U.S. prairie and plains women in the 1920s: A comparison of women, family, and environment

Agricultural History

Volumn 73, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 183-200

  Schwieder, Dorothy ^a   Fink, Deborah ^b  

^a IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GENDER RELATIONS; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; NINETEENTH CENTURY; RURAL SOCIETY; WOMENS STATUS;

UNITED STATES;

EID: 0032818988     PISSN: 00021482     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. The following works have treated the Midwest as a homogenous region in regard to women's domestic activities: Katherine Jellison, Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1919-1963 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Mary Neth, Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900-1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1995); Glenda Riley, The Female Frontier: A Comparative View of Women on the Prairie and the Plains (Lawrence; University Press of Kansas, 1988). Examples of works that have portrayed the plains experience as distinctive include Deborah Fink, Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1992).
2. The following works have treated the Midwest as a homogenous region in regard to women's domestic activities: Katherine Jellison, Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1919-1963 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Mary Neth, Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900-1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1995); Glenda Riley, The Female Frontier: A Comparative View of Women on the Prairie and the Plains (Lawrence; University Press of Kansas, 1988). Examples of works that have portrayed the plains experience as distinctive include Deborah Fink, Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1992).
3. The following works have treated the Midwest as a homogenous region in regard to women's domestic activities: Katherine Jellison, Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1919-1963 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Mary Neth, Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900-1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1995); Glenda Riley, The Female Frontier: A Comparative View of Women on the Prairie and the Plains (Lawrence; University Press of Kansas, 1988). Examples of works that have portrayed the plains experience as distinctive include Deborah Fink, Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1992).
4. The following works have treated the Midwest as a homogenous region in regard to women's domestic activities: Katherine Jellison, Entitled to Power: Farm Women and Technology, 1919-1963 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Mary Neth, Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900-1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1995); Glenda Riley, The Female Frontier: A Comparative View of Women on the Prairie and the Plains (Lawrence; University Press of Kansas, 1988). Examples of works that have portrayed the plains experience as distinctive include Deborah Fink, Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1992).
5. We use the term "subregion" to denote that the Midwest is composed of three different geographical areas: the woodland region in the eastern Midwest, exemplified by Ohio; the prairie region in the center of the Midwest as represented by Iowa: and the plains in the western part of the Midwest as represented by South Dakota. See Dorothy Schwieder, Iowa: The Middle Land (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1996). 36.
6. Schwieder, Iowa: The Middle Land. chaps. 3 and 8.
7. Herbert S. Schell, "Evolution of a Commonwealth," in South Dakota Fifty Years of Progress, 1889-1939, ed. York Sampson (Sioux Falls, S.D.: Golden Anniversary Book Co., 1939), 9, 11.
8. Luther Hill, ed., History of Benton County, Iowa (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1900), 38-40; "Stars in Our Crown: A Brief Sketch of Each County in the Sunshine State Prepared by the Federal Writers' Project Especially for this Book," in South Dakota: Fifty Years of Progress, 96-97. For the two most recent and comprehensive books, on West River, South Dakota, see Paula Nelson. After the West Was Won: Homesteaders and Town-Builders in Western South Dakota, 1900-1917 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986); and Paula Nelson, The Prairie Winnows Out Its Own: The West River Country of South Dakota in the Years of the Depression (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996).
9. Luther Hill, ed., History of Benton County, Iowa (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1900), 38-40; "Stars in Our Crown: A Brief Sketch of Each County in the Sunshine State Prepared by the Federal Writers' Project Especially for this Book," in South Dakota: Fifty Years of Progress, 96-97. For the two most recent and comprehensive books, on West River, South Dakota, see Paula Nelson. After the West Was Won: Homesteaders and Town-Builders in Western South Dakota, 1900-1917 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986); and Paula Nelson, The Prairie Winnows Out Its Own: The West River Country of South Dakota in the Years of the Depression (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996).
10. Luther Hill, ed., History of Benton County, Iowa (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1900), 38-40; "Stars in Our Crown: A Brief Sketch of Each County in the Sunshine State Prepared by the Federal Writers' Project Especially for this Book," in South Dakota: Fifty Years of Progress, 96-97. For the two most recent and comprehensive books, on West River, South Dakota, see Paula Nelson. After the West Was Won: Homesteaders and Town-Builders in Western South Dakota, 1900-1917 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986); and Paula Nelson, The Prairie Winnows Out Its Own: The West River Country of South Dakota in the Years of the Depression (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996).
11. Luther Hill, ed., History of Benton County, Iowa (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1900), 38-40; "Stars in Our Crown: A Brief Sketch of Each County in the Sunshine State Prepared by the Federal Writers' Project Especially for this Book," in South Dakota: Fifty Years of Progress, 96-97. For the two most recent and comprehensive books, on West River, South Dakota, see Paula Nelson. After the West Was Won: Homesteaders and Town-Builders in Western South Dakota, 1900-1917 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986); and Paula Nelson, The Prairie Winnows Out Its Own: The West River Country of South Dakota in the Years of the Depression (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996).
12. Schwieder, Iowa: The Middle Land, chap. 3.
13. Schell, "Evolution of a Commonwealth," 9-11.
14. Ibid.; Herbert S. Schell, History of South Dakota (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968), 346-47.
15. Ibid.; Herbert S. Schell, History of South Dakota (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968), 346-47.
16. Clara Jenson, interviews by Dorothy Schwieder, Presho, S.D., August 1985 and August 1986: Alma Muldoon, interview by Dorothy Schwieder, Nampa, Ida., August 1972; Nora Anderson, interview by Dorothy Schwieder, Presho, S D., June 1998; Early Settlers in Lyman Country (Pierre: State Publishing Company, 1974), 98-99, 200-202. Louise and Tinus Anderson were the maternal grandparents of Dorothy Schwieder.
17. Ibid. George Jenson was a brother of James and a nephew of Louise Anderson. George had relocated in Lyman County along with the Tinus Anderson and James Jenson families.
18. Early Settlers, 58.
19. Nelson, After the West Was Won. 32-33.
20. Early Settlers, 101.
21. Ibid., 98-99. 200-202.
22. For examples of medical difficulties, see Early Settlers, 94, 95, 97, 98, 122; see also Clara Jenson interview, August 1986.
23. Clara Jenson interview, August 1986.
24. The authors wish to thank the staff of the Vinton Public Library, Vinton, Iowa, for making this material available to them.
25. Ruth Gongwer Mumford, interview by Ann Harrison, Benton County, Iowa, 1984, Tape I, pp. 1-3, Vinton Public Library, Vinton, Iowa. The material on the Gongwer family comes from an interview with Ruth Gongwer Mumford, conducted by Ann Harrison, for the Oral History Project conducted jointly by the Vinton American Association of University Women (AAUW), the Benton County Historical Society, and Benton County Cooperative Extension. The interviews focused on twelve women's experiences in Benton County.
26. Schwieder, Iowa: The Middle Land, 153-55.
27. Mumford interview. Tape 1, pp. 29-30.
28. Ibid., Tape II, pp 12-13, 16.
29. Ibid , Tape I, pp. 24-25, 27.
30. Ibid., Tape I, p, 28.
31. Ibid., Tape I, p. 23.
32. Ibid , Tape II, pp. 23-25.
33. Ibid., Tape II, pp. 4. 10.
34. Schwieder, Iowa: The Middle Land, 146-47.
35. Manuscript population census schedules, 1920, Bruce and Homer Townships, Benton County, Iowa, and Lund and Presho Townships, Lyman County, S.D. While the Andersons and Jensons lived in Presho Township, one of the Lyman County townships used for this study, the Gongwer family lived in Fremont Township in Benton County, rather than in either Bruce or Homer Townships. We would have preferred to have located an early-twentieth-century history of a farm family in either Bruce or Homer Townships, but were unable to do so.
36. Fourteenth Census of the United States: Agriculture. Iowa and South Dakota, 1920.
37. Ibid. Although both Homer and Bruce in Benton County and Lund and Presho in Lyman County had farms that were somewhat larger than the county averages, they reflected the general conditions in the two areas: for the whole of Benton County, farms averaged 168 acres, while Lyman County farms averaged 844 acres.
38. Manuscript population census, schedules. 1920.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid. Also see Deborah Fink and Ahcia Carriquiry, "Having Babies or Not: Household Composition and Fertility in Rural Iowa and Nebraska, 1900-1910." Great Plains Quarterly 12 (Summer 1992). 157-68.
41. Manuscript population census schedules, 1920.
42. See Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Home: Its Work and Influence (New York: McClure, Philips, 1903), for a discussion of specialization in women's domestic work. Gilman argues that the lack of specialization in women's lives, whereby each woman did a wide range of daily tasks as opposed to specialized work, hindered women's creative abilities and their development. Men, on the other hand, specialized in their work and therefore had experienced evolution to a higher social and economic plane.