Cultivating machines : the use and maintenance of technology in Midwestern agriculture, 1845-1900 / James Rick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rick, James J. (James Jonathan), Author.

Series:

New approaches to Midwestern studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Agricultural machinery--Middle West--History--19th century.

Agricultural machinery.

Agricultural innovations--Middle West--History--19th century.

Agricultural innovations.

Farm mechanization--Middle West--History--19th century.

Farm mechanization.

Agriculture--Economic aspects--Middle West.

Agriculture.

Physical Description:

xiv, 292 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Other Title:

Use and maintenance of technology in Midwestern agriculture, 1845-1900

Place of Publication:

Athens : Ohio University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, farmers in the midwestern United States and in Ontario began adopting new agricultural machines: threshers, reapers, and drills for more efficient production of grains, as well as sewing and washing machines for more efficient production within the farm household. By using, maintaining, and altering these machines within the natural and social contexts of their farms, rural people produced new technological systems of industrial agriculture. They also struggled with machine manufacturers and their agents for control of those systems--both individually and through farmers' organizations. Cultivating Machines contributes to historiographies of capitalism, technology, and agriculture as it demonstrates the importance of everyday know-how and informed tinkering to the mechanization of grain agriculture. In this study, James Rick moves from the middle decades of the nineteenth century, and the introduction of horse-powered machines, to the end of the century, when mechanized technologies became indispensable and central parts of farms themselves. Ultimately, large-scale wheat production, the increased complexity of machines, the need for replacement parts, and the efforts of manufacturers and their agents to assert themselves as authorities over industrial agriculture diminished the technological independence of farming people"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Technological Systems and Farm Systems : Machines Enter Fields and Homes, 1845-1875x

Risk and Repair : The Precarities of Financial Capitalism, the Mechanical Labor of Industrial Capitalism, and Maintenance, 1845-1875x

The Granger Movement of the 1870s : Farmer Cooperatives Challenge Systems of Machine Purchase and Distribution

My Own Machine : Harvester Tinkering in the 1880s

Parts, Populists, and Experts : New Machines and Maintenance, 1875-1900x.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780821426593

0821426591

OCLC:

1514674078