Urban and Rural America: Shifting Demographics

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Urban and Rural America Shifting Demographics

• Tony Gonzales

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Background on Hamlin Garland and Under the
Lions Paw
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Background Hamlin Garland

• Born 1860 in West Salem, WI
• Second of four children
• Lived in WI for 8 yrs
• Visited every year
• Lived in Boston, became writer

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Under the Lions Paw

• Under the Lions Paw is one of eleven short
  stories in Garlands book Main-Travelled Roads
• Naturalist emphasis for economic reform (487)
• Inspired by Henry Georges Progress and Poverty
• Argument for Single Tax
• End land speculation (see Cultural and
  Historical Ramifications)
• Jim Butler (492)

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Under the Lions Paw (contd)

• In 1892, Garland read Under the Lions Paw
  before a national convention of the Peoples
  Party
• Later became spokesman for Populists

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Political Ramifications
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Political Ramifications

• Peoples Party or Populists (1891)
• Cotton and wheat farmers crusaded against banks,
  railroads, and other elites
• Coalitions and labor unions
• Child Labor
• No labor laws for children at farms
• Women and children could work up to 10 hours (law
  passed in MA, 1874)

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Political Ramifications (contd)

• Homestead Act of 1862
• Signed by Pres. Abraham Lincoln
• One of three federal laws
• Gave each applicant a freehold title of up to
  160 acres of land (west of Mississippi River)
• Example Far and Away

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Cultural and Historical Ramifications
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Cultural and Historical Ramifications

• Homestead Act of 1862
• Number of farms tripled from 2 million (1860) to
  6 million (1905)
• 22 million living on farms (1880)
• Farm value went from 8 billion (1860) to 30
  billion (1906)
• Land Speculation

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Cultural and Historical Ramifications (contd)

• Throughout the world, prices in wheat and cotton
  drop due to sharecropping
• This increased planting, which saturated wheat
  and cotton
• Sought usually to retain the former owner as
  tenant (492)
• Tenant farmers shared up to ½ of their crops with
  landowners
• Tenants became land poor

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Cultural and Historical Ramifications (contd)

• Large migration from other countries
• Haskins familys parents are from Canada
• Haskins family had nowhere to go (research
  migrating families)
• Haskins mentions grasshoppers (490)
• Farm life (family was overworked)
• Eldest boy (Tommy) worked hard on farm (494)

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Demographics
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Demographics 1890

• Whites 47,345,528 (86.17)
• Negroes 6,337,980 (11.5)
• Mulattoes 956,989 (1.7)
• Quadroons 105,135 (0.19)
• Octoroons 69,936 (0.13)
• Chinese 107,475 (0.195)
• Japanese 2,039 (0.0037)
• Civilized Indians 58,806 (0.11)

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Demographics 2010

• Urban (city and its suburbs) 82
• Rural 18
• (U.S. Census)

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Demographics 2010 (contd)

• Non-Hispanic Whites 64.7
• Hispanics 16.0
• African Americans 12.9
• Asian Americans 4.6
• (U.S. Census)

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Conclusion
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An Illusion?

• There is no despair so deep as the despair of a
  homeless man or woman. To roam the roads of the
  country or the streets of the city, to feel there
  is no rood of ground on which the feet can rest,
  to halt weary and hungry outside lighted windows
  and hear laughter and song within,these are the
  hungers and rebellions that drive men to crime
  and women to shame (496).
• Sounds like Utopia by Sir Thomas More

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Another Allusion?

• pushing the wolf of want a little farther from
  his door. (496)
• First published in 1899
• The Three Little Pigs
• Story from 1933

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Questions?