Book Description

Before the Civil War, the livelihood of most Americans was involved in some way with farming. Yet, because of a lack of readily available information on workers, farm labor has long been neglected by historians. Filing a major gap in the history of American agriculture, labor, and the frontier, David Schob studies this distinctive aspect of American life in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota from 1815 to 1860. Through hundreds of details drawn from farmers' records, diaries and letters, county histories, newspapers, and periodicals, Schob evokes the farm laborer as he broke prairies, harvested grain, drained ditches, dug wells, and worked during off-season winter months logging, sawmilling, and pork packing. Farm work varied with the season and with the ethnic background of the hired hands, each group of immigrants introducing its specialized tasks to the region--the Irish as ditchdiggers and trenchers, the Germans as horticulturists, and the Scandinavians as wood choppers. Together, these groups not only contributed to the economic development of the Midwest, but according to Schob, they also accelerated the westward movement of the American frontier. In addition to providing detailed accounts of the workers' duties and way of life, and information on wages, contracts, and working conditions for routine farm employment, the book sheds light on several previously ignored facets of agricultural and labor history: the work of chore boys and hired girls, whose services were equally important to industrious farmers, and the role of free black farm hands, who augmented the white labor force in the harvest fields and the hazardous work of well digging.