As You Sow. by Walter GoldschmidtReview by: Otis Durant DuncanSocial Forces, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Dec., 1947), p. 233Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2571792 .

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LIBRARY AND WORKSHOP 233

that are likely to be encountered, if and when the program studied is reactivated.

VERNON DAVIES

Washington State College

As You Sow. By Walter Goldschmidt. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co. 1947. 288 pp. $4.00.

Ten chapters comprise this small volume. They deal with the place of California Agriculture in American farm life, industrialized farming and the rural community, basic socioeconomic structure, social status and social experience, social status and religious life; cohesion, conflict and control; vari- ations in the social pattern: small farms; vari- ations in the social pattern: large farms; industrial- ized and urbanized farm people, and social directions. It is the result of a case study of three communities, Wasco, Dinuba, and Arvin, which are populated largely by recent migrants from Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas in addition to Mexicans, Negroes, and a scattering of orientals. The author and his wife spent eight months as participant observers in Wasco and one month each in the other two towns between 1940 and 1944. The title of the book has no particular virtue except brevity so far as the contents are concerned.

The general thesis of the book is that industrial- ization has changed farming around Wasco from a means of getting a livelihood to one of achieving wealth. Diversification, drudgery, and self-suf- ficiency have yielded to high cost single cash crop farming in expectation of large profits. This means a need for large groups of farm laborers and large commercial enterprises. The factors re- sponsible for these relationships are characteristic of California and are spreading rapidly to other parts of the United States. Probably mechaniza- tion and industrialization in agriculture will in- evitably come to dominate the rural scene in America. Yet, it is not impossible to salvage the good of the old rural pattern and to use to advan- tage what technology has to offer in agriculture. If this happens, new tenure arrangements will appear as they have in California; social differ- entiation will become more abrupt; social controls will gravitate increasingly toward the employer group and the market place; and conflict situ- ations will tend to duplicate in kind those found in industrial society generally. Apparently, as em- ployer-employee differentiations become more distinct, the unhampered social participation of the employee class becomes increasingly limited

to religious activity so far as institutional behavior is concerned. Even in that case, institutional religion takes on class differentiation in terms of intellectual-emotional appeals, the attachment to religion usually bearing an inverse relation to economic status.

Three fundamental principles must underlie constructive agricultural policies: First, the full utilization of productive capacity to insure the welfare of all the people; second, the preservation of natural resources; and third, the promotion of equity and opportunity for agricultural producers. The promotion of equity requires three legal devices: First, the establishment of minimum wages; second, the establishment of the rights of agricultural workers to organization, collective bargaining, and other rights of organized labor; and third, the extension of social security to agri- cultural labor. Other recommendations include an adult educational system patterned after the Extension Service, the creation of an employment service to get workers to jobs, the development of community labor pools for farmers, and the estab- lishment of a housing program to fit the needs of workers.

It is "hitting below the belt" for a reviewer to criticise an author adversely beyond the scope of his inquiry. However, it is legitimate to say that this investigation should be extended to the farm family, education, community health, political institutions, housing, recreation, and communica- tion facilities as affected by the industrialization of agriculture. Despite the lavish praise this volume has received by quick reviewers, it leaves one wishing. Unless the influence of the transition from sufficing to industrial agriculture is measured in terms of what happens to the more intimate phases of farm family life, how can one be sure that any proposed agricultural policy will not prove to be only another intellectual abortion?

In other words, the great fault of the book is that it is limited to a few of the more general and superficial aspects of social organization. What has been done has been well done, obviously to the end of laying a foundation for an over-all policy statement for agriculture. The result is a handy volume for the policy maker or the extension "specialist" and good preface for a teacher or a research worker.

OTIS DURANT DUNCAN Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College

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