Prosperity Far Distant The Journal of an American Farmer, 1933-1934 [Hardcover]

Fresh from receiving a doctorate from Cornell University in 1933, but unable to find work, Charles M. Wiltse joined his parents on the small farm they had recently purchased in southern Ohio. There, the Wiltses scratched out a living selling eggs, corn, and other farm goods at prices that were barely enough to keep the farm intact.

In wry and often affecting prose, Wiltse recorded a year in the life of this quintessentially American place during the Great Depression. He describes the familys daily routine, occasional light moments, and their ongoing frustrations, small and largefrom a neighbors hog that continually broke into the cornfields to the ongoing struggle with their finances. Franklin Roosevelts New Deal had little to offer small farmers, and despite repeated requests, the family could not secure loans from local banks to help them through the hard economic times. Wiltse spoke the bitter truth when he told his diary, We are not a lucky family. In this he represented millions of others caught in the maw of a national disaster.

The diary is introduced and edited by Michael J. Birkner, Wiltses former colleague at thePapers of Daniel Webster Projectat Dartmouth College, and coeditor, with Wiltse, of the final volume ofWebsters correspondence.

Prosperity Far Distantis a small gem of a book. Charles Wiltses journal of life on his parents Ohio farm in 1933 and 1934 describes farmings unrelenting physical toil, the grim fight to stave off ruin, the anger of Depression-era farmers, and the pleasures of rural life. Having just earned a doctorate in history and political philosophy, Wiltse was an unusual farm diarist, and his journal is also the story of a young scholars quest to make sense of a badly disrupted world.
 David E. Hamilton, University of Kentucky

One of a kind. A freshly minted but jobless Cornell PhD in political philosophy and history becomes a chicken farmer in Pike County,lCG