| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture. By Deborah Fitzgerald. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. xii, 242 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-300-08813-2.)

"The farm is a factory. It is operated on exactly the same principles of mass production, cost accounting, specialized machinery and skilled mechanical labor as any great industrial organization in this country." (p. 130)

—Thomas D. Campbell

Early in the twentieth century, leaders in business, government, and agricultural colleges asserted a "logic for agriculture [that] functioned as a matrix of ideas, practices and relationships that persuaded farmers to change the way they did things" (p. 8). Wrapped in an aura of expertise, these new agricultural experts rationalized the agricultural production process, developed tools ("tractors, combines, account books") to speed the process, then provided the metaphors of "the farm as a factory" and "the farmer as a businessman" (p. 189) to justify the inevitable transition from a small-scale entrepreneurial way of life to a highly ordered, efficient, and profitable industrial business.

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