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Farming in the Prairie Peninsula, 1830-1890

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Allan G. Bogue
Allan G. Bogue
Affiliation:
State University of Iowa
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Extract

Flaring westward from the upper valley of the Wabash lies the prairie triangle, embracing most of central and northern Illinois and almost all of Iowa. Much of this region today lies in the heart of the corn belt. Its economic history is a story of practical experimentation, adaptation, and change as its restless settlers endeavored after 1820 to unlock its wealth. To do so, the prairie pioneers had to adapt techniques and crops to the novel environment of an almost treeless grassland at a time when both technology and markets were undergoing revolutionary change. In 1830 the farm-makers had hardly begun their task; by the 1890's the land was tamed, the corn belt a fact, its farmers on the threshold of a golden age.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1963 , pp. 3 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1963

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References

1 “Ninety-Eight Years Ago in Bloomington,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, XXVIII (April 1935–Jan. 1936), 209Google Scholar. Iowa settlement is described in: Goodwin, Cardinal, “The American Occupation of Iowa, 1833 to 1860,” Iowa Journal of History and Politics, XVII (Jan. 1919), 83–102Google Scholar;Harter, William L. and Stewart, R. E., The Population of Iowa: Its Composition and Changes. A Brief Sociological Study of Iowa's Human Assets. Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, Bulletin No. 275 (Ames, 1930)Google Scholar. There is a series of excellent population maps based on the township population figures given in the state censuses of 1856, 1867, and 1875 in Schilz, G. B., “Rural Population Trends of Iowa as Affected by Soils” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Clark University, 1948), pp. 67, 68, 69Google Scholar. See also Cooper, Clare C., “The Role of Railroads in the Settlement of Iowa: A Study of Historical Geography” (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Nebraska, 1958)Google Scholar. The basic accounts of settlement in Illinois are: Boggess, Arthur C., The Settlement of Illinois, 1778–1830. Chicago Historical Society's Collection, Vol. V (Chicago, 1908)Google Scholar;Pooley, William V., The Settlement of Illinois from 1830 to 1850. University of Wisconsin, Bulletin No. 220, “History Series,” Vol. I (Madison, 1908)Google Scholar. The appropriate volumes of the Centennial History of Illinois include useful summaries of the settlement process; see particularly the maps in Buck, Solon J., Illinois in 1818 (Springfield, 1918), pp. 4, 174, 384Google Scholar;Cole, Arthur C., The Era of the Civil War, 1848–1870 (Springfield, 1919), pp. 16, 330Google Scholar. The various accounts of the immigrant groups are also helpful, as are the materials of the Federal censuses.

2 The discussion of pioneer demography in this and the following paragraph is based on , Harter and , Stewart, Population of Iowa, pp. 16–17Google Scholar;Throne, Mildred, “A Population Study of an Iowa County in 1850,” Iowa Journal of History, LVII (Oct. 1959), 305–30Google Scholar; William Bowers, “Crawford Township, 1850–1870: A Population Study of a Pioneer Community,” ibid., LVIII (Jan. i960), 1—30; and my own unpublished studies of farmers in Bureau County, Illinois, in 1850 and i860, and farmer turnover in townships in Bremer, Davis, Hamilton, and Washington Counties, Iowa. The method in these studies stems mainly from Malin's, James C. article, “The Turnover of Farm Population in Kansas,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, IV (Nov. 1935), 339–72. Miss Throne utilized both population and agricultural manuscript censuses, as I did in my township studies. In the Bureau study of farmer households, I made use primarily of the population censuses. The work of Throne, Bowers, and myself revealed patterns of turnover in Illinois and Iowa similar to those discovered by Malin, but to some degree I interpret them differently than did Malin. For similar research, seeGoogle ScholarCurti, Merleet al., The Maying of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1959). PP-. 55–83Google Scholar.

3 , Malin, “Turnover of Farm Population,” p. 356.Google Scholar

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5 Western Historical Company, The History of Cedar County, Iowa containing a History of the County, its Cities, Towns, &c, … (Chicago, 1878), pp. 600, 605Google Scholar. A number of accounts of nineteenth-century agriculture give attention to the particular problems of the prairies, but are not cited specifically by the writer in later notes. Bidwell, Percy W. and Falconer, John I., History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, 1620–1860 (Washington: The Carnegie Institution, 1925)Google Scholar;Carlson, Theodore L., The Illinois Military Tract: A Study of Land Occupation, Utilization and Tenure. Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, XXXII, No. 2 (Urbana, 1951)Google Scholar;Gates, Paul W., The Farmer's Age: Agriculture, 1815-1860. Vol. 3, The Economic History of the United States (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1960)Google Scholar;Ross, Earle D., Iowa Agriculture: An Historical Survey (Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1951)Google Scholar;Shannon, Fred A., The Farmer's Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860-1897. Vol. 5, The Economic History of the United States (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1945)Google Scholar. See also Throne, Mildred, “A History of Agriculture in Southern Iowa, 1833–1890” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, State University of Iowa, 1946)Google Scholar.

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7 Hewes, Leslie, “Some Features of Early Woodland and Prairie Settlement in a Central Iowa County,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, XL (March 1950), 51, 53Google Scholar. This pattern first came to my attention while working in the county records of Hamilton and Bremer Counties, Iowa.

8 Lindsey, Adrian H., “The Nature and Cause of the Growth of Iowa Land Values” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Iowa State College, 1929), p. 144.Google Scholar

9 The following account is based mainly on: Danhof, Clarence H., “The Fencing Problem in the Eighteen Fifties,” Agricultural History, XVIII (Oct. 1944), 168–86Google Scholar; Hayter, Earl W., “Barbed Wire Fencing—A Prairie Invention: Its Rise and Influence in the Western States,” Agricultural History, XIII (Oct. 1939), 189–207Google Scholar; Rice, Mary Louise, “The Role of the Osage Orange Hedge in the Occupation of the Great Plains” (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Illinois, 1937)Google Scholar; Bogue, Margaret Beattie, Patterns from the Sod: Land Use and Tenure in the Grand Prairie, 1850–1900 (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1959), pp. 117–21, 133–36Google Scholar; U. S. Commissioner of Agriculture, Report, 1871 (Washington, 1872), pp. 504–5Google Scholar; as well as numerous references in The Prairie Farmer, 1841–1889 (began publication as The Union Agriculturist and Western Prairie Farmer); The Iowa Homestead and Western Farm Journal, 1858–1883; and the annual Reports of die Iowa State Agricultural Society, 1856—1890.

10 Prairie Farmer, May 1843, p. 118.

11 Coffin, L. S., “Breaking Prairie,” Annals of Iowa, 3rd series, V (July 1902), 447–52Google Scholar; Prairie Farmer, May 1841, pp. 34–35; Oct. 1841, p. 76; April 1842, p. 34; Iowa State Agricultural Society, Report, 1879 (Des Moines, 1880), p. 35.Google Scholar Hereafter the latter series will be cited as I. S. A. S. R.

12 “W” in Prairie Farmer, April 1851, pp. 166–67.

13 Prairie Farmer, Feb. 1854, p. 56; June 1854, p. 205; Northwestern Farmer, Jan. 1857, p. 7; I. S. A. S. R., 1857, pp. 256, 434; 1863, p. 481; 1866, p. 186.

14 Prairie Farmer, Oct. 1848, p. 324.

15 Ibid., Nov. 3, 1866, p. 281.

16 Prior to 1880, the Federal census does not show acreages planted to the various field crops, giving only total yield per county and improved acreages. Maps based on production figures, of course, must be used with caution. Unusual seasons and regional differences in soil productivity could both distort production maps in comparison to maps based on acreage. How-ever, comparison of maps based on acreages in 1880 with those based on production in the same year does reveal very similar patterns. Some of the Iowa state censuses do give acreages planted to specific crops, and maps based on these figures suggest that the maps based on Federal production figures give a fairly accurate picture of production patterns.

17 The price indices referred to here are based on data presented by Norman V. Strand in Prices of Farm Products in Iowa, 1851–1940. Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, Research Bulletin No. 303 (Ames, 1942), pp. 934, 938–42.Google Scholar

18 Flower, George, History of the English Settlement in Edwards County, Illinois, Founded in 1817 and 1818 by Morris Bir\bec\ and George Flower (Chicago, 1882), pp. 165–66.Google Scholar

19 Prairie Farmer, August 12, 1862, p. 111.

20 Northwestern Farmer, Dec 1857, p. 457; June 1858, p. 191.

21 H. C. M. Case and K. H. Myers, Types of Farming in Illinois: An Analysis of Differences by Areas. University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 403 (Urbana, 1934), p. 123.Google Scholar The quotation is from Pooley, The Settlement of Illinois from 1830 to 1850 [99], p. 385, quoting Chicago Weekly American, Feb. 4, 1837.

22 Peck, John M., A Guide for Emigrants, Containing Sketches of Illinois, Missouri, and the Adjacent Parts (Boston, 1831), pp. 153–54.Google Scholar

23 Hewes, Leslie and Frandson, Philip E., “Occupying the Wet Prairie: The Role of Artificial Drainage in Story County, Iowa,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, XLII (March 1952), 33.Google Scholar

24 I. S. A. S. R., 1859, p. 246.

25 Weaver, John C., “Changing Patterns of Cropland Use in the Middle West,” Economic Geography, XXX (Jan. 1954), 19Google Scholar; Quick, Herbert, One Man's Life (Indianapolis, 1925), p. 194Google Scholar; U. S. Commissioner of Patents, Report, 1850 (Washington, 1851), p. 242Google Scholar; I. S. A. S. R., 1863, p. 378; 1865, p. 400; 1870, pp. 483, 490, 527.

26 Towne, Charles W. and Wentworth, Edward N., Pigs: from Cave to Corn Belt (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1950), pp. 208–9, 210–11.Google Scholar

27 Here I generalize on my examination of the agricultural census rolls of some ten counties scattered through Iowa and Illinois for the years 1850 and 1880 as well as a study of the rolls of all Iowa counties in the latter year.

28 This figure is derived from a farm-by-farm count in the Illinois manuscript agricultural census of 1880, in the possession of the Illinois State Archives, Springfield. The columns showing cattle bought and sold in the previous year were evidently not totaled for publication in the printed census of 1880. Comparable county percentages in Iowa ranged from 15.1 per cent to 1.4 per cent. Manuscript copies of the Federal agricutural census for Iowa are available at both the State Historical Society, Iowa City, and the Department of History and Archives, Des Moines.

29 The diaries of George F. Green of Miles, Jackson County, Iowa, present a particularly fine picture of the operation of a cattle feeder and dealer during the early 1870's. These were made available to me through the kindness of Mrs. Curtis Frymoyer of Wilton Junction, Iowa, a great-granddaughter of Mr. Green.

30 A common price in Putnam County, Illinois, about 1850 for wintering two- and three-year-old catde was $2.00 to $2.50 per head. U. S. Commissioner of Patents, Report, 1850 (Washington, 1851), p. 404.Google Scholar

31 Prairie Farmer, June 23, 1866, p. 429.

32 Anderson, Edgar and Brown, William L., “The History of the Common Maize Varieties of the United States Corn Belt,” Agricultural History, XXVI (Jan. 1952), 2.Google Scholar

33 See the conclusions in Cooper, Clare C., “The Role of Railroads in the Settlement of Iowa: A Study in Historical Geography,” pp. 136–38.Google Scholar

34 For early descriptions of western hogs see: Woods, John, Two Years' Residence in the Settlement on the English Prairie, in the Illinois Country, United States… (London, 1822Google Scholar, reprinted in Vol. 8 of Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed., Early Western Travels, 1748–1846 [Cleveland, 1906]), p. 285Google Scholar; Oliver, William, Eight Months in Illinois, with Information to Emigrants (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1843, reprinted Chicago, 1924), pp. 80–81Google Scholar; Peck, John M., New Guide for Emigrants to the West, p. 284Google Scholar.

35 Prairie Farmer, June 4, 1870, p. 169.

36 National Live Stock. Journal, March 1871, p. 223.

37 For early descriptions of Illinois cattle see: , Oliver, Eight Months in Illinois, p. 104Google Scholar; , Peck, A Guide for Emigrants, p. 168Google Scholar.

38 Prairie Farmer, Jan. 4, 1868, p. 9.

39 Gates, Paul W. has described Gillett's stock interests in “Cattle Kings in the Prairies,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXV (Dec. 1948), 391–96.Google Scholar

40 Iowa Homestead, Feb. 23, 1877, p. 60.

41 James N. Brown's Sons in National Live Stock, Journal, April 1874, pp. 123–24.

42 Hopkins, John A. Jr, Economic History of the Production of Beef Cattle in Iowa (Iowa City: The State Historical Society of Iowa, 1928)Google Scholar, is a standard and very useful account of the development of the cattle industry in Iowa.

43 Ardrey, R. L., American Agricultural Implements: A Review of Invention and Development in the Agricultural Implement Industry of the United States (Chicago, 1894), pp. 30–35, 36–39.Google Scholar George W. Brown's two-row planter was the first to win a considerable reputation, but there were at least three other two-horse corn planters on exhibit at the Illinois State Fair in 1854. Prairie Farmer, Nov. 1854, pp. 405–6.

44 , Peck, Guide (1831), p. 150Google Scholar; Prairie Farmer, Jan. 6, 1866, p. 2. In ibid., March 14, 1863, p. 163, “Small Farmer” struck a more conservative note, arguing for thirty to thirty-five acres. Estimates of 1885 give forty to fifty acres, Prairie Farmer, Feb. 7, 1885, p. 82; Feb. 28, 1885, p. 130.

45 Quick, Herbert, The Hawhjeye (Indianapolis, 1923), pp. 263–64.Google Scholar The one hundred-bushel-per-day man was never common. Two wagonloads or seventy bushels per day was a day's work. A good team, a heavy crop, a strong youthful back, a short haul to the granary and an immediate change of wagons were all essential for a one hundred-bushel day. I am indebted to my colleague John Clifford on this point.

46 For use of these terms in primary source material see: U. S. Commissioner of Patents, Report, 1845 (Washington, 1846), p. 384Google Scholar; Prairie Farmer, March 14, 1868, p. 163; April 11, 1868, p. 236; among secondary works, Hopkins, Beef Production, has a particularly useful section on feeding methods, pp. 122–42.

47 John Savage Diary, May 6, 1862. Department of History and Archives, Des Moines, Iowa.

48 Prairie Farmer, July 27, 1872, p. 237.

49 The standard work on the Percheron is Sanders, Alvin H., History of the Percheron Horse (Chicago, 1917).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Despite its importance, we lack satisfactory work on the subject of labor productivity in nineteenth-century agriculture, although at least one scholar is now working on it. The most frequently used secondary works are: Shannon, Fred A., The Farmer's Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860–1897, pp. 140—46Google Scholar, and Rogin, Leo, The Introduction of Farm Machinery in its Relation to the Productivity of Labor in the Agriculture of the United States during the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1931).Google Scholar The tendency has been to give too much emphasis to the relatively few examples given in U. S. Commissioner of Labor, Report, 1898Google Scholar, Hand and Machine Labor (2 vols.; Washington, 1899).Google Scholar Rogin pointed out (pp. 227–29) that in the case of wheat-growing these examples suggested labor input requirements under machine methods which were considerably less than those prevailing in many parts of the country in the 1920's as given by C. D. Kinsman in an Appraisal of Power Used on Farms in the United States. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 1348 (Washington, 1925), p. 59.Google Scholar It seems clear that wheat culture under hand methods required more than sixty hours of human labor per acre, although seeding in standing corn might reduce the amount; the Kinsman estimate under machine methods in the mid-1920's was fifteen hours in both Indiana and Illinois. Students have been less interested in the labor savings effected in the hay meadows, but see U. S. Commissioner of Agriculture, Report, 1872 (Washington, 1873), pp. 289–90.Google Scholar See my references for corn culture in note 44.

51 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Wages of Farm Labor in the United States. Division of Statistics, Misc. Series 4. (Washington, 1892), pp. 16–17, 65–66Google Scholar; U. S. Commissioner of Patents, Report, 1845 (Washington, 1846), p. 1152Google Scholar; Goodell, John, ed., Diary of William Sewall, 1797–1846, formerly of Augusta Maine, Maryland, Virginia and Pioneer in Illinois (Beardstown, 1930)Google Scholar; Benjamin F. Harris, Ledger and Day Book, First National Bank, Champaign, Illinois. See also U. S. Industrial Commission, Report, XI (Washington, 1901), pp. 140–41Google Scholar.

52 For a discussion of these matters and a case study see Bogue, Allan G., “Pioneer Farmers and Innovation,” Iowa Journal of History, LVI (Jan. 1958), 1–36.Google Scholar

63 Prairie Farmer, Sept. 1841, p. 65; March 1842, p. 26; Sept. 1844, p. 217.

54 Ibid., Feb. 1846, p. 42.

55 Birkbeck, Morris, Notes on a Journey in America, from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois (London, 1818), p. 144.Google Scholar We need more studies of farm credit in the nineteenth-century Midwest, particularly of lending at the local level. At this point the major dependence must be on William G. Murray, An Economic Analysis of Farm Mortgages in Story County, Iowa, 1854–1931. Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, Agricultural Experiment Station, Research Bulletin No. 156 (Ames, 1933)Google Scholar; Rozman, David, “Land Credit in Walnut Grove Township, Knox County, Illinois,” Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics, IV (Aug. 1928), 305–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bogue, Margaret Beattie, Patterns from the Sod, pp. 156–75Google Scholar; Bogue, Allan G., Money at Interest: The Farm Mortgage on the Middle Border (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1955), pp. 1—43.Google Scholar For interest rates in other lines of enterprise in the same period, see Macaulay, Frederick R., Some Theoretical Problems Suggested by the Movements of Interest Rates, Bond Yields and Stock. Prices in the United States Since 1856 (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1938), A3–A176Google Scholar, and Davis, Lance E., “The New England Textile Mills and the Capital Markets: A Study of Industrial Borrowing 1840–1860,” The Journal of Economic History, XX, No. 1 (March 1960), 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Of American agricultural historians, Paul W. Gates has devoted the most attention to land speculation and tenancy in the Midwest. Typical of his work is “The Role of the Land Speculator in Western Development,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXVI (July 1942), 314–33Google Scholar; and Frontier Landlords and Pioneer Tenants (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1945)Google Scholar.

57 Bogue, Margaret B. and Bogue, Allan G., “Profits and the Frontier Land Speculator,” The Journal of Economic History, XVII, No. 1 (March 1957), 2–3, fn. 7.Google Scholar

58 The procedure here is to extract from the manuscript population census the names of all those heads of households listing themselves as farmers, but owning no real estate. This group comprises the maximum number of possible tenants. By checking these names against the agri-cultural census rolls, one can find those who reported a farm business. This group represents the minimum number of possible tenants, and probably all of those who were farming on any considerable scale. Since, however, the agricultural census in part involved reports on the crops harvested in the previous year, some new tenants may not have given a farm return. This method of course disregards bachelor tenants who did not maintain their own households, but the number of these was probably quite small. The Federal census of 1880 did, of course, show tenancy present in the frontier region of northwestern Iowa.

69 1 hazard this suggestion on the basis of much reading in the biographical sketches in the county histories. Such information defies quantification for various reasons, but certainly does show a wide distribution of the ownership of tenant farms.

6 For a discussion of the northern wet prairie with maps see, Hewes, Leslie, “The Northern Wet Prairie of the United States: Nature, Sources of Information, and Extent,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, XLI (Dec. 1951), 307–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 The works bearing most particularly on this subject are Jacklin, Kathleen Bessie, “Local Aid to Railroads in Illinois, 1848–1870” (unpublished M. A. thesis, Cornell University, 1958)Google Scholar; Beard, Earl S., “Railroads in Iowa, 1865–1875: a Study of Attitudes” (unpublished M. A. thesis, State University of Iowa, 1950)Google Scholar; Robert M. Haig, A History of the General Property Tax in Illinois. University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, III, (Urbana, 1914), 1Google Scholar; Brindley, John E., History of Taxation in Iowa (Iowa City, 1911).Google Scholar My own research on the taxation of agricultural land in Muscatine County, Iowa, showed that taxes there were probably higher relative to the value of agricultural land during the 1870's than in the later years of the century.

62 These were Warren township, Bremer County, Union township, Davis County, and Hamilton township, Hamilton County, data taken from the Mortgage Indexes and Registers and analyzed by me. The findings are in accord with the works cited in note 55.

63 Warntz, William, “An Historical Consideration of the Terms ‘Corn’ and ‘Corn Belt’ in the United States,” Agricultural History, XXXI (Jan. 1957), 40.Google Scholar

64 National Live Stock Journal, Nov. 1870, p. 78.