Victor Davis Hanson // Private Papers
Two days ago, I drove in a 5-square-mile radius and noticed that the 100 or so farms I grew up with are all gone. Caput. Everyone. Not one grandkid, relative, etc. seems to be farming. The acreage seems either rented out or sold off.
The land is usually leased to conglomerated operations (and the almond orchards look beautiful). Renters from Mexico and Central America mostly live in the clapboard decaying houses, and the barns and sheds look empty or eroding—or rented out to boarders. Often, they also sublet the yard to families living in trailers and make-shift sheds.
So strange that the land is more productive than ever, but the people who first developed it simply disappeared. Their only traces are these wooden skeletons that have not all been removed yet by larger agribusiness companies.
I grew up and still live on a small part of the land that our great-great grandmother bought (as bare scrub) from Leland Stanford’s Southern Pacific railroad in the 1870s. See Frank Norris’s The Octopus, and cf. the Mussel Slough Tragedy (7 miles away), for the animosity of small farmers in the latter 19th-century to “the railroad” that had urged them to buy on credit undeveloped land—only to leverage its repossession later when it was fully developed.
(As a side note it is a paradox to work at Stanford, to listen to all the faculty and student earnests erasing the past about them, and to witness all the names of the supposedly illiberal and long dead now vaporized for their crimes against 21st-century race, class, and gender norms (e.g., Father Sierra, David Starr Jordan, etc.).
And yet, and yet—even the most zealous renamer and reeducator does not mention changing the name of Stanford itself, built on the profits of senior Leland Stanford. He had quite unkind things to say about the Chinese laborers who helped build his empire and whose railroad policies in the San Joaquin Valley were aimed at destroying small farmers whom he lured to develop the lands gifted to him by the government—only to seek to evict and destroy them when they were cultivated and worth 50 times more than when purchased in their wild aboriginal state. I supposed Trotskyizing Father Serra is easy, but giving up the Stanford careerist brand is non-negotiable even for most committed revisionist.)
But enough of the modern editorialization: the homesteader agrarians who shot it out with the confiscators had public opinion on their side and ultimately the railroad began to back off, but not until after a lot of “tragedy”.
A quarter-century ago, I wrote two books once about our family’s fifth-generation farming some 110 years later, and how it became impossible for small orchard and vineyard growers to continue.
By 1980, four families were living on our 180-acre farm and we all had different views of what was going wrong around us, but all agreed something had gone haywire.
For an idea of what life was like before the fall, my brother and cousin five years ago published some poems and art (My San Joaquin) that give a rich flavor of what were once the common lives of everyone we knew but are now mere fragments of memory. I note that Horace warned of the cranky laudator temporis acti (the praiser of time past), but for all the technological wonders of the 21st century, Hesiod was right 2700 years ago that with material progress often comes moral regress.
Discussion (2)
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Victor, I believe most of us in our 60's & 70's look back with nostalgia, as you do, on a time when things were very different, no matter where we lived then. I grew up in a small town in SoCal. When I visit now (which I try to avoid, but still have cousins there, so do occasionally visit,) it is entirely changed. The small homes we all lived in on sweet little tree-lined streets have been replaced with apartments, or the little houses have been demolished to build 4000-foot monstrosity homes that leave no space for a yard because they are built to within a foot of the property line. We used to play with our friends in those yards and there were also a number of vacant properties then, where we'd get together to play softball after school. We never knew who owned those lots, but no one ever told us we couldn't play there. Now they're all gone--there's not a vacant lot to be had now in that town. There's no sense of community there these days; people don't know their neighbors, not even next door. The few small 60-year-old bungalows remaining, like my parents bought in 1940 for $1500, sell for around $1.5 million--IF you can find one to buy, which is rare. What I'm saying is that life for many Americans has changed, whether you're on a farm or in a small town or a city--and lots of us observe that it's not better at all in any way (unless you count the Whole Foods that replaced our corner market owned by a man who loved kids--we'd stop there after school to buy a popsicle from him for a nickel. He didn't sell bok choi or kale--just the basics like Campbells soup and dill pickles). I often wonder if this lack of community connectedness was inevitable, given a population growing rapidly with so many immigrants (legal and illegal), and with social media replacing face-to-face interactions. Add the mandated lockdowns which have exacerbated the disconnect and the result is that nothing is as it was when life seemed so good to us kids back then. Thanks for your piece and for your insights. I listen to your podcasts and read your posts. Keep them coming--I always come away with new perspectives. -Jean p.s. Why is The Victor Davis Hanson National Review podcast being discontinued? I'm hoping you'll be continuing the "Classicist"--I never miss it--and encouraged to read that there'll be another regular podcast coming soon.
As a side question, how is Hoover Institute regarded by the administration, faculty, and students at Stanford? As a 'conservative' think tank, are Hoover Fellows & its programs respected? Are individuals treated with disdain; does the school or faculty look for ways to undermine Hoover's messages? As I read between the lines, I observe that students are seen as 'woke' and ready to practice cancel culture but not Mr. Stanford himself. What is moral of Hoover fellows if they are disliked? What keeps Hoover going? A separate, designated endowments? Some of my extended family ancestors at Stanford's School of Medicine.