The fruits of natural advantage : making the industrial countryside in California / Steven Stoll.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stoll, Steven, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fruit trade--California.

Fruit trade.

Fruit--California--Marketing.

Fruit.

Horticulture--California.

Horticulture.

Agriculture--Economic aspects--California.

Agriculture.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (309 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [1998]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The once arid valleys and isolated coastal plains of California are today the center of fruit production in the United States. Steven Stoll explains how a class of capitalist farmers made California the nation's leading producer of fruit and created the first industrial countryside in America. This brilliant portrayal of California from 1880 to 1930 traces the origins, evolution, and implications of the fruit industry while providing a window through which to view the entire history of California.Stoll shows how California growers assembled chemicals, corporations, and political influence to bring the most perishable products from the most distant state to the great urban markets of North America. But what began as a compromise between a beneficent environment and intensive cultivation ultimately became threatening to the soil and exploitative of the people who worked it.Invoking history, economics, sociology, agriculture, and environmental studies, Stoll traces the often tragic repercussions of fruit farming and shows how central this story is to the development of the industrial countryside in the twentieth century.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

PROLOGUE: IN THE RAIN'S SHADOW

I. The Conservation of the Countryside

2. Orchard Capitalists

3. Organize and Advertise

4. A Chemical Shield

5. White Men and Cheap Labor

6. Natural Advantages in the National Interest

EPILOGUE: RESTLESS ORCHARD

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-262) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9786612356421

9780520920200

0520920201

9781282356429

1282356429

9780585223131

0585223130

OCLC:

630527941