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In Raising Less Corn, More Hell George B. Pyle shows us how the famous breadbasket of America is being bought up by large corporations, who produce less food per acre than the small farmer, push those farmers further into debt, pollute the earth and wear out the soil, and even license the very stuff of life: grain and seed. Meanwhile those farmers are promised a better future if they play ball with the corporations, but caught between the brutal new market and antiquated government support systems, they are forced to grow too much of the wrong crops — crops that will be fed to animals who cannot tolerate them, shipped as dubious "aid" to struggling countries, drive the farmer's take-home pay ever downward, and make us all fatter. Pyle, native Kansan and editorialist for the Salt Lake Tribune , delivers a powerful, learned and lively attack on the status quo and shows us how unless we take a close look at our larder — right now — we risk turning much of rural America into a permanent environmental and economic wasteland. We are feeding ourselves and the rest of the world too much trash, he says, at environmental, ecological, and even security costs that are too high to pay.
'Raising Less Corn And More Hell is more than the living, breathing stories of courageous rural Americans....It is a tribute to the hope that we can and will succeed in preserving what is best in rural America.' Senator Tom Harkin, from the Foreword
Populist singer, Mid-Roader, editor, publisher, wife, mother of eleven, Luna Kellie was a well-informed, fervent member of the Farmers' Alliance movement in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Radicalized by railroad monopolies, corrupt government, recurring drought, heavy mortgages, and a desperate combination of rising costs and falling returns, prairie farmers were turning their energy toward raising "less corn and more hell." Kellie actively sought to organize Nebraska into cooperatives and educate rural people about land, transportation, and money reform. Her compelling, often heartbreaking memoirs--written on the backs of ornate red-and-gold Farmers' Alliance certificates in 1925--give us her own description of how she became motivated to join the Alliance and participate in the Populist party. Kellie writes of her homesteading and political life from the age of eighteen to forty, of failed crops, mortgaged fields, intense hardships, and her devastation at the death of her children. One of the most complete accounts of the Mid-Road political faction available, relevant in many ways to the plight of today's farmers, A Prairie Populist should be read by anyone with an interest in national politics, the farm protest movement, women's studies, and American cultural history.
This book is the first comprehensive biography tracing the captivating life of renowned activist Mary Elizabeth Lease. While Lease is most remembered in American history textbooks as the radical leader of the Populist Party, her influence and involvement in the late-nineteenth-century women's suffrage movement and early-twentieth-century feminist movement place her on par with luminaries such as Susan B. Anthony.
Biography of the first important female politician in America who did much to further the cause of farmers and the Populist Party of the 1890's.
Among Kansas’s many wheat fields lie secrets and hidden stories of heroes and villains that even a fiction author could never devise. It wasn’t just Dorothy Gale of the Wizard of Oz who roamed The Wheat State. Secret Kansas: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure will introduce you to a true cast of characters along with the little-known history of their inventions, deeds, and fame. Learn about the first indigenous woman to argue before the Supreme Court to save her ancestors’ graves from greedy developers. Discover how Frank Bellamy from Cherryvale wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, only to lose his claim to its authorship. Inventions abound in Kansas history such as Mentholatum which had a small role in ending World War II. From Capt. Emil Kapaun who is headed for sainthood to the fraudulent Goat Gland Doctor whose tonics started many entertainers’ careers, there’s no shortage of fascinating anecdotes to choose from. Add to that the countless examples of courageous captains, game-changing women, along with a few ne'er-do-wells whose biographies are chronicled here. Longtime Kansan Roxie Yonkey will unearth the hidden roads and secret passages to unearth the state’s buried treasures. Visitors and lifelong residents alike will find a surprise on every page.
By reputation, Kansas isn't the funniest place on earth. But it has its share of humor. In this book Robert Haywood reveals the lighter side of a state that's too often pegged a collection of sober-minded moralists struggling to find Utopia among the stars. He explores what has passed for humor in good times and bad and divulges what makes Kansans laugh.
Two eminent historians, Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher, present the American West as both frontier and region, real and imagined, old and new, and they show how men and women of all ethnic groups were affected when different cultures met and clashed. Their concise and engaging survey of frontier history traces the story from the first Columbian contacts between Indians and Europeans to the multicultural encounters of the modern Southwest. The book attunes us to the voices of the frontier's many diverse peoples: Indians, struggling to defend their homelands and searching for a way to live with colonialism; the men and women who became immigrants and colonists from all over the world; African Americans, both slave and free; and borderland migrants from Mexico, Canada, and Asian lands. Profusely illustrated with contemporary drawings, posters, and photographs and written in lively and accessible prose, the book not only presents a panoramic view of historical events and characters but also provides fascinating details about such topics as western landscapes, environmental movements, literature, visual arts, and film. Following in the tradition of Hine's earlier acclaimed work, The American West: An Interpretive History, this volume will be an essential resource for scholars, students, and general readers.
U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.
History is often measured by records of great leaders and events. Nicholas P. Hardeman convinces us that American history can be measured but the shaping force of a quiet monarch—corn. In fact, corn was more than king, it was a way of life, and Hardeman enthusiastically demonstrates that in order to understand the settling and development of America we must know about corn and its influence. Perhaps no volume has come closer to the grass roots of pre-twentieth century America. The history of American worship of property, love of the land, and the work ethic has its source in this country’s discovery of the values of corn. When Hardeman speaks of values, he emphasizes the human as equal to the economic values. He describes corn growing in early America from clearing the land through planting, cultivating, and harvesting, as it was done on the single-family farm, once the mainstay of American agriculture. He talks about the problems and the hard work of corn growing that led to an explosion of agricultural innovation, mostly American in origin, in the nineteenth century. The author gives his attention as well to corn’s ancestry and the role of the Indians in developing all six major varieties of corn. He discusses in detail the many uses of corn as food and drink and its scores of nonfood applications. Overall, Hardeman casts a glow on the “picturesque, symmetrical, checkered cornfields” of a time past. Corn was more than a commodity to the pioneer. It was a social phenomenon during every phase of its culture and especially in the husking bee, the most popular event of the entire pioneer era. Corn was integral to nearly all American culture—our language, literature, art, and mythology. “Frontiers have been erased . . . but in the subconscious of our cultural undergirding, they are with us yet—those phantom shocks in measured rows, the clamorous birds spiraling on set wings to waiting grain fields below, the rhythmic thudding of hominy blocks, the creaking of wheels and crackling of corncob fires.”