The Farmer's Benevolent Trust: Law and Agricultural Cooperation in Industrial America, 1865-1945 / Edition 1

by Victoria Saker Woeste

Overview

Americans have always regarded farming as a special calling, one
imbued with the Jeffersonian values of individualism and self-
sufficiency. As Victoria Saker Woeste demonstrates, farming's
cultural image continued to shape Americans' expectations of
rural society long after industrialization radically transformed
the business of agriculture. Even as farmers enthusiastically
embraced cooperative marketing to create unprecedented industry-
wide monopolies and control prices, they claimed they were simply
preserving their traditional place in society. In fact, the new
legal form of cooperation far outpaced judicial and legislative
developments at both the state and federal levels, resulting in a
legal and political struggle to redefine the place of agriculture
in the industrial market.
Woeste shows that farmers were adept at both borrowing such
legal forms as the corporate trust for their own purposes and
obtaining legislative recognition of the new cooperative style.
In the process, however, the first rule of capitalism—every
person for him- or herself—trumped the traditional principle of
cooperation. After 1922, state and federal law wholly endorsed
cooperation's new form. Indeed, says Woeste, because of its
corporate roots, this model of cooperation fit so neatly with the
regulatory paradigms of the first half of the twentieth century
that it became an essential policy of the modern administrative
state.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807847312
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	09/28/1998
Series:	Studies in Legal History
Edition description:	1
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Victoria Saker Woeste is a research fellow at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I. Cooperation and Agriculture in American Culture, 1865-1910
1. The Farm Problem
2. From Agribusiness to Family Farms

Part II. The Legal Status of Cooperatives, 1865-1914
3. Voluntary Associations or Corporate Combinations?
4. A Growers' Trust
5. Cooperatives and Federal Law

Part III. The Benevolent Trust in Law and Policy, 1912-1928
6. A Ruthless Trust Monopoly
7. Busting the Raisin Trust?
8. Decline of the Benevolent Trust

Part IV. Cooperation in the Industrial Economy, 1920-1945
9. Associationalism and Regulation
10. From Administered Markets to Public Monopoly

Conclusion
Appendix. The Statistical Profile of Small Farms in California, 1850-1940
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Illustrations
Sunkist advertisement, Ladies' Home Journal, February 1919
An early Fresno raisin packing plant, ca. 1890
Raisins drying in the sun, ca. 1900
Raisins drying in sweat boxes, 1940
Armenian immigrants harvesting wine grapes, ca. 1885
Formal portrait of M. Theo Kearney, 1903
Meeting of the California Raisin Growers Association, 1900
Kearney riding in chauffeur-driven limousine, Paris, 1904
James Madison and Wylie M. Giffen in the CARC offices, 1914
James Madison with "Sun-Maid girls," 1916
Early CARC advertisement for Sun-Maid Raisins, December 1915
CARC advertisement, Ladies' Home Journal, October 1917
California Associated Raisin Company brokers and salesmen, 1916
Women workers packing raisins in CARC plant, 1917
Growers signing contracts in CARC offices, 1917
Aerial view of Sun-Maid plant, Fresno, 1936

Maps
1. California agricultural production regions, 1909
2. Fresno County, California, ca. 1920
3. Agricultural colonies in Fresno County, ca. 1875
4. Sun-Maid plants, receiving stations, and unit divisions, 1923

Figures
A.1. Farm Size in Fruit-Growing and Nonfruit-Growing Counties in California, 1910
A.2. Farm Size in Fruit-Growing and Nonfruit-Growing Counties in California, 1920
A.3. Farm Size in Fruit-Growing and Nonfruit-Growing Counties in California, 1930
A.4. Farm Size in Fruit-Growing and Nonfruit-Growing Counties in California, 1940

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"To chronicle this complex history, a scholar must be sophisticated in economics, law, and agricultural politics. Fortunately, Woeste brings a very good level of understanding of these diverse but essential topics to her history. . . . A comprehensive, historical case study of the complex problems--legal, economic, and social--that confronted and still confront American commercial agriculture."--Law and History Review

"An important contribution to economic and business history and one whose main and specific arguments will be debated at length. . . . The study is a valuable contribution to establishing agriculture as a realistic participant in a modernising economy."--Business History

"Woeste skillfully weaves legal, business, and agricultural history. . . . A well researched, well-argued book. . . . An excellent contribution to the study of the transformation of American agriculture during the first part of the twentieth century."--American Historical Review

"Woeste's richly nuanced and tightly argued ten chapters deliver a new understanding of the cooperative movement and horticulture in California. Moreover, by shunning simplistic assumptions she exposes flaws in much theory-based history of agriculture's place in the national market revolution."--Agricultural History

"[A] concise, intelligent study. . . . Unsettles even the most sophisticated reader's sentimental notions about traditional nineteenth-century farm cooperatives. . . . An important contribution to understanding the transformations of agriculture in the twentieth century, through an articulate, detailed, multidisciplinary analysis of legal and social history."--Journal of American History

Editorial Reviews

[S]hunning simplistic assumptions she exposes flaws in much theory-based history of agriculture s place in the national market revolution.

"Agricultural History"

Unsettles even the most sophisticated reader s sentimental notions about traditional nineteenth-century farm cooperatives.

"Journal of American History"

Unsettles even the most sophisticated reader 's sentimental notions about traditional nineteenth-century farm cooperatives.

"Journal of American History"

Unsettles even the most sophisticated reader_s sentimental notions about traditional nineteenth-century farm cooperatives.

"Journal of American History"

Unsettles even the most sophisticated readera[s sentimental notions about traditional nineteenth-century farm cooperatives.

"Journal of American History"

ÝS¨hunning simplistic assumptions she exposes flaws in much theory-based history of agricultures place in the national market revolution.

"Agricultural History"

A comprehensive, historical case study of the complex problems that confronted and still confront American commercial agriculture.

"Law and History Review"

Unsettles even the most sophisticated readers sentimental notions about traditional nineteenth-century farm cooperatives.

"Journal of American History"

"A comprehensive, historical case study of the complex problems that confronted and still confront American commercial agriculture.

"Law and History Review""

An excellent contribution to the study of the transformation of American agriculture during the first part of the twentieth century.

"American Historical Review"

The study is a valuable contribution to establishing agriculture as a realistic participant in a modernising economy.

"Business History"

Unsettles even the most sophisticated readerUs sentimental notions about traditional nineteenth-century farm cooperatives.

"Journal of American History"

From the Publisher