The Heartland
Page 18
NORTH ATLANTIC CROSSINGS
The selective affinities grafted onto genetic importations fit into the larger politics of scientific agriculture. Along with serving as a means for self-advancement, scientific agriculture can be seen as a kind of alliance for progress that brought agricultural competitors together in opposition to the dread common enemy, hunger. Though potentially a universal alliance, scientific agriculture knit some farmers together more closely than others. It stitched the fortunes of midwestern farmers to those of northern Europe in particular, for despite the kinds of disparaging reports that Dunlap sometimes sent, midwestern farmers generally regarded Europe as the place to turn for the latest, most scientific practice.
On occasion, their search for best practice took midwestern agricultural experts farther afield. The Wisconsin professor Franklin H. King traveled to Korea, China, and Japan to study farming methods, believing these countries to be the only ones “where self-maintaining systems of agriculture have ever been developed.” In his resulting book, Farmers of Forty Centuries (which he lectured on at the University of Illinois), King insisted that East Asian farmers’ seemingly “crude and unprogressive” methods were “by no means unscientific.”155 Professor O. H. Peabody also spread knowledge of Japanese farming methods among the farmers of Champaign County through extension lectures derived from his three-year posting to the Royal Agricultural College in Japan.156 Following a trip to Hong Kong, Burma, Singapore, and India, Congressman McKinley offered thoughts on farming in a newspaper interview: “the American farmer has a great deal to learn from the Chinese farmer in regard to the careful cultivation of the soil. In some of our states in America . . . the crop supply has diminished after a cultivation of fifty years; while in China I find that as high as three crops a year are in some instances raised and gathered from land which has been farmed for about 3,000 years.”157
Such attention to East Asia was more the exception than the rule, however, especially before the twentieth century. More commonly, midwestern farmers regarded Europe as the place to turn to for model scientific practice. In 1898, the Illinois Agriculturist identified Germany, Belgium, and England as particular leaders in scientific farming.158 These nations reportedly had embraced scientific practices from necessity, as relative land shortages and earlier industrialization had made increased yields imperative for agricultural self-sufficiency.159 Scientific agriculturalists insisted that if the United States were to follow Europe in its population growth and industrial development, it, too, would need to invest in scientific agriculture to ensure short-term profits and long-term survival.
Enticing readers with prospects of European-style advancement, U.S. agricultural publications relayed European agricultural discoveries.160 Readers of the Illinois Farmer discovered not only that parasitic mushrooms could trigger bovine abortions, but also that the Belgian Annals of Veterinary Medicine had first printed these findings.161 The Illinois Agriculturist kept readers up to date on German experimental stations’ ration guides for dairy cows.162 In addition to learning about cutting-edge European practices through academic channels, midwestern farmers learned about them from their immigrant neighbors who had studied agriculture—and related fields such as chemistry, botany, and veterinary arts—prior to leaving for America.163
The search for the most advanced agricultural knowledge led a select group of midwestern farmers to study agricultural science in Europe.164 These travelers included one of the founders of the Illinois Industrial University, Willard C. Flagg, who had studied agriculture in Württemberg. His papers on agricultural education contain notes on Agronomie (agriculture), Feldbau (productive land culture), Blattfrüchte (leaf fruit), and Ölgewächse (oil plants).165
More than just knowledge came from Europe: the very structures of knowledge creation and dissemination had European inflections. The Illinois State Agricultural Society, founded in 1853, can be fit into a longer genealogy of such organizations, traceable back to the Highland Society of Scotland, instituted in 1784, and the Royal Agricultural Society of England, established in 1837. The founding of land-grant colleges likewise owes a debt to European agricultural education. Citing the 350 agricultural schools in Europe as of 1851 (three royal academies of agriculture in Prussia alone), the Illinois State Agricultural Society became an early supporter of comparable schools in the United States.166 As the executive committee of the Illinois State Agricultural Society put the case: “We have not one state school of agriculture in the whole Union! . . . While in Great Britain and on the continent of Europe there is no lack of them.”167 “Why should not we profit by these examples?” asked the Illinois Farmer in reference to European agricultural schools.168
Heeding such pleas, the Illinois legislature petitioned Congress to grant land from the public domain for industrial universities.169 Congress got the message. It passed the Morrill Act establishing the land-grant college system in 1862.170 The Illinois Industrial University (which changed its name to the University of Illinois in 1885) was one of the outcomes of this act. Upon its founding in 1867 it consisted of four colleges: Agriculture, Engineering, Natural Science, and Literature.171 Into the 1880s, more than half its students came from farms.172 Illinois faculty reached even more farmers through their agricultural extension programs. Inspired by European models, these programs and related experiment stations strove to publicize the “researches of this country and of Europe in the line of agriculture.”173
Scientific agriculturalists in the United States did not copy European plans word for word. Eugene Davenport, an early dean of the Agricultural College at the University of Illinois, critiqued the exclusively technical nature of leading European programs. Yet his admiration for the ways that European institutions pursued scientific discovery and education affected the way he structured his program, starting with the blueprints.174 For his college’s farm buildings, Davenport chose modern English architecture.175 Faced with the task of furnishing one of these buildings, agronomy professor Cyril G. Hopkins wrote to his contacts at the agricultural research station in Rothamsted, England. Could the researchers there send photographs of themselves “which we could have enlarged and placed in suitable frames and hung upon our walls”? He also solicited a painting “for the ladies’ parlor of our Agricultural Building,” promising that such a painting would be “held in the possession of the University of Illinois as a sacred trust.” Though proud of the new Agricultural Building, and the future research and education it portended, Hopkins hoped to visibly commemorate its debt to England, and, indeed, to increase that debt through soliciting gifts of symbolic value.176
NODES OF EXCHANGE
It did not take long for agricultural universities to become nodal points of informational exchange. In 1877, just a decade after its founding, Illinois trumpeted its “large collection of the best works, both of Europe and America, on all branches of Husbandry, and the best Agricultural Periodicals from both continents.” As titles such as Agronomische Zeitung (agronomic newspaper) and Annales de Pomologie Belge et Étrangère (annals of Belgian and foreign pomology) reveal, many of the journals trickling in were written in German and French—so many so that Hopkins told prospective students that they should have a reading knowledge of German to study for a master’s degree and of French as well for the PhD.177 For handy reference, Hopkins kept books such as Die Rationelle Dungung (rational manuring) and La Question Des Engrais (the fertilizer question) in his office.178
To supplement his library of printed works, Hopkins developed a library of seeds. As an armchair bioprospector, he wrote the Toronto seed purveyor William Rennie for Canada field peas and Black Tartarian, Siberian, and Danish White oats.179 He ordered New Zealand seed oats from a Minnesota company and Chinese Poor Land Corn from a grower in Centralia, Illinois.180 From Burpee & Co. he ordered White Dutch Clover, Japanese Buckwheat, Australian Salt Bush, and Hungarian Millet.181 He procured some of his Klein Wanzleben sugar beet seeds from a grower in Nebraska, from whom he
also requested the pamphlet “A Visit to Klein Wanzleben,” about the German village where the seeds had originated.182 In search of more seeds to test, he ordered “a very good stock” of Braun’s Elite Klein Wanzlebener direct from Germany.183
Although seeds, like publications, frequently arrived through the kinds of straightforward orders that Hopkins placed, they also reached Illinois faculty through social networks.184 Hopkins worked hard to build such relationships: “I have read with very much interest an abstract of your address, ‘Das Nährstoff-Kapital west-deutcher Böden . . .’” (the nutrient capital of west German soil), he wrote to a would-be colleague in Bonn. “I shall be very much pleased to have a complete copy of this publication.” Then a further request: “I wish to ask also if it would be possible to have my name put upon your permanent mailing list . . . In return, I shall be very glad to put your name upon our mailing list so that all of the bulletins which are issued by the University of Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station will be sent to you as they are published.”185
Illinois faculty members developed relationships through face-to-face meetings as well as correspondence. Professor George Espy Morrow traveled to Europe in 1879 to visit the Royal and Highland Agricultural Shows.186 Parasitic fungi expert Thomas Jonathan Burrill held fellowships in several European organizations.187 In 1903, Hopkins apologized for delays in answering the mail, saying in justification that the instructor in farm mechanics was traveling in Europe and his assistant was traveling in Canada.188
Travel begat more travel. Seasoned agronauts brought colleagues along on subsequent trips and offered valuable advice to associates who did not know where to begin.189 Hopkins offered the following counsel: “I believe that you would find the University of Halle or the University of Göttingen the best place for the study of practical and scientific agriculture in Germany, but, unless you are quite familiar with the German language, it would probably be of greater value to you to go to the Durham school of Science or to the Agricultural College at Redding, England.”190 Other seasoned travelers proffered names. Professor Louis H. Smith, an expert in crop production, recommended visits to Prof. von Seelhorst at Göttingen, Prof. Schneidewindt at the Experiment Field at Lauchstedt, Prof. Ramey at Bonn, and Prof. Früworth at Vienna. Smith knew at least some of these scholars personally. “If you go to Halle, I would advise you to call on Prof. F. Wohltmann, who is in charge of the Agricultural Institute . . . It was my privilege to sit under Prof. Wohltmann’s lectures for some time, and also to take a part of my final examinations under him, so that probably he will recall me if you mention my name.”191
The networking carried on in Champaign as well as in Europe. From its early days, the College of Agriculture brought in experts from outside the United States. Some of these experts came to fill faculty positions, including animal husbandry professor W. J. Kennedy, a Canadian who had studied at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph, Dr. Heinrich J. Detmers, a graduate of Berlin’s Royal Veterinary College, and Donald McIntosh, a graduate of the Toronto Veterinary College.192 The German army was able to draft “bacteriological” expert Professor Otto Rahn when he visited Prussia in 1914 because he had grown up there.193
Foreign-born agronomists also came for shorter terms. Celebrated scientists such as Dr. E. von Tschermak of the University of Vienna and Dr. Ruemecker of the University of Breslau visited the College of Agriculture while on U.S. tours.194 Canadians cropped up so frequently in university-sponsored farmers’ institutes that they hardly seemed foreign.195 Their insider status contrasted with that of the Mexican agricultural expert señor Zeferino Dominguez. A prominent landowner, Dominguez had traveled in the United States before the Mexican Revolution, studying midwestern methods of corn raising.196 During the Revolution, he fell into trouble with the dictatorial president, Victoriano Huerta, and landed in jail. According to the Urbana Courier, “All of his scientific manuscripts which were written in Mexican were destroyed.” Thirty years of exhaustive research aimed at aiding Mexican corn growers, gone. In 1916, he escaped from prison and fled to the United States. And then a glorious surprise: he discovered translations of his work in San Antonio. At Davenport’s invitation, Dominguez spoke at the University of Illinois, showing five reels of pictures on corn raising in the United States and Mexico.197
All these investigations and talks and library collections may not seem to be anything extraordinary—that is, after all, what we expect professors and universities to do and enable—but they counter perceptions of midwestern farms as far from the beaten path and of midwestern farmers as guarded against all rivals. In their classrooms, publications, tours, and lectures, scientific agriculturalists exchanged information with considerable commercial value. They did so not only with farmers from Iowa and Michigan, but also with those from other nations, in a cross-border alliance against hunger.
PREPPING FOR THE RACE WAR
Scientific agriculturalists often depicted their alliance as being above politics insofar as it aimed to benefit humanity. Food for all meant peace, not war.198 Since agriculture provided the foundation of civilization, the source of the comfort, happiness, and even existence of “nearly the whole earth’s population,” then advances in agriculture would benefit humankind.199 As the Breeders’ Gazette phrased the matter: “Upon the prosperity of agriculture all human progress is predicated.”200 With such thoughts in mind, a Nova Scotian speaker at the Illinois Farmers’ Institute invoked the “unity and fellowship throughout the entire farming brotherhood.”201
But the “entire farming brotherhood” encompassed by scientific farming did not include all farmers. Indeed, proponents of scientific agriculture believed that agricultural practice revealed civilizational hierarchies. Following the Mexican-American War, the Prairie Farmer claimed that the people of Mexico had fought “just about as well as they plowed, and cultivated”—in other words, not well. Their fields corresponded with their arms. This was more than a coincidence; it evinced a law—that a nation would not advance in civilization much beyond the condition of its agriculture.202 The corollary to the law was implicit: better farming meant greater strength, as demonstrated by military power.
The conviction that agriculture served as a prime benchmark for development maintained its hold as the nineteenth century progressed. Agricultural reports near the end of the century insisted that scientifically minded Anglo-Saxons had taken the lead in agricultural progress, with the “Latin races of Southern Europe” progressing more slowly and Russia lagging further behind.203 The rest of the world rarely surpassed the output of Russian serfs, as seen in the case of the Indian ryots who purportedly clung to antiquated methods, like heathens to their false religion.204
Given the role of agriculture in marking difference and its importance to the exercise of power, scientific agriculture did not stand as aloof from politics as references to human progress implied. Benevolent though an alliance against hunger might appear, in practice it often meant allying with imperial powers and on occasion directly with their colonial agents. Embracing the project of imperial uplift, Hopkins corresponded with the Hope Botanical Gardens in Jamaica and the imperial commissioner of agriculture in Barbados.205 Illinois hosted visitors—such as Bob Bartholomew, an American agricultural missionary in India—who spoke on colonial agronomy.206 By adding publications such as “Fertilizing Sugar Cane in the Hawaiian Islands” to its growing library collections, the College of Agriculture prepped Illinois students for careers in the tropics.207 With their scientific credentials and networks to back them up, Illinois agronauts could join in the great work of plantation management in distant, white-dominated, ecologically different colonies.
An earlier generation of historians would have labeled the ties that scientific agriculture fostered as international; more recent scholarship would suggest the word transnational, since the relationships were not state to state. Both these terms suggest the horizontal relationships of commensurate players, on the fairly level fiel
d of independent nations. Recognizing the vertical roots of agricultural expertise suggests that transimperial may be a better description for these types of alliances. Though centered in the North Atlantic, the alliances forged through scientific agriculture stretched from Tasmania to Barbados and Hawai‘i. For all their pretensions of universality, scientific agriculturalists networked along imperial circuits, in ways that benefited alliance partners more than the “colored” laborers who cut the cane.
Among those who expounded on the political stakes of agricultural alliances was the College of Agriculture dean, Eugene Davenport. Writing against the backdrop of Malthusian concerns, Davenport insisted that agriculture would determine “the final supremacy of races.”208 He elaborated on these convictions in a 1902 speech, one of a number on the topic: “The stubborn fact is, that mankind as a whole has never yet learned how to get enough to eat; that those people who have grown careless of their food supply have somehow dwindled and disappeared from off the earth; and that those who have possessed themselves of good land and have made the most of it have in some way prospered and have gradually possessed themselves of a large share of the earth.”209 Davenport believed that farmers were smack in the center of global struggles for dominance, struggles that over the longue durée would determine the fate of mankind. Without food, there would be no nation, or civilization, or race, and without farmers, no food.
According to Davenport, the day of racial destiny was coming ever closer to hand. “There is to be, in the very near future, a struggle for land and the food it will produce, such as the world has never yet beheld. He who knows where and how to look can see it coming.” Evidence for this coming could be found in “the African activity among western European nations” and European investments in Latin America.210 Illinois might seem to be far from these struggles, but it, too, was at risk. If the “human animal” persisted in doubling “his” numbers every twenty-five years, within a hundred years the United States would hold 1.2 billion people, a hundred million of them in Illinois. The dread prospect of race suicide would not result from a failure in the birth rate—as those who wanted white women to bear more children foretold—but from farmers’ inability to keep up with population growth.211