Primary Sources: The 1910's: Agriculture & Food

"Modern Americans, disconnected from the nation’s rural heritage, often imagine farm life of the past as simple and uncomplicated by market pressures. Farmers in the years before World War I, however, faced relentless and thoroughly modern economic stresses and labor conflicts as the scale of their enterprises increased. In the wheat-growing regions of the Midwest and the Great Plains, growing more wheat resulted in lower prices per bushel, ironically increasing costs (for equipment, fertilizer, and labor) and decreasing overall income for farm families. In 1917, viewing wheat production as essential to the war effort, the federal government established price controls for wheat. The plan raised wheat prices, but many Americans, especially those in the labor movement, asked why wheat farmers should be subsidized while wartime laws prevented other workers from seeking higher wages. This 1918 Scribner’s Magazine article answered critics who accused wheat farmers of profiteering, portraying farmers sympathetically, as patriotic businessmen simply trying to make a decent living. " GMU History Matters

"Statistics on women’s work in the early 20th century were invariably misleading: most women worked but only a minority were formally in the wage labor force. Nowhere was the discrepancy between the domestic ideal and the reality of women’s work lives wider than in rural America. In 1913 the U. S. Department of Agriculture decided to investigate and document the lives of farm woman they discovered a vast reservoir of discontent. The report, reproduced here, was culled from letters responding to a questionnaire sent to the wives of farmers and commented on all aspects of rural life, especially the enormous burden of labor that these officially non-working women were expected to carry out."

"During World War I, wartime inflation severely taxed the limited budgets of working-class families. Although wages also rose during the war, they could not keep up with prices. On February 20, 1917, after confronting pushcart peddlers who were charging exorbitant rates for necessities, thousands of women marched to New York’s City Hall to demand relief. The “food riot” precipitated a boycott campaign that eventually forced pushcart prices down. Women in Boston and Philadelphia took similar action." GMU History Matters

"...is a core electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines. Titles published between 1850 and 1950 were selected and ranked by teams of scholars for their great historical importance. The first phase of this project focused on books published between 1850 and 1925 and a small number of journals. Future phases of the project will include books published between 1926 and 1950, as well as additional journals. The full text of these materials, as well as bibliographies and essays on the wide array of subjects relating to Home Economics, are all freely accessible on this site. This is the first time a collection of this scale and scope has been made available." Cornell University

An online collection of books from the HathiTrust Digital Library. It covers "areas in American domestic and commercial life in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Far more than just cookbooks, it contains a wide diversity of materials from the 16th to early 20th centuries - books, ephemera, menus, magazines, graphics, maps, manuscripts, diaries, letters, catalogues, advertisements, and reference works - and is increasingly recognized as a premier collection for the study of culinary Americana"
The original archive is located at the University of Michigan's Clements Library (http://www.clements.umich.edu/longone-archive.php)

"With U.S. entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Herbert Hoover to head the newly created U.S. Food Administration. A mining engineer who had successfully organized the massive effort to get food to Belgium’s citizens after the German army’s sweep through that country in 1914, Hoover was now charged with managing domestic agriculture and conservation in order to feed the U.S. Army and assist Allied armies and civilians. “Food Will Win the War,” declared the Food Administration through its ubiquitous posters and publicity efforts. Planting gardens, observing voluntary rationing, avoiding waste—these efforts at food conservation all came to be known as “Hooverizing.” In a campaign sponsored by the Food Administration, Good Housekeeping magazine published a December 1917 editorial seeking recruits for an army of “kitchen soldiers.” The editorial portrayed women’s domestic work as part of the U.S. military effort and solicited women’s direct participation, asking readers to sign a pledge to conserve food." GMU History Matters

"With U.S. entry into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Herbert Hoover to head the newly created U.S. Food Administration. A mining engineer who had successfully organized the massive effort to get food to Belgium’s citizens after the German army’s sweep through that country in 1914, Hoover was now charged with managing domestic agriculture and conservation in order to feed the U.S. Army and assist Allied armies and civilians. “Food Will Win the War,” declared the Food Administration through its ubiquitous posters and publicity efforts. Planting gardens, observing voluntary rationing, avoiding waste—these efforts at food conservation all came to be known as “Hooverizing.” Women’s magazines also took up the home conservation crusade. Good Housekeeping printed menus, offering housewives directions for preparing tasty meals that met conservation standards. Contributed by readers, this “month’s worth of recipes” printed in August 1917 demonstrated conservation in action, as well as women’s ingenuity in redesigning menus to observe rationing guidelines."

"Although most people associate rationing with the Second World War, state and federal ration programs were first implemented in World War I--many of which were pioneered in Wisconsin. Wisconsin became the first state to organize both state and county-level Councils of Defense which helped to educate citizens about the war and necessary sacrifices. As an agricultural state, Wisconsin's State Council of Defense was particularly interested in solving the national food crisis that developed in 1917. Council chairman Magnus Swenson began vigorously promoting food conservation through the cultivation of home gardens and institution of meatless and wheatless days. When Congress appointed Herbert Hoover to lead the newly formed federal Food Administration, Hoover not only adopted many of Swenson's policies but also made Swenson the the food administrator of Wisconsin. These documents, released by the Wisconsin Food Administration in March and April of 1918, report on the varying efforts at conservation both in Wisconsin and also nationally, as Wisconsin citizens responded to shortages."

"Farmers in the years before World War I faced thoroughly modern economic stresses and labor conflicts as the scale of their enterprises increased. By World War I, Midwestern and Great Plains farmers had come to rely on large pools of seasonal migrant labor, mostly unemployed urban workers from Chicago and other Midwestern cities, to harvest wheat or corn. Workers faced long hours and low wages, isolated in temporary camps without permanent homes or meeting places. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union attempted to organize these “harvest stiffs.” The radical “Wobblies” argued that wheat farmers were businessmen in a protected industry who, thanks to wartime government price supports, reaped large profits and returned none of that wealth to those who actually harvested their crop. E. F. Doree, an IWW organizer, described in detail the difficult conditions migrants faced and mocked the idea of rural work as wholesome and benevolent with the famous joke that in the wheat states, the “eight-hour work day” prevailed—“eight hours in the forenoon, eight hours in the afternoon.”" GMU History Matters

"Rationing was one way that World War I affected people on the home front. Seeking to manage domestic consumption in order to feed the U.S. Army and to assist Allied armies and civilians., the U.S. Food Administration declared “Food Will Win the War.” In this droll reminiscence, Ethel George recalled one kind of home-front conservation effort: the hard work of chewing whole-grain foods. Born in 1903, George told her story to John Terreo, who interviewed her for the New Deal Oral History Project of the Montana Historical Society."

"In 1915, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) established a branch union, the Agricultural Workers' Organization (AWO). The AWO organized temporary harvesters, known as “harvest stiffs,” in railroad yards, migrant camps, and shelters. At its height in 1917 the AWO had more than 70,000 members, but like the IWW it was undermined by President Woodrow Wilson’s wartime attack on dissent and by local vigilante organizations. The AWO, like its parent organization, used folksongs, stories, and poetry to spread its message to migrants. One such song, “Harvest Land,” by “TD and H,” first appeared in the Little Red Songbook, a free booklet that IWW members regularly distributed to organizers and workers. Like most IWW songs, it set satirical lyrics to popular or traditional tunes, in this case “Beulah Land.” "Harvest Land“ attacked ”John Farmer" for recruiting laborers with false promises, and it urged workers to withhold their labor until they received better wages."