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| Format | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author, Analytic | Bennett, Lyn Ellen; Abbott, Scott |
| Title, Analytic | Barbed and Dangerous: Constructing the Meaning of Barbed Wire in Late Nineteenth-Century America |
| Journal Title | Agricultural History |
| Date of Publication | Fall 2014 |
| Volume ID | 88 |
| Issue ID | 4 |
| Location in Work | 566-590, ill. |
| URL | https://mki.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1100/2022/02/Barbed-and-Dangerous-2014.pdf |
| Abstract | When Henry Martin rose presented a sample of his latest attempt to “prevent stock from pushing against [fences]” at the 1873 DeKalb, Illinois, county fair, he may have hoped to influence the fencing industry, but he could not have imagined he was about to inspire a flood of inventions and an advertising blitz that would be an important part of an American mercantile revolution. By november 1874 three of the most influential new patents had been awarded to men who had examined Rose’s invention at the 1873 county fair: Jacob Haish, Isaac Ellwood, and Joseph Glidden, all residents of DeKalb. "[Ad]vertisements [for barbed wire] played on racial and and gender prejudices, appealed to beliefs like Manifest Destiny, employed religious symbols and animal images, contrasted civilized German-American industry with Indian savagery, and invoked a reassuring domesticity. The visual and verbal images with which barbed wire was sold in the final quarter of the nineteenth century tell a very interesing story about the wire and about the Americans who bought and sold it." ". . . Haish, himself a German immigrant, often feattured this genial German as the embodiment of domestic prosperity secured by the admittedly dangerous wire." |
| Call Number | Digital file |
| MKI Terms | German Americans/ Stereotypes/ Agriculture/ Farmers/ Inventors/ Native Americans/ Advertising |