Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

History

Document Type

Dissertation

Abstract

The farmer is one of the most central characters in American history. Though there have been able histories of the farmer’s evolving economic condition, of rural life, the role of the farmer in politics, and other aspects of American agriculture, the farmer’s precise role in the social drama of the late nineteenth century and his contributions to the United States as it emerged in the twentieth remains only half understood. “Progressive Agrarians and America’s Rural Reformation” resolves that ambiguity by studying the long farmers’ movement. It explains the movement’s origins in the social context of the rural Midwest during the mid-nineteenth century and shows how it spread throughout the country over the following decades. The farmer’s movement consisted of propertied, business-oriented farmers and related professionals who sought to place American agriculture on a systematic basis and to establish public and private institutions to solve farmers’ socio-economic problems. It analyzes the movement’s efforts to establish land-grant colleges, the USDA, and farm organizations like the Grange, Farmers’ Alliance, and Farm Bureau. It traces how participating farmers, which it identifies as “progressive agrarians,” gradually accepted a minority status in the nation in exchange for a set of professional institutions that catered to their needs. Importantly, it dispenses with the longstanding dichotomy between “Populists” and “Progressives,” arguing that progressivism as an ideology and movement was alive in the American countryside as early as the 1850s and that even during the so-called “Progressive Era” farm people remained key contributors. In doing so, it offers a rural perspective on what industrial modernization and urbanization meant for the people and character of the United States.

Date

1-20-2026

Committee Chair

Sheehan-Dean, Aaron

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Available for download on Monday, January 17, 2033

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