Rural American History

Rural American history is the history from colonial times to the present of rural American society, economy, and politics.

According to Robert P. Swierenga, "Rural history centers on the lifestyle and activities of farmers and their family patterns, farming practices, social structures, political ties, and community institutions."

Long-term trends

A main theme in rural history is the development of agriculture and its local support network. For example in his history of agriculture in Wisconsin, Jerry Apps includes a wide range of topics:

Environmental preconditions; the Native American experience, the original Yankee settlers; lead mining; the rise and fall of wheat; the role of steamboats and railroads; relation of rural and urban trends; lumbering; early mechanization; German, Swiss and Scandinavian immigration; the growth of cities; farmers in local and state government and politics; rural schools; transition to crop agriculture; the cheese and dairy industry; farming as a business; the Wisconsin idea; the College of Agriculture outreach programs; automobiles and good roads; tractors replace horses; arrival of rural free delivery, electricity and telephone; livestock raising; cranberry growing; federal controls and subsidies; truck farming; irrigation; consolidation into mega farms; the farm crisis of the 1980s; environmental degradation and recovery; and the impact of high tech.

Rural and farm population totals

The rural population is defined by size of place under 2500 and includes non-farmers living in villages and the open countryside. At the first census in 1790, the rural population was 3.7 million and urban only 202,000. The nation was 95% rural, and the great majority of rural residents were subsistence farmers. By 1860 the rural population had exploded to 25 million but urban had grown faster to 6 million, or 20% urban. Many non farmers lived in villages and small towns classified as "rural." The population in 1890 reached 63 million people, thanks to high birth rates and high immigration from Europe. The urban proportion was now 35%, comprising 22 million living in 2700 cities of 2500 or more people. In 1890 65% of the national population, or 36 million people, lived in rural areas. Of these 2.7 million lived in 13,000 towns of less than 2500 people. and 36 million --mostly farmers--lived in open country. In 1920 the urban population reached 54 million, or 51% while rural America had 52 million or 49%. In 2020, the rural population of the United States was approximately 66 million people, accounting for 20% of the total U.S. population.

In 2020 there were just over 2 million farms in the US, averaging 444 acres and occupying 897 million acres in total. About 90% are small farms, but 78% of the output is produced by the large farms with $350,000 or more revenue.

The economy has shifted, first from agriculture to industry in cities and more recently to a service economy with a large suburban base. Farming was the primary occupation of 72% of the national labor force in 1820, 60% in 1860, 37% in 1900, and 26% in 1920. The 50% level came in 1877.

In 1900 29.1 million Americans were gainfully employed, of whom 10.4 million were on farms. In all rural America comprised about 2500 counties, with an average of 2300 farms each, or 5.7 million farms in all. To help with the daily grind the farms hired 4.4 million laborers.

Mechanization

Mechanization and new technologies transformed farming practices over time. By the late 19th century the U.S. had the largest and most productive system of commercial agriculture in the world. Rural towns competed for access to the new railroad system. Towns that got a station sharply cut the cost of travel and shipping farm products out and consumer products in. Towns with a station attracted families that had the money to get established in farming.

Regarding the labor needed to produce one bushel of wheat, the U.S. Department of Agriculture states:

1894 being compared with 1830, the required human labor declined from three hours and three minutes to ten minutes. The heavy, clumsy plow of 1830 had given way to the disk plow that both plowed and pulverized the soil in the same operation; hand sowing had been displaced by the mechanical seeder drawn by horses; the cradling and thrashing with flails and hand winnowing had given way to reaping, thrashing, and sacking with the combined reaper and thrasher drawn by horses.

The time decline of 95% for wheat was followed by an 85% decline in the time for corn:

From 1855 to 1894 the time of human labor required to produce one bushel of corn on an average declined from four hours and thirty four minutes to forty-one minutes. This was because inventors had given to the farmers of 1894 the gang plow, the disk harrow, the corn planter drawn by horses, and the four-section harrow for pulverizing the top soil; because they had given to the farmer the self-binder drawn by horses to cut the stalks and bind them ; a machine for removing the husks from the ears and in the same operation for cutting the husks, stalks, and blades for feeding, the power being supplied by a steam engine; because they had given to the farmer a marvelous corn sheller, operated by steam and shelling one bushel of corn per minute instead of the old way of corn shelling in which the labor of one man was required for one hundred minutes to do the same work.

Identity and political culture

Rural versus urban remains a factor in American politics. Hal S. Baron argues farmers often were at odds with the dominant worldview. Their localism was rooted in Jeffersonian democracy and its republican ideals. They feared concentrated economic and political power, and distrusted urban ostentation. These looked like potential threats to their own freedom and to the overall American well-being. Such views permeated the Grangers and Populists, as they challenged the dominance of railroads and merchants. Rural America was skeptical of the Country Life Movement when metropolitan do-gooders came in and tried to upgrade them. They warned against the outside experts, who wanted to consolidate schools and replace local control with rule by the elites in the county seat. The Social Gospel did not echo the true Gospel they knew so well. The mixed reception of popular culture and consumerism in rural America further illustrates this tension between rural traditions and modernizing forces. Ever since the battles between Jeffersonian Republicans against Hamiltonian Federalists, the conflict between localism and cosmopolitanism has provided clues to understand the defensiveness of rural America.

Baron argues that better communication between countryside and city has eased the conflict. Nevertheless rural identity, deeply rooted in the land, has profoundly shaped American identity. There is a strong sense of community in rural areas, with residents working to find solutions to problems rather than abandoning their communities. Intellectuals often present rural areas as repositories of traditional American values and ways of life.

President Trump and the rural Republicans

In recent national politics, rural voters have steadily become more Republican. According to Pew Research Center data, Republican Donald Trump won 59% of the rural voters in 2016, and 65% in 2020. He carried rural white voters with 62% in 2016 and 71% in 2020. Exit polls in the 2024 election show that Trump carried 63% of the vote in rural areas, 50% in suburbs, and 37% in cities.

Economics of land and agriculture

The new nation had an abundance of high quality farm land and a severe shortage of laborers. Farm work became family work. After the federal government bought out the Indian tribes (which moved further west), pioneers rushed in to establish farms. The Ohio experience is representative, according to Kevin F. Kern and Gregory S. Wilson. A high priority was to eliminate both the dense forests and the abundant wildlife. The nearest trees were chopped down and the logs used to build the log cabin to live in, along with stacks of firewood. Year by year the other trees were cut down to make fences or burned to produce ash that increased soil fertility. Ohio from 1800 to 1900 went from 95% forest to 10%. At the same time farmers eradicated varmints that posed threats to their own safety, or to livestock, or to crops. Rattlesnakes were an immediate danger to the family. Bears, wolves, and wildcats threatened the cattle, hogs and chickens. Deer, raccoons, and squirrels devoured young crops. Traps and shotguns led to the rapid decline or complete elimination of many species from the landscape. The last wild black bear in Ohio was killed in 1881.

Farm families worked hard and produced almost all their food and clothing, and traded surplus items with neighbors. Typically they exchanged their small surpluses of food or tobacco or rice or lumber for imported items with the country merchant at a nearby crossroads. Or they sold grain to the miller, or sold some cattle or sheep to an itinerant buyer. A long-term priority was clearing the land, expanding the farm, and making plans for the sons to inherit land and the daughters to have a dowry.

In the 20th century rural residents advocated for federal and state help to obtain modern conveniences including rural free mail delivery (1906); paved roads (1920s); electricity (1930s); telephones (1930s); Interstate highways (1950s); and Internet access (21st century).

Land ownership has been central to rural American life, linked to ideals of independence and political influence. Family farms were a dominant feature of rural life for much of American history. Down to the early 20th century, farmers had a priority of establishing their children in farming. After 1920 new technology caused revolution, as horses and mules and hired hands were replaced by powerful machines. Farms were consolidated --a few giant operations replaced dozens of small ones. The family farm was replaced by a locally owned business enterprise. The great majority of children left farming and moved to nearby towns.

Agriculture remains important in the 21st century, with rural America still being the primary source for the nation's food, fuel, and fiber.

Environmental impact

The changing rural economy had an impact on the environment. The first stage of industrialization came in rural towns in New England in the early 19th century when they started to use water power from its rivers to run the machinery in mills that turned wool and cotton into thread and cloth. The result was a pollution of the communal water supply that angered farmers. Likewise new coal and lead mines in rural areas produced waste that polluted the water supply.

In the colonial era, access to natural resources was allocated by individual towns, and disputes over fisheries or land use were resolved at the local level. Changing technologies, however, strained traditional ways of resolving disputes of resource use, and local governments had limited control over powerful special interests. For example, the damming of rivers for mills cut off upriver towns from fisheries; logging and clearing of forest in watersheds harmed local fisheries downstream. In New England, many farmers became uneasy as they noticed clearing of the forest changed stream flows and a decrease in bird population which helped control insects and other pests. These concerns become widely known with the publication of ''Man and Nature'' (1864) by George Perkins Marsh. In the South, the emphasis on tobacco in colonial and early national Virginia and Maryland exhausted the nutrients in the soil, forcing farmers to abandon the old farm and repeat the process on new lands, and repeat every 15 or 20 years.

Country life

In the 21st century issues like limited broadband access, strained educational systems, and economic distress continue to be serious. However, rural areas have also shown resilience and found creative solutions to their problems.

General stores

General stores and itinerant peddlers dominated in rural America until the arrival of the automobile after 1910. Most of the early peddlers were Yankees; after 1859 most were Jewish immigrants.Hasia R. Diner, ''Roads taken: the great Jewish migrations to the new world and the peddlers who forged the way'' (Yale University Press, 2015). Farmers and ranchers depended on general stores that had a limited stock and slow turnover; they made enough profit to stay in operation by selling at high prices. Often farmers would barter butter, cheese, eggs, vegetables or meat which the merchant would resell. Prices were not marked on each item; instead the customer negotiated a price. Men did most of the shopping, since the main criterion was credit rather than quality of goods. Indeed, most customers shopped on credit, paying later when crops or cattle were sold; the owner's ability to judge credit worthiness was vital to his success. The store was often a gathering point for local men to chat, pass around the weekly newspaper, and talk politics.

=Southern country store

=
Outside the South, there were plenty of small towns where merchants and storekeepers could prosper. In the antebellum South there was no counterpart. The American Civil War devastated the rural, as cotton prices fell and the vast sums invested in slaves disappeared overnight. Before the Civil War plantation owners handled the cotton or tobacco matters and met consumer needs of their family and slaves. They dealt directly with wholesalers (called "factors") in far-off cities like Baltimore, Louisville, and St Louis. In poor white areas there were occasional merchants. When slavery was abolished the people urgently needed merchants. Ambitious men suddenly appeared after 1865 and played a leading role in refashioning the economic and social fabric of the South. By 1878, for example, there were 1,468 local merchants in Alabama, or 12 for every 10,000 people. These merchants were diverse in their backgrounds and operations, serving as crucial intermediaries between rural communities and larger markets. Many if not most were Jewish peddlers and merchants from the North. They had a better rapport with Black customers.

Merchants used the newly built railroads to link the rural cotton or tobacco economy to the national economy. They worked with wholesalers in the handful of Southern cities to bring in northern consumer products. Legally they depended on new state laws creating the "crop lien system". The merchant legally owned the entire commercial crop (usually cotton) from planting to harvest. He sold supplies on credit. When the crop was harvested the farmer brought it all to the merchant who then sold it, paid what the farmer owed the owner of the land, cleared the farmer's debt to the store, and returned the surplus if any. By providing credit to the poor white and black farmers, they exerted more influence every week than the white land owners.

The role of the country store extended beyond simple trade. It was a general store that provided a wide range of goods--pills, petticoats and plows and a hundred other items. The local federal post office was inside and there were benches outside for the bystanders. The farmers produced most of their own food, but they did buy necessities. In one Florida store with a largely Black clientele, the items most often purchased were corn, salt pork, sugar, lard, coffee, syrup, rice, flour, cloth, shoes, shotguns, shells, and patent medicines. Everything had a price except the one item in greatest demand: gossip was free.

Merchants took food and meat in trade and resold it. These merchants were not just shopkeepers but also acted as bankers and brokers, extending credit to poor farmers and hand pressed landowners. The customers needed supplies every week, but had an income only at the end of the harvest season. The merchants gave them credit in terms of the expected size of their cotton or tobacco crops, and at harvest time took the crops, sold them and closed their bills. Merchants were the liaison between rural areas and the few cities in the postwar South. They handled the flow of goods, information, and credit. Merchants depended on credit from urban wholesalers, and like the sharecroppers they paid off their own debts with proceeds from the cotton or tobacco harvests.

In the paternalistic mill villages that opened in the South in the late 19th century, the textile mills provided jobs for all family members, rented them cheap housing and paid then −in script they used to buy food and supplies in company stores. Independent merchants were few.

Weekly newspapers

Across the nation in the late 19th century nearly every county seat, and most towns of more than 500 or 1000 population sponsored one or more weekly newspapers. They were printed locally and sent out by mail (postage rates were very low for newspapers). Politics was of major interest, with the editor-owner typically deeply involved in local party organizations. However, the paper also contained local news, and presented literary columns and book excerpts that catered to an emerging middle class literate audience. A typical rural newspaper provided its readers with a substantial source of national and international news and political commentary, typically reprinted from metropolitan newspapers. The wealthy top fourth of the population purchased subscriptions; the rest listened to readings at a nearby store or tavern.

Rural weekly papers often used Patent insides. Instead of printing four pages on the front and back of a large blank sheet of paper, they printed only pages 1 and 4. Pages 2 and 4 arrived already printed, and filled with advertising, essays, fiction, and illustrations. The newsprint was very cheap, and the new content proved attractive to women who did not have time for the heavy dose of politics on page 1.

The major metropolitan daily newspapers prepared weekly editions for circulation to the countryside. Most famously the ''Weekly New York Tribune'' was jammed with political, economic and cultural news and features, and was a major resource for the local Whig and Republican press. It was a window on the international world, and the New York and European cultural scenes.

The expansion of Rural Free Delivery by the U.S. Post Office allowed easier access to daily newspapers to rural areas in the early twentieth century, and increased support for populist parties and positions.

Country religion

Historian Wayne Flynt notes that rural evangelists in the 19th century significantly supported various political movements challenging the established powers. Starting with the Primitive Baptists who aligned with Jacksonian democracy, rural evangelicals provided critical support to several large-scale uprisings towards the end of the 19th century, such as the Greenback Labor Party, the Grangers, Farmers Alliances, and most notably the Populists of the 1890s. Due to this close relationship, the campaigning technique, the thrilling rhetoric, the mode of organization of mass gatherings, and the psychological techniques of these insurgent movements were heavily influenced by the rural evangelical style and its enormous energy. Southern rural evangelists by the hundreds of thousands could serve as a powerful catalyst for both progressive change and rustic radicalism, for social justice, as well as for racism and traditionalism.

In the 20th century Protestant churches remained a strong force, especially in the rural South where evangelical Baptists and fundamentalists dominated. In each locality the leading families controlled the church and selected the pastor. They gave strong support for prohibition.

Farmers organize: Grange and Populism

By the late 19th century, farmer movements emerged, typified by the National Grange. They also created new economic roles, especially in forming coops. In the wheat belts and cotton belts they played the central role the 1890s in the Populist Party. They also tried to use politics to gain advantages regarding their grievances with grain elevators and railroad rates.

The merchants in town and the farmers depended upon each other economically, but there remained a we-versus-them tension. When some issues came up, such as taxes or schools, the merchants sided with the town faction. On the railroad question they were on the same side: both complained that rates they paid for manufactured products coming in and for farm products going out were too high. On the issue of grain elevators, the merchants sided with their fellow businessmen.

1890s: Crisis and recovery

Prosperity collapsed nationwide in 1893-1896, with ruinously low prices for all major farm products. Unemployment soared in the cities. Banks across the land closed down and bankruptcies wiped out assets. Rural America mobilized behind William Jennings Bryan who echoed revivalist religious themes with his powerful denunciation of big business and big banking. He called for "free silver", a device to pump cash into the rural economy to raise prices, regardless of its negative impact on urban wages. Bryan defeated the urban conservatives in the Democratic Party for the nomination, and also picked up the nomination of the faltering Populist Party based among wheat and cotton farmers. He was decisively defeated by the urban vote for William McKinley, who promised that the gold standard and high tariffs would restore prosperity. In Iowa the incoming Republican governor proclaimed in 1898: "Our industrial and financial skies are brightening fterthe experience of unrest, distrust, doubt, fear, disaster, and much of ruin, through which we have passed."

An important demographic pattern emerged in the 1890s and was repeated in the 1930s. In times of nationwide prosperity there was a steady movement from rural to urban America. During economic depressions the flow reversed, as disappointed and unemployed people left the cities and returned to the family farm.

Communal societies

Utopian dreamers were active from time to time in American history. One goal was to create communal societies with strictly enforced rules that would lead each member to perfection. They typically chose rural locales. In the early 19th century famous movements included the Oneida Community in upstate New York and Brook Farm in Massachusetts. Most collapsed after a year or two but two were long lasting. The Shakers began in England and relocated to the U.S. in the 1780s. Rejecting marriage, they multiplied by taking in true believers and orphans, and built numerous colonies in the 1820s-1850s. Great success came to the Mormons, but unlike the other utopians they built new cities. The rural utopians chose rural locales to isolate themselves from traditional society and provide subsistence agriculture. The Shakers opened a new dimension: they were highly imaginative inventors of new technology to improve farm productivity. They developed a whole new profitable industry: packaged garden seeds. These were sold everywhere and enabled anyone to start a backyard garden. 137 communes were founded from the 1787s to 1860. In the early 20th century a few urban communes were established. Almost all these efforts typically collapsed in a year or two as the members quit. There was a surprise renewal in the Counterculture of the 1960s.

20th century

1900-1920: The Golden Age of agriculture

By 1900 prosperity had indeed returned, and a smashing victory against Spain in a short, popular war guaranteed McKinley's landslide reelection against Bryan. The following years to 1919 were unusually prosperous for rural America: prices were high and the value of each acre soared. 1900-1914 was a golden age that rural spokesmen used as the ideal standard for the "doctrine of parity" that shaped federal policy for the rest of the 20th century. After taking inflation into account, the gross farm income doubled from 1900 to 1920, and average annual income (after inflation) rose 40%.

Roads: Farm to town and town to city

In the 19th century rural America made do with poorly maintained muddy dirt roads. According to David R. Wrone, Midwestern roads were as bad in 1910 as they were a century before. They created swirls of dust in the summer, froze into hard grooves in the winter, and transformed into swamps each spring and fall, ensnaring even the strongest horses and the mighty Model T. Agricultural goods could only be sold profitably if they were close to railroad or water transport hubs; carts and wagons couldn't withstand the relentless pressure of the bumpy roads. Farm horses were unable to handle the continuous effort of trudging through mud, and farmers couldn't afford the time to make long journeys.

Farmers did not like taxes so there was a system in which local farmers handled the maintenance of their nearby roads. In 1890-1930 there was a major effort to upgrade the rural road system, with local, state and national funding. Starting in 1908 farmers took the lead in buying Ford Model T automobiles, making it much easier to bring in supplies and haul out items to sell. Further it could pull a plow or connect its powerful motor to mechanical devices in the barn, and it was easy to repair. By 1924, there were 6,500,000 farms nationwide, on which farmers operated 4,200,000 Fords and other brands, as well as 370,000 trucks, and 450,000 tractors.

Even more important was the commitment to intercity roads, which the merchants wanted. The Post Office entered the fray with Rural Free Delivery in 1906, which enabled farmers to order cheap consumer items from fat catalogs sent out by Montgomery Ward and Sears. In 1908 Sears distributed 3.8 million new catalogs across the country. Rural families relocated last year's catalog to the outhouse.

Consolidation of neighboring farms

After 1940 the great majority of small farms were bought out and consolidated in large family-owned corporations. There were family values that played a central role in differentiating those families that managed to stay in farming versus those that were forced to sell out and move to town. Key values were family solidarity, fiscal conservatism, diversification of output, careful innovation, and hard work. German and Scandinavian immigrants, having sold their European farms for cash, were eager to invest and expand their family holdings in America. Conversely Old Stock Yankees were eager to sell out and enjoy the cultural advantages of urban living.

In the far suburbs of most major cities, farming activity sharply declined after 1945. Farms were bought up for suburban development and shopping malls, or purchased to become recreational facilities.

Rural telephone service

AT&T as an urban monopoly usually ignored high-cost low-profit telephone service to farmers. Many small independents operated decentralized, locally owned and locally oriented telephone networks that offered cheaper but mediocre quality service to a small towns and rural areas, and did not provide long distance. By 1912 there were 3200 rural telephone systems, doubling by 1927. Most were not-for-profit cooperatives that were owned by the users who leased the telephones. When the Great Depression hit after 1929 rural farmers were especially likely to discontinue the telephone. In 1949 most farms in the North, but few in the South, had electricity. Nationally only one in three had a telephone. Starting that year, the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) gave out grants and low interest loans to help local independents to expand the telephone service in rural areas.

Southern religion

The South has had a majority of its population adhering to evangelical Protestantism ever since the early 1800s as a result of the Second Great Awakening, The upper classes often stayed Episcopalian or Presbyterian. The First Great Awakening starting in the 1740s and the Second Great Awakening ending in the 1850s generated large numbers of Methodist and Baptist converts. These denominations remain the two main Christian confessions in the South. By 1900, the Southern Baptist Convention had become the largest Protestant denomination in the whole United States with its membership concentrated in rural areas of the South. Baptists are the most common religious group, followed by Methodists, Pentecostals and other denominations. Roman Catholics historically were concentrated in Maryland, Louisiana, and Hispanic areas such as South Texas and South Florida and along the Gulf Coast. The great majority of black Southerners are either Baptist or Methodist. Statistics show that Southern states have the highest religious attendance figures of any region in the United States, constituting the so-called Bible Belt. Pentecostalism has been strong across the South since the late 19th century.

By contrast in the late 20th century urban and suburban South, very large evangelical megachurches emerged. They included tens of thousands of members and numerous clergymen and staffers, all controlled by a charismatic minister whose word is gospel as he promises prosperity to God's people.

Education

Public schooling 1870s-1940s

In 1930, the nation had 238,000 elementary schools, of which 149,000 were one-room schools wherein one teacher simultaneously handled all students, aged 6 to 16. The teacher was typically the daughter of a local farm family. She averaged four years of training in a nearby high school or normal school. On average, she had two and a half years of teaching experience and planned to continue for another two or three years until she married. She had 22 students enrolled, but on average day only 15 were in attendance. She taught 152 days a year, and was paid $874. The students were not divided into grades 1 to 8, but grouped loosely by age. The teacher spent the day moving from group to group, giving them texts to memorize and then listening to their recitations. They did not have homework or tests. The condition of the school buildings ranged from poor to mediocre; they were lucky to have an outhouse. Andrew Gulliford says, "Rural schools were frequently overcrowded, materials were hard to obtain, and repairs and improvements were subject to the financial whims of parsimonious school boards hesitant even to replace dogeared textbooks."

Sharp debates took place in most of the local districts about merging into a consolidated district. Farmers feared loss of control to the experts in towns, and loss of opportunity for their teenage daughters to recoup the family's tax dollars by teaching before getting married.

Iowa lost ground in educational attainment compared to more industrial states, as rural education showed little improvement. Jensen and Friedberger (1976) have examined the impact of education on various socioeconomic factors in Iowa from 1870 to 1930, using individual data from state and federal census manuscripts. Old-stock Protestant populations showed more interest in education than new Catholic or Lutheran immigrants. Household heads were generally less educated than their wives due to demand for women teachers. Family background significantly influenced school attendance and dropout rates. For farmers, education had minimal impact on intergenerational mobility, with inheritance of the family farm being the primary determinant of economic status. In urban areas, education had a more positive effect on economic achievement. Despite the emergence of modern educational mobility channels, traditional opportunities through property accumulation remained more attractive to the average Iowan during this period.

Country life movement

The Country Life Movement was an early 20th century American social movement which sought to improve the living conditions of America's rural residents. It was sponsored by President Theodore Roosevelt and led by Professor Liberty Hyde Bailey. The movement focused on preserving traditional rural lifestyles while addressing poor living conditions and social problems within rural communities. Despite the movement's rural focus, many of its adherents were urbanites who sought to bring progressive changes and technological improvements to rural areas. The main goal was to improve education, with the professionally-run consolidated school replacing the many family-run one-room schools. The movement had little success in changing rural ways of life; its principal successes were the promotion of agricultural extension programs and the development of national organizations to improve rural living.

Medical issues

Malaria and hookworm

The urban-rural dichotomy has a medical dimension.
Two major diseases, malaria and hookworm, historically were largely rural phenomenon. They were stamped out by large-scale efforts to clean up the environment. Malaria is spread by the bite of a particular species of mosquito, and is eradicated by draining stagnant water.

The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission in 1910 discovered that nearly half the rural people in the poorest parts of the warmer parts of the South were infected with hookworms. The worms live in the small intestine, eat the best food, and leave the victim weak and listless. It was called the "germ of laziness." People were infected by walking barefoot, in grassy areas where people defecate. In the long run outhouses and shoes solved the problem. The Commission developed an easy cure. The person took a special medicine, then a strong laxative. When most residents did so the hookworms would be gone. The Commission helped state health departments set up eradication crusades that treated 440,000 people in 578 counties in all 121 Southern states, and ended the epidemic.

Lack of rural medical care

The Flexner Report of 1910 made for a radical change in medical education. It emphasized the importance of high quality. university-based, research oriented medical. education. It had the result of closing down most of the of small proprietary local schools that produced doctors for rural America. In 1938, rural counties with without a city of 2500 people had 69 doctors per 100,000 population, while urban counties with cities of 50,000 or more population had 174. The growing shortage of physicians in rural areas, especially in the South, led to significantly inferior medical care for the populace. Hospital care is still largely based in cities. In 1997, rural areas included 20% of the nation’s population, but fewer than 11% of its physicians.

Even worse was the dire shortage of Black doctors, almost all of whom before the 1960s were produced by two small programs at Howard University and Meharry Medical College.

Historiography

In historiography, rural history is a field of study focusing on the history of societies in rural areas. It is based in academic history departments, state historical societies, and local museums. At its inception, the field was based on the economic history of agriculture. Since the 1980s it has become increasingly influenced by social history and has diverged from the economic and technological focuses of "agricultural history". It can be considered a counterpart to urban history.

A number of academic journals and learned societies exist to promote rural history. H-RURAL is a daily discussion group.

Intellectuals against the city

As Morton White demonstrated in ''The Intellectual versus the City: from Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright'' (1962), the overwhelming consensus of American intellectuals has been hostile to the city. The main idea is the Romantic view that the unspoiled nature of rural America is morally superior to the over civilized cities, which are the natural homes of sharpsters and criminals. American poets did not rhapsodize over the cities. On the contrary they portrayed the metropolis as the ugly scene of economic inequality, crime, drunkenness, prostitution and every variety of immorality. Urbanites were set to rhyme as crafty, overly competitive, artificial, and as having lost too much naturalness and goodness.See also Morton White and Lucia White, "The American intellectual versus the American city." ''Daedalus'' 90.1 (1961): 166-179
online
and Morton White and Lucia White, ''The intellectual versus the city: from Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright'' (Harvard University Press, 1962).

Notes

See also

* American urban history
* Environmental history of the United States
* History of agriculture in the United States

* History of the Jews in the Southern United States
* Public health in American history
* Rural areas in the United States
* Rural electrification#United States
* Rural health
* Rural history, research methods done by historians
* Urban–rural political divide, worldwide patterns
* Tennessee Valley Authority, transformation of rural South after 1930s
* Farm museum
** Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead
** LSU Rural Life Museum, in Louisiana
** New Hampshire Farm Museum
** New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum
** Old World Wisconsin, museum near Milwaukee
** Rural African American Museum, in Louisiana

Further reading

* ''Cyclopedia of American agriculture; a popular survey of agricultural conditions,'' ed by Liberty Hyde Bailey, 4 vol 1907-1909
online
highly useful compendium
* Adams, Jane. ''The Transformation of Rural Life: Southern Illinois, 1890–1990'' (U of North Carolina Press, 1994
online
* Anderson, Rodney, ed. ''The Rural Midwest Since World War II'' (Northern Illinois UP, 2014)
online
* Atherton, Lewis E. "The services of the frontier merchant." ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' 24.2 (1937): 153-170
online
* Atherton, Lewis E. ''The Southern Country Store, 1800-1860'' (LSU Press, 1949
online

* Ayers, Edward L. ''The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction'' (2007
online

* Barron, Hal S. ''Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930'' (1997
online copy of the book
see als
online review of this book
* Benedict, Murray R, ''Farm Policies of the United States, 1790-1950: A Study of Their Origins and Development'' (1953
online
* Bidwell, Percy Wells, and John I. Falconer. ''History of Agriculture in the Northern United States 1620-1860'' (1941
online
* Bollinger, Holly. ''Outhouses'' (2005
online
* Bowers, William L. ''The Country Life Movement in America, 1900-1920'' (1974).
** Bowers, William L. "Country-life reform, 1900-1920: A neglected aspect of Progressive Era history." ''Agricultural History'' 45.3 (1971): 211-221
online
* Browne, William P., et al. ''Sacred cows and hot potatoes: agrarian myths and agricultural policy'' (CRC Press, 2019
online

* Brunner, Edmund deS. ''Village communities'' (1928
online
* Brunner, Edmund deS. ''American agricultural villages'' (1927
online
* Bull, Jacqueline P. “The General Merchant in the Economic History of the New South.” ''Journal of Southern History'' 18#1 (1952), pp. 37–59
online

* Bushman, Richard L. ''The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Cultural History'' (Yale University Press, 2018
online
* Christensen, Karen, and David Levinson, eds. ''The encyclopedia of community: From the village to the virtual world '' (4 vol. Sage, 2003 ) ISBN 0–7619–2598–8

* Conn, Steven. ''The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is—and Isn’t'' (University of Chicago Press, 2023)
* Craig, Steve. ''Out of the Dark: A History of Radio and Rural America'' (2009)
* Cronon, William. '' Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England'' (Hill and Wang, 1983)
* Cronon, William. ''Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West'' (W.W. Norton, 1991), major scholarly study of Chicago's relationship to its vast rural hinterland
* Currid-Halkett, Elizabeth. ''The Overlooked Americans: The Resilience of our Rural Towns '' (2023), quantitative sociology
* Danbom, David B. ''Born in the Country: A History of Rural America'' (3rd ed. 1995
online
focus on economics of farming.
**Danbom, David B. "Rural education reform and the country life movement, 1900-1920." ''Agricultural History'' 53.2 (1979): 462-474
online
* Dant, Sara. ''Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West.'' (University of Nebraska Press, 2023)
online
also se
online book review
* Davis, James C., et al. "Rural America at a Glance: 2023 Edition" ''Economic Information Bulletin No. 261'' November 2023
online from U.S. Department of Agriculture.
* Dollard, John. ''Caste and Class in a Southern Town'' (1937
online
* Eberhardt, Mark Stephen. ''Health, United States, 2001: Urban and rural health chartbook'' (National Center for Health Statistics, 2001
online

* Fink, Deborah. ''Open Country, Iowa: Rural Women, Tradition and Change'' (SUNY Press, 1986)
online
* Fink, Deborah. ''Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1992)
online
* Fite, Gilbert C. ''American Farmers: The New Minority'' (Indiana UP, 1981), covers 20th century
ONLINE
* Fite, Gilbert C. ''Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980'' (1984
online

* Freeman, John F. and Mark E. Uchanski. ''Adapting to the Land: A History of Agriculture in Colorado'' (University Press of Colorado, 2022
online

* Friedberger, Mark. ''Farm Families and Change in 20th-Century America'' (University of Kentucky Press, 2021)
* Fry, C. Luther. ''American Villagers'' (1926
online
heavily statistical.

* Fry, John J. " 'Good Farming–Clear Thinking-Right Living': Midwestern Farm Newspapers, Social Reform, and Rural Readers in the Early Twentieth Century," ''Agricultural History'' (2004) 78#1 pp.34–4
online
* Fuller, Wayne E. ''RFD, the changing face of rural America'' (Indiana UP, 1964
online
* Gates, Paul W. ''The Farmer's Age: Agriculture. 1815-1860'' (1960), a major scholarly economic history

* Gates. Paul W. ''History of Public Land Law Development'' (1968) a major scholarly histor
online

*Gimpel, James G., et al. "The urban–rural gulf in American political behavior." ''Political behavior'' 42 (2020): 1343-1368
online

* Gjerde, Jon. ''The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917'' (1997
online
compares German, Scandinavian and Yankee farmers
* Goreham, Gary A. ''Encyclopedia of Rural America'' (2 vol 1997); 438pp; 232 essays by experts on arts, business, community development, economics, education, environmental issues, family, labor, quality of life, recreation, and sports.
* Hagood, Margaret Jarman. ''Mothers of the South: Portraiture of the White Tenant Farm Woman'' (U of North Carolina Press, 1939).
* Hassinger, Edward W. ''The Rural Component of American Society'' (1978), sociology textbook.
* Hathaway, Dale E. et al. ''People of Rural America'' (Bureau of the Census, 1968) statistical detail from 1960 census
online
* Haystead, Ladd, and Fite, Gilbert C. ''The Agricultural Regions of the United States'' (1955
online
* Hinson, Glenn, and William Ferris, eds. ''Folklife'' (The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, vol 14.) (2009)
* Hirsh, Richard F. ''Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification'' (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022
online review of this book
* Holt, Marilyn Irvin. ''Linoleum, better babies, & the modern farm woman, 1890-1930'' (1995
online
* Hurt, Douglas, ed. ''The Rural South Since World War II'' (1998)
* Jensen, Joan, and Nancy Grey Osterud, eds. ''American Rural and Farm Women in Historical Perspective''
* Jensen, Richard J., and Mark Friedberger. ''Education and Social Structure: An Historical Study of Iowa, 1870-1930'' (The Newberry Library, 1976)
online
* Jones, Robert Leslie. ''History of agriculture in Ohio to 1880'' (1983
online
* Kirschner, Don S. ''City and Country: Rural Responses to Urbanization in the 1920s'' (Greenwood Press, 1970)
* Kirby, Jack Temple. ''Rural Worlds Lost: The American South 1920-1960'' (1987)
* Kulikoff; Allan. ''From British Peasants to Colonial American Farmers'' (2000
online
* Lauck, Jon. "'The Silent Artillery of Time': Understanding Social Change in the Rural Midwest," ''Great Plains Quarterly'' 19 (Fall 1999
online
* Lingeman, Richard. ''Small Town America: A Narrative History, 1620-The Present'' (Putnam, 1980)
* Longworth, Richard C. ''Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism'' (2008
online
* Miller, John E. "Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces Shaping the American Midwest," ''Studies in Midwestern History'' (2015) 1#1 pp.1-10, on push and pull factors as farm boys left home
online
* Miner, Horace. ''Culture and Agriculture: An Anthropological Study of a Corn Belt County'' (1949) in -depth study of Hardin County, Iowa in 1939
online

* Mueller, K.J. "Rural health policy: Past as a prelude to the future". in Sana Loue, and B.E. Quill, (eds.). ''Handbook of Rural Health'' (Kluwer Academic-Penum, 2001) pp. 45–72. ISBN 978-0-306-46479-9.

* Nelson, Lowry. ''Rural Sociology'' (1945
online

* Percy, Thomas C. ''Kansas State Fair'' (Arcadia, 2014
online

* Pritchard, James A. "A Landscape Transformed: Ecosystems and Natural Resources in the Midwest." The Rural Midwest Since World War II, edited by J. L. Anderson, (Cornell UP, 2014), pp. 12–43
online

* Rasmussen, Wayne David. ''Taking the university to the people'' (Iowa State UP, history of agricultural extension wor
online

* Ricketts, Thomas C. "The changing nature of rural health care." ''Annual review of public health'' 21.1 (2000): 639-657
online

* Ricketts, Thomas C., ed. ''Rural health in the United States'' (Oxford UP, 1999
online

* Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela. ed. ''The Routledge History of Rural America'' (2016)
* Russell, Howard S. ''A long, deep furrow: three centuries of farming in New England'' (1976)
* Russo, David J. ''American towns: an interpretive history'' (2001
online
* Saloutos, Theodore, and John D. Hicks. ''Twentieth Century Populism: Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900-1939'' (1951
online
* Saloutos, Theodore ''Farmer movements in the South, 1865-1933'' (1964
online
* Schafer, Joseph. ''The social history of American agriculture'' (1936
online
* Schapsmeier, Edward L., and Frederick H. ''Encyclopedia of American Agricultural History'' (Greenwood, 1975)
* Schob, David E. ''Hired hands and plowboys: farm labor in the Midwest, 1815-60'' (1975), pp. 173–249.
* Shannon, Fred A. ''The Farmer's Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860–1897'' (1945
online
* Sims, Newell Leroy. ''The Rural Community: Ancient and Modern'' (1920
online
* Stray Dog Institute, "The Importance of US Farmers" (November 18, 2021
online

* Taylor, Carl C. ''Rural sociology'' (1933
online
* Tickamyer, Ann, et al. ''Rural Poverty in the United States'' (2017)
* U.S. Department of Agriculture. ''Farmers in a changing world'' (1940) 1240 pp of articles by experts in agriculture and rural lif
online
* Vidich, Arthur J., and Joseph Bensman. ''Small town in mass society; class, power, and religion in a rural community'' (1960), in upstate New Yor
online
* Vogt, Paul L. ''Introduction to rural sociology'' (1922
online
* Walsh, Lorena S. "Urban Amenities and Rural Sufficiency: Living Standards and Consumer Behavior in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1643-1777," ''Journal-of Economic History'' 43#1, (1983), 109-17
online
* Weeden, William Babcock. ''Economic and Social History of New England, 1620-1789'' (1891) 964 pages
online edition

* Whelpton, P.K. "Occupational Groups in the United States, 1820-1920" ''Journal of the American Statistical Association'' 21#155 (1926), pp.335–34
online
* Woodward, C. Vann. ''The Origins of the New South, 1877-1913'' (1951
online
* Wuthnow, Robert. ''The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America'' (Princeton UP, 2018
online
* Wyman, Andrea. ''Rural women teachers in the United States '' (1997
online

Historiography

* Aley, Ginette . " 'Knotted Together like Roots in the Darkness': Rural Midwestern Women and Region: A Bibliographic Guide" ''Agricultural History'' 77#3 (2003), pp. 453-48
online

* Ambrose, Linda M. et al. "Revisiting Rural Women's History" ''Agricultural History'' (2015), 89#3, pp. 380-38
online

* Burton, Orville Vernon. "Reaping What We Sow: Community and Rural History," ''Agricultural History'' 76#4 (2002) pp.631–658
online

* Eagles, C. W. "Urban‐Rural Conflict in the 1920s: A Historiographical Assessment" ''The Historian'', (1986) 49(1), pp.26-48
online

* Fink, Deborah; Valerie Grim and Dorothy Schwieder. "Introduction: Rural and Farm Women in Historical Perspective." ''Agricultural History'' 73#2 (1999), pp. 131-13
online
introduction to special issue.
* Garry, Patrick. "Cherished Lives and Lasting Values: Memoirs of the Rural Midwest." ''Middle West Review'' 10.1 (2023): 183-194. Reviews ten autobiographical memoirs from Midwest
excerpt

* Hurt, R. Douglas. "The Historiography of American Agriculture" ''OAH Magazine of History'' 5#3 (1991) pp.13-17

* Hahn, Stephen, and Jonathan Prude. "Introduction" in Hahn and Prude, eds. ''Essays in the social history of rural America'' (U of North Carolina Press, 1985) pp.3–24.

* Hurt, R. Douglas. "Writing Midwestern State Histories." ''Middle West Review'' 10#1 (2023): 195-201
excerpt

* Merchant, Carolyn. ''The Columbia guide to American environmental history'' (Columbia UP, 2012).
* Swierenga, Robert P. “Theoretical Perspectives on the New Rural History: From Environmentalism to Modernization.” ''Agricultural History'' 56#3 (1982), pp. 495–502
online

Primary sources

* Grant, H. Roger, ed. ''Railroads in the Heartland: Steam and Traction in the Golden Age of Postcards'' (1997) over 100 historic photographs
online
* Kirkpatrick, Ellis Lore. ''The farmer's standard of living: a socio-economic study of 2886 white farm families of selected localities in 11 states'' (1926
online
* Phelan, John, ed. ''Readings in rural sociology'' (1920), about the US
online
* Phillips, Ulrich B. ed. ''Plantation and Frontier Documents, 1649–1863; Illustrative of Industrial History in the Colonial and Antebellum South: Collected from MSS. and Other Rare Sources.'' 2 Volumes. (1909)
online
* Rasmussen, Wayne, ed. ''Agriculture in the United States: A Documentary History'' (4 vol 1975) 2800 pages of primary source
online
* Schmidt, Louis Bernard, ed. ''Readings in the economic history of American agriculture'' (1925
online

* Sorokin, Pitirim ''et al.'', eds. ''A Systematic Sourcebook in Rural Sociology'' (3 vol. 1930), 2000 pages of primary sources and commentary; worldwide coverage
* Williams, James Hickel. ''Our Rural Heritage'' (1925)
online
explores rural roots of psychology of typical Americans.

External links

"H-Rural: H-Net's network for the study of rural and agricultural history
free discussion group

"Lectures in History: Rural America After the Civil War" (CSPAN. 2002)

''Agricultural History'' a leading scholarly journal

Agricultural History Society

331 historic photographs of American farmlands, farmers, farm operations and rural areas; These are pre-1923 and out of copyright.

Upper Mississippi Valley Digital Image Archive
hundreds of photographs of rural life; copyright has expired.

"Literature Review: The History and Future of Rural America" by Amy Hill, Lecturer at Tennessee Tech, 2020).

{{Agriculture in the United States

History of agriculture in the United States
Rural geography
Rural society in the United States