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‘How can a Poor Man Live?’ Resistance to Capitalist Development in Southern Illinois, 1870–1890.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Jane Adams
Jane Adams
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois, USA.
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Extract

For better than a decade American historians have debated whether or not U.S. farmers were ‘capitalist’ or ‘non-capitalist’ during the nineteenth century. This debate has tended to use market integration as the key index for determining where they should be conceptually located,-although Henretta and Merrill, who fired the opening salvos in the debate, focused more on how farmers understood what they were doing, and Genovese has long insisted that the direct relations of production are the basis for defining specific modes of production. This argument is important not only insofar as it sharpens our knowledge of early American social formations, but also as it aids in interpreting political disputes that occurred on local and national levels.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , April 1992 , pp. 87 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

Notes

1. Merrill, Michael, ‘Cash is Good to Eat: Self-Sufficiency and Exchange in the Rural Economy of the United States’, Mid- Atlantic Radical Historians Newsletter 4 (1977), 42–71Google Scholar; Henretta, James A., ‘Families and Farms: Mentalité in Pre-Industrial America’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., XXV (01 1978), 3–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Genovese, Eugene, The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation (New York, 1969).Google Scholar This debate has been so widely reviewed and commented on that I will not replicate what others have done. See, e.g., Kulikoff, Allan, ‘The Transition to Capitalism in Rural America’, William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Ser., XLVI (1, 1989), 120–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nobles, Gregory, ‘Capitalism in the Countryside: The Transformation of Rural Society in the United States’, Radical History Review 41 (1988), 163–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See especially Bettye Pruitt, Hobbs, ‘Self Sufficiency and the Agricultural Economony of Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts’, William and Mary Quarterly 3rd Ser., XLI (1984), 333–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rothenberg, Winifred B., ‘The Market and Massachusetts Farmers, 1750–1855’, Journal of Economic History LXI (1981), 283–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jensen, Joan, Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750–1850 (New Haven, CT, 1986)Google Scholar who argue for the early importance of market relations and the concomitant development of capitalist dynamics. See Hahn, Steven, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850–1890 (New York, 1983)Google Scholar; Hahn, Steven and Prude, Jonathan, The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985).Google ScholarClark, Christopher, ‘The Household Economy, Market Exchange, and the Rise of Capitalism in the Connecticut Valley, 1800–1860’ Journal of Social History, XII (2, 1979), 169–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Faragher, John Mack, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (New Haven, 1986)Google Scholar; (in a somewhat more problematic manner) Cassity, Michael, Defending a Way of Life (Albany, NY, 1989)Google Scholar; and Vickers, Daniel, ‘Competency and Competition: Economic Culture in Early America’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, XLVII (1, 1990), 3–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar for studies which stress the early importance of non-capitalist forms.

2. Marx, Karl, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, Translated by Jack, Cohen, Edited by Hobsbawm, E. J. (New York, 1964)Google Scholar, and Marx, Karl, Capital, edited by Engles, Frederick (New York, 1967 [1887])Google Scholar, chapters 3 and 4. Taussig, Michael, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism (Chapel Hill, 1979)Google Scholar has explored the ideological consequences of this transformation of a ‘natural’ economy in the Cauca Valley in Colombia into one based on capitalist principles. According to his analysis, those peasants still embedded in pre-capitalist systems of production and exchange understood increasing value (wealth) as being due to nature's fecundity and personal generosity. In contrast, those who engaged in wage labor and who attempted to increase the amount of money they had had engaged in pacts with the Devil, an indication of the profound inversion of ‘natural’ ways of conceiving of production and exchange. Similarly, Burridge, Kenelm, New Heaven, New Earth: A Study in Millenarian Activities (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar writes of the way that the imposition by European colonists of money as a measure of human worth was a radically disorienting experience for Melanesians. Vickers, ‘Competency and Competition’.

3. Howard, Robert P., Illinois: A History of the Prairie State (Grand Rapids, MI, 1972), 84Google Scholar; see also Illinois Libraries 59 (5, 1977)Google Scholar, special issue on Population Centers in Illinois, 1807, containing Illinois Militiamen, August 1, 1790, and squatters in Territorial Illinois, reports of 1807 and 1813.

4. See Gates, Paul W., The Illinois Central Railroad and Its Colonization Work (Cambridge, Mass., 1934).CrossRefGoogle Scholar There are a number of professional and amateur histories and genealogies that document the settlement of the county, which are of varying degrees of accuracy. These include Arthur Clinton Boggess, , The Settlement of Illinois, 1778–1830 (Chicago, IL, Chicago Historical Society's Collection, v. 5. 1908).Google ScholarCondon, Dr. Sidney S., Pioneer Sketches of Union County, Illinois, edited and annotated by Dexter, Darrel from the original articles published in the Jonesboro Gazette (P.O. Box 175, Ullin, IL, 1987 [1871])Google Scholar; Doty, John Hubert, ‘Vancil and Lyerly Families in America’ (in Genealogy Society of Southern Illinois collection, Caterville, IL, n.d.)Google Scholar; Hunsaker, Maurice and Haws, Gwen Hunsaker, Hunsaker Family History (Salt Lake City, UT: Hunsaker Family Organization, Desert News Press, 1967).Google ScholarKarraker, I.O., ‘Flaughtown and Other Union County Water Mills’ (Southern Illinois Historical Society, 1947).Google ScholarKennedy, Sarah Alice, Why Did George Leave? Reminiscences of Mrs. Elizabeth Rendleman (Marion, IL, 1910).Google ScholarSimon, John Y., ‘Union County in 1858 and the Lincoln- Douglas Debate’, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society LXII (3, 1969). 267–92Google Scholar; Smith, George Washington, A History of Southern Illinois: A Narrative Account… (Chicago, 1912).Google ScholarSmoot, Mildred E. and Rife, Loren, Dongola: Then and Now (mimeo pamphlet, 1980).Google Scholar and Webb, Billie Sneed, Randleman, Rendleman, Rintelman Reunion 1981, with members of the Randleman Research Committee (Rendleman, Rintelman) (651 Sherwood Way NE, Corvallis, OR 97330, 1983).Google Scholar Atlases and plat books are also a valuable source of information. These include Griffing, B.N., Atlas of Union County, Illinois (Chigaco, IL: D.J. Lake & Col. 1881).Google ScholarWarner, & Beers, , Proprietors, Atlas of the State of Illinois (Chicago, IL: Union Atlas Co. 1876Google Scholar, reprinted by Mayhill Publications, Knightsown, Ind. 1972). and Illinois State Archives computerization of original land entry records. See also Brush, Daniel Harmon, Growing up with Southern Illinois, 1820–1861, edited by Quaife, Milo Milton (Chicago, 1944).Google Scholar for a detailed account of the early years of the county seat of the neighboring county. For descriptions of the settlement process and social life during the first half of the nineteenth century see also Bardolph, Richard, ‘Illinois Agriculture in Transition 1820–1870’, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 41 (3, 1948). 244–64Google Scholar, and 41 (4, 1948). 415–37; James Hall, Hon. Judge, Letters from the West … (London, 1828Google Scholar, reprinted Gainesville, Fla: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1967). Newton, Milton, ‘Cultural Preadaptation and the Upland South’, Geoscience and Man V (06 10, 1974). 143–54Google Scholar; Oliver, William, Eight Months in Illinois, With Information to Immigrants (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1843, reprinted Chicago, 1924).Google ScholarOtto, J.S. and Anderson, N.E., ‘The Diffusion of Upland South Folk Culture, 1790–1840’, Southeastern Geographer 22 (2, 1982). 89–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Power, Richard Lyle, Planting Corn Belt Culture: The Impress of the Upland Southerner and Yankee in the Old Northwest (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1953).Google Scholar and Rohrbough, Malcom J., The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions 1775–1850 (New York, 1978).Google Scholar Faragher's Sugar Creek describes a region that is comparable to Union County in its period of early settlement, although the two areas diverged in the 1840s. On the term ‘Egypt’ see Howard, , Illinois, p. 163Google Scholar and Brush, , Growing Up With Southern Illinois, p.73Google Scholar; Yankee Notions (weekly issued in Portland, ME, beginning 1828). 6 (03, 1857). 8.Google Scholar

5. Benson, Lee, Merchants, Farmers, and Railroads: Railroad Regulation and New York Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buck, Solon J., The Granger Movement (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1913)Google Scholar, and The Agrarian Crusade: A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921)Google Scholar; Destler, Chester McA., ‘Western Radicalism, 1865–1901: Concepts and Origins’, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 31 (3, 1944), 355–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fine, Nathan, Labor and Farmer Parties in the United States 1828–1928 (New York, Rand School of Social Science, 1928)Google Scholar; Miller, George H., Railroads and the Granger Laws (Madison, 1971)Google Scholar; and Nye, Russel B., Midwestern Progressive Politics: A Historical Study of Its Origins and Development 1870–1958 (Ann Arbor, 1959).Google Scholar

6. Clayton, John, compiler, The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, 1673–1968 (Carbondale, 1970)Google Scholar, Jones, Stanley L., ‘Agrarian Radicalism in Illinois’ Constitutional Convention of 1862’, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society vol. 48 (3, 1955), 271–82.Google Scholar The Grange persists to the present, largely as a rural social club. Its program of forming producer cooperatives was taken over by other organizations during the Populist movement of the 1880s and 1890s.

7. Eugene Havens, A., ‘Capitalist Development in the United States: State, Accumulation, and Agricultural Production Systems’, in Havens, A. E. (ed.), Studies in the Transformation of U.S. Agriculture (Boulder, CO, 1968), pp.26–59Google Scholar; Howe, Carolyn, ‘Farmers' Movements and the Changing Structure of Agriculture’, in Havens, Studies in the Transformation of U.S. Agriculture, pp.104–49Google Scholar; and Scott, Roy V., The Agrarian Movement in Illinois, 1880–1896. Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, vol. 52 (Urbana, 1962).Google Scholar The citations in the Jonesboro Gazette are too numerous to list. Most issues of this weekly newspaper after T.F. Bouton took it over in 1866 (JG 9/29/1866) had columns promoting improved agriculture and technologies and boosting local businesses, as did the weekly, Farmer and Fruitgrower, begun in 1877. See also Perrin, William Henry, History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties (Chicago, 1883) p.377.Google Scholar

8. Bardolph, Richard, Agricultural Literature and the Early Illinois Farmer (Urbana, 1948)Google Scholar; Bowers, William L., The Country Life Movement in America 1900–1920 (Port Washington, NY, 1974)Google Scholar; Scott, Roy V., The Reluctant Farmer: The Rise of Agricultural Extension to 1914 (Urbana, 1970).Google Scholar

9. The development of elements of this new grouping, commercial horticulturalists and orchar- dists, as a self-conscious class, is analyzed in Adams, Jane, ‘Farmer Organization and Class Formation’, Canadian Journal of Anthropology 5(1, 1986), 35–42.Google Scholar

10. For largely parallel discussions, see Barren, Hal S., ‘Rediscovering the Majority: The New Rural History of the Nineteenth Century North, Historical Methods 19 (4, 1986), 141–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hahn, , Roots of Southern PopulismGoogle Scholar; Hahn, and Prude, , The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist TransformationGoogle Scholar; McDonald, Forrest and McWhiney, Gracy, ‘The South from Self-Sufficiency to Peonage: An Interpretation’, American Historical Review 85 (1980), 1095ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Merrill, , ‘Cash is Good to Eat’Google Scholar. It appears that, in the mid-south, as in the plantation South, capitalist relations of production did not develop directly out of existing, colonial relations, as they appear to have, for example, in New England and Pennsylvania (see Jensen, Loosening the BondsGoogle Scholar; Simmler, Lucy, ‘She Came to Work/She Went to Work: The Development of a Female Rural Proletariat in Southeastern Pennsylvania, 1760–1820’, Paper given at Woman and the Transition to Capitalism in Rural America, 1760–1940, (DeKalb, IL 1989).Google Scholar

11. Newton, , ‘Cultural Preadaption and the Upland South’.Google Scholar

12. I have studied closely the histories of two farms, for which I have the abstract. This, together with oral traditions and the original land patent concerning another farm, show claims from the government with almost immediate transfer to a purchaser, suggesting that the land had been cleared and improved, but not patented until the squatter wished to sell. These transactions occured in the 1840s.

13. Brush, Daniel, Growing Up with Southern Illinois, p.56Google Scholar writes of a store owned by his brother-in-law in Brownsville, the county seat of neighboring Jackson County. The date is 1829.

Peltry consisting of deer, coon and other skin, beef hides, venison, hams dried, and feathers in the proper season were current in trade and almost legal tender in payment of debts. Merchants took such articles at about the prices expected for them in the markets and usually came out of the barter with little loss.

The quantity of such peltry that came in was wonderful to me. Thousands of pounds of deer skins, shaved and long-haired, would be delivered in a season with dried venison hams in proportion, coon and muskrat skins in hundreds, with an occasional panther, bear, or wolfskin, while beef hides were numerous and feathers abundant.

The goods sold in the store (p.54) included coffee, sugar, spices, indigo, madder, molasses, and whiskey; dry goods such as calico, unbleached stout cotton goods (‘domestic’), bed ticking, and cotton yarn for warp.

Cotton yarn for warp was a main article of trade, as almost every family, especially the farmers, made Jeans for men's wear, and striped and checked homespun for women's dresses, all cotton, while linsey-woolsey, half cotton and half wool spun and wove at home, was very much made and worn.

For an account of a trading trip to New Orleans in 1835, see pp.86–93. In the 1840s live cattle and hogs, corn, salt pork, wheat, dried fruit, smoked deer hams, and other unlisted items made up the produce taken from farmers in trade (pp.123, 146, 151).

14. Boatman, Wm. J., ‘History of St. John's Lutheran Church’, (ms. in author's possession, 1966)Google Scholar, Elbert, E. Duane, ‘The American Roots of German Lutheranism in Illinois’, Illinois Historical Journal 78(2, 1985), 97–112Google Scholar; Eller, David B., ‘George Wolfe and the ‘Far Western’ Bretheren', Illinois Historical Journal 80 (2, 1987), 85–100Google Scholar; McMahan, Gale S. (ed.), The Southern Baptist Churches in the Clear Creek Baptist Association (Ultica, KY, 1988), pp.284–5Google Scholar; Perrin, , History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Biographies, pp. 286–7.Google Scholar

15. Condon, , Pioneer Sketches, ix.Google Scholar

16. Simon, , Union County in 1858 pp.271–2Google Scholar; see also 1860 Census.

17. These characterizations are drawn from a close reading of the County Court records between 1818 and 1850. The Court licensed tavern keepers, ferry operators, and dram shop operators. They empaneled juries to view proposed mill dams and to site roads.

18. Union County currently has 271,360 acres, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Soil Survey of Union County (n.d. [1976?]), 94. Although floods on the Mississippi have somewhat altered the county's territory, current acreage approximates closely to that of the nineteenth century. Percentages were calculated by dividing enumerated land in farms, etc., by total current acreages.

19. Detailed searches of the 1870 and 1880 census schedules reveal that many people, including large sections of some precincts, were not enumerated. The 1860 census has not been searched for individuals; however, the statistics must be used with caution.

20. These data are drawn from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population, 1860Google Scholar, and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufactures, 1860Google Scholar, manuscript originals in County Clerk's office, Union County Courthouse, Jonesboro. On timbering, see Krause, Bonnie, ‘The Virgin Forest’Google Scholar, ms. program for SIUC Museum exhibit (1983).

21. Most of the land still unclaimed was swampland in the Mississippi Bottoms or was rugged hill country that was exploited for its timber. Much of this land was part of the Illinois Central Railroad grant, purchased by George W. Fithian for $.14 an acre in 1904, and later sold to the U.S. Forest Service (State of Illinois Archives Division, Public Domain Sales Land Tract Record Listing).

22. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture, 1880. Table V, p.80Google Scholar. Tenure figures were not collected prior to 1880. Detailed land holding records are being compiled for future analysis and publication. In the Mississippi bottoms virtually all farm land became held by absentee landlords and tenant farmers developed as the predominant group. Unlike in other parts of the county where most local offices (school and road commissioners, etc.) were held by land-owners, memoirs and oral accounts indicate that (at least by the turn of the twentieth century) tenants held these offices in the Bottoms. See Rendleman, Edith, The Story of My LifeGoogle Scholar, handwritten memoirs; typescript in author's possession from 1976 and 1983 versions; Hill, Mary, Oral History Tape, Summer 1990Google Scholar, SIUC Morris Library Special Collections. A number of oral histories and associated genealogies indicate that many of the people who became tenant farmers emigrated to Union County in the 1870s and 1880s from Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia (Rhodes 1984 oral history tape, Ed Brimm 1990 oral history tape, Jess and Mable Brimm interview 1990, Boyer family genealogy in author's possession).

23. The organization of production has been reconstructed through detailed historical reconstruction of seven Union County farms. See Rendleman, MemoirsGoogle Scholar, and Adams, Jane, Stephens, Jeanette E., and Rich, Ron, ‘The Transformation of Two Substantial Farms in Southern Illinois’, paper given at Illinois Historic Archaeology Conference,Carbondale, IL, 09, 1990.Google Scholar The average number of people in the county in proportion to the number of farms is an indirect indication of the increasing importance of wage labor. In 1870 there were 8.3 people per farm; by 1890 there were 12.1

24. See, e.g., Destler, , ‘Western Radicalism’Google Scholar; Finkleman, Paul, ‘Slavery, the “More Perfect Union”, and the Prairie State’, Illinois Historical Journal 80 (2, 1987), 248–69Google Scholar; Howard, , IllinoisGoogle Scholar; Jones, , ‘Agrarian Radicalism’Google ScholarKlement, Frank L., The Copperheads in the Middle West (Chicago, 1960).Google Scholar

25. Over-zealous members of the U.S. military, on presenting the order to close, destroyed many back issues of the paper. There are, consequently, few issues of the paper prior to 1865 when it resumed publication. There is a virtually complete run since that date.

26. Parks, George E., History of Union County, Illinois, 3 vols. (Anna, IL., 1987), pp.320, 321, 324.Google Scholar Parks’ study of enlistment records shows (p.235) 1,852 Union County men enlisting in the Union army in the period 1861–62, out of an enumerated population of 11,145. He notes that some of these enlistees were probably ‘refugees or workers who enlisted in Union county" although they were not actual residents. His listing (p.324) of Union Countians by regiment (5 principal regiments) lists 1,568.

27. See also Simon, , ‘Union County in 1858’.Google Scholar

28. Mumford, Lewis, The City in History (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Castells, Manuel, The Urban Question (London, 1977)Google Scholar; see also Giddens, Anthony, Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (Berkeley, 1983), esp. chap. 6.Google Scholar

29. During the 1860s and '70s the pages of the Gazette have frequent items by correspondents from these hamlets who write glowingly of the investment possibilities in their communities. These hamlets had been cross-roads settlements of varying importance in the pre-railroad period; with the railroad they remained small trading centers but never became the manufac- turing centers their boosters promoted. See, e.g., JG 10/13/1866, 5/4/1867, 2/23/1867, 9/7/1867, 9/28/1867, 12/28/1867, 12/5/1868, 4/23/1870, 8/20/1870, 9/3/1870, 1/6/1872, 10/25/1873, 12/20/1873.

30. JG 2/21/1874; also JG 3/15/1873, 6/25/1881, 5/7/1887.

31. JG 6/4/1870.

32. JG 7/27/1878.

33. See, e.g., JG 7/18/1874, 7/3/1875, 7/22/1876, 6/23/1877, 6/30/1877, 7/27/1878.

34. JG 7/19/1873.

35. Hahn, , The Roots of Southern Populism, pp.239, 251.Google Scholar

36. See, e.g., Clark, Norman, Deliver us from Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition (New York, 1976)Google Scholar and Bordin, Ruth, Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873–1900 (Philadelphia, 1981).Google Scholar

37. JG 1/20/1872.

38. JG 2/17/1872.

39. Occasionally other concerns contributed to the debate. The reporter for a Farmer's Club meeting of ‘substantial farmers’, wrote of ‘a lively discussion in regard to the frightful mortality among the forest timber during the past two years. It was shown that at least four per cent, of the most valuable white oaks had died during the past season. Should the same continue for the next ten years, our forests will be completely denuded of their most valuable timber. Now what is the cause?… [I]t was shown by a number of members that it is caused by trampling of cattle and the rooting of hogs during the dry weather of the past two seasons.… If the running of large stock is the cause of the death of timber, what an argument in favor of the stock law!’ (JG 11/15/1873). I did not see this argument made subsequently, although Hahn, , in Roots of Southern Populism, p.243Google Scholar, notes that it was commonly used to promote the fencing of domestic stock in Georgia.

40. JG 11/2/1878.

41. JG 11/2/1878.

42. JG 5/28/1887.

43. JG 6/4/1887.

44. JG 5/28/1887.

45. JG 6/4/1887.

46. JG 8/6/1887.

47. e.g. JG 5/31/1890.

48. JG 1/16/1892.

49. JG 1/23/1892.

50. JG 2/27/1892, JG 3/5/1892, JG 3/19/1892.

51. JG 11/11/1893.

52. JG 7/14/1894.

53. See, e.g., JG 6/4/1870, 7/2/1870, 7/16/1870, 8/10/1878, and many more not noted.

54. See, e.g., JG 1/27/1872, 4/22/1876.

55. JG 1/25/1879, JG 2/8/1979.

56. JG 2/8/1879. Wool production rose sharply during the Civil War as the Union Army required large amounts of wool to replace the cotton no longer available. See Bardolph, , Illinois Agriculture in TransitionGoogle Scholar; Cochrane, Willard W., The Development of American Agriculture: A Historical Analysis (Minneapolis, 1979)Google Scholar; Crockett, Norman L., The Woolen Industry of the Midwest (Lexington, 1970)Google Scholar; and Gates, Paul W., Agriculture and the Civil War (New York, 1965)Google Scholar. Union County and other southern Illinois farmers also raised considerable cotton during the war years and continued to do so into the 1870s, despite a relatively short growing season. Part of the decline in sheep raising can be attributed to market shifts following the Civil War.

57. JG 6/25/1881.

58. JG 10/18/1873.

59. JG 11/8/1873, 9/19/1874.

60. In the September 27, 1873, issue, the Dongola correspondent to the Gazette wrote, ‘The November election is arriving close, and the candidates are flocking here to fasten and secure every voter on their behalf. All are good men and want to put down the salary grabbing business, and curtail the expenses of the county. Now, will some good man come forward and run the machine for one year gratis, and for small pay the second year’? A candidate, responding to a candiate who rose to the challenge, responded that ‘no sane man would seek the position without some compensation’ (JG 10/4/1873).

61. An irony of this historical legacy is that Union County roads are now relatively better maintained than those with township organization, due to the way state road funds are allocated. They now go to the county, which uses them to maintain the county road system. Township roads are drastically under-funded, and if a township is poor (as are many rural townships), its roads will be in extreme disrepair. In contrast, Union County is able to allocate its limited funds on the roads that most need them, since all roads are county roads.

62. Buck, Solon J.The Agrarian CrusadeGoogle Scholar; Danhof, Clarence H., Change in Agriculture: The Northern United States, 1820–1870 (Cambridge, Mass, 1969)Google Scholar; File, Gilbert C., American Farmers: The New Minority (Bloomington, 1981)Google Scholar; Hayter, Earl W., The Troubled Farmer, 1850–1900: Rural Adjustment to Industrialization (DeKalb, 1968)Google Scholar; Howe, Carolyn, ‘Farmers’ Movements’Google Scholar; and Taylor, Carl C., The Farmers’ Movement, 1620–1920 (New York, 1953).Google Scholar

63. For a study of one element of this new class, the fruit growers, see Adams, , ‘Farmer Organization and Class Formation’, pp.35–42Google Scholar. See also Adams, Jane, ‘1870s Agrarian Activism in Southern Illinois: Mediator between Two Eras’, Social Science History, in press.Google Scholar