Author: Reynold M. Wik
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512808466
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
Steam Power on the American Farm
Author: Reynold M. Wik
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512808466
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512808466
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
Steam Power on the American Farm
Author: Reynold Millard Wik
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural machinery
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agricultural machinery
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
American Farm Tools
Author: R. Douglas Hurt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 126
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 126
Book Description
American Farming and Stock Raising
Author: Charles Louis Flint
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 716
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 716
Book Description
Powering American Farms
Author: Richard F. Hirsh
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421443635
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 377
Book Description
The untold story of the power industry's efforts to electrify growing numbers of farms in the years before the creation of Depression-era government programs. Even after decades of retelling, the story of rural electrification in the United States remains dramatic and affecting. As textbooks and popular histories inform us, farmers obtained electric service only because a compassionate federal government established the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The agencies' success in raising the standard of living for millions of Americans contrasted with the failure of the greedy big-city utility companies, which showed little interest in the apparently unprofitable nonurban market. Traditional accounts often describe the nation's population as split in two, separated by access to a magical form of energy: just past cities' limits, a bleak, preindustrial class of citizens endured, literally in near darkness at night and envious of their urban cousins, who enjoyed electrically operated lights, refrigerators, radios, and labor-saving appliances. In Powering American Farms, Richard F. Hirsh challenges the notion that electric utilities neglected rural customers in the years before government intervention. Drawing on previously unexamined resources, Hirsh demonstrates that power firms quadrupled the number of farms obtaining electricity in the years between 1923 and 1933, for example. Though not all corporate managers thought much of the farm business, a cadre of rural electrification advocates established the knowledge base and social infrastructure upon which New Deal organizations later capitalized. The book also suggests that the conventional storyline of rural electrification remains popular because it contains a colorful hero, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and villainous utility magnates, such as Samuel Insull, who make for an engaging—but distorted—narrative. Hirsh describes the evolution of power company managers' thinking in the 1920s and early 1930s—from believing that rural electrification made no economic sense to realizing that serving farmers could mitigate industry-wide problems. This transformation occurred as agricultural engineers in land-grant universities, supported by utilities, demonstrated productive electrical technologies that yielded healthy profits to farmers and companies alike. Gaining confidence in the value of rural electrification, private firms strung wires to more farms than did the REA until 1950, a fact conveniently omitted in conventional accounts. Powering American Farms will interest academic and lay readers of New Deal history, the history of technology, and revisionist historiography.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421443635
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 377
Book Description
The untold story of the power industry's efforts to electrify growing numbers of farms in the years before the creation of Depression-era government programs. Even after decades of retelling, the story of rural electrification in the United States remains dramatic and affecting. As textbooks and popular histories inform us, farmers obtained electric service only because a compassionate federal government established the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The agencies' success in raising the standard of living for millions of Americans contrasted with the failure of the greedy big-city utility companies, which showed little interest in the apparently unprofitable nonurban market. Traditional accounts often describe the nation's population as split in two, separated by access to a magical form of energy: just past cities' limits, a bleak, preindustrial class of citizens endured, literally in near darkness at night and envious of their urban cousins, who enjoyed electrically operated lights, refrigerators, radios, and labor-saving appliances. In Powering American Farms, Richard F. Hirsh challenges the notion that electric utilities neglected rural customers in the years before government intervention. Drawing on previously unexamined resources, Hirsh demonstrates that power firms quadrupled the number of farms obtaining electricity in the years between 1923 and 1933, for example. Though not all corporate managers thought much of the farm business, a cadre of rural electrification advocates established the knowledge base and social infrastructure upon which New Deal organizations later capitalized. The book also suggests that the conventional storyline of rural electrification remains popular because it contains a colorful hero, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and villainous utility magnates, such as Samuel Insull, who make for an engaging—but distorted—narrative. Hirsh describes the evolution of power company managers' thinking in the 1920s and early 1930s—from believing that rural electrification made no economic sense to realizing that serving farmers could mitigate industry-wide problems. This transformation occurred as agricultural engineers in land-grant universities, supported by utilities, demonstrated productive electrical technologies that yielded healthy profits to farmers and companies alike. Gaining confidence in the value of rural electrification, private firms strung wires to more farms than did the REA until 1950, a fact conveniently omitted in conventional accounts. Powering American Farms will interest academic and lay readers of New Deal history, the history of technology, and revisionist historiography.
The American Farm and Home Cyclopedia
Author: Horace R. Allen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 1114
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 1114
Book Description
Henry Ford and Grass-roots America
Author: Reynold M. Wik
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472061938
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
A study of Henry Ford and rural America in the 1920s
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472061938
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
A study of Henry Ford and rural America in the 1920s
The Power Makers
Author: Maury Klein
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1596918349
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 538
Book Description
Maury Klein is one of America's most acclaimed historians of business and society. In The Power Makers, he offers an epic narrative of his greatest subject yet - the "power revolution" that transformed American life in the course of the nineteenth century. The steam engine; the incandescent bulb; the electric motor-inventions such as these replaced backbreaking toil with machine labor and changed every aspect of daily life in the span of a few generations. The cast of characters includes inventors like James Watt, Elihu Thomson, and Nikola Tesla; entrepreneurs like George Westinghouse; savvy businessmen like J.P. Morgan, Samuel Insull, and Charles Coffin of General Electric. Striding among them like a colossus is the figure of Thomas Edison, who was creative genius and business visionary at once. With consummate skill, Klein recreates their discoveries, their stunning triumphs and frequent failures, and their unceasing, bare-knuckled battles in the marketplace. In Klein's hands, their personalities and discoveries leap off the page. The Power Makers is a dazzling saga of inspired invention, dogged persistence, and business competition at its most naked and cutthroat--a biography of America in its most astonishing decades.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1596918349
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 538
Book Description
Maury Klein is one of America's most acclaimed historians of business and society. In The Power Makers, he offers an epic narrative of his greatest subject yet - the "power revolution" that transformed American life in the course of the nineteenth century. The steam engine; the incandescent bulb; the electric motor-inventions such as these replaced backbreaking toil with machine labor and changed every aspect of daily life in the span of a few generations. The cast of characters includes inventors like James Watt, Elihu Thomson, and Nikola Tesla; entrepreneurs like George Westinghouse; savvy businessmen like J.P. Morgan, Samuel Insull, and Charles Coffin of General Electric. Striding among them like a colossus is the figure of Thomas Edison, who was creative genius and business visionary at once. With consummate skill, Klein recreates their discoveries, their stunning triumphs and frequent failures, and their unceasing, bare-knuckled battles in the marketplace. In Klein's hands, their personalities and discoveries leap off the page. The Power Makers is a dazzling saga of inspired invention, dogged persistence, and business competition at its most naked and cutthroat--a biography of America in its most astonishing decades.
Agriculture in the Midwest, 1815-1900
Author: R. Douglas Hurt
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496235622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 569
Book Description
After the War of 1812 and the removal of the region's Indigenous peoples, the American Midwest became a paradoxical land for settlers. Even as many settlers found that the region provided the bountiful life of their dreams, others found disappointment, even failure--and still others suffered social and racial prejudice. In this broad and authoritative survey of midwestern agriculture from the War of 1812 to the turn of the twentieth century, R. Douglas Hurt contends that this region proved to be the country's garden spot and the nation's heart of agricultural production. During these eighty-five years the region transformed from a sparsely settled area to the home of large industrial and commercial cities, including Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Detroit. Still, it remained primarily an agricultural region that promised a better life for many of the people who acquired land, raised crops and livestock, provided for their families, adopted new technologies, and sought political reform to benefit their economic interests. Focusing on the history of midwestern agriculture during wartime, utopian isolation, and colonization as well as political unrest, Hurt contextualizes myriad facets of the region's past to show how agricultural life developed for midwestern farmers--and to reflect on what that meant for the region and nation.
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496235622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 569
Book Description
After the War of 1812 and the removal of the region's Indigenous peoples, the American Midwest became a paradoxical land for settlers. Even as many settlers found that the region provided the bountiful life of their dreams, others found disappointment, even failure--and still others suffered social and racial prejudice. In this broad and authoritative survey of midwestern agriculture from the War of 1812 to the turn of the twentieth century, R. Douglas Hurt contends that this region proved to be the country's garden spot and the nation's heart of agricultural production. During these eighty-five years the region transformed from a sparsely settled area to the home of large industrial and commercial cities, including Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Detroit. Still, it remained primarily an agricultural region that promised a better life for many of the people who acquired land, raised crops and livestock, provided for their families, adopted new technologies, and sought political reform to benefit their economic interests. Focusing on the history of midwestern agriculture during wartime, utopian isolation, and colonization as well as political unrest, Hurt contextualizes myriad facets of the region's past to show how agricultural life developed for midwestern farmers--and to reflect on what that meant for the region and nation.
Where Have All the Horses Gone?
Author: Jonathan V. Levin
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476667136
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
A century ago, horses were ubiquitous in America. They plowed the fields, transported people and goods within and between cities and herded livestock. About a million of them were shipped overseas to serve in World War I. Equine related industries employed vast numbers of stable workers, farriers, wainwrights, harness makers and teamsters. Cities were ringed with fodder-producing farmland, and five-story stables occupied prime real estate in Manhattan. Then, in just a few decades, the horses vanished in a wave of emerging technologies. Those technologies fostered unprecedented economic growth, and with it a culture of recreation and leisure that opened a new place for the horse as an athletic teammate and social companion.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476667136
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
A century ago, horses were ubiquitous in America. They plowed the fields, transported people and goods within and between cities and herded livestock. About a million of them were shipped overseas to serve in World War I. Equine related industries employed vast numbers of stable workers, farriers, wainwrights, harness makers and teamsters. Cities were ringed with fodder-producing farmland, and five-story stables occupied prime real estate in Manhattan. Then, in just a few decades, the horses vanished in a wave of emerging technologies. Those technologies fostered unprecedented economic growth, and with it a culture of recreation and leisure that opened a new place for the horse as an athletic teammate and social companion.