Rural sociology and democratic planning in the third new deal

Agricultural History

Volumn 82, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 422-438

  Gilbert, Jess ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEMOCRACY; LAND USE PLANNING; LOCAL PLANNING; NEIGHBORHOOD; RURAL HISTORY; RURAL PLANNING; RURAL SOCIETY;

EID: 56049097889     PISSN: 00021482     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3098/ah.2008.82.4.422     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. Presidential address given at the annual meeting of the Agricultural History Society, Reno, Nevada, June 19, 2008. I want to thank Dave Gilbert, Christine Hoephner, and Marilyn Sinkewicz for commenting on earlier versions of this paper.
2. Annual Report, Division of Farm Population and Rural Welfare, Bureau of Agricultural Economics (BAE), USDA, Farm Population and Rural Life Activities 15 (Oct. 4, 1941): 18.
3. Arthur F. Raper, Preface to Peasantry: A Tale of Two Black Belt Counties (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1936)
4. Arthur F. Raper, Tenants of the Almighty (New York: Macmillan, 1943).
5. Ellen Sorge Parks, "Experiment in the Democratic Planning of Public Agricultural Activity" (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1948)
6. Richard S. Kirkendall, Social Scientists and Farm Politics in the Age of Roosevelt (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1966).
7. Several historians have presented a third New Deal but they don't discuss agriculture; for example, Barry D. Karl, The Uneasy State: The United States from 1915 to 1945 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 155-81
8. Otis L. Graham Jr., "Franklin Roosevelt and the Intended New Deal," in Essays in Honor of James MacGregor Burns, ed. Michael R. Beschloss and Thomas E. Cronin (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989), 75-95
9. John W. Jeffries, "A 'Third New Deal'? Liberal Policy and the American State, 1937-1945," Journal of Policy History 8:4 (1996): 387-409.
10. I present various aspects of the third agrarian New Deal in "Democratic Planning in Agricultural Policy: The Federal-County Land-Use Planning Program, 1938-1942," Agricultural History 70 (Spring 1996): 233-50
11. "Eastern Urban Liberals and Midwestern Agrarian Intellectuals: Two Group Portraits of Progressives in the New Deal Department of Agriculture," Agricultural History 74 (Spring 2000): 162-80
12. "Agrarian Intellectuals in a Democratizing State: A Collective Biography of USDA Leaders in the Intended New Deal," in The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State, ed. Catherine McNicol Stock and Robert Johnston (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 213-39
13. "Low Modernism and the Agrarian New Deal: A Different Kind of State," in Fighting for the Farm, ed. Jane Adams (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 129-46.
14. Kirkendall, Social Scientists
15. Gilbert, "Democratic Planning." For some contemporary evaluations of the program, see, Bryce Ryan, "Democratic Telesis and County Agricultural Planning," Journal of Farm Economics 22 (Nov. 1940): 691-700
16. John D. Lewis, "Democratic Planning in Agriculture, I," American Political Science Review 35 (Apr. 1941): 232-49
17. John D. Lewis, "Democratic Planning in Agriculture, II," American Political Science Review 35 (June 1941): 454-69
18. Neal C. Gross, "Post Mortem on County Planning," Journal of Farm Economics 25 (Aug. 1943): 644-61.
19. Kirkendall, Social Scientists
20. Gilbert, "Democratic Planning."
21. BAE, Farm Population and Rural Life Activities, 8
22. Charles P. Loomis et al., "Neighborhoods and Communities in County Planning," Rural Sociology 6 (Dec. 1941): 339
23. Charles P. Loomis and Douglas Ensminger, "Governmental Administration and Informal Local Groups," Applied Anthropology 1 (Jan.-Mar. 1942): 48.
24. Until the launch of the Third New Deal, the division was known as Farm Population and Rural Life, a name it resumed in 1947.
25. The definitive history of the division is Olaf F. Larson and Julie N. Zimmerman, Sociology in Government: The Galpin-Taylor Years in the US Department of Agriculture, 1919-1953 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003).
26. For a short version, see, Olaf F. Larson and Julie N. Zimmerman, "The USDA's Bureau of Agricultural Economics and Sociological Studies of Rural Life and Agricultural Issues, 1919-1953," Agricultural History 74 (Spring 2000): 227-40
27. Carl C. Taylor to John S. Page, Dec. 9, 1943, Box 36, Carl C. Taylor Papers, Collection No. 3230, Rare and Manuscript Collections, Carol A. Kroch Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (hereafter Carl C. Taylor Papers).
28. Larson and Zimmerman, Sociology in Government
29. Olaf F. Larson et al., "Dismissal of a Sociologist: The AAUP Report on Carl C. Taylor," Rural Sociology 64 (Dec. 1999): 533-53. 30 Much of my understanding of Taylor comes from working with Margaret M. Christie. See, Christie, "Carl C. Taylor, 'Organic Intellectual' in the New Deal Department of Agriculture" (master's thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1996); and
30. Margaret M. Christie and Jess Gilbert, "'Sociology on the Spot': Carl Taylor and the Division of Farm Population and Farm Life," Paper, Conference on Twentieth-Century Farm Politics, College Park, Md., June 1995, in possession of author.
31. Carl C. Taylor, "Social Theory and Social Action," Rural Sociology 5:1 (1940): 28, 31
32. Carl C. Taylor, "Sociology on the Spot," Rural Sociology 2:4 (1937): 373-81.
33. Carl C. Taylor, "Sociology and Common Sense," American Sociological Review 12 (Feb. 1947): 1.
34. Taylor, "The Implementation of Democracy," Address to Political Sociology Section of the American Sociological Society, Dec. 28, 1941
35. "Comprehensive Yet Logical and Democratic Approaches to Group Planning and Social Planning," Discussion paper at the Rural Sociological Society Annual Meeting, Dec. 1938
36. "The ABC's of the Democratic Process," undated MS, ca. 1940, Box 1, Carl C. Taylor Papers.
37. Taylor, "The ABC's"
38. Memo, "Social Research," Carl C. Taylor to M. L. Wilson, May 28, 1937, Folder A2, M. L. Wilson Papers, Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections, Montana State University Libraries, Bozeman, Mont.
39. Community Organization Section, Division of Farm Population and Rural Welfare, "Service and Research in Community Organization," Sept. 1940, Box 2, Entry A1, RG 83, p. 2, National Archives and Records Administration II, College Park, Md. (hereafter NARA II)
40. BAE, Farm Population and Rural Life Activities, 8.
41. Community Organization Section, "Service and Research in Community Organization," 1 43 BAE, Farm Population and Rural Life Activities, 7-10, 18
42. Douglas Ensminger, "Diagnosing Rural Community Organization," Cornell University, Extension Bulletin No. 444 (1940)
43. Linden S. Dodson et al., "Rural Community Organization in Washington and Frederick Counties, Maryland," University of Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 437 (1940)
44. Linden S. Dodson and Jane Woolley, "Community Organization in Charles County, Maryland," University of Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin No. A21 (1943)
45. Ray E. Wakeley, "Rural Planning: Social and Community Organization Aspects," Rural Sociology 6:1 (1941): 63.
46. Howard W. Beers et al., "Community Land-Use Planning Committees," University of Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 417 (1941): 152-56.
47. Other good examples of community delineation are Irwin T. Sanders and Douglas Ensminger, "Alabama Rural Communities," Alabama College, Bulletin No. 33, 1A (1940) and Dodson et al., "Rural Community Organization."
48. Beers et al., "Community Land-Use Planning," 156-57.
49. Ibid., 157-60.
50. Ibid., 154, 164, 167
51. Loomis et al., "Neighborhoods and Communities," 340
52. Loomis and Ensminger, "Governmental Administration," 47
53. Carl C. Taylor, "Social Science and Social Action in Agriculture," Social Forces 20 (Dec. 1941): 158.
54. A vigorous debate on community delineation went on in the pages of Rural Sociology; the most important articles are Wakeley, "Rural Planning" 57 Rudolf Heberle, "The Application of Fundamental Concepts in Rural Community Studies" 6:3 (1941): 203-15
55. Rudolf Heberle, "Rural Community Studies" 7:2 (1942): 212-16
56. Bryce Ryan, "The Neighborhood as a Unit of Action in Rural Programs" 9:1 (1944): 27-37, including discussion by Rudolf Heberle; and
57. Harold A. Kaufman, "The Limitations of the Neighborhood as a Unit for Organization" 9:1 (1944): 57-59.
58. See, also, Walter M. Kollmorgen and Robert W. Harrison, "The Search for the Rural Community," Agricultural History 20 (Jan. 1946): 1-8.
59. Arthur F. Raper, Tenants of the Almighty, 234-41, 302.
60. On Raper generally, see, Louis Mazzari, Southern Modernist: Arthur Raper from the New Deal to the Cold War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006).
61. On Tenants of the Almighty and its political context, see, Mary Summers, "The New Deal Farm Programs: Looking for Reconstruction in American Agriculture," Agricultural History 74 (Spring 2000): 241-58, where she discusses the role of her mother, then U. T. Miller, who worked as Raper's research assistant two summers in Greene County. I have benefitted greatly from discussions with Mary on this and related topics.
62. Raper, Tenants of the Almighty, 304-309, 385-86.
63. Ibid., 248-53.
64. Ibid., 208-209, 203. For a counterexample to the success in Greene County, see, Sigurd Johansen and Milton Rossoff, "Community Planning in Eddy County, New Mexico," New Mexico Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin No. 297 (1942).
65. Kirkendall, Social Scientists, 195-217
66. Charles M. Hardin, "The Bureau of Agricultural Economics under Fire," Journal of Farm Economics 28 (Aug. 1946): 635-68.
67. See, for example, Clifford M. Kuhn, "'On a Basis of Common Interest': Arthur Raper's Descriptions of America and the Developing World," Paper delivered at the Jubilee Conference of the Historical Association of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa, June 2006 (Kuhn is currently writing a biography of Raper)
68. Sarah T. Phillips, This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 242-83
69. Mazzari, Southern Modernist
70. Arthur F. Raper et al., The Japanese Village in Transition, Natural Resources Section Report No. 136 (Tokyo: General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, 1950)
71. Arthur F. Raper, "Rural Sociologists and Foreign Assignments," Rural Sociology 18:3 (1953): 264-66
72. Carl C. Taylor, "Early Rural Sociological Research in Latin America," Rural Sociology 25:1 (1960): 1-8
73. Carl C. Taylor, "The Development of Rural Sociology Abroad," Rural Sociology 30:4 (1965): 462-73
74. Carl C. Taylor et al., India's Roots of Democracy: A Sociological Analysis of Rural India's Experience in Planned Development Since Independence (Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1965).
75. Nor should I give the impression that rural sociology always fomented progressive change. The demise of critical work in the mid-forties' USDA reverberated politically throughout the land-grant colleges, where most rural sociologists resided. With a few individual exceptions, the field soon became less participatory-democratic and more ideologically conservative, theoretically positivist, methodologically quantitative and statistical. Not for over thirty years, until the late 1970s, did a critical rural sociology arise again in the land-grants and elsewhere (not the USDA) although it presumed it was "new." For excellent overviews of the discipline from this angle, see, Frederick H. Buttel and Howard Newby, eds., The Rural Sociology of the Advanced Societies. Critical Perspectives (Montclair, NJ: Allenheld, Osmun, 1980), especially the introduction; and
76. Frederick H. Buttel et al., The Sociology of Agriculture (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990).