After northern Wisconsin was cleared by commercial loggers early in
the twentieth century, enthusiastic promoters and optimistic
settlers envisioned transforming this "cutover" into a land of
yeoman farmers. Here thousands of families-mostly immigrants or
second-generation Americans-sought to recreate old worlds and build
new farms on land that would come to be considered agriculturally
worthless. In the end, they succumbed not to drought or soil
depletion but to social and political pressures from those who
looked askance at their way of life.
"Farming the Cutover" describes the visions and accomplishments
of these settlers from their own perspective. People of the cutover
managed to forge lives relatively independent of market pressures;
and for this they were characterized as backward by outsiders and
their part of the state was seen as a hideout for organized crime
figures. State and federal planners, county agents, and agriculture
professors eventually determined that the cutover could be
engineered and the lives of its inhabitants improved. By 1940, they
had begun to implement public policies that discouraged farming and
they eventually decided that the region should be depopulated and
the forests replanted.
By exploring the history of an eighteen-county region, Robert
Gough illustrates the travails of farming in "marginal" areas. He
juxtaposes the social history of the farmers with the opinions and
programs of the experts who sought to improve the region, and shows
how what occurred in the Wisconsin cutover anticipated the sweeping
changes that would transform American agriculture after World War
II. "Farming the Cutover" is a readable story of the hopes and
failures of people who struggled to build new lives in an
inhospitable environment. It makes an important counterpoint to
Turnerian myths and the more commonly-told success stories of
farming history.
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