Cultivating California

Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920

Häftad, Engelska, 2002

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In Cultivating California, David Vaught shows how fruit and nut growers were neither industrialists nor agrarians. From the very outset, he explains, these "horticulturists" saw themselves as guardians of California's unique culture-raising crops for market while self-consciously building healthy and prosperous communities. Every grower was not, in fact, like every other, Vaught argues, whether one examines their labor systems, recruiting methods, harvest needs, marketing strategies, farm size, or their relationships with their communities, unions, and the state. The hard work, foresight, and devotion to detail required to nurture an orchard or vineyard made them, they insisted, cultivators of a better society. Over time, however, labor relations, market imperatives, and changing political conditions undermined the growers' horticultural ideal.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2002-08-26
Mått152 x 229 x 15 mm
Vikt544 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieRevisiting Rural America
Antal sidor240
FörlagJohns Hopkins University Press
ISBN9780801871122

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This is an important book because it dares to take on-with considerable success-a paradigm that has prevailed since the publication of Carey McWilliams's Factories in the Field in 1939. Cultivating California is a crisply written, fast-paced narrative based upon extraordinary research. It is also a courageous effort to clarify the history of agriculture in California by making room for the high ideals of the turn-of-the-century horticultural generation. -- Kevin Starr Business History Review This detailed history of four central and northern California agricultural communities is developed around pivotal issues of race, gender, market forces, and entrepreneurial vision. It is local history at its best. -- Harry C. McDean Western Historical Quarterly Cultivating California is expertly researched and gracefully written... [It] is an extremely important book that will be read by scholars in agricultural, labor, and California history. -- David Igler Agricultural History Vaught... is a good writer, but an even more valuable trait... is his dedication to research. This book tells an intriguing story, and it should thus rank very high on the reading list of any historian interested in the history of agriculture and labor in the American West. -- Carlos A. Schwantes Journal of American History A must for scholars interested in the Golden State's controversial history. -- Paul Rhode Agricultural History Review Cultivating California broadens our understanding of California agriculture and offers scholars an important new view into the culture of agricultural management in the early 1900s. -- Brian Black Enterprise and Society There is much to admire in Vaught's work. Besides looking at the details of the crops upon which he focuses-readers will feel as if they are right on the ground in Vaught's accounts-Vaught illustrates clearly how linkages developed between marketing, labor, and the self-images of the growers. -- Mansel Blackford Southern California Quarterly Going beyond the traditional approaches, Vaught's fascinating new study provides California's specialty crop growers with a human face. -- Paul Rhode Agricultural History Review This significant work... Offers significant implications for the understanding of both California and American history during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. -- Robert M. Senkewicz Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era