All progress in capitalistic agriculture
is a progress in the art, not only
Of robbing the laborer, but of robbing
the soil.
- Karl Marx (Worchester 1)
American settlers couldn't rest after they took their places within the Great Plains; they now had to live every day with the violent natural world they thought they had conquered.
For more on natural disasters on the plains, seeJen Dondlinger's paper.
This daily endurance of natural disasters, great and small, bred a Midwestern culture distinct among the many regional folkways of America - a culture that many believe still survives today and manifests itself in the work ethic of modern Midwesterners (Worchester 3). When Americans settled the plains, they thought they could get away with the slash and burn methods they used in the east, the practices of using up all possible resources and discarding the rest; however, unlike the passive east coast, the Great Plains struck back at the attackers. In the process of farming the virgin grasslands of the Midwest, settlers knew that the plains were a harsh place to live. Their mistake was believing that they could outlast the resistance of the prairie. Though many examples of nature's retaliation exist, the one that is most striking is the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
As previously stated, farmers in the western and southern plains tore up the plains to grow crops totally foreign to the land, such as wheat and corn (Worchester 2). In 1935, the first of the major dust storms that comprised the Dust Bowl took place (Worchester 10). The storms were actually enhanced by the agricultural practices of the farmers in this region (Worchester 5). If Oklahoma farmers had simply waited out the storm instead of persistently plowing at the onset of the Dust Bowl, the costly operation of repairing the land would have been averted. Granted, the problem of massive unemployment due to the loss of farming jobs would have been equally daunting, but at the very least the land could have been farmed (Worchester 5).
To see the plight of the modern family farm, see Joe Doolittle's paper.
The plight of the farmers pushed out of their land is probably best described in The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Steinbeck introduces us to the Joads, an Oklahoma family affected by the Dust Bowl. The Joads had farmed in Oklahoma for generations, but when the dust bowl came they were forced to leave and search for work in California. The novel shows the resilience and heartiness in one particular Midwestern family (French 56). But were all Oklahomans as resilient and as hearty as the Joads? Even in The Grapes of Wrath, several displaced families were seen giving up after a period of hardship. It's hard to say that all Midwesterners are hearty, but there is some indescribable feature about the people of the Great Plains that separates them from the rest; perhaps it's merely the fact that they have endured so much.
The unique culture of Great Plains residents provides an interesting contrast to the demands of the Information Age, and may ultimately fade into memory because of changing technology. External forces caused the problems experienced by the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath, and we see the regional customs of a Midwestern family beaten down by those forces (French 129). The Grapes of Wrath is usually used to represent the hardships imposed upon the migrant workers of the 1930s; however, the novel also presents a window into Midwestern culture at that time. John Steinbeck himself probably said it best in "Their Blood is Strong," an essay he wrote immediately before Grapes of Wrath (French 56).
They are descendants of men who crossed into the Middle West, who won their lands by fighting, who cultivated the prairies and stayed with them until they went back to desert. And because of their tradition and their training, they are not migrants by nature. They are gypsies by force of nature.
In their heads, as they move wearily from harvest to harvest, there is one urge and one overwhelming need, to acquire a little land again, and to settle on it and stop their wandering. One has only to go into the squatters' camps where the families live on the ground and have no homes, no beds, and no equipment; and one has only to look at the strong purposeful faces, often filled with pain and more often, when they see the corporation-held idle lands, filled with anger, to know that this new race is here to stay and that heed must be taken of it (French 56).
Is this same cultural erosion still occurring today? Perhaps. The changes occurring in the Midwest today aren't necessarily negative and certainly don't come as obviously as a mighty dust storm. Instead, they often come in the form of technological and communication advances that reduce the amount of work that needs to be done and brings the ideas and customs of other regions or countries into the living rooms of modern Midwesterners. Just think about it. Like it or not, the residents of the Great Plains have unifying characteristics. We have to wonder where these perceptions came from. The idea that Midwesterners have a stronger work ethic probably developed from their need to work in order to survive during settlement all the way until the dawn of the Information Age. The concept of Midwestern self-reliance and independence developed from the basic separation and isolation of Midwesterners from society before improvements in communication and transportation technology. Yet now that the isolation of Midwesterners has been lessened by improvements in transportation and the need to work has been reduced by machines and replaced with aesthetic distractions like television and the Internet, the whole dynamic changes. The contention that the land's power in forming a Midwestern culture, stronger and heartier than its American contemporaries, is threatened by this transformation.
It's not all gloom and doom though. It seems logical that the land and the conditions of the land created the culture, but we can't really prove that. All we can prove is what we believe, that the Great Plains have produced an intangible spirit in the people. Indeed, the plains may have had a tremendous influence on overall American society (Jones 16). The stereotype of an average Midwesterner is almost synonymous with the stereotype of a loyal red-blooded American. The majority of Great Plains residents are from three primary ethnic groups: New England Puritans, Scandinavians, and Central Europeans (Jones 7). Their culture is traditionally stoic, reserved, and non-violent with exception to their treatment of the Indians while settling the plains. This is the stereotype. This is what the city-dwellers of the east and west think.
But this generalization produces an interesting debate just in looking at the kind of people who have come from the Midwest. The communist scare of McCarthyism was born and bred in this land (Jones 16). Joe McCarthy was born and raised in Wisconsin by a working class family. On the other hand, the Midwest has produced characters that have shot far away from the American mainstream. Bob Dylan, the recording artist who redefined the music industry in the 60s, grew up in a northern Minnesota Midwestern mining town. Comparisons between Dylan and Joe McCarthy are few and far between, but do exist.
Ideologically they are polar opposites, but both are united in a powerful passion for ideas -- the same Midwestern passion that the businessman at my high school career fair seemed to be looking for; however, the fact that they both had strong work ethics is not a definite point of comparison. In 1966, Dylan produced two albums, Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited - each of which had a tremendous influence on the development of popular music. Producing two quality albums in one year certainly attributes to Dylan's Midwestern work ethic.
The same goes for Joe McCarthy. You could say that his fervish political campaigns of the 1950s was a result of a Midwestern working tradition. Certainly it may have been driven by his own personal ambition but even so, he spent long hours advancing his work.
The true unifying aspect of Bob Dylan and Joe McCarthy is the spirit of their life's work and how they completed it. McCarthy, a staunch conservative, truly believed in the stereotype of the Midwest: that its population of hard-working individuals was America as it should be.
Dylan, a radical liberal, expressed the redeeming value of the Midwest in his songs, using an almost holy approach to the solace and self-reliance of the Great Plains. He expresses this in "Highlands" among other songs written throughout his career.
Well my heart's in The Highlands at the break of day
over the hills and far away.
There's a way to get there, and I'll figure it out somehow;
Well I'm already there in my mind and that's good enough for now.
- Bob Dylan, "Time Out of Mind," 1997
Dylan and McCarthy are political opposites, but we see a consistent reverent regard for the land of the Midwest in how they approach their very different work. We see the Midwestern essence.
The spirit of the Great Plains lives on in the people of the Midwest, even if the land itself is eventually obliterated. The culture of the American Midwest is thick with the rugged characteristics of the Great Plains. Whether these characteristics are entirely unique to Great Plains culture or were a product of the physical realities of the plains themselves is a point of debate. I could tell that businessman from the career fair if I saw him again, yes, you might very well find a hard worker from the Midwest. Then again you might not. The only thing I can assure you, is that you will probably find someone whose thoughts, ideas, or processes, either directly or indirectly -- in large amounts or microscopic quantities, emanate the essence of the land and culture of the Great Plains.
Introduction
Home page
Section One
The rugged history of people on the plains.