Hugh Macrae and the idea of farm city : race, class, and conservation in the New South, 1905-1935
- WCU Author/Contributor (non-WCU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Thomas Luke Manget (Creator)
- Institution
- Western Carolina University (WCU )
- Web Site: http://library.wcu.edu/
- Advisor
- Richard Starnes
Abstract: In 1921, Hugh MacRae, a Wilmington businessman, launched his campaign to
build Farm City. A fusion of country living and urban amenities, Farm City was to be a
demonstration in community planning, an experimental solution to what many
conservation-minded reformers saw as the problem of rural life. Based on his experience
in colonizing the Wilmington countryside with European immigrants, MacRae undertook
a thirteen-year lobbying campaign to build Farm City in hopes that it would show
reluctant southern farmers how greater cooperation in economic, social, and intellectual
affairs could make rural community life more attractive. Along the way, he enlisted the
help of a variety of reformers, writers, and politicians, both northern and southern, who
came to believe that the concept of Farm City could point the United States toward a
more sustainable future. In 1933, MacRae finally received his chance to build Farm City
when the New Deal’s Division of Subsistence Homesteads placed him in charge of
Penderlea Homesteads.
This thesis chronicles the story of the idea of Farm City through more than a
decade of ever-growing popularity and explores the reasons why this particular group of
Americans, specifically MacRae, championed such a utopian ideal. The idea of Farm City was born in the mind of a southern progressive who was concerned with making
agriculture more socially and environmentally sustainable. Influenced by the prevailing
intellectual trends of the conservation movement, including the Country Life Movement,
MacRae held a deep conviction that healthy national development required the
establishment of a happy, stable, yeomanry that could effectively husband the nation’s
resources, but his vision for the countryside was skewed by southern progressive notions
of race and class, and he came to see Farm City as a way to simultaneously strengthen the
South’s racial and social order and pave the way for more efficient resource development.
MacRae’s campaign initially attracted support from elements of the national
conservation movement, including New South advocates, who largely shared his agrarian
convictions. However, throughout the 1920s, as national conservation ideology drifted
further away from securing the yeomanry, MacRae increasingly turned to his fellow
southerners for support. By the onset of the Great Depression, Farm City had become a
southern cause, but it was no longer part of the New South vision. Rather, its supporters
now embraced the idea as a way to preserve an agrarian way of life against the onslaught
of northern industrialism. In tracing the story of the Farm City idea, this thesis will shed
valuable light on the relationship between agrarianism and conservation and illuminate
some hidden corners of progressive conservation ideology in the South.
Hugh Macrae and the idea of farm city : race, class, and conservation in the New South, 1905-1935
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Created on 6/1/2012
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- Language: English
- Date: 2012
- Keywords
- Colonization, Conservation, Division of Subsistence Homesteads, New South, Progressive Era, Reclamation
- Subjects
- Penderlea (N.C.)
- Utopias -- North Carolina -- Penderlea
- Collective settlements -- North Carolina -- Penderlea
- MacRae, Hugh, 1865-1951