Farm size and work ethic: measuring the success of immigrant farmers on the American grasslands, 1875–1925

With the general increase in the scale of American farming over the last 100 years, farm size has sometimes been used as a measure of financial success. This measure requires considerable modification, particularly when the intensity of farming is introduced. The average size of farms also varied according to government land granting policy, stage of settlement, accessibility to markets, fluctuations in market prices for farm produce and variations in climate which affected harvest yields. In this essay the validity of farm size as a measure of success is considered and then applied to three immigrant groups in central Kansas to determine the importance of the work ethic in their value systems. The Mennonites, not unexpectedly, appear to have been the most successful farmers, but the French-Canadians, contrary to general wisdom, achieved a higher level of success than Swedish immigrant farmers.