Ohio Agriculture in History
By ROBERT LESLIE JONES*
The history of agriculture in Ohio is on
the surface a subject
prosaic enough. Indeed, only once, and
that long ago, did it ever
possess anything of the implausibly
romantic. Timothy Flint tells
us that the New England settlers who
came in the beginning to the
lands of the Ohio Company were attracted
not only by "the un-
paralleled fertility of the soil"
but (according to the wags of the
day) by "springs of brandy, [and]
flax that wore little pieces of
cloth on the stems."1 Fortunately
for the historian there were more
substantial reasons for the growth and
maintenance of interest in
farming in Ohio. Ohio was the first
northern state west of the
mountains; it was a confluence for
settlers from New England and
New York, Pennsylvania, and the old
upper South, with their
variant social and economic
inheritances; it became a bridge be-
tween the East and Indiana, Illinois,
and the newer states farther
west, because it bordered the Ohio River
and Lake Erie, and was
crossed by the National Road and the
first railroads; its south-
western portion lay in the Corn Belt,
and with the exception of
the Kentucky Bluegrass, was the only
part thereof not too distant
from eastern livestock markets to take
full advantage of them; it
evolved, and did so in the very morning
of its development, distinc-
tive agricultural specializations; and
perhaps not least, it had in
Allen Trimble, Anson Bartlett, Jared
Kirtland, John Klippart, Wil-
liam Renick, and others, men who were
not only champions of im-
* This article and the one immediately
following, "Ohio Agriculture Today," were
read at a session on "Agriculture in Ohio"
during the seventy-first annual meeting of
the Ohio Historical Society on April 28,
1956.
Robert Leslie Jones is head of the
department of history and political science at
Marietta College. He is a frequent
contributor to the Quarterly and other periodicals
on agricultural subjects.
1 Condensed History and Geography of
the Western States, or the Mississippi Valley
(Cincinnati, 1828), II, 363.
230
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
provement but notable collectors and
publicizers of information
about the progress actually taking
place.
For the sake of completeness, a survey
of the development of
agriculture in Ohio must at least refer
in passing to the activities of
the Indians resident in the future
state in the latter part of the
eighteenth century, even though they
exercised no evident influence
on subsequent practices. The Indians in
Ohio were then few in
number, and ranged in type from the
essentially nomadic to the
sedentary, the best examples of the
latter group being the Wyandots
around the western end of Lake Erie and
the Moravian Delawares
on the upper Muskingum. As a
consequence of their contacts with
the white settlers in western
Pennsylvania and western Virginia, as
well as with the French at Detroit, the
more sedentary ones had
some cattle and swine and even a few
horses. Like other Indians
of the Great Lakes region, they had
clearances, especially along the
river bottoms, where they grew corn and
melons; some of them had
the beginnings of orchards; and the
Moravian Delawares even im-
ported bees. Nevertheless, it must be
admitted that the Indian con-
tribution to Ohio agriculture was
small, consisting of nothing more
than a few corn fields ready cleared
for white settlers, a few
varieties of corn for seed, and the
example of burning the dead
grass to encourage fresh spring
pasturage. The technique of corn
culture used by the whites, which could
have been an imitation of
local Indian practice, was actually
brought with them from the East,
though it is true that it was
originally borrowed from the Indians
there. For our purposes, therefore, the
real history of Ohio agri-
culture may be taken to start with the
coming of the white settlers.
About the close of the American
Revolution the first settlers ap-
peared in the future Ohio. These were
not the well-known immi-
grants who came under the auspices of
the Ohio Company in 1788,
but crude frontiersmen spilling out of
the Pennsylvania and Virginia
back country, who hacked out clearances
along the upper Ohio and
some of its tributaries, and who were
perhaps more hunters than
farmers. With the official opening of
the Northwest Territory came
the pioneers of Marietta and
Cincinnati, and, after the end of the
Indian War in 1795, a succession of
landseekers from New England,
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, Virginia, and
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN HISTORY 231
Kentucky. Whatever their origin and
their social outlook, they had
pretty much a common store of
agricultural knowledge and practices
traceable back to the
seventeenth-century British Isles and beyond.
They could determine the character and
the economic value of the
soil on the basis of its vegetation
(except for the prairies, which
were "barrens" to them); they
could build houses, stables, and
fences; they could grow corn, small
grains, grasses, and vegetables,
and breed and look after livestock; they
could preserve their own
food, make their own clothes, prescribe
and concoct their own medi-
cines, and otherwise adjust themselves
to life in the wilderness.
They were resigned to defective surveys,
as in the Virginia Military
District, they were no strangers to farm
mortgages, and they wasted
little time in damning the land
speculator, for such each settler was
himself at heart.
"Pioneer histories" and the
writings and drawings of contem-
porary travelers have given us vivid
descriptions of life in the new
settlements--the tiny clearing slashed
out of the forest, the deaden-
ing nearby with crows cawing from the
rampikes, the fenced corn
and vegetable patches, the rough log
cabin with its mud-daubed
fireplace and its latch string always
out, the hominy block, the
spinning wheel, and the soap barrel, the
cows with their bells
tinkling, the feral swine ready to tree
unwary boys, even the rasping
of the nighthawk and the pall of smoke
overhanging the logging
fallow. But there were aspects of the
backwoods scene too little
dwelt upon in such narratives--the
isolation, the "chills and fever,"
the "milk sickness," and the
deaths in childbed, the unending drud-
gery, and the steady wasting of capital
resources till such time as
a surplus could be produced. The
Canadian Canniff Haight once
dealt with this "romance" of
pioneer life. His parents, he ex-
plained, set up housekeeping on an
uncleared farm. "Doubtless
there was a good deal of romance in it.
Love in a cot; the smoke
gracefully curling, the woodpecker
tapping, and all that. But alas,
in this work-a-day world, particularly
the new one upon which my
parents then entered, these silver
linings were not observed. They
had too much of the prose of life."2
Thus it was about 1810 in
eastern Ontario, and so it was then in
Ohio.
2 Country Life in Canada Fifty Years
Ago (Toronto, 1885), 2.
232
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Few incoming settlers had much in the
way of resources. In addi-
tion to what it took to buy his land,
the average one might have
enough money to buy the supplies
necessary to tide him over the first
year, and a minimum of livestock and
equipment. Benjamin Van
Cleve of Dayton, who may be regarded as
typical, said that, on his
marriage in 1800, "my property was
a horse creature & a few farm-
ing utensils & her father gave her a
few household or kitchen
utensils so that we could make shift to
cook our provision, a bed,
a cow & heifer, a ewe & two
lambs, a sow & pigs & saddle & spin-
ning wheel."3 Thus or
similarly furnished, the pioneer would
attack the forest. He would begin by
girdling the trees in the
southern fashion or cutting them down
and burning them in the
New England one. As the deadening or
clearing was gradually
enlarged, the process became slower and
slower, at least till the boys
became old enough to help, for the
pioneer had to devote more and
more of his time to the routine of
ploughing, cultivating, haying,
harvesting, and threshing. After eight
or ten years, if he was, like
Kipling's Foreloper, the type who found
that his neighbor's smoke
vexed his eyes, or, in the idiom of the
frontier, one who "could
not stand civilization and destruction
of timber," the pioneer would
sell out, thereby realizing on his
capital improvements, and go
elsewhere. But not all settlers belonged
to this category of "pro-
fessional pioneers," and those who
did not, kept working away till
their holdings evolved into "old
cleared farms." By this time there
would be newcomers in the vicinity--men
who by preference bought
partially cleared land--a nascent community
life centering on a com-
mon school and a church or two, and, not
far off, a crossroads
general store.
As a consequence of this almost
universal development, it was not
long before much of Ohio ceased to be in
any true sense a frontier,
from the agricultural viewpoint at
least. Husking bees, crude
athletic contests, all-night dancing on
puncheon floors, and a general
roughness of society long persisted as
cultural lags, but no region
was really a frontier one which had,
like Ohio in the decade prior
to the War of 1812, an established trade
in produce down river to
3 Beverley W. Bond, ed., "Memoirs
of Benjamin Van Cleve," Historical and Philo-
sophical Society of Ohio Quarterly Publication, XVII (1922), 65.
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN
HISTORY 233
New Orleans and in livestock over the
mountains to the seaboard,
homes with some pretension to
architectural distinction, flocks of
purebred Merinos, horse racing under
Virginia rules, and "merchant
[flour] mills" with all the latest
mechanical innovations of Oliver
Evans. By the era of canal construction,
that is, the late 1820's, the
whole state may be said to have passed
through the frontier stage,
except for the late settling swampy
northwest section.
The most obvious differences between the
pioneer clearance and
its successor, the old cleared farm, lay
in the extent of land under
crop or in meadow or fallow and in the
number and character of
the buildings. In the early part of the
century, land was considered
"pretty well cleared up" when
half of it, or even a third, was under
culture, but the proportion of farm to
wilderness gradually became
larger. At the same time there would
come to be constructed a
frame or brick house; a barn, either log
or frame, but of substantial
size, and a smokehouse, a spring house,
and an assortment of other
buildings. There would be, too, a good
deal of rail fencing, and
usually an orchard. But all of these
were only part of the story.
More important was the fact that the
farmer was decreasingly
self-sufficient, that is to say, he was
more dependent on selling his
produce to satisfy his needs, and
therefore was encouraged or driven
to specialize or diversify to meet the
demands of the market. More-
over, because he was strongly motivated
to increase his income, he
became an employer of labor from outside
his household. His
hired man might be either the son of a
local farmer anxious to earn
money to set himself up or else an immigrant.
He was popular
with the boys because he ordinarily did
the meanest of the chores,
and with the girls because he was a
ready-made beau. Invariably
he was treated as one of the family, for
it was a common saying
among Ohio farmers that "if a man
is good enough to work for me,
he is good enough to eat with me."4
In addition to the hired man
with his foot on the first rung of the
"agricultural ladder," and who
stayed on one farm or at least in one
neighborhood, there were
sometimes laborers available for
specialized or seasonal activities.
Some worked on a day or contract basis
to do land clearing, or to
4 D. Griffiths, Two Years' Residence
in the New Settlements of Ohio, North
America (London, 1835), 80.
234
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
follow the harvest, or to do winter
threshing. It was this class of
hired help that was most affected by the
introduction of such ma-
chinery as the reaper and the thresher.
The prevailing tendency on the old
cleared farms of Ohio, as of
the other northern states, was to engage
in what may perhaps be
best described as general farming, that
is, a kind in which part of
the acreage would be devoted to corn,
wheat, and other grains, part
to pasture and meadow, and part--a very
small one--to orchard
and garden, and in which the salable
products would be grain,
livestock, wool, butter, eggs, cured
meats, and other items. Even
in those sections which came to have
some form of specialization,
there was seldom complete dependence on
it. Nowhere in Ohio
did the farmers produce one salable
crop, as did the cotton growers,
in the South, and rely on the outside
for their food and feedstuffs.
Ohio is not a large state, for it has an
area of only forty-one
thousand square miles, but its
topography is varied enough to include
the flat northwestern section, the
rolling hills of the Backbone
Counties, and the jumble of ridges and
runs comprising the un-
glaciated southeastern quarter. It is
far from climatically uniform
on account of the presence of Lake Erie
on the north, though the
amount of variation is limited by the
fact that it extends only
through slightly more than three degrees
of latitude. From the
beginning of settlement it had, for an
inland region, good access
to outside markets, at first by the Ohio
River, and later by Lake Erie
and the National Road. In its early days
it had a population some-
what diverse in origin, with wide
differences in training and ap-
proach between the Connecticut Yankee
who went into dairying
in the Western Reserve, the Virginian
who went into cattle grazing
and feeding in the Virginia Military
District, and the Pennsylvania
Dutchman with his bank barn and his fat
and sleek horses who
went into wheat growing in the Backbone
Counties. For these
reasons, there came to be during the
first half of the nineteenth
century some quite significant
specializations in Ohio agriculture,
but these were, as already explained,
still within the framework of
general farming.
The first of the specializations to
develop, and probably the most
distinctive, was a cattle kingdom which
centered first on Chillicothe
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN HISTORY 235
and ultimately spread over the whole
lower Scioto Valley and most
of the state west therefrom to the
border of the swine country of
the Miami Valley. The establishment of
this cattle industry was not
in itself something unlooked for,
because there was in this region
an abundance of cheap land and (at
first) even open range, there
were good techniques available which
had been worked out during
the preceding century in the colonial
back country, the winter climate
was no great obstacle, and markets were
available in the East for
stock cattle. In so far as the industry
was developed on the
"barrens" of Clark and
Madison and Marion counties, with graziers
obtaining young cattle from nearby or
out-of-state sources, keeping
them a year or so, and then driving
them to the fatteners east of
the mountains, it might therefore be
considered a normal stage in
the frontier economy, which would be
abandoned when denser
settlement forced land prices up. This
was not true, however, of the
cattle-feeding industry of Pickaway and
Ross counties. Here emi-
grants from the South Branch of the
Potomac brought a method
of fattening stock cattle on corn in
open feed lots through the
winter, and, as soon as there was any
herbage along the trails,
drove them over the mountains to
compete with the corn-fed beeves
of the Pennsylvania counties of Chester
and Lancaster. It was an
innovation which astonished easterners
in 1805, and one which was
long to remain unique in the Corn Belt.
As time passed, the Scioto
cattle country became a focus of the
cattle industry throughout
much of Ohio and even of the states
farther west, for on it depended
to a considerable extent the graziers
of Clark and Madison counties,
the small hill-farm producers of
eastern Ohio, and other furnishers
of stock cattle. Of course the Ohio
cattle industry was not confined
to the regions mentioned, for it was a
by-industry of dairying in the
Western Reserve, and it existed on a
small scale anywhere there was
a farmer with a few cattle to get rid
of. Every year till the coming
of the railroads, thousands of stock
cattle and of grass-fattened
ones as well were driven eastward from
every part of Ohio, just as
they were from all over the northern
states, but there was nothing
distinctive in this universal trade.
A second specialization was dairying,
which on a commercial
basis was as alien to the conventional
frontier scene as cattle fatten-
236
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
ing. Dairying in the form of butter
making for home consumption
and for pin money existed on every farm
in Ohio as elsewhere in
the West, but dairying as a real
industry was restricted to cheese
making in part of the Western Reserve.
Here there was an abund-
ance of pasturage, with a population of
New England origin which
did not shrink from the endless chores
associated with the care of
the cows and the heavy drudgery of
pressing and turning cheese.
By mid-century the industry evolved to
the point where "factories"
were appearing. These were
establishments to which curd--not
milk--was brought from nearby farms. As
the curd obtained was
never uniform in quality from day to day
or patron to patron, the
factories all failed. It was not till
1862 that the real cheese factory
as we think of it, which was based on
the collection of raw milk,
was introduced from New York.
While the Scioto Valley was the
heartland of the Ohio cattle in-
dustry, and the Western Reserve of
dairying, the Miami Valley was
the region of greatest concentration on
swine. Of course swine had
been kept everywhere in Ohio from the
beginnings of settlement.
In the first stage they ranged the woods
and small prairies, but as
time passed, most of those on the
ordinary farms had to be kept out
of the growing crops, and so were
confined in pig pens. Because the
Miami Valley soon had a great surplus of
corn, hog raising on a
large scale flourished, as it did for
the same reason in adjacent
northern Kentucky and southern Indiana.
When the business be-
came somewhat concentrated, there came
to be a division of function
between the "growers," or
small farmers who furnished stock hogs,
and the "fatters." The latter
maintained a kind of swinish paradise
wherein the animals reveled in clover
and gorged themselves on
corn, often enough by the simple process
of "hogging down," which
was ideal from the viewpoint of
minimizing human labor. In the
early days stock hogs were commonly
driven over the mountains to
the coast, and some still were till the
advent of the railroads, but
the fattened ones went to Cincinnati,
the national Porkopolis, or to
other local packing centers in the West.
Another kind of specialization, though
not altogether a regional
one, for which Ohio soon became noted
was wool growing. This
could be so effectively combined with
wheat growing that it may be
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN HISTORY 237
stated as a general proposition that the
best wool-growing sections
of eastern Ohio were also noted for
their wheat. It was, moreover,
suited to the hilly lands of
southeastern Ohio with their cheap
pasturage. Perhaps as important as
anything, it was easy to turn
to whenever a rise in prices occurred.
Little capital was required,
for the large wool growers followed a
practice, well established by
1820, of letting sheep on a
share-cropping basis. The wool-growing
business was unfortunately highly
cyclical, as it was responsive
to the ups and downs of the British and
American textile industries
and was at the mercy of the American
tariff. When prices fell, as
they they did in the early 1840's, the
usual reaction was to slaughter
sheep by the thousands for their
tallow, pelt, and carcass, as these
combined would be worth more than the
wool. Another source
of discouragement was losses from dogs.
Many efforts were made
to reduce the number of half-starved
hounds running at large,
usually by means of a tax. And with
what result? "It is a common
observation among political aspirants,
that no member of the
Legislature who voted for a tax upon
dogs ever went a second time
to the legislature."5 In
general, if we except the agricultural crazes
of which mention is made later, wool
growing was undeniably the
most speculative branch of farming in
pre-Civil War Ohio.
Horse raising became an important
sideline on many farms as soon
as the countryside began to get
cleared, and especially so when the
introduction of improved implements
tended to bring about the dis-
placement of oxen, but it was not till
after 1850 that there was any-
thing approaching a regional
specialization. Horses were, however,
always in demand, not only in the
villages and towns of the state,
but for export, especially to the South
and to the eastern cities.
Rearing of horses fitted in well with
wheat growing, and the value
of an animal could be considerably
enhanced by breaking him prop-
erly. Many a religious farmer, who
would not grow barley for fear
it might be malted by the purchaser,
saw nothing improper in spend-
ing Sunday afternoons behind the barn
with his boys training colts.
A few men here and there found profit
in breeding mules in the
Kentucky and Missouri fashion. In other
respects there was nothing
5 Ohio Cultivator (Columbus), III (1847),
67.
238 THE OHIO
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
to distinguish the horse industry of
Ohio from that of any other
northern state.
If we turn to grain growing, we find
that Ohio was a leading
specialist in wheat. It is true that
corn was in physical volume a
much more important crop than wheat,
but as it was commonly fed
on the farm which grew it, it did not
enter much into commerce.
Other grains were also commonly
grown--rye, barley, buckwheat,
and especially oats--but of these only
barley was readily salable,
and then only in the vicinity of
breweries. Wheat, however, was a
cash crop from the early 1800's, at
first in the down-river trade,
and then, during the "canal
era," for export to the eastward. The
opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 gave
a market at New York and
at the Rochester mills as well, and the
opening of the Welland
Canal in 1833 provided one at Montreal,
and through it, in the
British Isles. It could accordingly be
stated as early as 1834 of
Harrison County that wheat had become
"the main reliance of the
farmer.--When wheat is down the
farmers' prospects are beclouded,
and when it is up they are bright and
cheering."6 For farmers here
and throughout the Backbone Counties
wheat had special advan-
tages. It was adaptable to a wide
variety of soils, it could be
easily transported in bags, it would
not spoil as long as it was kept
dry, and its production required no
great capital and little special
equipment. The men who made wheat their
dependence experi-
mented endlessly with new varieties,
and fought doggedly (and
helplessly) against midge, Hessian fly,
and rust. The more progres-
sive among them during the 1820's and
1830's tended to turn from
the naked summer fallow to rotations
involving clover, and during
the 1840's to make use of the new
machinery then becoming avail-
able, particularly the reaper and the
thresher, but to some extent
the seed drill. So great was the wheat
surplus of Ohio in the
1840's that the state came to have in
Massillon, Milan, and Toledo
three of the most important primary
grain markets in the world.
There were a few minor specializations
localized in time or place.
One was found along the Ohio River,
where from a very early
period the farmers grew apples and
peaches, which they exported
down river in flatboats. Others were in
reality crazes, like those for
6 Cadiz Telegraph, quoted in the Marietta Gazette, April
19, 1834.
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN HISTORY 239
yellow, or "spangled," tobacco
in the early 1820's, for silkworms a
few years later, and for
"Shanghai" and other fancy poultry at the
end of the 1840's. The silkworm frenzy
spent itself when it became
clear that there was no hope of
competing with the cheap labor of
France, Italy, or the Orient, and the
"hen fever" would now be all
but forgotten were it not for the
issuance five or six years ago of
a special commemorative postage stamp.
The tobacco mania was
peculiar to Ohio, not national in
character as were the other two,
and did result in the establishment of
tobacco as a fairly important
crop throughout eastern Ohio till
towards the end of the century.
The productions, specialized and
non-specialized, of its agriculture
grew so spectacularly that during the
1840's and the 1850's Ohio
had a good claim to be considered the
leading farm state in the
Union. In number of both horses and
sheep it outranked all other
states in 1850 and 1860; in number of
milch cows it was second only
to New York in 1850 and 1860; in number
of "other cattle," ex-
cluding oxen, it stood second among the
states east of the Mississippi
in 1850 and 1860; it was the fifth or
sixth most important swine
state in 1850 and 1860; it was first in
wheat production in 1839,
second in 1849, and fourth in 1859; and
it was fourth in corn pro-
duction in 1839, first in 1849, and
second in 1859. In the cash value
of its farms it was outranked in 1850 by
only New York and Penn-
sylvania, and in 1860 by New York alone.
Perhaps it is not sur-
prising that Ohioans gloated and that
the outside world marveled.
Impressive as the statistics were--a
wheat crop of sixteen and a
half million bushels in 1839, a swine population
little short of two
million head in 1850, and so
forth--there was another side to the
growth of agriculture in Ohio. Was it
really efficient? Was it tech-
nically backward compared with what it
should have been? Con-
temporary observers were by no means
consistent in their appraisal
of these aspects of the matter prior to
the Civil War. They under-
stood fairly well as a rule that the
greatest profits in the livestock
industry came from a combination of
cheap land and a minimum
amount of labor, as was found
particularly among the cattle graziers
of Clark and Madison counties, but also,
after making allowance for
the labor applied to the corn crop,
among the cattle feeders of the
Scioto Valley and the hog fatteners of
the Miami Valley. Yet, while
240
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
they might write in amazement of the
efficiency of the men engaged
in these activities, they would spare no
condemnation of the grain
farmers. These, it would seem, were the
veriest "moon farmers,"
who guided their seasonal work by old
saws and superstitions trace-
able back to the forests of the Rhine or
the bogs of Ulster, whose
fields looked as if they had been
"ploughed with a ram's horn," who
wasted manure, who let their wheat and
corn be choked out by
thistles and vines. The farming was
often, perhaps mostly, slovenly,
to be sure, but the critics who used the
"high farming" of East
Lothian or of Belgium as a model failed
to realize that the cir-
cumstances under which American
agriculture was carried on ex-
plained and even justified the rough
system used. It was of no profit
to underdrain and manure to obtain
greater yields, if thereby the
unit cost of production went up. It was
better to obtain more land
and apply such labor as was available to
cultivating it, with the
purpose of having a greater harvest,
even though it came from a
larger acreage. "It is this
consideration," one clear-thinking Erie
County farmer explained, "which
induces us to prefer purchasing
more lands to graze our flocks and herds
upon at $10 or $20 per
acre, rather than double the produce of
the old homestead by under-
draining, subsoiling and manuring, at an
expense of from $30 to
$50 per acre. These outlays for
improvements so highly recom-
mended, and no doubt very beneficial,
will of necessity be delayed in
any country, till population becomes
dense and lands high-priced."7
As agriculture in Ohio expanded decade
after decade, the middle-
men who were associated with it became
more and more numerous.
In the beginning and indeed till long
after the Civil War a common
type was the general storekeeper, who
sold on credit and took butter,
eggs, hides, wool, feathers, potash,
tobacco, and other farm produce
in trade. Likewise, even in the new
settlements, there was always a
drover in evidence, perhaps a local
farmer buying and driving
livestock as a sideline, perhaps a
speculator from as far away as
New York. Gradually, as the country
became settled, there were
specialized dealers in grain, with their
flat warehouses spotted along
the canals or at river mouths where
shipping was available. So, too,
7 Report of the Commissioner of Patents
for the Year 1852, Senate Executive
Documents, 32 cong., 2 sess., No. 55, Part II, 246.
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN HISTORY 241
there came to be specialized drovers of
different kinds. Cattle drovers
went off to the prairies of Illinois and farther west
to get stockers
for the Madison County graziers, drove
fattened beeves over the
mountains to New York and Philadelphia
and lean ones to the
feeders of Chester County
(Pennsylvania) or the Genesee Flats of
upstate New York, and participated in
the considerable intrastate
shifting of cattle from farm to farm
and region to region. "Horse
jockeys" went from farm to farm to
buy or trade, and took their
accumulated strings through Cumberland
Gap to South Carolina or
along the National Road to New York.
Hog speculators equipped
with steelyards appeared in the fall to
fill their contracts with the
Cincinnati packers or to get droves to
take eastward. Wool-growing
areas had a full quota of agents
representing Massachusetts mills
and of peddlers of flocks brought in
from the East, all of course
pure Merinos till the first prolonged
rain washed off the "Cornwall
finish" of grease and lampblack.
Then there were the produce
dealers along the Ohio, who bought
apples, beans, pork, and other
commodities for sale at Memphis,
Natchez, and the whole "Coast"
down to New Orleans, the cheese vendors
operating out of the
Western Reserve, and even the tin
peddlers taking chickens, eggs,
butter, and other produce in trade, to
be disposed of to the steam-
boats on the Ohio.
So many criticisms were made of Ohio
agriculture prior to the
Civil War that it might be possible to
lose sight of the attempts
which were made to improve it. The most
important of these were
the introduction of improved livestock
and the organization of agri-
cultural societies.
The attempted improvement of the
various kinds of livestock
was not peculiar to Ohio, for all the
older states had parallel ac-
tivities, but certainly the state was
near the head of the procession.
Cattle improvement really commenced in
1834 with the importation
of some Shorthorns by the Ohio Company
for Importing English
Cattle, and continued with the efforts
of other associations and in-
dividuals. Though a few Herefords,
Ayrshires, and others were
brought in, most of the cattlemen
preferred the Shorthorns, with the
result that Ohio remained (as far as
purebreds and their grades
went) essentially a Shorthorn state
till long after the Civil War.
242
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Hogs of the Chinese type--Bedfords,
Berkshires, Irish Graziers,
Woburns, and others--were imported in
considerable numbers, start-
ing in the 1830's. Incidentally, it was
only the hog breeders amongst
all the "improvers" who
actually evolved by a process of inter-
breeding and selection a breed
distinctive to Ohio. This was the
Warren County, or Miami Valley, Hog,
renamed in 1872 for no very
good reason the Poland China. Merinos
were the favorites of the
professional sheep men, though in the
1830's and later there were
a few importations of mutton types like
the Leicesters, Oxfords, and
Southdowns. From almost the very
beginning there was an up-
grading of horses, at first through the
introduction of Thoroughbred
types--usually pretty much
mongrelized--and then, during the late
1840's and the 1850's, of Morgans and
even some Percherons. All
of these introductions and developments
were, for the time, ex-
ceedingly well publicized, perhaps more
than they deserved. One
cannot avoid getting the impression that
many of the men concerned
were carrying on activities which were
uneconomic, that often they
did not understand what they were doing,
and that they had a ten-
dency to attribute to supposed superior
breeding some improvements
which were in reality the result of
better feed and management.
During the late 1840's and the 1850's
agricultural societies came
into being on what was to be a permanent
basis, as they did else-
where in the country. There had been a
false start in Ohio a quarter
of a century earlier under the influence
of Elkanah Watson's Berk-
shire Plan, of which there is now
nothing to remind us except the
Geauga County society, which claims a
continuous existence since
1823. There had been another false start
in the 1830's, attributable
to the unrealized expectation of
obtaining subsidies from the coun-
ties. The movement really became serious
with new legislation in
1846 which made county financial support
on a matching basis
mandatory. The county societies which
thereupon sprang up worked
out a scheme of activities emphasizing
an annual exhibition with
prizes for grains, livestock, and
home-manufactured goods, reaper
and mower contests, and, shortly, horse
racing and sideshows.
The same act of the legislature which
made possible the suc-
cessful growth of the county
agricultural societies provided for a
state board of agriculture. This served
for many years as a quicken-
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN HISTORY 243
ing agent in the development of Ohio
farming. Its annual meetings
provided a useful forum for the
discussion of topics of interest to
the rural community. Its annual reports
incorporated not only
material of theoretical value but
correspondence from the county
societies which gave a picture of
current economic problems and
local practices. The most important
activity of the board, however,
was the management of the state fair.
Beginning somewhat un-
certainly, for there was no vicarious
experience on which to draw,
the board held its first fair at
Cincinnati in 1850. Till 1874, when
the state fair was permanently located
at Columbus, the board
rotated it among the different cities of
the state. It felt that farmers
would not attend a centrally held fair,
but would attend one when
it came to their own general area. The
unfortunate tendency in
practice was for the fair to become a
somewhat expanded local one,
with new managers every year and a set
of invariably vexatious
problems in connection with
accommodations for exhibitors and
visitors. Regrettably, too, the managers
were unable to avoid the
increasingly characteristic evils of the
county exhibitions, particularly
the emphasis on trotting races and the
intrusion of sideshows "em-
bracing monsters great and small,
break-neck swings, flying horses,
booths for the sale of' 'ot pies and
coffee,' the woman afflicted with
snaix, the big boy and the little man,
et cetera and so forth."8
During the late 1840's and the 1850's
Ohio agriculture began to
be revolutionized by the coming of the
railroads. At first the rail-
roads facilitated the rapid
transportation of Ohio produce to the
seaboard, but soon, as they were
extended farther west, they brought
a more effective competition than
theretofore experienced. This was
especially so for such specialists as
the cattle feeders of the Scioto
Valley, who now ceased to have any
appreciable advantage over
the stock men in Illinois and Indiana
who borrowed their methods.
The consequence was that, though Ohio
farmers in general profited
by the inflation attendant on the
railway-building mania, and the
wheat growers from the high prices
created by the Crimean War,
the times for many involved a painful
readjustment. The scurry and
bustle of the Civil War, with temporary
experimentation in flax and
8 Cincinnati Commercial, quoted in the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Ohio
State
Board of Agriculture . . . for the
Year 1859 (Columbus, 1860), 84.
244 THE
OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
sorghum, rapid expansion of wool growing, and acute
shortage of
labor, did not fundamentally alter the process. As a
result, the
economic provincialism typified by the cattle feeding
of the Scioto
Valley, the dairying of the Western Reserve, and even
the wheat
growing of the Backbone Counties, tended to shade off
into a pre-
vailing uniformity. Indeed, Ohio agriculture as a whole
lost what-
ever uniqueness it once had, and became assimilated
into the general
pattern of farming characteristic of the older Middle
West.
By the end of the Civil War Ohio was coming to show
every
evidence of rural maturity. The state was covered with
a network
of railways. Wherever the soil was fertile, the
clearing of land
reached the point where farmers realized with something
of a shock
that their woodlots would soon be unable to furnish
stovewood, let
alone timber for barns or walnut for the furniture
factories. County
"pioneer histories" began to be published, in
which subscribers could
read of the hardships and adventures of their
grandparents in "Old
Stark" or "Old Washington." All in all,
it was a new age, with
grand reunions of war veterans, ice-cream socials, and
even citified
games like croquet.
If we think of the era of pioneer slashing, grubbing,
and corn-
and-hog subsistence as the first stage in the
agricultural develop-
ment of Ohio, and the period from the advent of the old
cleared
farm to the end of the Civil War as the second, then we
may take
the third as running from the end of the Civil War to
the outbreak
of the First World War. In this half century Ohio
gradually became
more industrialized, though there was never any danger
of its
ceasing to be an agricultural state too. With little
new acreage
available, the volume of farm production tended to
become
stabilized.9 There was no longer any
spectacular growth, and ad-
9 LIVESTOCK
(in thousands)
Milch cows
Other cattle Sheep Swine Horses
1870 654 758 4,928 1,729 610
1880 767 1,085 4,902 3,141 736
1890 795 954 4,061 3,276 881
All cattle
1900 2,053 4,021 3,188 878
1910 1,838 3,909 3,106 910
[Continued on page 245]
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN HISTORY
245
justments were piecemeal rather than violent. While Ohio did suffer
from the effects of the overproduction attendant on the opening of
the trans-Mississippi West and the new frontiers in Argentina,
Australia, and Canada, it was in a relatively favorable position with
respect to the expanding industrial market, and, as earlier, escaped
the evils attendant on a one-crop economy. Farmers had their
grievances, to be sure. They disliked falling prices, they resented
the practices of many middlemen, and they hated to be victimized
by the vendors of miraculous seed grain and improperly grounded
lightning rods, but they felt so little driven to raising political
hell
in Kansas and Nebraska fashion that the Granger movement, when
it came, was very different from what it was in the upper Mississippi
Valley. In any case, grievances tended to be forgotten in the wave
of prosperity that set in during the late 1890's and lasted beyond
1914.
After the Civil War there was a continuation of the factors which
disturbed the beef-cattle industry with the coming of the railways.
The cattle kingdom of the Scioto Valley and the "barrens" of
Clark and Madison counties lost its earlier distinctiveness as it
merged into the prevailing course of midwestern evolution. In the
state at large, where cattle raising was essentially one aspect of
general farming, there were likewise important changes. For
example, the system of feeding long since borrowed by the Scioto
fatteners from the South Branch of the Potomac spread into prac-
tically all areas where corn was a major crop. Again, Ohio cattle
feeders depended increasingly on stockers from the western plains
brought in by rail from Chicago. But the advantage in the eastern
market over Illinois and other competitors which had been enjoyed
in the pre-railway era was gone, so that many farmers pastured and
fattened their cattle at a loss or with little profit, especially in
the
CROPS
ACREAGE
(in thousands of bushels) (in
thousands of acres)
Wheat Corn Wheat Corn
1869 27,882 67,501
1879 46,014 111,877 2,556 3,282
1889 35,559 113,892 2,270 3,190
1899 50,377 152,055 3,209 3,826
1909 30,664 157,513 1,828 3,916
246
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
decade from 1885 to 1895. They had,
however, no other branch of
agriculture to which they could turn
with any confidence, for every-
thing else was equally depressed, except
perhaps dairying.
Dairying expanded rapidly immediately
after the Civil War, as it
did in some other states. The
"Herkimer County," or modern cheese-
factory, system introduced into the
Western Reserve in 1862 was at
first so highly profitable for its
promoters that there came to be a
hundred factories in Ohio in 1874 and
five hundred in 1880. The
new system was much more efficient in
labor than the old dairy one,
and involved much less wastage than was
the case with the un-
successful predecessor curd factories.
It flourished till the mid-
1880's, when it entered on a steady
decline, which was partly the
result of slackening demand in the
British Isles for all American
cheese, but more the result of Ohio
manufacturers falling behind
those of some other states in uniformity
and palatability of product.
Butter making was stimulated by the
introduction of creameries,
which were at first run in connection
with cheese factories, but after
the early 1880's, when the small cream
separator became available,
as separate plants to which cream was
hauled. Ohio creamery
operators found it difficult to hold a
market in competition with
the butter makers of other states, for
their standards of manufacture
were low. Both cheese factories and
creameries suffered most, how-
ever, from the steady growth of the
whole-milk industry. By 1885
this had developed to the point where
special milk trains were being
run into centers like Cleveland. By 1900
Ohio dairymen were
supplying considerable amounts of milk
to out-of-state markets like
Pittsburgh. Condenseries, which created
another outlet for whole
milk, appeared in the 1890's. In general
it may therefore be said
of the dairy industry that it continued
to expand steadily, and
that the concentration was increasingly
on whole milk for urban
consumption.
The swine industry continued to grow
after the Civil War, es-
pecially in the western part of the
state. Commonly, as was the case
elsewhere in the Corn Belt and had long
since been so in the Miami
Valley, swine were kept in ways which
minimized labor costs, that
is, they were grazed on clover during
the summer and fattened on
corn, often by "hogging down."
Now, however, they were hustled
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN HISTORY 247
off to market when they were eight
months old, so that they did not
have to be fed over the winter. The
swine-raising business was of
course responsive to the corn-hog cycle,
so that it tended to alternate
from prosperity to little or no profit
and back again, as it has con-
tinued to do till the present. Like the
beef-cattle industry, it suffered
from the competition of the states
farther west, but those who were
engaged in it seldom thought they stood
to gain much by shifting
to something else.
The sheep industry was more affected by
the Civil War than any
other phase of Ohio agriculture. In the
preceding decade wool grow-
ing had tended to decline, mostly
because the extension of railroads
raised land values to the point where it
was no longer economical
to depend on sheep. The war shut off the
supply of cotton and at
the same time created a tremendous
demand for common-grade wool
for army uniforms and blankets. As a
result, the number of sheep
in Ohio almost doubled in five years.
After the war the industry
went into another cyclical decline.
There was now a plentiful supply
of cotton, government woolens were being
dumped, and imports
from Australia and other countries
mounted. Moreover, there was
competition from dairying. As a
consequence, fine-wool growing was
effectively maintained only in the hilly
counties of the southeast,
where land continued to be cheap because
it was suitable only for
pasture. At the same time, however,
farmers in other parts of the
state developed a practice of crossing
Southdowns, Shropshires, and
other mutton breeds on the existing
partly Merino flocks with a
view to participating in the lamb trade
to the eastern cities. In parts
of northeastern Ohio, for the twenty
years or so prior to 1914, there
were some farmers who engaged in the
production of out-of-season,
or "Easter," lambs for the
hotel and dining-car trade, but the busi-
ness was overdone, and it succumbed to
competition from regions
with less severe winters.
In the years after the Civil War the
horse-rearing industry under-
went considerable change. Earlier the
demand had been chiefly for
fast trotting horses. Now, however,
heavier horses were needed on
the farms for drawing the various
implements coming more and
more into use, and similar ones were
needed in the cities for draw-
ing heavy drays and brewery wagons and
in the lumber camps for
248
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
hauling logs. In response to this demand
a cluster of counties in
central Ohio came to specialize in
heavy-draft horses, at first mostly
Percherons, but then also Clydesdales
and Belgians. Another market
for horses, but these ordinary ones, was
for hauling streetcars in
the cities. This market disappeared
shortly after 1890, but the kind
of horse formerly sold for it was
thereafter salable--thanks to the
telephone--for various kinds of delivery
services. No one foresaw
that horse rearing was doomed by the
automobile. "I conversed with
many parties owning and using them ...
in New York," a Chicago
expert told the convention of the state
board of agriculture in 1900,
"and all voiced the same sentiment,
that they were not altogether
satisfactory. Many said they would keep
them for rainy weather and
night work, in order to save their fine
horses and carriages, but for
pleasure driving in the parks and
boulevards they should never
abandon the horse, as he is a source of
pleasure and joy to mankind
forever."10 Yet, by 1914
the trade in carriage horses in New York
was coming to an end, and within a
generation the universal use
of trucks and tractors by all except the
members of a few con-
servative religious faiths made the
horseless farm commonplace.
After the Civil War as before, people
who were interested in
agricultural improvement had a tendency
to concentrate on livestock.
If one went solely by the editorials in
farm journals, however, he
would have to conclude that Ohio farmers
were, like those in other
states, still perversely backward in
obtaining a better class of stock.
Of course the root of the difficulty was
that farmers felt they could
not afford to squander money purely for
prestige. When they were
convinced of the likelihood of more
profits from better stock, they
usually did not hesitate to go in for
up-grading. Yet the process was
undeniably slow, for as late as 1904 it
could be stated, for example,
that nineteen percent of the cattle in
Ohio were still "natives," that
is, without any evidence of crossing
with purebreds, and thirty-seven
percent were grades of one kind and
another. Despite the inertia
of farmers as a class, so much attention
was given to livestock
breeding by some specialists that some
sections of the state came
to have a national reputation for
quality. One such region was
10 Fifty-fifth Annual Report of the
Ohio State Board of Agriculture . . . for the
Year 1900, 439.
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN
HISTORY 249
Greene County, where there was early in
the twentieth century a
concentration of breeders of Aberdeen
Angus, Jersey, and Shorthorn
cattle, Duroc-Jersey swine, and several
breeds of sheep. Another was
around Wooster, where the presence of
the agricultural experiment
station was something of a factor.
Another characteristic of the times
was the formation of breeders'
associations. These had a number of
practical functions--commonly getting
publicity for the breeds by
sponsoring shows, advertising the stock
the members had for sale,
and even holding cooperative sales. By
1920 Ohio had eight state-
wide associations for the promotion of
as many breeds of cattle,
two for horses, three for sheep, and
three for swine. In addition
there were thirty-nine district or
county associations concerned with
cattle improvement--twenty-one of these
being devoted to Short-
horns and eight to Holsteins--eight with
heavy-draft horse im-
provement, and nine with swine.
The livestock industry in its various
branches required a tre-
mendous quantity of feed and forage to
support it, and wheat and
the other small grains were always
marketable, even if the prices
obtainable reflected effective western
and foreign competition. Ac-
cordingly, as before the Civil War, the
production of grain and
forage was extremely important. But
times were changing, and
cultural practices with them. Crops were
now commonly grown on
land so long cleared and so much abused
by soil mining as to be
worn out. As a result, from the early
1870's artificial fertilizers be-
gan to be used, though the amount sold
as late as 1914 was in-
adequate by modern standards. More
attention was likewise given
to the use of manure, especially after
the manure spreader became
available. Immediately after the war the
swampy lands of north-
western Ohio were reclaimed by arterial
drainage, and elsewhere
field drainage became widespread
wherever its expense could be
justified. The most important change,
however, was the universal
adoption of a wide range of implements
designed to speed up
operations, transfer drudgery from man
to horse (or engine), and
reduce labor costs.
It will be recalled that prior to the
war, reapers, threshing ma-
chines, and a few seed drills comprised
the only machinery of any
significance to be introduced. After the
war these were improved
250
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
and other implements were developed. The
sulky plough and the
spring-tooth cultivator were introduced
in the 1870's. The primitive
reaper gave way to the self-raker, the
self-raker to the Marsh har-
vester, and the Marsh harvester, about
1880, to the twine binder
with its Appleby knotter. About 1880
also, the steam tractor began
to supersede the old horsepowers and the
"portable" engines in the
operation of grain separators. These
separators by the end of the
century had baggers, stackers (blowers),
and automatic feeds. The
check-row corn planter and the corn
cultivator became common in
the Miami Valley in the 1870's, and even
the corn binder was in-
troduced in a small way by 1900. The
Buckeye mower and the
"Tompkins County" steel rake
became commonplace shortly after
the war, and there were some hay
tedders. The hay loader appeared
about 1890, and shortly thereafter the
side-delivery rake. Hay-and-
grain unloading equipment became
universal--the system of track
under the ridgepole, carriage, harpoon
fork (or slings), and rope
out the gable end. The continuous hay
baler became available in the
1870's, operated at first by a
horsepower, and then by a steam
engine. Though not falling into the
category of implements, other
mechanical improvements frequently found
on Ohio farms by the
1890's were windmills, cream separators
(as already mentioned),
and artificial incubators. Another
improvement of the same period,
which was not mechanical, still less an
implement, was the silo,
though it was as a rule limited to the
dairying districts.
Besides what might be called the
standard branches of farming,
there developed to some extent a pattern
of minor agricultural
specialization, which was now based on
factors such as peculiarities
of soil, favorable climatic
characteristics, and adjacency to market,
rather than on speculative frenzies of
the earlier silkworm and hen-
fever type. Examples of such
specialization are to be found in the
expansion of the cigar-filler industry
in the Miami Valley and of the
Burley industry in the counties along
the Ohio east of Cincinnati;
the concentration of grape growing on
the Lake Erie islands and
in the half-dozen counties along the
lake shore comprising Ohio's
portion of the vineyard country between
the ridge and the lake
running from Sandusky to Buffalo, New
York; the establishment of
onion and celery growing on the drained
muck lands of Lake, Stark,
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN HISTORY 251
Medina, and other counties, commencing
in the 1880's; the creation
about 1900 of a sugar-beet industry in
the "black-land" northwestern
counties; the growth of market gardening
in the immediate vicinity
of every important urban center, a
development much noticed by the
end of the 1860's; and its evolution
into truck farming for the supply
of more distant consumers, a process
well established around Toledo
and in the Muskingum Valley by the
middle 1880's.
In retrospect, one of the most important
lines of development in
Ohio agriculture from the end of the
Civil War to the outbreak of
the First World War was in the area of
organization. Many of the
county agricultural societies had become
moribund during the war,
but they revived as soon as it was over,
and entered on what has
been described as their golden age. The
state fair, once permanently
located at Columbus (1874), became a
veritable institution. Then
there were the many societies, often
short-lived, for the promotion
of better livestock breeding, poultry
improvement, bee keeping, fruit
growing, and dairying. The organization
which attracted most at-
tention, however, was the Grange.
The Grange (or Patrons of Husbandry) was
the first of the
farmers' movements to appear in Ohio, as
elsewhere. In the upper
Mississippi Valley the Grange was
primarily a protest movement
directed against middlemen in general
and railroads in particular,
but in Ohio there was really not much
discontent. Being a region of
diversified farming, it was, at least
relatively, immune to boom-and-
bust agricultural cycles. Accordingly,
in Ohio as in the eastern states,
the Grange was essentially educational
and social, though for a time
it had some commercial pretensions. The
first local grange in Ohio
was established at East Cleveland in
1870, and the State Grange in
1872. By 1875 the number of local
granges reached 1,102. There-
after the rate of increase slackened,
and by 1880 a rapid decline set
in, partly because the wholesaling
ventures proved unprofitable, per-
haps mainly because too much had been
hoped for. The Grange
nevertheless managed to continue its
existence, though with varying
vigor from time to time and place to
place, till it was revivified
early in the present century, and became
one of the most active of
farm organizations in the state.
The Grange was not the only evidence of
the growth of co-
252
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
operative activities among farmers.
There were during its heyday
and afterwards many other groups. Some
of these were essentially
social and educational, like the
"independent institutes" referred to
below; some represented a pooling of
capital to buy expensive ma-
chinery, like the threshing syndicates,
or to pay the salary of an
outside expert, like the cow-testing
associations; some existed as an
adjustment to the prevailing conditions
of rural life, like the beef
rings, which made possible a supply of
fresh meat weekly through-
out the summer; some existed to assume
functions or risks that the
business community would not perform at
all or would perform only
at an exorbitant cost, like the mutual
telephone companies and the
mutual fire and casualty insurance
companies; some were engaged
in the processing of agricultural
produce, like the cooperative cheese
factories and creameries; some were
formed to buy for their mem-
bers at wholesale a considerable range
of implements, fertilizers,
twine, feedstuffs, and consumers goods;
and some, particularly in
the early part of the present century,
sold or handled farm produce,
like the livestock-shipping groups and
the cooperative elevators.
While farmers were organizing to help
themselves in the ways
described and in others, they were
getting an increasing amount of
assistance from agencies of the state
government, particularly Ohio
State University, the agricultural
experiment station, and the state
board of agriculture and its offshoots.
Though in retrospect the establishment
of Ohio State University
(originally called the Ohio Agricultural
and Mechanical College) to
take advantage of the provisions of the
Morrill act appears to be
one of the more important developments
of the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, it cannot be denied
that for many years after it
opened its doors in 1873 the college of
agriculture of the university
was the object of bitter attack by the
articulate part of the farm
population, as were similar colleges
elsewhere. While some of the
opposition must be attributed to sheer
ignorance and prejudice, it
has to be recognized that the
late-nineteenth-century mind was not
conditioned to place scientific
experiment, to say nothing of aca-
demic theory, above practical
experience. Even if it had been so
disposed, there was little to respect in
the early work of the college
of agriculture, leaving out of account
altogether the endless internal
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN HISTORY 253
bickerings which marked its career. Its
period of recognized use-
fulness commenced in the middle 1890's
with the establishment of
the dairy school. In the next few years
there was a succession of
new and successful enterprises,
particularly the inauguration of
agricultural-extension work throughout
the state (1905), of a short
winter course for young farmers (1907),
and of Farmers' Week
(1913). One aspect of the extension work
was the county-agency
system, which was begun in Portage
County in 1912. There were
about half a dozen county agents in the
state when the federal
Smith-Lever act came into force two
years later. This provided for
federal subsidies to be matched by state
funds, with the state agri-
cultural college (that is, Ohio State
University) in control of ad-
ministration. Within a few years the
system was firmly established
throughout the state. The county agent
became the local champion
of improved rotations, soil
conservation, and upgrading of livestock,
the demonstrator of seed treating,
pruning, and vaccination, the
promoter of breeders' associations and
of cooperative marketing
organizations, and the sponsor of the
boys' and girls' clubs which
evolved into the 4-H program.
The Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station
was established on
land belonging to Ohio State University
at Columbus in 1882, but
its real usefulness dates from 1892,
when it was moved to Wooster.
Like other state experimental stations,
it received funds under the
federal Hatch act of 1887. It conducted
experiments at Wooster
and at several substations where there
were special crops or peculiar
soil problems. From the beginning it
published bulletins, ranging
from the technical and scientific to the
economic, but providing
overall a tremendous amount of useful
information about crop and
animal husbandry, the costs and
advantages of new kinds of ma-
chinery, and the trends of the markets.
One notable example of the
economic benefit to be derived from its
work was to be found in
connection with apple growing in
Washington County and its
neighbors. Here, early in the present
century, the industry was
steadily getting less profitable, owing
to cultivation techniques which
promoted erosion of the hilly lands and
to the invasion of insects
and fungous diseases, though the farmers
ascribed their troubles to
a changing climate or even to smoke from
steamboats and railway
254
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
locomotives. Orchards were being cut
down or turned into pastures,
for such fruit as was produced was too
much deformed and blotched
to have a market. As a result of a
spraying program inaugurated in
1909 under the auspices of the station
and of some improvements
in working the orchards, the industry
was not only saved but was
placed on the profitable level it has
since maintained. Another con-
tribution of great economic value was
in plant breeding, especially
wheat and corn. Beginning in 1924 the
station began experimen-
tation with hybrid corn, and, when
commercial quantities became
available during the middle 1930's,
actively promoted its use.
The state board of agriculture,
established in 1846, was, as al-
ready explained, a semi-public
organization which in its early days
compiled information about the
activities of county agricultural
societies and other groups promoting
farming interests and on its
own account managed the state fair.
Beginning about 1880 it came
to have additional functions, which
collectively are indicative of a
trend towards increased government
support of agriculture and of
interference therein. Thus, the board
collected and published
monthly crop reports from 1880 on. By
the middle 1890's it had
about 1,500 volunteer correspondents in
different parts of the state.
This work was valuable to farmers, in
that the more precise knowl-
edge they had, the less they would be at
the mercy of grain-pit and
stockyard speculators. Again in 1880 the
board borrowed from
Michigan the idea of holding Farmers'
Institutes. In the early 1900's
there were around 250 institutes a year
at which there were two
speakers furnished by the state, as well
as around fifty independent
ones which provided their own. At their
best the institutes provided,
for the times, some good suggestions for
the farmers in attendance.
None the less they had their weaknesses.
Not every speaker was a
well-qualified one, and many who were
masters of their subject were
not very entertaining. But perhaps the
chief deficiency was the dis-
sipation of effort that came with the
effort to cover too much.
"You know what our usual program
is," a critic from Clinton
County asserted. "We begin by
opening with a prayer, [an] address
of welcome by the mayor, a response,
then we have a little decla-
mation, and then the state speaker talks
twenty minutes on soil
fertility . . .; then the burning
question of the hour is good roads;
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN HISTORY 255
then after we build good roads for
fifteen or twenty minutes some
one wants to know about alfalfa."11
Other work was loaded on the
board or agencies associated with it as
the legislature came to enact
laws to prevent fraud, or to preserve
minimum sanitary standards,
or to check communicable disease, or,
ultimately, to assure orderly
marketing--the inspection and control of
the sale of commercial
fertilizers (1881), the inspection of
nursery stock and orchards
(1902), the enforcement of legislation
respecting livestock diseases
(1902), and the inspection and licensing
for sale of commercial
feedstuffs (1904).
The increasing diversification of the
activities of the board of
agriculture meant that its work not only
became less well co-
ordinated but also overlapped
substantially what was being done by
the agricultural experiment station or
the university extension service
or both. This was the reason for the
administrative reorganization of
1913, whereby the state board of
agriculture disappeared, to be
succeeded by the Ohio Agricultural
Commission, which was also to
exercise supervision over the
agricultural experiment station and the
college of agriculture in Ohio State
University. Two years sufficed
to show that the new arrangement worked
poorly. Accordingly, in
1915 further legislation abolished the
commission, "liberated" the
college of agriculture, provided a
separate administration for the
agricultural experiment station, and set
up a new board of agri-
culture. Six years later this became the
state department of agri-
culture, which was to be headed by an
appointed director, and which
was charged with the wide range of
functions appropriate to such a
governmental agency in the modern age.
The last major period in the development
of Ohio agriculture
dates from the outbreak of the First
World War. The commence-
ment of that conflict upset the pattern
of relative stability into
which farming in the state had settled
during the preceding twenty
years. As a result, since 1914 Ohio has
shared the roller-coaster
characteristics of the national
agricultural economy. It has enjoyed,
or endured, or suffered, as the case may
be, the prosperity attendant
on the First World War, the serious
depression of the 1920's and
11 Sixty-fourth Annual Report of the
Ohio State Board of Agriculture . . . for the
Year 1909, 520.
256 THE
OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the terrible one of the early 1930's, the
experimentation of the New
Deal era, the prosperity accompanying the Second World
War, the
Marshall Plan, and the Korean police action, and the
current stage
of--need it be said?--somewhat less than full
prosperity. During
this time prices of land have climbed for half a dozen
years, then
collapsed in a welter of foreclosures and scaled-down
mortgages,
then climbed again. Operations have become ever more
mechanized.
There has been a concomitant and resultant tendency for
farms to be
consolidated into larger units, so that while more has
been produced,
it has been produced by fewer people. There have been
other im-
portant changes too, none of them peculiar to Ohio, but
all de-
serving of at least passing mention.
As far as the major branches of agriculture are
concerned, the
most significant trends of the last forty years are to
be found in the
decline of wool growing and the steady expansion of
dairying.12
Laymen, and many farmers too, may be justified in
thinking that
the most important general development has been the
rapid re-
placement of horses by tractors.13 With the
tractors have come new
implements, including one-row and two-row corn pickers,
small-
12
LIVESTOCK WHOLE
MILK SOLD
(in thousands) (in
millions of pounds)
Cattle Sheep Swine
1910 1,838 3,909 3,106 1909 855
1920 1,927 2,103 3,084 1919 1,196
1930 1,773 2,536 2,778 1929 1,954
1940 1,772 1,757 1,916 1939 2,606
1950 2,036 1,143 3,156 1949 3,606
CROPS ACREAGE
(in thousands of bushels) (in thousands of
acres)
Wheat Corn Wheat Corn
1909 30,664 157,513 1,828 3,916
1919 58,124 149,845 2,923 3,562
1929 30,290 102,177 1,564 2,911
1939 36,914 156,304 1,852 3,168
1949 53,040 168,046 2,238 3,247
13
NUMBER OF HORSES NUMBER OF TRACTORS
(in thousands) (in thousands)
1910 910
1920 811 10
1930 495 53
1940 421 90
1950 145 182
OHIO AGRICULTURE IN HISTORY 257
grain combines, and field balers, all
marvelous devices which create
high profits for the most efficient,
pile up towering overhead costs
on every farm, and help perpetuate the
problem of surpluses. The
wonders of the new age are not confined
to mechanization. Hybrid
corn, a product of the research of the
geneticists, has come to be
almost universally grown since its
introduction twenty years ago.
There has been an elimination or
suppression of such infectious
livestock diseases as tuberculosis,
brucellosis, and hog cholera
through compulsory action by the state
government, usually in asso-
ciation with the federal department of
agriculture. Animals are
better fed than in the past, thanks to
the efforts of the nutrition
experts, and may even nowadays be
furnished antibiotics as a feed
supplement. There has been a widespread
adoption of conservation
practices, with the farm pond the
universal symbol. Organizations
as diverse as the Farm Bureau and the
4-H Club have flourished.
But it may well be that the most
important change of all is the in-
creasing urbanization of farm life.
The Ohio farmer in 1914 was typically
resident on a narrow road
which was alternately dusty and muddy.
He got his news in a
weekly paper and went to town or church
in a buggy or democrat,
unless, like an increasing number of
his fellows, he owned a
Model T. He occupied a house which was
considered advanced if
it had a cistern with a force pump, a
hand-cranked telephone, a
washing machine, and a mantle lamp. Of
course there were always
a few far in advance of the mass. Such,
for example, was a man
who owned a dairy farm about a dozen
miles from Dayton. There
was an interurban stop at the corner of
his farm, he had running
water in house and barn, forced in by a
hydraulic ram, and a
washing machine run by a water motor.
Nor was this all. "We have
a rural [mail] route and a trunk-line
[private] telephone. A gaso-
line and oil tank goes by once a week.
A bread wagon and a fish
vendor from town come several times a
week. We have an electric
light plant [operated by a gasoline
engine]. A common school is a
half mile away. Our high school is
within a five-cent fare limit.
Why should we want to live in a city?
Our farm is ideal.14 The
14 Country Gentleman, LXXX (1918),
January 5, 1918, 4.
258
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
thing that requires comment is not that
this was certainly, from the
point of view of conveniences, a very
advanced farm for that time,
but that in the succeeding forty years
the rural standard of living
has risen so fast as to make this
idyllic picture as old fashioned as
a Currier & Ives print. Today the
typical farmer is only a few
minutes distant from the nearest town by
good roads, and he has
his television and his wife her freezer.
Even in the marginal agri-
cultural areas, like the hilly counties
of the southeast part of the
state, he is in process of obtaining
consolidated schools which, at
least as plants, compare favorably with
those found elsewhere, es-
pecially when industrial giants like
Union Carbide or Olin Mathie-
son are added to the tax duplicate.
Such, then, are some of the aspects of
the contemporary age in
Ohio agriculture. Only a pessimist can
believe that technological
advances in fields like mechanization,
plant and animal breeding,
and the development of pesticides have
reached the point of di-
minishing returns. On the other hand, it
may be that only a pro-
fessional optimist can foresee a
political settlement of the "farm
problem" satisfactory to producer
and consumer alike. But this
article is not concerned with prophecy.
It is intended merely to throw
some light on what has happened in a
long and by no means un-
eventful past to bring Ohio agriculture
to its present position.