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This chapter examines the modernization of American society by focusing on economic issues such as industrialization and the decline of household manufacturing. It first provides an overview of economic development in America between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before discussing the shift from an economy that was largely based on agriculture and barter to one that was based much more on the monetary exchange of services and industrially produced goods. It then analyzes money-based commerce and the role magazines played in this rapidly growing part of the economy, along with the rise of rationality and “science” in America. It also investigates how magazines fostered the development of scientific agriculture and concludes by exploring the ways in which agricultural magazines supported communities of practice that had a distinctly traditional, antimodern cast.

This chapter looks at the farm demonstration trains that toured California. It shows that these agricultural demonstration trains were the result of a long period of interaction between the University of California-College of Agriculture and the Southern Pacific Company. The chapter studies the influence of the Southern Pacific on agricultural research, before moving on to the alliance formed between the Southern Pacific and the University of California's College of Agriculture. Both of them were unpopular and constantly attacked by critics. The chapter further expounds on farm demonstration trains and studies the promotion of scientific agriculture across the western regions.

This book explores the role that magazines played in the modernization of America, and particularly in the development of translocal communities, during the period 1741–1860. Drawing on original data obtained from 5,362 magazines published during this period, the book analyzes how the growing number and variety of magazines promoted and directed modern community building in America. It investigates the ways that magazines affected and were affected by key features of American society, including rapid population growth and urbanization; breakthroughs in printing and papermaking technologies; the rise of religious communities and social reform movements; the growth of educational institutions; and the emergence of scientific agriculture. This introduction reviews scholarship on modernization and community and explains how these concepts apply to America during the period. It also provides an overview of the chapters that follow.

Mark Schultz delves into the life of Benjamin F. Hubert, a rural reformer in Georgia who tried to stem the flood away from farming by establishing a viable independent black town, the Log Cabin Community. He allied with other African American agrarian reformers who urged blacks to separate themselves from white society and return to the land to live an independent life sheltered from white supremacy and unequal citizenship. Hubert's strategy based in cooperative farming, scientific agriculture, and industrial education transformed tenants into landowners, sustained rural communities, and allowed farmers to provide for their children. He founded the Association for the Advancement of Negro Country Life in 1928 and used his position as president of the black land-grant college in Georgia to promote his utopian ideal. Children raised on farms owned by their parents tended to get a better education than sharecroppers' children. The owners' children developed self-reliant habits of mind and a sense of optimism that they could succeed despite the barriers thrown up by white supremacy. Many of these children found their way into the northern urban middle class. In doing so, they demonstrated that farm owning offered both immediate security and a path out of poverty.

This chapter talks about how Morris had always been interested in scientific agriculture and naturally threw himself into the predictable demands of the farm, managing it with a firsthand knowledge that surprised some of his city friends. With that decisive Morris manner, before the month was out he had an architect on hand to begin planning a new house on the foundation of the old one, eventually laying out some $60,000 in improvements. By the time Morris arrived in Manhattan, an international crisis had developed with the French government over its attacks on American shipping as a part of the war with Britain. To Morris, the most serious threat to the Constitution and the national government by the new administration was the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801.