During the period 1910–1940 some changes were occurring in the production practices of the Corn Belt. Three of the most important were the substitution of the tractor for horse power, the introduction of hybrid seed corn, and the development of viable mechanical picker-huskers for harvesting corn. This paper examines the background of those innovations, evaluates current assumptions about them, presents data concerning the relative per acre savings or additional income involved in adoption, and notes the possibility that assumptions about the economic rationality involved in corn improvement research, as well as the implications of the “dry hole effect,” may require some revision.
WHEN the "new" histories were germinating in the mid-and late 19505, there were high hopes for the technique of collective biographynot that a method used by Charles A. Beard could be considered novel. 1 But various pundits believed that historians, by showing a little more industry in collecting biographical data and a little more effort in achieving a judicious blend of analytical rigor and creative imagination, might effect all sorts of rewarding breakthroughs. Since then, American historians have called a motley array of collectivities to the colors, and the results, if sometimes stimulating and informative, have also been more mixed, indeterminate, and frustrating than the euphoria of twenty years ago seemed to promise. A number of collective profiles depict sectors of the American political elite, but the authors of these studies have most commonly examined relatively restricted groups or confined themselves to restricted time periods, and investigators applying the method to members of Congress or to state legislators have concentrated primarily on the recent period of American history.
The idea of forming a new scholarly association has been generated in the lonely study of scholars hungry for supportive contact, in the interaction of kindred seekers in convention bars or bull sessions, and no doubt, in many other kinds of circumstances. The Social Science History Association began as an exercise in transmogrification, and although, in retrospect, its origin may appear to have been an act of secession, it was not intended as such. Institutional manifestation of what came to be called the “New Political History” was apparent as early as 1957 when a small group of historians interested in the political history of the American early national period met at Rutgers under the sponsorship of the Social Science Research Council to discuss the methodology of political history. The draft report of that conference, prepared by Richard P. McCormick (1957), rather accurately forecast significant developments during the next decade.
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