Did New England Go Downhill?
1989; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 79; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/215118
ISSN1931-0846
Autores Tópico(s)American Environmental and Regional History
ResumoEvidence from landscape history and agricultural censuses does not support thesis of a regionwide nineteenth-century decline in farming for New England. On basis of output per farm acre, New England has been one of most productive agricultural regions in United States. Urban and industrial growth and associated changes in rural culture are more important than comparative advantage in explaining actual post-1900 decline in agriculture. THE decline of New England agriculture remains one of best-known, generally accepted themes in American historical geography. Told and retold, tale has become part of region's identity, especially since 1927 publication of article A Town That Has Gone Downhill by James Walter Goldthwait.1 Most New Englanders know something of how farmers abandoned rocky, infertile, hilly fields at first opportunity and migrated to flat, rock-free, fertile of Midwest, which became American breadbasket and heartland. The grid of stone walls running through forests of New England and current lack of much agriculture there reinforce this interpretation and give it stature of common sense. The traditional interpretation of New England agriculture was best summarized in a widely cited couplet attributed to father of Ezra Stiles, an eighteenth-century president of Yale College: Nature out of her boundless store / Threw rocks together, and did no more.2 A popular history published slightly more than a decade ago described nineteenth-century New Englanders as leading a monotonous, bare, subsistence life of marginal, selfsufficient farming.3 Similar interpretations are found in academic works.4 Yet true picture was not so simplistic. Based on analysis of agriculturalcensus data, nineteenth-century landscape views, and contemporary agricultural commentaries, thesis advanced in this article is that longterm geographical pattern for region has been misrepresented. The conventional interpretation has portrayed celebrated decline as inevitable response of a slim resource base to midwestern competition and has distorted timing, size, and significance of decline. * I thank David Lowenthal, Diane Mayerfeld, Joseph Miller, and John Western for reading drafts of this article. ' James Walter Goldthwait, A Town That Has Gone Downhill, Geographical Review 17 (1927): 527552. 2 Cited in Chard Powers Smith, The Housatonic: Puritan River (New York: Rinehart, 1946), 235. 3William F. Robinson, Abandoned New England (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1976), 42, 44. 4Ladd Haystead and Gilbert C. Fite, The Agricultural Regions of United States (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), 29. * MR. BELL is a doctoral candidate jointly in sociology and School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06511. NEW ENGLAND DOWNHILL? 451 THE TRADITIONAL MODEL Between 1927 and 1950, Goldthwait, Harold F. Wilson, John D. Black, and contributors to New England Studies Program of American Geographical Society worked out what could be called traditional model of New England agricultural decline.5 The AGS-sponsored program sought to understand the highly critical state of New England agriculture with particular attention . . . to problems that spring from relations of man to natural elements of topography, rock structure, soil, and climate.6 In later refinements of model, its basic components remained unchanged.7 The model emphasized stoniness and infertility of New England and hardscrabble, subsistence characteristics of its farm economy. It argued that subsistence farming on stony led to early construction of stone walls to clear land for cropping, rapid agricultural decline in region, and finally widespread farm abandonment in preference for midwestern prairie lands. Numerous writers also showed a predilection for social-Darwinist and environmental-determinist explanations of forging of Yankee character amid hard New England hills and subsequent impoverishment of rural stock as decline ensued.8 Several originators of this model had connections with Harvard University, and much of popularity of model must be attributed to a series of dioramas known as Harvard Forest models, put together between 1931 and 1941. The dioramas portray step by step clearing, field abandonment, and subsequent regrowth of Harvard Forest land at Petersham, Massachusetts. Stone walls dominate views, with virtually no wood fencing; walls arise from initial act of clearing land and do not change as dioramas proceed through time (Figs. 1-3). The implication is that walls originated from a land so stony that it had to be cleared of rocks before farming could begin. That image fits well with traditional interpretation of New England as a region extremely poor in natural soil resources. Decent productivity on these rocky, essentially infertile soils was deemed possible only by heavy fertilization.9 5 New England's Prospect 1933 (edited by John K. Wright; New York: American Geographical Society, 1933); John D. Black, The Rural Economy of New England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950); Harold Fisher Wilson, The Hill Country of Northern New England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936); Goldthwait, footnote 1 above. 6 Annual Report of Council, Geographical Review 18 (1928): 318; John K. Wright, New England, Geographical Review 19 (1929): 479-494, reference to 485. 7 Clarence Danhoff, Change in Agriculture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969); Robert Eisenmenger, The Dynamics of Growth in New England's Economy, 1870-1964 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1967); Hugh Raup, The View from John Sanderson's Farm: A Perspective for Use of Land, Forest History 10 (1967): 1-11; Howard S. Russell, A Long Deep Furrow: Three Centuries of Farming in New England (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1976). 8 Black, footnote 5 above, 23; Danhoff, footnote 7 above, 114; Wilson, footnote 5 above, 149-152. 9 Raup, footnote 7 above, 6. 452 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW Advocates of traditional interpretation usually described New England agriculture as declining rapidly subsequent to opening of Erie Canal in 1825 and of railroads shortly thereafter, which allowed production from better agricultural lands of Midwest to compete locally. Depending on area under study, research placed peak of New England agriculture at anywhere from 1830 to 1850.10 Although these authors were aware that dates applied only to specific sites in New England, they were read to be and were intended to be representative. However, one supporter did rather grudgingly note continued vitality of New England agriculture through 1880 at least.12 Before ascendancy of what is now traditional, accepted model of decline, there was a lively debate concerning agricultural capabilities and future of New England. Against interpretations that later became almost totally dominant, supporters of New England agriculture pointed to high yields and good prices that farmers received and argued that farms were productive, competitive, and financially viable.13 As one supporter stated early in twentieth century, We have been obsessed with stale idea that New England was a sucked orange, with respect to its human enterprise and its opportunity.'14 In remainder of this article I present evidence to revive this counterargument. STONE WALLS AND STONY SOILS To anyone familiar with large areas of bare rock, thin soil, and stony till in New England, an argument for high farm productivity may not seem 10 Louis A. Wolfanger, Economic Geography of Gray-Brownerths of Eastern United States, Geographical Review 21 (1931): 276-296; Harvard Forest Models, Fisher Museum of Forestry, Harvard Printing Office, Cambridge, Mass., 1975; Raup, footnote 7 above, 6; Goldthwait, footnote 1 above; Wilson, footnote 5 above. 11 Harold Fisher Wilson, Population Trends in Northwestern New England, 1790-1930, Geographical Review 24 (1934): 272-277, reference to 272. 12 Black, footnote 5 above, 142-144. 13 A. L. Loveland, Life on New England Farms, Cultivator 37 (1872): 99-100; Frederic Hathaway Chase, Is Agriculture Declining in New England?, New England Magazine NS 2 (1890): 448-453; New England: What It Is and What It Is to Be (edited by George French; Boston: Chamber of Commerce,
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