Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T12:49:56.862Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mules in Southern Agriculture: Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2017

Martin A. Garrett Jr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article provides additional empirical evidence concerning the choice of the mule as the dominant draft animal in southern agricultural production in the latter 19th and early 20th century. While the mule was uniquely suited to the crops and climate of the region, two divergent arguments have been presented as to why the mule was the dominant draft animal in southern agricultural production. This research reevaluates these arguments and provides evidence that it was, in fact, the characteristics of this hybrid that made it the preferred draft animal for the South.

Keywords

muleland ownerspart owners, and managersshare tenantssharecroppersprincipal agent problemN51O13Q12Q13
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , December 2001 , pp. 583 - 590
Copyright
Copyright © Southern Agricultural Economics Association 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, W.S., and Hooper, J.J. American jack stock and mule production. Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 212: Lexington KY, 1917.Google Scholar
Bourke, John. On the border with Crook. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Bradley, Melvin. The Missouri mule: his origin and times. Two vol. Columbia, MO. Extension Division, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1993.Google Scholar
Chittenden, W.D. “Horses and mules for farm power.” Breeders Gazette 84 (1923):725.Google Scholar
Danhof Clarence. Change in agriculture: The northern United States, 1820-1870. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Ellenburg, George. “African Americans, mules, and the southern mindscape, 1850-1950.” Agriculture History 72,4(1998):381–97.Google Scholar
Ewing, Floyd. “The mule as a factor in the development of the Southwest.” Arizona and the West 5,4(1963):323–331.Google Scholar
Fraser, Alexander. “The draft mule in the field in Mexico,” American veterinary medical association LII (1917):1273.Google Scholar
Garrett, Martin. “The mule in southern agriculture: a requiem.” The Journal of Economic History 50,4 (1990):925-30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, Martin. “Evidence on the use of oxen in the postbellum South.” Social Science History 22,2(1998):225-49.Google Scholar
Genevose, Eugene. The political economy of slavery: Studies in the economy and society of the slave south. New York: Pathenon Books, 1963 Google Scholar
Gray, Lewis. History of agriculture in the southern United States to 1860. 2 vols. Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1958 Google Scholar
Hood, J. “The mule.” American Farmer 12(1830):33.Google Scholar
Kauffman, Kyle. “Why was the mule used in southern agriculture?: Empirical evidence of principle-agent solutions.” Explorations in Economic History 30,3 (1993):336-51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirby, Jack. Rural worlds lost: the American south, 1920-1960. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Lamb, Robert. The mule in southern agriculture. Berkeley: Greenwood Press, 1963.Google Scholar
Liebowitz, Jonathan. “The presence of draft oxen in Western agriculture.” Material History Review 36,1 (1992):29–37.Google Scholar
Moore, John. The emergence of the cotton kingdom in the old Southwest. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Olsen, John. The occupational structure of plantation slave labor in the late antebellum era. Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1983.Google Scholar
Ried, Joseph. “White land, black labor and agricultural stagnation. The causes and effects of sharecropping in the Postbellum South, Explorations in Economic History 16,1(1979):31–56.Google Scholar
Renner, G. The mule in southern agriculture. Missouri Historical Review 74,2:(1980)44251.Google Scholar
Shannon, Fred. The farmer's last frontier: Agriculture, 1860-1897. New York: Farrar and Rine-hart, Inc., 1945.Google Scholar
Skinner, J. 1820. Address to the agricultural society of Maryland. 2: (Oct.) 238-41.Google Scholar
Thornbury, William. Regional geomorphology of the United States. New York: John Wiley and Sons. 1965 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1896. The Eleventh Census. Report on Farms and Homes: Proprietorship and Indebtedness in the United States.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1890. The Eleventh Census, Statistics of Agriculture. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1890. The Eleventh Census, Statistics of Population. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Warder, J. T. Mule raising, in U.S. Patent Office. Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year 1863. 38th Cong., 1st sess., H. Ex. Doc. 91. Washington: Serial no. 1196 180, 1864.Google Scholar
Welsch, J. “Defending oxen: A reassessment of their role in American agriculture, in exploring our livestock heritage.” Proceedings of the 1988 annual meeting of the American livestock breeds conservancy. Pittsboro, NC: The Conservancy:26–40.Google Scholar