Ohio History Journal

ROBERT P. SWIERENGA

 

Ethnicity and American Agriculture

 

 

Ethnic Patterns in Land Settlement

 

Rural America was never as ethnic as urban America. The

vastness of the agricultural hinterland and the traditional family

farm both worked against the formation and survival of ethnic com-

munities. Nevertheless, ever since Americans populated the land,

every national and denominational group, in greater or lesser

degree, is represented in the farming population. Rural America,

especially the Upper Middle West during the nineteenth century,

had a remarkable cultural diversity, traces of which still exist today

in the countryside. Agricultural historian Allan Bogue has aptly

described the midwestern frontier: "Farm       operators might be

native-born or foreign-born, born to the English tongue or highly in-

ept in its use. If continental-born, they might have been raised

among the Rhineland vineyards or trained to a mixed life of farming

and fishing in Scandinavia, been emigrants from the grain fields of

eastern Europe or come from many other backgrounds. If native-

born, they might be Yankee or Yorker, Kentuckian or Buckeye,

Pennsylvanian or Sucker."1

There were three major ethnic settlement streams in rural

America-New Englanders, Scotch-Irish, and Germans-and sev-

eral minor concentrations of Scandinavians, Canadians, Dutch,

Italians, Czechs, Japanese, and Mexicans.² The New England ex-

 

 

 

Robert P. Swierenga is Professor of History at Kent State University

 

1. Allan G. Bogue, From Prairie to Cornbelt: Farming on the Illinois and Iowa

Prairies in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1963), 194-95.

2. Excellent descriptions of these major settlement patterns are: John L. Shover,

First Majority-Last Minority: The Transformation of Rural Life in America

(DeKalb, Ill., 1976), 38-50; Frederick C. Luebke, "Ethnic Group Settlement on the

Great Plains," Agricultural History, 8 (Oct., 1977), 405-30; Randall M. Miller, "Im-

migrants in the Old South," Immigration History Newsletter, X (Nov., 1978), 8-14;

Hilldegard Binder Johnson, "The Location of German Immigrants in the Middle

West," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 41 (1951), 1-41;

Frederick Jackson Turner, The United States, 1830-1850, The Nation and Its Sec-

tions (New York, 1935).

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324                                            OHIO HISTORY

 

odus, which began in the early nineteenth century, carried Yankees

across much of the northern United States. The New Englanders

migrated in stages, first to upper New York and northwestern Penn-

sylvania (1800s), then to the "Burned-Over District" of western

New York and northeast Ohio (1820s), next to southern Michigan or

northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, and Iowa (1840s and 1850s),

and finally to Kansas and westward to Oregon (1870s). The Yankee

frontiersmen usually arrived first, chose the richest glaciated soils,

and transplanted intact their culture, churches, and schools.

While the Yankees moved across the northern tier of the frontier,

the Scotch-Irish in Pennsylvania and the Carolinas, half a million

strong by the end of the colonial era, crossed the mountains into

Tennessee and Kentucky.³ From the Appalachian valley they fanned

out southward across the Gulf Plains and northward along the

Ohio valley and eventually west of the Mississippi River into the

hilly, unglaciated regions of eastern Missouri and southern Iowa.

Typically, the Scotch-Irish spied out the "loose-dirt" bottom lands

and sandy uplands with which they were familiar. Unfortunately,

such hilly terrain often contained inferior soils. The Scotch-Irish

dominated the interior South and Ohio Valley and stamped this

region with a common ethnic and cultural identity that was unique

in the nation. In 1850, 98 percent of the people in the South Central

states were native-born, a higher proportion than any other region.

The third major ethnic contingent in rural America was the Ger-

mans, the largest non-English speaking immigrant group. Fed by a

continuous stream of immigrants from the colonial period to World

War I, Germans first settled in the lowland limestone soils of Penn-

sylvania and then after the Revolution they moved into the fertile

glaciated oak openings and prairies of the Midwest from northern

Ohio to Kansas and the Dakotas. Texas also attracted a large con-

tingent, so that by 1900 almost a third of the Texans were either

German or of Germanic ancestry.

Nationally, according to the 1910 census report, Germans were

"over-represented" in agriculture by 51.8 percent. (See Table.) They

comprised 2.7 percent of the total population, but 4.1 percent of the

nation's farmers. Among the 670,000 immigrant farm operators

they were the overwhelming nationality, with 33 percent. In 1880,

Germans had made up 36 percent of all farmers, but in proportion to

their total numbers, they were under-represented in farming by 2.6

percent. Thus, the German presence in agriculture, as with the

 

 

3. James G. Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish, A SocialHistory (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1962).

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Ethnicity                                           325

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326                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

Scandinavians, increased greatly at the end of the nineteenth cen-

tury.

The Germans preferred to buy partially-improved farms rather

than open new lands. There were many exceptions to this

generalization, however. Carl Wittke reported that Germans

developed 672,000 American farms, totaling one hundred million

acres. Some of these farms were in colonial Pennsylvania, where

Germans went to the frontier as frequently as the Scotch-Irish.⁴

Wherever they settled, Germans established the reputation of

developing excellent farms. The German farmer's regard for his

barn and animals at the expense of his home and family is prover-

bial in frontier America. Nevertheless, in the Mennonite county of

Lancaster, stone houses outnumbered stone barns among Germans,

and small log barns were still the norm as late as the 1780s. The

large "Swisser" stone barns in Pennsylvania "Dutch" country ap-

peared only after the farmers had prospered greatly during the

Revolution.5

The Germans in America comprised three diverse groups in

language and religion.⁶ There were the Anabaptist sects (Volga or

Russo-Germans, Mennonites, Dunkers, and Amish), Lutherans and

Reformed from northern Germany, and Catholics from Bavaria and

the south. Each group maintained its cultural distance and distinc-

tiveness and some, such as the Russians, spoke languages other

than German. By 1900, the German immigrant population had

swelled to three million, half of whom lived in the North Central

states. Many others, such as the Russo-Germans, clustered

throughout the great plains on land resembling their native steppes,

where they uniformly introduced hard winter wheat. Prominent

German areas were Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; Holmes and

Madison counties, Ohio; Ellis County, Kansas; Franklin County,

Missouri; and Jefferson County, Wisconsin. The latter two were 80

percent German in 1900.

Scandinavians numbered more than 1.2 million in 1910 and were

concentrated in the heavily wooded, forest and lake country of the

Upper Mississippi Valley, which resembled their homeland. Min-

nesota and Wisconsin were the primary areas, but scattered

 

4. Carl Wittke, We Who Built America: The Saga of the Immigrant (New York,

1946), 208. Wittke describes the settlement patterns of all of the major immigrant

groups which are described in this and succeeding paragraphs.

5. James T. Lemon, The Poor Man's Country: A Geographical Study of Early

Southeastern Pennsylvania (Baltimore and London, 1976), 177.

6. This and the following paragraphs rely heavily on Wittke, We Who Built

America.

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Ethnicity                                                   327

 

Swedish, Norwegians, Danish, and Finnish settlements also sprang

up in Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. The Norwegians were the

most rural and clannish of the Scandinavians. As late as 1940, over

half of all midwestern Norwegians lived on farms or in small

villages. Indeed, they were the only immigrant group with a lower

proportion of city-dwellers than the native Americans. Swedes also

led in the conquest of the rolling prairies. By 1925, they had cleared

and opened an estimated twleve million acres. The 1910 census

counted 156,000 Scandinavian farm operators, the second largest

immigrant nationality. Indeed, the Scandinavians were over-

represented in agriculture by 123 percent in 1918 (Table), which was

more than twice the proportion among Germans. In 1880, the Scan-

dinavians were the only major foreign-born group over-represented

in agriculture. The Scandinavians truly sought after the land.

Other sizeable immigrant groups in the midwestern farm popula-

tion were Canadians, English, Irish, Swiss, Dutch, Czechs (Bohe-

mians), and Poles, but no group was over-represented in proportion

to its total numbers. The Canadians, English, Irish, and Swiss were

widely scattered in the Upper Great Lakes, but were especially

strong in Michigan. The Swiss in northern Wisconsin laid the basis

for the Swiss cheese industry in the 1840s and 1850s. The Dutch

were concentrated particularly in the lake and woodland regions of

southwestern Michigan, northern Illinois, and southern Wisconsin,

but several thousand also settled on the prairies of Iowa and

neighboring states. The Czechs preferred prairie land; the major col-

onies were in Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Texas. The latter state had

50,000 Czechs in 1910, mainly farmers. By that date one-third of all

first generation Czechs in America followed agricultural pursuits.

Among the southern and eastern European immigrants, the Czechs

considered farming an ideal way of life.⁷ Poles were more inclined to

head for the cities, but some managed to acquire low-priced

"cutover" timber land in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota or

abandoned farms in the East. Many began as farm tenants or

worked in the sawmills, mines, and quarries as day laborers before

they became land owners. Polish farmers were less familiar with

modern farming techniques than other immigrants, and therefore

imitated their neighbors more than most.

7. In addition to Wittke, We Who Built America, 409-16, sociological analyses of

specific Czech farming communities are: Robert L. Skrabanek, "The Influence of

Cultural Backgrounds on Farming Practices in a Czech-American Rural Communi-

ty," Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, 31 (1951), 258-62 and Russell Wilford

Lynch, Czech Farmers in Oklahoma: A Comparative Study of the Stability of a

Czech Farm Group in Lincoln County, Oklahoma ... (Oklahoma Agricultural and

Mechanical College Bulletin, 39 [June, 1942]), 107.

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328                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

The high proportion of northern European immigrants in rural

midwestern communities was a result of several factors: the coin-

cidence of their arrival and the opening of the frontier, the influence

of the Homestead Act of 1862, the promotional efforts of railroad

agents and immigration bureaus, their relative prosperity that

enabled them to become farm owners, and the geographical similari-

ty of the Midwest to their native lands.

Later immigrant groups had neither the opportunity and capital

to obtain farm land nor the experience and temperament to confront

a lonely and often hostile environment. But some southern and

eastern Europeans could be found in the countryside, especially as

truck farmers near coastal metropolises. Jewish farmers were pro-

minent in the borscht belt of New York's Catskills, and among

chicken ranchers in Petaluma, California and Vineland, New Jersey.

Italians raised fruit and vegetables in the East, and in the Pacific

Northwest they engaged in dairying, fruit raising, and built

wineries in California (notably the Italian Swiss-Colony).

California's Italians competed for prime farm land with Yugoslavs,

Japanese, Portuguese, Armenians, Basques, and various northern

European groups. The Portuguese distinguished themselves as

dairymen in the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento areas. The

Armenians were prominent in Fresno County as market gardeners.

One developed the largest fig ranch in the world.⁸

The role as seasonal farm laborers of Orientals, Eastern Euro-

peans, and Spanish-Americans, was also crucial to agricultural

growth. The Chinese and Japanese provided the initial pool of

"stoop" labor in the far west until the Oriental exclusion acts shut

the door between 1882 and 1907. Filipinos and especially Mexicans

had a near monopoly thereafter, except during the depression of the

1930s when tens of thousands were repatriated. The quota law of

1921 did not apply to Mexico and during the 1920s more than a

million and a half Mexicans crossed the border. Most settled in the

Southwest, but many moved into the large midwestern cities of

Chicago, Kansas City, Minneapolis, and St. Paul. These migrants

on the fruit and vegetable farms of the sunbelt and the midwest

generally moved northward following the harvest in three main

streams: from Florida to New Jersey, Texas to Michigan and Min-

nesota, and up California's Salinas and Sacramento-San Joaquin

Valleys. The peak year of dependency on foreign farm workers was

 

 

8. Theodore Saloutos, "The Immigrant Contribution to American Agriculture,"

Agricultural History, 50 (Jan., 1976), 60-62.

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Ethnicity                                                329

1960 when the federal government admitted 460,000 for harvest

labor.⁹

The Immigration Commission Reports give the rural concentra-

tion of the major immigrant groups in 1900. In descending order,

the percentage of foreign-born, male bread-winners following

agriculture pursuits was Norwegians fifty, Czechs thirty-two,

Swedes thirty, Germans twenty-seven, British-Canadians twenty-

two, English eighteen, Irish and French Canadians fourteen, Poles

ten, Italians six, and Hungarians three. These percentages would in-

crease an average of five points if sons of the foreign-born were in-

cluded. Thus, most ethnic groups were more than half urban at a

time when the national percentage was 45 percent. The census of

1910 further indicates the low incidence of immigrant farmers: only

12 percent of the nation's farm operators were foreign-born.10

The geographical distribution of immigrant farmers was striking-

ly uneven. In 1910, nearly seven out of ten lived in the Midwest,

where they comprised 20.5 percent of all farm operators. However,

in Minnesota and North Dakota more than half of the farmers were

foreign-born, and in Wisconsin and South Dakota over 30 percent.

The remaining three-tenths were nearly evenly divided between the

Northeast and Far West regions, but their small absolute members

were noticed more in the West where they comprised 23 percent of

all farmers, compared to 11 percent in the East. A mere 12,000 im-

migrant farmers (.06 percent) settled in the South because of its

reputedly inferior soils, slavery or its legacy, and the absence of

friends and relatives. The immigrants, in short, chose the cities

rather than the countryside, and those who opted for farming

headed for the midwestern and plains states.

To what extent climate, ethnic idiosyncracy, and the pull of

already-established communities accounted for the distribution of

the immigrant groups is unknown. In general, however, immigrants

first gathered in and near the large seaport cities of the Atlantic

Coast, especially in the Middle Atlantic states, and to a lesser

measure, near the Pacific harbor cities. They gradually spread out

over the northern, central, and western sections of the country

wherever transportation and job opportunities in agricultural and

industry beckoned. Usually the immigrants clustered around com-

munities of their compatriots. Some sought certain climates or soil

 

9. Louis Adamic, A Nation of Nations (New York and London, 1944), 62-65;

Saloutos, "Immigrant Contribution," 63-65.

10. U.S. Immigration Commission, Reports (Washington, GPO, 1911), Vol. 28,

60-62. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 13th Census, 1910, Vol. 5, Agriculture, 178.

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330                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

areas that resembled their homelands, while others preferred urban

life. Many who joined the frontier movement to the cornbelt and

prairies eventually were swept back into the cities by the strong ur-

ban tide of the Industrial Revolution.

Cultural Patterns in Farming

 

Throughout the history of settlement in the American wilderness,

European immigrant farmers had to deal with a variety of un-

familiar soils, weather conditions, vegetation, and terrains. The

fields of Europe had been cleared or drained for generations, if not

centuries, and land was farmed intensively and with great variety of

grains, fruits, vegetables, and livestock. The American frontier,

whether forests or prairies, was strikingly different. It required that

immigrant farmers adapt themselves to an alien land.

The degree to which the varying cultural backgrounds of the im-

migrants influenced their choice of settlement areas and affected

their farming practices and success rate has long intrigued

Americans. The literature of rural history is replete with contem-

porary comments and observations about the relationship between

cultural background and farming behavior. Bogue identifies two

key propositions in accounts of midwestern agriculture.11 The first

is that various ethnic groups, when learning to farm in America, in-

itially drew upon their particular Old World skills and modes of

husbandry, thereby introducing specific crops and farming tech-

niques into American agriculture. The second hypothesis is that cer-

tain ethnic groups in the same geographical region farmed for

generations in ways significantly different from their neighbors,

within the limits of the common constraints imposed by climate and

soils in each region. He finds the first proposition more plausible

than the second, but neither has been sufficiently tested by

systematic research. Only recently have scholars attempted com-

parative studies of ethnic cropping patterns, animal husbandry,

technological skills, tenure differences, and mobility and per-

sistence rates, based upon census records, tax lists, and estate in-

ventories.12

 

11. Bogue, Prairie to Cornbelt, 237-38.

12. See, for example, Bogue, Prairie to Cornbelt 25, 237-40; John G. Gagliardo,

"Germans and Agriculture in Colonial Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania Magazine of

History and Biography, 83 (1959), 192-218; James T. Lemon, "The Agricultural

Practices of National Groups in Eighteenth-Century Southeastern Pennsylvania,"

The Geographical Review, 56 (Oct. 1966), 467-96; David Aidan McQuillan, "Adapta-

tion of Three Immigrant Groups to Farming in Central Kansas, 1875-1925" (Ph.D.

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Ethnicity                                                          331

 

Many of the traditional generalizations about ethnic behavior in

agriculture have been tainted by stereotypes of "national

character" or frontier mythologies. Benjamin Rush, Benjamin

Franklin, and other scientists of the Revolutionary era, for example,

believed that agricultural traditions of national groups were

distinct. They cited as evidence the supposed superior farming prac-

tices in the eighteenth century of the Germans, as compared to their

English and Scotch-Irish neighbors.¹³ German farmers were literally

described as "earth animals," superior to all other nationality

groups in land selection, agricultural skills, animal husbandry, barn

construction, product specialization, soil conversion, consumption

habits, and labor-intensive family work teams.14

The classic statement of this "national character" genre is from

the pen of Benjamin Rush, the renowned Philadelphia physician and

one of the early advocates of German agricultural practices. Ger-

man farms, said Rush in 1789, "may be distinguished from farms of

other citizens . . . by the superior size of their farms, the height of

their inclosures, the extent of their orchards, the fertility of their

fields, the luxuriance of their meadows, and a general appearance of

plenty and neatness in everything that belongs to them."¹⁵ The

Frenchman J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur agreed with Rush.

"Whence the difference arises I know not, but out of twelve families

of emigrants of each country, generally seven Scotch will succeed,

diss., University of Wisconsin, 1975); John G. Rice, Patterns of Ethnicity in a Min-

nesota County, 1880-1905 (Geographical Reports, 4, Norway, University of Umea,

1973); Rice, "The Role of Culture and Community in Frontier Prairie Farming,"

Journal of Historical Geography, 3 (1977), 155-75; Terry D. Jordan, German Seed in

Texas Soil: Immigrant Farmers in Nineteenth Century Texas (Austin, 1966); Robert

Ostergren, "Rattvik to Isanti: A Community Transplanted" (Ph.D. diss., Universi-

ty of Minnesota, 1976); E.D. Ball, "The Process of Settlement in 18th Century

Chester County, Pa.: A Social and Economic History" (Ph.D. diss., University of

Pennsylvania, 1973).

13. Lemon, "Agricultural Practices," 467-68, 495-96; Lemon, Best Poor Man's

Country, xiv.

14. The "earth animals" quote is from Adolph Schock, In Quest of Free Land

(Assen, Netherlands, 1964), 131. Major traditional stereotypical studies are: Walter

M. Kollmorgan, "The Pennsylvania German Farmer," in Rudolph Wood (ed.), The

Pennsylvania Germans (Princeton, 1942), 27-55; Stevenson Whitcomb Fletcher,

Pennsylvania Agriculture and Country Life, 1640-1840 (Harrisburg, 1950); Richard

H. Shryock, "British Versus German Traditions in Colonial Agriculture," Mississip-

pi Valley Historical Review, 26 (1939), 39-54. Similar perspectives regarding

nineteenth-century German farmers are Joseph Schafer, "The Yankee and Teuton in

Wisconsin," Wisconsin Magazine of History, 6 (1922), 125-45, 261-79, 386-402; Ibid.,

7 (1923), 3-19, 148-71; William H. Gehrke, "The Ante-Bellum Agriculture of the Ger-

mans in North Carolina," Agricultural History, 9 (July, 1935), 143-60; Marcus Lee

Hansen, The Immigrant in American History (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), 61-63;

Saloutos, "Immigrant Contribution," 45-67.

15. Quoted in Saloutos, "Immigrant Contribution," 48.

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332                                                  OHIO HISTORY

 

nine Germans, and four Irish..      "16 Methodical, frugal, and in-

dustrious, German farmers rapidly achieved self-sufficiency, accord-

ing to these accounts. They raised other cereals to supplement their

principal cash crop, wheat, and perfected the Conestoga wagon and

bred the Conestoga horse to carry their products to market. Scotch-

Irish farmers, on the other hand, were said to mine their land and

leave livestock and machinery to weather the winter elements un-

protected. James Lemon is correct in viewing the origins of such at-

titudes as an English colonial import, stemming from a set of

stereotypes held by Englishmen about the superiority of German

peasants and the inferiority of Celtic peoples in agricultural prac-

tices.¹⁷ Once fixed, the beliefs were reinforced by late-nineteenth

century ethnic societies and filiopietistic historians.

In marked contrast to the ethnic apologists, frontier historian

Frederick Jackson Turner, the most respected scholar in the early

twentieth century, completely rejected the nationalist views of

Rush, Franklin, and other European-oriented historians. The fron-

tier, for Turner, was a democratic melting pot, the great economic

leveller, a place that destroyed the European "cultural baggage" of

the immigrant pioneers. The land and not the culture of the im-

migrant was the significant factor in acculturation. After a very

short period of settlement, immigrant farmers became in-

distinguishable from American-born neighbors in the operation of

their farming businesses.¹⁸

Several modern studies, based upon the manuscript population

and agricultural census lists, seem to confirm Turner's thesis of

rapid assimilation and cultural conformity among immigrant

farmers. In a study of early settlement in a Wisconsin county

(Trempealeau), Merle Curti compared the socioconomic structure

and relative economic success of all major nativity groups, for the

census years 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880. Initially, Americans and

English-speaking foreign-born farmers owned better land, had more

implements and livestock, obtained higher crop yields, and were less

transient than the Continental-born farmers. This was largely due

to their lateness of settlement and inadequate financial resources.

 

16. J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and

Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America (New York, 1963), 79. This is quoted in

Crevecouer's famous essay, "What is an American?"

17. Lemon, "Agricultural Practices," 493-94; Lemon, Poor Man's Country, 17-18.

18. Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American

History," American Historical Association, Annual Report for the Year 1893

(Washington, G.P.O., 1894), 199-227. Turner elaborated his thesis in The Frontier in

American History (New York, 1920).

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Ethnicity                                                  333

 

Continental-born farmers arrived after the Anglo-Americans had

picked the choice prairie lands. Gradually, however, the poorer im-

migrant groups-Irish, Poles, and Germans-made steady gains

and within a generation their farm valuations approached the level

of the Americans. The only group to lag behind was the

Norwegians, who arrived last and selected hilly, wooded slopes

resembling their homeland. Even this difference was only in degree,

not in kind; and Curti stressed the essential similarity of all ethnic

groups in frontier Wisconsin.¹⁹

In his study of pioneer farming in Illinois and Iowa, Bogue

specifically addressed the issue of whether ethnic groups in the

same region farmed differently over a considerable period of time.

The conventional wisdom was that Germans and Swedes raised

more pigs than did Yankees. Charles Towne and Edward Went-

worth, in their history of the pig, state that these two nationality

groups pulled themselves "out of the red" with a "combination of

pluck, perspicacity, and pigs. .. . Less skilled in the management

of horses, sheep, and beef cattle than the English and native

Americans, they concentrated with dogged tenacity on their

hogs."²⁰ In his statistical analysis of hog production in Hamilton

and Bremer counties in northcentral Iowa in 1880, Bogue found

that foreign-born farmers actually owned fewer swine than native

farmers, a direct contradiction of the prevailing wisdom. In their

crop production, however, immigrant farmers conformed to the

general observation. Immigrants raised more wheat and less corn

than natives and they hired more farm hands, an indication that

they practiced a more intensive type of agriculture.²¹ Thus, the

native-born farmers in Iowa anticipated the future corn-hog sym-

biosis more than did immigrant farmers, but neither group differed

substantially.

Additional midwestern studies bear out this conclusion of

semblance. Seddie Cogswell compared livestock valuation and the

number of farm animals in six eastern Iowa counties (1850-1880)

and concluded that "for the most part there was essential similarity

between the farms of native-and foreign-born. . . . [They] did not

differ very much, either in the numbers of the various farm animals

or in their mix."²² The immigrant farmers had a slightly lower in-

 

19. Merle Curti, The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of

Democracy in a Frontier County (Stanford, Cal., 1959), 80-83, 91-97, 179-97.

20. Quoted in Bogue, Prairie to Cornbelt 237.

21. Ibid., 238.

22. Seddie Cogswell, Jr., Tenure, Nativity and Age as Factors in Iowa

Agriculture, 1850-1880 (Ames, Iowa, 1975), 75, 78.

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334                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

vestment in livestock, but this was more than offset by a greater

amount of machinery. Donald Winters likewise found that native or

foreign-born tenants in Iowa were not distinguishable in terms of

rental arrangements, farm practices, or success rates.²³

In a pathbreaking study, Robert Ostergren compared cropping

patterns and livestock enterprises among Old Americans, Germans,

and Scandinavian farmers in Isanti County, Minnesota, in 1880. He

concluded that cultural factors had a minimal impact on crop deci-

sions compared to the overrriding effects of geographic and en-

vironmental conditions in the community. Only in the case of

secondary crops such as oats and livestock such as sheep did

cultural traditions have an impact.²⁴ The economic status of the

various ethnic groups in Isanti measured by land and wealth data

likewise revealed few striking differences not explained by length of

occupance.25 Ostergren traced one group of Isanti Swedes back to

their Old Country parish of Rattvik and compared their farming

practices before and after migration. This thoroughly innovative

technique revealed that in Rattvik barley had been the primary

crop, with oats a secondary crop. In Minnesota, by contrast, wheat

(which had never been raised in Sweden) was the primary crop and

oats a secondary one. The Rattvik colonists transplanted their in-

stitutions, Ostergren concluded, but not their farming practices.

"When it came to making a living it seems that the immigrants

were faced with little choice but to adapt as quickly as possible to

the American system." "In fact," said Ostergren, "there is little

evidence that there ever was much resistance to the dictates of the

new environment and the local market economy. The situation was

so different from home, that one probably did not even seriously

contemplate farming in the same manner."26

David McQuillan used a different technique to assess the adapta-

tion process among immigrant groups in the more arid region of cen-

tral Kansas. He selected three ethnic groups-Swedes, Mennonites,

and French-Canadians-and compared farming practices not only

between the groups but within the groups by selecting one township

in which the group was clearly dominant and one township in which

the particular immigrant group was a minority among native-born

farmers. Rural segregation of the ethnic groups had no significant

impact on farming practices, McQuillan concluded. Only the Men-

 

23. Donald L. Winters, Farmers Without Farms: Agricultural Tenancy in

Nineteenth-Century Iowa (Westport, Conn., 1978), 77, 88, 135.

24. Ostergren, Rattvik to Isanti, 107-21.

25. Ibid., 121-28.

26. Ibid., 140.

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Ethnicity                                        335

nonites diverged from the American norm by operating smaller farms of higher value, by diversifying their crop and livestock enter- prises, and by owning debt-free farms rather than rentals.27 Religious values may have been the determining factor in the case of the Mennonites, although McQuillan does not pursue this intrigu- ing lead. In brief, the immigrant farmers of frontier Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota adjusted rapidly and without apparent dif- ficulty. From the earliest period of settlement, they made greater gains than the native-born, obtaining a proportionate share of the land and developing unsurpassed commercial farming businesses. Instead of the common picture of the relatively "poor" and traditional-bound immigrant farmer, the census research indicates that measured by farm size, livestock, crops, and machinery, Euro- pean immigrants quickly adopted the best practices of the region and they had the financial resources to do so. At least at the broad level of the nationality group, economic differentials did not mark immigrant farmers from natives. This midwestern picture is repeated in Terry Jordan's detailed comparison of German and Anglo-American farmers in Texas (1850-1880). Although the Germans clung to Old World cultural traits that made them distinctive for generations among Texas     27. McQuillan, "Adaptation of Three Immigrant Groups to Farming."

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336                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

farmers, in other important ways they "became Southerners almost

from the first." The Germans were more attracted to the soil and

committed to commercial agriculture. They farmed with greater in-

tensity and productivity, were less mobile, and had a higher rate of

landownership. They diversified more by actively pursuing market

gardening near the major Texas towns, by producing wine and

white potatoes (in a sweet potato region), by cultivating small

grains, and by using mules instead of horses as draft animals. But

the similarities between Germans and southern-born farmers were

"even more striking than the differences." The Germans were im-

itators rather than innovators. They introduced no new major crops

or livestock practices, but rather began cultivating the three

southern staples-corn, cotton, and sweet potatoes. They adopted

the southern farmstead architecture and open range system, with

no barns for wintering stock. They neither dunged their fields nor

stall-fed their livestock.²⁸

In a German settlement in the Missouri Ozarks dating from the

1890s, Russell Gerlach compared agricultural land use and crop pro-

duction in 1972 in four sample counties that contained clearly de-

fined German and non-German farming regions.²⁹ As in Texas, more

Germans were full-time farmers and they worked their land more in-

tensively, but their crops, farm size, yield per acre, and tenancy

rates did not appreciably differ from that of the Old Stock

Americans who had emigrated from Appalachia to the Ozarks in the

last century. The major difference is cultural. Germans are more

traditional and share a deeper commitment to an agrarian way of

life than the native Americans, but their farming behavior is barely

distinguishable.

Jordan suggests a four-class typology of the "survival

tendencies" of imported agricultural systems by immigrant

groups.³⁰ (1) Old Country traits never introduced, such as the Texas

Germans' failure to dung fields and winter livestock in barns. (2)

European traits introduced but not successfully implemented. For

Texan Germans these included viticulture, European fruit trees, the

farm village plan and communal herding on the West Texan plains,

and small grain production in the east Texas cotton belt. (3) Euro-

pean traits that survived only the first generation. These included

 

28. Jordan, German Seed in Texas Soil, chaps. 4-6. The quotes are on p. 195.

29. Russell L. Gerlach, Immigrants in the Ozarks: A Study in Ethnic Geography

(Columbia and London, 1976).

30. This paragraph and the four following are summarized from Jordan, German

Soil in Texas Soil, 194-203.

• 14
 

Ethnicity                                              337

 

small-scale farm operations, German farmstead structures, and the

free-labor system in east Texas. By the 1850s, some Germans in

East Texas were purchasing slaves. (4) Long-lived traits. Texas Ger-

man farmers were distinguishable for generations by their labor-

intensive, highly productive, stable, diversified agriculture.

The determinant factors in these various outcomes were the

physical and cultural-economic environments. The mild Texas

climate, for example, obviated the need for large barns and winter

quartering of livestock. Without barns, manure was lost. The

economic milieu likewise encouraged immigrants to adapt farming

practices of the region because those of the native Southerners were

proven superior. For example, Germans shifted from small family

farms to large-scale commercial agriculture common to the region.

Moreover, those traits that did survive, either intact or modified,

such as intensive farming methods, cheese-making, and cultivating

white potatoes, were those that did not interfere with or undermine

the economic viability of Texas agriculture.

Many of these surviving traits were curiously absent in the

earliest years of settlement but emerged later in what Jordan calls a

"cultural rebound." The initial shock of adjustment to a new en-

vironment apparently inclined immigrants to ape indigeneous

American practices. But gradually this initial "artificial" assimila-

tion was reversed and unique dormant traits reappeared. The Ger-

mans were an alien group in Texas confronting an agricultural socie-

ty that had evolved over two hundred years. The uniqueness almost

guaranteed the survival of their "Europeanness."

Whether the "built-in" traits of agricultural immigrants from

northwestern and central Europe suvived in American farm com-

munities depended largely on the disimilarity to their Old Country

environment. The more alien the cultural environment, the more

defensive and persistent the group. Since the southern United

States was not as congenial to European-born farmers as the north-

ern regions, immigrants in the South retained their distinctiveness

more than did their compatriots in the North. On the other hand,

German wheat farmers in Kansas, Rhine winegrowers in California,

and Norwegian dairymen in Wisconsin risked losing their ethnic

identity quickly because they blended in with their neighbors from

the beginning.

The rapid assimilation of immigrant farmers was due to more

than a familiar cultural environment. Before leaving Europe, im-

migrants often purchased crude farming manuals and guide books

to ease their introduction to America. They also sought direct con-

• 15
 

338                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

tacts with American neighbors to learn proven farm methods in the

area. Many unmarried young men and women "hired out" to

Americans as field hands and domestics. If fellow-ethnics had

previously settled the region, newcomers naturally sought their aid

and served "apprenticeships" under them. Despite the rapid ac-

culturation, foreign-born farmers, of course, always faced a greater

adjustment than natives.

The Texan farmers of German ancestry today still retain some

distinctive social-cultural traits, but Jordan concluded that dif-

ferences in agricultural practices are largely "invisible," if they per-

sist at all. As farmers and ranchers, the Germans in Texas are

businessmen first and foremost; they are ethnics only in the farm-

house, in church, and in social clubs.³1 This finding agrees with

Bogue's assessment of midwestern ethnic farmers: Cultural dif-

ferences "were more apparent than real-most obvious in food

ways, dress, and lingual traits, and less important when the farmer

decided on his combination of major enterprises."³²

The census research summarized here is seminal. It provides the

first solid evidence regarding ethnic patterns in agriculture. But all

of these studies suffer from two limitations, which are inherent in

the census sources. The first is that all farmers of a given nationali-

ty are lumped together, without taking account of local and regional

differences in the motherland. The censuses only record the country

of birth, of course, and it would be a herculean task to link the cen-

sus with foreign records at the local level. Yet in nineteenth century

Europe, farming practices, life styles, and even languages often dif-

fered widely between two adjacent provinces in the same country, or

even between two parishes in the same province. Secondly, the early

studies slight the importance of religious group differences, again

because the censuses do not report religious or denominational af-

filiation. Thousands of close-knit, church-centered, ethnic com-

munities dotted the landscape of rural America a century ago.

These homogeneous clusters of people often had common origins in

the Old Country and they deliberately sought to create isolated set-

tlements in hopes of preserving their cultural identity and retaining

the mother tongue for generations to come. Such cohesive sectarian

communities differed greatly from settlements composed of a mix-

ture of main-line "church" groups, even if all were Protestant.³³

31. Ibid., 203.

32. Bogue, Prairie to Cornbelt, 238.

33. This is the perceptive approach of Marianne Wokeck in her dissertation ir

progress at Temple University. See Marianne Wokeck, "Cultural Persistence and

Adaptation: The Germans of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1729-76," in Pau

• 16
 

Ethnicity                                                 339

There are several recent micro-studies that take into account the

parish background of American immigrant farmers. These are

highly rewarding and suggestive of the direction of future research

in agricultural history. John Rice studied farming patterns in a six-

township area of frontier Minnesota (Kandiyohi County), which was

settled by Swedes, Norwegians, Irish, and Americans from the

East.³⁴ Each of the nationality groups was diverse in origin, except

for one group of Swedes who came from the same parish-Gagnef in

Dalarna Province. Two other Swedish settlements were more

diverse, comprising people from many parishes, yet all from the

same provinces. Moreover, each of the three subnational Swedish

culture groups was affiliated with the three major church com-

munities in the sample townships. Thus, Rice was able to compare

agricultural practices of Swedish cultural groups defined at the na-

tional, provincial, and parish levels.

Rice's findings, based on both Swedish and American sources,

reveal that farmers from all the nationality groups, except the

Swedes of Gagnef parish, were similar in their cropping patterns,

livestock holdings, persistence rates, and economic status. All the

groups concentrated on wheat. The Scandinavians (including the

Norwegians) raised more livestock, especially sheep, than the Irish

and Americans, and the Swedes were more persistent. But the

Gagnef parishioners stand out as unique. They retained their oxen

as draught animals into the 1880s, long after the other farmers in

the area had switched to horses. The Gagnef community was the

most stable by far, and it prospered economically, advancing from

the poorest of the Swedish settlements to the wealthiest. In sum,

the agricultural experience of the church-centered Gagnef group,

transplanted en masse from Dalarna, differed markedly from the

neighboring immigrant settlements, including those of Swedes and

Norwegians. Religion and its cultural trappings, not nationality per

se, determined farming behavior among Minnesota Swedes.

The impact of religion on immigrant farmers was not unique to

Swedes. A century early in southeastern Pennsylvania, sectarian

"plain folk," Mennonites from the Rhine Valley and Switzerland,

Friends (Quakers) from England and Wales, and German Baptist

"Dunkers" and Moravian Brethren similarly occupied and used the

land differently than immigrants from mainline European chur-

 

Uselding, ed., Business and Economic History Papers Presented at the Twenty-

Fourth Annual Meeting of the Business History Conference (Urbana, Ill., 1978), n.p.

34. The findings of this paragraph and the next are from Rice, "The Role of

Culture" and "Community in Frontier Prairie Farming," 166-75.

• 17
 

340                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

ches-Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and Presbyterian. The sect

groups valued discipline and cooperation. The Moravians lived com-

munally in agricultural villages, following the European "open-

field" system, but the Mennonites and Quakers lived on family

farms. The sects were tightly clustered geographically, owned the

most valuable farms, and were least transient. Although most

farmers in Lancaster and Chester counties were involved in general

mixed agriculture with an emphasis on wheat, the Mennonites and

Quakers farmed more intensively, sowed more wheat acreage, and

possessed more livestock than other national and denominational

groups.³⁵ Thus, in a relatively homogeneous agricultural region, the

only significant differences in farming behavior derived from

religious, rather than ethnic origins. The seven Amana villages in

Iowa and numerous Spanish-American peasant villages in New

Mexico, the latter antedating the Mexican war of independence

from Spain in the 1820s, provide additional examples of religiously-

based communities that to this day use the open-field system of

agricultural settlement. In all of these communities, behavioral

distinctions in farming can be determined only through microscopic

local studies.

Contributions

Not only did immigrant farmers bring to America a willingness to

confront an alien land, they also made specific contributions to

agriculture.36 The most general contribution of farmers from the ad-

vanced nations of northern Europe was simply their dedication to

farming as a way of life and their skill in farm techniques, animal

husbandry, and cropping practices. The extent to which the ideal-

ized family-sized farm has survived the forces of modernization is

largely due to the determination of third and fourth generation im-

migrants to maintain their traditional life style and values.

In animal husbandry, immigrant farmers throughout the north-

ern part of the country consistently set the standard for livestock

winter care, utilization of manure, and selective breeding. The Penn-

sylvania Germans by the late eighteenth century had demonstrated

the necessity of huge, functional barns, but native-born farmers

were exceedingly slow to emulate them.³⁷ As late as 1849, a Dutch

35. Lemon, Poor Man's Country, 63-64, 81-85, 174, and passim; Lemon,

"Agricultural Practices," 467-96.

36. The best survey is Saloutos, "Immigrant Contribution," 45-67. The 91 notes

also provide an extensive bibliography.

37. Perry Wells Bidwell and John I. Falconer, History of Agriculture in the North-

ern United States, 1620-1860 (Washington, D.C., 1925), 107-08, 122-23.

• 18
 

Ethnicity                                                       341

 

immigrant in central Iowa reported to relatives in the Province of

Friesland: "Americans do not have barns. . .    As a rule the cattle

here are not as heavy as in Friesland, and as far as I can see, this is

caused by the fact that they are left on their own during the winter.

Calves are not placed in the stable and no colts are taken inside, so

livestock suffers terribly."³⁸ From their firsthand knowledge, im-

migrants, especially those from the British Isles, introduced in the

half century after Independence the improved varieties of animals

developed in Europe, such as the Spanish Marino sheep and English

cattle and hogs-the Herefords, Shorthorns, Durhams, and Devons.

Indeed, as with the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century,

English agricultural reforms of the eighteenth century came a

generation or two earlier than in America and provided the impetus

for change, especially in livestock.³⁹

Immigrant farmers also contributed to the introduction of new or

improved varieties of plants and crops that were so important in the

development of American agriculture. In the Carolina and Georgia

tidewater region in the eighteenth century, French settlers led in the

introduction of the more esoteric agricultural products such as

grapes, silk-worm and mulberry trees, olives, and indigo.⁴⁰ The

Frenchmen, Lewis Gervais, Lewis St. Pierre and Pierre Legaux, suc-

cessfully transplanted native French grapevines and established the

vineyard industry in North America. Similarly, Andrew Deveaux

was the provincial indigo expert whose efforts raised the quality of

American indigo to that of the best French product. Farmers of

English-stock in New England and the Middle Colonies, meanwhile,

introduced the cultivation of grasses and legumes for animal forage

and hay. The fact that early clovers were simply called "English

grass" testifies to their origin.

Notable nineteenth century plant imports were Grimm alfalfa and

Turkey Red wheat. A German immigrant to Carver County, Min-

nesota in 1857, Wendelin Grimm, brought a twenty-pound bag of

alfalfa seed from his homeland. Over a number of years the alfalfa

acclimatized to withstand winterkill until it became the prime

 

38. Robert P. Swierenga, ed., "A Dutch Immigrant's View of Frontier Iowa"

(Sjoerd Aukes Sipma, Belangryke Berigten uit Pella, in de Vereenigde Staten van

Noord-Amerika [Important Reports from Pella, in the United States of North

America], 1849), Annals of Iowa, 3rd Series, 38 (Fall, 1965), 95, 89.

39. Rodney C. Loehr, "The Influence of English Agriculture on American

Agriculture," Agricultural History, 11 (Jan. 1937), 3-15.

40. Arthur H. Hirsch, "French Influence on American Agriculture in the Colonial

Period With Special Reference to Southern Provinces," Ibid., 4 (Jan., 1930), 1-9. See

also Arthur P. Whitaker, "The Spanish Contribution to American Agriculture,"

Ibid., 3 (Jan., 1929), 1-14.

• 19
 

342                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

forage crop of the Northwest. Agricultural historians have stated

that "its permanence, enormous yields, high protein content,

economy as a crop, and value as a soil builder and weed throttler is

almost without parallel in plant history."⁴¹ No wonder that farmers

called it the "everlasting clover seed!" Mennonite settlers from the

Crimea introduced Turkey Red wheat in south-central Kansas in

1873, and this hardy winter wheat and other durum varieties

became within a generation the great cash crop of the semi-arid

regions of the northwestern plains. Ten years earlier, Russian im-

migrants had brought durum wheat to the Dakotas. In the 1890s,

other Russian peasants brought to the United States from their

native steppes the seeds of kabanka and arnautska wheat and also

special rye and sunflower seeds, all of which became widely

cultivated on the plains.⁴² The white potato is another plant that ad-

ded variety to the American diet because of the persistent efforts of

German and Irish farmers to cultivate it.

Farmland reclamation was another immigrant specialty, especial-

ly among those groups who arrived penniless after the great

homesteading era had ceased. "The foreign-born take the marginal

land," Edmund de S. Brunner declared, "hoping that their energy

and muscle will overcome other handicaps."⁴³ The Poles, Russians,

and Finns were notable examples. Between 1870 and 1920, three

million Polish peasants migrated to the United States. They were

unskilled and poor but willing to work hard and accumulate sav-

ings. With these meager savings some 750,000 Poles purchased

farms abandoned by New Englanders in Massachusetts, the Con-

necticut Valley, and upstate New York. Others acquired lower quali-

ty lands in the Midwest and Texas. By dint of toil and thrifty

management, Poles restored numerous farms to a productive state.

By 1940, some 30,000 Russian immigrants were also in the land,

many in the East on abandoned farms.⁴⁴ The Polish and Russian

story is repeated among the Finns, who were too poor to buy choice

farms.⁴⁵ By working first as the lowest-paid laborers in the mills,

 

41. Saloutos, "Immigrant Contribution," 66; Peter C. Marzio, ed., A Nation of

Nations: The People Who Came to America as Seen Through Objects and

Documents Exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution (New York, 1976), 148.

42. Adamic, Nation of Nation, 155.

43. Edmund de S. Brunner, Immigrant Farmers and Their Children (Garden City,

N.Y., 1929), 44.

44. Wittke, We Who Built America, 421, 428-29; Saloutos, "Immigrant Contribu-

tion," 56-57.

45. A. William Hogland, "Finnish Immigrant Farmers in New York, 1910-1960,"

in O. Fritrof Ander, ed., In the Trek of the Immigrants: Essays Presented to Carl

Wittke (Rock Island, Ill., 1964), 141-55.

• 20
 

Ethnicity                                              343

mines, and forests of the East coast or Midwest, they slowly ac-

cumulated enough capital to buy the "cutover" lumber lands of

northern Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. These areas had

thin, rocky soil and required much back-breaking labor to root out

the stumps before the land could be farmed. In 1920, 90 percent of

the Finns in Wisconsin agriculture were in the cutover area. Other

Finns purchased abandoned farms in the old agricultural regions of

New England and New York. The Finnish historian, A. William

Hogland, has described one such group of several hundred Finns

who in 1910, at the behest of local real estate agents, began settling

on abandoned land in New York's hill country. The farms sold for

$500 to $3,000. The Finns eventually by 1950 numbered over five

hundred and dominated the agriculture of three townships. Most

had little farming experience; yet they developed profitable dairy

farms and during the 1930s turned to large-scale poultry raising.

The Finns played a major part in the agricultural revival in New

York after World War I.

Although most immigrant farmers brought less capital with them

to the frontier than the native-born farmers, at least one group of

Italian farmers in California, led by Amadeo Peter Giannini, found-

ed the Bank of Italy which subsequently became the Bank of

America. The credit operation of the Bank of America had a pro-

found impact on the agricultural development of the state. An im-

migrant from Russian Poland, David Lukin, likewise strengthened

the marketing mechanism of American farmers by protecting their

export markets in Europe through the creation of the International

Institute of Agriculture (now the United Nations Food and

Agriculture Organization). This organization served as a clearing

house of information on European crop production and prices,

which enabled American farmers to compete in the world market.⁴⁶

 

Conclusion

 

The forces of change in modern life are breaking down the local

ethnic and cultural distinctions in American agriculture; they are

tending to "homogenize rural society." But in the past local condi-

tions varied greatly and the process of acculturation was uneven.

Unfortunately, the ethnic variety in rural America remains an

enigma because the subject of ethnicity and agriculture is virtually

unexplored. Marcus Lee Hansen's 1940 list of "suggestive subjects

for investigation" remains intact. Hansen urged the study of "the

46. Saloutos, "Immigrant Contribution," 66-67.

• 21
 

344                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

immigrant as an outright [land] purchaser, the rise of the hired land

to ownership; the immigrant as renter or mortgaged debtor; occupa-

tion of abandoned farms by any race; the different racial customs in

providing for the second generation; the immigrant as a market

gardener, cotton planter or tobacco grower, as a fruitman, rancher

or ordinary prairie mixed-farmer; the employment of farm hands

and older sons in lumbering, ice cutting and other seasonal labor;

the attitude toward improvements and scientific farming.^"47 Com-

parative local studies of specific ethnic groups, considering topics

such as these, would greatly enlarge our understanding of rural

America and the impact on ethnic groups of the forces of moderniza-

tion since the early days of settlement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

47. Hansen, Immigrant in American History, n200.

• 22