Item Detail
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11481
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1
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0
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English
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Those Who Labor in the Earth : The Families and Farms of Fountain Green, Illinois, 1830-1880
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University of Chicago
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Ph.D. diss.
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"The persistence of family farming has motivated much of the current debate about the nature and timing of capitalism in rural America. The dissertation examines how family farming operated successfully within the dominant mode of capitalist production in the nineteenth-century Midwest. It argues that the expansion of market agriculture was not due to economic factors alone, but to familial values and a local culture which encouraged rather than resisted the opportunities of an expanding economy. The dissertation employs such diverse sources as censuses, tax records, land deeds, wills, church records, newspapers, letters, and general store ledgers. The study opens with the settlement of Fountain Green in Hancock County, Illinois by families from northern, mid-Atlantic, and southern states. Chapter Two exposes the controlling set of communal values--property rights, free market trade, and local self-government--as they were reflected in the Mormon conflict. The third chapter deals explicitly with the family farm as a maturing economic enterprise reliant upon family labor and ties to land. Chapter Four shows how farm families found their place within the social structure and institutions of the larger rural community as dominant groups fostered commercial development. The fifth chapter argues that the Civil War was a fulcrum for change, as rural people adopted the values of a national political culture while the local farm economy was drawn into a national market system. The final three chapters analyze the consequences of competing in a market-driven agricultural economy: tensions within the patriarchal family farm system, agrarian protest, and the decline of rural towns. Contrary to the assumptions inherent in the debate about rural capitalism, the dissertation shows that lineal family values did not inhibit, but rather encouraged market engagement. Indeed, family ties and communal support were vital to success in the market. The decline of rural areas were the logical outcome of the world that farm families were able to shape for themselves. The dissertation can enhance our understanding of the nexus of culture and capitalism in the development of the new industrial order of the nineteenth century." [Author's abstract]