Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1987
Document Type
Article
Abstract
From 1873 to 1878 there occurred one of the worst economic depressions in this country. The western frontier also experienced a second calamity that, with cruel irony, recurred each year for the duration of the depression. This calamity, the grasshopper infestation, is the subject of this book. The author has focused her attention upon the "grasshopper plagues and public assistance in Minnesota" from 1873-1878. It is her purpose to study "the response to the plagues personally, locally, and at the state and national levels" in order to understand attitudes, and to examine the relationship between farm people and their government. The author argues that the general unresponsiveness of local, state, and national government to the victims of this natural disaster reflects the triumph of the "money ethic" over the work ethic in nineteenth century America and is evidence that an earlier cultural value attached to farming and farmers no longer predominated in American society. The argument is unconvincing, in large part because in examining the regional grasshopper calamity the author has totally neglected the national economic one.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 7:1 (Winter 1987). Copyright © 1987 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.