Bogue on Hoover, _A Good Day's Work: An Iowa Farm in the Great Depression_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (October 2007)

Dwight W. Hoover, _A Good Day's Work: An Iowa Farm in the Great 
Depression_. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2007. viii + 211 pp. $26 (cloth), 
ISBN: 978-1-56663-702-2.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Alan G. Bogue, Department of History, 
University of Wisconsin.


This book describes life on the farm of Dwight Hoover's father during 
the 1930's. Migrants from the German Palatinate to Pennsylvania in 
the eighteenth century, thence down the Shenandoah Valley to North 
Carolina, the Hoover family's Quaker antislavery sympathies and 
farming opportunities finally brought them to the Middle West. 
Dwight's great grandfather settled in Iowa Territory in 1845 where he 
obtained well-watered and partly timbered land between the Skunk and 
Des Moines Rivers. There Dwight's grandfather developed a 120-acre 
farm with the help of five sons. The latter also acquired farms and 
at Dwight's birth in 1926 his father operated one hundred acres near 
Oskaloosa, Iowa.

In a short introduction Hoover describes the family history and the 
local area. He explains that the farm of the 1930's was "premodern," 
a "capitalistic enterprise overlaid on a subsistence occupation," 
"that provided its residents with most of their food but also with 
crops that brought needed cash in a market economy" (3-4). Chapters 
dealing with the farm tasks of the spring, summer, autumn, and winter 
provide the backbone of the book. These meticulously describe the 
work of each season including the plants and animals, the labor 
required, methods used, machinery and farm buildings needed, and the 
seasonal clothing -- plus Dwight's reactions. He balked at helping 
castrate young pigs and hated picking maggots off the feces-encrusted 
fannies of lambs. He describes the dangers faced in keeping male 
animals and in using half-broken horses. Hoover's father finished 
feeder lambs each year and Dwight's account is an important 
contribution on a seldom discussed topic. Cooperative labor by the 
brothers in harvesting and other tasks largely solved their needs for 
additional help.

Between and around the seasonal chapters are ones introducing broader 
perspectives. The first of these, "A Family Farm," describes the 
Hoover's base structures, including the house, garage, barns, corn 
crib and other grain storage buildings, hen house and brooder house. 
Most of the farm buildings lacked cement flooring. There was 
electricity in neither house nor barn until 1937. The farm business 
was a mix of enterprises; usually five milk cows and their offspring, 
brood sows and their litters, feeder lambs from the West, and 
chickens, as well as garden and field crops. Forage needs limited the 
area that could be devoted to potential cash crops, such as corn or 
soybeans to some sixty-five acres, but low prices made such 
concentration unprofitable. A relative had provided Hoover's father 
with start up capital but bank credit for expansion was scarce. He 
began farming, his son writes, at the wrong time, acquired land at 
high post-war prices and was caught in the ensuing depression. He 
"made do" until World War II brought a return of prosperity.

The chapter between "Summer" and "Fall" is entitled "An In-Between 
Age." Here Hoover describes the problems involved in adopting 
mechanical engine power and electricity. He provides a brilliant 
analysis of how the purchase of a tractor or conversion to a larger 
dairying enterprise would have affected the farm business, including 
the increase of cash expenditures, changes in cropping emphases, the 
elimination of work stock, the arrangement of fences and fields, and 
the use of farm buildings. For his father, he concludes, "the only 
option seemed to be to begin changing to a modern, tractor-powered 
farm with as little investment as possible while retaining many of 
the elements of an older farming tradition" (89). Had it been 
available, cliometricians who have analyzed agricultural innovation 
would have benefited from reading this chapter.

In another chapter Hoover describes his agricultural education, 
absorbed on his father's farm and from 4-H and Future Farmers of 
America programs. His sheep and swine projects in these activities 
took him into livestock competition at various fairs including the 
Iowa State Fair. A following unit explains his decision to leave 
farming despite his father's wishes. He saw little chance of early 
marriage if he stayed in agriculture. Although liking aspects of 
animal husbandry, he hated the ever present manure, tasks like 
castration and the killing of livestock. Most important was his 
belief that he lacked the mechanical skills that were becoming 
essential in farming. Hoover's final chapter tells of returning to 
Iowa for the fiftieth reunion of his high school class. Few 
recognized him and the trip left him with a feeling of "rootlessness."

Some authors and editors regard accounts of growing up in rural 
America as story telling, the stringing together of anecdotes. 
Trained in intellectual history, Hoover writes as an historian, 
explaining what went on, and how and why. His detailed descriptions 
and explanations of farm practices make this book the best of its 
kind the reviewer has read. Hoover's writing displays a marked 
literary flair and an introspective quality. The illustrations are 
well chosen but less sharp than desirable and committed economic 
historians would have appreciated more economic context. Where, for 
example, did the Hoover farm fit on the Iowa types of farming map of 
that era?[1] What were some of the actual prices that Hoover's father 
received and specific adjustments that he made to counter the 
Depression? And perhaps the author reveals his intellectual history 
background when he explains that the land survey system was 
prescribed in the Northwest Ordinance rather than in the Land 
Ordinance of 1785. This, however, is a first-rate book.

Reference:
C. L. Holmes, _Types of Farming in Iowa_. Iowa State College of 
Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, _Bulletin, No. 256,_ Ames, 1929.


Allan G. Bogue, emeritus professor of history and environmental 
studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has published in the 
fields of American economic and political history and historiography. 
Recent publications include, _The Farm on the North Talbot Road_ 
(Lincoln, 2001) and (with Brian Q. Cannon and Kenneth J. Winkle) 
"Oxen to Organs: Chattel Credit in Springdale Town, 1849-1900," 
_Agricultural History_ 77 (Summer 2003): 420-52.

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