Astrology

Outline pages
are numbered
with small roman
numerals

.

Outline begins
with thesis and
uses standard
format.

Outline is
written in complete
sentences.

Levi i

.

Sample Outline in an MLA Paper (Levi)

Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006).

This paper has been updated to follow the style guidelines in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers,
7th ed. (2009).

Source: Diana Hacker (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006).

Writer’s name and page
number are typed 1⁄2”
from top of each page.

Levi ii

The thesis
statement
is often
(but not
always) the
last
sentence of
the
introductio-
n.

The thesis
is a clear
position
that you
will support
and
develop
throughout
your paper.
This
sentence
guides
your paper.

Angeli 1

E. L. Angeli

Professor Patricia Sullivan

English 624

12 February 2012

Toward a Recovery of Nineteenth Century Farming Handbooks

While researching texts written about nineteenth century farming, I found a few

authors who published books about the literature of nineteenth century farming,

particularly agricultural journals, newspapers, pamphlets, and brochures. These authors

often placed the farming literature they were studying into an historical context by

discussing the important events in agriculture of the year in which the literature was

published (see Demaree, for example). However, while these authors discuss journals,

newspapers, pamphlets, and brochures, I could not find much discussion about another

important source of farming knowledge: farming handbooks. My goal in this paper is to

bring this source into the agricultural literature discussion by connecting three

agricultural handbooks from the nineteenth century with nineteenth century agricultural

history.

To achieve this goal, I have organized my paper into four main sections, two of

which have sub-sections. In the first section, I provide an account of three important

events in nineteenth century agricultural history: population and technological changes,

the distribution of scientific new knowledge, and farming’s influence on education. In the

second section, I discuss three nineteenth century farming handbooks in

connection with the important events described in the first section. Special

attention is paid to the role that these handbooks played in the dissemination of

agricultural knowledge (and the creation of genuinely new knowledge). I end

If your
paper is
long, you
may want
to write
about how
your paper
is
organized.
This will
help your
readers
follow
your ideas.

MLA requires
double-spacing
throughout a
document. Do
not single-
space any part
of the
document.

Page numbers
begin on page
1 and end on
the final
page. Type
your name
next to the
page number
in the header
so that it
appears on
every page.

Your name,
the
professor’s
name,
the course
number, and
the date of
the paper are
double-
spaced in 12-
point, Times
New Roman
font. Dates in
MLA are
written in this
order: day,
month, and
year. Do not
abbreviate the
month.

Titles are
centered
and written
in 12-point,
Times New
Roman
font. The
title is not
bolded,
underlined,
or
italicized.

Blue boxes contain
directions for writing
and citing in MLA
style.

Green text boxes
contain explanations
of MLA style
guidelines.

The
introduc-
tory
paragraph,
should set
the context
for the rest
of the paper.
Tell your
readers
why you
are writing
and why
your topic
is
important.

Use
personal
pronouns
(I, we, us,
etc.) at
your
instructor’s
discretion.

Angeli 2

When using
headings in
MLA, title
the main
sections
(Level 2
headers) in
a different
style font
than the
paper’s
title, e.g., in
small caps.

The headings used here follow a three-
level system to break the text into
smaller sections. The different levels
help organize the paper and maintain
consistency in the paper’s organization.
You may use your own format for
headings as long as they are consistent.

with a third section that offers research questions that could be answered in future

versions of this paper and conclude with a fourth section that discusses the importance of

expanding this particular project. I also include an appendix after the Works Cited that

contains images of the three handbooks I examined. Before I can begin the examination

of the three handbooks, however, I need to provide an historical context in which the

books were written, and it is to this that I now turn.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The nineteenth century saw many changes to daily American life with an increase in

population, improved methods of transportation, developments in technology, and the

rise in the importance of science. These events impacted all aspects of nineteenth century

American life (most significantly, those involved in slavery and the Civil War).

However, one part of American life was affected that is quite often taken for granted: the

life of the American farmer.

Population and Technological Changes. One of the biggest changes, as seen in

nineteenth century America’s census reports, is the dramatic increase in population. The

1820 census reported that over 10 million people were living in America; of those 10

million, over 2 million were engaged in agriculture. Ten years prior to that, the 1810

census reported over 7 million people were living in the states; there was no category for

people engaged in agriculture. In this ten-year time span, then, agriculture experienced

significant improvements and changes that enhanced its importance in American life.

One of these improvements was the development of canals and steamboats,

which allowed farmers to “sell what has previously been unsalable [sic]” and resulted in a

If there is a
gramma-
tical,
mechanical,
or spelling
error in the
text you are
citing, type
the quote as
it appears.
Follow the
error with
“[sic].”

The
paragraph
after the
Level 2
headers
starts flush
left.

Be sure
to
differen-
tiate the
Level 3
headers
from the
Level 2
headers.
The
paragraph
continues
directly
after the
header.

Headings,
though not
required by
MLA style,
can help the
overall
structure and
organization
of a paper.
Use them at
your
instructor’s
discretion to
help your
reader follow
your ideas.

Angeli 3

“substantial increase in [a farmer’s] ability to earn income” (Danhof 5). This

improvement allowed the relations between the rural and urban populations to strengthen,

resulting in an increase in trade. The urban population (defined as having over 2,500

inhabitants) in the northern states increased rapidly after 1820.1 This increase

accompanied the decrease in rural populations, as farmers who “preferred trade,

transportation, or ‘tinkering’” to the tasks of tending to crops and animals found great

opportunities in the city (Danhof 7). Trade and transportation thus began to influence

farming life significantly. Before 1820, the rural community accounted for eighty percent

of consumption of farmers’ goods (Hurt 127). With the improvements in transportation,

twenty-five percent of farmers’ products were sold for commercial gain, and by 1825,

farming “became a business rather than a way of life” (128). This business required

farmers to specialize their production and caused most farmers to give “less attention to

the production of surplus commodities like wheat, tobacco, pork, or beef” (128). The

increase in specialization encouraged some farmers to turn to technology to increase their

production and capitalize on commercial markets (172).

The technology farmers used around 1820 was developed from three main

sources: Europe, coastal Native American tribes in America, and domestic modifications

made from the first two sources’ technologies. Through time, technology improved, and

while some farmers clung to their time-tested technologies, others were eager to find

alternatives to these technologies. These farmers often turned to current developments in

Great Britain and received word of their technological improvements through firsthand

knowledge by talking with immigrants and travelers. Farmers also began planning and

conducting experiments, and although they lacked a truly scientific approach, these

farmers engaged

In-text
citations
occur
after the
quote but
before the
period.
The
author’s/
authors’
name/s go
before the
page
number
with no
comma in
between.

Insert the
footnote
after the
punctuatio-
-n mark
that
concludes
the
sentence.

Use
endnotes to
explain a
point in
your paper
that would
otherwise
disrupt the
flow of the
text.

If you cite the
same source
multiple times
in a row, you
do not have
to repeat the
author’s last
name until
you start a
cite a
different
author or
start a new
paragraph.

Angeli 4

Titles of
published
works
(books,
journals,
films, etc.)
are now
italicized
instead of
underlined.

in experiments to obtain results and learn from the results.2 Agricultural organizations

were then formed to “encourage . . . experimentation, hear reports, observe results, and

exchange critical comments” (Danhof 53). Thus, new knowledge was transmitted orally

from farmer to farmer, immigrant to farmer, and traveler to farmer, which could result in

the miscommunication of this new scientific knowledge. Therefore, developments were

made for knowledge to be transmitted and recorded in a more permanent, credible way:

by print.

The Distribution of New Knowledge. Before 1820 and prior to the new knowledge

farmers were creating, farmers who wanted print information about agriculture had their

choice of agricultural almanacs and even local newspapers to receive information

(Danhof 54). After 1820, however, agricultural writing took more forms than almanacs

and newspapers. From 1820 to 1870, agricultural periodicals were responsible for

spreading new knowledge among farmers. In his published dissertation The American

Agricultural Press 1819-1860, Albert Lowther Demaree presents a “description of the

general content of [agricultural journals]” (xi). These journals began in 1819 and were

written for farmers, with topics devoted to “farming, stock raising, [and] horticulture”

(12). The suggested “birthdate” of American agricultural journalism is April 2, 1819

when John S. Skinner published his periodical American Farmer in Baltimore. Demaree

writes that Skinner’s periodical was the “first continuous, successful agricultural

periodical in the United States” and “served as a model for hundreds of journals that

succeeded it” (19). In the midst of the development of the journal, farmers began writing

handbooks. Not much has been written on the handbooks’ history, aside from the fact that

C.M. Saxton & Co. in New York was the major handbook publisher. Despite the lack of

If you
delete
words
from the
original
quotation,
insert an
ellipsis,
three
periods
with a
space
between
and after
each one.

Notice how
this
paragraph
begins with
a
transition.
The topic
sentence
follows the
transition,
and it tells
readers
what the
paragraph
is about.
Direct
quotes
are used
to support
this topic
sentence.

Notice how
this
paragraph
ends with a
brief
mention of
print
sources
and the
next
paragraph
begins with
a
discussion
of print
informa-
tion.

Transitions
connect
paragraphs
and unify
writing.

Body
paragraphs
often (but
don’t
always)
have these
four
elements: a
transition,
a topic
sentence,
evidence,
and a brief
wrap-up
sentence.

Angeli 5

information about handbooks, and as can be seen in my discussion below, these

handbooks played a significant role in distributing knowledge among farmers and in

educating young farmers, as I now discuss.

Farming’s Influence on Education. One result of the newly circulating print information

was the “need for acquiring scientific information upon which could be based a rational

technology” that could “be substituted for the current diverse, empirical practices”

(Danhof 69). In his 1825 book Nature and Reason Harmonized in the Practice of

Husbandry, John Lorain begins his first chapter by stating that “[v]ery erroneous theories

have been propagated” resulting in faulty farming methods (1). His words here create a

framework for the rest of his book, as he offers his readers narratives of his own trials and

errors and even dismisses foreign, time-tested techniques farmers had held on to: “The

knowledge we have of that very ancient and numerous nation the Chinese, as well as the

very located habits and costumes of this very singular people, is in itself insufficient to

teach us . . .” (75). His book captures the call and need for scientific experiments to

develop new knowledge meant to be used in/on/with American soil, which reflects some

farmers’ thinking of the day.

By the 1860s, the need for this knowledge was strong enough to affect education.

John Nicholson anticipated this effect in 1820 in the “Experiments” section of his book

The Farmer’s Assistant; Being a Digest of All That Relates to Agriculture and the

Conducting of Rural Affairs; Alphabetically Arranged and Adapted for the United States:

Perhaps it would be well, if some institution were devised, and supported at the

expense of the State, which would be so organized as would tend most effectually

to produce a due degree of emulation among Farmers, by rewards and honorary

distinctions conferred by those who, by their successful experimental efforts and

improvements, should render themselves duly entitled to them.3 (92)

The
paragraph
ends with
a wrap-up
sentence,
“Despite
the
lack . . .”,
while
transi-
tioning to
the next
thought.

Use block
quotations
when
quoted
text runs
longer than
four lines
once typed
in your
paper.

Block
quotations
begin on a
new line,
are double-
spaced,
and are
indented
half an inch
from the
margin. Do
not add
quotation
marks not
present in
the original.
The
citation
information
(author
name and
page
number)
follows the
quote’s end
punctua-
tion.

Part of Nicholson’s hope was realized in 1837 when Michigan established their state

university, specifying that “agriculture was to be an integral part of the curriculum”

(Danhof 71). Not much was accomplished; however, much to the dissatisfaction of

farmers, and in 1855, the state authorized a new college to be “devoted to agriculture and

to be independent of the university” (Danhof 71). The government became more

involved in the creation of agricultural universities in 1862 when President Lincoln

passed the Morrill Land Grant College Act, which begins with this phrase: “AN ACT

Donating Public Lands to the several States and Territories which may provide Colleges

for the Benefit of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts [sic].” The first agricultural colleges

formed under the act suffered from a lack of trained teachers and “an insufficient base of

knowledge,” and critics claimed that the new colleges did not meet the needs of farmers

(Hurt 193).

Congress addressed these problems with the then newly formed United States

Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA and Morrill Act worked together to form

“. . . State experiment stations and extension services . . . [that] added [to]

. . . localized research and education . . .” (Baker et al. 415). The USDA added to the

scientific and educational areas of the agricultural field in other ways by including

research as one of the organization’s “foundation stone” (367) and by including these

seven objectives:

(1) [C]ollecting, arranging, and publishing statistical and other useful

agricultural information; (2) introducing valuable plants and animals; (3)

answering inquiries of farmers regarding agriculture; (4) testing agricultural

implements; (5) conducting chemical analyses of soils, grains, fruits, plants,

vegetables, and manures; (6) establishing a professorship of botany and

entomology; and (7) establishing an agricultural library and museum. (Baker et

al. 14)

Periods occur
before the
end
quotation
mark if the
citation
information is
given already
in the
sentence.

If a source
has three or
more
authors, use
the first
author’s last
name
followed by
“et al.”

Angeli 6

These objectives were a response to farmers’ needs at the time, mainly to the need for

experiments, printed distribution of new farming knowledge, and education. Isaac

Newton, the first Commissioner of Agriculture, ensured these objectives would be

realized by stressing research and education with the ultimate goal of helping farmers

improve their operations (Hurt 190).

Before the USDA assisted in the circulation of knowledge, however, farmers

wrote about their own farming methods. This brings me to my next section in which I

examine three handbooks written by farmers and connect my observations of the texts

with the discussion of agricultural history I have presented above.

Note: Sections of this paper have been omitted for the purpose of this sample.

CONCLUSION

From examining Drown’s, Allen’s, and Crozier and Henderson’s handbooks in light of

nineteenth century agricultural history, I can say that science and education seem to have

had a strong influence on how and why these handbooks were written. The authors’ ethos

is created by how they align themselves as farmers with science and education either by

supporting or by criticizing them. Regardless of their stance, the authors needed to create

an ethos to gain an audience, and they did this by including tables of information,

illustrations of animals and buildings, reasons for educational reform, and pieces of

advice to young farmers in their texts. It would be interesting to see if other farming

handbooks of the same century also convey a similar ethos concerning science and

education in agriculture. Recovering more handbooks in this way could lead to a better,

more complete understanding of farming education, science’s role in farming and

education, and perhaps even an understanding of the rhetoric of farming handbooks in

the nineteenth century.

The conclusion
“wraps up”
what you have
been
discussing in
your paper.

Because
this is a
Level 2
header,
the
paragraph
is not
indented.

Angeli 7

Angeli 8

Notes

1. Danhof includes “Delaware, Maryland, all states north of the Potomac and Ohio

rivers, Missouri, and states to its north” when referring to the northern states (11).

2. For the purposes of this paper, “science” is defined as it was in nineteenth

century agriculture: conducting experiments and engaging in research.

3. Please note that any direct quotes from the nineteenth century texts are written

in their original form, which may contain grammar mistakes according to twenty-first

century grammar rules.

Endnotes
begin on a
new page
after the
paper but
before the
Works
Cited.
Double-
space all
entries and
indent each
entry 0.5”
from the
margin. Use
size 12
Times New
Roman font.

Center the title “Notes,”
using 12-point Times
New Roman font.

Angeli 9

Works Cited

Allen, R.L. The American Farm Book; or Compend of American Agriculture; Being a

Practical Treatise on Soils, Manures, Draining, Irrigation, Grasses, Grain,

Roots, Fruits, Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar Cane, Rice, and Every Staple Product of

the United States with the Best Methods of Planting, Cultivating, and Preparation

for Market. Saxton, 1849.

Baker, Gladys L., et al. Century of Service: The First 100 Years of the United States

Department of Agriculture. [Federal Government], 1996.

Danhof, Clarence H. Change in Agriculture: The Northern United States, 1820-1870.

Harvard UP, 1969.

Demaree, Albert Lowther. The American Agricultural Press 1819-1860. Columbia UP,

1941.

Drown, William, and Solomon Drown. Compendium of Agriculture or the Farmer’s

Guide, in the Most Essential Parts of Husbandry and Gardening; Compiled from

the Best American and European Publications, and the Unwritten Opinions of

Experienced Cultivators. Field, 1824.

“Historical Census Browser.” University of Virginia Library, 2007,

www.mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/. Accessed 6 Dec. 2008.

Hurt, R. Douglas. American Agriculture: A Brief History. Iowa State UP, 1994.

Lorain, John. Nature and Reason Harmonized in the Practice of Husbandry. Carey,1825.

“Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862.” Prairie View A&M, 2003. www.pvamu.edu/

library/about-the-library/history-of-the-library-at-prairie-view/1890-land-grant-

history/. Accessed 6 Dec. 2008.

The Works
Cited page
begins on a
new page.
Center the
title “Works
Cited”
without
underlining,
bolding, or
italicizing
it. If there
is only one
entry, title
this page
“Work
Cited.”

If a print
source
does not
list a
publisher
and you
can infer
who the
publisher
is, place
the
publisher’s
name in
brackets.

MLA now
requires
only the
publisher,
and not
the city of
publication.
The 8th
edition also
does not
require
sources to
have a
publication
marker,
(such as
“Print”).

The Works Cited
page is a list of
all the sources
cited in your
paper.

List the
title of the
source in
quotation
marks, and
the title of
the
container in
italics,
followed by
a comma
and the
date of
publication.
Since this
is an online
source,
include the
URL and
date of
access.

If a source
has three
or more
authors,
only the
first one
shown in
the source
is given. It
is followed
by et al.

MLA now
requires
URLs (when
possible)
when citing
online
sources.
Omit
“http://”
from the
address.
The date of
access is
optional,
but be sure
to include
it whenever
possible,
since online
works can
be changed
or removed
at any
time.

Angeli 10

Nicholson, John. The Farmer’s Assistant; Being a Digest of All That Relates to

Agriculture and the Conducting of Rural Affairs; Alphabetically Arranged and

Adapted for the United States. Warner, 1820.