time has not

yet come for achieving the much to be desired synthesis; but

it has long since been time to engage in a broader and more

systematic exploration of the field, and to ask of the material

many significant questions in addition to those that have thus

far been posed.

97 Donald E. Stout, "Are Business History and Economic Theory Compatible?"

Business History Review, XXIX (1955), 285-297; W. Woodruff, "History and

the Businessman," ibid., XXX (1956), 241-259. Compare Thomas C. Cochran,

"Researches in American Economic History: A Thirty Years View," Mid-

America, XXIX (1947), 3-23.

• 31