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Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Childhood on the Farm: Work, Play,
and Coming of Age in the Midwest. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas,
2005. Notes, bibliography, index, photographs.
$34.95 cloth. xi, 300 pp. ISBN:
9780700613885.
by Simon J. Bronner
[First Paragraph]
As the nineteenth century came to a close,
a Midwestern farm boy ruminated about
the assigned theme of "Life on the Farm."
For child and adult, he wrote, "It is work
from early morning till late at night, with a few minutes set apart for each meal" (p.
199). He must have been well aware of
a dramatic shift sweeping across the nation's
breadbasket. Whereas earlier generations
had flocked to the West to stake
their claim to land and to see harvests they
could call their own, turn-of-the-century
youth were leaving the farm for the possibility
of better pay for less arduous
work. |
