William J. Spillman and the Birth of Agricultural Economics.

William J. Spillman and the Birth of Agricultural Economics. By Laurie Winn Carlson. Missouri Biography Series. (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, c. 2005. Pp. [x], 210. $39.95, ISBN 0-8265-1581-5.)

This study of William J. Spillman (1863-1931) is a top-down history of a man who resisted top-down agricultural education. Spillman is relatively un known today, yet he was incredibly influential in the early days of the United States Department of Agriculture. The book is a welcome and necessary addition to our understanding of how some of our nation's most important agricultural policies developed. Spillman pioneered the field of farm management and established federal programs that led to the formation of the Agricultural Extension Service. Spillman, a prolific writer, published scores of articles and bulletins detailing his research. His 1927 Balancing the Farm Output: A Statement of the Present Deplorable Conditions of Farming (New York) helped lay the groundwork for the New Deal.

Laurie Winn Carlson's book is not a full-blown biography but a comprehensive account of Spillman's professional life as documented by his own publications and by an unpublished biography written by his son, Ramsay Spillman. An educator, economist, and agricultural policy maker, Spillman was involved in the early debates of government agencies concerning the future of American agriculture. Spillman's talents were multiple. Using Gregor Mendel's laws, he laid the foundation for American genetic science with his study of wheat. He grasped complicated economics and devised a new way to visualize statistics to help others more easily understand economic data--the dot map. While Spillman loved giving lectures to a room of scientists, he was equally comfortable talking with and learning from farmers. Indeed, while many experts thought farmers had nothing to teach them, Spillman believed that even agricultural experts could learn from successful farmers.

Carlson is at his best when placing Spillman in the context of and describing the various disagreements within agencies at a time when there were no rules, no agreed-upon goals, and no unifying agenda within agricultural and land agencies and when conflicting interests and people struggled to gain control. One controversy concerned how much influence big business, especially the Rockefeller General Education Board (GEB), would have on the United States Department of Agriculture. Tensions also existed between farmers and colleges. The book chronicles different forms of agricultural education, including debates about the role of experts, book learning versus practical experience, how much and what information should be shared with farmers, crop diversification, the use of demonstration, and even the resistance to land-grant colleges, which many people viewed as corrupt political entities. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sought to insure that policies included African American farmers. Some of the more interesting conflicts that Carlson explores are those between Spillman and the more famous Seaman Knapp. Knapp approved of the GEB, disliked colleges, and believed that farmers should not diversify--all of which brought him into opposition with Spillman.

Carlson provides a lengthy bibliography of Spillman's publications that should prove useful for scholars of agriculture. Reflecting the nature of Carlson's sources, the prose is somewhat bureaucratic and occasionally the litany of criticisms voiced by the bureaucrats reads like a "he said/he said" account of political infighting. Still the stakes were high, and Spillman and his contemporaries knew it. Therefore, these concerns are minor given the overall significance of this study and its contribution to agricultural history.

MINOA UFFELMAN

Austin Peay State University