Corn Kings and One-Horse Thieves
Odds & ends
Illinois past and present, as seen by James Krohe Jr.
The Corn Latitudes
Farms and farming
On this page are links to articles about farms, farmers, and farming from feed grains to forestry, about the strip-mining and reclamation of prime farmlands, about polluted runoff from farm fields, about agribusiness and federal ag policy, and about the farm economy and rural Illinois.
I came from farm people, that is, people who farmed or sold machines to farmers or lent money to farmers or bought and sold the things farmers made. I grew up in in a state in which city folks are as perfectly surrounded by farms as Hebrideans are by water. The first two pieces I sold to national magazines were about farming and farmers, and I've continued to write about both.
While I was busy at my keyboard for 40 years, the family farmer became the agribusinessman, the grain-and-hog farm became an outdoor factory, and agriculture completed its evolution from growing food for people to producing feedstocks for industry—much to lament, in short, but more happily for the journalist, much to write about too. My pieces gradually became more critical and my prose more pointed but that had no effect on public debate whatsoever. Farming still enjoys a privileged place in Illinois culture and politics that I think the industry is less and less entitled to.
Interested readers also should know that I devoted a chapter in my history of mid-Illinois—“Wondorous plant”—to agriculture as it affected that part of the state; see Corn Kings & One-Horse Thieves.
Click on the title for the full article.
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The Family Farmer: An Endangered Species?
A “typical” family farmer of central Illinois in the 1970s.
Across the Board September 1978
"Breadbasket or Dustbowl"
This is the first part of the six-article series on soil conservation that appeared in Illinois Issues magazine between September 1981 and February 1982. The series was another of that magazine’s examinations of pressing environmental issues, in this case funded in large part by The Joyce Foundation, with the assistance of the Illinois Department of Agriculture's Division of Natural Resources. The articles were later published as a 48-page booklet titled Breadbasket or Dustbowl. (See Publications.)
The distance between Eden and the desert
Illinois Issues September 1981
Saving the Soil: Target Date 2000
The rebirth of soil conservation in Illinois
Illinois Issues December 1981
Soil Loss: The Conversion Factor
"The land is going! The land is going!"
Illinois Issues January 1982
Farmland Preservation: Condos or Corn?
Saving the farm—until it's time to sell
Illinois Issues February 1982
Recreating a paradise of weeds in Illinois
"Prejudices" Illinois Times January 15, 1992
Chicago's economic and environmental past, synthesized
Illinois Times December 11, 1991
How Chicago Became the Gateway to the West
A review of Cronon’s Nature's Metropolis
Chicago Enterprise October 1991
Turning Illinois’s poor counties into bucolic Disneylands
"Prejudices" Illinois Times May 26, 1983
Why soil loss in Illinois is a bad thing
The Ecologist (UK) No. 5/6, 1984
The world through the eyes of Farm Week
“Prejudices” Illinois Times February 3, 1983
Trading coal today for corn forever
“Prejudices” Illinois Times January 18, 1980
Charlie Boon, Logger, of Goofy Ridge
A tinkering entrepreneur in the old Illinois style
Illinois Times November 24, 1978
Illinoisans debate how to treat animals for food
"Prejudices" Illinois Times January 28, 1982
Where Corn Is God
Not quite everything you wanted to know about corn
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times January 21, 2016
Coal companies plow up central Illinois
“Prejudices” Illinois Times July 25, 1980
It's Not the Heat, It's the Corn
Are row crops making summers unbearable?
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times July 12, 2011
The demise of the Illinois countryside
“Prejudices” Illinois Times August 10, 1979
Barns Full of Machines
Tinkerers make Illinois safe for farming
See Illinois (unpublished) 2002
Planting new questions about Illinois ag
“Prejudices” Illinois Times April 12, 1984
Fair Deal
Turning the state fair into an expo of real rural life
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times September 8, 2016
Toward a Farm-fresh Food System
Can central Illinoisans learn to like their broccoli?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times December 9, 2010
Betting the Farm
Is Illinois farmland the next real estate bubble?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times May 5, 2011
Could building materials be a new Illinois crop?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times April 24, 2014
On converting Illinois corn to motor fuel
Illinois Issues January 1981
Some Books About Illinois Farming
Harvesting corn and myth from the prairie
See Illinois (unpublished) 2009
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SITES
OF
INTEREST
Essential for anyone interested in Illinois history and literature. Hallwas deservedly won the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illinois State Historical Society.
One of Illinois’s best, and least-known, writers of his generation. Take note in particular of The Distancers and Road to Nowhere.
See Home Page/Learn/
Resources for a marvelous building database, architecture dictionary, even a city planning graphic novel. Handsome, useful—every Illinois culture website should be so good.
The online version of The Encyclopedia of Chicago. Crammed with thousands of topic entries, biographical sketches, maps and images, it is a reference work unmatched in Illinois.
The Illinois chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2018 selected 200 Great Places in Illinois that illustrate our shared architectural culture across the entire period of human settlement in Illinois.
A nationally accredited, award-winning project of the McLean County Historical Society whose holdings include more than 20,000 objects, more than 15,000 books on local history and genealogy, and boxes and boxes of historical papers and images.
Mr. Lincoln, Route 66, and Other Highlights of Lincoln, Illinois
Every Illinois town ought to have a chronicler like D. Leigh Henson, Ph.D. Not only Lincoln and the Mother road—the author’s curiosity ranges from cattle baron John Dean Gillett to novelist William Maxwell. An Illinois State Historical Society "Best Web Site of the Year."
Created in 2000, the IDA is a repository for the digital collections of the Illinois State Library and other Illinois libraries and cultural institutions. The holdings include photographs, slides, and glass negatives, oral histories, newspapers, maps, and documents from manuscripts and letters to postcards, posters, and videos.
The people's museum is a treasure house of science and the arts. A research institution of national reputation, the museum maintains four facilities across the state. Their collections in anthropology, fine and decorative arts, botany, zoology, geology, and history are described here. A few museum publications can be obtained here.
“Chronicling Illinois” showcases some of the collections—mostly some 6,000 photographs—from the Illinois history holdings of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
I will leave it to the authors of this interesting site to describe it. "Chicagology is a study of Chicago history with a focus on the period prior to the Second World War. The purpose of the site is to document common and not so common stories about the City of Chicago as they are discovered."
Illinois Labor History Society
The Illinois Labor History Society seeks to encourage the preservation and study of labor history materials of the Illinois region, and to arouse public interest in the profound significance of the past to the present. Offers books reviews, podcasts, research guides, and the like.
Illinois Migration History 1850-2017
The University of Washington’s America’s Great Migrations Project has compiled migration histories (mostly from the published and unpublished work by UW Professor of History James Gregory) for several states, including Illinois. The site also includes maps and charts and essays about the Great Migration of African Americans to the north, in which Illinois figured importantly.
An interesting resource about the history of one of Illinois’s more interesting places, the Fox Valley of Kendall County. History on the Fox is the work of Roger Matile, an amateur historian of the best sort. Matile’s site is a couple of cuts above the typical buff’s blog. (An entry on the French attempt to cash in on the trade in bison pelts runs more than
2,000 words.)
BOOKS
OF INTEREST
Southern Illinois University Press 2017
A work of solid history, entertainingly told.
Michael Burlingame,
author of Abraham
Lincoln: A Life
One of the ten best books on Illinois history I have read in a decade.
Superior Achievement Award citation, ISHS Awards, 2018
A lively and engaging study . . . an enthralling narrative.
James Edstrom
The Annals of Iowa
A book that merits the attention of all Illinois historians
as well as local historians generally.
John Hoffman
Journal of Illinois HIstory
A model for the kind of detailed and honest history other states and regions could use.
Harold Henderson
Midwestern Microhistory
A fine example of a resurgence of Midwest historical scholarship.
Greg Hall
Journal of the Illinois
State Historical Society
Click here
to buy the book
Southern Illinois University Press
SIU Press is one of the four major university publishing houses in Illinois. Its catalog offers much of local interest, including biographies of Illinois political figures, the history (human and natural) and folklore of southern Illinois, the Civil War and Lincoln, and quality reprints in the Shawnee Classics series.
The U of I Press was founded in 1918. A search of the online catalog (Books/Browse by subject/Illinois) will reveal more than 150 Illinois titles, books on history mostly but also butteflies, nature , painting, poetry and fiction, and more. Of particular note are its Prairie State Books, quality new paperback editions of worthy titles about all parts of Illinois, augmented with scholarly introductions.
The U of C publishing operation is the oldest (1891) and largest university press in Illinois. Its reach is international, but it has not neglected its own neighborhood. Any good Illinois library will include dozens of titles about Chicago and Illinois from Fort Dearborn to
Vivian Maier.
Northern Illinois University Press
The newest (1965) and the smallest of the university presses with an interest in Illinois, Northern Illinois University Press gave us important titles such as the standard one-volume history of the state (Biles' Illinois:
A History of the Land and Its People) and contributions to the history of Chicago, Illinois transportation, and the Civil War. Now an imprint of Cornell University Press.
Reviews and significant mentions by James Krohe Jr. of more than 50 Illinois books, arranged in alphabetical order
by book title.
Run by the Illinois State Library, The Center promotes reading, writing and author programs meant to honor the state's rich literary heritage. An affiliate of the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book, the site offers award competitions, a directory of Illinois authors, literary landmarks, and reading programs.
